63

60.110 Javanese script from East Java and Madura.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 'be ancient kingdom of Majapahit in the ’nterior of East Java declined. Several mer cantile principalities on the North Coast, in Javanese called Pasisir, ruled by Muslim Princes of mixed Indian and Javanese blood, became centres of a rejuvenescent culture strongly influenced by international Islam. Unfortunately, remnants of the once flour ishing Pasisir culture are scarce, in conse quence of devastating wars waged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries between t b' e heirs of the Majapahit realm. A few Javanese manuscripts of that period survived hie vicissitudes of war, as they were brought Europe as curiosities by the first Dutch Navigators te» explore the Archipelago. The codexes were preserved in University libra- r * e s and almost forgotten, because they were Unintelligible to seventeenth and eighteenth century European scholars. Not until the iast decades of the nineteenth century Dutch

scholars were successful in deciphering and interpreting them (see § 14.000). Peace was gradually restored in Java in the eighteenth century, and in residences of formerly independent North Coast dynasties, by then conquered by the inland Mataram Kings, an Islamic Pasisir art and literature survived. Up to the twentieth century several kinds of script different from the standard Central Javanese script were in use in Ma dura and East Java. A cursive and a per pendicular variety could be distinguished. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (and probably before, too) many palmleaf manu scripts of the popular Yusup romance were made in East Java. These codexes show a great variety of hand-writings. Purely Madurese texts are not discussed in the present book (see § 22.300). Madurese spelling has some peculiarities by which it is distinguished from common Javanese or thography.