Holle, Van der Tuuk, and Old Sundanese Epigraphy : the Cikajang and Kawali Inscriptions - article ; n°1 ; vol.77, pg 303-314

J. Noorduyn

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Bulletin de l'Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient - Année 1988 - Volume 77 - Numéro 1 - Pages 303-314
12 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

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• Publié par: BULLETIN_DE_L-ECOLE_FRANCAISE_D-EXTREME-ORIENT
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1988
• Nombre de lectures: 10
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

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J. Noorduyn
Holle, Van der Tuuk, and Old Sundanese Epigraphy : the
Cikajang and Kawali Inscriptions
In: Bulletin de l'Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient. Tome 77, 1988. pp. 303-314.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Noorduyn J. Holle, Van der Tuuk, and Old Sundanese Epigraphy : the Cikajang and Kawali Inscriptions. In: Bulletin de l'Ecole
française d'Extrême-Orient. Tome 77, 1988. pp. 303-314.
doi : 10.3406/befeo.1988.1747
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/befeo_0336-1519_1988_num_77_1_1747VAN DER TUUK, HOLLE,
AND OLD SUNDANESE EPIGRAPHY:
THE CIKAJANG AND KAWALI INSCRIPTIONS
BY
J. NOORDUYN
While in Jakarta to examine the Old Sundanese manuscripts in the palm-leaf
manuscript collection of the central Museum in October 1964, I was informed that a
stone inscription had recently been found in the mountains near Garut, in the
southern part of Priangan, West Java (Indonesia). After making the necessary
arrangements, I went to Bandung for a few days in order to visit the site of the
inscription from there. The express from Jakarta, which takes one right across the
northern mountains in a few hours non-stop to Bandung, was excellent. It was a
brand-new train, placed under close military guard, its only disadvantage being the
extremely low seats, due to the train's origin as part of Japan's World War II
reparation to Indonesia. In Bandung, it fortunately proved possible to borrow a
Landrover plus driver for a one-day trip to the mountains in the company of several
friends, including the archaeologist and architect Suhamir, then already seriously
ill, the champion of Sundanese studies, R. Machdar, and N. Titus, translator of the
Bible into Sundanese. We went first to the village of Kampung Naga, on the banks
of the Citanduy near Tasikmalaya, with its typical taboos, its sacred house (bumi
agung) — formerly the depository of a 17th-century charter (Holle 1877b) — and its
characteristic style of house-building. The village, we were told, had recently been
rebuilt — though not in the old style with the traditional, curved, horn-shaped roof
ridges — after being burnt down by followers of the Darul Islam rebellion. After
returning from Kampung Naga to Garut, we proceeded southwards, climbing all
the way to Cikajang, on the south-western slopes of Mount Cikuray. Arriving there
in the late afternoon, in the middle of a light drizzle, we were shown the stone of the
inscription, lying behind one of the buildings of the Cikajang tea estate, on the
banks of a mountain stream also called Cikuray. It appeared to be a large, flat
stone, about 1 Vi by 1 Vá т., with several incised lines running criss-cross across its
entire surface, and, distinct from these, three lines of what were unquestionably Old
Sundanese characters. We made a quick attempt at reading them before returning
to Bandung.
Back in Jakarta, I reported the existence of this Cikajang inscription to the
Archaeological Service, then in the charge of Mr. Soekmono, and still located in its J. NOORDUYN 304
long-term emergency headquarters in Jalan Kimia. In the years following this the
inscription was mentioned again several times. I myself shall return to it and to the
question as to its content presently.
First, however, another question must be asked. Why had this inscription not
been found and reported much earlier? The circumstance that the stone had only
recently been recovered from the surrounding overgrowth and the inscription
discovered in the process, as we were informed, true as it may be, cannot -be
accepted as an adequate explanation. The question that should arise in that case
would then be: why had not this happened much earlier? For the overgrowth can
hardly have consisted of anything more than some grass and weeds, while the
location of such a stone, close to the buildings of the Cikajang tea estate, can hardly
have remained unknown for such a long time. But then perhaps no interest in
epigraphy can be expected from tea planters?
Nonetheless, talking of tea planters and epigraphy, one is immediately reminded
of the colourful figure of Karel Frederik Holle (1829-1896), a well-known member of
one of several related families of Dutch tea-planters living in West Java in the last
century, who had close connections with the local population, as is vividly
described and illustrated by Rob Nieuwenhuys (1982:12-57). Karel Holle possessed,
as an amateur, an extensive and intimate practical knowledge of the Sundanese
language and culture, including epigraphy, and was recognized in his own time as
an expert in these fields, having acquired his mastery of these and many other
subjects while living as a tea planter in this self-same area, first as a manager on
Cikajang estate (1856-1862), and after that, until 1890, on his own plantation,
located not far from Cikajang on the north-western slopes of Mount Cikuray, above
the village of Ciburuy, and which he had named Waspada, 'clear view'.
Holle had close ties with the local population, and was very interested in their
material welfare and their cultural revival. He was active in these areas in a very
practical way, writing and publishing booklets containing simple agricultural
information under the title 'The Farmer's Friend' (Mitra Noe Táni, from 1874), as
well as models of letter-writing (1861a), stimulating Sundanese authors to write in
the regional language instead of Javanese, and gathering historical information
from old manuscripts (e.g. 1867a, 1869a, 1882b). His interest in the local language
and the traditional outlook is evident from his publications of Sundanese
traditional poetry (1857), proverbs (1861b, 1870), and riddles (1869b), and of
examples of popular beliefs (1869d).
Holle's activities were not restricted to West Java, however. He also did some
extremely practical and useful things in the field of linguistics in other parts of the
archipelago, publishing regional language-maps (1882d, 1887, 1889, 1893, 1894b),
drawing up a standard word-list, which has proved its value and has been known as
the 'Holle list' until the present day (1894; new, revised edition by Esser, 1931; and
the series of vocabularies based on the list, edited by Stokhof, which have been
published since 1980), and compiling a palaeographic handbook (1882a).
Holle also did some original scholarly work in the field of epigraphy. He transcriptions of two collections of Old Javanese charters written on
copper plates (1880, 1882c), and made significant contributions to the study of each
of the admittedly few Old Sundanese inscriptions which have been preserved. Holle
was the first to publish a transcription and tentative translation of the five
Kebantenan copperplate inscriptions (1867b), as well as of the Geger Hanjuang
stone inscription (1877c), and he corrected earlier work by Friederich on the Batu THE CIKAJANG AND KAWALI INSCRIPTIONS 305
Tulis (1869c, 1882a) and the two most important Kawali stone inscriptions (1867a).
He was able to improve on the latter's pioneering, but far from definitive, studies of
1853 and 1855 on these subjects chiefly because of the first-hand knowledge of
Sundanese which he possessed and which Friederich lacked, and because of his
experience with Old Sundanese from reading pre-Muslim manuscripts. In this field,
too, he was a pioneer. He was, in fact, the first to use the term 'Old Sundanese', and
from his unpublished papers, kept in the Jakarta Museum archives, it is evident
that he made an extensive study of such Old Sundanese manuscripts, though he
never achieved any better results beyond the preliminary announcements
containing a few excerpts which he published (1867a, 1882b).
For the re-examination of the Kawali inscriptions he took the trouble of going
himself to Kawali, near Ciamis in the eastern Priangan area, not far from his home,
in order to compare the facsimile of these used by Friederich and reproduced by the
latter in his article, with the original on the stones. For some of the old manuscripts
he did not need to go even as far as that, because they were kept in the villages of
Ciburuy and Cièla, which happened to adjoin the Waspada tea estate where he was
living. The highly important Ciburuy collection of Old Sundanese and Old Javanese
manuscripts was at that time still located in the special sanctuary in that village,
which is still in existence today, though most of the manuscripts are now kept in
the Jakarta Museum. The curious Cièla map of Timbanganten and the remaining
part of western Java, painted on cloth, which was reproduced by Holle (1877a) is
still kept in its special chest in the special house where Holle first found it and had it
copied. A few notes written in the margin of the cloth in the violet ink which Holle
favoured, testify to his former presence in the village and to the attention which the
man who is still remembered by the villagers as Tuan Hola today showed their
precious heirloom.
The details of Holle's career and activities as presented so far raise a problem for
the subject under discussion. In view of Holle's great interest in Sundanese
antiquities in general, and in Old Sundanese epigraphs in particular, and of his
many publi