UNAIR NEWS – Ancient manuscripts are forms of wealth to people who conserve and study them. According to Muchtar Lutfi, SS, M.Hum., a philology lecturer from Department of Indonesian Literature, FIB UNAIR, manuscripts are invaluable heritages as they provide more information on contents and ideas inscripted than other historical artifacts.
Thus, communities are expected to understand the importance of the manuscripts as the nation’s assets. Then, how do we preserve them so they will not lose or vanish. These are some of the ways:
- Preservation effort (saving manuscript) should not be conducted in National Library only, but also in universities in Indonesia.
- Disseminating awareness to the communities on the importance of these ancient manuscripts’ contents by educating people on their contents through researchers, reproducing them in understandable language, and providing them for purchase. The contents can be comic or film materials (such as in India with its Mahabarata and Ramayana).
- Teaching the communities and young generations to understand the language and inscriptions of the ancient manuscripts. It can be done by putting them in local content (at schools) and regional languages (in colleges).
- Encouraging people who work in industrial field to use the manuscript contents in their products. For example, food industry, beauty products, and medicine manufacture which use the contents as references. Fashion industry (shirts, batik, t-shirts, shoes, bags, hats and other accessories) can use pictures from the manuscripts (illustrations or illuminations) on their products; they can also quote the sentences from the old manuscripts for the clothes.
The preservation of ancient manuscripts must have supports from all sides, the government to concern more with the preservation, the communities which understand the important of the manuscripts’ contents by studying them, and also from the industrial companies.(*)
Author: Yulis Majidatul
Editor: Nuri Hermawan
