Notes on the early Kidung literature

Abstract

Professor P. J. Zoetmulder has already taught us, in his Survey of Old Javanese Literature appropriately entitled Kalangwan, Beauty (Zoetmulder 1974: 151-165), to appreciate the figure of the poet (kawi) as a man of letters in the setting of his times and culture. Taking his information from the literature itself, he has given us a picture of the poet as practitioner of the cult of beauty, as it flourished in and around the courts of early Java. And so we are able to catch a glimpse of a fragile world of particular charm. It may even be possible to take his account a step further, but in order to do that it is first necessary to limit the scope of our discussion in time, and accordingly I wish to devote some comments to the state of the arts in the Majapahit period (defined roughly as the 14th and 15th centuries). During this time a line of Hindu kings ruled at Majapahit in East Java. From surviving works of Old Javanese literature we know that leading poets often worked under the patronage of kings or members of the royal family. Is it perhaps possible to say something more about the nature of the relationship between royalty and the court and the prac tice of the arts, including poetry? (It hardly needs to be stressed that poetry is only one of the arts that were cultivated at court.) Evidence on this point is to be had from the Old Javanese prose work Nawanatya. Selections from this have been published by Pigeaud1 ; although it is unfortunate that he did not reproduce the whole text, this contains a passage that is of considerable interest for Javanese cultural history. The Nawanatya is available apparently in one MS.