The Sanskrit colophon of the Tanjung Tanah codex and its Malay gloss as illuminated by balinese and south Asian parallels

Abstract

This article highlights a parallel between a verse-quarter of the Sanskrit colophon of the Tanjung Tanah codex, the oldest Malay manuscript known so far, and the opening verse of the Bhuvanakos̈a, a Sanskrit-Old Javanese text from Bali. On the basis of the parallel, and of the Malay gloss, I suggest an alternative reconstruction of the verse-quarter to that proposed by Arlo Griffiths (2010). Having traced the parallel back to identical verse-quarters from South Asian texts, and building on the recent discussion by Hunter (in Kozok forthcoming), I advance the view that premodern textual materials from Sumatra and Bali, although originating from distant geographical areas, stemmed from a common, supralocal Indic tradition.