La Galigo
Text Sulawesi Selatan
Dormant
Other and rejected name forms
A rejected form remains searchable so that older sources stay findable, but it is never used in the prose of an entry.
A Bugis literary corpus in the Lontara script, held to be among the longest in the world, never complete in any single manuscript and surviving as dispersed portions.
Manuscripts and copies
The largest composed copy was prepared by Colliq Pujié, Arung Pancana Toa of Tanete, at the request of B. F. Matthes around 1847. That copy is now in Leiden University Library and runs to some 2,851 folio pages — only a part of what once existed.
The corpus was inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2011. Its location in Leiden rather than South Sulawesi is a continuing subject of discussion, and repatriation has been requested by some parties.
Reading
The manuscripts are written in a register of Bugis differing from everyday speech, in a script that does not write final consonants. Reading them is therefore not decipherment but command of a literary register now held by few.