Sajarah Cina a Nineteenth-century Apology in Javanese

The sometimes precarious position of the Chinese in Indonesia has a long history. The (most probably) nineteenth-century author, Apdul Mutalip, advocated a more balanced view by pointing out some fundamental contributions the Chinese had made to the welfare of the Javanese; he also demonstrates that their presence in Java has a basis in law. Although seems like a poem in Javanese metre, his Sajarah Cina, written in Javanese, is remarkable not only for its subject matter but also for the way the material is presented, in a rhetoric unknown to exist in Javanese literature by most scholars

The Art of Storytelling in Old Javanese Prose as Illustrated by the Story of Ekalawya

Scholarly attention for Old Javanese literature so far has mainly focused on poetry. The apparently simple nature of narrative prose texts, while making them excellent sources for linguistic and lexicographic research, at the same time denies them any literary value. In this article an impression is given of the art of storytelling in one Old Javanese prose story, taken from the Adiparwa of around A.D. 1000. Quite unexpectedly, a sophisticated tradition unfolds in which a rich variety of devices enables the storyteller to create a meaningful world of words