Current and continuing work

Lontara Pabbura is the branch of the Bugis manuscript tradition concerned with healing: the identification of illness, the preparation and use of remedies, and the practices surrounding treatment. Written in Lontara script, these texts circulate largely in private and family collections rather than institutional ones, and comparatively few have been transliterated or studied for their medical content.

What the project does

• Locates and documents surviving Pabbura manuscripts held by families and communities in South Sulawesi
• Transliterates from Lontara script and translates, producing readable scholarly editions
• Analyses the therapeutic knowledge recorded — materia medica, preparation, indication — as a system rather than as a list of curiosities
• Traces the relationship between manuscript knowledge and the plants and practices still in use today

Why it is urgent

Manuscripts in private hands face humidity, insect damage and dispersal through inheritance. The people able to read Lontara fluently, and to explain what a passage means in practice, are not being replaced at the rate they are being lost. Documentation delayed is, in a number of cases we have already encountered, documentation forgone.

Dissemination

Findings from the project have been presented at international conferences, including the Congress of Global Chinese Medicine and allied meetings, where the Bugis material can be set against other Asian textual medical traditions.

Method and ethics

Manuscripts remain with their custodians. Documentation is carried out with informed consent, and custodians receive a copy of any imaging and transliteration produced from their material. Where a knowledge holder contributes substantively to interpretation, we regard that as scholarly collaboration.