J. NOORDUYN

The Etymology of the Name of Yogyakarta

In a fascinating evocation of the real and symbolic function of Yogya- karta's main processional thoroughfare, Jalan Maliabara, Dr. P.B.R. Carey has recently in this journal W made an eloquent plea in favour of the hypothesis that the name of the street is derived from Sanskrit Màlya-bhàra « garland bearing », following the late Drs. O.W. Tichelaar, who in 1971 was the first to advance the same hypothesis in print (2). This proposed etymology of the name of this street is a likely one, in spite of the fact that some of the arguments advanced by Dr. Carey are less cogent than they might appear at first. When Drs. Tichelaar, who was a Sanskritist, referred to the Ramayana, Bombay ed. 2, 17, 2, for the Indian tradition with regard to royal roads (ràjamàrga) which might have applied in Yogyakarta, too, he was referring to the Vâlmîki Sanskrit Ramayana and not to the Old Javanese Ramayana, which contains no reference to this tradition. At present it is not difficult to establish from Zoetmulder's Old Javanese-English dictionary (1982), that the Sanskrit words maty a « garland » and màlyakarma « having the care of garlands » are both attested in Old Javanese, but that màlyabhàra or màlyabhàrin (both meaning « garland bearing ») are not. When Drs. Tichelaar referred to PW for the latter term, he of course meant the voluminous Sanskrit-German dictionary commonly known as the Peters- burger Wôrterbuch, and not the Old Javanese kakawin Pàrthawijaya, with this abbreviation. Thus neither of these two Sanskrit words is attested anywhere in Old Javanese, and only one of them - and not the one from which the name Maliabara may have been derived - in Sanskrit.

Nevertheless, màlyabhàra, though not attested in Sanskrit dictiona-