Pegon is an adaptation of Arabic writing used to record local languages, notably Javanese and Sundanese, among Muslim communities on Java. Its letters can carry a Javanese translation of an Arabic lesson or a Sundanese poem about spiritual experience. Recognizing the Arabic-derived shapes is therefore only the beginning: readers also need to identify the language and the way a text was used.
The museum's manuscripts and literature collection places Pegon within a wider history of writing. The overview of precolonial scripts introduces that diversity; Pegon offers a closer view of how Islamic learning worked through local languages.
Adapting Letters to Local Sounds
Pegon runs from right to left. Writers use Arabic letters for familiar consonants and adapt letter forms for sounds without a direct Arabic equivalent. Sri Wahyuni and Rustam Ibrahim describe added dots for sounds such as c and ng, and the use of alif, waw, and ya to represent vowels. These changes made Arabic writing usable for a different sound system. Wahyuni and Ibrahim.
An Arabic-looking page need not be in Arabic. Likewise, the name Pegon alone does not tell us whether its words are Javanese or Sundanese. This distinction also matters when looking at Lontara manuscripts, where a writing system serves more than one language.
Learning through Makna Gandhul
In pesantren, Islamic boarding schools, Pegon can help students follow Arabic texts through local-language explanations. Ahmad Baidowi's study of Javanese Qur'anic commentaries discusses makna gandhul, word-by-word translation that also supports learning Arabic grammar. His examples include Al-Ibrīz by KH Bisri Mustafa, Al-Iklīl by KH Misbah Mustafa, and Al-Maḥallī by KH Mudjab Mahalli. Baidowi.
Such a page joins two tasks: keeping the Arabic wording visible and making its meaning available in Javanese. The translation is part of the apparatus of study, showing how readers worked between languages rather than abandoning one for the other.
A Paper Manuscript with Two Languages
British Library manuscript Or 16878 provides an identifiable example. Catalogued as late nineteenth-century and originating in Java, it contains an Arabic text with interlinear Javanese translation in Pegon. Its 157 folios are described as brownish Dutch paper, with black and red ink and a brown cardboard binding with an envelope flap. British Library catalogue.
The space between lines matters as much as the main text: it accommodates another language. In a museum display, a close view of that arrangement can explain the manuscript's function more clearly than an isolated enlargement of a letter.
Sundanese Poetry and Sufi Thought
Pegon also carried sustained literary expression. Jajang A. Rohmana's study identifies more than 10,000 stanzas of Sundanese Sufi poetry in Pegon by Haji Hasan Mustapa (1852–1930). His dangding uses the metrical forms called pupuh. Rohmana discusses manuscript copies in Leiden, including Cod. Or. 7872–7879, and interprets Mustapa's writing as a meeting of Sufi thought and Sundanese cultural expression. Rohmana, especially pp. 309–311.
Here, the local language shapes the literary work itself. Pegon records Sundanese verse, rather than merely providing annotations to an Arabic original.
A Chronicle beyond the Classroom
The Babad Diponegoro shows another use: autobiographical historical writing in Javanese macapat verse. UNESCO's nomination identifies the National Library of Indonesia's KBG 282 as a Pegon copy made in 1865–1866 from Diponegoro's original, written between 20 May 1831 and 5 February 1832. Those dates distinguish the surviving copy from the earlier composition. UNESCO nomination, section 3.1.
Reading Pegon as Living Heritage
A 2024 study by Sahal Mahfudh and Abdul Aziz El Tiganiy examined seven traditional pesantren communities and associated networks in Central and East Java, including Rembang, Tuban, and Kediri. It documents continued translation, teaching, production, and circulation of Pegon texts. Mahfudh and El Tiganiy.
Pegon belongs both to manuscript collections and to practices of learning. Read alongside sacred texts and manuscripts of the archipelago, these examples invite attention to the page's language, material, layout, and readers. Each reveals a different way Arabic writing became a vehicle for local knowledge.