Description: This study of the Javanese shadow theatre is grounded in research in Holland and Java. It spans the elusive gap between history and ethnography and tries to strike a balance between the two. Dutch sources shed light on how Dutch scholars saw the tradition in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and how this way of looking at the shadow theatre influenced not only succeeding generations of scholars but also those of Javanese performers. In Dutch and Javanese libraries there are descriptions of the tradition from the nineteenth century that help create pictures of the shadow theatre's past. All researchers must gratefully acknowledge the rigor and care that went into the compilation and preservation of these materials by Dutch scholars and their Javanese colleagues.

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