[A. G. Maisey]

Jean, working from the notes you have presented, I can understand your frustrations.

The original notes would have been handwritten in Honocoroko, Jawi, from that they would have been transcribed to Roman text, that Romanised Jawi was then translated to Bahasa Indonesia. Many opportunities for misspellings and incorrect translations and misunderstandings.

Apart from that, Mpu Wirasukadgo would have obtained his understanding from verbal transmission, which would have been a generally accepted version at that time.

Then you have the fact that these notes refer to various specific makers, rather than to overall tells relating to a classification.

Something you might not realise is that in Jawa, especially in Kraton society, a person does not have the same name at birth that he has when he goes into the grave. Each time a situation in his life changes, so does his name. He gets a rise in rank, his name changes, he hits a patch of bad luck, his name changes, he goes to live in a different location, his name changes.

Even when he does not change his name himself, other people will change it for him, he might be known to his neighbours as Pak Wasijo, but to his business associates as Pak Wakijo.

Mpu Pauzan Pusposukadgo was just Pak Fauzan for many years, then he began become well known, so he became Mpu Pauzan Pusposukadgo, AKA Pak Pus, and he , himself, never used "Mpu/Empu". Mpu Suparman had a number of different names, in fact every Javanese person I know has had several different names, and sometimes more than only one name/identity at the same time.

This applies not only to Javanese people, Chinese people too, in Jawa will have several names.

Some of the names of empus in the notes you have shown do align with Pangeran Wijil's babad, others do not, still others, like Keleng for example were known by one name in one place, and a different name somewhere else, in Pjjrn Keleng was Keleng, in Madura he was Kasa(Koso), in other places he was Kekep, and he travelled around from Blambangan to Pjjrn and places in between.

If you think you have much chance of making sense of all these old notes that have been through half a dozen transcriptions and twice as many translations, think again.

To have any chance of coming to terms with this stuff we need to go back to the original text, get a competent transcription into Romanised text, get that Roman text translated into Bahasa Indonesia, and then be able to read it in BI and check it against the original.

It is a long process. It is what I did with Pangeran Wijil's babad. You need at least competent double checks at every stage, even then, some of the ideas are not really all that easy to put into either BI or into English.

But having done all that you then need to ask if you are looking at fact as you & I understand fact, or if you are looking at the individual belief of somebody, or if you are looking at something that the original author's Lord wanted to see.