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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 …

Mount Merapi In Drawings And Paintings; A Dynamic Reflection Of Nature, 1800-1930, Ghamal Satya Mohammad

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

Mount Merapi in Central Java is one of the world’s most studied volcanoes. The frequent eruptions of this volcano and the densely populated areas on its slopes make Merapi particularly important to scholars of the natural and social sciences. Considerable attention has been devoted to contemporary aspects of this volcano, including research into forecasting and monitoring possible volcanic activity and eruptions. However, research investigating artistic representations of Merapi in a historical context, particularly local artworks referring to how people responded to a natural hazard such as a volcanic eruption, is still rare. In this paper, I explore how artists in …

Where Is Home? Changing Conceptions Of The Homeland In The Surinamese-Javanese Diaspora, Rosemarijn Hoefte, Hariëtte Mingoen

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

In 1890 the first Javanese indentured labourers arrived in Suriname to work on the colony’s plantations. In total almost 30,000 indentured and free immigrants arrived in this small Caribbean colony. Fifty years later, at the end of the migration period, they formed more than one fifth of the population. Consequently, they constituted a substantial community which had to adapt to a different socio-cultural environment but, at the same time, managed to keep in touch with their homeland. The Javanese thus shaped their own cultural expressions and traditions in Suriname.

We attempt to analyse the processes of identity formation, adaptation, and …