The literature of the Javanese is of three different
descriptions : that which has been borrowed
from the Hindus ; that borrowed from the Arabs ;
and that which is native or indigenous. The portion
borrowed from the Arabs is inconsiderable,
and will not demand much consideration.
All other Javanese literature is, like that of every
rude people, metrical ; the plain and simple reason
for which seems to be, that all composition being oral
before it was written, would naturally be poetry, to
assist the memory,—not to say that to amuse the
fancy, and awake the passions, of which poetry is
the natural language, and not to satisfy the reason,
is the main object in such cases with all barbarians.
When the use of letters is first acquired,
oral composition is, from habit, committed to writing
unaltered, while the circumstances of the society
continuing unchanged, and amusement, not
instruction or utility, continuing the chief object
of men, the practice is necessarily persevered in.
To this day, the songs of the Javanese peasants,
who can generally neither read nor write, are in the
same peculiar measures, and on the same subjects,
which we find described in their literary compositions.
From this cause it is that poetry with every
people precedes prose, and that poets attain celebrity
for ages before prose writers are heard of.
Making ample allowance for the generous and
manly genius of European nations pn the one
hand, and for the feebleness, incapacity, and puerility
which has ever characterized those of Asia
on the other, the Javanese are, at this moment, in
the same state of advancement in literature that
the Greeks were in the time of Homer, and the
Caledonians in that of Ossian ; bating the accidental
advantage, in the instance of the former, of an
earlier knowledge of writing, with the use they
have made of it, perhaps in this case, but a dubious
one when it is recollected that the tameness of
writing is substituted for the animated declamation
of oral delivery.
Like many nations who have made some progress
in civilization, the Javanese are found to be
possessed of an ancient and recondite language, in
which are buried some relics of their ancient literature
and religion. This language the Javanese
term Kawi, which, in their acceptation of it,
means refined, as opposed to the ordinary or popular
tongue. The words Kawi and Jowo, or
rather Jawi, from the language of deference, here
adopted for the rhyming termination, always so
agreeable to a rude ear, are correlative terms.
The Kawi, in its simplicity of structure, resembles
the Javanese, but it has a greater variety and
range of consonant and vocalic sounds than the
popular language, is harsher in its prosody than,
what we expect in the genius of the soft tongues
of the Indian islanders, and seems, in shojrt, to
VOL. II. b