Westenenk’s Rëntjong-schrift, II (1922) — full title “Rëntjong-schrift, II, Beschreven hoorns in het landschap Krintji,” published in the Tijdschrift van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen in 1922 — is the article by L. C. Westenenk|L. C. Westenenk that documented the pre-Islamic Sumatran script family known as rëntjong (rencong, ulú, or surat ulú) — used in Acheh|Atjeh, the Gajoland|Gayo-Alasland|Alas highlands, Krintji|Kerinci and the Rejang|Rejang country before the adoption of the Arabic-derived jawi script — and specifically the practice of inscribing buffalo horns with this script as a documentation medium. The article is listed in the Lijst van geschriften (bibliography) of J. Kreemer|Kreemer’s Kreemer’s De Karbouw (*De Karbouw* (1956) (p. 268).
The article
Westenenk’s article — published in 1922 in the Tijdschrift van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen — treated the rëntjong-schrift (rencong / surat ulú) script family that was used before the adoption of the Arabic-derived jawi script in Acheh|Atjeh and the adjacent highlands of central and southern Sumatra. The article’s specific subject was the practice, attested in the Krintji|Kerinci landschap of interior Sumatra, of inscribing buffalo horns with this script — a documentation medium that survives in scattered specimens and that links the material culture of the buffalo to the literary culture of pre-Islamic Sumatra.
The script family itself extends across the highland belt from Acheh|Atjeh through Gajoland|Gayo-Alasland|Alas to Krintji|Kerinci and the Rejang|Rejang country of south-western Sumatra, and is one of the principal evidences of a pre-Islamic Sumatran literate culture that was, in Atjeh itself, eventually displaced by Arabic jawi and by the European script. The practice of inscribing buffalo horns with the script is documented by Westenenk for the Kerinci landschap specifically, but the wider distribution of the script family across the Atjeh-Gayo-Alas-Kerinci-Rejang highland belt suggests that the practice was once more widely attested.
Significance
Westenenk’s Rëntjong-schrift, II (1922) is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history as the principal documented Western study of the pre-Islamic Sumatran script family that included Atjeh’s own rencong/ulú script, and as the specific documentation of the practice of inscribing buffalo horns with this script as a recording medium. The article links the material culture of the buffalo to the literate culture of pre-Islamic Sumatra — a connection that is otherwise poorly attested, and that is significant for the encyclopedia both as a document of the buffalo’s integration into the documentation-media of pre-Islamic Atjeh and as a document of the pre-Islamic literate culture of the Atjeh-Gayo-Alas-Kerinci-Rejang highland belt.
Sources
“Rëntjong-schrift, II, Beschreven hoorns in het landschap Krintji,” by L. C. Westenenk, in Tijdschrift van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, 1922.
De Karbouw — Zijn betekenis voor de volken van de Indonesische Archipel, by J. Kreemer (‘s-Gravenhage / Bandung: N.V. Uitgeverij W. van Hoeve, 1956), p. 268.
See Also
- Alasland
- Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen
- Gajoland
- Kreemer’s De Karbouw (1956)
- Krintji
- L. C. Westenenk
- Rejang
- rëntjong-schrift