The Livro de Pantuns, a 300-year-old manuscript preserved in the National Museum of Archeology, where it was recently found, is published for the first time, in its entirety, and will be presented on the 19th in Lisbon.
The Book of Pantuns, which brings together poetic texts, in this form typical of Southeast Asia, specifically of Malay origin, is “a 300-year-old Asian manuscriptwhich contains a collection of poems in Malay Creole and Malayo-Portuguese, found on the island of Java (Indonesia) and which belonged to the archaeologist and philologist José Leite de Vasconcelos (1858-1941)”.
By will, Leite de Vasconcelos “delivered part of his scientific and literary heritage” to the National Museum of Archeology (MNA), which he helped establish, “including a library with around 8,000 titlesas well as manuscripts, correspondence, engravings and photographs”.
This manuscript was recently found at the MNA, in Lisbon, and, through the Imprensa Nacional (IN), in its “Leitiana” collection, it is delivered to the printer after nearly four years of scientific work.
The edition was carried out by an international team of experts in languages and cultures of Southeast Asia, coordinated by researchers Ivo Castro and Hugo Cardoso, from the Linguistics Center of the University of Lisbon, and also made up of Australian researcher Alan Baxter and professors dutch Alexander Adelaar and Gijs Koster.
“The existence of the manuscript has been known since the 19th century. XIX, having been mentioned by several authors, but never before described, published or interpreted”, explains the IN.
“The content of the manuscript is a collection of pantuns, whose dominant themes are love, war, aspects of everyday life, etc.”
“The Book of the Pantuns. An Asian Manuscript from the National Museum of Archaeology”, by Ivo Castro, Hugo C. Cardoso, Alan Baxter, Alexabder Adelaar and Gus Koster, will be presented on the 19th, at 6:30 p.m., at the Biblioteca da Imprensa Nacional, in Lisbon.
“Verses like these, about love, war and morality, were apparently written on the island of Java in Malay and in an extinct Portuguese-origin Creole,” reads the back cover of the work.
Source: Observadora
