Sulukan

This is plausible considering that the metrical structure of sulukan verses does indeed generally conform to the pattern of octosyllabic couplets, the etymology may have passed into Javanese lore from the work of 19th century Dutch scholars.

The standard Yogyakarta listing is contained in Mudjanattistomo's Pedhalangan Ngayogyakarta (1977), and divides the repertory into the following categories: lagon, (equivalent to pathetan in the Surakarta style), kawin, sendhon, suluk, bawaswara and ada-ada.

The Surakarta tradition is covered by Nojowirongko's Serat tuntunan padalangan (1954), which also forms the foundation of the account of sulukan in English given by Brandon.

The literary Javanese used in sulukan and many other literary forms differsm from spoken Javanese in three main ways: Firstly, the grammatical rules covering elements such as word order are relaxed - a practice known as baliswara;[5] secondly, a large number of archaic words or phrases are used to create an atmosphere of "ancient wisdom", and finally the normal rules on speech levels (undha-usuk) may be relaxed, allowing the poet to choose a ngoko, krama, krama inggil or even Kawi version of a word to fit the metre in use, creating juxtapositions of speech levels unthinkable in normal discourse.

Most modern Javanese wayang audiences do not "understand" the texts of sulukan in the normal sense - although there are differences in levels of comprehension as there would be for an English-speaking audience at a Shakespeare play, for instance - but few see it as a problem, feeling that the archaic and obscurantist nature of the texts is appropriate to the atmosphere of "otherworldliness" which wayang tries to create.