The Javanese Origin of the Syair Seribu Masalah and Its Bantenese Spelling

E. Wieringa Dotting the dal and penetrating the letters; The Javanese origin of the Syair seribu masalah and its Bantenese spelling

In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 159 (2003), no: 4, Leiden, 499-518

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 11:08:39PM via free access E.P. WIERINGA Dotting the dal and penetrating the letters The Javanese origin of the Syair seribu masalah and its Bantenese spelling

In memoriam JJ. Ras (1926-2003), an exemplary philologist, convinced of the importance of Javanese for Malay studies

A remarkable spelling

A number of years ago, Drewes (1986:324-5) drew attention in this journal to a versified Malay version of the so-called 'Book of the Thousand Questions', that is, the well-known story of the Jewish scholar 'Abd Allah bin Salam of Khaybar who questioned the Prophet Muhammad about a wide spectrum of theological matters, ultimately embracing Islam after the Prophet had been able to answer all his questions in a satisfactory way.1 Drewes 'discovered' this text in Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 3343, belonging to the Van der Tuuk bequest. As Drewes duly noted, the Syair seribu masalah* in this manuscript is incomplete, consisting of two fragments, namely sheaf M, pp. 13-24 and sheaf N, pp. 1-10. The opening stanza of the first fragment reads (see Figure 1):

1 On the half-historical, half-legendary figure of 'Abd Allah b. Salam, see the entry in the first or second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam (Horovitz 1987:30-1 or Horovitz 1960:52). For an overview of bibliographical references, see Wieringa (1998a:187-8). A first version of this essay was presented at a meeting of Malaysian linguists at the KITLV, 1 November 2002. I am grateful to Julian Millie, Willem van der Molen, Titik Pudjiastuti, and Jan van der Putten for their suggestions on an earlier draft of this article. I also wish to thank J.J. Witkam, keeper of the Oriental printed books and manuscripts in the library of Leiden University, for his kind help in furnishing the illustrations.

E.P. WIERINGA currently teaches Malay and Indonesian language and literature at the University of Leiden, where he also obtained his doctorate (on a Javanese subject). The second volume of his major Catalogue of Malay and Minangkabau manuscripts in the library of Leiden University is forthcoming. Dr Wieringa may be contacted at TCZOAO, PO Box 9515, NL-2300 RA Leiden, .

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 11:08:39PM via free access Figure 1. First fragment of the Syair seribu masalah in Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 3343, sheaf M, p. 13. Line 10a reads: 'dan yang mangikut jalan bënër pada Tuhannya'. The dotted dal in the word duduq can be found in line 3b (second word).

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Bahuwa Rasulüllah salla 'llahu 'alaihi wa-sallam Pasuruh Allah pada sakalian Islam Dan barkata pada 'All 'alaihi as-salam Ini surat kita kapir suruh Islam2

In translation: The fact is that the Apostle of God, may God bless him and grant hitn peace, is God's Messenger to all Muslims. And he said to 'All, upon him be peace: 'This is our letter to the infidels, ordering them to embrace Islam'.

After a few pages, however, we find a new beginning - not mentioned by Drewes (1986) - with the typical opening formula wa bi-hi nasta'ïnu bi-llahi (al-)'aliya (see Figure 2).3 The first fragment ends with the dimensions of the sky (roughly comparable to the Malay prose version in Djamaris 1994: 30), while the second piece starts with the question about the second langu (see Drewes 1986:325). This second part ends with questions pertaining to eschatology (see Drewes 1986:324-5 for a transliteration of the final two quat- rains). Drewes (1986:326) concluded that this syair could not be based upon a Malay prose version, but must have gone back to a Javanese rendition. His argument was that the occurrence of 'Alï in the syair could also be found in Javanese accounts, but not in the Malay ones, as stated by Pijper (1924:41, 68). Furthermore, he noted that 'Abd Allah confirmed the correctness of the Prophet's answers by declaring sadaqta, 'It is as you said', whereas Malay manuscripts use the corrupt term sidiq.4 There are, however, at least two more intratextual reasons in favour of assuming a Javanese origin. First, the name of the Jewish scholar in the Syair seribu masalah is given as Samud ibnu/ibni Salam or simply as Samud, following Javanese tradition (Pijper 1924:69). Second, the number of questions is not one thousand, but 1,404, as in Javanese manuscripts (Pijper 1924:69-

2 Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 3343, sheaf M, p. 13. 3 Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 3343 M, p. 16, line 7a, where the last word seems to be spelled as alif-lam-'ain-lam-ya, but it looks as if the initial alif-lam was crossed out. On the prob- lematic interpretation of this invocation, especially the last word which constitutes its crux, see Braginsky (1993:37), who also refers to earlier explanations. 4 According to Drewes (1986:326), in Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 4001, the only Javanese rendering mentioned by Pijper (1924), 'Abd Allah's stereotypical reaction to the Prophet's answers is always couched in Javanese terms. The brief catalogue descriptions of Javanese manuscripts in other collections, such as in Poerbatjaraka (1950:68-74), Behrend (1990: 526, 542-3) or Behrend and Pudjiastuti (1997:196, where other manuscripts are also mentioned), do not allow a conclusion to be drawn on this point.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 11:08:39PM via free access Figure 2. New beginning of the Syair seribu masalah, opening with the conventional formula wa W-fci nasta'inu bi-llahi (al-)'aliya. Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 3343, sheaf M, p. 16.

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70).5 The orthography, too, points to a Javanese milieu. The purpose of this brief paper is to examine the spelling in the text somewhat more closely in order to examine its possible place of origin. Apparently, Van der Tuuk had mainly become interested in this text because of what he called its 'remarkable spelling'.6 The original manuscript, of which Cod. Or. 3343 sheafs M-N are a copy, belonged to the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, and is nowadays kept in the National Library of the Indonesian Republic at Jakarta, where it is registered as ML 420.7 Van der Tuuk made an autograph copy of two poems from this manuscript, while he left the copying of the Syair seribu masalah to someone else with a more expert hand. The first poem is a religious text, featuring the warring kings Raja Lawwamah of Medina and Sultan Mutmainah of Mecca, but, contrary to what might be expected, it is not a Javanistic allegory of the so-called napsu termed Lawwamah (Arabic an-nafs al-lawwama, 'the blaming soul') and Mutmainah (Arabic an-nafs al-mutma'inna, 'the soul at peace').8 It is, rather, a vehicle for presenting a brief discussion of a number of religious subjects, focussing in the beginning on dhikr. The latter topic constitutes the main theme of the next poem, which Van der Tuuk himself also copied, namely an untitled syair on the performance of dhikr at various occasions. A third religious poem of six folios, situated in between them, in which the words were not 'penetrated' (read: vocalized), was not copied.9 For practical reasons, I will limit myself to a discussion of the Leiden copy. As Sutaarga et al. (1972:250) already noted more than thirty years ago,

o 5 See, for example, Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 3343 M, p. 14, line 5: 'yaitu parkara yang ada dalem kitab kalam / saribu empat ratus ampat parkara kalam', and on p. 16, line 8a: 'mangataken saribu ampat ratus ampat parkara'. On p. 14, line 27b, however, we read 'saribu ampat ratus parkara adanya', which must be a mistake. 6 In Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 3343, sheaf M, p. 1, Van der Tuuk briefly described it as 'een 4to h[an]ds[chrift] toebehoordende aan het Bat[aviaasch] Genootsch[ap]', commenting that he copied its contents, because of the remarkable orthography ('hetwelk wij in zijn geheel overnemen wegens de opmerkelijke spelling'). 7 lts contents are rather inaccurately described in Sutaarga et al. (1972:250) as: 'Peperangan antara sultan Mutmainan [sic] melawan raja Lauamah di Madinah. Kemudian Mutmainah mengajarkan: sifat 20, iman kepada Tuhan, tauhid, dzikir. Terdapat pula petikan percakapan Rasulullah dengan kaum Tsamud [sic]'. It is omitted in Van Ronkel (1909), while it is merely listed in Behrend (1998:290) as 'Syair-syair Melayu'. 8 For the genre of Javanese allegories featuring Luwamah and Mutmainah, see Pigeaud (1970:294-295 (under Luwamah), 316 (under Mutma'inah), 319 (under napsu), and 332 (under Pafica Driya)). Iskandar (1999:170) wrongly identified this poem as a copy of the Syair sifat dua puluh, perhaps because he was misled by the line 'jadi syarat sifat dua puluh yang safi' (Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 3343, sheaf M, p. 3, line 17b). 9 Van der Tuuk writes: 'Hierop volgt een godsdienstig] Mal[eisch] gedicht van 6 inllandsche] blad- zijden, waarin echter de woorden niet gepenetreerd zijn. Waarop dan het volgende gedicht' (after which follows Van der Tuuk's autograph copy of the 'Syair dikir'), Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 3343, sheaf M, p. 4.

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Figure 3. Spelling of the pepet with a hamzah below the consonant. This phenomenon can be observed, for example, in the words tëgës and idëp, see the last words of line 11: 'tëgësing idëp ka' (the 'ka' belongs to the word 'kanugrahan' of the following line). From a Kudus treatise on Islam, perhaps written in the seventeenth century. Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 3050, p. 4.

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the Jakarta original is in bad condition. Regrettably, during a recent visit to the National Library in Jakarta, I found that their short comment that 'a large part has decayed' (sebagian besar sudah lapuk) in fact meant that many pages of ML 420 were severely damaged due to the corrosive effects of acidic ink. Nevertheless, the hypothesis about a Javanese background was further sup- ported by the existence of some Javanese interlinear translations of Arabic texts.10

Javanese ways ofindicating the pepet

What was so remarkable about the spelling of this manuscript? A look at Figure 1, for example, makes clear why Van der Tuuk was so intrigued by it. First of all, we see that the text is vocalized throughout. The vowel points are in accordance with the Jawi writing system, except for the pepet or schwa- vowel /ë/, which is indicated by the so-called 'stroke above the line' above the consonant (Malay baris di atas or fatah; Arabic fatha) in combination with a hamzah below the consonant (e.g. the word bënër in line 10a which has two pepet, see Figure 1). This way of combining two signs in order to represent the pepet follows the conventions of Javano-Arabic script (Pegon), where the vowel sound /e/ is written by a combination of fatah and ya, while /o/ is indicated by a combination of fatah and wau. In Pegon, however, the pepet is normally indicated by a tilde-like sign (~) above the consonant.11 This was not always the case: in a Javanese-language treatise on Islam, which seems to originate from Kudus, perhaps written in the seventeenth century, we find that the pepet is indicated by a hamzah placed below the consonant (see Figure 3).12 Other examples of expressing the pepet by way of fatah and hamzah of

10 Jakarta National Library ML 420 opens, for example, on ff. lv-3r in Arabic, occasionally supplemented by Javanese interlinear translations. I also happened to find some Javanese fragments on ff. 52r, 53r, and 71v. Further research is needed to ascertain whether there are also a few traces of Urdu (f. 39v) and Persian (f. 40). 11 In a recent primer in reading and writing Pegon, destined for pupils of pesantren from the Nahdlatul Ulama organization, compiled by Ahmad Umar Mansur, the terminology is derived from that of Javanese script, namely for indicating /o/ taling tarung, for /e/ taling, and for /ë/ it is pepet (2001:21). Needless to say perhaps, in this booklet only the tilde-like sign is mentioned for writing the pepet. As usual, for the typically Javanese /d/ and /t/ the so-called dotted dal and dotted ta' are used in this manual. 12 See the description in Pigeaud (1968:101). Pigeaud (1970:36, plate 39) gives an illustration of one page, accompanied by a transliteration and translation in Pigeaud (1970:76-7). lts repeated attribution in the text to the 'Lord of Kudus' (Susuhunan ing Kudus) (see Pigeaud 1968:101, and 1970:76-7) would seem to point to Kudus, but Pigeaud identifies its origin tentatively as Central North Coast. Pigeaud (1968:101, 1970:76) does not discuss any of the spelling features of this manuscript, but roundly condemns its T>ad Arabic spelling' without further ado.

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Figure 4. Van der Tuuk's change (in the top line) of the originally Minangkabau verb batangka-tangkalah into the Malay form bertengkar-tengkarlah. Leiden Cod. Or. 3295, f. lOverso.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 11:08:39PM via free access Dotting the dal and penetrating the letters 507 which I am aware, all hail from Banten. In fact, Van der Tuuk (1870:370) once described this praxis as being typical for Banten, but if I understand him correctly, he solely referred to its application in Javanese-language texts.13 Intriguingly, it seems that after he had come across this particular way of indicating the pepet in the Malay parts of ML 420, the great philological purist himself started to use this Bantenese spelling method for vocalizing certain words in several Malay and Minangkabau texts of his private collection. For example, in a Minangkabau folktale called Kaba baruak mamanjek durian ('Story of a coconut-monkey climbing a durian tree'), possibly copied for him by a certain Si Liek, Van der Tuuk changed, in this 'Javanese' way, the originally Minangkabau verb batangka-tangkalah into the Malay synonym bertengkar-tengkarlah (see Figure 4).14 One of the oldest genuine examples of this phenomenon in Malay, however, may be observed in an official Malay letter sent by the sultan of Banten to the king of Denmark, dated 1085/1675, where the very word 'Banten' (in the first line) is spelled this way (see Danish National Archives C 63, III. 2 c, reproduced in Van Naerssen, Pigeaud and Voorhoeve 1977:plate 40, MALAY (Arab) 5). In this particular letter, however, vowel points are only used for occasional words: the pepet is indicated by a combination of fatah and hamzah in four words, namely dalem (line 2), malem (line 3), tellah (line 8) and bessar (line 9; omitting the fatah).15 Furthermore, in line 7, 'Banten' is spelled only with a fatah, omitting the hamzah below the consonant, whereas in line 8 it is the other way round.16 If I am not mistaken, Sweeney (1992:90-1) was the first scholar to draw

13 The text of Van der Tuuk's letter is reproduced in Groeneboer's recent edition (2002:370), but this publication unfortunately skips over this particular statement and Van der Tuuk's example of the spelling of the word timen. 14 Other examples are duly mentioned in the second volume of my Catalogue of Malay and Minangkabau manuscripts (Wieringa forthcoming). 15 Voorhoeve, who twice published this letter, does not discuss this specific way of spelling the pepet, see Voorhoeve (1975:273-6 and 1977:160-1). See, however, Voorhoeve (1975:272, note 5) for two other ways of indicating the pepet, which are outside the scope of this paper. Incidentally, in the quoted examples the duplication of the consonant in tellah and bessar also indicated the pepet. The latter procedure was also executed in Banten by using the tashdïd or 'doubling sign' (see Pigeaud 1929:131). 16_ In another letter, also by the sultan of Banten to the king of Denmark, with almost the same contents, but dated ten days earlier, the pepet is not indicated. This letter, which never reached the intended recipiënt, is kept in the Public Record Office (PRO) at Kew, where it is registered as PRO Ext. 8/2, f.58, see Gallop (2002:20-1). See also Gallop (2002:14-9) for three other seventeenth- century Banten letters kept at the PRO featuring the dotted dal, but not indicating the pepet. In one example, however, it seems that the word harap is written as harep with a tilde-like sign above the /r/, see PRO SP 102/4/50, letter from the Pangeran Ratu of Banten to King Charles I (dated 1628/9), the second-last line, the penultimate word, reproduced in Gallop (2002:15). 17 Although Juynboll (1899:272-3) had already pointed to the remarkable spelling of this manuscript, he did not describe how the pepet was indicated.

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Figure 5. Spelling of the pepet in the word dalëm by use of a tilde-like sign (line 10, second word). Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 2016, folio 49verso.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 11:08:39PM via free access Dotting the dal and penetrating the letters 509 attention to the indication of the pepet in Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 2016.17 This is also a Bantenese manuscript, dated 1116/1704, being the oldest extant copy of Hamzah Fansuri's poems (Wieringa 1998a:230-3). The manuscript is vowelled and, so he wrote, 'two features of this vocalization are new to me in Malay manuscripts.' To quote him further: 'Both of these represent the "e" pepet. Up to folio 46 verso, the pepet is denoted by the use of hamza under the preceding consonant. From folio 47 recto, this is largely replaced by the pepet sign traditionally used in Javanese and Sundanese Arabic script: a sign akin to a tilde (~).' Sweeney's description, however, is not entirely accurate: checking the two pages in facsimile reproduced in the 1986 edition by Drewes and Brakel, one will indeed discover that the pepet can be indicated by the common tilde-like sign (see Figure 5; also reproduced in Drewes and Brakel 1986:41), but that the other method consists of combining the fatah above the consonant and the hamzah below the consonant (see Figure 6; also reproduced on the cover of Drewes and Brakel 1986).18 The 'Pegon way' of spelling the pepet by use of a tilde-like sign may be rather unusual in Malay manuscripts in general, but it is not uncommon in Malay wrirings from Java.19 I would like to draw attention to a rather humorous example, in which the vocalization is needed to create a convinc- ing Javanese couleur locale. Typically perhaps, it is found in a manuscript written by someone with a Bantenese background. I am referring to Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 3341, which is an untitled poem that could be called Syair burung (Poem of the birds), but rather than being a bad imita- tion of the Persian 'Conference of the birds' (Mantiq at-tayr) by 'Attar, as Van Ronkel (1922) once suggested, it is an 'original' creation, warning against love of this world and neglect of Islam. The dialogues of the assembled birds centre on the futility of worldly riches and the importance of leading a pious life in view of the Last Judgement. It was written on 28 Rabiulakhir 1257/18 June 1841 by a certain Muhammad Hasnawi who lived in kampung Karang in Semarang, but who identified himself as 'a native of Banten' (anak Banten).20 In this text he occasionally vocalized a few words, and sometimes indicated

18 Sweeney (1992:91) rightly pointe out that the text shown in the illustration in Drewes and Brakel (1986:41) is not part of poem XXI, as the editors erroneously have it, but of poem XXXI, and that the unidentified source is Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 2016. 19 Some examples are listed in my catalogue (Wieringa forthcoming). 20 Information taken from the colophon of Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 3341, p. 22. The existing literature on this manuscript is not very helpful. Juynboll's (1899:28) succinct description only mentions the date and the place name Semarang. Iskandar (1999:168) gives a little more information, but misinterprets b-n-t-n as 'Bintan' - a recurrent pitfall in Malay studies (see Wieringa 1998b:123-4) - and wrongly converts the date 28 Rabiulakhir 1257 to 20 May 1841. Although the paper bears the watermark 'J Maurenbrecher', Iskandar (1999:168) describes it only as 'thin wove paper'. 21 In this poem the dotted dal, however, does not occur.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 11:08:39PM via free access Figure 6. Spelling of the pepet in the word terang (line 7, third word) by use of a combination ot fatah above the consonant and hamzah below the consonant. Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 2016, folio 32recto.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 11:08:39PM via free access Dotting the dal and penetrating the letters 511 the pepet by use of a tilde-like sign in such words as bendara (p. 9, last word of line lb) oijemu (p. 9, last word of line 5b).21 In stanza 73 of his poem, however, he Iets a crow (gagak) speak in a strong Javanese accent (see Figure 7):

Arak dan tuak keduanya haram Jangan dimakan tubuhnya karem Bangkai kumakan tiada' bergarem Perutku kenyang22 hatiku mareni23

In translation: Rice wine and palm wine are both prohibited. Do not consume them as your body will become addicted to them. I ate an unsalted corpse, my stomach was completely filled to my heart's satisfaction.

The vocalization is important here, not only for creating the right atmosphere (most of the feathered characters are explicitly presented as Javanese-born and bred), but also for the interpretation: non-Javanese speakers of Malay would presumably read karem as karam, hence interpreting it as rusak, but Javanese karem, that is, 'to be addicted to, to be very fond of (especially food and drink)' is what the poet intended.

The two dal

As is well known, the Javanese language distinguishes between the dental /d/ and the retroflex /d/. These two separate phonemes are distinguished in the Syair seribu masalah by the dal and the dal with one or three dots underneath respectively. In Figure 1 the dal of the word pada has a triangle of dots with the apex up. As so often in this manuscript, the two dots below have merged. In the 1675 letter from Banten, by contrast, the apex is always down, whereas in another Banten letter from 1619 by Pangeran Gebang to J.P. Coen, there is only one dot below the dal (see Ricklefs 1976:133 and his plate III).24 In a 1628-1629 letter from the Pangeran Ratu we find the letter dal with one dot and three dots (with the apex both up and down) underneath (see the illustration in Gallop 2002:15). In the Syair seribu masalah the dal in the fre- quently occurring word pada (or pada for that matter) is spelled with one or

22 Spelled k-n-ny-ng. I merely draw attention to this spelling, because Drewes (1955:38) sug- gests that this is a peculiarity of old manuscripts, whereas it given as normal in such Standard Jawi dictionaries as those of Klinkert and Wilkinson. 23 Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 3341, p. 9, lines 22-23. 24 Ricklefs (1976:133) transliterates the prince's name as Gabang, but the text has g-b-ng and not g-alif-b-ng.

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Figure 7. Spelling of the pepet in the 'Javanistic' rhyming words karem, bergarem and marem by use of a tilde-like sign (stanza 73). Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 3341, p.9.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 11:08:39PM via free access Dotting the dal and penetrating the letters 513 three dots and often also without any dots at all. Van Ronkel (1926) once devoted a short, and in my view rather thought- less, paper to the spelling of the two dal in Malay manuscripts, surmising that this differentiation was an archaic feature, which only occurred in the oldest extant manuscripts. As he pointed out, in the olden days the dotted dal was not an exclusively Javanese phenomenon, as is indicated by its occurrence in an early seventeenth-century trading permit from the Acehnese sultan to an English merchant (registered as MS Douce Or. e. 4 in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, catalogued in Ricklefs and Voorhoeve 1977:103-4). Van Ronkel (1926:141-2) meticulously calculated all dotted dal in one particular manuscript, namely Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 2016, in order to find out whether he could detect some regularities, but, as might be expected, without reaching any conclusive results. But then, merely counting letters is hardly the same as a worthwhile systematic investigation. Remarkably, Van Ronkel (1926:141) argued that his criterion for choos- ing Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 2016 was that this manuscript did not come from Java, so that the possibility of interference from Pegon in such words as datang or dalam (Javanese datëng and dalëm) could safely be ruled out. Once again, Van Ronkel rushed to conclusions. As we saw, Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 2016 does in fact originate in Java, having been copied in early seventeenth-century Banten. In this respect it is noteworthy that almost all of the extant examples of manuscripts with two types of dal hail from Banten. Moreover, contrary to what Van Ronkel assumed, this spelling phenomenon was continued well beyond the seventeenth century. For instance, in a letter dated 1 November 1810 from the sultan of Banten to Governor General H.W. Daendels, all possibilities are included: dal with three dots with the apex up and down, one dot or none at all.25 In the Syair seribu masalah we find no evidence for Van Ronkel's hypothesis that the differentiation between the two dal was based upon a desire to make a distinction between Malay and Arabic words - a convention which he claims became less and less understood over time until it finally sank into oblivion, disappearing completely after the seventeenth century (Van Ronkel 1926:143-4). As the spelling in the Syair seribu masalah of a word such as duduq clearly shows (Cod. Or. 3343, sheaf M, p. 13, line 3b, second

25 This letter was recently unearthed by Pudjiastuti (2002) in the National Archives of the Indonesian Republic (ANRI), Banten archive no. 61; see p. 15 of her paper for an illustration and pp. 10-12 for a transliteration. The date is given as 'satu dari bulan sëlahman tahun 1810'. The word sëlahman, as Pudjiastuti (2002:7, note 10) explains, comes from Dutch slachtmaand, 'slaughtering season', that is, November. See also Cohen Stuart (1864:190, 192-4) for a discussion of an interlinear Malay translation of the Qur'an using a Javanese spelling system (probably dating from the nineteenth century), which according to Cohen Stuart (1864:190) could probably originate from Banten.

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word, see Figure 1), the dotted dal was meant to mark the Javanese pronun- ciation of a word (compare Javanese duduk and dodok, meaning inter aha 'to sit'). In this, it fulfilled the same function as the indication of the pepet in such a word as dalëtn.26 For the same reason the suffix -kan, pronounced by Javanese speakers as -ken is therefore (often, but not always) written with a pepet. The Bantenese dialect of Javanese does not use the suffix -ake, but only -aken (Pigeaud 1929:158; Ras 1982:305). Ras (1982:305) furthermore notes that this dialect only clearly differentiates between the dental /d/ and the retroflex /d/ when there is an opposition, giving the example of wëdi ('afraid') and wëdi ('sand')- It stands to reason that a deeper study of this dialect might throw more light on the spelling of manuscripts from Banten. Interestingly, other texts, too, suggest that there must have been a long-standing process of mutual interpenetration of Malay and Javanese in Banten (compare Pigeaud 1929:159).

Conclusion

Summing up then, intratextual evidence (the occurrence of 'Alï, the name Samud and the number of questions posed to the Prophet) supports the assumption that the Syair seribu masalah was derived from a Javanese version of the 'Book of the Thousand Questions'. But as both Malay and Javanese paleography as fields of study still hardly exist, it is presently impossible to identify with definitive certitude where exactly in Java the manuscript of the Syair seribu masalah originated. Nevertheless, on the basis of the few examples adduced in this paper, the script style of the manuscript of the Syair seribu masalah seems to point to a copyist from Banten. Dotting the dal is well attested in Bantenese manuscripts, whereas the indication of the pepet by way of fatah above the consonant and hamzah below the consonant could perhaps be regarded as even more typical of Bantenese script. In addition, the thoroughly Islamic contents of the manuscript as a whole would confirm Banten's reputation as one of the most self-consciously Muslim regions of the archipelago. ,

26 With almost the same frequency, however, we also find the Standard form dalam.

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REFERENCES

Unpublished sources

Jakarta, National Library of the Republic of Indonesia ML 420 Collection of Islamic texts in Malay, Arabic, Javanese (and perhaps also Urdu and Persian).

Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 2016 Bantenese manuscript, mainly consisting of copies of Hamzah Fansuri's poems. Cod. Or. 3050 Kudus treatise on Islam. Cod. Or. 3295 Minangkabau Malay manuscript, dealing with adat (customs) in Barus, and containing a copy of the Kaba baruak mamanjek durian, possibly made by a certain Si Liek. Cod. Or. 3341 A Syair burung by Muhammad Hasnawi. Cod. Or. 3343 sheafs M and N. Copies of Jakarta National Library ML 420. Cod. Or. 4001 Javanese version of the Book of the Thousand Questions.

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