Lontara script
The Lontara script, also known as the Bugis script, Bugis-Makassar script, or Urupu Sulapa’ Eppa’ "four-cornered letters", is one of Indonesia's traditional scripts developed in the South Sulawesi and West Sulawesi region. The script is primarily used to write the Buginese language, followed by Makassarese and Mandar. Closely related variants of Lontara are also used to write several languages outside of Sulawesi such as Bima, Ende, and Sumbawa. The script was actively used by several South Sulawesi societies for day-to-day and literary texts from at least mid-15th Century CE until the mid-20th Century CE, before its function was gradually supplanted by the Latin alphabet. Today the script is taught in South Sulawesi Province as part of the local curriculum, but with very limited usage in everyday life.
Lontara is an abugida with 23 basic letters. The script is a descendant of Brahmi through Kawi intermediaries. As of other Brahmic scripts, each letter represents a syllable with an inherent vowel, which can be changed with diacritics. The direction of writing is left to right. Traditionally, the script is written without word breaks and with little to no punctuation. A typical Lontara text may contain many ambiguities as coda syllables, or consonants at the end of syllables, are normally not written and must be supplied by readers from context.
History
Lontara is a descendant of the Kawi script, used in Maritime Southeast Asia around 800 CE. It is unclear whether the script is a direct descendant from Kawi, or derived from one of Kawi's other descendants. One theory states that it is modelled after the Rejang script, perhaps due to their graphical similarities. But this claim may be unfounded as some characters of the Lontara are a late development.The term Lontara has also come to refer to literature regarding Bugis history and genealogy, an important subject in traditional South Sulawesi societies. Historically, Lontara was also used for a range of documents including contracts, trade laws, treaties, maps, and journals. These documents are commonly written in a contemporary-like book form, but they can be written in a traditional palm-leaf manuscript called lontar, in which a long, thin strip of dried lontar is rolled to a wooden axis in similar manner to a tape recorder. The text is then read by scrolling the lontar strip from left to right.
Lontara in South Sulawesi appears to have first developed in Bugis area of the Cenrana-Walannae region at about 1400. Writing may have spread to other parts of the South Sulawesi from this region, but the possibility of independent developments cannot be dismissed. What is evident is that the earliest written records for which there is any evidence were genealogical.
When paper became available in South Sulawesi in the early 17th century, Lontara script, which previously had to be written straight, angled-corner and rigid on palm leaves, could now be written faster and more variedly using ink on paper. It is worth noting that R.A. Kern writes that modified curved letters in the Lontara script one finds written on paper do not appear to have been used in the palm-leaf Bugis manuscripts he examined.
Through the efforts of Dutch Linguist, B.F. Matthes, printing types of the Bugis characters, designed and cast in Rotterdam in the mid-19th century, were used from that time onwards for printing in both the South Celebes capital, Makassar, and Amsterdam. They were also used as models for teaching the script in schools, first in Makassar and environs, and then gradually in other areas of South Celebes. This process of standardization clearly influenced the later handwriting of the script. As a standard style of the script emerged, previously existing variations disappeared. By the end of the 19th century, the use of the Makasar had been completely replaced by the Lontara Bugis script, which Makassarese writers sometimes referred to as "New Lontara".
Although the Latin alphabet has largely replaced Lontara, it is still used to a limited extent in Bugis and Makasar. In Bugis, its usage is limited to ceremonial purposes such as wedding ceremonies. Lontara is also used extensively in printing traditional Buginese literature. In Makasar, Lontara is additionally used for personal documents such as letters and notes. Those who are skilled in writing the script are known as palontara, or 'writing specialists'.
Usage
Traditionally, Lontara is used to write several languages of south Sulawesi. Most Lontara materials are written in the Bugis language, followed by Makassarese and Mandar. The Toraja people who also reside in south Sulawesi do not use the script as their literary tradition is primarily oral based, without an indigenous written form. Due to Bugis-Makassar contact, modified Lontara are also used for several writing traditions outside of south Sulawesi, like the Bima, in eastern Sumbawa Island and Ende in Flores Island.In historical South Sulawesi cultural sphere, the Lontara script was used in a number of related text traditions, most of which are written in manuscripts. The term lontara also refers to a literary genre that deals with history and genealogies, the most widely written and important writing topics by the Buginese and neighboring Makassar people. This genre can be divided into several sub-types: genealogy, daily registers, and chronicles. Each kingdom of South Sulawesi generally had their own official historiography in some compositional structure that utilized these three forms. Compared to "historical" records from other parts of the archipelago, historical records in the literary tradition of South Sulawesi are decidedly more "realistic"; historical events are explained in a straightforward and plausible manner, and the relatively few fantastic elements are marked with conventional wordings so that the overall record feels factual and realistic. Even so, such historical records are still susceptible to political meddling as a mean of ratifying power, descent, and territorial claims of ambitious rulers.
The use of registers is one of south Sulawesi's unique phenomena with no known parallel in other Malay writing traditions. Daily registers are often made by high ranking member of societies, such as sultans, monarchs, and prime ministers. The bulk of register consists of ruled columns with dates, in which the register owner would log important events in the allocated space of each date. Not all lines are filled if the corresponding dates did not have anything considered worthwhile to note, but only one line is reserved for each date. For a particularly eventful date, a writer would freely rotate the lines to fill in all available space. This may result in some pages with rather chaotic appearance of zig-zag lines that need to be rotated accordingly in order to be read. One example of a royal daily register in the public collection is the daily register of Sultan Ahmad al-Salih Syamsuddin, which he personally wrote from January 1, 1775 to 1795 CE.
One of the most common literary work Lontara texts is the Bugis epic Sure’ Galigo also known as I La Galigo. This is a long work composed of pentametric verses which relates the story of humanity's origins but also serves as practical everyday almanac. Most characters are demi-gods or their descendants spanning several generations, set in the mythological kingdoms of pre-Islamic Sulawesi. While the story took place over many episodes that can stand alone, the contents, language, and characters of each episodes are interconnected in such a way that they can be understood as part of the same Galigo. Most texts are only extracts of these episodes rather than a "complete" Galigo which would be impractical to write. Put together, writing a complete Galigo is estimated to take 6000 folio pages, making it one of the longest literary work in the world. The poetical conventions and allusions of Galigo mixed with the historicalness of lontara genre would also lend to a genre of poems known as tolo’.
Lontara script is also frequently found in Islamic themed texts such as hikayat, prayer guide, azimat, tafsir, and fiqh. Such texts are almost always written with a mixture of Arabic Jawi alphabet especially for Arabic and Malay terms. Lontara script usage in Islamic texts persisted the longest compared to other type of texts and still produced in the early 21st century. One of the more prolific producer of Lontara-Islamic texts is the Pesantren As'adiyah in Sengkang who published various publications with Lontara texts since the mid 20th century. However at the dawn of the 21st century, the volume and quality of Lontara publications rapidly declined. To paraphrase Tol, the impression that these publications make on present readers, with their old-fashioned techniques, unattractive manufacture, and general sloppiness, is that they are very much something of the past. Today, almost no new publications are published in Lontara, and even reprints of works that originally have Lontara are often replaced by Romanized version.