The informant in Pamijahan who discussed the Babad Pamijahan with me was not the owner of the babad, nor he was able to read the manuscript, but he had had an opportunity to see the manuscript and had received an explanation of its contents from the owner, a site custodian. It was easy for him and other villagers like him to believe that Shaykh Abdul Muhyi was a real holy man because he is mentioned in the Babad Pamijahan. However, the term ”real” here goes beyond the referential. It is experienced. The elder, like other villagers, shares the ground^[3] regarding their ancestors’ signs, without any obligation to check references given in the narrative. The manuscript and the elder’s narrative itself are an ‘index’^[4] of their shared knowledge.

In my interviews with the villagers, I tried to put open questions, such as ‘how do you know X?’ or ‘what is the meaning of X’? Responding to this question, the phrase ”my ancestors told me,” saur sepuh, recurs frequently at the beginning of their answers. This key phrase is used particularly in historical narratives, or when villagers have to explain certain aspects of material culture preserved by the custodians. In Sundanese, sepuh carries broad meanings. It can refer to ancestors, elders, or parents. The villagers may use sepuh when speaking of their ancestors, the older generation, or living elders as well as parents who have already died. The word modifies the whole of the content of the narratives delivered. The elders and the custodians, for example, share the same belief that Shaykh Abdul Muhyi was a real holy man according to saur sepuh. The author of BP in [A], mentions that sepuh means ”one who has received the grace and blessing of God”.

These ‘words of the ancestors’ form a powerful element in all narrative performance. They encapsulate the whole ideology of the narrative. By using such devices, custodians can spread and manipulate belief in the holiness of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi. During my fieldwork, I found that the villagers always use saur sepuh to introduce narratives explaining features of the material culture around the sacred village. In the same vein, it is easy for the villagers to assume that if Susunan Giri Kadaton^[5] is real, then Shaykh Abdul Muhyi must also be real. Of course, it is difficult for historians to confirm whether Shaykh Abdul Muhyi actually was a descendant of Giri Kadaton, or whether Shaykh Abdul Muhyi was part of the Wali Sanga tradition, the popular 'Nine Saints of Java'. Krauss (Krauss 1995) suggests that Shaykh Abdul Muhyi stands half in myth and half in history. However, villagers construct the ‘historicality’ of their Shaykh by a process of abduction. Abduction^[6] is defined by Peirce (Mertz and Parmentier 1985) as a way of reasoning where one does not use a ‘general rule’ explicitly, as may be seen in the relation between the following two propositions.

The Babad Pamijahan provides the villagers with the first proposition. The second is the villagers’ own hypothesis. Such abduction is not only generated from the text of BP but also from a complex narrative performance. By a complex narrative performance I mean the actualisation of narratives (signs of history) in daily activities.

On the first day of my fieldwork, I tried to make a ‘tour’ of the pilgrimage area. A custodian ordered one of his staff to accompany me. In the villagers’ terminology, the staff member is called nu nganteur or a guide. His main job was to take me to the sacred cave and to other sacred sites outside Pamijahan. Nu nganteur cannot perform the ritual pilgrimage within Muhyi's shrine itself. That job is a monopoly of the senior custodian. Accordingly, most of those nu nganteur are not closely related to the fourth main family which controls the pilgrimage area. The guide told me to buy the book of the history of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi which he called ‘The History Book’ (Buku Sajarah). When I asked him who wrote the book and why I had to buy it, he said that it was written by one of the custodian’s relatives. He said, “You can get the whole story (sajarah) of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi from it.” He said that he could not recite the story of Abdul Muhyi in detail himself because he was not an expert. I asked him again, who was an expert in history. He said that Ajengan Endang, the most prominent custodian was the expert. He added that contents of the Buku Sajarah that I bought were also taken from what the the custodian had said. The custodian was an expert in history because he had a sacred manuscript called Babad Pamijahan. “Why do you think that Babad Pamijahan contains the real history of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi?” I asked him. He was surprised by my question at first, but then he replied with a relatively long explanation.

My ‘guide’ strongly believed that the Babad Pamijahan is one of the main sources for reciting his ancestor’s history. Interestingly, he has never seen the manuscript but he believes that it contains ‘narratives of the ancestors’. Thus, the meaning of the Babad Pamijahan came to my informant, not through the process of reading but through its performance. In the narratives delivered by my guide, indeed, there was an ‘epidemiology’^[7] of the reported speech ‘saur sepuh’. The reported speech has an internal power to generate interpretation.

In this regard, saur sepuh is the ‘additional software’ needed for comprehending the meaning. The narrative of the ancestors recorded in the Babad Pamijahan must be activated by another medium, such as ritualised language or action. For instance, the custodian who translated the Babad Pamijahan into Sundanese felt that the process of translation itself was a sacred project. Before he made the translation, he performed intermediary ritual or tawassul, a rite which is also often conducted during pilgrimage and in mystical practices. The main theme of the tawassul is to recite Shaykh Abdul Muhyi’s name and those of his ancestors, as well as of the Sufi master, and to ask God to bestow His blessing upon these figures. By performing this ritual, people expect two things. The first is that all the grace and blessings given by God to their ancestors will be transmuted into their own lives. Second, the ritual is also used as a way of asking the ancestors for permission to recite their histories. Every act related to the ancestor’s name or identity has a sacred dimension. The custodian who copied this manuscript from the older one also followed this rule. The scribe of manuscript H adds this formulaic introduction into his manuscript.

From this perspective, saur sepuh has the power to enhance beliefs regarding Shaykh Abdul Muhyi. So far, I have shown that the construction of meaning is initially triggered by ritualised idioms such as saur sepuh. Saur sepuh itself is not part of the poetics of the Babad Pamijahan but rather an extrinsic element embedded into the text by the performer. However, we will see that saur sepuh is not arbitrarily attached to the text. There is a correlation between the attachment of saur sepuh and the genre to which it is attached. Only particular narratives have the authority to be activated and validated by saur sepuh. Any single word, sentence, typography of manuscript, collector, as well as any place where the manuscript is collected, are signs: perceivable, referential, and interpretable.

For the villagers, the validation of whether a particular phenomenon such as a narrative or a manuscript can function as a meaningful sign rests on their ideology. By ideology, I mean any set of interrelated assumptions which appear as a ‘ground’ for identifying and using signs. Ideology itself is a product of previous semiotic processes. (Eco 1979: 139-42) It is accumulated through the process of interpretation. In this regard, the idea of closeness to the holy man is crucial. The manuscripts are only held by the close family of the saint who may dwell in the vicinity of the holy tomb.

The Babad Pamijahan is meaningful not only because it is part of the saur sepuh discourse but because it contains other significant references for the villagers. As stated by Peirce, signs have three elements, the perceptable, the referential, and the interpretable (Mertz 1985; Parmentier 1994). In other words, a manuscript or the text of a manuscript could be a sign because it comes to the villagers' perception as something important, pointing to something, and suggesting interpretation.