The project is an assignment by Gramedia's new digital publication Ruang. Original article can be seen here.
In a country seemingly so attached to our culture, Indonesia tend to overlook historical and archival efforts. With relatively scarce funding for research in history and documents, Aditia Gunawan's job as the national philologist for ancient sundanese manuscript tend to raise half an eyebrow. Proficient in ancient sundanese, ancient javanese, alongside english and french, Gunawan spends much of his time trying to learn more about the ancient sundanese society through their archaic writings.
Gunawan spent several hours with us, discussing about his experience, challenges, and wonders of being a philologist, especially in countries where such efforts tend to be overlooked such as Indonesia.