Tommy Christomy and Nurhata
Introduction
Awareness of the manuscripts significance for Indonesian culture is in critical condition. Incomprehension about the importance of manuscripts is experienced not only by government officials, who have duties to protect them, but also by manuscripts owners. In some occasions in doing observation in Sorong Papua recently, for example, we found that society, owners, and manuscripts heirs tend to be neglected the manuscripts. Worse, those manuscripts are already regarded as antique commodities, as Pudjiastuti’s opinion (2010), that have unimaginable price. Some sellers and brokers are suspected as suppliers of archipelago manuscripts for international institution, while the other of manuscripts falls to the auction.
Referring to that fact, the most loosing party is actually that society itself. That is because they are automatically going to be loss of their cultural references. This country will also suffer from a loss because cultural strategies that ought to be supported by local wisdom in certain community are actually documented and represented through manuscripts. Moreover, our nation is not going to be able to understand the benefit of our ancestors’ heritage. What a condition that we do not expect at all.
There are many scriptoriums in archipelago. Indramayu as an area located in North coastal West Java is included into one of them. Indramayu, which is frequently considered having maritime history and rich coastal culture, is often regarded as an area under the Cirebon authority in the past. Recently, however, there is a tendency to re-examine the Indramayu intellectual cultural treasures, which are represented through cultural artifacts as their independent entity, not as one of Cirebon variants or other Sundanese areas. Furthermore, there is also a tendency from the society who lives in the surrounding of Cimanuk River who has idolized Wiralodra as a character involved in Indramayu establishment. According to local historian and archeology, Wiralodra is a character in Indramayu who existed after the 16th century. Based on our beginning research in this area, we predict that there are still so many scriptoriums in Indramayu which are not explored by the researchers and government yet. Instead, there are many Indramayu’s people who do not figure out what is the significance of the existence of manuscripts.
This research is related to indigenous knowledge study that focuses on the coastal manuscripts corpora, primarily Indramayu manuscripts. Indramayu manuscripts as a corpus, in this context, refers to all of manuscripts found in fieldworks.
Method and Materials
This research uses codicology and philology approach to investigate the content of manuscripts. Besides that, we also use Knowledge Management System (KMS) to explore the knowledge in the research objects. Some steps in KMS are first, the researcher will utilize the data in database (acquisition); and then those data will be packed for utilization of strategic needs (utilization) of tacit knowledge. After that, the knowledge will be shared to some related parties, such as stakeholder, that enable interactivity (schema 1). In this process, we adopt Amrit Tiwana framework (1999) that focuses on the strategic role of university as an institution that is able to manage tacit knowledge. The tacit knowledge, which is usually documented in manuscripts in descriptive form, is expressed explicitly. In the future, public through digital networking infrastructure, which is available in the university, can utilize that knowledge.
This research is divided by three steps. First, fieldworks. This step is held to select the manuscripts which are spread in Indramayu society and the areas surrounding it. In this process, codicology and philology approach is very needed. According codicology perspective, a manuscript as if having its own signature to inform us about the origin of manuscript related to the material used. Physical aspects of manuscript will be noted carefully. After that, philology approach is used to investigate the unique content in a manuscript. In this step, the study of philology is useful to find some manuscripts that can represent Indramayu coastal culture that also contains local wisdom value. Manuscripts that are contained tacit knowledge are described in explicit format in order to be easy to access. Thereby, all of the manuscripts found would be identified and depicted in order to be stored in digital data. Some manuscripts that are not represented directly about the Indramayu local wisdom remain to be descripted but not to be analysed. Thus, all of information needed, manuscripts and the information inside, are still recorded digitally very well categorized as Indramayu manuscripts corpora.
After doing them, still included into the first step, what to do then is data acquisition step. Data are obtained from the fieldwork research, which were codified and analyzed using philology approach to be acquired into digital data corpus.
The second step is utilization. In this step, data can be used by public (Nonaka, 1991:2—9; Tiwana, 1999). Indramayu manuscripts are considered to have tacit knowledge in the form of many kind of expressions: metaphor, symbols, and other unique local expressions such as primbon, babad, history, fetish, holy book, tembang, etc. Tacit knowledge will be explained using semiotics analysis and interpretation in order to get referential aspects from every expressions. This is because those expressions are contained certain knowledge that are not identified yet.
The third step, as stated by Tiwana (1999), corpora is not enough because it has to be explained into some components of knowledge that can be shared to others, especially to the stakeholders and the other users in general. The process of sharing knowledge will use the infrastructure of the Center of Cultural Data (Pusat Data Budaya) which is owned by FIB UI and UI Library. The components of knowledge then will be published in IMC (Indramayu Manuscripts Collection) and it can be downloaded by Archipelago Manuscripts Society, government, Indramayu society, and other users interactively. It means that those knowledge can be criticized, added, or even commented by users (KMS, chart II). In this step, filtering which is related to the sources are done in order to keep the property right.
Results and Discussion
Based on our fieldwork, we found that the old manuscripts, which are written in some different languages and letters, have been spread in the society but in endangered condition. In eleven villages in Indramayu, we identified more than a hundred manuscripts in different genres, like history and primbon. To preserve those manuscripts, philology suggests doing manuscript identification, description, and conservation. Without doing those steps, there is no guarantee that we are able to access those manuscripts again in the future. Besides lack of knowledge from the manuscripts’ owners, there are some factors that aggravating the manuscripts condition, such as giving the manuscript to the other party, selling, discarding, or even burying it.
Conclusion
Research in manuscripts shows that the society still keeps their manuscripts' ancestors, even though most of them do not figure out anymore about the content of the text and how to maintain it. People's perceptions about manuscript are really varied and it has some impact to the existence of the manuscripts. The owner of manuscript believes that this text can not be inherited carelessly or even in random. That is why certain manuscript has to be vanished to avoid something that is not expected. nevertheless, some owners of manuscripts still keep their text because they understand about the content. This is of course because they are able to read the manuscript writings. The ability to read the manuscript, which is written in pegon and cacarakan, is merely expertized by the elders. It seems that there is no effort to teach that ability to the young generation. Based on that reality, identification and conservation become two actions that are very important. In the beginning of this research, we are success to identify a hundred of manuscripts titles with varied genres. Those manuscripts are processed into database by using Endnote. This database is actually the basic to build KMS, which is possible to be accessed by public in order to be used further.
Indramayu manuscripts that were identified through this research, most of them are related to the religion, babad and history, and primbon. In general, local wisdoms which are reflected through manuscripts are related to farming, the perception of society about the condition of their era, and tarekat.
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