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merce. In the fourteenth and fifteenth cen turies traders in the Archipelago, when they embraced Islam, used their familiar inter- insular trade idiom also in religiosis. Malay became the language of Islam. At the same time the international Arabic script superseded older scripts of Indian origin which had been used before by Malay speaking people. In matters connected with Islam, Muslim theology and law, Malay words and expressions were borrowed everywhere in the Archipelago, and Malay always was intermediary in introducing Arabic words and names, connected with Islam, into the native languages of the islands. For a long time Muslim religiosity in Java had its centres on the one hand in the quar ters of pious traders and artisans clustered around the mosques in towns and boroughs, on the other hand in schools or colleges ( pondoks,pasantrèns), which will be dis cussed by and by. The quarters of Muslim men of religion mostly engaged in trade were called kamnans in Javanese (from Arabic kawm: people). In the beginning, Javanese Islam was a religion of middle- class people. Probably one is justified in assuming that the overturn of ancient Java- nese-Hinduistic religion in part was a social revolution which brought a new class of temporal and ecclesiastical rulers into office. Though in theory there are no priests in Islam, in fact the place of pre-Islamic ec clesiastics was soon filled by Muslim men of religion belonging to the kauman and pondok groups. In the beginning of the Islamic period several elements of ancient indigenous Javanese culture, wayaij, ga melan etc. came to the fore. In this devel

opment of native art also the new classes of temporal and ecclesiastical rulers may have been operative. Being partly of middle- class origin, they were probably more fa miliar with elements of ancient popular culture than the Hinduistic Court nobility and the high-class Court scholars, who were superseded. At the time of the victory of Islam over the old Javanese-Hinduistic religious system, Java and Bali possessed a rich and many- sided literature. The Malay treatises which contained the tenets of the new religion were studied by Javanese scholars who had an extensive vocabulary referring to pre- Islamic religious concepts at their disposal. Like all Muslim neophytes they borrowed a great number of Arabic words, expressive of the new concepts. Over and above that, they soon began to use terms belonging to the sphere of the pre-Islamic religion, in order to explain Arabic religious terms. An Islamic Javanese idiom came into existence. Nevertheless, like everywhere in the Muslim world, Arabic words and expressions re mained preponderant in religious treatises. Starting from religious and moralistic Isla mic literature, Arabic words and expressions became increasingly numerous in everyday speech, and enriched the already copious Javanese vocabulary with new synonyms. Gradually, in the form of Arabic and Malay words and expressions, Islam acclimatized in Java, living side by side with the old Javanese-Hinduistic religious traditions. Finally it superseded them. In some remote districts of Java pre- Islamic religious beliefs and related cere monies survived. Under one of the preceding heads (10.800) texts originally belonging