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Journeys And Metaphors; Some Preliminary Observations About The Natural World Of Seashore And Forested Mountains In Epic Kakawin, Peter Worsley

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

In earlier publications I have argued that ancient Javanese poets imagined the world to be one marked by distinctions between a social world consisting of palace (kaḍatwan) and countryside (thāni-ḍusun) and a wilderness of seashores and forested mountains (pasir-wukir). The social world was characterized by the presence of an effective royal authority; the wilderness by its absence. A distinction was also drawn between this world inhabited by human beings and a world in which gods, ancestral spirits, and other divine beings dwelt (kedewatan). Journeys through these landscapes are an enduring interest in the narrative literature in the literary tradition of …