Transcript: Sacred Pixels, Episode Four

< Back to “Sacred Pixels” Podcast page

Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. This transcript has been edited slightly for clarity. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

Mahita Valluri: For this conversation on the local digitisation and manuscript preservation efforts in Indonesia, I’m joined by Ms Efflina, who is a key member of the Jangkah team. The Jangkah is a youth-led group of philologists in Indonesia who have taken up the mission to digitally preserve manuscripts from the archives of the Royal Library in Yogyakarta. Their fascinating efforts have stirred the conversation on manuscripts locally and inspired major community involvement in heritage conservation. We’re so excited to have you join us today, Efflina. Thank you for accepting the invitation to be on our podcast. 

Hassan Asrowi Efflina: Hello. OK, thank you, Mahita, for inviting us, and we are excited to join this. 

MV: Thank you, Efflina. I would like to start this conversation off by asking you how the idea of the Jangkah was conceived. What are the aims of your organization and what is your role in the team? 

HAE: Our organization is a special program in cultural heritage and, especially, we are focusing on digitising manuscript and younger Yogyakarta palace (ed. Pakualaman palace) because Yogyakarta is one of the largest scriptoriums in Indonesia. In Yogyakarta there is…I believe in many places in here [ed. in Indonesia] also has traditional writing, has a writing tradition. It’s not only in the Yogyakarta Palace or in Pura Pakualaman. In Yogyakarta, there’s so many manuscripts outside the palace. I’m not one of the founding members. The founding member is Muhammad Bagus Febriyanto and Taufiq Hakim, they are founder and co-founder. But beside Bagus and Taufiq, I know how they built this organization, and, behind them, I manage all the projects, including digitising and metadata and also mapping manuscript in Yogyakarta and also in Central Java. Not only the digitising project, but I also manage some project after digitising such as preservation. I also try to empower the owner because in some digitising project, after the project is final or ends, they will go and the owners just get the copy of the manuscript, but they don’t know what to do in the next time with the photo or the manuscript because they also don’t have don’t have enough knowledge to manage or to treat the manuscript. So, after digitising, we have still to empowering the owner of the manuscript. The artefact or the manuscript, it could [be] long lasting so the next generation could see and could read the manuscript in good condition. They are just not seeing the digitising of manuscript, but they could see the real manuscript in the object. 

MV: I see. So, what you are doing is taking care of the digitisation project, identifying what manuscript needs to be digitised, while also teaching the owners of these manuscripts how to take care of them, right? So that they don’t get destroyed for the future generation. That sounds great. And who are these owners of the manuscripts? I thought, all of the manuscripts that you were digitising were part of the Royal Library. So, are there some owners who don’t have their manuscripts in the library as well? 

HAE: They are just civil.  

MV: The civilians? 

HAE: Yes, civilians. Some of them, they don’t know that their manuscript is one of the most important thing in our tradition, or in our culture. So, before we come to digitising the manuscript, we also give the information or teaching them what is the manuscript or what kind of book that they’re collecting and how to treat the book. Because some of them, they think that collection is pusaka or wingit (ed. haunted, spooky, dangerous). So, nobody could see the manuscript, can touch. In some case, they have a hesitation or afraid to give their manuscript to other people, to us. And when we come back another day, the manuscript has been buried and some of the manuscript, it’s burned by the owner or they threw it to the sea. 

MV: My God. Were they trying to protect the text? 

HAE: Yeah, some of them are protecting the text, but I think most of the owners, they could not read the manuscript and they don’t know what is the text inside. They’re just maybe afraid that the manuscript will be misused by us. So they got to get rid of them or just make it disappear so everyone could not see the manuscript, everyone could not read the text. Maybe they think that it is the safe thing. 

MV: And it is very interesting to listen to your experiences in trying to digitize manuscripts that are considered pusaka, and we were previously discussing how the text and the object of a pusaka are highly potent. So, the response makes sense when you tell us about these incidents of people burying the manuscript or throwing it into the ocean to protect the text. How do you convince the owners of pusaka manuscripts to let your team digitise them? And when you are digitising a pusaka manuscript, is the procedure any different compared to the non-pusaka manuscripts? 

HAE: Oh yeah, some of the manuscript, the owner still think that the manuscript is a pusaka. There is some manuscript until right now, the owner still don’t want to share or don’t want to let us to see the manuscript. I think when the owner doesn’t give us permit to read or to see the manuscript, we don’t force it. We will wait until the owner’s feeling safe and they don’t think there will be bad thing happen in the next day or in the next time. We will wait until they are ready to give it to us, but before that, we also provided understanding to the owner slowly. We give them…maybe like sounding [ed. telling] the owner that what we are doing is something good because we just want to read and want to learn what the text inside. We don’t have any bad… 

MV: …[bad] intention behind digitising. 

HAE: Yeah, we don’t have any bad intention behind it. So yeah, maybe we should take more time when we are providing the profile to understanding them. But this is one of our responsibilities so we have to do this—give some understanding to the owner. And that’s how we handle it. But before we treat the manuscript, we had a tradition in here because some of the manuscript are written by important people or an influencer in the past time. So, before we are digitising the manuscript, we will carry out a ceremony asking for dua (ed. prayer) and permission from the ancestor for what we are going to do. And also other ceremony is ziarah makam (ed. pilgrimage to gravesite), we visit the cemetery—old cemetery—the cemetery of the ancestor of the owner of the manuscript. They’re two important traditions that we have to do before any project. Not only digitising or mapping, but also when we want to study the manuscript or other project, we have to ask permission to the ancestors, not only to the owner who is alive, but also to the ancestors. Yeah, in Yogyakarta this tradition still… 

MV: Exists? Is it still prevalent? 

HAE: Yeah, it is still right now and we have to do that. It’s like amazing, because yeah, believe it or not, last month when we do a project after digitising, we got some trouble, I think the problem, it could understand with our eyes, our… 

MV: Health…. 

HAE: Yeah. And then so for the next project, we have to do the local ceremony. 

MV: So the next question that I would like to ask you is about the digitisation process. I think I’ve seen a video with the Wikimedia Foundation where the Jangkah was digitising a few manuscripts. So, could you walk us through this digitisation process and what type of manuscripts have been digitised so far? 

HAE: So, the first process that we have to do is manuscript mapping. We record the manuscript, who are the civilization or is the owner of the manuscript, in Yogyakarta, in the region of Sleman, Bantul, Yogyakarta, and also in Gunung Kidul, in four different cities. After we record it, we also ask permission to the owner, the manuscript that they collected, is it OK if we digitise their manuscript and also if the photo of the manuscript after digitising process, we can upload in the internet or in the platform of Wikisource. And after we give understanding or give explanation to the owner and the owner is ready to digitize their manuscript, so they have to sign one paper that that we get the permission. Then, after that, we did the preservation. We brush the manuscript, and we also get rid the mold in the surface of the manuscript. When all the manuscript has done preservation and ready to digitise, so the photographer will take the photo for digitising the manuscript. The type of the text from the manuscript that we have digitised—the first is religious, and the second topic, it is about art, especially about dancing and music, traditional music in Javanese or Gamelan and also wayang and literature. So, the literature type is also in a religion time, like Islamic time and also in Hinduism, Buddhism, and maybe other…all of the religion that ever come in Nusantara or Indonesia. For the religious text, especially in Islamic topics such as Qur’an and some literature from the Arabic or was adopted from Persia and also from Malay literature. We could read it better. 

MV: I see that that seems like it’s a long process. How long does it take for you to do all of this, approximately? 

HAE: For the manuscript mapping permission and maybe other political and social responsibility that we have done and also for the local ceremony, it’s three until four months before we are finished digitising. When all the local ceremony and other administration we have done…so maybe before taking the picture, it’s about one month. But it is every day, we take it. So we took photos about ten hours a day, maybe about eight until ten hours a day, sometime we need to take more time just to digitise the manuscript, because even the manuscript has been cleaned up, but before taking the photo, sometimes we still found some dust or dirt that’s coming out from the inside of manuscript. So, before taking the picture we should clean up again, so it takes more time. 

MV: That is a lot of effort.  

HAE: Yeah!  

MV: And the fact you are so consistent about it, that takes a lot of work. I think it’s a very commendable process as well, and it also is coming from a place of care, right, because you personally care about the manuscripts. It’s not just doing it for the sake of it. I see how hard it is. So, what I wanted to ask you next is sort of related to this. Why is there a need to preserve these manuscripts? Why do you make such an effort, for taking hours to take pictures of each page, spending so many months getting permission from everyone? Why is there a need to protect and preserve these manuscripts? And can you speak more on how the manuscripts have been used and appreciated in Yogyakarta? 

HAE: Yeah, why we need to protect and preserve the manuscript because I think manuscript, it is like a monument, right? Because inside a manuscript, there is so many knowledge and information written in the past by…maybe they’re also smart people or by poet. And then because when we read the manuscript by seeing the photo and when we touch or read life as we can, I think the sense is different. Do you like reading a book? So, I think, maybe, I like old people. I love more to read book by using my hand, I open one by one the pages, I smell the paper, and anything about books printed. It’s different when you see by screen [of] phone maybe or in your PC. I think it’s different, but when we read the manuscript directly, it gives us different experience. I think sometime when we see the artefact directly sometime we could imagine how this manuscript was written before, and who write this manuscript and how the [??] and everything. And also, the beautiful picture or illumination from the manuscript because the manuscript in Yogyakarta, they had illumination. By read[ing] or seeing directly, we feel happy to see that, but when we just see from the picture, I think, or other digitising resource, I think it’s gonna be different. For example, I see one manuscript in the British Library collection. I only see the manuscript from the website, but I never could see the manuscript directly. It’s gonna be different, especially for the researcher or someone who loves manuscript like us. It will differ when you see manuscripts directly and when you just seeing from the digital, but we also need the digital because when I don’t have enough money to see the manuscript in British Library, when I need to do my research or any other occasion, still I could see the photo. Like what I said before that the manuscript is also important artefact, such as maybe kris or temple or the wayang artifact—manuscript also important. So maybe in many years in the future when our children, our next generation, see that their ancestor has all the one of the biggest work, I think it will make our love to our nation and our culture is getting bigger. We gotta feel, I’m proud with my ancestor, with my culture, so they still had a root, a tradition that it’s gonna be still exist for many years. 

MV: I wanted to ask you this question a little later in our conversation, but you kind of touched on it earlier as you were speaking and it’s about the digitised Yogyakarta manuscripts which the British Library presented to the Court of Yogyakarta in 2019. This process of the British Library handing over the master copy of the digitised manuscripts was termed as a digital return of the manuscripts by the Indonesian media, and also by the British Library. I wanted to know if you agreed with the terming of this process as a return and what your thoughts are on the British Library’s digitisation project, and if you ever accessed it yourself. 

HAE: I think this is a great program. Maybe it could continue into another manuscript, not only manuscript from Kraton Yogyakarta, maybe manuscript from other region in Indonesia, maybe from Sunda, Bali or Batak. So British Library also could return the digitisation of the manuscript to the owner of where the manuscript belongs. I think it’s fair because many people where the manuscript belongs[], they don’t know that they had the manuscript, that it still exists or where they will access the manuscript because the people who [are] seeing the manuscript is…I think it’s not much. It’s just some people who understand it. Because for right now, as you know, most of the people in Indonesia, they are only to speak in Bahasa and also to write and read in Latin letter, but in traditional or in local alphabet, I think it’s not every people could read it. But I think it is still important for us for everyone that that they should to know what they have, what our ancestor has written or their effort, their creation. And then I think it is one of our duties to know and to learn our culture, especially from manuscripts. But I think it’s not only from the manuscript, maybe other writing source. So it’s not only the manuscript, but we have to learn anything about our culture. 

MV: As someone who is preserving and digitising these manuscripts, what is more important for you? Is it the text within the manuscript, or is it the physicality of the manuscript? And I’m asking you this because I read that for Malay manuscripts, the text is considered far more significant than the object. Is this binary between the text and the physical object a binary that exists in this field, or is it imagined? And if it does exist, does it apply to the Javanese manuscripts by any capacity? And what do you give more significance when you’re preserving the manuscript, the text or the physicality? 

HAE: OK, for us, both of them are important between the text and also the physical of the manuscript. Both of them are important, so not one that could be more important to preserve or to be maintained. Both of them we should maintain it for many years. But some people, especially the owner of the manuscript, some of them think that the text is more important, but some of them also think that the physical of the manuscript is more important than the text. That’s why when the physical is more important, no one would touch the physical, no one could see, or they give some sajen (ed. incense and floral offerings) or flower, various flower and give them aromatic scent.  

MV: A smell? 

HAE: Yeah, aromatic smell, dupa [ed. Incense] to make the manuscript more about feeling more… 

MV: sacred? 

HAE: Yeah, feeling more sacred. But not much, just some of them [ed. the owners]. So, for the owner or other people, there are two types [to] think about this. One think that the text is more important and the other think that the physical is more important, but for us, especially Jangkah team, both of them are important. 

MV: What challenges or dangers do you perceive that Indonesia’s textual heritage is facing today? And, you know, what are some questions you personally ask yourself while working to preserve this heritage? What is more important to you as you do this work? 

HAE: OK. Our challenges, our dangers…the first is human. [Laughter] OK, the first is human because, yeah, when we teach them or when we give explanation of how [it is] important to keep the manuscript, how to treat the manuscript, but not everyone will hear us. Because sometimes they know what should they do to treat the manuscript, but yeah, I think it’s usual [ed. out of habit] what they’re doing. So for example, when they open the sheet or the paper to change the paper, sometime when it is hard to take the paper, they still need their saliva! [Laughter] I think, yeah, I teach them how to touch the manuscript. It is a simple thing. Before you…when you don’t have a glove, you just need to wash your hand and make sure that your hand is sanitized or clean. So, you can touch the manuscript and open the manuscript gentle, just slowly open the page one-by-one. Just be patient. The second is, not every day we watch the owner. Not every day, we are in the contact so when we don’t have contact, maybe for long time or in time that we are not in the contact. So maybe sometimes they meet other people, with maybe different thing, yeah? So sometimes, there is some people that made an issue about the manuscript, so the owner feeling hesitation or afraid or well, it’s something about the manuscript. Then when we come back, the owner feel uncomfortable with us or something like that. Yeah, sometimes we desert it in the field. Then the other reason is environment because in Indonesia, in here, we have two seasons and the humidity, insects. So many insects here and that’s also one of the dangers for the manuscript. Yeah, because some of the owners don’t know how to treat [it], so most of the manuscript they have in a bad condition.  

When I touch the manuscript or I read the text, it feels like iPhone treasure because inside the manuscript contains many information or knowledge. My goal for the manuscript—I hope I could find other manuscripts, especially in the civilization, that we’ve never seen before or never known before so we could take responsibility and we could treat them well. Taking care of the manuscript so we get more positive thing from the manuscript. Maybe it could increase my knowledge and also my experience in the field. One of my projects is making a mapping, especially for civilization manuscript in Indonesia. So, everyone who loves or interested in manuscript, they could come visit the owner and see the manuscript directly. I think the connection between the manuscript or bonding between the manuscript, the owner, and maybe researcher or other people who had interest…they could make connection and also we could make a good ecosystem, especially in manuscript, so we could support each other and to share anything about manuscripts. It will enrich our knowledge or anything about it. 

MV: Yeah, that’s absolutely lovely. I think I’m really looking forward to your new project, the one where you mapping manuscripts and with the people who are interested because that sort of shows why there’s still a need for a physical copy of a manuscript, right? It’s something beyond just the text that you see on a digital screen like, yeah, that is important, but then there’s some personal relationship that people can have with objects such as manuscripts. I’m looking forward to listening to more about your project once it’s done. And yeah, thank you so much for your valuable insights today. It means a lot to me personally listening to somebody who is working with manuscripts in the field so thank you so much for all of your time. 

HAE: You’re welcome Mahita. I think digitising is so important, [but also] that taking care of the physical of the manuscript is also important because we are not making, we are not digitising, but we have to make the good ecosystem for this program. So not only the researcher or the people who can…because you know some owner in here, they could not reach the Internet, so when their manuscript has done to digitise so they don’t know where they could see the photo. But yeah, they should see the physical manuscript, because the owner—he’s old, so maybe they don’t know how to use the phone or some modern technology.