117

influence on Javanese literature of all pe riods of history. In the course of time Maha bharata heroes were adopted as national heroes and ancestors of the Central Javanese line of Kings. A majority of the plays of the national Javanese theatre, the wayaq purwa, has Mahabharata heroes for persona ges. True, probably several wayaq plays actually are indigenous myths, but then the fact that Mahabharata heroes (Arjuna, Bhlma, sikhandin = Srikandi) took the places of the original principal characters (whose Javanese names we can only guess) is evidence of the paramount influence of Indian epic tales. In fact, Indian epic and puranic tales have almost entirely filled the place of mythology in Javanese literature. The name of the most popular type of national theatre, the wayarj purwa, probably contains the word parwa, the Sanskrit name of the eighteen Mahabharata books, corrup ted in contamination with purwa, pristine, ancient. Under the; present head Old Javanese prose versions of Mahabharata books are registered. Not all of the eighteen Maha bharata books have been rendered into Ja vanese prose, and the renderings are of unequal quality. The Adiparwa is by far the best known. All Old Javanese prose versions have one characteristic in common: they contain fragments of original Sanskrit slokas, with Javanese paraphrases, which are used as rubrics. By means of these fragmentary Sanskrit quotations it is possible to collate the Old Javanese texts with the originals. It is clear that the Old Javanese books con tain very much abridged versions of the Indian parwas. The question whether the parwa versions

in Javanese prose had a definite sacral func tion in Old Javanese life is difficult to ans wer. Probably on festive occasions the Old Javanese version of the Rama tale in verse, with Indian metres, Ramayana kakawin (see 30.000), was chanted in public by trained singers. The Old Javanese prose texts may have been recited rhythmically on similar occasions by professional story-tellers. If this was the case, probably even in that early period the pronunciation of Sanskrit words and names, and the stress on some syllables, must have resembled modern Java nese practice, because if not, the rhythm of the sentence would have been disturbed (see 00040). The tale of the war of the Pandawas and Kora was was made into an Old Javanese epic poem, called Bharata Yuddha, which afterwards was rendered into modem Java nese verse. These poetic versions of the ancient Indian tale are listed in Part Three (Belles-Lettres) of the present Synopsis (30.010 and 30.900). Like the Mahabharata parwas, the last book of Walmlki’s Ramayana, Uttara Kanda, was also rendered into' Old Javanese prose. This work supplied the subject- matter of well-known epic poems: Hari Sraya and Arjuna Wijaya (30.145 and 30.125). Wiwuda (Wibudha) Parwa is the name of a short text of the same kind, on Parasu Rama, apparently containing similar tales as found in the third (Wana Parwa, chpt. 116) and in the twelfth (Santi Parwa, chpt. 49) book of the Mahabharata. Most of the parwa versions in Old Java nese prose have been edited by Juynboll and other Dutch scholars (see Uhlenbeck’s “The