Mpu Monaguna’s Sumanasantaka: An Old Javanese Epic Poem, its Indian Source and Balinese Illustrations

Mpu Monaguna’s early thirteenth century epic poem Sumanasantaka is a vernacular rendering of Kalidasa’s story of Prince Aja and Princess Indumati told in the Raghuvamsa. In it the poet exploits his source narrative to describe and comment on the Javanese world of his times. In Mpu Monaguna’s Sumanasantaka the authors offer an edited text and translation of Mpu Monaguna’s epic kakawin and extensive commentary on the editing of the manuscripts and history of the poem and its story, the relationship between the Old Javanese poem and Kalidasa’s Raghuvamsa, the way in which the poem imagines the lived environment of ancient Java in the early thirteenth century and Balinese painted representations of the story of Prince Aja and Princess Indumati.