Abstract:

Interlinear translations have been known in Indonesia’s Islamic communities since at least the late 16th century with extant evidence in the form of manuscripts pointing to their ongoing popularity in the following centuries. Such translations encompass important works composed in Arabic and rendered in the languages of the archipelago, and they touch upon key fields of knowledge, among them Islamic law, theology and grammar. But has this textual abundance been matched by the range of scholarly writings produced about this phenomenon? This paper asks if and how interlinear texts from Indonesia were studied by scholars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It does not attempt to offer an exhaustive survey but rather raises questions about how interlinear translations were perceived and points to possible trends that have helped shape the scholarly context for the Textual Microcosms project, currently exploring interlinear translation across the Indonesian-Malay world. Keywords: Indonesia, Java, Interlinear translation, colonial scholarship, pesantren

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