Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 October 2002
The Sěrat candraning wanita (Book of descriptions of women) is a voluminous Javanese manuscript written in Yogyakarta in the 1930s. This handbook for would-be husbands is basically an instruction manual, informing its (male) readers how to choose a good wife/sexual partner (based on physiognomy) and how sex works (based on ‘the etiquette of sexual intercourse’). It can be regarded as the swansong of pre-modern Javano-Muslim erotology.