12

Old Javanese written literature was a true reproduction of the spoken language of the time is unknown to us, and so it is hazardous to make statements on the spread of dialects in the pre-Islamic period. Ad 2 (cf. 00020, era B). In the present Synopsis Javanese-Balinese is used as a name for the literary idiom of texts written in Bali and Lombok after the disintegration of the East Javanese kingdom of Majapahit and the rise of Islam in Java in the fifteenth century. In many respects Javanese-Balinese literature is a successor of Old Javanese letters, showing some new developments of its own. The name “Midden-Javaans” (Middle Javanese), formerly used by some Dutch scholars with reference to part of the Javanese-Balinese literature is deceptive, be cause Old Javanese and Javanese-Balinese letters are differentiated by origin of the authors (Java on the one side, Bali and Lombok on the other) more than by age (see 00020). In Bali Javanese-Balinese liter ature continued up to the twentieth century. In the present book on Literature of Java sometimes also the term Javanese-Sundanese is used. It refers to texts which were written in the border provinces of Javanese civiliza tion in West Java. In fact the idiom verges on the Sundanese. Many Javanese-Balinese and Javanese-Sundanese texts were regis tered as Balinese and Sundanese in Juyn- boll’s “Supplement op den Catalogus van “de Sundaneesche Handschriften en Catalo gus van de Balineesche en Sasaksche hand schriften” 1912, in the present book quoted as “Catalogue Juynboll III”, and in Bran- des’ “Beschrijving der Javaansche, Bali- “neesche en Sasaksche Handschriften, aange- “troffen in de nalatenschap van Dr H. N.

“van der Tuuk” 1901-1926 (see 50008). Registering those texts as Javanese instead of Balinese or Sundanese is in accordance with the precedence given to the cultural aspect of the study of literature over the linguistical in the present book. Ad 3 (cf. 00020, era C). After the disin tegration of the kingdom of Majapahit and the rise of Islam an Islamic Javanese litera ture developed in East Java, mainly in the trading centres on the North Coast, Grësik and Surabaya. It was also cultivated at the Courts of Madurese rulers, and it spread in the North Coast districts eastwards and westwards. Probably the idiom of the oldest Islamic East Javanese texts corresponds more or less with the Javanese spoken and written in religious middle-class communi ties of the districts along the lower course of the rivers Brantas and Bëtjawan. The oldest Islamic texts from East Java show similarities in idiom with some Old Javanese texts, not belonging to Court literature, writ ten in the pre-Islamic period. Islamic East Javanese literature endured after the fall of the local dynasties of Sura baya and Grësik and the conquest of the country by the forces of the Central Javan ese Kings of Mataram, in the seventeenth century. The influence of East Java on the development of Central and West Pasisir literature, and, later, on the literature of the Central Javanese Courts of Kartasura and Surakarta, was great. Probably the literary idioms of all later centres of Javanese culture owe much to the early Muslim East Java nese authors. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the period of expansion of Islamic Javanese culture. In the centre and the