Translational Diversity in Javanese Jarwa Manuscripts

The article examines 18th- and 19th-century Javanese manuscripts belonging to a literary category known as jarwa, in which Old Javanese kakawin are rendered into Modern Javanese. It focuses in particular on a small but significant corpus of bilingual manuscripts in which source text and translation are preserved together in a single codex. Combining codicological and textual analysis, the first part surveys the visual and scribal features of these manuscripts and proposes a typology of four structures that map different ways of segmenting the source text and positioning the rendering in relation to it. These structures reveal a striking range within the jarwa tradition. The manuscript UBL Or. 2174(E), examined in detail in the second part of the article, re-narrates part of the Rāmāyaṇa kakawin and embodies the diversity within the corpus of bilingual jarwa manuscripts. It combines an Old Javanese text cast in one of the macapat metres with an interlinear Modern Javanese text that closely follows the rhythm of the Old Javanese text above. This configuration highlights the crucial role of sound in Javanese translational practice and shows jarwa operating in ways that are not constrained by, and at points challenge, notions of ‘translation’ today.