The Arjuna Wiwaaha (1986)

INTRODUCTION

The aim of this work is primarily to provide access to the first third of an 11th century Old Javanese Kakawin. Mpu Kaņwa's Arjuna Wiwaaha, through translation and commentary. The translation itself makes use of a transliteration from Javanese into Roman script by Poerbatjaraka (along with a translation into Dutch) (Poerbatjaraka 1926), which he based on several manuscript versions.

Accompanying the translation is a set of notes in which I deal, on a case by case basis, with various difficulties in translation and interpretation, and also with particular points of interest regarding Old Javanese language and literature, In organizing the work in this way, my goal has been to keep the poem as central as possible; the notes are mainly a means of contextualizing the poem, not an explication of Old Javanese language or literature per se.

This structuring of the notes around the poem results in a work that is coherent with reference to the poem, but dispersed with reference to particular analytical constructs (such as "verb morphology", "deixis", "stanza structure", etc.). While this approach has the advantage of maintaining the centrality of the poem, it has the disadvantage of separating material which, from an analytical point of view, should be grouped together. This introduction attempts to compensate for this disadvantage by providing an overview of some of the features of the analysis. In addition, a brief index (see Appendix A) will cite particular analytical points and cross-reference the places where they appear in the notes and in the introduction

The central problem remains that of bringing a distant text closer. Translation alone cannot achieve this, as is pointed out by M. Zurbuchen in her recent dissertation:

Translations and abstractions, which are actually transformations, allow too many opportunities for unmotivated concepts to slip into the interpretation; the analysis of the formal coherence of texts in foreign languages must be firmly anchored in the language of the text.

(Zurbuchen 1981:27)