159

consideration the wars fought by contending dynasts in Central and East Java and the internal troubles in the Royal dominions, which caused a delay of many years or even some decades every time a King, having won authority in the country during his life-time, died. Without the backing of the Dutch East India Company the Central Ja vanese dynasty would probably not have survived as long as it did. Eventually the centre of authority might have shifted again to East Java. In several preceding paragraphs (22.200- 24.800) local histories of many districts of Java have been mentioned. Probably these local histories seemed of little interest to eighteenth century scholars of the Central Javanese Courts, because of their irrelevancy to Central Javanese dynastic greatness. In some cases episodes which seemed not wholly irrelevant were incorporated in the major babads, however. Many local histories mentioned in the preceding paragraphs may have been wholly unknown to eighteenth and nineteenth century Central Javanese Court scholars, due to> difficulties of communica tion. Measured by modern standards of cul tural, social and economic historiography, eighteenth and nineteenth century Javanese dynastic histories are disappointing. The historical information provided is not always trustworthy because authors of texts were biassed in favour of ancestors of the King under whose protection they were living. Therefore examination of local histories is extremely useful: it throws new light on the history of the Central Javanese dynasty. Under the present head historical texts referring to the reigns of Dëmak, Pa jat}

and Mataram Kings before Sultan Agut} (first decades of the seventeenth century) are registered. Probably the majority of the texts was written in the eighteenth or the nineteenth century, at the time of the Sura karta and Yogyakarta Kings. Nevertheless it seems possible that Dëmak, Pa jar} and early Mataram babads contain information of some importance for local history, based on ancient local tradition. As to Dëmak history, collation of babads Dëmak of the kind listed under the present head with the final chapters of the Central Pasisir Uni versal History mentioned in 22.900 might be fruitful. In the Major History of Central Javanese Kings, composed in Surakarta in the last decades of the eighteenth century and in the nineteenth century, histories of preceding dynasties were incorporated. Collation of introductory chapters of those Major His tories with babads Dëmak and Pajai} might be interesting for historians. Manuscripts containing texts on the sub ject are registered in the General Index under the catchwords Dëmak, Tit^kir, Pajaw>, Sénapati, Mataram. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries several Javanese historical texts were pub lished under the name Babad. The Babad Pajat}, published in Surakarta in 1871, was one of the first. In several Dutch articles and books Dr. H. de Graaf has tried to reconstruct the course of history. He has collated Javanese historical texts with notes on Javanese history found in Portuguese and Dutch books on the beginning of West European trade to South Asia. 25.610 Histories of pre-Mataram kingdoms, beginning with mythology: