North Coast, Dëmak, Kudus and Japara, did know a period of political expansion in the sixteenth century. Eighteenth century Javanese historians considered the Muslim Dëmak Kings as legitimate successors of the heathenish Majapahit rulers. In Javanese historical tradition the great mosque of Dëmak became the national centre of Islam, venerated as fervently as the holy places of international Muhammadanism in Arabia, Mecca and Medina. In the field of literature the flourishing Central Pasisir kingdom of Dëmak was fruitful. Numerous books on law, compen diums and adaptations of Old Javanese law books, dating from the Dëmak period or shortly afterwards, will be discussed in Part Four of the present Synopsis (47.400). Probably several works on religion, and perhaps some belletristic books, belong to the same period and the same centre of culture (see 16.500 and 30.670 ff.). But history was the subject in which the Dëmak rulers and scholars, who considered themselves succes sors and heir$ of Majapahit, took an interest above all other things. The great changes in political and social order, the introduction of Islam and the overthrow of the old kingdom of Majapahit had impressed them greatly. When the seventeenth century scholars of the Central North Coast districts became acquainted with Muslim religious and his torical traditions, different from Old Java nese tales of either indigenous Javanese or Indian origin, they wanted a frame wherein to unite all myths, legends, histories and tales. This idea of uniting all known mythical and historical tales gave rise to- the writing of the Universal Histories and compendiums of mythology of the Pasisir culture. True,

Old Javanese literature produced some ency clopedias (see 46.500), but they were not firmly founded on a historical concept. Prob ably the historical view of the authors of Pasisir Universal Histories was sharpened by the Islamic concept of continuity in world history, beginning with creation up to- mo dern times. According to eighteenth and nineteenth century tradition the walls, the holy men who introduced Islam into Java in the fif teenth century, were also the inventors of some important arts: the art of wayat}- puppet making, of wayarytheatre perform ances, of the making of gamëlan instruments and theatrical masks. Historically it is beyond doubt that these arts existed already in the pre-Islamic period. It is easy to under stand that the walls, inaugurating a new period, namely the era of Islam, were con sidered patrons of all arts belonging to that period. But then, perhaps, there is a deeper truth in the Javanese tradition. In the pre- Islamic period the above mentioned arts still were sacral offices closely connected with religion, ritual and worship. In the Muslim period they were secularized, and so they became arts in the common sense of the word. The walls (i.e. the Muslim scholars of the Pasisir period) discovered them, and laid them bare for the profane public. A similar secularizing tendency may have prevailed with the authors of the Universal Histories of the Pasisir period. They in corporated in their books mythic tales and epic history from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana which before had been consid ered sacred. Divulging them had been thought almost a profanation. Moreover in the General Histories tales of the adventures