Editorial Reviews
Product Description
This book is the first major contribution in English to the study of Old
Sundanese literature. Old Sundanese texts have generally been preserved in
undated palm-leaf manuscripts, often in a bad condition. Most of them contain
prose texts of a historical, religious or didactic nature. Reliable editions
are still largely lacking.
The present book presents three long Old Sundanese poems, each of them handed
down in a single manuscript. Two of these – the story of King Rama, and Sri
Ajnyana – were found in a nineteenth century manuscript collection of the
former Batavian Society, now in the National Library of Indonesia in Jakarta.
The third – Bujangga Manik – had been donated to the Bodleian Library in Oxford
as early as 1627, but it was not until the 1950s that it was identified as an
Old Sundanese poem. The poems are written in octosyllabic verse, altogether
counting some four thousand lines. Two of the texts belong to the sphere of
popular Shivaism as it was widely practised in Java and Bali; at the same time
they are in many respects typical of Sundanese culture.
About the Author
J. Noorduyn was director of the KITLV. A. Teeuw is professor emeritus of Malay
and Indonesian language and literature at Leiden University.
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aya anu terang hal ieu ??
Abah Joe
