A CHAIN OF KINGS - Books and Journals

chapter ii
The chronicle texts
In between the historical context discussed in Chapter I and translations of
the Gowa and Talloq chronicles in the following chapters lay the texts themselves.
This chapter performs three functions: describing the manuscripts
used in the preparation of the translations, analyzing the tradition of chronicle
composition in Makassar, and discussing the choices made in the process
of translation itself.
Description of manuscripts
An unknown number of manuscripts containing either or both the Gowa and
Talloq chronicles are available in libraries, archives, and miscellaneous collections
across the world. No comprehensive list or catalog exists. This edition
is based on detailed analysis and comparison of texts in the following eight
manuscripts.
1 BL ‒ British Library MS 12351 (London, England). This eighteenth-century
codex of historical texts is written in the ‘Old Makassarese’ or jangang-
jangang script. It contains complete texts of the Gowa and Talloq chronicles,
though the text of the Gowa chronicle does not contain the account of
the reign of Sultan Hasanuddin, and presumably derives from a copy of
the chronicle extant before that section was composed. It was inscribed
upside-down in a book with already numbered pages, meaning that the
chronicles begin on page 33 and end on page 20, with recto preceding
verso pages.
2 KIT ‒ Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen MS 668/216 (Amsterdam, the
Netherlands). Like BL, this is an eighteenth-century codex of historical
texts written in the ‘Old Makassarese’ or jangang-jangang script. It is missing
the first pages of the Gowa chronicle, however, and its narrative begins
mid-sentence during the account of Karaeng Tumapaqrisiq Kallonna’s
reign. One third of the way through its account of Tunipalangga’s reign,