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For a long time instruction in religious lore of all kinds in Java was given in schools or colleges, each under the leadership of a master, called kyahi. The pupils were lodged in simple huts in the yard of the master’s house, and in some cases they worked for him to earn their living and school-fees. The schools were called pondoks (huts) or pasantrèns (places of santris: pupils and servants). There is reason to suppose that teaching establishments of this kind already existed in the pre-Islamic period. Perhaps their origin is to be found in the ancient indigenous social organization. The Muslim pondoks may have had for prototypes, in the pre-Islamic period, the mandalas, men tioned repeatedly in Old Javanese literature (see “Java in the XIVth Century” vol. IV, p. 484). Similarity of methods of studying religion in the pre-Islamic and in the Mus lim period of Javanese cultural history will be mentioned again with reference to- the use of texts, originally written in Arabic (see 14.400). In the first centuries of the Islamic period several masters of pondoks, perhaps con tinuing a pre-Islamic tradition of scholar ship, were adepts of mysticism. Propagating their doctrines among their pupils they exercised a wide-spread influence in Java, not only spiritually but also politically. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Javanese Kings found the kyahis of pondoks a nuisance and troublesome. The action of the temporal rulers to curtail the influence °f the mystic masters was appreciated by the legalist divines who had their doubts about the orthodoxy of the kyahis. So in the nineteenth century orthodox Islam came into the ascendancy in Java.

The orthodox faction was mostly led by Muslim divines who occupied rather lucra tive places as heads of mosques, in Javanese called with a Malay word: pav,hulus. They belonged to the middle-class kanman, the men of religion grouped around the mosques in towns and boroughs, often engaged in trade, who have been mentioned before as belonging to the earliest period of Islam in Java. Religious texts primarily studied in orthodox circles have been registered under a separate head (15.700 ff.). The mystic current in religious thought did not disappear, though. In the nineteenth century the leadership of mystic adepts passed gradually from the hands of revered kyahis of pondoks to local representatives of grand-masters of great international mys tic fraternities having their headquarters in Mecca. That was the end of the kind of free mysticism which was instrumental in introducing the Muslim Faith into Java. For centuries it had been characteristic for Javanese Islam. In Javanese religious literature of the Islamic period texts in some way or another concerned with mysticism are numerous. Some books which in the present Synopsis have been registered in Part Three, Belles- Lettres, are also coloured by mysticism. In view of the preponderant importance of the mystic current in Javanese Islam, in the present Part One Muslim religious texts will be discussed in the following order: A. Texts primarily concerned with mystic speculation: 14.010—15.300 ff. B. Collections of prayers and incantations,