THE DESCRIPTION OF JAVANESE MANUSCRIPTS 50.009

21

lists, of Vreede’s and Juynboll’s catalogues and the “Bladwijzer B” of Brandes’s Beschrijving”, are made superflous by this device. The third volume contains a General Index of names in alphabetical order comparable with the first index of Vreede’s and Juynboll’s catalogues, Brandes’s Beschrijving” and Voorhoeve’s “Handlist”. Beside names of texts and authors, the General Index contains other entries, which are not found in the older catalogues (see 00010). Primarily it refers to codex numbers as registered in the second volume and secondarily to the paragraphs of volume One. In the present volume Two every codex is provided with a reference to a Paragraph of the first volume, the “Synopsis of Javanese Literature”, which has a systematical classification. By this means it is possible to find information on a ge and importance of every text in the collection. Many codexes contain more than one text, in this case the paragraph reference of such a codex belongs to the first text, for, as a rule, in the present book the codex is named after the first text, at any rate if it is of some importance. In several cases the second and following texts in a codex are also provided with indications referring to a paragraph of the Synopsis. Anyhow it is always possible to find a Synopsis paragraph containing information on a given text by looking up the text in the General Index (volume III) which refers primarily to codexes of volume II (see 00150), and also, secondarily, to paragraphs of volume I. The descriptions of codexes in the present volume consist of three parts: (I) The three initial lines are concerned with shape and script of the codex. They form the heading of the description ; (II) The main part contains a short description of the text or texts, if possible mentioning the author’s name, the probable age and the part of Java where it was written (East, Central, West etc.); (HI) At the end of the description the way and the year of acquisition by the Library are mentioned (see 50.004-50.006, the major and minor collections). I- In the headings of descriptions, in the first line, the codex number a nd the paragraph number, preceded by one of the four capital letters R (Religion), H (History), B (Belles-Lettres) and S (Science) (see 00010 and 70.000), the material of the codex (palmleaf manuscript or treebark manuscript, see 00130) a nd its state of preservation (damaged, fragmentary) are mentioned. Of paper manuscripts no special mention is made. The kind of the paper used m Javanese codexes seems of small importance; as a rule the script and the idiom contain clearer indications on the age of a codex than the paper used. Moreover many manuscripts are recent copies made by scribes using paper provided by Dutch scholars, or even common exercise-books.