Malay manuscripts: a guide to paper and watermarks. The collected works of Russell Jones 1972–2015.

EUROPEAN AND ASIAN PAPERS IN MALAY MANUSCRIPTS Introduction [178]One of the advantages of discussing the materials on which manuscripts are written (as opposed for example to discussing language or script) is that any findings can usually be extended to the manuscripts produced in other traditions. The reasons seem to be the failure to distinguish between manuscripts and lithographs, or manuscripts and photocopies; and between manuscripts in Malay and those in Arabic or Acehnese; and scholars seem to borrow manuscripts from each other, further blurring the size of actual collections. At the workshop the participants agreed on a number of Malay/Indonesian terms relating to the physical characteristics of manuscripts that could be employed, such as I cap kertas i (for watermarks), I kertas acuan garis i (for laid paper) and I jilidan i (for binding) (Jones [36]: 70).[174] Russell's articles (Jones [64], [65]) were summarised in a paper, 'Watermarks in Indonesian and Malay manuscripts, some developments in theory and practice' (Jones [66]), presented at the 2011 ASEASUK conference in Cambridge. The data must be regarded as provisional: the dates especially may have to be revised when the manuscripts have been studied more carefully; also, the data may not be representative of Malay manuscripts as a whole; for one thing, there is in it a preponderance of manuscripts written on paper made in Britain, and quite possibly the list contains a disproportionate number of manuscripts "copied to order", giving quite possibly a shorter interval between the making and the use of the paper than would be true of manuscripts in general. [Extracted from the article]