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SYNOPSIS, PART FOUR

SCIENCE, ARTS, HUMANITIES, LAW; FOLKLORE, CUSTOMS AND MISCELLANEA 40.000 Medical Literature.

The difficulty of dating Javanese texts belonging to this category is even more ap parent than in other cases. It seems probable, however, that notes on medicines and magic, to be applied in case of illness, were written down in an early period of the history of Javanese letters. No doubt they were private notes of experts. The lore of concocting medicines was kept secret as long as pos sible, being orally transmitted only to trusted pupils. Perhaps a considerable part of the knowledge of medicinal herbs and other sub stances originally was the property of women. The ancient lore was collected afterwards by male practitioners. It is a noticeable fact that in Javanese prescriptions the simples sometimes are called by special names, dif ferent from the names of the herbs in daily life. No doubt this is a result of the desire to keep the knowledge of medicines secret, coupled with a fear of impairment of the * In the present Part Four as a rule no distinction has been made between texts belonging to the four Eras of Javanese cultural history (see 00020), because in most genres and disciplines which are discussed the continuity from the Old Javanese period up to modern times is almost unbroken. An exception has been made only in the case of juridical literature (47.000—48.440).

herbs’ efficiency if called by their common names. Gradually in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries native medicines for serious dis eases, for instance small-pox, fell into discre dit in consequence of the advance of modern European medical science. Many medicines for less serious diseases, household remedies for various kinds of illnesses, especially for children, continued to be used in most Java nese families, however. Texts on medicines are collections of notes in prose, mostly compiled unsystematically. Evidently most manuscripts are the work of compilators who enriched older collections with additional notes of their own. As a con sequence many manuscripts contain a mixture of notes on medicines, magic, physiognomy, erotics and divination. In the present book they are simply classified as books of notes. In Old Javanese literature collections of notes on medicines were called Usada (from Skrt. ausadha). This name has been preserved in Bali. It is impossible to ascertain which part of Javanese-Balinese Usada books is of Old Javanese origin and which part con stitutes an addition of later centuries. The idiom of Usada books written in Bali often