History and Mythology

Abstract

The oldest Javanese texts which have come down to us are Royal charters engraved on stone slabs or copper-plates, issued by Javanese Kings ruling in the ninth century in Central Java. Even in that early period the district was already called Mataram. For clearness’ sake the ancient ninth, tenth and eleventh century rulers are called Old Mataram Kings, in order to distinguish them from the Muslim Mataram dynasts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the founders of the modern Central Javanese line of Kings. There is no evidence of any connection between the Old Mataram and the modern Mataram dynasty. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Muslim Mataram rulers were unaware of the existence of a preceding line of Kings in (the same district. That fact only became apparent in the second half of the nineteenth century as a consequence of the Old Javanese charters being finally deciphered by Dutch scholars.