“Lord of the mountains” in the fourteenth century kakawin

Abstract

Although fourteenth century Majapahit may well be regarded as the golden age of the Javanese past, only few of its literary products are known to us. Out of the hundred or so kakawin that have reached us, only three can be ascribed to this period with absolute certainty, namely the N?garakrt?gama, the Arjunawijaya and the Sutasoma. Because of its importance for the study of Javanese history, the N?garakrt?gama, which probably was not considered an important work in those days, has been edited and published ? less than three times so far, by Brandes (1902), Kern (1919) and Pigeaud (1960-3) respectively. On the other hand, the Arjunawijaya and the Sutasoma, which have enjoyed a certain degree of popularity among the Javanese and the Balinese since the days they were composed, are still waiting for their publication.1 It was in the course of editing the Arjunawijaya, and preparing its annotated translation, that I came across the problem of Lord of the Mountains, the solution of which could not be contained in the limited space allocated for the Notes to the translation. In one way, the present article is thus nothing but an attempt to elaborate on the notes to the translation of the man gala of the Arjunawijaya. Hence this article's dependence mainly upon the Arjunawijaya, and to a lesser degree upon the Sutasoma, for its evidence.