Drop caps in Javanese

[adtbayuperdana]

Ilham Nurwansyah recently point me to this book, Dongeng-dongeng Pingĕntĕngĕn by Muhammad Musa, printed in 1867. (most pages are available in google books). It is a collection of tales written in the Sundanese language using the Javanese script. I have not encountered Javanese drop caps in other books, so this might be an exceptional case. Hopefully these samples would be useful for documentation.

[r12a]

@adtbayuperdana Since you haven't encountered this elsewhere, is there some connection with the fact that it's Sundanese? Just checking... @Ilhamkang, do you happen to know whether this is something that happens when people use the Sundanese script ?

[Ilhamkang]

@r12a No, I haven't encountered it. The drop caps neither occurs on any available modern Sundanese script source-book nor in the old Sundanese manuscript.

[adtbayuperdana]

@r12a I have not seen a lot Sundanese book printed in the Javanese script; in fact, this is my first one. This book has many qualities that I did not find in my Javanese book resources, including:

1. Very frequent use of Cecak Telu
2. Frequent use of Pangrangkep
3. Using Tarung as a replacement for Tolong vowel sign

I do not know whether these qualities are connected to the language, or peculiar to this book alone. Perhaps @Ilhamkang know of other Sundanese language/Javanese script books that we might compare with each other?

[Ilhamkang]

There is a good book resource about Javanese script for Sundanese language, written by K.F. Holle, published in 1862. Soendasch spel- en lees boek, met Soendasche letter – K. F. Holle.pdf

There are several printed book with Sunda-Javanese script on Google Book. Please find the following titles on Gbook:

• Iyĕ wawacan carita Ibrahim
• Iyĕ wawacan carita Nurul-Kamar
• Kitab dongeng-dongeng nu araneh
• Tjarita Erman
• wawacan jaka miskin

[r12a]

My summary of this in the gap analysis document was:

Initial-letter styling of the kind that ressembles drop caps doesn't appear to be a feature of Javanese script (although there is one example of Sundanese written with the Javanese script).

https://w3c.github.io/sealreq/gap-analysis/java-gap.html#initialletter

[Ilhamkang]

Hi all, I've got another sample for Javanese drop cap on Sundanese language. This is a document from National Library of Indonesia, entitled "Mitra Noe Tani" volume 3 (unknown year, est. 1880's) by Moehammad Moesa, published by Landsdrukkerij in Batavia.

(page 1)

(page 4)

(page 8)

(page 17)

(page 19)

[r12a]

Interesting to see how decorative these are.

@Ilhamkang do documents written in Sundanese script happen to use drop caps too? Just wondering whether that could be an influence here.

[Ilhamkang]

@r12a Nope. There is no documents written in Sundanese script with drop caps found yet, and it should be younger than Sunda-Javanese printed book. The documents with drop caps in Sunda-Javanese script were published earlier than documents with modern Sundanese script.

In fact both of the Sunda-Javanese documents above written by the same author (Muhammad Musa) and same publisher (Landsdrukkerij). I'm wondering these were a kind of convention used by the author, typesetter and the publisher.