Mysterious Marks between the Lines

June, 2023

Keiko Kamiishi

 

The manuscript we will discuss in this blogpost is titled Bratayuda, the common title in Modern Javanese for the epic poem bharatayuddha composed in Old Javanese in 12th century Java. After 657 years since the original text was composed, the manuscript with its original Old Javanese text and Modern Javanese translation were inscribed (for an introduction to this manuscript please see the blogpost dated April 2023, Interlinear translation of the month #5)

 

This manuscript employs a unique method with each Old Javanese line divided into three parts.

 

Figure 1: The Bhāratayuddha manuscript with the Old Javanese original text and a word-for-word and line-by-line Modern Javanese translation divided by specific marks, 1814. British Library, Add MS 12279, f. 95v.

 

The mark located in the top left in Figure 1 is placed in the beginning of the poetic line in the manuscript. Each poetic line is divided into three parts by two marks with arranged circles. The circles’ mark is generally called pada guru. It is the punctuation used to begin a letter in the Javanese writing tradition (Everson 2007: 4).

In the manuscript, the original Old Javanese poetic line is written first, Old Javanese words and their equivalents are then put side by side, and finally a sentence in Modern Javanese is constructed. The marks, pada guru, are used to separate these parts, namely, they are used between the first part and second part and between the second part and third part. Since this manuscript doesn’t have the Modern Javanese translation from the middle of Canto 21 and only the Old Javanese text continued to be written from that point onwards, the marks also disappear from there.

 

Therefore, the marks with arranged circles play an important role in visualizing the stages of translation by creating partitions between the stages that are specific to the method of this manuscript’s translation.

Actually, other manuscripts related to the Bhāratayuddha which are contemporaneous and belong to the same collection do not, at least not frequently, have such marks, with the exception of one manuscript. And this exceptional manuscript is the one with the Old Javanese text and an interlinear Modern Javanese version.

 

Figure 2: A Bhāratayuddha manuscript with Old Javanese in black ink and its Modern Javanese version in red ink, 1812. British Library, MSS Jav 25, f. 6v.

 

The Old Javanese text is written in Balinese script here, and the mark is apparently only used for the Old Javanese. According to Balinese orthography the mark is called pasalinan and is used at the end of a section, namely, a verse etc. (Everson 2005). Therefore, it is likely that the Javanese scribe followed the method employed in the Balinese manuscript to which he was referring. On the other hand, however, these might also have been the marks that were typically employed in manuscripts as a strategy to contrast the Old and Modern Javanese sections in the Javanese literary tradition that was non-Islamic and not written in the pegon script.

 

While the Old and Modern Javanese lines follow the patterns faithfully, the mark has many different variations whose patterns I have not been able to categorize yet.

 

Figure 3: The various kinds of pada guru. British Library, Add MS 12279, f. 92r, 109r, 140v and 34v.

 

These 4 images are just a few examples among the many kinds of marks. How the person who put down these marks differentiated them is not clear. However, there must have been an intention to make the text more attractive or more understandable for people who looked at the manuscript, whether they actually read it or not.

 

Who wrote these marks? This is also one of the main questions about them.

The marks that show up from the opening page suddenly disappear from f. 5r. The marks written until f. 5r give the impression that they were somewhat forced into places where there was not enough space. Also, that the marks were written in a darker ink than the actual text may indicate that they were added later.

 

Figure 4: The first two examples show that the beginning and end of each line on the page are aligned, yet the marks nevertheless are extend beyond the lines. The latter two examples show that the marks are added on the text already written before. British Library, Add MS 12279, 2v-3r.

 

Looking at f. 41r to f. 61v, there are blank spaces without circles in each line as you can see in Figure 5 below. The blank spaces strengthen the impression that the circles inside the mark were added after the text was written.

 

Figure 5: The blank space inside the mark. British Library, Add MS 12279, 41v.

 

Behrend mentions a division of labor in the production of manuscripts in 19th century Yogyakarta. In some cases it is clear that the copying, illumination, and binding were done by different scribes or artists (Behrend 1993: 421). Dick van der Meij, in his analysis of illuminated manuscripts, shows that generally the text was written first and the illumination was provided later (Van der Meij 2017: 81).

 

Going back to the question of who inscribed the marks on the manuscript, it is possible that a scribe initially wrote all of the text and then someone else added the marks. If this is the case, the marks are included in the category of illumination.

 

While the text follows a translation method faithfully, the marks seem to be relatively free and playful and even include elements of illumination. This irregular movement of those marks makes us feel the mystery of the unknown and is a case in point which reminds us that we know only a small part of this subtle and profound “textual microcosm.”

Even a single kind of mark raises a lot of questions. On what basis were different kinds of marks differentiated? What does the number of circles surrounded by double lines represent? Did the content, metres, or the translation of the poetic lines influence the marks? Was a special mark such as the one you see in the last image in Figure 4 used because the content or its translation of the line of special interest, attracting the attention of the person who added the mark?

 

Although these marks seem to speak eloquently about the text to which they are attached, further comparative studies of manuscripts are needed to gain a better understanding of what they speak to and what function they play in a specific manuscript with an interlinear translation.

 

 

References and image credits:

British Library Add. MS. 12279

https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_12279

British Library MSS Jav 25

https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=MSS_Jav_25

 

Behrend, T.E. 1993. “Manuscript Production in Nineteenth-Century Java; Codicology and the Writing

of Javanese Literary History”, In Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 149(3): 407-

437.

Dick van der Meij. 2017. Indonesian Manuscripts from the Islands of Java, Madura, Bali and Lombok.

Leiden: Brill.

Everson, M. 2005. “Proposal for encoding the Balinese script in the UCS”, UC Berkeley: Department

of Linguistics.

Everson, M. 2007. “Proposal for encoding the Javanese script in the UCS”, UC Berkeley: Department

of Linguistics.