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by the descendants of the original grantee. Considered from this point of view the origin of ancient cast brass plate charters and bronze cult statuettes from the same brass- founders workshops belonging to religious communities seems not incongruous (see 20.000). Probably in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries occasionally Javanese texts with a religious or magical purport were engraved on thin copper strips of a narrow form which afterwards often were made into small rolls. The rolls were used as charms or amulets, carefully preserved at home or carried con cealed in the clothes. In shape the copper rolls resemble rolls of palmleaf which also are occasionally used for magic purposes, being provided with an inscription or a drawing. In olden times the above mentioned writ ten texts were venerated or feared as much on account of their contents as for the script, the letters, which were considered with re ligious awe as visible marks of invisible, superhuman powers. For a very long time the mysterious connection of writing with audible and sensible words remained a won der. All kinds of written texts and books were handled with circumspection. In anti quity putting trivial matters and information on persons of no consequence in writing seemed preposterous. In consequence in old manuscripts notes on personal circumstances and descriptions of everyday life are very scarce, which is a pity. In Java, scratching texts of any impor tance on bamboo laths is very seldom re corded. Considering the Sumatran use of bamboo as a writing-material it seems pro bable that in antiquity in Java bamboo lath

books were less scarce than they are now. In the pre-Islamic period the common writing material was : leaves of various kinds of palms, especially the lontar palm (Boras- sus flabellifer), in Java locally called kropak. In India writing on palmleaves has been known for a very long time. As the art of writing was introduced by Indians it seems probable that in Java and Bali the use of palmleaves as writing-material is also of Indian origin. The leaves were dried and cut in narrow oblong forms, sometimes with the ribs still attached, sometimes without. Palmleaves with ribs, folded up, tended to warp and so they became unwieldy. With cut ribs, palmleaves of good quality made good flat and flexible writing sheets. As a rule they were pierced in three places, at the two ends and in the middle. A string running through the middle hole could keep a bundle of mostly about one hundred leaves together. In order to make a book, the two ends of the string were run through holes of wooden or bamboo boards of the same size as the palmleaves themselves, and the ends were tied together. The two boards formed the binding of the palmleaf book, in Dutch-Indian parlance called a kropak. Texts were not written on the lontar palmleaves with pen and ink, but they were scratched with the point of a small knife. Afterwards a black powder was rubbed in. in order to render the scratchings better visible. If done carefully this manner of writing produced fine manuscripts. A draw back was the impossibility of redressing mis takes, for the scratchings could not be made invisible or corrected. Occasionally in the pre-Islamic period other methods of writing were used. Fluid