Chronogram, Muslim Southeast Asia - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
[Article]
Ricklefs, M. C.
Leiden
Brill
(675 words)
The use of chronogram s in Muslim Southeast Asia is most prominent in Javanese culture. In Modern Javanese, chronograms are called sangkala/sengkala (or candra sengkala ), the word sangkala meaning "chronology" or "chronogram." Pre-Islamic, Old Javanese works use the Sanskrit word śakakāla , referring to the Śaka era and meaning also "chronogram" (Zoetmulder and Robson, 2:1603). In Javanese, chronograms consist of four words, each word-rather than each letter of a word, as in the ḥisāb al-jummal and taʾrīkh systems-having its own numerical value. They are read