FOREWORD BY THE LIBRARIAN

The present “Catalogue Raisonné” is the second work dealing with an oriental literature which appears in the series “Codices Manuscripti” of the Leiden Uni versity Library. The first one is the “Handlist of Arabic Manuscripts” by Dr. P. Voorhoeve, which was published in 1957. The two books have in common the aim to offer comprehensive surveys of the public collections of manuscripts in their respective fields existing in The Netherlands. It will be found that the Arabic “Handlist” and the Javanese “Catalogue Raisonné” have been arranged in different ways. This difference is due to the fact that the Leiden collections of Arabic manuscripts and of Javanese manuscripts cannot be placed on the same footing. The Arabic manuscript collection of Leiden, on the one hand, is very important in many respects, but it has rivals in several university towns of Europe, North Africa, Asia and America. Moreover, the Arabic literature has been described in various books written in many languages. The Javanese collection of Leiden, on the other hand, is the only representative one which has been described completely by competent scholars, and it covers the whole literary production of the Javanese from about 900 up to about 1900 A.D. For this reason the Library feels justified in publishing the present elaborate descriptive catalogue. It contains information on Javanese literature in general which is not found in any other book published until now. On account of this fact it has been given the distinctive title “Literature of Java”. “Literature of Java” is made available to the public by the Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology (“Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde”) in Leiden. The book is incorporated in the Institute’s series of publications on the Indian Archipelago.