The Rencong script, locally known as ''Surat Ulu'' ('upstream script') is a writing system family found in central and

south Sumatra South Sumatra ( id, Sumatra Selatan) is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southeast of the island of Sumatra, The province spans and had a population of 8,467,432 at the 2020 Census. The capital of the province is Palembang. The prov ...

, in the regions of Kerinci,

Bengkulu Bengkulu is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southwest coast of Sumatra. It was formed on 18 November 1968 by separating out the former Bencoolen Residency area from the province of South Sumatra under Law No. 9 of 1967 and was fi ...

Palembang Palembang () is the capital city of the Indonesian province of South Sumatra. The city proper covers on both banks of the Musi River on the eastern lowland of southern Sumatra. It had a population of 1,668,848 at the 2020 Census. Palembang ...

and

Lampung Lampung ( Lampung: ), officially the Province of Lampung ( id, Provinsi Lampung) is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southern tip of the island of Sumatra. It has a short border with the province of Bengkulu to the northwest, and ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...

. It was used to write manuscripts in Sumatran languages and Malay, such as the Tanjung Tanah Code of Law. The Malay writing was gradually replaced by the

Jawi script Jawi (; ace, Jawoë; Kelantan-Pattani: ''Yawi''; ) is a writing system used for writing several languages of Southeast Asia, such as Acehnese, Banjarese, Kerinci, Maguindanaon, Malay, Minangkabau, Tausūg, and Ternate. Jawi is bas ...

, a localized version of the

Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and th ...

Naming

The terms "surat" and "ulu" are the origin of the name Surat Ulu. While "ulu" ('upstream') refers to the highland region where the rivers in

South Sumatra South Sumatra ( id, Sumatra Selatan) is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southeast of the island of Sumatra, The province spans and had a population of 8,467,432 at the 2020 Census. The capital of the province is Palembang. The prov ...

and

originate (the

Barisan Mountains The Bukit Barisan or the Barisan Mountains are a mountain range on the western side of Sumatra, Indonesia, covering nearly 1,700 km (1,050 mi) from the north to the south of the island. The Bukit Barisan range consists primarily of volca ...

), "Surat" refers to the script. The user community first referred to this script family as ''Surat Ulu''. The Rencong script () is another well-known naming system. "Rencong" is thought to be derived from the Old Malay word ''mèncong'', which means oblique/not straight. It could also be derived from the word ''runcing'' ('sharp'), as this script family was originally written with a sharp knife tip. Regardless of its origin, Western scholars frequently use this term to refer to this family of scripts. The Kaganga script is another name for it. Mervyn A. Jaspan (1926-1975), an

anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms an ...

at the

University of Hull , mottoeng = Bearing the Torch f learning, established = 1927 – University College Hull1954 – university status , type = Public , endowment = £18.8 million (2016) , budget = £190 million ...

, coined the term to refer to all Brahmi script lineages, not just the Ulu scripts. The name "Kaganga" is derived from the first three letters of the Pāṇini sequence, which is used in the Brahmi (Indian) script family. This is equivalent to the word "alphabet," which is derived from the names of the first two letters of the

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as ...

(Α-Β, ''alpha-beta''), and the word "abjad," which is derived from the names of the first four letters of the Arabic alphabet (ا-ب-ج-د, ''alif-ba-jim-dal''). Several tribes have their own names in addition to the three mentioned above. For example, this script family is known as the ''surat ʁincung'' among the Pasemah ethnic group.

Materials

Rencong script was often written on

tree bark Bark is the outermost layers of stems and roots of woody plants. Plants with bark include trees, woody vines, and shrubs. Bark refers to all the tissues outside the vascular cambium and is a nontechnical term. It overlays the wood and consist ...

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, ...

, horns and palmyra-palm leaves.Miller, Christopher. (2011)
''Indonesian and Philippine Scripts and extensions not yet encoded or proposed for encoding in Unicode as of version 6.0: A report for the Script Encoding Initiative''.
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Disambiguation

The term "Rencong" is often confused with "Rejang", which refers to a specific Rencong alphabet that was used to write various dialects of the

Rejang language Rejang (, ) is an Austronesian language predominantly spoken by the Rejang people in southwestern parts of Sumatra (Bengkulu), Indonesia. There are five dialects, spread from mountainous region to the coastal region of Bengkulu, including the ...

and for writing Malay in the region.

Distribution

This map below shows the distribution of various Rencong alphabets in South Sumatra:

Galleries

File:Kerinci MSS detail.jpg, Detail of a Kerinci manuscript (KITLV Or. 239). The text reads (Voorhoeve's spelling): "haku manangis ma / njaru ka'u ka'u di / saru tijada da / tang itu hadik sa, which is translated by Voorhoeve as: "I am weeping, calling you; though called, you do not come" (hitu adik sa- is the rest of 4th line). File:Nama Instansi.jpg, Signboard of government office buildings in

Kerinci Regency Kerinci is a regency (''kabupaten'') in Jambi province, on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. The regency has an area of . Kerinci Regency had a population of 229,495 at the 2010 Census, 234,912 at the 2015 Census and 250,259 at the 2020 Census; t ...

File:Nama Jalan.jpg, Street sign in

File:Plang SDN 1 Podomoro, Pringsewu, Lampung.jpg, SDN 1 Podomoro signboard, Pringsewu, Lampung File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Handschrift op 20 bamboelatjes TMnr A-3291.jpg, ''Gelumpai'' inscribed with the Rejang script

Notes

References

Bibliographies

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Rencong Script Brahmic scripts Indonesian scripts