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^explicable word manawasta seems to be a corruption of Sanskrit anawastha, unsta- ’ used in connection with Javanese r akwa, which means: so it is said, uncer- IjUn. Sanskrit awastha, (firm) position, is ƒ °rigin of Javanese and Balinese wasta, w esta, meaning: title, name. These words ° Ccur in the introduction of LOr4463, in Landes’ “Beschrijving” III, 1915, no 975, a c °Py made by K.F. Holle of an old codex ^ ^e KBG collection in Jakarta, dated a ^ a 1357, i.e. A.D. 1435, and called after e initial words Say Hyay Ayu. The words Hyag Ayu (or Hayu) used both in the °dleian and the KBG manuscript appar ently refer to Holy Good, or Holy Truth. e two texts seem to have some more e atures in common. The idiom of the Rasa Carita is Old av anese. The fact that many paragraphs c °nsist of explanations of Sanskrit words a nd sentences had a considerable influence ° n the style. The orthography of both nnskrit and difficult Old Javanese words is a °t always correct; long vowels are not 'stinguished from short ones, and d and d are represented by one character (d). The utter fact is an indication of the West av anese origin of the scribe, which is also a Pparent from the type of the script. This ^hows a similarity with the script of the -eiden Kunjara Karna codex 2266 (fac- s irnile plate 22 in Lit. of Java, vol. Ill, 31). also of West Javanese origin and a text of Buddhist inspiration. The writing of llte Leiden codex is superior, though, the text of the Rasa Carita is difficult to read ^ Ue both to the ambiguity or indistinctness °f certain characters or clusters of charac- ters a nd the mistakes made by the scribe.

Influence of the Sundanese vernacular on the idiom of the text is scarcely in evidence, though. The original of the Rasa Carita is regis tered in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, as ms. Jav. b. 1 (R). It was presented to the library in 1627 by Andrew James, see Ricklefs and Voorhoeve, Indonesian Man uscripts in Great Britain, 1977, p. 177. On the ground of the similarity of the script with LOr 2266, the Kunjara Karna ms. of circa 1500 A.D., it is to be assumed that the Rasa Carita manuscript dates from the same period. The 78 nipah palmleaves were in disor der. The photostats collected in LOr 14.436 have been rearranged according to the original Javanese numbering, written at right angles to the writing of the text, in the left hand margins of the upper leaves. As a rule in palmleaf manuscripts the numbers are written in the margins of the lower leaves. This particularity was often over looked by the photographer of the Bodleian codex. Students using the set of photostats should take account of the perfectly under standable irregularities of the photo grapher’s work. The first “page” of the manuscript (8 lines written on an upper end a lower leaf) and some loose leaves without writing on it, have no numbers. The highest number is 91, the leaves numbered 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83 and 85 are missing. The text ends abruptly, the conclusion is missing and there is no colophon. LOr 8515 contains a preliminary romanized translit eration of the initial leaves of the text made by Soegiarto and Voorhoeve in 1954. The present complete set of microfilms of the Rasa Carita is due to the courtesy of the