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Old Sundanese script

The Old Sundanese script, known as Aksara Sunda Kuno, is an ancient abugida writing system developed for the Sundanese language in the region of West Java, Indonesia, consisting of 36 letters, including consonants, vowels, and diacritics, along with pasangan (subjoined consonants) and numerical symbols, derived from the Pallava script of southern India.^[1] It was primarily employed from the 14th to the 18th centuries CE during the pre-Islamic era of the Sundanese kingdoms, such as Pajajaran, to record royal decrees, religious doctrines, chronicles, and literary works like the Carita Parahyangan and Sewaka Darma.^[2]^[1] Inscriptions in Old Sundanese script appear on durable materials like stone (e.g., the Batutulis inscription in Bogor, dated 1533 CE, commemorating King Sri Baduga Maharaja) and copper plates (e.g., the Kebantenan plates detailing land grants and taxation), while manuscripts were incised or inked on palm leaves such as lontar (*Borassus flabellifer*) or gebang (Corypha gebanga), often in hermitages or royal courts.^[2]^[3] The script's distinct angular forms and markers, including the pamepet (a central vowel sign) and panghulu (a diacritic for initial vowels), set it apart from related Brahmic scripts like Old Javanese, reflecting a localized adaptation under Hindu-Buddhist influences.^[2]^[1] Around 100 pre-Islamic Sundanese manuscripts survive today, with the oldest dated example being the 1518 CE Saṅ Hyaṅ Siksa Kandaṅ Karəsian, an environmental and ascetic encyclopedia preserved on gebang leaves, highlighting the script's role in transmitting esoteric knowledge amid the transition to Islam in the 16th century.^[3] European scholars, beginning with K.F. Holle in 1882, pioneered its study through collections like those from Kabuyutan Ciburuy in Garut, where 501 of 726 palm-leaf folios employ the script for texts on ethics and mythology.^[1] By the 19th century, the script fell into disuse, supplanted by the Arabic-based Pegon and later Latin alphabets, though the modern Sundanese script, modeled after the Old Sundanese script, has been standardized and taught in schools since the 2000s for cultural preservation and education in West Java.^[1]^[2]

History

Origins and Influences

The Old Sundanese script developed in West Java during the 14th century under the Sunda Kingdom, as a localized adaptation tailored to the Old Sundanese language.^[4] This emergence reflected the kingdom's cultural and political consolidation in the Priangan highlands, where the script facilitated the recording of royal decrees, religious texts, and literary works on durable media like stone and metal.^[4] By the 14th century, it had diverged sufficiently from its precursors to form a coherent system suited to the region's Austronesian phonology, marking a key phase in the indigenization of writing practices.^[5] The script's primary influence stemmed from the Pallava script of South India, introduced through maritime trade routes and cultural exchanges that connected the Indian subcontinent with Southeast Asia from the 5th to the 14th centuries CE.^[6] These interactions, involving merchants, Brahmin scholars, and Buddhist monks, carried South Indian writing conventions to West Java, where they were modified to accommodate local needs.^[4] Secondary connections linked it to the Brahmi script—its ancient Indic progenitor—and the Kawi script of Old Javanese, which shared similar evolutionary paths across the archipelago and influenced angular character forms through shared monumental traditions.^[4] Earliest traces of precursors appear in 5th-century inscriptions from the Tarumanegara kingdom in southern West Java, which employed southern Brahmi-derived forms for Sanskrit texts.^[4] Examples include the Ciaruteun and Tugu inscriptions, which demonstrate initial adaptations of Brahmi for regional use in royal and religious contexts.^[4] Over the following centuries, amid ongoing cultural transmissions, these evolved into a fully distinct abugida by the 14th century, with consonants carrying inherent vowels and diacritics for modifications.^[5] Hindu-Buddhist cultural diffusion profoundly shaped the script's angular, monumental character, optimized for stone carving in temple and inscription settings across the Sunda Kingdom.^[4] This influence arrived via non-coercive exchanges starting in the 2nd century BCE, integrating Indian religious motifs with local animist practices and emphasizing durable, public displays of power and piety.^[4] The resulting forms supported the kingdom's patronage of Sanskrit-infused Sundanese literature, as seen in early poetic manuscripts.^[7]

Development and Usage

The Old Sundanese script emerged in the 14th century as a distinct writing system in West Java, with the earliest known inscription appearing on the Kawali stones, dated to the late 14th or early 15th century, marking the script's initial use for recording royal blessings and territorial claims during the height of the Sunda Kingdom.^[4] Its development accelerated in the 15th and 16th centuries, coinciding with the kingdom's diplomatic expansions and cultural flourishing, as evidenced by copper plates like the Kebantenan inscriptions from the late 15th or early 16th century, which detailed tax exemptions and trade regulations.^[4] By the 16th century, the script reached its peak usage under rulers like Sri Baduga Maharaja, as seen in the Batutulis inscription of 1533 CE in Bogor, which chronicled royal genealogies and achievements to legitimize authority and mark sacred sites.^[4] Usage persisted into the 17th and 18th centuries, even after the Sunda Kingdom's fall in 1579 CE, primarily through manuscripts that adapted the script amid emerging Islamic influences, though production gradually declined by the late 18th century.^[4] Primary applications of the script included stone and copper inscriptions for official purposes, such as royal decrees, temple dedications, and territorial boundaries, which served to commemorate events and enforce governance in the Sunda Kingdom's core regions. For instance, the Batutulis inscription not only etched the lineage of kings but also functioned as a territorial marker near the Ciliwung River, blending political and spiritual symbolism.^[4] Complementing these, palm-leaf manuscripts on lontar or gebang became prevalent from the 15th century onward for administrative records, including land grants and daily affairs like taxation and weaving instructions, reflecting the script's versatility in sustaining bureaucratic functions.^[4] The script integrated seamlessly with Old Sundanese literary traditions, facilitating the production of chronicles, poetry, and religious texts that captured courtly life, ethics, and spiritual practices during the 16th and 17th centuries.^[4] Works such as the Carita Parahyangan, a historical chronicle, and the poetic Bujangga Manik were inscribed on lontar to preserve Sundanese narratives of kings and sages, often incorporating Hindu-Buddhist motifs adapted for local audiences.^[4] Religious manuscripts like the Sanghyang Siksa Kandang Karesian (dated 1518 CE) used the script to convey moral teachings and rituals, underscoring its role in transmitting cultural and spiritual knowledge amid the kingdom's diplomatic engagements.^[4] Regional variations in the script's style arose from material constraints and scribal practices, particularly in key centers like Pakuan Pajajaran (the capital near present-day Bogor) and Kawali (in Ciamis), where stone inscriptions favored angular, oblique forms for durability, while lontar manuscripts in these areas featured thicker, more fluid strokes suited to organic surfaces.^[4] In Pakuan Pajajaran, scribal traditions emphasized precise, monumental lettering for royal texts, as in the Batutulis example, whereas Kawali's inscriptions, such as those from the 14th century, showed coarser adaptations for local temple dedications, highlighting how geographic and material differences influenced execution across West Java.^[4]

Decline and Legacy

The decline of the Old Sundanese script commenced in the 16th century alongside the Islamization of West Java, as Muslim communities increasingly adopted the Pegon script—an Arabic-based system modified for writing Sundanese and related languages—to produce religious and literary works.^[8] This shift was driven by the need to transcribe Islamic texts, leading to Pegon's widespread use from the 17th century onward for Sundanese expressions of faith and poetry.^[8] Concurrently, the Javanese Hanacaraka script gained traction in Sundanese contexts due to cultural and linguistic exchanges between the two regions, further diminishing the prominence of the indigenous script.^[9] In the 19th century, Dutch colonial policies exacerbated this obsolescence by enforcing the Latin script (known as Aksara Walanda) in education and official documentation, sidelining local writing systems to facilitate administrative control.^[10] The final documented applications of the Old Sundanese script occurred in the early 18th century, primarily in manuscripts that integrated Islamic themes, such as pupujian poetry, which blended Old Sundanese linguistic structures with Arabic and Javanese loanwords to convey religious narratives.^[4]^[11] These hybrid texts marked a transitional phase, reflecting the script's adaptation to evolving cultural and religious influences before its complete replacement by Pegon and Latin alternatives. The legacy of the Old Sundanese script endures as the foundational model for the modern Standard Sundanese script (Aksara Sunda Baku), which revived and standardized its forms for contemporary use.^[12] Revival initiatives accelerated in the 1960s and 1970s through efforts to promote Sundanese literature and printing, culminating in official standardization in 1996 to support education and cultural expression in Indonesia.^[13]^[14] The script's characters were encoded in Unicode in 2006, enabling global digital accessibility.^[15] In modern times, Old Sundanese artifacts are preserved in institutions like the National Museum of Indonesia in Jakarta, which houses palm-leaf manuscripts safeguarding pre-Islamic Sundanese heritage.^[16] Digital fonts, such as Noto Sans Sundanese, facilitate its integration into computing and design, while ongoing revival movements in West Java leverage the script to reinforce Sunda ethnic identity through arts, signage, and community education programs.^[17]^[18]

Linguistic and Cultural Context

Old Sundanese Language

The Old Sundanese language, an Austronesian language of the Malayo-Polynesian branch spoken in western Java from the 12th to the 17th centuries, featured a phonological inventory adapted to represent both indigenous sounds and loanwords from Sanskrit and Prakrit, particularly in religious and administrative contexts. Its consonant system comprised approximately 18-20 phonemes, including voiceless and voiced stops (/p, b, t, d, k, g/), nasals (/m, n, ŋ, ɲ/), fricatives (/s, h/), approximants (/w, l, r, y/), and a palatal stop (/c/), with additional aspirated stops (e.g., /ph, th, kh/) and retroflex sounds (e.g., /ʈ, ɖ, ɳ/) appearing primarily in Sanskrit-Prakrit borrowings such as dharma or puṣpa.^[19] The vowel inventory consisted of six phonemes: /i, e, ə, a, o, u/, with no distinction between dental and retroflex consonants in native words and length marked in loans via diacritics like panolong (e.g., a: in pura:na).^[19] Grammatically, Old Sundanese retained Austronesian roots evident in its core vocabulary for daily life and kinship (e.g., bapa 'father', ina 'mother'), while incorporating heavy Sanskrit borrowing for abstract, religious, and administrative terms (e.g., dewa 'god', raja 'king', dharma 'duty'), often mediated through Old Javanese intermediaries.^[19] Derivational processes relied on affixation, including prefixes like di- (passive), ka- (inchoative), and infixes like -um- (actor focus), alongside clitics such as -na (definite marker or enclitic pronoun) and pronominal suffixes like -iṅ (first-person possessive, e.g., kenaIṁ 'because of me'). Reduplication served derivational and intensifying functions, such as partial reduplication for plurality or manner (e.g., kədə-kədə 'aggressively stubborn' from kədə 'obstinate') or full reduplication for nominal plurality, reflecting Austronesian morphological patterns while adapting to borrowed lexicon.^[19] Regional variations existed between western areas like Pakuan (modern Bogor) and eastern regions like Galuh, reflected in orthographic preferences in inscriptions.^[19] The language was embedded in the cultural life of Hindu-Buddhist Sundanese kingdoms, used in royal decrees, religious doctrines, and literary works that preserved esoteric and ethical knowledge.^[2] The abugida nature of the Old Sundanese script was well-suited to the language's phonology, with basic consonant signs carrying an inherent /a/ vowel (e.g., ka for /ka/), modified by diacritics for other vowels (e.g., pamepet for /ə/, panolong for /o/) and a virama (pamaéh) to suppress the inherent vowel in clusters, accommodating the CV(C) structure and prosodic flow without excessive ambiguity. This system efficiently captured the language's syllable-timed rhythm and loanword phonotactics, though it occasionally underdistinguished schwa-like vowels in rapid speech.^[19]

Relation to Modern Sundanese Script

The modern Sundanese script, known as Aksara Sunda Baku, directly descends from the Old Sundanese script (Aksara Sunda Kuno), retaining its core structure as an abugida derived from the Brahmic family while undergoing significant simplifications for contemporary use.^[20] The modern script preserves 18 basic consonants representing indigenous Sundanese sounds, such as ᮀ ka, ᮁ nga, and ᮂ ga, but streamlines diacritics for vowel modifications and introduces standardized punctuation like the period (.) and comma (,) to align with modern typographic needs.^[21] Unlike the Old Sundanese script, which occasionally featured vertical arrangements in palm-leaf manuscripts for aesthetic or spatial reasons, the modern form is strictly horizontal from left to right, facilitating easier adaptation to print and digital formats. Key differences between the two scripts highlight the modern version's emphasis on efficiency and accessibility. The Old Sundanese script employed more varied conjunct forms, such as stacked clusters for consonant combinations (e.g., using a virama-like sign to suppress inherent vowels), and included archaic letters for Sanskrit-derived sounds, like ᮻ reu, ᮼ leu, ᮽ bha, ᮾ final k, and ᮿ final m, which are absent in the modern script.^[20] In contrast, the modern script adopts a streamlined design with the Sundanese Sign Pamaeh (U+1BAA) to indicate consonant clusters without full conjuncts, following a model similar to Burmese script, and incorporates additional letters or digraphs (e.g., ᮿ for foreign 'nya' sounds) to handle loanwords from Arabic, Dutch, and English, making it more typewriter- and keyboard-friendly.^[15] These changes reduce the script's complexity, eliminating the need for intricate ligatures that characterized Old Sundanese inscriptions and manuscripts. The standardization of the modern Sundanese script occurred in the late 20th century, building on revival efforts from the 1960s onward. Scholars including Ayatrohaedi, alongside Amir Sutaarga, Atja, Saleh Danasasmita, and Noordyun, conducted foundational research to document and reconstruct the script from historical sources, adapting it to reflect Roman-influenced phonetics while preserving Old Sundanese models like those from the Kawali inscriptions. This culminated in the official standardization in 1996 by the West Java provincial government, as detailed in works like Baidillah et al.'s Direktori Aksara Sunda untuk Unicode, which formalized letter shapes, slopes, and encoding for digital use.^[20] The process prioritized educational viability, resulting in Unicode inclusion in 2008 (version 5.1), which enabled widespread font development and input methods.^[15] In terms of usage, the Old Sundanese script was primarily employed for literary and epigraphic purposes, such as royal inscriptions and religious texts on stone or lontar (palm leaves), reflecting its role in the Sunda Kingdom's cultural documentation from the 14th to 18th centuries.^[20] The modern script, however, serves practical functions in education, public signage, and digital media across West Java, promoting cultural revitalization and literacy among over 30 million Sundanese speakers while coexisting with Latin script in official contexts. This shift underscores the modern script's role in bridging historical heritage with everyday communication.^[21]

Key Texts and Manuscripts

Inscriptions

The Old Sundanese script found extensive application in stone inscriptions, serving primarily administrative, commemorative, and diplomatic roles within the Sunda Kingdom during the 15th and 16th centuries. These epigraphic artifacts, often carved into andesite for permanence, reveal the script's evolution from earlier influences and its standardization for official records. Unlike palm-leaf manuscripts, these inscriptions prioritized durability and public visibility, reflecting the kingdom's governance and royal authority.^[22] The Kawali inscriptions, unearthed in Ciamis, West Java, exemplify this usage and date to the late 14th century during the reign of Niskala Wastu Kancana. Consisting of six short texts, they delineate territorial boundaries—such as moats and village cultivations—and outline royal grants for land management and palace enhancements, including references to King Wastu beautifying the Surawisesa palace. The uniform script style across these stones, characterized by distinct Old Sundanese characters without certain ligatures like panyecek, indicates a deliberate adaptation for monumental engraving. This consistency underscores the script's role in formal decrees, preserving the king's directives for posterity.^[23]^[22] Similarly, the Batutulis inscription in Bogor, also from the 16th century, stands as a key commemorative monument. Erected in 1533 CE by King Surawisesa to honor his father, Sri Baduga Maharaja (r. 1482–1521), it details the ruler's genealogy—from predecessors like Rahyang Dewa Niskala Wastu Kancana—and enumerates his achievements, including the establishment of sacred sites and royal memorials. Accompanied by carved footprints symbolizing sovereignty, the text employs a chronogram (1455 Śaka) and employs the Old Sundanese script in a bold, legible form suited to andesite surfaces. This inscription not only glorifies the monarch's legacy but also reinforces dynastic continuity.^[23]^[22] Preceding these, earlier inscriptions highlight the script's developmental trajectory. The Ciaruteun inscription, from the 7th century near Bogor, serves as a precursor in Pallava script, featuring Sanskrit verses likening a ruler to Viṣṇu alongside symbolic footprints that influenced later Sundanese motifs. These examples illustrate the script's adaptation from South Indian-derived systems toward a distinctly local variant.^[24] Collectively, these inscriptions demonstrate the Old Sundanese script's efficacy in administrative and diplomatic contexts, such as boundary demarcations and royal endorsements, with its angular forms and vowel notations optimized for chisel work on resilient andesite stone to withstand environmental exposure.^[23]^[22]

Literary Manuscripts

Literary manuscripts in Old Sundanese script consist mainly of palm-leaf texts that document historical chronicles, didactic narratives, and ethical poems, serving as vital repositories of Sundanese cultural identity, royal history, and spiritual guidance from the 15th to 18th centuries. These works, often composed in metrical verse or prose, blend indigenous traditions with Hindu-Buddhist influences, emphasizing moral education, governance, and legendary origins. Unlike fixed inscriptions, these portable manuscripts were likely used in courtly, religious, and communal settings to transmit knowledge across generations.^[25] One prominent example is the Carita Parahyangan, a 16th-century palm-leaf manuscript comprising 47 sheets, each inscribed with four lines of text. This chronicle narrates the lineage of Sunda kings from mythical beginnings through historical events up to the 16th century, intertwining legend with documented rulers such as King Warak (r. 803–827 CE), who is depicted as orchestrating a coup against his father, King Panaraban, amid the fracturing of the Javanese Shailendra polity into separate Javanese and Sundanese realms. The text's blend of history and myth underscores themes of dynastic legitimacy and regional autonomy, providing the only known narrative account of the Shailendra era from a Sundanese perspective.^[26]^[26] The Carita Ratu Pakuan, dated to the early 18th century and preserved as Kropak 410, offers a focused historical narrative on the rulers of Pakuan, the Sunda kingdom's capital. Written by the scribe Kai Raga, it details governance, royal succession, and key events in West Java's political landscape, reflecting the manuscript's role in maintaining oral and written traditions of Sundanese royalty. This text highlights the cultural importance of Pakuan as a center of power and its enduring legacy in local historiography.^[1]^[1] Among other significant works, the Sewaka Darma (Kropak 408), a 15th-century poem in kawih form, serves as a Buddhist ethics guide through dialogues between a teacher and student, exploring life's impermanence, suffering, and the path to moksha (liberation). It imparts virtues such as non-deceit, respect for elders, and spiritual integrity, functioning as an educational tool for moral and character development in Sundanese society via the nyantrik learning method, where followers emulate teacherly examples.^[27]^[27] The Bujangga Manik, a late-15th-century narrative poem preserved in a single palm-leaf manuscript at Oxford's Bodleian Library (MS. Jav. b. 3), recounts the spiritual wanderings of the hermit Bujangga Manik across West, Central, and East Java, emphasizing ascetic practices, moral pilgrimages, and Hindu-Sundanese spirituality. As a didactic tale, it illustrates the seeker's quest for enlightenment amid diverse landscapes and encounters, offering profound insights into 15th-century maritime Southeast Asian religious life and Sundanese literary heritage.^[7]^[7] The Saṅ Hyaṅ Siksa Kandaṅ Karəsian, dated 1518 CE and preserved on gebang leaves, is the oldest dated Old Sundanese manuscript. This encyclopedia covers environmental and ascetic topics, highlighting the script's role in transmitting esoteric knowledge during the transition to Islam in the 16th century.^[3] Adaptations of the Ramayana in Old Sundanese, such as the 16th-century or later epic poem in Kropak 1102 at Jakarta's Central Museum, extend the classic narrative to focus on Rawana's descendants and Rama's sons, incorporating Hindu elements like invocations to Visnu and Siva, Yama's hell, and asceticism while introducing unique twists, such as portraying Sita as Rawana's daughter. These palm-leaf texts, blending Javanese influences with indigenous Sundanese settings, demonstrate the epic's adaptation to local cosmology and its role in perpetuating Hindu cultural motifs in pre-Islamic West Java.^[16]^[16] Preservation of these manuscripts faces significant challenges, including fragility from age, pest damage, and suboptimal storage in wooden boxes within private or sacred sites like kabuyutan in West Java. Many, such as those under Kropak designations, are housed in the National Library of Indonesia, which maintains the world's largest Sundanese collection, while digitization projects like the Endangered Archives Programme (EAP280) have copied over 30 items from Garut and Cirebon, depositing replicas at the National Library, Universitas Padjadjaran, and the British Library to mitigate risks and enhance accessibility. These efforts underscore the manuscripts' themes of courtly history, religious ethics, and moral instruction as cornerstones of Sundanese cultural education.^[25]^[28]^[25]

Script Variants

Carita Ratu Pakuan Model

The Carita Ratu Pakuan model represents a cursive variant of the Old Sundanese script employed in the early 18th-century daluang paper manuscript Carita Ratu Pakuan (also known as Carita Ratu Pakuan Pajajaran), preserved as inventory item L 410 at the National Library of Indonesia. This model is distinguished by its adaptation to daluang surfaces, featuring both angular and flowing cursive forms that facilitate engraving with a stylus while maintaining legibility on the media. The script's inventory in this manuscript exemplifies the abugida structure typical of Brahmic writing systems, where consonants inherently carry the vowel /a/ unless modified.^[1]^[2] The consonants, termed ngalagena, comprise 18 basic forms corresponding to the core phonemes of Old Sundanese, including ka, nga, ga, ca, ja, ña, ṭa, da, na, pa, ba, ma, ya, ra, la, wa, sa, and ha. These glyphs exhibit angular edges for durability on daluang and cursive flourishes in connected sequences, reflecting the scribe's technique to avoid damaging the material during writing.^[1] Vowels, known as swara, are represented by four independent letters: a, i, u, and é. Vowel modifications to consonants are achieved through diacritics called rarangkén, of which 14 varieties appear, including panghulu (above for -i), suku (below for -u), panéleng (below for -é), and others like teuleung for -e or -eu, tolong for -o, panyecek for -aŋ, and pamaéh (a crossbar) to suppress inherent /a/ for consonant-final sounds. These diacritics are positioned strategically—above, below, or through the base consonant—to optimize space on the daluang format.^[1]^[2] For consonant clusters, the model employs pasangan or subjoined "hanger" forms, where a secondary consonant is stacked below the primary one, yielding up to 20 common combinations such as kya, tra, and mpa. These conjuncts are less frequent than in contemporary Javanese scripts, often simplified by sequential placement with pamaéh to indicate virama (vowel killing), prioritizing the cursive flow essential for manuscript production.^[1]^[2] Numbers, or angka, consist of 10 distinct glyphs for 0 through 9, visually influenced by ancient Brahmi numerals through their angular, additive-derived shapes, resembling early Indic rod numerals adapted for Sundanese phonology (e.g., a vertical stroke for 1, a circle-like loop for 9). These numerals appear sparingly in the manuscript, typically in dates or quantities, underscoring their practical role in historical narration.^[1]^[2] Special letters (khusus) include rare glyphs for Sanskrit loanwords, such as aspirated forms (e.g., kha, gha) and retroflexes (e.g., ṭa, ḍa), which expand the inventory beyond native sounds, along with two ligatures like tra and mpa for complex borrowings, and two punctuation-like marks (e.g., a double dot for verse ends, a flourish for section breaks). These elements highlight the script's accommodation of religious and literary influences from Indian traditions while remaining anchored in Sundanese vernacular use.^[1]^[2]

Kawali Model

The Kawali model refers to the epigraphic variant of the Old Sundanese script employed in the late 14th-century stone inscriptions discovered at six sites in the Kawali area of West Java, Indonesia, reflecting adaptations for durability on hard surfaces.^[2]^[4] This style features bolder, more angular strokes compared to the curvier forms in palm-leaf or gebang-leaf manuscripts, enabling clearer engraving between parallel horizontal lines on stone.^[2] The script's design prioritizes conciseness, with simplified elements suited to brief dedicatory or royal decree texts, distinguishing it from the more elaborate inventory in manuscript traditions like the Carita Ratu Pakuan model.^[4] The consonants, known as ngalagena, comprise 18 basic forms, rendered with thick, rounded yet angular geometries and 2–5 strokes per character to withstand stone carving.^[4] For instance, the ka consonant appears more squared and robust, with a tall body and hooked extension, contrasting its softer curvature in manuscript styles.^[4] Other forms, such as ga and ṅa, exhibit split bodies and oblique lines for geometric stability, while pasangan (subjoined) consonants like panyakra (for r) and pamingkal (for y) are used sparingly, with clusters often formed sequentially using the pamaéh virama mark rather than complex subscripts.^[2] Vowels, or swara, follow a similar structure to other Old Sundanese variants, with four independent forms for a, i, u, and é, but dependent diacritics (rarangkén) are frequently simplified or entirely omitted in these short inscriptions to enhance brevity and readability on limited space.^[2] The vocalization marks, primarily positioned above or below the base consonant, denote i, u, e, and o sounds through hooks, caps, or descending lines, such as panolong for o or pamepet for schwa (ə); however, distinctions like e versus eu are absent, and long vowels are indicated by additional tassels only when necessary.^[2] Due to inscription constraints, fewer conjunct forms appear, with pasangan va substituting for o in some cases.^[2] Surviving Kawali texts lack dedicated numeral sets or special symbols, relying instead on a core of 15–16 consonants for phonetic needs, omitting rarer extensions found in fuller manuscript repertoires.^[4] This streamlined approach aligns with the inscriptions' practical function, such as recording land grants or rituals. Across the six Kawali sites—including Astana Gede and nearby stones—the script maintains high uniformity in form and ductus, indicative of a standardized epigraphic practice.^[2]

References

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Noto Sans Sundanese is an unmodulated (“sans serif”) design for texts in the Southeast Asian Sundanese script.Missing: preservation museums digital revival identity
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[22]
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[25]
[PDF] Pūrṇavarman's Prints - IU ScholarWorks
Dec 24, 2024 · In West Java, the use of footprints as ancestral memorials is also well attested in Old Sundanese inscriptions. In Bogor, the Old Sundanese Batu ...
[26]
Retrieving heritage: rare old Javanese and old Sundanese manuscripts from West Java (stage one)
### Summary of EAP280: Preservation of Old Sundanese Palm-Leaf Manuscripts
[27]
(PDF) The Old Sundanese Carita Parahyangan, King Warak, and ...
This is a study of the passage in the 16th century Carita Parahyangan, the only known narrative description of the Shailendra period in Central Javanese ...
[28]
Sewaka Darma: Pembelajaran Keutamaan Kehidupan dan Implikasi ...
May 19, 2016 · Sewaka Darma, an ancient Sundanese text, contains a particular model of education by way of teaching the wisdom of life. This text inspires ...
[29]
National library holds world's largest Sundanese manuscript collection
Aug 7, 2024 · These newly acquired manuscripts, meticulously preserved by the Ngariksa Budaya Indonesia Foundation, offer invaluable insights into Sundanese ...Missing: Old | Show results with:Old