Access to Malay manuscripts

Abstract

Until today, our knowledge of the written traditional Malay literature depends to a great deal on the Malay manuscripts copied and collected particularly in the 19th century, despite various contributions by scholars in recent years in studying them and discovering other hitherto neglected versions of the already known texts. These manuscripts, perhaps with the exception of those potentially oldest ones, preserved in Cambridge and Oxford University libraries, have undergone various deliberate changes in the hands of scribes. Leaving aside the abundant editorial changes in the extant manuscripts, what concerns us in this paper is their survival and accessibility to researchers.