our of the then reigning sovereign of Majapahit. The king in question was Hayam Wuruk, known by the royal style of king Rajasanagara and also as Sang Hyang Wekasing Sukha, not to mention all his other titles. This monarch, who was a son of the queen already mentioned, appears to have ascended the throne at the age of 16 in the year 1350 A.D., his mother (who till then had acted as regent) laving handed over the government to him in that year; and he reigned till his death in the year 1389 A.D). It was during his reign that the power of Majapahit really culminated and its political expansion reach- ed its widest extent.
The poem, written in the Javanese language of that period, is an important historical document. The unique manuscript containing it was discovered by the late Dr. Brandes among the books of the last Balinese ruler of Lombok, when that island was taken under the immediate control of the Dutch colonial government. Dr. Brandes published it in Deel LIV of the Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen in 1902. Unfortunately he only gave the poem in the original Balinese script, without transliteration, translation notes or commentary, a circumstance which leaves it a sealed book except to an extremely limited number of specialists; for it is given to few (even amongst Dutch scholars) to understand 14th, century Javanese and read the Balinese character readily. Under the circumstances one must be thankful that Professor Kern has given some information on the subject for the bene- fit of the general reader, who is not a Kawi scholar. In the Indische Gids for 1903 (I, pp. 341-360) he gave a general ac- count of the contents of the poem, with particular reference to some of its geographical data, and in Deel LVIII (1905) and Deel LXI (1908) of the Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Vol- kenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië he returned to the subject and dealt more particularly with some of the genealogical and chronological details contained in the poem. Colonel G. E. Gerini further dealt with some of the geographical data of the Nāgarakětāgama, especially those connected with Siam and the Malay Peninsula, in a paper published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (July 1905), to which I wrote a
