res of Prambanam and Boroboedoer clearly presuppose
an acquaintance with the Ramayana, the Lalita Vistara and other
Buddhist works but, as in Camboja, this literature was probably known
only in the original Sanskrit and only to the learned. But it is not
unlikely that the Javanese adaptations of the Indian epics which have
come down to us were preceded by earlier attempts which have
disappeared.

The old literary language of Java is commonly known as Basa Kawi or
Kawi, that is the language of poetry.[420] It is however simply
the predecessor of modern Javanese and many authorities prefer to
describe the language of the island as Old Javanese before the
Madjapahit period, Middle-Javanese during that period and New Javanese
after the fall of Madjapahit. The greater part of this literature
consists of free versions of Sanskrit works or of a substratum in
Sanskrit accompanied by a Javanese explanation. Only a few Javanese
works are original, that is to say not obviously inspired by an Indian
prototype, but on the other hand nearly all of them handle their
materials with freedom and adapt rather than translate what they
borrow.

One of the earliest works preserved appears to be the Tantoe
Panggelaran, a treatise on cosmology in which Indian and native
ideas are combined. It is supposed to have been written about 1000
A.D. Before the foundation of Madjapahit Javanese literature
flourished especially in the reigns of Erlangga and Djajabaja, that is
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries respectively. About the time of
Erlangga were produced the old prose version of the Mahabharata, in
which certain episodes of that poem are rendered with great freedom
and the poem called Arjuna-vivaha, or the marriage of Arjuna.

The Bharatayuddha,[421] which states that it was composed by Mpoe
Sedah in 1157 by order of Djajabaja, prince of Kediri, is, even more
than the prose version mentioned above, a free rendering of parts of
the Mahabharata. It is perhaps based on an older translation preserved
in Bali.[422] The Kawi Ramayana was in the opinion of Kern composed
about 1200 A.D. It follows in essentials the story of the Ramayana,
but it was apparently composed by a poet unacquainted with Sanskrit
who drew his knowledge from some native source now unknown.[423] He
appears to have been a Sivaite. To the eleventh century are also
referred the Smaradahana and the treatise on prosody called
Vrittasancaya. All this literature is based upon cla