Part 1

• Thai Panji/Inao Manuscripts: Texts, Paratexts, and Insights into Performance Culture Thaneerat Jatuthasri Chulalongkorn University

  The Javanese Panji tales were introduced to Thailand around the eighteenth century, leading to the composition of two distinct Thai versions: Inao Lek and Inao Yai. These two Inao versions flourished within the royal court both as literature and as court dance-drama (Lakhon Nai) and have become a crucial part of Thai culture since then. While the literary significance of Inao is well-recognised, the extensive collection of extant Inao manuscripts—comprising at least 632 manuscripts kept at the National Library of Thailand—offers a broader field for scholarly investigation. Most of these Inao manuscripts function as performance scripts, featuring diverse dating, textual variations, and rich paratextual elements. By analysing selected manuscripts, this paper examines how textual and paratextual elements, such as song titles, scribal corrections, and comments, offer valuable insights into Thai performance culture and practices. The study argues that these Inao manuscripts are not merely literary artefacts but are essential “living evidence” of the Thai performance culture. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how the Inao manuscripts have played a vital role in preserving, transmitting, and reflecting the development of Thai classical dance-drama.

• Portuguese “letters patent” and indigenous lulik heritage in Timor-Leste Ricardo Roque University of Lisbon

  This paper outlines ongoing research on the past and present significance of old Portuguese-language manuscripts preserved by indigenous lineages across Timor-Leste, from the 1600s until today. The paper will focus especially on a type of old Portuguese-language manuscripts known as carta-patente (letter patent) or simply patente. Typically, cartas-patente were official documents issued by the Portuguese colonial governor on behalf of the King of Portugal, granting Portuguese military, noble, and kingship honours and titles (e.g. Don; colonel; rei) to certain named Timorese traditional authorities. These letters entitled the latter to act as holders of Portuguese sovereignty within the indigenous polities. The Portuguese introduced these letters in the early modern era, as paper tools of a ceremonial style of colonial governance, and they were in common usage until the 1910s. To hand out these letters-patent to indigenous classes was to make the Timorese dependent upon, and subordinate to, the powers of Portuguese administration. However, over time, these manuscripts in Timorese cultures evaded the plans of their original colonial makers. Recognised as lulik (sacred) heritage, they became different agencies. How, by who, and why were/are they used and preserved by Timorese houses; what meanings, what qualities and potencies these manuscripts presumably contain; what entities they are, what they do — what effects their materials, and the practices of care, secrecy, and ritual exhibition that surround these manuscripts are expected to generate are questions I investigate in this paper.

• Three Letters from Palembang, Their Life and Times: Javanese as a Language of State in Eighteenth-Century Sumatra Bernard Arps Leiden University

  Javanese was a language and script of state at the Sultan’s court of Palembang in southern Sumatra until British and Dutch imperialism brought an end to this in 1812–1825. Several classical works of Javanese literature and a lawbook (in verse) survive that were copied in court circles in the late 1700s, royal edicts (piagĕm) inscribed in Javanese characters on metal plates continued to be kept in villages, and three letters – probably acquired by Raffles or one of his officers in the 1810s – were found in a cupboard in London in the 1970s. These letters will be the subject of my presentation. After characterizing their remarkable epistolary style and the way they report politically sensitive situations and exchanges with European magistrates, I focus on the life of these textual artefacts themselves: their writing, stamping, enveloping and sealing, carrying, reading, and keeping. Royal edicts furnish useful comparative material.

• Translating between the lines in Performance: Manuscript Recitation in the Ruwatan Ritual in East Java Agus Iswanto Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional (BRIN), Indonesia/National Research and Innovation Agency, Indonesia

  This paper discusses the use of manuscripts in recitation practices in the ruwatan (exorcism) ritual in Jember, East Java. Moving beyond a text-centered approach, the paper examines how the manuscripts are brought to life, interpreted, and presented to audiences through oral delivery, bodily gestures, and rituals. It pays particular attention to a dynamic process of “translating between the lines” from the original text in Javanese into Madurese during the recitation, delivered to the Madurese Muslim audiences. A key feature of this practice is the line-by-line oral translation of a Javanese verse text: each verse recited in Javanese is immediately rendered into Madurese, allowing the audience to follow and engage with the text in performance. This sequential mode of translation not only facilitates comprehension but also shapes the rhythm and structure of the performance itself.
  The paper highlights the role of performers as cultural and linguistic mediators who provide a translation orally, making it accessible to Madurese-speaking audiences for meaning-making. Through this process, the recited text is not only transmitted but also reinterpreted across linguistic and cultural boundaries. Based on ethnographic observation and textual analysis, the study demonstrates that manuscript recitation and the act of translation serve as an effort to sustain the relevance of the ruwatan ritual across time and space, making the textual heritage useful in contemporary society. In doing so, the study aims to contribute to academic debates on the relationship between manuscripts, translation, performance, and ritual in Southeast Asia.

• Transmitting the Mawlid Recital: Bugis Diaspora, Manuscript Culture, and Ritual Performance in West Sulawesi Hafidz Fadli Monash University

  This research attempts to map the transmission route of the performative Mawlid ritual, portray the Mawlid cultures, and to understand the significance of Mawlid manuscripts for practitioners in Eastern Indonesia. Built on four months of fieldwork in West Sulawesi, this research will employ a social codicology lens to explore 12 digitised mawlid manuscripts in four different libraries: the Library of the Ministry of Religious Affairs in Makassar; the National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia; the Makassar Regional Library: and a private collection in Polewali Mandar. Idham (2017) notes that this manuscript transmission seems to have been brought by the Bugis, an ethnic group originating from South Sulawesi, as attested by vernacular elements (interlinear and parallel translations) and paratextual features (marginalia and colophons) written in the Bugis language. Accordingly, my macro-level question is what this set of Bugis Mawlid manuscripts discloses about the connection between the Mawlid recital culture and the mobility of the Bugis diaspora. I address three subsequent questions: 1) What is the dissemination route of this Mawlid culture that may be constructed as portrayed by these Bugis Mawlid manuscripts? 2) What does this set of Mawlid manuscripts reveal about Mawlid culture in Eastern Indonesia, particularly in West Sulawesi? 3) What is the significance of Mawlid manuscripts for people in the field? Three important notes to highlight: This research is ongoing and is part of my PhD project on the Mawlid al-Barzanji recitation ritual in Indonesia, in which I take the Mandar community as the subject. Likewise, this research is part of a research plan proposed to the Center of Islamic Manuscripts and Written Cultures at Universitas Islam Internasional Indonesia as an affiliated researcher. If my proposal is accepted, I will conduct this research from September to December 2026.

Part 2

• At the Place of the Hills: Manuscripts, Ritual Performance, and Divination in Batak Porbuhitan Tradition Roberta Zollo MVNB

  This paper examines a corpus of Batak divination manuscripts from North Sumatra, known as porbuhitan manuscripts, as a distinct textual tradition within the broader Batak manuscript tradition (pustaha), and explores their role in shaping ritual practice.
  Produced by ritual specialists (datu), these manuscripts are closely associated with divinatory practices and their enactment in ritual contexts, particularly those surrounding buffalo sacrifice and directionology, central components of Batak ritual life.
  Rather than functioning as straightforward ritual manuals, porbuhitan manuscripts preserve the interpretive core of practices enacted through oral and performative contexts. As these practices are no longer widely performed, the manuscripts constitute one of the primary forms of evidence through which they may be approached today. Rather than describing procedures, they organise systems of signs, omens, and interpretive instructions through which ritual action could be performed, enabling the datu to interpret omens, make decisions, and shape ritual performance.
  Particular attention is given to the interplay between written text, visual schemata, and material form. Layout, diagrams, and other graphic features operate as retrieval devices, supporting the memorisation and activation of specialised knowledge in ritual settings. A comparative analysis of ten manuscripts reveals a notable degree of consistency in both textual content and visual organisation, especially in the sections containing the sixteen omen statements, which remain strikingly stable, while other sections allow for greater variation.
  This combination of formal stability and variation suggests that, in Batak porbuhitan tradition, writing did not replace oral and performative transmission but operated alongside it to preserve and authorise ritual knowledge. By foregrounding the role of manuscripts as active participants in ritual practice, this paper contributes to a more grounded understanding of how texts function within Southeast Asian manuscript cultures, particularly in the Sumatran context.

• Manuscripts on manuscripts Kathryn Wellen KITLV

  This paper looks at the use of manuscripts from insular Southeast Asia according to what is written in the manuscripts themselves. While we can only guess as to the way many manuscripts were used historically, some manuscripts provide clues as to how manuscripts were used in the societies that created them. Still others provide detailed descriptions about the circumstances in which manuscripts were used and how they were treated. Javanese manuscripts, for example, frequently describe exchanges of letter between loved ones. More rare is a manuscript from South Sulawesi containing a dialogue among politicians regarding the use of manuscripts in a legal tribunal. Through an examination of these and other cases, this paper sheds new light on the region’s written traditions.

• Plays-within-plays in a Panji tale Mulaika Hijjas SOAS

  Hikayat Cekel Waneng Pati, a Panji talefrom 18th-century Palembang, contains several examples of plays-within-plays, beginning with the opening premise that the entire narrative itself is a performance (lakon/lelakon), staged to entertain the gods. Within the course of the narrative itself there are further scenes featuring dramatic performances, whether sung poetry or shadow puppet plays. There is therefore not only a certain ritual significance—albeit perhaps vestigial, in the case of this text produced in the Sultanate of Palembang—but also an ekphrastic aspect. The plays-within-plays are, in other words, art about art, and as such may help us understand what readers and audiences of the time expected narrative and performance to do. This discussion will draw on earlier studies of Malay literature which posited its psychotherapeutic benefits, how it evoked emotion in order to eventually assuage it, to explore what and how literature, allegedly the most useless of all genres, actually does.

• Manuscripts in Aceh: lives, deaths, and afterlives Aglaia Iankovskaia SOAS

  The paper discusses production, circulation, and social lives of manuscripts in the Indonesian province of Aceh in northern Sumatra. Known for its connections with the Middle East and the Indian Ocean world, Aceh has been a centre of Islamic manuscript production since the early modern period. Texts in Arabic and Jawi scripts were produced and circulated in court and religious environments and lay at the core of Acehnese literary culture and Islamic education. With the advance of print in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century, handwritten books gradually lost their primary functions but retained those of heirlooms, collectibles, and ritual objects. During the Aceh War (1873–1904) many of them fell into the hands of foreign collectors and eventually made their ways to museums and archives abroad. This process continued throughout the colonial period and after Indonesia’s independence, while at the same time manuscripts were preserved and circulated in and between local communities and institutions. Many were lost to the tsunami in 2004, but the natural disaster also boosted international and local interest in Acehnese cultural heritage and facilitated further processes of manuscript circulation and misplacement. In today’s Aceh, old manuscripts can be found in archives, museums, traditional Islamic schools’ libraries, and private collections. The paper will look into the ways these objects are handled, including their preservation, usage, modification, circulation, and disposal. Drawing upon the materials of EAP329 collection digitised by the British Library as well as fieldwork in Aceh, the author will discuss the functions and perceptions of manuscripts in modern Acehnese social and cultural contexts.

Show Paper Abstracts

Abstract

Keywords

• Aceh
• Bugis Diaspora
• Indonesia
• Javanese letter-writing
• Mawlid Ritual
• Palembang
• Panji/Inao
• Paratexts
• Performance Culture
• Social Codicology
• Texts
• Thai Manuscripts
• Vernacular Manuscripts
• West Sulawesi
• colonial history of Indonesia
• language of state
• legal codes
• literacy
• love letters
• manuscript recitation
• manuscripts
• oral translation
• performance
• ritual