RI manuscripts face destruction: Expert

RI manuscripts face destruction: Expert

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Most of Indonesia's ancient manuscripts kept by ordinary people
may perish due to lack of awareness about manuscript conservation
and the limited number of experts who could copy the written
heritage, an expert says.

I Gusti Ngurah Anom, the cultural conservation and development
head of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, said on Monday that
most of Indonesia's rare manuscripts were still in the hands of
non experts.

Only a few of the manuscripts are being preserved in museums
across the country, he said.

Anom was speaking during the opening ceremony of the 7th
International Symposium on Archipelago Manuscripts organized to
commemorate the 41th anniversary of state-owned Udayana
University and 45th anniversary of its school of literature in
Denpasar, Bali.

The three-day symposium will also feature dozens of experts
from various universities in Indonesia, Australia, Brunei
Darussalam, the Netherlands and Germany.

Anom said the preservation of ancient manuscripts and books,
both those kept by common people and those in museums, was
essential to protect the country's history.

However, he acknowledged that the country lacked experts who
have sufficient knowledge to make copies of the manuscripts.

"It is our duty to protect the rare manuscripts so that they
do not perish," he said, adding that the country needed to
improve its efforts to restore and copy the ancient manuscripts.

There is no exact figure on the number of ancient manuscripts
in the country. The National Library today holds the largest
collection of Indonesia's manuscripts in the world. However, some
30,000 are believed to be kept in some 30 countries.

Indonesian manuscripts, which are written in a wide range of
languages and scripts, are also a rich storehouse of information
for researchers from a wide range of disciplines. Indonesian
manuscripts are a record of knowledge and events produced by past
generations of scholars.

Unfortunately, most of the manuscripts, be it those in the
libraries or those kept by individuals, are not in a good
condition because most are made from organic material such as
paper, palm leaf, bark, bamboo, rattan and the like, which are
not durable and easily decay.