ALCOHOLIC DRINKS IN OLD JAVANESE INSCRIPTIONS: PRELIMINARY REMARKS

Abstract

Though alcoholic culture of pre-Islamic Java was thoroughly examined by Jiří Jákl in his seminal monograph Alcohol in Early Java, there are blank spots in epigraphic research of Old Javanese inscriptional evidence. There is no list of Old Javanese inscriptions which mention alcoholic drinks and their consumption. My article aims at enlisting and examining available references to alcohol drinks in Old Javanese epigraphy. The main sources are Old Javanese inscriptions published in the printed and online catalogues while the latter are still in progress while the former are obviously incomplete. I found ten Old Javanese inscriptions which contain references to alcoholic drinking. Nine inscriptions date from 901 CE to 939 CE. The current text of the Watukura A inscription seems to be a multilayer copy of its original text of 902 CE: it was re-written in the middle tenth century and re-written again in the middle fourteenth century. The phrases maṅinum siddhū, ciñca, kilaṁ, tvak ‘drank a fruit wine siddhu, a fruit wine ciñca, sugar cane wine and palm wine’, and parka ciñca tvak ‘mead(?), a fruit wine ciñca, palm wine’ date from 929–930 CE and, perhaps, may serve as dating markers but it needs further investigations.