Three old Achehnese Manuscripts

Abstract

No written literature of an Indonesian people has been so brilliantly and completely described as that of the Achehnese in the north of Sumatra. This description was the work of Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje. Before it appeared in 1894 as one of the seven chapters of his work De Atjèhers, all that was known to the outside world about this literature consisted of a few specimina, printed (under Snouck Hurgronje's supervision) in K. F. H. van Langen's manual of the Achehnese language (The Hague, 1889). After some preparatory work in Holland and a stay of only seven months in Kutaraja (in wartime, cut off from intercourse with the country by the then prevailing system of a concentrated line surrounding the capital), Snouck Hurgronje was able to reveal the existence of a rich epic, romantic, and relïgious Achehnese literature, to give summaries of all its works of any importance and to deal elaborately with its chief masterpieces, to investigate the prosody of the poetry in which nearly all these texts are written as well as the origin of the foreign elements found in many tales and treatises. In the second edition of his work, which was published in English (The Achehnese) in 1906, only a few additions had to be made. The catalogue of the manuscripts, collected by Snouck Hurgronje himself and by some pupils and friends inspired by his example, will show some more, but they do not alter the general picture drawn in the first edition.