Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Shot In The Volcano; A Humorous Travelogue About Java By Dé-Lilah (1896), Olf Praamstra

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

In 1899 Dé-Lilah, pseudonym of Lucy van Renesse-Johnston (1862-1906), published a travel story in two parts, Mevrouw Klausine Klobben op Java (Mrs Klausine Klobben on Java). It was an account of an early tourist trip she had made in 1896. According to Van Renesse, she undertook her journey to do environmental research on Java as well as ethnographic research on the native and European inhabitants of the island. But that was just a pretext for a woman who travelled alone to climb volcanoes, visit shrines and talk to the various inhabitants of Java. She was able to do so because …

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 …

The Drum In The Mosque; A Modern Short Story By Djajus Pete, George Quinn

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

The short story “Bedhug” (The drum in the mosque) by Djajus Pete (born 1948) was first published in the Javanese-language magazine Panjebar Semangat in 1997. It describes what happens in a small village when well-intentioned local people unsuccessfully attempt to replace an old mosque drum with a bigger, more resonant one. In many Muslim communities, the call to prayer is made by beating a drum in the mosque’s vestibule. The story gives a glimpse of how Islam is changing, and not changing, in Java. It is critical of village institutions and functionaries, but also humorous and deeply affectionate.

The Kyai’S Voice And The Arabic Qur’An; Translation, Orality, And Print In Modern Java, Johanna Pink

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

This paper discusses practices of translating the Qur’an into Javanese in the Indonesian post-independence era. Focusing on works that emerged in pedagogical contexts, it demonstrates that the range of translation practices goes far beyond contemporary notions of scriptural translation. I argue that this is due to the oral origin of these practices and to the functions they assume in teaching contexts. These result in a higher visibility of the translator who appears as a religious authority in his1 own right. His voice might therefore be considered a valuable contribution to the translation, rather than a distortion of the source text’s …

Mother’S Tongue And Father’S Culture; A Late Nineteenth-Century Javanese Versification Of Master Zhu’S Household Rules (Zhuzi Zhijia Geyan), Edwin P. Wieringa

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

The Serat Tiyang Gegriya or “Book for people on running their homes and households” is a Javanese versification of the famous seventeenth-century Chinese treatise Zhuzi Zhijia geyan (‘Master Zhu’s Household Rules‘), better known in the Anglophone world as “Maxims for managing the home” or “Family regulations”. Propagating the basic principles of Confucian ethics, this small treatise instructed generations of Chinese readers, presumedly adult males, lessons in proper behaviour. Today, Master Zhu’s little compendium is among the most reprinted works of classical Chinese popular literature. The Serat Tiyang Gegriya exists in the form of a manuscript, written in Surabaya in 1878, …

The Sair Kin Tambuan; A Banjarese Versified Version Of A Well-Known Panji Story, Edwin P. Wieringa, Titik Pudjiastuti

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

The Syair Ken Tambuhan (“Poem of Lady Tambuhan”) is a traditional Malay Panji tale in verse which is known in three redactions (short, middle, and long), all seeming to have a Sumatran origin, although an alternative hypothesis suggests that it might have originated from Borneo, in the Banjarmasin area. This article describes the hitherto unstudied Banjarese manuscript Sair Kin Tambuan from Kalimantan which represents the long redaction, running parallel to Klinkert’s 1886 edition which is based on a Riau manuscript. Probably copied in the twentieth century, since the mid-1980s it has been kept under call number N 4228 in the …

Panji In The Age Of Motion; An Investigation Of The Development Of Panji-Related Arts Around Java, Adrian Perkasa

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

The first half of the twentieth century in Indonesia is often remembered as the Age of Motion. The term “motion” (pergerakan) is invariably used in history textbooks for students and in the official Indonesian historiography: Sejarah nasional Indonesia (Kartodirdjo, Poesponegoro, and Notosusanto 1975; Poesponegoro and Notosusanto 2008) and in the new edition, Indonesia dalam arus sejarah (Lapian and Abdullah 2012). Political movements in Indonesia always dominated the discourses of pergerakan at the expense of developments in other sectors, including culture. This cultural development, particularly in Java, was intricately intertwined with the upsurge in Javanese and then Indonesian nationalism, an expansion …

Gods, Birds, And Trees; Variation In Illustrated Javanese Pawukon Manuscripts, Dick Van Der Meij

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

Many libraries in the world own illustrated manuscripts containing calendrical divination based on the Javanese 30 seven-day wuku cycle. Although the contents of these pawukon manuscript have been studied, the illustrations they often contain have almost been ignored. Apart from stating that these illustrations usually depict the gods, trees, buildings, and birds associated with each individual wuku, the variety among these illustrations has escaped scholars so far. Variation is found at many levels such as the general lay-out of the illustrations, the depiction of the various gods, trees, et cetera but also with reference to the position of the illustrations …

The Installation Of Prince Mangkubumi; Performing Javanese History, Els Bogaerts

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

Representation of Javanese history in performance plays an important role in the self-characterization of the Special Region of Yogyakarta. It legitimizes the power of the rulers and strengthens the identity of the city and its inhabitants. The audiences know the stories and this is part of the fun. In the study of oral traditions it is essential to take these performances into account. In the stories featuring famous political figures from the history of Mataram and Yogyakarta, there is an intricate relationship between the written and the spoken word: all are based on both oral and written traditions and are …

Inscriptions Of Sumatra; Ii. Short Epigraphs In Old Javanese, Arlo Griffiths

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

This article documents the existence of inscriptions using Old Javanese language on the island of Sumatra, by editing three short epigraphs, the first of which has previously been published but never satisfactorily interpreted, while the remaining two have not yet been published at all. However short these texts are in themselves, they raise interesting questions about the cultural, commercial, political, and linguistic connections between Java and Sumatra in ancient times.