Abstract
Scripts are sites of religious, cultural and political power. Although scripts are often viewed solely as technical devices in the service of meaning, the particular histories of scripts' coming into being, their uses and sometimes disappearance can tell us much about shifting religious agendas, memory, and attachments to community, place, and particular literary cultures. In my essay I explore the history of writing in Java, including the story of the letters' creation, to think about cultural and religious transformations, the relationship of foreign to local, and the powerful hold certain texts have on the imagination.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 419-435 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | Itinerario |
Volume | 39 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 18 Jan 2016 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2016 Research Institute for History, Leiden University.