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consequence, contacts between common vil lagers and members of the Court aristocracy, which was quadrupled, became more frequent and more intimate. The relations between the four Courts became strained, owing to in evitable disputes about borderlines and the administration of justice. In the course of time Dutch Governors and Residents estab lished order by persuading the Kings to agree on issuing simultaneously some new laws (in Javanese called aw,gër-av,gër), regulating the unprecedented relations. The new regu lations issued by Royal decree were not based on previously existing jurisprudence, which did not cover the cases arising from the new situation. They partook of the character of political treaties. In the second half of the nineteenth cen tury Islam attracted the interest of Dutch scholars. A Javanese treatise of Islamic law, called Tuhfa, was published and studied. There is little reason to believe that treatises of the character of the Tuhfa were decisive in Javanese courts of law at any time (see 48.000). In the last decades of the nineteenth cen tury Javanese society evolved and gradually entered into a phase of modern economy and expansion. All over the country the common villagers came into contact with Chinese and Dutch entrepreneurs and their contacts with Government became increasingly frequent. Again, the cases arising from the new situa tion were not covered by the existing law books. In the spirit of the age the Dutch Government decided to unify the adminis tration of justice all over the Archipelago, abrogating the ancient indigenous lawbooks and replacing them by a modern code made on the pattern of the Netherlands code of

law with adaptations to Indonesian circum stances. The existing courts of law were reorganized. They were given Dutch trained lawyers as presidents. This was the end of the indigenous Javanese administration of justice. Henceforth the ancient Javanese law books were of interest to historians only. As mentioned before, the Balinese, on ac count of their exceptional status of a non- Muslim people in the midst of Muslim nations, were allowed to keep their ancient administration of justice based on Balinese versions of Old Javanese lawbooks. In the first decades of the twentieth cen tury Dutch lawyers, studying Government legislation in the Archipelago, observed that in several cases justiciables considered rules of old indigenous custom more just than laws of any code, ancient or modern. This observation led to> the study of indigenous customary law (in Dutch called adat- “recht”). The information on the subject, supplied by scholars at home and lawyers serving on courts of law in the Archipelago, was published in the “Adatrechtbundels”, and studied by professor van Vollenhoven, of Leiden, and his school. It seems highly probable that both in the pre-Islamic and in the Muslim period, the same situation as in modern times prevailed: common people in the country settled their disputes by preference according to rules of old, indigenous custom, through the inter mediary of elders and headmen or of their own account. Only cases which could not be settled in this manner were brought to the Royal courts of law for judgment. The Kings, and afterwards the Dutch Govern ment, tried to enforce the rule that at least grave misdemeanours, murder, manslaughter,