Abstract
There are mounting campaigns to repatriate cultural heritage objects that were wrongfully seized under colonial rule. Studying the history of these objects before their encounters with colonialism is essential to understanding why they remain valuable today. This article investigates the history of a collection of about 500 palm-leaf manuscripts that were looted during the conquest of Lombok by the Netherlands East Indies in late 1894. It shows how the production, purchase, and theft of manuscripts had been intertwined with struggles for power in Bali and Lombok since the seventeenth century. Violence was involved in the very creation of the Lombok Collection, and its seizure by victorious Dutch troops was just another chapter in its long and bloody story. This kind of study is especially urgent as the demand for provenance research grows, because it helps us to better understand the complex historical trajectories of these cultural heritage objects.
1 Introduction
From June to November 1894, two colonizing powers battled for control over the tropical island of Lombok in present-day Indonesia. One was the Netherlands, which was consolidating its grip on the East Indies by subduing the archipelago’s last autonomous kingdoms. The other was a kingdom ruled by Hindu Balinese who had conquered and settled on their neighbouring island of Lombok. Its leader, who styled himself as a maharaja, was a scion of the east Balinese dynasty of Karangasem. This king had grown immensely wealthy on the labour and rents of his Lombok possessions. The island’s indigenous Sasak people were wedged between these two foreign aggressors bent on dominating their prosperous land. After a protracted war marked by dogged Balinese resistance and heavy casualties, the king’s palace at Cakranagara was captured on 19 November 1894. There followed a massive act of colonial looting, in which the victorious troops ransacked almost a quarter of a tonne of gold, over seven tonnes of silver, and innumerable precious jewels from their Balinese owners—a hoard soon dubbed the Lombok Treasure (Vanvugt 1995:43–8). It is unknown to what extent the centuries-long exploitation of Sasak people by Balinese settlers had contributed to this vast accumulation of wealth, which was spirited away by Dutch officials and soldiers to their metropolitan centres in Batavia, Amsterdam, and Leiden.
Stories like this are a lightning rod for debates about the repatriation of colonial loot. Along with demands for the return of cultural artefacts comes the need to know their history, which is essential to understanding their value and significance today. But there is a problem. Most provenance research only concerns itself with the colonial rupture and its aftermath, because it is only after loot enters colonial institutions that it creates an archival trail for historians: purchase receipts, accession lists, and collection inventories, all written in easy-to-read European languages. The pre-colonial history of looted artefacts is largely ignored. There are obvious, practical reasons for this: indigenous records of artefact histories are extremely scarce and, if they do exist, are often written in archaic languages and scripts, which few historians are trained to read anymore. Ideological reasons may play a role too. By treating the pre-colonial history of artefacts as a blank slate on which colonialism left its ugly traces, we can straightforwardly justify the repatriation agenda. Postcolonial states like Indonesia can claim that returning the loot will restore a pre-colonial condition of innocence, in which the nation-state unproblematically owns its cultural patrimony once again. An important critique of this simplistic argument was offered by Appiah (2006).
Repatriation campaigns in Indonesia are usually led by the national government.1 The complex interplay of national heritage and the repatriation agenda is discussed by Ardiyansyah (2021), who shows the arbitrariness and contingency of the process of determining the significance of any particular object to national heritage. Nationalist arguments in favour of repatriation tend to oversimplify the ambiguities of subjects’ relations with colonial power. For example, in the 1970s the politicians Adam Malik and Koesnadi Hardjasoemantri lobbied for the repatriation of Raden Saleh’s painting The arrest of Prince Diponegoro by promoting a patriotic narrative of the painting as an act of artistic resistance to colonial rule (Ardiyansyah 2021:170). Uncomfortable histories, such as the fact that the Lombok Treasure was amassed through the oppression of the Sasaks by the Balinese over several centuries, rarely feature in these discussions.2 Moreover, the leading role of the Indonesian national government often excludes non-state community claimants who may have a closer historical connection to specific objects and collections.3
This article does not shy away from the pre-colonial histories of such objects but tackles them head on. It takes as its case study the Lombok Collection of manuscripts: a group of around 500 palm-leaf manuscripts taken from the Balinese kingdom in Lombok in the immediate aftermath of its defeat in November 1894.4 These texts embody the august civilization of their predominantly Balinese owners. They belong to a vast array of genres: epic poetry, folktales, religious scripture, magic, history, legal codes, medicine, letters, royal edicts, diplomatic treaties, among many others. The collection contains copies of literary works that go back over a thousand years to medieval Java.
After the maharaja’s defeat, the Lombok Collection was seized by Dutch troops. Most of these manuscripts became the property of the Netherlands East Indies government and were entrusted to its language official (taalambtenaar) J.L.A. Brandes to be catalogued and researched. Shortly after Brandes’s death in 1905, these texts were transferred to Leiden University. However, around 50 more manuscripts had been taken by private individuals, such as soldiers, who subsequently donated them to the Bataviaasch Genootschap der Kunsten en Wetenschappen (hereafter Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences); these texts never left the archipelago and now belong to the Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia (hereafter National Library of Indonesia). A handful more ended up in the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam and the Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde in Leiden, from which institutions they were repatriated to the Indonesian government in 2023. It is unknown how many items of the Lombok Collection remain in private ownership.
The designation of these manuscripts as a single unit called the ‘Lombok Collection’ is a legacy of philological scholarship.5 However, these manuscripts already formed a coherent group before their seizure by Dutch forces, because they had a shared pre-colonial trajectory: emerging out of the literary traditions of medieval Java, they were largely produced in east Bali during the early modern period. The gathering of these hundreds of manuscripts in Cakranagara at the end of the nineteenth century was brought about by the activities of the Balinese settlers on Lombok. Unlike the gold and silver artefacts that were stored in a treasure house within the Cakranagara palace (Vanvugt 1995:44–6), there is no clear evidence that the manuscripts were stored in a single physical repository.6 The manuscripts in the Lombok Collection belonged to a variety of owners, including the maharaja himself. These details enrich our notion of what a manuscript collection might have meant for the Balinese on Lombok, before the intrusion of colonial institutions and knowledge systems.
Written artefacts like the Lombok Collection manuscripts are distinctive, because they can tell us about their own histories before the colonial encounter. Such manuscripts may be historical sources in their own right (for example, correspondence, royal decrees), or they may have historical information attached to them in the form of paratexts, such as colophons. Balinese manuscripts often record the specific moments at which they were copied, usually dated to the precise day. When these colophons contain memoranda (pangelingan) of historical significance, they can improve our understanding of events described in European archives and later Balinese narratives (Vickers 1990; Rubinstein 1996). Manuscripts of the Lombok Collection have many remarkably old colophons, some dating back 500 years. The collection therefore constitutes a profoundly valuable archive for the early modern history of Bali and Lombok.
The Lombok Collection came into being through the power of the Balinese rulers of Lombok, who belonged to a royal dynasty called Karangasem. This dynasty consisted of Balinese nobles, originating from the town of Karangasem on the far eastern side of Bali, who first came to prominence in the mid seventeenth century. Over the next two and a half centuries, this dynasty violently expanded its territories to include the whole of east Bali, the north coast kingdom of Buleleng, and most of the island of Lombok. Karangasem rule on Lombok involved the establishment of Hindu Balinese colonies and the marginalization of the original Muslim Sasak inhabitants of the island (Hägerdal 2001). Ethnic, religious, and political tensions between these two communities caused ongoing conflict and were the catalyst for decisive intervention by the Dutch at the end of the nineteenth century (Van der Kraan 1980). The Lombok Collection gives us crucial insights into the history of the Karangasem dynasty by recording the ways in which its members received, commissioned, purchased, or stole the manuscripts that ended up in the collection. The presence of these hundreds of manuscripts in one place, on the eve of the Dutch victory in 1894, is itself a testament to the concentration of power by the dynasty’s leader at that time: the maharaja of Lombok.
The memoranda attached to manuscripts in the Lombok Collection provide insights into four distinct phases of Bali–Lombok history: the flourishing of Hindu priest-poets in the sixteenth-century kingdom of Gelgel in Bali; the rise of the Karangasem dynasty in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; the dynasty’s expansion into Lombok throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and, finally, its political consolidation under the Mataram branch in the second half of the nineteenth century. In each of these phases, there were complex interplays of power, culture, and heritage, which can only be properly apprehended through close engagement with the manuscript sources. This article thus seeks to contribute to provenance research in a broader sense than simply tracking the origins of individual manuscripts in a library. Instead, it uses data from the manuscripts themselves to reveal the history of the society that created and possessed them before the catastrophe of 1894.7
2 Priest-Poets of Bali (Sixteenth Century)
The earliest records of literary activity on Bali date from the sixteenth century. This is considered by many to be a golden age in Balinese history, linked to the political power of the Gelgel dynasty that claimed sovereignty over the whole island (Berg 1927:93–167). Our knowledge of the cultural efflorescence of this time comes only from genealogical histories (babad) written in the nineteenth century, since Balinese primary sources for the period have been lost, while foreign accounts of the time contain next to no information about the island’s literary practices. The Lombok Collection vitally fills this gap in the historical record. A handful of manuscript colophons give us a glimpse of the learned milieu in which the heritage of Old Javanese literature was treasured and enriched in early modern Bali.
The most famous figure of this time is the semi-legendary priest and poet Nirartha, who is credited with reforming Balinese religion (Acri 2022) and authoring many works of literature, including the Anyang Nirartha and Nirarthaprakr̥ta (Creese 1999:53). Today he is venerated by the Śaiva priestly families of Bali as their apical ancestor, as recounted in posthumous hagiographies like the Dvijendratattva (Rubinstein 2000). We lack any primary sources from Nirartha’s lifetime, so we have to rely on these hagiographies and a few allusive self-references in the literary works attributed to him (Fletcher 2021). Two colophons from the Lombok Collection add historical specificity to some aspects of Nirartha’s biography as it is known from the later traditions. These are manuscripts of two revered Old Javanese poems: the Bhomāntaka and the Sumanasāntaka. The colophon of the Bhomāntaka (Or. 5036) provides specific geographical information about Nirartha’s activities:
This is the famous Bhomāntaka. […] It was completed in the Rājya Manyar (‘New Palace’) at Badahulu by the renowned Nirartha.8
A colophon attached to the Sumanasāntaka (Or. 5015) adds chronological precision to Nirartha’s activities:
This is the completed Sumanasāntaka. It was finished being copied on the island of Bali, in the village called Kanaka (‘Gold’), by the one with the moniker Nirartha on 14 July 1537.9
The toponyms Rājya Manyar, Badahulu, and Kanaka (identifiable with the modern villages of Pejeng, Bedulu, and Mas in central Bali) can be linked to a particular phase in Nirartha’s life, prior to his invitation to serve as high priest to the great king Baturenggong in the royal court of Gelgel (Rubinstein 2000:80). The 1537 date for his activity in Mas is largely consistent with other sources that put Baturenggong’s reign in the first half of the sixteenth century.10
Another manuscript from the Lombok Collection, a copy of the rare Old Javanese poem Kr̥ṣṇāyaṇa (Or. 5040), contains a colophon in verse from the same period of Balinese history:
This is the famous Kr̥ṣṇāyaṇa. The story was finished being copied on the island of Bali, there in the garden of Śarma Subhaga (‘Prosperous House’), known as a most tranquil foundation and dwelling. That is the place of the priest called Suranātha, a master of the Siddhānta sect […] around 1544, which rises when the sun has set.11
Suranātha’s identity is unknown, but the colophon offers some circumstantial details about him. The Sanskrit term śarma is almost certainly a gloss of the Balinese griya, so Śarma Subhaga can be identified with present-day Griya Subagan near Amlapura city in east Bali. The name Siddhāntapakṣa (‘of the Siddhānta sect’) recalls the Śaiva Siddhānta form of Hinduism that Nirartha propagated in Bali. We are therefore dealing with a Balinese priest who was a contemporary of Nirartha and of the same religious persuasion.
Another glimpse of sixteenth-century Bali is given in a memorandum attached to a copy of the Sundari Terus (Or. 5266). There is mention of a figure called Liṅganātha, of whom little else is known besides the brief description given in this manuscript. The text is rather terse and disjointed, which makes its depiction of Gelgel politics hard to understand:
What follows is the tale of master Liṅganātha, who was a bhujangga (a type of cleric) in Bali. His aim was to be the champion of the bhujangga in Bali around 1568, when the chief minister at Svecchapura (a.k.a. Gelgel) was Lord North-of-the-Banyan (Ler ing Waringin), who had forebears three times (that is, generations?) from [the great Javanese kingdom of] Majapahit. The time of the rain of rice (? ujan byas) was around 1505. The one who ruled Bali was called Ki Lalah; he ruled Bali, the one who obtained the pura Baraja at last, around 1544.12
We lack any solid historical documentation for the people mentioned in these colophons. Despite these promising hints, we should remain cautious in treating such memoranda as primary sources for the Gelgel period, since these manuscripts are copies produced over two centuries later. Such was the prestige of priest-poets like ‘the renowned Nirartha’ that many of the literary works attributed to him were probably written by others. It is possible that these manuscripts were likewise credited to Nirartha, Suranātha, and Liṅganātha by their latter-day admirers, rather than being authentic products of their hands.
3 Rise of the Karangasem Dynasty (1660–1770)
These literary priests worked within a political order centred on the grand royal court of Gelgel, which had made such a strong impression on the first Dutch voyagers to the archipelago in 1597 (Lodewycksz 1915:189–202; Vickers 1994:36–45). From the mid seventeenth century onwards, however, political power in Bali started to fragment, as conflicts in the capital led to the usurpation of the throne, while other centres, like Buleleng in the north, began to assert their autonomy (De Graaf 1949). One of the most significant of these new contenders was the Karangasem dynasty, whose power base lay in the far eastern district of Amlapura. It is this family whose fortunes are most closely tied to the history of the Lombok Collection, right up to its seizure by the Dutch in 1894. The rich heritage of medieval Java and early modern Bali was inherited by scholars and scribes living within the ambit of this mighty dynasty.
Karangasem first emerged as a powerful clan in the mid seventeenth century, with its leader appearing as one of several antagonists in a military struggle in east Bali (Hägerdal 2006:31). Later Karangasem family histories identify this figure as Gusti Ketut Karang, who was the first to use the title Anglurah, thereby staking his claim to political autonomy from his erstwhile overlords at Gelgel (Vickers 2014:4). Karangasem’s early expansion in the period 1660–1680 had to contend with several other powerful forces in east Bali: the old capital Gelgel, its newly emerging successor at Klungkung, as well as the highland centres of Sidemen and Sibetan. Ongoing strife between these powers is documented in a handful of Balinese sources, as well as in correspondence received by the VOC (Creese 1991b; Hägerdal 2006:28–35). Just as for the early sixteenth century, the colophons of the Lombok Collection shed much-needed light on this otherwise obscure corner of Balinese history. One such colophon is attached to an antique copy of the Ādiparva (Or. 5046), an Old Javanese paraphrase of the first book of the Mahābhārata:
This is the completed Ādiparva. The Sabhā [to wit, the second book of the Mahābhārata] will be its future continuation. It was finished being written by Bhāṣa Mangara, there at Kawisamla [a.k.a. Karangasem] on the island of Bali on 13 January 1668.13
Another manuscript, entitled Dangdang Bang Bungalan (Or. 5073), a didactic text on religion, bears a near-identical colophon with the same date, though it was copied at the nearby village of Ababi, which had probably come under the sway of Karangasem by this time.
The political rise of Karangasem thus coincided with its emergence as a centre for literary production. Toponyms in east Bali are prominent among the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century colophons of the Lombok Collection. This was an area of rapid expansion for the Karangasem dynasty, particularly under the leadership of three brothers who reigned jointly: Gusti Ngurah Made Karangasem (d. Pasaren Anyar), Gusti Ngurah Nyoman Karangasem (d. Bale Ukiran), and Gusti Ngurah Ketut Karangasem (d. Patandakan).14 A manuscript of the law code Ādigama (Or. 3852) contains a record of an oath-taking ceremony in 1731, in which three aristocrats in the village of Sibetan drank a curse-potion (cor) as their pledge of loyalty to the Karangasem kings:
On 17 October 1731, that was the time of the drinking of the curse-potion. The contents of the curse [directed] to Lord Nengah Jalantik, Lord Abyan, and Lord Tanah, including their relatives and kin: ‘if you are untrue in your service to me, you will suffer all the disasters of the curse. And if you bring about ruin to me, or to my younger brother Adi Ketut Agung, or to my sons I Barak Pambayun and I Barak Made […] you will suffer all the disasters of the curse.’15
A letter to the VOC dated 15 January 1731 confirms that Nengah Jalantik, referred to there as Gusti Made Mantu, was a vassal ruler of Sibetan subject to the reigning Karangasem kings (Vickers 2014:21).16 The loyalty of such local leaders was crucial to Karangasem’s expansion, as they controlled the villages along the main highland road leading westward from Karangasem, including those that served the great temple of Besakih (Stuart-Fox 2002).
Karangasem’s military ambitions were documented by a prolific scribe called Artha Pamasah, who was active in east Bali in the 1730s.17 He copied many rare and important manuscripts, including poetry and political treatises from the Majapahit period of Javanese history as well as later Balinese legal codes, to which he attached informative colophons. His home, located in a settlement called Kawyan (derived from kavi ‘poet’), somewhere ‘east of the Unda river’ (wetan ing kali Unda), is difficult to pin down precisely. His earliest known colophon, attached to a copy of the Āgama Apitan (HKS 5250), was written on 2 January 1731 in the western hamlet (banjar kilyan) of a village called Iranya (‘Gold’), in a place called Sayawana Sūkṣma which was ‘north of the main road’ (ler ing wratmara geng). Subsequent colophons confirm this locality, occasionally substituting Iranya and Sūkṣma for their synonyms Kañcana and Śūnya. The scribe mentions in two colophons, dated early November 1731 (Ādigama etc., Or. 3852) and 30 September 1734 (Nītiprāya, Or. 5066), that he was working ‘during the reign of Yaśa Śarantik’ (possibly identifiable with Nengah Jalantik), who was at war with forces from Singharsa (a.k.a. Sidemen) and from Ratnarasa (possibly Klungkung).18
Further details about the tense political situation throughout the 1730s are revealed in the colophons attached to the famous manuscript NB 9 in the National Library of Indonesia in Jakarta. A memorandum attached to the first text in the bundle, the fifteenth-century poem Śivarātrikalpa, recounts Karangasem’s expansion to the north and to the east:19
Ketut Anggahan’s fort was pressed; he disappeared to Pondong hill at Bangle,20 under attack from Karangasem, in whom his enemies had taken refuge […] in early 1738. Nengah Jalantik was at Bebandem; Pamayasan served as his general. Eventually Ketut Anggahan was attacked by Nengah Gianyar on 9 April 1738 […] Kyayi Alit of Padang Aji [in] Sidemen, attacked Sibetan [which was] in alliance with Nengah Jalantik, under the protection of the priest Pinatih, on 26 October 1738.21
Karangasem’s battle against Ketut Anggahan aimed to secure its northeastern frontier. The battle over Sibetan was strategically crucial, as it determined Karangasem’s access to the villages along the road to Klungkung and to the state temple at Besakih. Two other colophons by Artha Pamasah in the NB 9 bundle, dated 22 November 1738 (Kuñjarakarṇa Dharmakathana) and 20 October 1740 (Deśavarṇana), mention that they were copied while his village ‘was held by enemies’ (tinanggung ripu) whose identity is not stated. The result of this strenuous warfare was that Karangasem gained full control of the villages up to the river Unda by the late 1740s, including the cultural centre of Sidemen. It was probably at this time that significant manuscripts of Sidemen origin entered the possession of members of the Karangasem dynasty, who would shortly transport them across the sea to Lombok. Karangasem’s supremacy in east Bali culminated in taking direct control of the Besakih temple complex, which was a ritual centre for the whole of Bali, sometime before 1769 (Hägerdal 2016:283).
The dynasty’s next major victory was against the kingdom of Buleleng, which controlled the north coast of Bali. A colophon in a copy of the poem Wangbang Wideya (Or. 3715) describes how:
This kidung poem was finished being copied on 27 November 1765. The time when Sangsit was defeated, and Buleleng, up to Sangket and Patemon, by Karangasem. After just ten years, Sangsit was subjugated by Karangasem. Then the pavilions of Nyoman Abyan were burned down, as well as the houses of Gusti Ketut Padang, Gusti Wayan Alas, Gusti Nyoman Bangli, Gusti Wayan Blayu, and Segara Gunung. All of them were burned down, including the houses of the commoners, 48 households in total. The time of that fire was 18 September 1765.22
A gold-leaf letter sent in 1768 to the VOC governor of Semarang (Kats 1929; Gallop and Arps 1991:104), now held in the British Library as Egerton 765, confirms that north Bali was ‘ruled by the Lord of Karangasem’ (wewengkon dane ngurah Karangasem). According to the dynastic history Babad Buleleng, Karangasem was able to intervene because they had been invited by one side of an internal conflict within the incumbent Panji dynasty. The victory of the Karangasem-backed faction allowed its representative, a certain Gusti Nyoman Karangasem, to become chief minister and eventually to usurp the Buleleng throne (Worsley 1972:178–83).
4 Balinese Colonies in Lombok (1691–1839)
The Balinese had already begun to make inroads in Lombok during the Gelgel period. Dutch sources mention that in 1603 the Balinese king claimed suzerainty over at least the western part of Lombok (De Graaf 1941:357). A large military campaign was undertaken in 1645, when a Balinese minister from the powerful Agung clan defeated the east Lombok capital of Selaparang.23 Another Balinese attack against east Lombok was carried out in 1677–1678, apparently to wrest control from its Sumbawan overlords (De Graaf 1941:369–70). These mid-century attacks do not appear to have resulted in any lasting Balinese settlement. It was only with an invasion beginning in 1691 that the Balinese established a permanent foothold in west Lombok, which would eventually turn into domination of the whole island (Hägerdal 2001:63–74). The paramount ruler of the dynasty at this time was Anglurah Nengah Karangasem, and the leader of the Lombok campaign is reported to have been his younger brother Anglurah Ketut Karangasem.24 Although later Balinese accounts highlight the commanding role of the Karangasem dynasty, the expedition is more likely to have consisted of many small bands of warriors led by village-level chiefs (Hägerdal 2001:66–8).
During the first half of the eighteenth century, various members of the Karangasem dynasty established permanent residences in the western part of Lombok. The kinship relations of these founders are hard to determine, as the Balinese dynastic histories contradict each other and disagree with later oral traditions.25 Many of the new residences were named after medieval Javanese palaces like Kahuripan, Singhasari, Pagutan, Kadiri, and Mataram, which reflects the enduring prestige of the Old Javanese literature that Balinese people considered to be their cultural patrimony. The Karangasem dynasts saw themselves as recreating in Lombok the glorious cultural landscape described in the manuscripts they had brought from home (Vickers 2005:281–3). This project involved imposing lasting domination over the Sasaks of east Lombok and their Sumbawan allies, which was noted by the VOC between 1740 and 1775 (Hägerdal 2016:288–95).
Karangasem rule in Lombok was far from unified. Instead, different branches of the family who had settled on the island formed competing factions. Making war on one’s relatives was a shrewd way of boosting prestige within the dynamic social pyramid that was the Karangasem dynasty. An early hint of internal conflict appears in a colophon from Kadiri dated 1 August 1759 (a divination manual, Or. 5055), which was written ‘at the time when Gusti Wayahan Karangasem made war on Gusti Nyoman Rai; [they were] reconciled by Gusti Ngurah Made Karangasem’.26 Ultimate authority for resolving this family dispute remained with the heads of the dynasty in Bali: a triumvirate of brothers, represented in the colophon by the eldest, Gusti Ngurah Made Karangasem (d. Pasaren Anyar).
A prominent figure of this period was Gusti Wayahan Tegeh, a Karangasem prince (possibly of partly Sasak descent) who kept up a lively correspondence with the VOC. His career saw him expand his power from the western port town of Tanjung Karang to the old Sasak capital of Selaparang in the far east. Tegeh’s relationship to his putative overlords in Bali was ambiguous: at times he appeared to be extending Balinese power in Lombok on their behalf, but at other times, he acted with a similar degree of autonomy to the old Sasak kings whom the Balinese had defeated (Hägerdal 2016:294). Dutch historiography has imagined Tegeh as the central player in Lombok during this period (see, for instance, Bijvanck 1894), but Balinese sources tend to depict him as one among several members of the extended Karangasem family who were competing for advantage in Lombok.
The transfer of Bali’s literary heritage across the Lombok Strait began in the middle of the eighteenth century, after the Karangasem dynasty had consolidated its authority on Lombok. There is a marked change in the colophons of the Lombok Collection manuscripts at this time: beforehand, the colophons exclusively mention locations in Bali; afterwards, they become replete with Lombok toponyms. The earliest dated instance of copying in Lombok occurred in the town of Pagesengan on 18 June 1753 (Ślokāntara, Or. 5047). The Balinese in Lombok maintained an enduring historical connection by making new copies of old manuscripts that had been transported from Bali. The copying of lengthy texts required a substantial commitment of time and effort. The two manuscripts attributed to Nirartha that were discussed above, namely the Bhomāntaka (Or. 5036) and the Sumanasāntaka (Or. 5015), were copied once again in Lombok by a woman calling herself ‘Grandmother Lotus’.27 These long poems took her over eight months to copy: the Bhomāntaka from 9 September 1799 to 22 January 1800, and the Sumanasāntaka from 1 October 1800 to 28 January 1801.
Scribal toil sometimes happened on a professional basis. A manuscript containing several texts, including the Ātmapraśaṁśā and the Indraloka (Or. 5100), gives an account of how it was commissioned:
This is the Ātmapraśaṁśā. It started being copied on 14 March 1814. It was finished being copied on 6 May 1814. The reason that the property of Gusti Istri Pagesangan was copied was that it was requested by Pan Dwirada Butak (‘Father Bald Elephant’). A message was left with Ida Bagus Karang. Then Pan Dwirada Butak sought the assistance of De Badeng, who successfully delivered the request of Pan Dwirada Butak to master Sayuddha, who transcribed the Ātmapraśaṁśā. His service fee was 2,000 copper coins.28
The Balinese in Lombok also treated palm-leaf manuscripts as trophies. After defeating an enemy, the victor claimed ownership not just of land, treasure, and dependents, but also of the heirloom manuscripts that carried with them spiritual power. The Ādiparva manuscript discussed earlier (Or. 5046), which was previously copied in 1668 at the beginning of Karangasem’s rise in Bali, had subsequently been inherited by the dynasty’s descendants in Lombok. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, this manuscript was seized after its owner was killed in a shoot-out by the Jangkok river in west Lombok, during yet another internal Karangasem conflict. The winner of this battle triumphantly added a new colophon to the book, boasting about how he had obtained it:
This is the Ādiparva. It now belongs to Ngurah Made Karangasem, but it used to belong to Nengah Padang Celeng Les. Nengah Padang and his relatives supported Nyoman Rai in his rebellion and made war on Ngurah Made Karangasem.29
There follows a description of the war between Gusti Ngurah Made Karangasem (d. Loji)30 and Nyoman Rai (d. Kadiri), which involved a two-stage struggle. In April 1804, Nyoman Rai and his allies were first driven out of Kadiri. Then, in November 1804, the rebels clashed again with Gusti Ngurah Made Karangasem’s forces and were finally eliminated. This war ended with the defeat of one faction of the Balinese dynasty on Lombok, based at Kadiri and led by Gusti Nyoman Rai, by their more powerful relatives at Singhasari, led by Gusti Ngurah Made Karangasem.31 The colophon first lists the names of the enemies, explaining that the previous owner of the book (Nengah Padang) was a relative of the rebellion’s leader Nyoman Rai:
Kadiri was defeated and crushed on 23 April 1804. Nyoman Rai and his relatives, who were called Nengah Paguyangan Guwe, Nengah Padang Celeng Les, Gede Kadiri, Kuwa Kekeb Dengeng, as well as the children of Gede Kadiri, called Cuweg, Wayahan Kale Budagag, Ketut Mas Tombong—they all disappeared from Kadiri.32
The colophon then describes the return of Gusti Nyoman Rai’s faction to Kadiri in November, where they were ultimately defeated by the river Jangkok. It lists the casualties on both sides:
They came again on 23 November 1804. Gede Kadiri was encountered by the side of the river Jangkuk and was stabbed by Ketut Jalantik. This Ketut Jalantik, son of the widow, sired by Śrī Rāma, was stabbed by the dagger of Pencok. Cupeg33 was stabbed by Pan Ginawang. Ketut Mas was matched by the side of the river Jangkuk. Nengah Padang was encountered by the river Jangkuk; he was matched, pelted, and shot at. Nengah Padang drowned in the river. They all died on that day.34
Manuscripts entered the Lombok Collection not only as loot, but also as gifts. A short text about the character and classification of rubies (Or. 5244), consisting of Sanskrit verses and Javanese glosses of them, was presented as a gift from the king of Klungkung (Dewa Agung Putra) and a high priest in Bali (Made Kekeran), on the occasion of major funerary rites in Lombok. The colophon offers a detailed chronology of the manuscript’s production, thereby shedding light on the process of sourcing, transporting, and consulting the text:
This is the Glosses on Rubies, in two parts. One part was a gift of the priest (padanda) Made Kekeran, another part was a gift of His Majesty (cokorda) Dewa Agung [Putra]. They were combined and turned into one whole. The gift of the priest Made Kekeran arrived at Karangasem during funerary rites at Karangasem in the Sasak land, on 31 October 1797. The gift of His Majesty Dewa Agung was in two parts: one part was verses (śloka) and the other part was glosses (padārtha). The verses are said to have been copied from a manuscript from Badung, while the glosses are said to have been copied from a manuscript from Mengwi. They came to Karangasem [a.k.a. Singhasari] in the Sasak land, carried by Sang Nyoman, on 23 December 1797. They were turned into a whole during the funerary rites at Pagutan, on 28 June 1798. After they had been turned into a whole, Made Banjar consulted the text (nuun pada), on 16 July 1798.35
The gifting of this valuable manuscript by two of the most prestigious figures in Bali indicates the very high status that the Karangasem dynasty in Lombok enjoyed. The donation by Dewa Agung Putra, the king of Klungkung, may reflect his ongoing connection to the Karangasem dynasty, whose leaders had helped him to contest the Klungkung throne and provided him with a powerful wife in the person of Gusti Ayu Karang (Vickers 2012:98).
5 The Maharajas of Mataram (1839–1894)
As a result of the internecine conflict throughout the early nineteenth century, two Balinese palaces eventually absorbed their smaller competitors to become the dominant powers in west Lombok: Singhasari and Mataram. This cannibalization resulted in many of the Lombok Collection manuscripts coming into the possession of these two branches of the Karangasem dynasty, such as the Ādiparva (Or. 5046) looted by the Singhasari leader when Kadiri was defeated. The competition between Singhasari and Mataram erupted into war from 1837 to 1839, which is well documented in Balinese sources and in the records of the European commercial agents who became embroiled in it: George King, John Burd, and Mads Lange.
The outcome was a decisive victory for the Mataram line, which established control over all the Karangasem dynasty settlements in west Lombok. Since the death of his father in 1838 during the war against Singhasari, the throne of Mataram belonged to Agung Ketut Karangasem (d. Mataram). He was ably assisted by his younger brother Agung Gede Karangasem (d. Batavia), who conducted much business with the Dutch and was seen by them as next in line to the throne (Liefrinck 1915:197, n. 1). The two brothers ruled as a duumvirate with a great many edicts and letters signed in both their names (for example, Or. 5305). The rising prominence of the two Mataram kings set them against their dynastic relatives in Bali, who were caught between the increasingly aggressive Netherlands East Indies and the highland kingdom of Bangli in central Bali. By this time, rival factions of the Karangasem dynasty ruled three kingdoms: Karangasem proper and Buleleng, which respectively controlled the east and north coasts of Bali, versus Mataram in Lombok (Gde Agung 1991:41–53; Van der Kraan 1995:12–7).
These tensions exploded into a major war in the 1840s. The first phase seems to have been an inland conflict on Bali, in which Bangli was encircled by its enemies to the north and east. A memorandum attached to the Smaravijaya (Or. 5017) describes how Karangasem and Buleleng conducted a joint invasion of the interior:36
[The copying was completed around 1843] when the villages of Bangli country were defeated: Bangbang, Tampuagan, Pulesari, Banjar Sidem, Metra, Karang Suung, Payuk, Pantunan, up to Undisan, Umbalan, Yangapi, Landih—all those were defeated by the Karangasem troops. Moreover, those who were defeated by the troops from north of the mountains (that is, from Buleleng), like a host of blazing stars (or, like the constellation Sagittarius), perfect in their greatness. The foremost villages overrun by the people north of the mountains: Abang, Trunyan, Kedisan, Pinggan, Buwahan, Batur, Songan, Kintamani; to the north: Bantang, Dausa, Sukawana; all the villages up to Kambayung, Sekardadi—all were completely overwhelmed by the troops from north of the mountains.37
At the same time, the Dutch took issue with the kingdom of Buleleng over its policy of confiscating wrecked cargo (tawan karang). With the tacit support of their allies in Mataram, with whom they had signed a treaty in 1843, the Dutch waged a gruelling war against Buleleng from 1846 to 1849, which swept up most of the other Balinese kingdoms. In its aftermath, the Mataram king became the overlord of Karangasem territories in east Bali, while the Dutch took over Buleleng (Van der Kraan 1995:174–7). The commanding centre of the Karangasem realm was now located in Lombok, while the Bali branches of the family were demoted to vassalage.
During the period of Mataram’s hegemony, manuscript culture in Lombok developed rapidly. Several manuscripts produced in the second half of the nineteenth century mention the individuals who owned them. These owners belonged to all social classes: kings, nobles, brahmins, and commoners. The collection of the priest Gede Ketut Kekeran was particularly rich, as shown by a detailed itemization of his legacy in palm-leaf form (Or. 5302):
Memorandum of the palm-leaf volumes (rontal takepan) left behind by the priest Gede Ketut Kekeran: a volume of the Sang Hyang Rwa Bhineda, a volume of the Indravijaya [possibly Or. 5102], a volume of protective charms, an incomplete volume of medicine, a volume of the Kāvya Jānakī [Or. 5082 or Or. 5134], a volume of the Dodaka, a volume of the Krakah [a.k.a. Kārakasaṁgraha, Or. 5075], another volume of the Krakah [Or. 5089], a volume of religious speculation (tutur), yet another volume of the Krakah [Or. 5110], a volume of Śāstra Cemeng, a volume of magic (tenung titi murti), a volume of the Bungbung, a volume of the Śivaśāsana [and] a volume of the Pūrvādigama [probably together in Or. 5098], a volume of the Pamancangah, a volume on dove augury. The total number of palm-leaf volumes given above is seventeen volumes.
There is also a group of palm-leaf manuscripts in boxes (rontal makropak), such as: a box of the Smaradahana, a box of sacred hymns (veda), a box of the Sumanasāntaka, a box of the Bhomāntaka, a box of the four parva, a box of the Brahmāṇḍa[-purāṇa, possibly Or. 5099], a box of the Udyogaparva, a box of the Gita Gemet, a box of divination texts (wariga). Only the ones mentioned above are complete. There are also boxes such as: a box of the Ādiparva, a box of the Bhāratayuddha, a box of the [Arjuna-]vivāha, a box of the Lubdhaka [a.k.a. Śivarātrikalpa]; these ones are roughly scattered (anarik abarasat) and incomplete.38
Many of the books on Gede Ketut Kekeran’s list can still be found in the Lombok Collection today, though only a few extant items explicitly identify him as their owner.39 It is quite likely that many other manuscripts in the collection once belonged to individual owners who cannot be traced in this way. It is impossible to determine whether these personal collections came to belong to a single ‘public’ collection located in a central palace repository, or whether they were stored in separate compounds within the palace grounds. The destruction wrought by the 1894 attack on Cakranagara means that this information is probably lost for good.
Agung Ketut Karangasem died in 1870 and was succeeded by the younger brother who had buttressed his rule for three decades: Agung Gede Karangasem (d. Batavia). The new king organized a grand funeral ceremony for his deceased brother over a seven-month period from September 1877 to March 1878, as recorded in a colophon attached to the Pabratan (Or. 5041). Agung Gede Karangasem enjoyed greater authority than any of his predecessors, thanks to the burgeoning wealth of his kingdom, his ongoing suppression of Sasak resistance, and his deepening international ties with the British (Van der Kraan 1980:7–15). This grandeur is reflected in the titulature he adopted in his edicts and letters after 1877: ‘The Glorious Maharaja, the great hero of Janggala and Amlapura’.40 He was also a bookworm, with several items in the Lombok Collection traceable to his personal library. These include the rare Hindu philosophical work Bhuvanakośa (Or. 5022), and the revered Islamic-Javanese poem Rumaksa ing Wengi (Or. 3191).41 The Bhuvanakośa colophon describes the maharaja’s rebuilding of the Singhasari palace, which had been wrecked in the civil war of the 1830s, and compares his new palace to that of Rāma in the epic poem Rāmāyaṇa:
This palm-leaf manuscript is the property of the Glorious Maharaja, the great hero of Janggala and Amlapura, the one who successfully rebuilt the palace that had been destroyed and overthrown in the past. Its name was changed; it is [now] called Cakranagara, by the favour of the gods. Truly it seems just like the city of Ayodhya, greater than what was lost.42
The maharaja’s love of Old Javanese literature even influenced how he thought about modern politics. A royal edict dated 16 January 1888 (Or. 5296) cites the tenth-century Udyogaparva to describe the danger that the 1843 treaty with the Dutch posed to the unity of the Karangasem dynasty across the strait:
The lands of Sasak and Bali-Karangasem are to be compared to the two birds from the Udyogaparva that have been caught in a single snare with two nooses. The treaty is the snare. While the two birds fly in tandem, as long as Bali-Karangasem and Sasak stick together, the one who has the snare remains below them, following them slowly, his steps patient. He then startles the birds, causing them to fly off in opposite directions. If the lands of Bali-Karangasem and Sasak are estranged from each other, then his trick has succeeded. The birds will fly chaotically; they will pull and tear, pecking and clawing at each other, going for the throat. Then they will fall and end up writhing upon the ground. Of course, they will be caught by the one who has set the snare, whereupon he can pluck them to his heart’s content.43
This warning came despite the fact that it was the maharaja himself who had signed that very treaty 45 years earlier. The old alliance that had once helped Mataram to fly was now threatening to strangle it. As the hawks gained influence within the Netherlands East Indies government from 1891 onwards, a showdown loomed.
The trigger for the maharaja’s downfall was a wide-scale rebellion against his authority in 1891–1892 by Sasak leaders and peasants, starting in the central Lombok district of Praya. An atmosphere of suspicion between Balinese and Sasak aristrocrats caused uprisings throughout the central and eastern parts of Lombok, a region which the Balinese referred to as ‘east of the forest’ (dangin juring). The colophon of the maharaja’s own copy of the Rumaksa ing Wengi (Or. 3191) records that
[I]t was finished being copied at Kuṭa Rāja [a.k.a. Cakranagara], when he was making war against Muslim enemies east of the forest, which had been started by the disobedience of people from Praya, namely Dukuh Bangkol, Śrī Natha, [and] Sipyan on 8 January 1893.44
The Sasaks were kept at bay by superior Balinese tactics, but their plea for help from the Dutch authorities in north Bali caused the Netherlands East Indies government’s strategy to shift towards direct confrontation with the maharaja (Van der Kraan 1980:190–200). Deterioriating relations and failures of diplomacy eventually led to outright war in the second half of 1894, resulting in the final defeat of the Mataram line of the Karangasem dynasty in Lombok. The maharaja, who had dominated the politics of both Lombok and Bali for over half a century, was at last captured by Dutch forces and detained in Batavia, where he died the following year.
6 Conclusion
The story of the 1894 conquest of Lombok by the Dutch has been told many times. What these accounts have so far missed is the history of the Balinese settler society that was defeated in this conquest, as related in that society’s own historical sources. The looting of the maharaja’s palace yielded not only gold and silver but also a treasury of manuscripts that reveal many aspects of the culture and history of the Balinese who dominated Lombok in the nineteenth century. These manuscripts open a window into historical processes going back to the expansion of the Karangasem dynasty from the late seventeenth century, the foundations of early modern Balinese society in the sixteenth century, and the enduring legacy of Old Javanese civilization stretching back over a thousand years.
This article has dealt primarily with the colophons of the Lombok Collection manuscripts that are currently in Leiden, with a focus on those pertaining directly to the fortunes of the Karangasem dynasty. But there are a great many sources still waiting to be investigated. For example, the collection contains many texts of a conventionally archival nature: letters, edicts, legal rulings, invoices, inventories, and all kinds of miscellaneous notes. These sources would provide insights into the everyday life of the Mataram kingdom which existing scholarship, based almost exclusively on European-language sources, has not yet disclosed. Also in need of attention is the part of the collection that now resides in the National Library of Indonesia, having been donated to the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences in the immediate aftermath of the invasion (see Appendix). The contents and colophons of these manuscripts have been little studied, but they may yield significant new data on the history of the Balinese in Lombok.
The Lombok Collection complicates some simplistic notions of cultural heritage and the repatriation agenda. By looking closely at the pre-colonial history of these manuscripts, rather than only considering their post-1894 trajectories, we discover that violence was inherent in the very creation of the collection. Rather than a palladium of national heritage in which all Indonesians have an equal stake, the collection seems more like a testament to the domination of one people (the Balinese) over another people’s land (Lombok). The repatriation in July 2023 of a handful of these manuscripts from Dutch museums makes this problem more urgent, as Indonesian institutions prepare them for public view. These texts contain the cultural memories of many centuries of Indonesian civilization. To gain access to these memories, we need to see the manuscripts as more than trophies to be won and lost, stolen and returned. Instead, we need to learn the scripts and languages in which they are written and get to work studying them. How else can the fraught and fascinating history of the Lombok Collection be told to future generations?
Acknowledgements
I thank Adrian Vickers for inspiring my study of manuscript colophons as historical sources and for sharing his handwritten notes on the manuscript colophons at Leiden University Library and the National Library of Indonesia. I thank Carma Citrawati for her guidance in translating and interpreting difficult expressions in the Balinese texts, Zakariya Pamuji Aminullah for his help in identifying several manuscripts on poetics within the collection and Putu Eka Guna Yasa for his elucidation of Balinese toponyms. This project developed out of a panel at the 11th International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS 11), held in Leiden in 2019, on the theme ‘Unpacking the Asian Library’; I am grateful to Marieke Bloembergen for inviting me to join this panel. The staff of Leiden University Library, particularly Doris Jedamski and Marije Plomp, were instrumental in facilitating access to the hundreds of Lombok Collection manuscripts kept there. The present publication is a result of the project DHARMA (The Domestication of ‘Hindu’ Asceticism and the Religious Making of South and Southeast Asia). This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant agreement no. 809994). Research for this article was further supported by a Scaliger Fellowship at Leiden University and a Visiting Fellowship at the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University.
Appendix
Provisional List of Manuscripts of the Lombok Collection
This appendix offers a guide to the past and current locations of parts of the Lombok Collection that are held by institutions. Some items listed here have an uncertain connection to the 1894 war and may have been collected in Lombok much later than the maharaja’s defeat; such items are indicated by a question mark. The item counts for each sub-collection are only approximate, since in many cases several manuscripts are bundled under a single shelf-mark. For detailed information about individual manuscripts in the list, the reader is directed to the catalogues and inventories of Pigeaud (1967–1970), Behrend (1998) and Witkam (2007–2017). For a list of the items connected to the 1894 war, to varying degrees of certainty, see Appendices A–D of the ‘Colonial Collections Committee Recommendation I-2023–2024 Lombokschat’.45 The online catalogue of the Wereldmuseum indicates every item in the Volkenkunde and Tropenmuseum collections that was repatriated in 2023 with a note stating that its owner is now the Republic of Indonesia.46 The catalogue published in late 2023 for the National Museum of Indonesia’s repatriation exhibition is not a reliable guide, as it includes several items that were not repatriated in 2023 but apparently still remain in the Netherlands.47
Current location |
Collection codes |
Remarks |
---|---|---|
Currently in the Netherlands |
||
Leiden University Library, Leiden, The Netherlands Universiteitsbibliotheek Leiden (UBL) |
Or. 3191 Or. 5012–Or. 5435 (except Or. 5023) Or. 6958 |
423 items. UBL holds by far the largest portion of the Lombok Collection. The group coded Or. 5012 to Or. 5435 was seized by the Netherlands East Indies government and catalogued by Brandes. A handwritten draft of this catalogue in Balinese script is also held by UBL as Or. 8392. The group was transferred by the Netherlands Indies government to UBL in 1906, shortly after Brandes’s death. One |
item within this main group, formerly Or. 5023, was repatriated to Indonesia in 1973 and is now held in Perpusnas as NB 9. The single manuscript Or. 3191 was purchased from a certain Mr Leestonner of Delft, who served as quartermaster-sergeant during the 1894 Lombok war. Or. 6958 is a bundle of palm-leaf fragments said to contain pieces from various manuscripts from the Lombok Collection. All items listed here remain in the Netherlands. |
||
Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Tropenmuseum (TM) |
TM-H-974 TM-2751-1-2 ? TM-75–1a–1b ? TM-737-1-8 ? TM-997–35 ? TM-H-966–967 ? TM-H-972 |
17 items. Of these items, three (TM-2751-1, TM-2751-2 and TM-H-974) were most likely part of the group looted in 1894.48 The other items listed have a less certain connection with the conquest. The items with the code TM-H originally belonged to the Koloniaal Museum (Colonial Museum) in Haarlem, whose collection was merged with other colonial collections to form TM in 1926. These items were included in the repatriation exhibition catalogue published by Museum Nasional Indonesia (MNI) in November 2023, but as of the time of writing, they are not indicated on the Wereldculturen website as being the property of the Republic of Indonesia. Therefore, they appear to still be in the Netherlands. |
Museum of Ethnology, Leiden, The Netherlands Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde (RV) |
? RV-3600–476 |
1 item. This item has an uncertain connection to the 1894 conquest. It was included in the repatriation exhibition catalogue published by MNI in November 2023, but as of the time of writing, it is not indicated on the Wereldculturen website as being the property of the Republic of Indonesia. Therefore, it appears to still be in the Netherlands. |
Currently in Indonesia |
||
National Library of the Republic of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia (Perpusnas) Items formerly held by the Bataviaasch Genootschap (BG), MNI, and UBL. |
L 705–751 NB 9 |
47 items. Several batches of Lombok Collection manuscripts were donated by individuals to the Batavian Society in early 1895. Among the donors were protagonists of the Lombok conquest, such as Resident M.C. Dannenbargh. In 1973, a single manuscript containing several texts (including the politically important Deśavarṇana) was repatriated from UBL (where it had been Or. 5023) to MNI (where it became NB 9). The collection was transferred from MNI to Perpusnas in the 1990s. |
National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia Museum Nasional Indonesia (MNI) Items formerly held by the Museum of Ethnology, Leiden, The Netherlands Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde (RV) |
RV-2364-153-154 RV-1132-4 |
3 items. This group entered RV’s collection at different times in the early twentieth century: RV-1132-4 was donated by Jacob van Gorsel in 1897. RV-2364–153 and RV-2364–154 entered RV’s collection in 1937 and have been on loan to UBL since 1965.49 All items listed here were repatriated to MNI on 10 July 2023. |
National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia Museum Nasional Indonesia (MNI) Items formerly held by the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Tropenmuseum (TM) |
TM-135–2 TM-1137-1 |
2 items. Of these manuscripts previously held in TM’s collection, these two items show strong evidence of having come from the 1894 looting. All items listed here were repatriated to MNI on 10 July 2023. |
See Smith, Ristiawan and Sudarmi (2022:396) on the dominance of the central government’s agenda of national state ownership of repatriated items, in the case of the treasures looted from the Klungkung and Banjarmasin palaces. The same argument applies to the Lombok Treasure.
Articles by Sitompul (2023) and Wirayudha (2023), published in the lead-up to the repatriation of the Lombok Treasure to Indonesia, discuss the Sasak–Balinese conflict in some detail. However, these discussions do not mention the long-term phenomenon of Balinese rule in Lombok, nor its implications for the status of the Lombok Treasure as national heritage that is supposedly shared by all Indonesians today. See Martin Sitompul, ‘Melongok harta karun Lombok’, 8-8-2023, Historia.id: Masa Lampau Selalu Aktual.
The fraught issue of national versus local repatriation has recently been raised in connection with the famous Minto Stone, a tenth-century Javanese inscription currently in the United Kingdom, which is claimed by local communities in East Java on the basis of their historical connection to the stone’s original site (Griffiths, Sastrawan and Bastiawan 2024:145–6).
For the circumstances in which these manuscripts came to be looted, with a particular focus on the role of the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences and its board member, the philologist J.L.A. Brandes, see Vanvugt (1995:38–47) and Sastrawan (2021).
H.H. Juynboll (1907:ix) was one of the first to use the term Lombok-collectie in his 1907 catalogue of manuscripts in the Leiden University Library. This became standard usage among philologists writing in Dutch and English (for instance, Pigeaud 1967–1970, II:9).
Not all Lombok Collection items were necessarily taken from the main royal palace at Cakranagara. A copy of Malat in the National Library of Indonesia (L 715) ‘probably came from one of the lesser palaces of Lombok’ (Vickers 2005:340).
Manuscripts of the Lombok Collection are almost entirely written in Balinese script, which belongs to the Indic family of writing systems. A small handful of manuscripts contain short pieces of Arabic writing, usually in the form of seals or marginal notes, which are not dealt with in this article. I present quotations from these manuscripts in footnotes, using the loose transliteration scheme of the DHARMA Project based on the ISO-15919 standard for the transliteration of Indic scripts (Balogh and Griffiths 2020). In the body text of the article, Balinese personal and place names are presented in Indonesianized spelling (for example, without diacritics), while Sanskrit terms and titles are presented according to the ISO-15919 standard (for example, marking vowel quantity with diacritics). Individual manuscripts are cited by their current shelf-mark, for example, Or. 5036; a full list of manuscripts consulted is given in the References.
yekiṅ Bhomāntaka-khyāti […] sampūrṇeṅ Rājya Mañar i Baḍahulu deniṅ Nirartha praśasta. See the discussion of this colophon in the edition and translation of the Bhomāntaka by Teeuw and Robson (2005:14–5).
iti Sumanasāntaka samāpta, təlas sinurat iṅ nusa Bali, riṅ sīmānāma Kanaka, de saṅ aparab Nirartha, […] i Śaka, 1459, tithi dvadaśī kr̥ṣṇa-pakṣa ring Āṣāḍha-māsa, Vu, Pva, Bu, vāra Vatugunuṅ, irika kahuvusan iṅ pustaka. The Balinese dates found in colophons contain many interlocking calendar elements; for brevity, I have included only the equivalent Gregorian date (proleptic for dates before 1582) in the English translations. Where only a Śaka year is given, I indicate the approximate Common Era equivalent by adding 78 to the year numeral and using the preposition ‘around’; for example, 1500 Śaka would be given as ‘around 1578’. See the discussion of this colophon in the edition and translation of the Sumanasāntaka by Worsley et al. (2013:33).
The chronology of the Gelgel period is contentious, largely due to disagreements among the historical sources (Creese 1991a; Hägerdal 1995a; Creese 1995; Hägerdal 1995b). Creese (1981:35–6) separately argued for a late fifteenth-century date for Nirartha.
yekiṅ Kr̥ṣṇāyaṇa-khyāti carita sinurat sampun iṅ Bali-nusa, ṅkane tamanikaṅ Śarma-subhaga vinuvus puṇya veśmātiśūnya, yoṅgvan saṅ paṇḍita nāma rasika Suranātha mpu Siddhāntapakṣa […] rasa-rasa-varṇa-candra mamijil ri sampun ikaṅ arka mañjiṅ i dalem. On the interpretation of this colophon, see also Soewito Santoso (1986:29–32).
nihan katattvaniṅ sira mpu Liṅganātha, sira saṅ bhujaṅga riṅ Bali, maṅartha sira pinakaśūraniṅ bhujaṅga riṅ Bali, i Śaka, 1490, yan iṅ papatih riṅ Svecchapura pangeran Ler iṅ Variṅin, kaṅ paṅarəp [letters erased] kapiṅ 3 saṅkeṅ Maospahit, babad iṅ ujan byas, dina, Bu, U, Kulantir, Śa, Gara, i Śaka, 1427, saṅ amutər iṅ Bali, Ki Lalah ṅaranira, amutər pva sira Bali, saṅ olih pura Barāja, vəkasan i Śaka, 1466.
iti Ādiparva samāpta, Sabhā tulusanya dlāha, təlasniṅ likhita de Bhāṣa Māṅara ṅkāne Kavisamla riṅ nusa Bali, i Śaka, dvāra-dvija-śara-candra, 1589, Magha-māsa, tithi, Pva, Śu, vāra Dukuh, paṅ 10
Balinese aristocrats tend to use the same limited stock of personal names, which makes for a great deal of ambiguity in the historical record. One tactic used by Balinese chroniclers is to refer to individuals by their unique place of death. I follow this approach here, noting the place of death of a particular Karangasem dynasty member using the format: (d. [place of death]). Thus, the early eighteenth-century king Anglurah Made Karangasem (d. Bulatri) had a son Gusti Ngurah Made Karangasem (d. Pasaren Anyar), a great-grandson Gusti Ngurah Made Karangasem (d. Singhasari), and great-great-grandson Gusti Ngurah Made Karangasem (d. Loji).
i Śaka 1653, Kārttika-māsa riṅ dina Ka, Bu, vāra Vugu, irika divaśaniṅ aṅinum cor, pamastuniṅ cor mariṅ cai Nəṅah Jalaṇṭik, mivah cai Abyan, mivah cai Tanah təkaniṅ sasanake mivah sakadaṅe, manava sira tan tuhu pangavulane mariṅ isun, yan isun sakiṅ apatut, kenaa sira sing saupadravaniṅ cor, mvah yan sira agave karusakan isun mivah arin isun adi Kətut Aguṅ, mivah anak isun I Barak Pambayun, mivah I Barak Maḍe, […] kenaa sira riṅ saupadravaniṅ cor, dina cor, Bu, Ka, vāra Vugu, śa, 4, rah, 3, təṅ 5.
I identify the Gusti Made Mantu mentioned in the 1731 VOC letter as Nengah Jalantik, rather than as Wayan Abyan (pace Vickers 2014:20–2). According to the Babad Arya Karangasem (HKS 1753), Nengah Jalantik was a double brother-in-law to the king Anglurah Made Karangasem (d. Bulatri), as they had married each other’s sisters. This relationship explains the remark in the VOC letter that Gusti Made Mantu was the uncle of the three brothers ruling Karangasem in 1731. His birth-order name Made is equivalent to Nengah (‘middle-born’), which further rules out an identification with Wayan (‘eldest-born’) Abyan. The village records of the Mantri hamlet in Sibetan (Awig-Awig Banjar Mantri, HKS 5257) confirm that Nengah Jalantik was the local lord of Sibetan during the 1730s.
This figure is sometimes incorrectly referred to by scholars as ‘Nirartha Pamasah’. This error was made due to an ambiguity found in many of his colophons, where the phrase ‘by Artha Pamasah’ is written denirārtha pamasah or təkapnirārtha pamasah, with the final syllable of the possessive suffix ‑nira becoming fused with the first syllable of his name due to sandhi rules. Other colophons signed by him use the alternative suffixes ‑ra or ‑nipun, resulting in the unambiguous formulations derārtha Pamasah (Or. 5066) and təkapnipun Artha Pamasah (HKS 5250). This proves that ‘Artha’ and not ‘Nirartha’ is the correct spelling of the first element in his name.
ri sapaṇḍirinira Yaśa Śarantik saṅ ginaveṅ yuddha ri Ratnarasa (Or. 3852); sang i kiniteran i śatru, sakeṅ Siṅārḍa [corr. Siṅhārṣa] mvaṅ sakeṅ Rāsmarasa [corr. Ratnarasa] (Or. 5066).
These commemorations are given in the critical edition of the Śivarātrikalpa (Teeuw et al. 1969:156–7) and are discussed at further length by Vickers (1990:175–6).
Not to be confused with Bangli regency in central Bali, the highland village of Bangle is located at the far eastern end of Bali, on the northern slopes of Mount Lempuyangan.
Ketut Anggahan kadəsə[k] kuṭa ilaṅ bukit Pondoṅ riṅ Baṅle, kadəmak sakeṅ Karangasəm, makaśraya dene ṅ śatru […] i Śaka mārga-pustaka-rasa-tuṅgal, 1659, avəkasan Kətut Aṅgahan kadəmak antuk ida Nəṅah Gyañar, riṅ dina Bu, U, Kulantir, i Śaka śūnya-rasa-bhramara-puruṣa, 1660, Vaiśākha-māsa […] Kyayi Alit Paḍaṅ Āji Sidəmən, tumindak mariṅ Sibətan piṇḍaniṅ asisihan riṅ Nəṅah Jalaṇṭik, makaśraya ṅ saṅ dvija Pinatih, Ra, U, Vukir, śa, 4, babad, vindu-rasa-gaṇa-tuṅgal, 1660.
duk iṅ putus iṅ anurat kiduṅ iki, riṅ dina,, Bu, Ka, Gumbrəg,, riṅ kr̥ṣṇa-pakṣəṅ piṅ solas, tithi Kārttika,, rah, 8, təṅgək, 7,, tuuh bumi lavase, vau,, 1687,, riṅ Vr̥haspati Manis, duk iṅ Saṅsite kavon, mvah Buleleṅ, təkaniṅ Saṅket, mvah Patəmon, antuk i Karangasəm,, vau adasa təmwang sor Saṅsite sakiṅ Karangasəm, lantas balen de Ñoman Abyane puun, mvah jəron Gusti Kətut Paḍange, Gusti Vayahan Alas, Gusti Ñoman Baṅli, Gusti Vayahan Blahyu, mvah i Sagara Gunuṅ, samine puun, təkaniṅ umah vvaṅ jabane, kehnyane, sekət dadua kurənañane, duk puun punika, riṅ dina, Bu, Ka, vāra,Vugu,, tithi, taṅgal,, 3,, śaśih, ka, 4,, rah, 7, təṅgək, 8. The order of events in this memorandum is rather difficult to unravel. My translation and interpretation differ in several respects to those of Vickers (1990:170–1). The colophon is transcribed in the edition and translation of Wangbang Wideya by Robson (1971:53–4).
The expedition is mentioned in a colophon of the Ātmapraśaṁśā (Or. 4079), probably dated to 27 July 1645, as well as in a later chronicle, where it is linked to a lunar eclipse on 7 August 1645. A Dutch letter to the king of Bali dated 18 January 1646 confirms that the defeat of Selaparang had occurred several months earlier (Hägerdal 2006:139).
This claim comes from the official Karangasem family history, compiled at the end of the nineteenth century. The older chronicle text Babad Gumi credits a certain ‘Made Karangasem’ as the victor, which probably refers to Anglurah Nengah Karangasem as the overall leader of the dynasty. Histories from Lombok instead identify the invader as his son, Gusti Ngurah Made Karangasem Śakti (d. Bulatri) (Hägerdal 2006:39–40).
For useful reconstructions of the Karangasem family tree, see Ketut Agung (1991:64, 102, 125, 265), Hägerdal (2001:114), and Vickers (2014:24–7).
sədək taṅtin I Gusti Vayahan Karaṅasəm maməsaha Gusti Ñoman Rai, kahajəṅan antuk I Gusti Ṅurah Maḍe Karaṅasəm.
This name appears in the synonymous forms Ra Nini Pangkajawati (Or. 5015) and Ra Nini Kumudawati (Or. 5036); see Teeuw and Robson (2005:14–5); Worsley et al. (2013:30–1, 524).
iti Ātmāprasaṁśā, anəmbenin linikhita, ulih iṅ Mpu Sayuddha, riṅ dina, Vu, Pva, Śu, vāra Kurantil, Phālguna-māsa, tithi, sukla-pakṣa riṅ trayodaśī, nāma rūpa pratitakəm [corr. pratītya ṅkāna], rah, 5, təṅgək, 3, i Śakala, 1735, […] pūrṇa linikhita riṅ dina, Ma, U, Śu, vāra Laṅkir Jyaiṣṭha-māsa, tithi, dvitīya kr̥ṣṇa-pakṣa, sadaya tanā pratītya ṅkāna, rah, 6, təṅgək, 3, i Śakala 1736 […] lantare katurun drəven I Gusti Istrī Pagəsaṅan, kapamitaṅ antuk Pan Dviraddhā Butak manurun rontal iki, kavəkasaṅ riṅ Ida Bagus Karaṅ, Pan Dviraddhā Butak, raris minta śraya riṅ De Badəṅ, kəni De Badəṅ aṅrauhaṅ paṅiḍihane Pan Dviraddhā Butak riṅ Mpu Sayuddha, mañurat manurun rontal Ātmāprasaṁśā iki, jinah dakṣiṇanya, guṅ, 2000 (f. 38v).
iti Ādiparva, maṅke drəvenya Ṅurah Maḍe Karaṅasəm, pəcak drəve Nəṅah Paḍaṅ Celeṅ Ləs, Nəṅah Paḍaṅ saha ñama, mañarəṅin Ñoman Rai mabalik maśatru ri Ṅurah Maḍe Karaṅasəm.
The identification of this figure is not completely certain, as the title Gusti Ngurah Made Karangasem was passed down from father to son for several generations of the Singhasari line of the dynasty. The timing of this event makes the one who died at Loji in 1835 the most likely candidate, though it may instead refer to his father, the one who died at Singhasari (Vickers 2014:24–6).
A more detailed account of this war is given in the Balinese poem Regreg Kadiri (The fall of Kadiri, HKS 2266). The poem’s opening stanza states that its composition began on a Balinese date equivalent to 2 January 1805, only a few weeks after this final battle.
sakavon Kaḍirine kagəbug, riṅ dina, Tuṅle, Umanis, Candra, vāra Vatugunuṅ, Ñoman Rai saha ñama, ne mapaṅkusan, Nəṅah Paguyaṅan Guve, Nəṅah Paḍaṅ Celeṅ Ləs, Gəḍe Kaḍiri Kuva Kəkəb Dəṅeṅ, mvah panak Gəḍe Kaḍiri mavasta I Cuveg, Vayahan Kale Budagag, Kətut Mas Tomboṅ, paḍa hilaṅ sakiṅ Kaḍiri.
This person’s name is spelled ‘Cuweg’ in one part of the colophon and ‘Cupeg’ in another. The Balinese characters for ‘w’ and ‘p’ are very similar, suggesting that the discrepancy is due to a scribal error. It is not possible at this stage to determine which spelling is more likely to be correct.
malih rauh, riṅ dina, Vā, Ka, Śu, vara Vatugunuṅ Mārgaśīrṣa-māsa, tithi ṣaṣṭhī, kr̥ṣṇa-pakṣa, rah, 6, təṅgək, 2, i Śaka, 1726, Gəḍe Kaḍiri, kapaṅgih ri təpin tukad yeh Jaṅkuk, tinuvək antuk saṅ Kətut Jalaṇṭik, ika saṅ Kətut Jalaṇṭik putran byaṅa, kapupuputra antuk saṅ Śrī Rāma, tinuvək deniṅ khaḍga si Pəñcok, saṅ I Cupəg katuvək antuk Pan Ginavaṅ, Kətut Mas kakəmbarin di təpin tukad yeh Jaṅkuk, Nəṅah Paḍaṅ kapaṅgih di yeh Jaṅkuk, kakəmbarin kasabatin kabədilin, kanug I Nəṅah Paḍaṅ ñiləm di tukade paḍa mati riṅ dina ika
Padārthan Mirah iki, kalih soroh, paican Paḍaṇḍa Gəḍe Maḍe Kəkəran asoroh, paican Cokorda I Deva Aguṅ asoroh, kasareṅaṅ kadadosaṅ asoroh, paican paḍaṇḍa Gəḍe Maḍe Kəkərane, rauh ka Karaṅasəm, davəg paṅasthivedana riṅ Karaṅasəm bhūmi Sasak, riṅ dina, Ma, U, A, vāra Vuye, Mārgaśīrṣa-māsa, tithi ekadaśī, śukla-pakṣa, rah 9, təṅgək 1, i Śaka 1719, paican Cokorda I Deva Aguṅe kalih soroh: śloka asoroh, padārtha asoroh,, śloka ika kocap katəḍunan rontal sakeṅ Baḍuṅ, padārtha ika kocap katəḍun rontal sakeṅ Maṅvi, rauh ka Karaṅasəm bhūmi Sasak, kabakta antuk Saṅ Ñoman, riṅ dina, Vā, Va, Śa, vāra Dukut, Māgha-māsa, tithi, pañcamī, śukla-pakṣa, rah 9, təṅgək 1, i Śaka, 1719; davəg andodosaṅ asoroh, davəg paṅasthivedana, riṅ Pagutan, riṅ dina, Ma, U, Vr̥, vāra Vugu, tithi pañcadaśī, śukla-pakṣa, rah 0, təṅgək 2, i Śaka, 1720,, davəg amuputaṅ ndadosaṅ asoroh, davəg Maḍe Bañjar nuun pada, riṅ dina Ma, Va, Ca, vāra Dukut, Bhadrapāda-māsa, tithi tritīya, śukla-pakṣa, rah, 0, təṅgək, 2, i Śaka, 1720.
The same attack is also described in a memorandum attached to a copy of the poem Malat (Vickers 1990:172–4).
duk avəs pradeśa-deśi bhūmi Baṅli: Ñaṅgəlan, Baṅbaṅ, Tampvagan, Pulasāri, Bañjar Sidəm, Metra, Karaṅ Suuṅ, Payuk, Pantunan, təkeṅ Undisan, Umbalan, Yaṅapi, Landih, saika lvire kavəs dene vado Karaṅasəm, malih kaṅ kavəs dene vado ler gunuṅ, lvire sasoroh bintaṅ Ḍanuh, təlas siddhaniṅ paṅhotan, kalindih olih voṅ ler gunuṅ, adiniṅ deśa, kaṅ kavəsan, Abaṅ, Trunyan, Kəḍisan, Piṅgin, Buvahan, adinya Batur, Soṅan, Cintamaṇi, paṅalornya, Bantaṅ, Dauṣa, Sukavana, akeh lvir iṅ deśa, təke Kambayuṅ, Səkardadi, sama təlas kerup deniṅ vado ler gunuṅ.
paṅeliṅ-eliṅ, rontal takəpan tatiṅgalan pədaṇḍa Gəḍe Kətut Kəkəran, takəpan Saṅ Hyaṅ Rva Bhineda atakəp, takəpan Indravijaya atakəp, takəpan paṅaliṅ atakəp, takəpan usada atakəp duruṅ puput, takəpan Kavyajanaki atakəp, takəpan Dodaka atakəp, takəpan Krakah atakəp, malih takəpan Krakah atakəp, tutur atakəp, malih takəpan Krakah atakəp, takəpan Śāstra Cəməṅ atakəp, takəpan tənuṅ titi murti atakəp, malih Buṅbuṅ atakəp, takəpan Śivaśāsana atakəp, takəpan Pūrvādigamaśāsanaśāstrasaroddhr̥ta atakəp, Pamañcaṅah atakəp, carcan kitiran atakəp, piguṅ keh rontal takəpane muṅgviṅ arəp, pitulas atakəp, malih soroh rontal makropak, lviripun, Smaradahana akropak, kropak veda akropak, kropak Sumanasāntaka akropak, kropak Bhoma akropak, kropak catur-parva akropak, kropak Brahmāṇḍa, akropak, kropak Udyogaparva akropak, kropak Gita Gəmət akropak, kropak variga akropak, vau asapuniki kəni matuptup, sayavini kocap riṅ arəp, ventən malih kropak, lviripun, kropak Ādiparva akropak, kropak Bhāratayuddha akropak, kropak Vivāha akropak, kropak Lubdaka akropak, punikānarik abarasat duruṅ kəni matuptup.
An example of a manuscript bearing Gede Ketut Kekeran’s name in its colophon is Or. 5056, which cannot be easily identified with any of the titles given in this list.
Śrī Mahārāja Ādivīryajaṅgalāmlapura, which is found in the colophons of the Ādipurāṇa (Or. 5019) and the Bhuvanakośa (Or. 5022). See also the edicts in Liefrinck (1915, I:20).
A manuscript of the Prayoganira Sang Sadaka (Or. 5204) states that it was copied on 5 September 1841 and was owned by a certain ‘Gede Karangasem’. If this refers to one and the same Agung Gede Karangasem, then the king’s habit of book-collecting must have been lifelong.
iti lontar drəvyanira Śrī Mahārājādivīryajaṅgalāmlapura, saṅ prasiddha gumavyakən kaḍaton muvah, ikaṅ vus śīrṇa paravaśa ṅūni, ginantyakən nāma, inaranan riṅ Cakranagara, sakiṅ nugrahanira saṅ hyaṅ, sākṣāt Ayodhyapura kahiḍəpanya, ləvih sakiṅ hilaṅ.
jagat Sasak mivah Bali-Karaṅāsəme, māvug kadi rasaniṅ Udyogaparva, madevek pakṣi kālih siki, sampun masaluk latih tuṅgal, masoṅ mapañjərət kakalih, kontrak punika prasiddha latih, riṅ kari carəm pakəbur pakṣine, ratəp Bali-Karaṅasəme ka Sasak, nu ṅadahipun, nurūt adeṅ-adeṅan, kṣama-bheddha margiaṅipun, antuk ne duveyaṅ latihe, gəbragipun ṅāryanaṅ patuṅkas pakəbur pakṣine, riṅ kahanan macre jagat Bali-Karaṅasəme ka Sasak, mamargi upāyanipun, ñlevanaṅ pakəbur pakṣine, makəḍəṅ-kəḍəṅan, saliṅ gitik maṅlavan timpal, sami cəkukən, labuh māvanan pəh-pəh, jantən dakəpipun antuk ne masaṅ latih, samanahipun mbut-butin.
puput sinurat riṅ Kuṭa Rāja, tatkāla ṅarəp i praṅ, məsəh voṅ Islam daṅin juraṅ [recte juriṅ], kavitin olih voṅ Praya coṅah, mavasta Dukuh Baṅkol, I Śrī Nātha, I Sipyan, duk riṅ dina, Pva, Ra, vāra Juluṅvaṅi, paṅ piṅ 6, śaśih ka 7, rah 4, təṅgək 1, i Śaka 1814.
This report is available in English translation at
This online catalogue is available at
The exhibition catalogue, entitled Repatriasi: Kembalinya saksi bisu peradaban Nusantara, is available at
See Appendix C of the ‘Colonial Collections Committee Recommendation I-2023-4 Lombokschat’.
Quist 2022:2.
References
Manuscript Sources
Shelf-mark |
Title |
Year(s) of copying |
---|---|---|
Leiden University Library (UBL) |
||
Or. 3191 |
Rumaksa ing Wengi |
1893 |
Or. 3715 |
Wangbang Wideya |
1765 |
Or. 3852 |
Ādigama etc. |
1731 |
Or. 4079 |
Ātmapraśaṁsā |
1645 |
Or. 5015 |
Sumanasāntaka |
1537 & 1801 |
Or. 5017 |
Smaravijaya |
around 1843 |
Or. 5019 |
Ādipurāṇa |
1877 |
Or. 5022 |
Bhuvanakośa |
1878 |
Or. 5023 (see NB 9 in Perpusnas collection) |
||
Or. 5036 |
Bhomāntaka |
around 1537 & 1800 |
Or. 5040 |
Kr̥ṣṇāyaṇa |
1544 |
Or. 5041 |
Pabratan |
1877–1886 |
Or. 5046 |
Ādiparva |
1668 & 1804 |
Or. 5047 |
Ślokāntara |
1753 |
Or. 5055 |
Divination manual |
1759 |
Or. 5056 |
Rājapatiguṇḍala, Devaśāsana etc. |
|
Or. 5066 |
Nītiprāya |
1734 |
Or. 5073 |
Dangdang Bang Bungalan |
1668 |
Or. 5075 |
Kārakasaṁgraha |
|
Or. 5082 |
Kr̥tabhāṣa, Kāvya Jānakī |
1741 |
Or. 5089 |
Kārakasaṁgraha |
|
Or. 5098 |
Pūrvādigma, Śivaśāsana etc. |
1853 |
Or. 5099 |
Brahmāṇḍapurāṇa |
|
Or. 5100 |
Ātmapraśaṁsā & Indraloka |
1814 |
Or. 5105 |
Smaradahana |
|
Or. 5110 |
Kārakasaṁgraha |
|
Or. 5134 |
Kr̥tabhāṣa, Kāvya Jānakī |
|
Or. 5204 |
Prayoganira Sang Sādhaka |
1841 |
Or. 5244 |
Ślokapadārthaning Mirah |
around 1797 |
Or. 5266 |
Various law texts including Sundari Terus |
1742 |
Or. 5296 |
Edict from Agung Gede Karangasem |
1888 |
Or. 5302 |
Various notes, including Kekeran book list |
|
Or. 5305 |
Letter from Mataram duumvirate |
1867 |
National Library of Indonesia (Perpusnas) |
||
NB 9 |
Śivarātrikalpa etc. |
1738–1740 |
L 715 |
Malat |
|
Hooykaas Ketut Sangka Collection (HKS) |
||
HKS 1753 |
Babad Arya Karangasem |
|
HKS 2266 |
Regreg Kadiri |
|
HKS 5250 |
Āgama Apitan |
|
HKS 5257 |
Awig-Awig Banjar Mantri |
|
British Library (BL) |
||
Egerton 765 |
Letter from Balinese kings to Semarang |
1768 |
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