Although Chinese writers and historians have had little to say about the Mongols in Java, the peoples of Java have a long tradition of poetic references to the Mongols (always “Tatars” before the 20th century). The spread of Islam throughout most of Java interrupted the transmission and renewal of the early texts and their themes, but after the discovery and publication of the Desarwarnana, the Pararaton and the kidung literature in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Mongols once again appeared in new literary works. Whereas in Part I the narrative was drawn from all of the sources to provide a composite account, Part II takes each text separately, not to summarize, but to comment on certain salient features and questions which each one raises. We begin with the Chinese sources, proceed to the Javanese poetical histories ancient and modern, and end with the other histories, those from the world outside Yuan/Ming China and medieval Java.

The Chinese accounts

The principal Chinese account is that found in the Yuan shi, the main narrative occuring in Book 210, and supplementary material in the biographies of the generals in charge of the campaign, found in Books 131 and 162. Groeneveldt published an English translation of the relevant sections in 1876. Gaubil's Histoire de Gentchiscan et de toute la dinastie des mongous, ses successeurs, conquérans de la Chine; tirée de l'histoire chinoise, et traduite par le R. P. Gaubil (Paris, 1739) was a translation into French of material found in Chinese histories, but he did not identify his sources. Although his account is brief, it does contain material found in the Yuan shi and the Yu pi xu zi zhi tong jian gang mu. Howorth (p. xvii) wrote that Gaubil relied on the same sources for his translation as Hyacinthe (Iakinf) did in his “history of the first four Mongol Khans” (p. xix), i.e. the Yuan shi and the Yu pi xu zi zhi tong jian gang mu.