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PRELIMINARY HISTORICAL REMARKS ON THE LITERATURE OF JAVA 00001 The Importance of Javanese Literature.

Linguistically the Javanese language be longs to that very extensive group of langua ges, the Austro-Indonesian family, which is spread over innumerable islands of the Southern Hemisphere from Madagascar in the west to Easter Island in the east. The Indonesian Archipelago is the home of the most important peoples speaking a language belonging to that family, and among the Archipelago languages, Javanese has the greatest number of speakers (nowadays pro bably fifty millions or more). Historically the Javanese language has been the medium of an important civilization since the ninth century A.D. Many peoples inhabiting the southern islands benefited spiritually by the import of ideas and inven tions brought to the Archipelago by travel lers and immigrants from India, but in Cen tral and East Java, and in Bali, Indian civilizing influence proved most enduring and most deeply penetrating into society. No doubt one of the most valuable gifts of India was the art of writing. Adapting a South Indian script to their native languages, the Javanese and the Balinese were able to write down important texts earlier than any other people inhabiting the southern islands. In consequence of this fact, Javanese and Bali nese cultural developments and achieve

ments during the past ten centuries are better known (or, at least, less unknown), histori cally, than similar matters in the civilizations of closely related Archipelago peoples. Where as Javanese literary texts are rather well known from the tenth century A.D. onward, in the case of other Archipelago languages it is often difficult to date texts even within the past four centuries. With regard to civilization, Java and Bali are so closely connected with the Conti nent that the islands are rightly considered as belonging to the sphere of Greater India. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Is lam and Muslim literature were also impor ted into the islands from India. Nevertheless in Java and Bali, as in other countries be longing to the Greater India sphere, the indigenous civilization was never completely superseded by Indian import; it was only influenced and its development was stimula ted by Indian culture. In the most important products of Javanese and Balinese authors of ancient and modern times the amalgama tion of foreign and indigenous elements is apparent. Geographically Java and Bali are the southernmost countries where Indian cul tural influence was of decisive importance. In the course of history East Javanese