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in prefixing introductions to their works the poets of Surakarta imitated the authors of Old Javanese kakawins, which were dedi cated to Royal patrons (see 30.010). In the nineteenth century European in fluence, primarily exercised by the Dutch scholars residing in Surakarta at the time: Gericke, Winter and Wilkens, also led Ja vanese authors to more precision in personal details. Winter’s “Javanese Conversations” contain valuable notes on the authorship of books written in his own time and in the preceding period, based on oral information provided by Surakarta Court scholars. With out Winter’s efforts historical knowledge on seventeenth and eighteenth century Javanese literature would be still more deficient than it is. In the development of nineteenth cen tury renaissance literature European in fluence increased in force with the time. In the second half of the century, in the Rarjga Warsita period, it was notable everywhere. In the flourishing period of the Surakarta renaissance literature, in the second half of the eighteenth century and in the beginning of the nineteenth century, two scholars of the name Yasadipura, father and son, were the leaders. In due time the son, Yasadipura II, was given the grand name Sastra Nagara. He was a contemporary of the above-men tioned Dutch scholars and the grandfather °f Rai}ga Warsita. It is difficult to distin guish between the work of Yasadipura I and H, because the son often re-edited books Written by his father. The Kings of the time were personally interested in literature, and some of than were authors themselves. They were Paku Buwana III (reigned 1749-1789), Paku Buwana IV (1789-1820) and Paku Buwana V (1820-1823).

The renaissance was notable in all fields of literature. In Part One, Religion, of the present Synopsis moralistic-didactic poems written by authors belonging to this period have been mentioned (17.600—18.500). In Part Two, History, the great Babads written by the Yasadipuras have been discussed (26.800—27.000) and the, later, monumental Pustaka Raja by Ra^ga Warsita (28.400). Poerbatjaraka (“Kapustakan Djawi”, 1952) has interesting notes on these authors and some others (Sindu Sastra, Kusumadilaga) belonging to the Surakarta renaissance. The Old Javanese kakawin tradition waned in Java in the period of ascendancy of Islamic literature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nevertheless manu scripts containing Old Javanese texts were preserved in Javanese libraries up to the nineteenth century. As a rule the Javanese tradition is more corrupt than the Balinese texts written on palmleaf (see 30.000). Sura karta scholars who studied the old texts, in the last decades of the eighteenth century, made modern Javanese paraphrases, still in the original Indian metres. These paraphra ses are simplified versions; ordinary, gener ally understood expressions are substituted for difficult Old Javanese and Sanskrit ones. This literary idiom was called kawi- m i r i i}, sloping kawi, in contradistinction to the real kawi of the old texts (see 00050). Sometimes it was also called jarwa (origin ally sajarwa, from Sanskrit arjawa, straight, hence: clear explanation). Only some of the classic Old Javanese kakawins, mostly dating from the flourishing period of Kadiri literature in the twelfth century, were given kawi-miriw, versions.