Читать книгу Memory of the World: The treasures that record our history from 1700 BC to the present day - UNESCO - Страница 55
ОглавлениеInscribed 2011
What is it
Two manuscript copies of La Galigo, a poetic text in a Bugis dialect of South Sulawesi in Southeast Asia and dating from around the 14th century. One copy is in South Sulawesi in Indonesia and the other is in the Netherlands.
Why was it inscribed
At an estimated 6000 folio pages long, La Galigo, also known as Sureq Galigo, may be the longest work of literature in the world. A mythological epic, the work has its origins in oral tradition and its language is considered beautiful and difficult.
Where is it
Museum La Galigo, Makassar, Indonesia; Leiden University Library, Leiden, the Netherlands
The two copies of La Galigo listed on the Register are not the only extant manuscripts of the work: many others are in public and private collections, but the work itself is so long that no single manuscript contains the entire text. Instead, the work is contained in many manuscripts and all the known copies are fragments – some extensive, others much smaller – but the copies in Museum La Galigo in Indonesia and at Leiden University Library in the Netherlands are exceptionally important.
The Sulawesian manuscript, at 217 pages in length, narrates one complete episode in the text. The Dutch manuscript is 2851 pages long and comprises the first third of the story; this version is the largest continuous and consistent fragment of the text in the world. Both were probably transcribed in the 19th century.
La Galigo is a poetic text generally set in a strict, five-syllable metre using a particular branch of the Bugis dialect. Its origins lay in oral tradition and it was thought to have first been recorded in writing around the 14th century, when the indigenous Bugis script developed. Its story is a mythological epic centred in Luwuq, the kingdom regarded as the cradle of Bugis culture, and relates the coming of the gods to Earth and their adventures there over six generations.
The main barriers to the study and understanding of the work are the disappearing knowledge of Bugis in both written and spoken forms. The first systematic study of La Galigo was the work of B.F. Matthes, a missionary who, like many of his colleagues, learned the local language of the region in which he taught and preached. He also published a Bugis–Dutch dictionary which remains an important source both for the language and its use in La Galigo.
Difficulties with the language, and the fragmented and incomplete nature of the manuscripts mean that, although the text is of a high literary quality, it remains less studied than other epic poems. However, La Galigo still remains part of the culture and identity of the Bugis people who have named public roads and buildings after the story and its protagonists.
