It is the dream of every aspiring scholar to come across an object that holds the key to a wide
range of new insights. Uli Kozok has discovered, or rather re-discovered, just such a document. The book here under review is the outcome of Kozok’s detailed study of a 40-page manuscript of the Nītisārasamuccaya, a Sumatran legal code. It builds on the author’s earlier publications on this material (Kozok 2004, 2006), yet is substantially revised and enlarged. The present version contains additional chapters by Thomas Hunter, Waruno Mahdi, and John Miksic. It also features noteworthy contributions to the fifth chapter by Eric van Reijn and Jan van der Putten, and a long note in the sixth chapter by Arlo Griffiths (pp. 369–370 fn. 36), who also provided suggestions for the transliteration.