The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: TRANSPORTATION / Railroads / General
ISBN: 9781789254785
Publisher: Casemate
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Old Sundanese script(s)

While these developments were occurring in East Java, people in West Java developed scripts of their own for recording texts in Old Sundanese, almost certainly from Javanese prototypes (see Darsa 1997 for a useful overview of Sundanese scripts). A small number of manuscripts and inscriptions survive in Old Sundanese: the in situ Batutulis10 inscription, whose controversial chronogram gives a probable date equivalent to AD 1333 (Fig. 10.17); the Rumatak inscription, also from the 1330s and written in a similar script; a set of stone inscriptions from Kawali, Ciamis, dated to the late fourteenth century; some copper plates, particularly the Kebantenan inscriptions (Jakarta, Museum Nasional, inv. no. E.42A–E.45), also from the fourteenth century; and some manuscripts on lontar and gebang leaves, a small number of which have fifteenth and sixteenth century dates. A section of the Old Sundanese text, Sanghyang Sasana Maha Guru (Jakarta, PNRI, kropak 621, f.14v), tells us that lontar manuscripts with aksaras cut into the leaves were intended for common use and public consumption; those on gebang leaves, with the aksaras written in ink, were for storage in an archive (or kabuyutan) (Fig. 10.18).11

The Old Sundanese scripts appear to have been altered deliberately to separate them from the scripts used for Javanese and Malay, including changes both to the forms of the graphemes and to the grapheme inventory. Aksaras for retroflex and aspirated consonants (ḍ, ṇ, bh, etc.) appear in none of the Old Sundanese texts, not even in Sanskrit and Old Javanese loanwords; one, aksara <ṭaṭ>, was adopted for writing the syllable [tra]. Long vowels (ā, ū, etc.) are similarly absent. Only those graphemes positively required by Old Sundanese phonology were kept in the script. Old Javanese phonology may or may not have had long vowels and aspirates; they are present in the scripts used for writing Old Javanese regardless. Malay is closely related to Sundanese and its phonology has always lacked retroflexes and long vowels; these features are nonetheless present in all the non-Arabic-derived scripts used to write Malay. It is therefore significant that they are absent from Old Sundanese. The use of a script adapted in some way to write Old Sundanese may have been motivated by a desire to mark the political separation between Sunda and Java at a time of growing Javanese dominance in the Indo-Malaysian archipelago, although other factors may be involved.

Fig. 10.17. The Batutulis inscription (1333 AD). Author’s photograph. November 16, 2018.

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