REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- The Ministry of Religious Affairs encourages the leadership of boarding schools and religious education institutions to promote the use of pegon script in the learning process to teach them so that the heritage of the archipelago's scholars is not lost.

“Because, some regional characters are lost because no one has preserved them,” said Director of Education Diniyah and Pondok Pesantren (PD Pontren) Kemenag Basnang Said in a statement in Jakarta on Thursday.

Basnang said that efforts to preserve pegons could be through simple things such as displaying the script on gates or boards in front of the entrance to boarding schools or educational institutions.

“If the narrative that is emblazoned on the board or gate of the boarding school is written in pegon script, we are fighting for the preservation of the pegon as a legacy of Nusantara ulama khazanah,” he said.

Basnang confirmed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs continues to make efforts to preserve the pegon script, one of them by digitizing the pegon script. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched a virtual keyboard with pegon characters earlier this year.

By downloading the pegon font app, he said, users can use the font as a means of pouring ideas or communicating through smartphones, laptops, tablets or other digital devices.

Currently, Basnang said, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is also working on how digitization of the pegon script can actually be implemented in boarding schools.

He then exemplified that digitization can give meaning to the yellow book but in digital format.

“Therefore, we are working on and preparing a digital device containing yellow books that can later be given meaning in pegon letters,” he said.

According to him, the pegon script is still used today. However, it is generally confined to the santri community. Outside the santri community, the pegon script is not used. In fact, probably many do not know what the pegon script is.

In fact, he continued, history records the ancient pegon script to transcribe religious texts, literary texts, letters, incantations, and others.