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insular commerce, was widely spread, and in religious circles Arabic books were read. In the interior of Java, the Court, the gentry and the rural communities, though profes sing Islam, were less Islam-minded than the inhabitants of the coastal districts. Ancient indigenous religious belief and custom oc cupied an important place in their minds, and they were fascinated by the tales found in Old Javanese kakawins of Indian inspira tion. Acquaintance with the Malay literary idiom was superficial. It is improbable that in the flourishing period of the Pasisir culture in the seven teenth and eighteenth centuries Old Javanese kakawins had been completely disregarded. Perhaps understanding of the old texts still prevailed in some circles of scholars. On the whole, however, intellectual and artistic at tention was focussed on Islamic texts of foreign origin and on Javanese adaptations of these texts, in the fields of religion, his tory and Belles-Lettres. The turning of die attention of Javanese scholars from Islamic texts to Old Javanese kakawins, and the ensuing development of Surakarta Court literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, were tantamount to a renaissance of classical Javanese litera ture. The Surakarta renaissance of literature in the late eighteenth and the nineteenth cen turies was also notable in art, especially in theatrical art and music connected with wayat) performances. No doubt way at) and all it stands for are of very old origin in Java, but its artistic development and pene tration into all fields of Javanese culture seem to date from the renaissance period. In the nineteenth century the cultural in

fluence of the Central Javanese Courts of Surakarta (in a minor degree of Yogyakarta too) spread all over Java and the remnants of old Pasisir culture dwindled. In the judg ment of nineteenth and twentieth century Javanese authors and scholars, Central Ja vanese Court literature and art were the only notable representatives of genuine Ja vanese civilization. The Pasisir literature was well-nigh forgotten, and the Pasisir art was deemed insignificant. This judgment was strengthened by the fact that since the middle of the eighteenth century the old Pasisir civilization had been overshadowed by modern Dutch colonial culture, which had its centres (in the Javanese part of the is land) in the very districts where once the Pasisir towns had been flourishing: modern Europeanized Surabaya eclipsed old Bampèl and Giri-Grësik, once residences of Pasisir princes, and modern Sëmarat), the capital of all Central Javanese districts under Dutch administration, put the old towns of Japara, Kudus and Dëmak in the shadow. The renaissance literature distinguished itself from the preceding Islamic Pasisir literature not only by its increasing interest in Old Javanese pre-Islamic origins but also by the more individualistic attitude of scho lars and authors. Nearly all Javanese books of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, even the most important ones, are without names of authors and without dates. In the eighteenth century, authors of Sura karta began regularly to mention dates and names of Royal patrons, sometimes also their own names, in the introductions to their work. So historical knowledge about renais sance literature is greater than about the products of the preceding period. Perhaps