Javanese Alphabet - History

History

See also: Kawi script

Javanese and Balinese are modern variants of the old Kawi script, a Brahmic script introduced to Java along with Hinduism and Buddhism. Kawi is first attested in a legal document from 804 CE. It was widely used in literature and translations from Sanskrit from the tenth century; by the seventeenth, the script is identified as carakan. A Latin orthography based on Dutch was introduced in 1926, revised in 1972–1973, and has largely supplanted the carakan.

Currently, there are only a few newspapers and magazines being printed in the Javanese script, such as "Jaka Lodhang". However it is still taught in most elementary school and some junior high school as of compulsory subject in Javanese language areas.

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