JAVANESE MANUSCRIPTS
Javanese manuscripts from the British Library collection are digitilisedfor our reading pleasure. This is the collection of John Crawfurd who was the British Resident of Yogyakarta from 1811 to 1814. He commissioned many further copies of Javanese texts adorned with illuminated frontispieces or wadana by artists from the Pakaualaman and decorated in the scriptorium of the Pakualaman court in Yogykarta.
The Pakualaman principality was founded in Yogyakarta in 1812 by the British to reward Prince Paku Alam for his support for the British military campaign against Sultan Hamengkubuwana II of Yogyakarta.
One is a more classical style with essentially rectangular frames, on which has been superimposed a diamond-shaped outline, in many cases taking the form of ornamental arches on the three outer sides of the text on each page. A fine example is shown above, on a manuscript of the Sĕrat Gada (Gonda) Kusuma. These frontispieces derive from the broader Islamic tradition of decorated frames, symmetrical around the central spine of the book, which often adorn the initial double opening pages.
A rather different style of illuminated frontispiece associated only with Yogyakarta has been termed wadana gapura, 'gateway frontispieces', or wadana renggan candhi or ‘frontispieces decorated as temples’ alluding to the temple-like structures of the decorated frames surrounding the text block on each page, with a plinth-like base and architectural features such as columns, arches and windows, often with ‘brick’ detailing.
These devices all suggest that these temple-style illuminated frames were added after the main text was copied, at a second distinct stage within the manuscript production process. It could be hypthesized that the examples of 'temple' wadana in Javanese manuscripts in the British Library mark the very beginning of the development of this artistic genre at the newly-formed Pakualaman court in Yogyakarta. The types of writing shown here are combination of Old jawi script, Kawi script, Sundanese and Arabic script.
