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found there by Dutch scholars. Unfortu nately detailed information on the religious communities where those texts were written and used, perhaps as late as the eighteenth century, is not available. Probably in the last decades of the eighteenth century and in the beginning of the nineteenth, the in crease of traffic and the ensuing penetration of Muslim officials into the interior of the country caused old conservative non-Islamic religious communities to fall into' discredit with the rural peasantry, and so they lost their means of subsistence. Non-Islamic texts from Java are written in a peculiar script, which is different from modern Javanese script and also from Bali nese. Apparently it is more closely related to the kind of script used in Java in the pre- Islamic period than the other types. It is called buda or gunuv, script. In the Islamic era the preceding period was called jaman buda, Buddha time, and so the script was also called buda script. On the name Buddha time, which is at variance with the facts (siwaism was far more important than Buddhism), some notes can be found in the present author’s “Java in the XIVth Cen- “tury” (references in vol. V, p. 40). The name gunuv, script, mountain script, was given on account of the remoteness of the mountain districts where manuscripts writ ten in that script were found. Perhaps in some conservative non-Islamic communities occasionally buda or gunurt, script was used as a kind of secret writing, in order to preclude profanation of sacred texts by out siders. It is not likely that all manuscripts written in buda script owe their existence to a desire for secrecy, however, for common belletristic texts written in buda script are

in evidence. The script of the manuscripts which were collected in the nineteenth century has var ious types. In the present Synopsis the terms buda, gunuv, and rustic script are used in discriminately, in order to draw attention to the relationship existing between the various types of script used in manuscripts apparently written in remote districts of Java (see the facsimiles in Volume Three of the present book). In consequence of the bad state of preser vation of most manuscripts, study of those remnants of non-Islamic Javanese literary activity is difficult. A few manuscripts writ ten in some kind of buda or gunuv, script contain literary texts belonging to Part Three, Belles-Lettres, of the present Synop sis. Several manuscripts containing texts on magic and divination are registered in Part Four (40.260 and 41.960). In the present Part One under a separate head (14.200) some Javanese manuscripts written in buda script containing Islamic incantations etc. are registered. The KBG lontar collection in Djakarta contains a considerable number of manu scripts written in buda script of Central and West Javanese origin (see 50.052). Under the present head manuscripts writ ten in various kinds of buda, gunuv, or rustic script, containing non-Islamic religious texts have been collected. Apparently they were written in rustic religious communities; the scholarly standard of their authors is not high. Therefore it is unfeasible in respect of those manuscripts to distinguish between texts on religious speculation, on ritual etc. The majority of the manuscripts belongs to the class of books of notes, containing in-