Authenticity, Authority, and Sundanese Historical Memory: The Wangsakerta Manuscript Controversy, 1986–1995

Abstract

This article reconstructs the controversy over the Wangsakerta manuscripts among historians, archaeologists, philologists, and Sundanese cultural intellectuals between 1986 and 1995. Rather than treating the dispute as a binary contest between authenticity and forgery, it examines how standards of historical evidence collided with the cultural demand for a fuller and more affirming account of the Sundanese past. The study employs a historical research method comprising heuristics, external and internal source criticism, interpretation, and historiography. Its principal evidence consists of Edi S. Ekadjati’s documentary compilation, contemporary editions and transliterations, seminar papers, press articles, museum documentation, and later historiographical assessments. The controversy developed in three phases. The years 1986–1987 were marked by philological publication and an asymmetrical public record dominated by advocates. The years 1988–1989 brought direct confrontation in academic forums, material testing, and national press coverage. The years 1990–1995 witnessed a decline in collective debate without methodological or cultural consensus. The article argues that the dispute was a struggle over historical authority as much as manuscript authenticity. Critics insisted on provenance, material analysis, paleography, anachronism, and independent corroboration. Supporters emphasized the corpus’s cultural value, the scarcity of local written sources, and the need for continued investigation. Its novelty lies in reconstructing the chronology of this shift, identifying the asymmetry of the early documentary record, and showing how academic forums and mass media converted a technical problem of source criticism into a public argument about Sundanese historical memory under the New Order.