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As the name "War of the Bharatas" is applicable, strictly speaking, to only one-fifth part of the whole poem, it is probable that the great epic was not yet known under this title at the time when it was transported from India to Java. The Ramayana appears in a slightly changed form in the Kavi version.
Suddenly I suppose because a doubt of my perfect Freemasonry had been aroused by my absurd question he said, holding up a kettle "What do you call this here in Rommanis?" "I call it a kekavi or a kavi," I said. "But it isn't right Rommany. It's Greek, which the Rommanichals picked up on their way here."
Thus, O chief of Bhrigu's race, hath the whole world been peopled with the progeny of Angiras, and Kavi and Bhrigu. The puissant and supreme Lord Mahadeva in the form of Varuna which he had assumed for his sacrifice had first, O learned Brahmana, adopted both Kavi and Angiras. Hence, these two are regarded as of Varuna.
In Bali, therefore, it is natural that we should find the fullest remains of such parts of the Kavi literature as are most closely identified with that of Continental India. Only fragments of the two great Indian epics, the Mahabharata, or "Great War of the Sons of King Bharata," and the Ramayana, or "Adventures of Rama," are found in Java; but in Bali Kavi versions of both appear.
One's house always blazes forth with beauty in consequence of the household deities that live in it. Hence, he that desires his own advancement and prosperity should worship the household deities by offering them the first portion of every food." Even thus did the learned Kavi of Bhrigu's race discourse to Vali, the chief of the Asuras.
The subjects of the wayang plays are taken from the Kavi poems, from the Panjis, and especially from the chronicles. Some of these plays, or lampahans, are in metre, others are in prose. Both alike consist of summaries of the original poems on which they are based, and are intended for the use of the dalang.
Both poems appear, however, to have acquired a reputation for unusual sanctity. The difference between the Kavi and Indian versions of these epics seems to afford additional evidence if any such were needed that neither the Mahabharata nor the Ramayana is the work of a single mind, but that both are a collection or compilation of myths.
They were three male persons, endued with bodies that partook of the characters of the circumstances from which they respectively sprang. The third sprang from a heap of extinguished charcoals and he came to be called by the name of Kavi. It has been already said that the first came out with flames emanating from his body and hence he was called Bhrigu.
The original Indian epic is divided into seven Kandas, or volumes, which are again subdivided into chapters. The Kavi version, entitled "the Kandas," contains the narrative of the first six Kandas. The seventh, the Uttara-Kanda, or supplementary volume, which gives an account of the descendants of Rama after his death, appears in the Kavi as an entirely separate work.
The authors of both alike set one main object before them to exalt the reigning princes by identifying them with the heroes or princes of an anterior epoch; only in the case of the Kavi poems, this anterior epoch is fixed in the cloud-land of Hindu mythology, while after the Mohammedan conquest it becomes merely the preceding era of the Hindu supremacy in Java, which is used as a ladder by which the Hindu cloud-land may be reached.
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