(Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia. Jakarta, 2013)*

The peer-reviewed publication opens the series "Catalogues of Nusantara Manuscripts" ¹ published by the Jakarta National Library of the Republic of Indonesia (NBRI). The need to create such a series has been suggested for a long time: catalogues of manuscripts from Indonesia, published over the past century and a half, for the most part did not meet modern requirements. New opportunities for working with sources, their fixation on electronic media, which simplifies the procedure of decryption and cataloging, have raised the study of written monuments to a qualitatively different level. Digital versions of manuscripts from the repositories of many countries of the world became available to textual scholars, which made it possible to compare different lists of the same work without referring to the original. The format of their descriptions has also significantly expanded: catalogues published in recent years are often provided with illustrations (including color ones) that give an idea of handwriting, spelling features, and decorative elements of the manuscript design.

In this context, publications such as the catalog reviewed here, which is entirely devoted to one of the most important segments of the Malay - language book culture in Batavia (Jakarta) at the end of the 19th century-the work of writers and copyists of the Fadli family, are of particular importance. The books they created or copied are usually called "manuscripts from Pechenongan" - this was the name of the area in the center of Batavia where this family lived and worked.

Researchers of Malay written literature have repeatedly addressed the activities of the paid Fadli library and writers who came out of its bosom. The first of them were Russian scientists V. I. Braginsky and M. A. Boldyreva, authors of the article "Description of Malay manuscripts in the collection of the Leningrad Academy of Sciences of the USSR" [Braginsky and Boldyreva, 1978], where among the manuscripts of the Leningrad collection were mentioned those that came from the Fadli library. Later, V. I. Braginsky devoted a special work to the activities of writers and copyists from this family (Braginsky, 2002). At the same time, the well-known French Malaist Henri Chambert-Loir became interested in the library: his articles considered both individual works of authors from the Fadli family and the library as a whole [Chambert-Loir, 1984; Chambert-Loir, 1987; Chambert-Loir, 1991; Chambert-Loir, 1992; Chambert-Loir, 2009]. Later, a number of original works by writers of this circle were published in Malay in modern orthography [Chambert-Loir, 2009; Muhammad Bakir, 2012], and one of them was published in Russia - not only in transliteration, but also in Russian translation [Goryaeva, 2008].

Paid libraries first appeared in Java in the late 18th century. Over time, their number has grown to meet the needs of a wide variety of audiences, from the elite to the mass reader. Among the first to be mentioned, for example, is Rex Pustak, an unofficial library for persons of noble rank, established in 1867 by the poet, scientist and entrepreneur Prince Mangkunegoro IV, who obtained official status for it from the Dutch authorities [Nancy Florida, 2002, p. 17-18]. In parallel with the book collections that served readers from the local nobility or provided copies of manuscripts to officials of the Dutch administration who studied Malay and Javanese, there were very numerous large or small paid libraries for the widest audience [Lombard, 1985, p. 83; Behrend, 1993], and Malay manuscripts predominated in them.

There is an opinion that the environment where the practice of paid libraries developed and strengthened was the local Chinese, who borrowed this idea from their homeland. This is indirectly evidenced by the fact that such libraries were created and operated exclusively in the areas of settlement of Chinese Muslims (peranakan), in particular in Batavia, as well as in Palembang (Kratz, 1977). One of these neighborhoods was Pechenongan (Chambert-Loir, 1984, p. 54), where Chinese people made up a significant part of the readers of the Fadli Library. There was also a bookstore on the same block

Lyubov V. GORYAEVA-Candidate of Philological Sciences, Leading Researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. E-mail: l.goriaeva@yandex.ru

Catalog of manuscripts from Pechenongan in the collection of the National Library. Batavian literature of the late 19th century Edited by A. Chamberlain-Loire, Devaki Kramadibrata; Comp. Noor Karim, Didik Purwanto, Dina Ishanti and Isri Nurita. Jakarta: National Library of the Republic of Indonesia, 2013.

¹ Nusantara is the traditional name of the geographical area of insular Southeast Asia, including the Malacca Peninsula.

The largest book publisher in Batavia in the mid - 19th century was the Dutchman G. J. K. Kolff, who purchased the paper used by the scribes of the Fadli family. The library's activity dates back to 1858-1909, and its completion is usually associated with increased competition in the book market and a growing demand for printed products made in Latin graphics.

The publication of the catalog was timed to coincide with the exhibition of Fadli Library manuscripts, held from July 11 to 20, 2013 at the Ismail Marzuki Cultural Center in Jakarta. The NBRI collection contains more than three dozen manuscripts of this library, however, due to the poor preservation of some manuscripts, only 29 storage units were presented in the exhibition, containing a total of 26 texts.

In the preface to the catalog, A. Chamberlain-Loire summarized the results of the study of the Fadli family heritage, conducted over many years by himself and other Malay philologists. The central figure here is the author of most of the exhibited manuscripts - Muhammad Baqir, a copyist and writer whose work is located at the junction of so-called traditional and modern literature. One manuscript from the catalog belongs to the pen of his uncle - Sapirin bin Usman, while other manuscripts from Pechenongan, the works of other members of this family, stored in the collections of Leiden and St. Petersburg, could not be presented at the exhibition.

As the researcher noted, identifying the corpus of Fadli family manuscripts in the extensive NBRI collection proved to be a difficult task, requiring long and painstaking work. The collection books of the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences Museum, which bought a number of his manuscripts from M. Bakir, and the catalog of Malay manuscripts from this repository, compiled by F. S. van Ronkel, published in 1909, served as an aid. Colophons and handwriting characteristic of writers - authors or copyists, as well as their signatures-were studied; advertising lists of books offered to readers (Muhammad Baqir compiled them six times) gave an idea of the collections of the Fadli library; illustrations made in the style characteristic of the writer also helped with attribution of manuscripts.

The presented material turned out to be without exaggeration unique, making it possible to draw a portrait of the writer and scribe of that era. His tastes and preferences are indicated not only by the choice of texts for later copying or themes for his own original work, but also by the artistic design of the book: handwriting, ornamental motifs, color scheme and illustrations. A special feature of the manuscripts written by Muhammad Bakir is the abundance of illustrative material presented in detail in the "Catalog": no less than five dozen color and black-and-white images of people, plants, birds and animals, buildings, ships, etc., as well as characters from Hindu and Muslim mythology, traditional Malay-Indonesian theater wayang purvo. And if the silhouette images of the wayang figures look quite traditional, then the grotesque, foreshortened portraits of genies give away the hand of an original, original artist.

Muhammad Baqir was not only the author of original drawings, he was also not above borrowing material. In one of his manuscripts, for example, you can find European transfer pictures: vignettes depicting flowers, frolicking angels-children, sailboats. The text "flows around" the images, and their subject matter is directly related to the narrative. As you can understand, Muhammad Baqir was very fond of these illustrations and on the last page of the manuscript gave a direct indication of them: "Here is my instruction to those who read, view or listen to [this story]: pictures and any drawings that occur in this story are forbidden to peel off, tear out or scrape off... "(p. 51-52). It is interesting that this very" Order " of Muhammad Bakir is decorated with a screen saver-a translated picture depicting a book with a cross on the cover (Bible or catechism) - in all likelihood, for purely decorative purposes.

A characteristic feature of Bakir's work was his attention to the signs and events of the current day. Even in such a traditional text as "Wayang on Arjuna", a letter sent by one of the characters is marked "Batavia, May 1, 1897". In another work (Lakon Jaka Sukara), the date of Arjuna's marriage is indicated as October 22, 1894 (p. 4). In colophons of manuscripts, Baqir usually indicates first the date according to the Gregorian calendar, only then - according to the Hijra, and sometimes does without the latter. In the marginal notes of his manuscripts, such topical events as the penetration of a night robber into the house of Bakir himself, the death of King Willem III of the Netherlands, and the uprising of 1888 in Banten (West Java) are reflected.

In the narrative itself, Bakir boldly includes the attributes of modernity. Thus, in the Tale of Seri Rama, Ravana treats one of the Rakshasa giants with brandy, brandy, and champagne; one of the characters in the theatrical Tale of Maharaj Garbak Jagat flies through the sky "faster than cyclists run through Gambhir Square", etc. According to A. Chamberlain-Loire, some elements of anachronism (for example, Gregorian dates found in the text that are far removed from the actual time of Bakir's creation of the manuscript) could have migrated to the text from the original list - the protograph that he used when copying.

One of Bakir's characteristics as a copyist was the desire to present the reader with the most accurate and easily understandable text. This is indicated by the edits that Bakir made to his work after it was completed (the edits were made in a different shade of ink), as well as the introduction of synonyms in parentheses for some words, which, in his opinion, made them easier for the reader to understand. While acknowledging that he did not reproduce the original manuscript word for word, Bakir stressed that he did not distort the general meaning of the phrases: "I did not write with literal accuracy, not in the same words as before, and it turned out to be different from what it was, only the plot remained unchanged" (p. 16).

The consolidated register of books listed by various sources in the Fadli library shows that the author's works of members of this family occupied a large place in it. So, out of the total number of books Bakir has rewritten, presented in the NBRI collection, his original creations make up about half: three stories of the magic-adventurous genre, eight novels on the themes of wayang and one allegorical poem-shair. The only manuscript written by Sapirin bin Uthman from the same collection also contains the original text of this author. As the catalog shows, young members of the Fadli family often acted as copyists of the works of their older relatives, but sometimes they brought something new to the text being rewritten.

The second source of replenishment of the library's collection was copies of manuscripts borrowed from other collections, as well as, importantly, works of oral tradition, which were put on paper by the efforts of family members. Scattered comments from authors and copyists show that the manuscripts from the Fudli library were not intended for sale: the main source of income for the family was to hand them over for reading for a fee. The number of people who gained access to the library's resources was very significant due to the widespread practice of reading books aloud in front of an illiterate public (p. 19) [Sweeney, 1980, p. 24-30]. According to available data, the Fadli family's collection included 75 book titles, and therefore there is every reason to consider it the most outstanding of the paid libraries of Java in the second half of the XIX century.

The publication of the "Catalog" is not only a necessary attribute of the exhibition held in Jakarta more than two years ago, but also an invaluable source of a wide variety of information related to the manuscript tradition of the Malay world. As you know, today researchers have at their disposal only a very small number of original manuscripts available online. Perhaps the only exception is the recently digitized collection of manuscripts from the collections of the British Library. In contrast, the Malaysian public portal Mymanuskrip, which has been operating successfully for several years, has recently ceased to exist. Researchers of the Nusantara manuscript tradition will look forward to seeing new catalogues of manuscripts from the NBRI collection.

list of literature

Braginsky V. I., Boldyreva M. A. Opisanie malayskikh rukopisey v sobranii LO IV AN SSSR [Description of Malay manuscripts in the collection of the Law of the USSR Academy of Sciences]. Malay-Indonesian Studies, Moscow, 1978, pp. 131-167.

The story of Maharaja Marakarma. Facsimile of the manuscript. Transliteration, translated from Malay, research, commentary, appendix. L. V. Goryasvoy, Moscow: Vostochnaya literatura Publ., 2008.

Behrend T. Manuscript Production in Nineteenth-Century Java; Codicology and the Writing of Javanese Literary History // Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (BKI). Vol. 149, issue 3, 1993, pp. 407-437.

Braginsky V.I. Malay Seribes on their Craft and Audience (with Special Reference to the Description of the Reading Assembly by Safirin bin Usman Fadli) // Indonesia and the Malay World. Vol. 30, issue 86, 2002, pp. 37-61.

Chambert-Loir H. (ed.). Sapirin bin Usman, Hikayat Nakhoda Asik [dan] Muhammad Bakir, Hikayat Merpati Mas dan Merpati Perak, Jakarta: Masup Jakarta / Ecole francaise d'Extreme-Orient / Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia, 2009.

Chambert-Loir H. Muhammad Bakir. A Batavian Scribe and Author in the Nineteenth Century // Review of Indonesian and Malayan Affairs. N 18(1984), pp. 44-72.

Hikayat Nakhoda Asyik: Jalan Lain ke Roman// H.B. Jassin 70 Tahun. Sapardi Djoko 16/03/16amono (ed.). Jakarta, Gramedia, 1987.

Kratz E.U. Running a lending library in Palembang in 1886 AD // Indonesia Circle. Vol. 5, issue 14, 1977.

Lombard D., Salmon C. Islam et Cinite // Archipel. Etudes interdisciplinaires sur le monde insulindien, vol. 30 (1985), no 1.

Malay literature in the 19^th Century; The Fadli Connection // J.J. Ras and S.O. Robson (ed.) Variation, Transformation and Meaning; Studies on Indonesian Literatures in Honour of A. Teeuw. Leiden, KITLV Press, 1991, pp. 87-114.

Muhammad Bakir b.Syofian. Kumpulan cerita wayang versi Pecenongan: suntingan teks oleh Nur-Karim, Mardiono, Didik Purwanto, Sanwani. Jakarta: Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia, 2012.

Nancy K. Florida. Javanese Literature in Surakarta Manuscripts: Vol. 2: Manuscripts of the Mangkunagaran Palace. Ithaca, 2002.

Sair Java-Bank dirampok: litterature malaise ou sino-malaise? // C. Salmon (ed.). Le moment sino-malais de la litterature indonesienne. Paris, Archipel, 1991, pp. 43-70.

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