[Manuscript. Indonesia, Java. XIXth century]. [Sĕrat Mintara - Lot 204

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Lot n° 204
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[Manuscript. Indonesia, Java. XIXth century]. [Sĕrat Mintara - Lot 204
[Manuscript. Indonesia, Java. XIXth century]. [Sĕrat Mintaraga]. Javanese language manuscript of rustic origin featuring a coloured frontispiece, rubricated punctuation, and polychrome illustrations. Copied in Sidoarjo Regency, East Java, Indonesia, ca.1850-1860. An incomplete date in the exordium, Sunday-Pon, 21 Jumadilawal, Je [no numerals] does not allow conversion. Folio (approx. 340 x 210 mm.), ink and paint on European rag paper, [2] f. unnumbered, then 79 (out of 86) leaves (numbered by copyist 1-43, then 45-53, then 56-62, then 67-86), [9] f. blank, oriental havana leather binding with fore-edge flap, blind-stamped and tooled decoration on the covers and flap (some rubbing; spine cracked; numerous repairs along gutters with adhesive, now yellowed; small repairs on edges with the same adhesive, including one on a drawing; some light soiling, some chipping, particularly on the fore-edge; 8 folios missing). The paper is generally of a tan to brown colour, somewhat brittle, with foxing. There is some bleedthrough at points of heavy inking of illustrations, but the text is readily legible and not obscured. 95 pages present simple illustrations, ⅓ to ½ the height of the page, composed of scenes in which wayang puppet-style characters featuring standard iconography are placed as if on the puppet screen, some with a kinetic quality. Many illustrations have labels in Javanese, some with Malay translations in Latin script and Dutch orthography below them; ink, script, and orthography suggest these were later additions. Illustrations are not of high artistic quality; some are partially cut off at foot level due to careless trimming of the bottom edge of the text-block when rebound some time after captioning. Nevertheless, this type of illustrated manuscript is very rare in the trade. Images are usually found standing at the bottom of the page, but some are integrated into the text, making clear that text and images were made simultaneously; they are traced in ink and coloured by hand, some enhanced with gilding. Illustrations of this sort are often found in manuscripts copied for use in lending libraries from the 1850s onwards; such libraries were often run by Javanised Chinese (Cina Peranakan) in cities and larger towns. The first two leaves are blank and have handwritten and stamped ex-libris notes; the same are found on several pages throughout the MS in upper margin. They extend to the v° of the second folio and to the r° of the third: these two pages are decorated with simple, polychrome wadana (page-frames) dominated by blue. The text body is written in a simple, somewhat awkward hand, front and back, usually 19 lines per page, except when the page has an illustration. Punctuation marks (pĕpadan) indicating the end of each verse in the poetic text are daubed with blue, yellow, and red paint, while the end of each line within verses features a rubricated hamzah-like device above the usual plain marks (pada lungsi) written by the copyist. Larger, somewhat crude decorative devices (pada pupuh) stretch across the full width of the text, decorated in the same colours, indicate the beginning of a new canto in a new metre: the consecutive number of the canto written in Dutch is framed therein (No. 1, etc.) while the name of the new metre appears in Javanese script. There are 24 such devices, one for each canto, and the text ends with a related device marking the conclusion (f.86r). The paper was produced in the Netherlands and its use is attested in the 1850s and 60s in Indonesia. Watermark : crowned lion, holding a sword, in a circle bearing the motto of the United Provinces of the Netherlands: "Concordia res parvae crescent", the whole surmounted by a crown. Approx. 155 x 122 mm. Countermark: "V d L" designating the Van der Ley factory. The text found in this manuscript is a version of the Sĕrat Mintaraga (also known as Cipta Hĕning) in which the ogre king Niwatakawaca desires to marry Dewi Supraba, a daughter of the god Indra. When denied permission he wages war against heaven (Suralaya). The hero Arjuna, who has won a magical weapon (the arrow Pasopati) after performing great austerities in a mountain cave, enters the fray. In the end Arjuna defeats Niwatakawaca with the assistance of some subterfuge by Supraba that leads the ogre king to reveal his only vulnerability, enabling Arjuna to use his magic arrow to slay him, winning Supraba's hand. Arjuna and other characters in this story originated in the Indian epic Mahābhārata, the source of many stories in the wayang puppet repertoire, but this particular tale is based on an Old Javanese text, Arjunawiwaha, 'Marriage of Arjuna', written ca.1030 CE in East Java by the poet Mpu Kanwa. The copyist of the manuscript introduces himself immediately after the opening invocation, providing unusually detailed particulars. He calls himself Jayengasmara, 'conqueror in/of love', undoubtedly a nom-de-plume and not the scribe's personal name. He is impoverished and pathetic, he says – a common form of self-deprecation – and mentions he has been forced by poverty to move several times before ending up in the hamlet of Kriyan, Jenggala III District, Sidaarja Regency. Though he says nothing of his exemplar, he does state that he is making the copy "because of a desire to excel [at writing]" [I.5, f.1r]. He is making the copy not just for practice, but also for the benefit of family and relatives, whom he advises that many different metres are used in the text and they must be careful in singing them, otherwise the sound will be unpleasant to the ear and disturb the performance – an ironical statement given that this tyro scribe makes egregious mistakes in the syllabic count more than three times more frequently in the poetic lines he has composed himself (the first eleven stanzas) than in the lines he is copying from his exemplar. Provenance : Stamps and signatures in the manuscript reveal two generations of owners, Chinese merchants living in the great port city of Surabaya just north of Sidoarjo. How it moved from Jayengasmara and his family into their possession is not known. The first owner was one Han In Yang whose oval stamp is found on numerous pages. The man is nearly invisible to history, but a legal case in which he was involved was adjudicated in his favour at the Council of Justice in Surabaya on 18-11-1868. Nothing further is known except that he owned the MS and made sure that his ownership was announced through ink stamps throughout the pages. Most of Yang's stamps were subsequently 'cancelled' by the stamp and/or signature of another owner, one Bennie Njoo/B. Njoo, who acquired this manuscript and another at the same time, 9/6/'31. He is unknown. A subsequent owner who only covered and cancelled several of Bennie's stamps, writes his name as Tjoopoosing. One other partially legible signature [f.86v] is found, ..khnan. Acknowledgements: This description owes everything to the brilliant analysis of Professor Timothy Behrend, who died prematurely in 2025. He received our request for information with the greatest kindness, and did not hesitate to send us his observations free of charge. It is with great emotion that we pay him a posthumous tribute here.
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