Comptes rendus 409

Th. C. van der Meij, Indonesian Manuscripts from the Islands of Java, Madura,
Bali and Lombok, Leyde–Boston, Brill (Handbook of Oriental Studies,
Section 3 Southeast Asia, Vol. 24), 2017, xliv + 575 pages – ISSN 0169-9571 ;
ISBN 978-90-04-34762-5 (relié) ; 978-90-04-34811-0 (e-book) ; 168 €

When compared to other academic disciplines focused on manuscript traditions,

those associated with the Indonesian archipelago have a poorly developed set
of scholarly tools. The plethora of reference works available to researchers in
Classical Studies, to take an example, includes libraries of concordances, lexi-
cons, historical and dialectical dictionaries, geographical, technical and personal
onomastica, vast catalogues of scholia, searchable lexical corpora, mythologi-
cal dictionaries, encyclopaedias of various sorts, thousands of critically edited
texts… The list goes on. By comparison, Javanese, the most highly developed
philological field for Indonesia, has not a single published concordance – not of
the works of Ranggawarsita, not of the text of the oft-quoted Major Centhini or
any other work, not of the court literature of Cirebon or Surakarta or Yogyakarta.
The small number of exceptions – some dictionaries, a few indices of names
found in texts, an ever-growing number of manuscript catalogues – reflects the
relatively small numbers of scholars who have worked and published in the field
of Javanese and other Nusantaran literary traditions over the last two centuries.
The last decades, however, have seen a steady expansion of essential ref-
erence works, amongst them the book here under review: the latest addition
to the Southeast Asian section of Brill’s Handbook of Oriental Studies series
which appeared in mid-2017. The author is Dr. Th. C. van der Meij, a scholar
of Indonesian literatures who has published on Javanese, Malay, Balinese and
Javano-Sasak traditions. In this volume he leaves text and philology and goes
behind them into the study of codicology which focuses on manuscripts as
material and social objects. The basis for this highly detailed, meticulously
documented work is Van der Meij’s indefatigable search in many previously
untapped collections throughout the region, conducted over a period of decades,
usually at his own expense. In his investigations he has shown an ability to find
and profit from many local mentors who are not integrated into international
networks of publishing scholars, making him uniquely qualified in breadth and
depth as a scholar of manuscripts.
Indonesian codicology is a broad and diffuse area of study across a dozen
strikingly different manuscript traditions that entails the close technical
analysis of a range of subjects including writing materials from the sourcing
and preparation of raw materials to the assembly of final products; writing
instruments and inks/colouring agents; the organisation of space on the page;
the effects of age and use on condition; and the history of particular manu-
script objects from age to age. It also concerns itself with related areas such
as palaeography, cheirography and calligraphy, the study of illustrations and
illuminations, and much more. Van der Meij has decided to limit his attention
to a survey of these subjects in the manuscript traditions of Java, Madura,
Bali and Lombok, excluding the related Malay tradition which is represented
throughout the archipelago and Malay peninsula and whose surviving manu-
scripts number in the thousands. The numerous Arabic language manuscripts
410 Comptes rendus

from the same region, whose total numbers may well exceed all the regional
traditions combined, has also largely been left for another study.
Many areas of manuscript research require such a level of expertise in a
field lacking not only in works of reference but in monographic studies on
single codices that the author has wisely excluded some subjects entirely,
most importantly methods of binding and the classification of imported
European rag paper, including watermarks and treatments such as marbling
– “because it is almost impossible for a non-expert […] to say anything
meaningful about it” (p. 15). This still leaves a long list of topics to cover
in which the author is accomplished and which he is able to enlighten.
Van der Meij begins his analytical survey with a chapter that stretches to
cover a broad, somewhat miscellaneous range of topics, under the general
rubric “Manuscripts”: what they are, the scripts and languages that he will be
dealing with, the question of completeness and integrity, issues arising from
damage due to climate, storage, and use/misuse, illustrations, illumination,
reasons for their making, ‘authentic’ vs ‘fake’ (quotation marks in original),
aesthetic questions (beautiful, ugly), numbers of surviving manuscripts and
relationship to popularity, single- vs multiple-text manuscripts, the practice
of titling. In this chapter he reveals a critique of certain trends in the scholarly
treatment of manuscripts, in particular an antiquarian mindset that insists the
field deals with relics from the past that represent traditions now closed. Here
he questions why the ongoing practice of manuscript production, particularly
in Bali, is often ignored or considered to be separate from the practices of the
centuries that preceded the introduction of mechanical print technology in the
latter half of the 19th century. As the rest of the book illustrates in both examples
and discussions, Van der Meij does not accede, or at least does not give a high
importance to, the idea that the supremacy that print gained in the 20th century
spelt the end of the manuscript era. This inclusive approach certainly has merits,
but the author does not include a discussion of the fundamental differences that
exist between a largely oral-aural culture supplemented by the materiality of
manuscripts and a print-based, globalised culture of universal literacy in which
manuscripts function as exotic rarities or, indeed, textual reliquaries preserving
a threatened identity, that resides largely in the domain of specialists.1
The remaining seven chapters are each more tightly framed than the first,
though again exhibiting a somewhat miscellaneous collection from one to the
next. They cover (2) access to manuscripts; (3) palm leaf manuscripts, includ-
ing everything from covers and boxes to page organisation, leaf numbering,

1.  What percentage of Balinese, Javanese, Sasak, or other peoples from cultural areas that have indigenous
scripts are still able to use them today is not known. It is not amongst the data collected in decennial censuses
(for questions in the last census see https://manado.antaranews.com/berita/13011/materi-pertanyaan-sensus-
penduduk-2010). A somewhat frivolous 2006 article in the Jakarta Post by reporter I Wayan Juniartha
reported that in Singaraja, Bali, Balinese script was becoming “the funkiest medium of communication
for teenagers” because it worked like a secret code that was impenetrable to most (http://bali-studies.
blogspot.co.nz/2006/08/young-balinese-media-keep-their.html), indicating the rarity of its mastery in the
population at large. In an informal survey of members of several Facebook groups dedicated to Javanese
script and language conducted during the writing of this review, respondents estimated that the portion of
the Javanese populace with literacy skills in the script ranged between 0.5% and 2.0%.
Comptes rendus 411

reinforcing stitchings around the holes, and means of repair; (4) verse forms;
(5) mistakes and corrections; (6) dating and calendars (the shortest chapter
at 16 pages); (7) colophon traditions in Java, Bali, and Lombok; and finally,
(8) a clean-up chapter offering “other information on dating and ownership”.
The sections and sub-sections are all constructed to the same pattern,
beginning with a brief introduction of the subject or problem providing a bib-
liographic review of available studies (usually with a lament about the inchoate
state of the art) followed by an often highly-detailed discussion. This is where
the strength and value of the book is, quite literally, most visible. Every point
is accompanied by photographs of manuscript pages or details illustrating the
point under discussion. All told this book of 535 pages (excluding bibliogra-
phy and index) contains 494 photographic illustrations that make the author’s
descriptions easy to understand visually. Most of the photography was done
by the author himself and he is to be congratulated for his dedication to docu-
mentation, often under less than ideal conditions, over such a long period of
his career. There is nothing like it for comprehensiveness within the limited but
growing library of Indonesian codicological scholarship. It is only unfortunate,
though perhaps unavoidable in terms of production costs, that all are black
and white, many are smaller than one would prefer, and some have such poor
contrast that the topic they are illustrating is not fully clarified by their inclusion.
The book is completed with eight appendices containing useful lists of
(1) chronogram words, (2) alternative names for macapat metres, (3) pada
marks in Javanese, Sundanese and Madurese manuscripts, word clues embed-
ded in text signalling a change to (4) or beginning of (5) a new metre, metrical
rules for (6) Balinese and (7) Old Javanese texts, and (8) the reproduction of
Rouffaer’s tables giving data necessary for converting dates between Javanese,
Arabic and Gregorian calendars.
With its publication, this book became an indispensable tool for all those
with an interest in the manuscript traditions of Indonesia, including those not
falling within its specific geographical and cultural bailiwick. The somewhat
conglomerative make-up of the book in no way detracts from its value: the
field of codicology itself is like a matrix studded with a variety of contrasting,
separately assayable, minerals that are cemented together by the urge to engage
with and explicate manuscript objects. Here we have an assortment of assay
tools gathered in this one hefty volume, a one-stop compilation of reference
and research tools of the sort that until now have only existed in the form of
field notes and personal research databases assembled individually (and rarely
circulated) by scholars working in the field. Dr. van der Meij has provided in an
instant a point of reference that all English-speaking investigators can use and
cite as the field of Indonesian codicology, nearly unknown three decades ago,
continues its rise to prominence amongst domestic and international scholars.
One hopes, though, that an Indonesian edition is in preparation and that it
will soon be available at a less stratospheric price than the original edition.
There is too much essential information here to be sequestered behind what
in practical terms is a formidable linguistic and financial barricade.

Tim Behrend (University of Auckland)