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teenth century the printing-press lias made a valuable contribution to the preser vation of Javanese literature. The public collections of Javanese manuscripts now extant in the Archipelago and Europe were built up in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries mostly by the efforts of Dutch scholars. There are three centres of major collections: in Java, Djakarta (Batavia), Surakarta and Yogyakarta; in Bali (Singaraja); and in The Netherlands, Leiden (see Uhlenbeck, “Languages of Java and Madura”, 1964, p. 114). 50.002 The collections in Java. KBG and Yogyakarta collections. In the eighteenth century some officials of the Dutch East India Company showed an increasing interest in things Javanese. In 1778 they founded the “Bataviaas Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen” (Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences), one of the oldest of its kind in Asia. In the course of time, especially since the middle of the nineteenth century, the Society’s museum and library grew into an important centre of scholarly research in the fields of Indonesian anthro pology, philology, archeology and history. In the present book it is usually referred to as KBG, since the Society was given the predicate “Koninklijk” (i.e. Royal) in 1923. At present the museum is called Museum Pusat Kebudajaan Indonesia (Central Museum of Indonesian Culture). In the second decade of the nineteenth century Sir Stamford Raffles, Lieutenant- Governor during the British interregnum in Java in the period of the Napoleonic wars in Europe, showed a great interest in Javanese culture. His “History of Java” Contains much information collected with the assistance of Dutch and Javanese authorities. Until the appearance of professor Veth’s “Java, Geographisch, Eth- nologisch, Historisch” in 1875, Raffles’s book was the generally acknowledged authority on things Javanese. It contains valuable though incomplete nates on Javanese literature. The Batavian Society’s collection of manuscripts in Indonesian languages was gradually built up in the nineteenth century by gifts and purchases effected through the intermediary of Government officials. Though as a rule rather interested in the manuscripts they collected, the Dutch officials seldom possessed enough philological training to be able to read the texts, and the staff of the museum in Batavia was insufficiently equipped. In consequence the Batavian Society’s collection, though very important, was neglected for many years. After a long period of erratic attempts Poerbatjaraka published since 1933, in Dutch, a useful alphabetical list of Javanese manuscripts (“Jaarboek KBG”) and three volumes of very important monographic studies on cycles of narrative romantic and didactic texts belonging to the Islamic period (1940 and 1950). In 1952 he published a comprehensive book on Javanese literature in Javanese (“Kapustakan Djawi”). The translation in Bahasa Indonesia is called “Kepustakaan Djawa”.