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The Three Palm-Leaf MSS from Java in the Bodleian Library and their Donors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

J. Noorduyn
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Extract

For more than three and a half centuries the Bodleian Library at Oxford has possessed three palm-leaf MSS originating from Java, probably the earliest of their kind to be included in a Western public collection. They bear the shelfmarks MS.Jav.b.l (R), MS.Jav.b.2 (R), and MS.Jav.b.3 (R), for which I shall use the numbers 1, 2, and 3 here for convenience sake.

In the relevant published literature, to be referred to below, there exists some uncertainty, not about the identity of the two persons who donated these MSS, but about the question of which of them gave which one. This is true explicitly for MS. no. 3, and by implication for the others. When first examining this MS, I was informed by the then Keeper of Oriental Books that it “was a 17th century gift, either by Andrew James in 1627, or by the Earl of Pembroke in 1629, more probably the latter”. This dual possibility was subsequently adopted in publications about this MS. Only a recent examination of the pertinent data, both published and unpublished, has shown that they do allow of a definite conclusion being reached, as will be demonstrated below.2

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 117 , Issue 1 , January 1985 , pp. 58 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1985

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References

1 Noorduyn, J., Further Topographical Notes on the Ferry Charter of 1358, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde CXXIV, 1958, 460Google Scholar; Manik's, BujanggaJourneys Through Java, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde CXXXVIII, 1982, 413Google Scholar; Ricklefs, M. C. and Voorhoeve, P., Indonesian Manuscripts in Great Britain. A Catalogue of Manuscripts in Indonesian Languages in British Public Collections. Oxford, 1977, 181.Google Scholar

2 The investigation reported here owes a great deal to the kind help extended by others. I am greatly indebted to Mr. C. Wakefield, Assistant Librarian, Department of Oriental Books, Bodleian Library, for providing references to relevant literature and supplying unpublished data, to his colleagues of the Department of Western Manuscripts for similar assistance, and not least of all to Dr. P. B. R. Carey for his encouragement and his unlimited willingness to spend time looking for further information.

3 Vol. 1, 261, of the contemporaneous MS kept in the Library's Department of Western Manuscripts.

4 Quoted for the greater part in Macray, W. D., Annals of the Bodleian Library Oxford. London, Oxford, Cambridge, 1868, 50; Second edition. Oxford 1890, 64.Google Scholar

5 I am greatly indebted to T. B. James, MA, PhD, FSA, of King Alfred's College, Winchester, for supplying these data concerning the James family. For Thomas James as Bodleian librarian (1601–1620), cf. Macray, Annals 1890, pp. 25–6, 34, 50, 55.Google Scholar

6 Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 26, 1891, 228.Google Scholar

7 Madan, F. and Craster, H. H., Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, vol. 2, part 1. Oxford, 1922, 7.Google Scholar

8 It is published in full in Macray, , Annals, 1890, 69–70.Google Scholar

9 Macray, , Annals, 1890, 70.Google Scholar

10 Vol. 1, 178–184.

11 Macray, , Annals, 1890, 71.Google Scholar

12 Summary Catalogue, 1922, 3Google Scholar; a major rearrangement of the manuscripts took place in the 1640's, cf. Philip, Ian, The Bodleian Library in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Oxford, 1983, 42.Google Scholar

13 Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hispaniae in unum collecti …. Tom. 1. Oxoniae, 1697.Google Scholar

14 Summary Catalogue, 1922, 3–9, 561.Google Scholar

15 Summary Catalogue, 1922, 3.Google Scholar

16 Summary Catalogue, 1922, 561.Google Scholar

17 This number 193 evidently refers to the obsolete shelfmark “Arch.A.Infra 193” which is found on the inside of the lid of the box of MS. no. 3.

18 Catalogi librorum, 1697, vol. 1, part 1, 34, 153.Google Scholar

19 Of the words ‘Liber arundineus’ (“book made of reed”), cited as a quotation in Summary Catalogue, 1922, 561 (cf. the description quoted above, p. 60) with reference to MS. 2980 (= no. 3), no trace has been found in the available sources either, including the Benefactors' Register and the catalogues of the Barocci MSS in Barocci 243, Barocci 244 and MS. Smith 34, drawn up in 1629 and 1636.Google Scholar

20 Annals, 1890, 64, nt.Google Scholar

21 Ricklefs, and Voorhoeve, 1977, 177.Google Scholar

22 Macray, 1890, 64, nt.Google Scholar

23 Ricklefs, and Voorhoeve, 1977, 177Google Scholar; Pigeaud, Th. G. Th., Literature of Java. IV. Supplement. Leiden, 1980, 206–208.Google Scholar

24 Ricklefs, and Voorhoeve, 1977, 181Google Scholar; Noorduyn, 1982, 413.Google Scholar

25 Ricklefs, and Voorhoeve, 1977, 43.Google Scholar

26 Macray, 1890, 64, nt.Google Scholar

27 Macray, 1868, 50, nt.Google Scholar