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Mpu Monaguṇa's early thirteenth century epic poem Sumanasāntaka is a vernacular rendering of Kālidāsa's story of Prince Aja and Princess Indumatī told in the Raghuvaṃśa. In it the poet exploits his source narrative to describe and comment on the Javanese world of his times.
In Mpu Monaguṇa's Sumanasāntaka the authors offer an edited text and translation of Mpu Monaguṇa's epic kakawin and extensive commentary on the editing of the manuscripts and history of the poem and its story, the relationship between the Old Javanese poem and Kālidāsa's Raghuvaṃśa, the way in which the poem imagines the lived environment of ancient Java in the early thirteenth century and Balinese painted representations of the story of Prince Aja and Princess Indumatī.

Texts about the nocturnal journey of the Prophet Muḥammad (Mi‘rāj) abound in the Muslim world and outside. International attention has never been afforded to any version of text in any language of the Indonesian archipelago. One old version of the text from the area, the Malay Hikayat Mir’āj Nabi Muḥammad is presented here in Malay and English translation. The introductory chapters place the text in a wider context in Indonesian literatures while the manuscript of the text (Cod.Or. Leiden 1713) is described in detail. The text and translation purport to enhance interest in this important text in the Muslim world as seen from the Malay/Indonesian perspective.

The Battle for Junk Ceylon presents a new scholarly edition of the text of the Malay “ballad” known as the Syair Sultan Maulana, together with an English translation. This long poem was written during the second decade of the 19th century by the secretary to the Lakasamana (Admiral) of the sultanate of Kedah. It gives an eye-witness account if the events which occurred during the early part of the reign of Sultan Ahmad Tajuddin, in particular the part played by the Kedah fleet in helping the Siamese to expel the Burmese form the island of Phuket (“Junk Ceylon”) on the west coast of southern Thailand.
The accuracy and relative lack of bias on the part of the author make this Malay text a primary source of some importance, and accordingly the editor has concentrated his attention on the historical features of the text, in particular the military and naval aspects of the Junk Ceylon campaign, thereby also making use of sources in Thai in order to paint a remarkably clear picture of the course of the events.

The Bhomantaka, or the Death of Bhoma, is a wide-ranging tale of the sweet romance of Samba and Yajñawati, of the defeat of the demon Bhoma by King Kresna and his minions in a truly monumental battle, and many more incidents and descriptions, a product of the sophisticated literary tradition of early Java. The poem is written in Old Javanese (composed by an author who does not mention his name or that of his king), in an idiom that presents many difficulties for the modern reader. This book contains an edition of the text, a translation, and an extensive explanatory introduction—enough to make the work accessible—and was produced by a team of two, both senior scholars of Old Javanese and experienced in producing readable English translations.
It will become apparent in the course of reading that there are still numerous philological problems attaching to the text and its interpretation, but on the other hand it is also a fact that it contains many a passage of delightful poetry, philosophical teaching and other cultural information. As a result we get a glimpse of what Java was like perhaps eight and a half centuries ago, and of the thought-world of the Javanese of that age – a world where legendary, mythological or divine beings do battle, and kings march out to restore the welfare of the realm.
This publication takes its place in a long line, from the author via the copyists, in Java and in Bali, who faithfully and lovingly transmitted the work, down to the first edition of the text in 1852 and then the first translation in 1946. In this way a literary tradition of great value has been preserved for the future, and the KITLV Press now offers this contribution to coming generations of students of Old Javanese and to scholars of comparative literature around the world.

The sly wit and silky eroticism of the verse genre known as romantic syair were staple dishes on the Southeast Asian cultural menu, especially in the Malay, Islamic regional centres. Yet very few examples are available in translation for the many readers interested in the genre, and attempts by academics to account for their powers of attraction are even rarer. This book is the author’s effort to convey the seductive qualities of the sexiest of the romantic syair, the ‘Poem of Bidasari’. Few Malay works have been loved and disseminated to the extent the Syair Bidasari has. It was translated in other languages of the region like Makassarese and Maranao and adapted for the Malay theatre and cinema.
Three tasks are attempted in the book: a transliteration into Roman characters of one of the surviving Malay manuscripts of the poem, a translation of that manuscript into English, and an inquiry into the poem’s virtues. The intertexts drawn upon in the analysis reveal the author’s conviction that understanding of traditions of kesenian rakyat (popular arts) such as pantun and the Malay theatre provides the background that allows the text to signify most powerfully.

Around a century ago a Malay poem which tells of a foreigner, always indicated as Sinyor, in Southeast Asia who elopes with Lela Mayang, the wife of a wealthy Chinaman. The latter sets out in pursuit of the couple and engages in a naval battle with the Sinyor in an attempt to get his wife back. The Syair Sinyor Kosta, as the poem is known, presents us with fascinating pictures and glimpses of Malay society, in this case a nineteenth-century society in transition. It reflects changing literary tastes, a pluriform society and the beginning modernization of Malay culture. In its variegated transmission, through both manuscripts and early printings, it is an illustration of the continuous interaction between Malay authors and audiences. In particular it is a remarkable piece of early evidence of literary coexistence between Malays and Chinese, who must have enjoyed this story of the merry Sinyor each in their own way, as is apparent from the continuing process of creation, reception and recreation of the text.
This book presents editions of four versions of the Syair Sinyor Kosta, of which two are translated into English. The texts are preceded by a lengthy introduction which deals with the manuscripts, their history and provenance, and their writers. The book closes with a detailed chapter with a comparative study of the four versions, an investigation of the historical setting, and an analysis of the language used in the texts.

In Malay Court Religion, Culture and Language: Interpreting the Qurʾān in 17th Century Aceh Peter G. Riddell undertakes a detailed study of the two earliest works of Qur’anic exegesis from the Malay-Indonesian world. Riddell explores the 17th century context in the Sultanate of Aceh that produced the two works, and the history of both texts. He argues that political, social and religious factors provide important windows into the content and approaches of both Qur’anic commentaries. He also provides a transliteration of the Jawi Malay text of both commentaries on sūra 18 of the Qur'ān ( al-Kahf), as well as an annotated translation into English. This work represents an important contribution to the search for greater understanding of the early Islamic history of the Malay-Indonesian world.