The perils of hybridity in 19th-century Java: Ronggawarsita’s reputation, animated debates in Bramartani, and the probable origins of Javanese acrostics; with a postscript on Purwalĕlana

Abstract

n 1866-1867, a controversy in the Javanese newspaper Bramartani raised questions as to whether the writer Ronggawarsita was really a great Javanese pujongga (poet). The correspondents – all from Java’s tiny literate class – stooped to extraordinary rudeness towards each other in the midst of withering criticism of Ronggawarsita, until the newspaper’s editor brought the correspondence to an end. This lively correspondence revealed not only divisions about what, in the new colonial age in Java, constituted good literature, but also about what, in the pages of the new medium of a newspaper, constituted proper manners. It probably also suggests how the Javanese use of acrostics may have found its origins in a popular Dutch song. With Ronggawarsita’s reputation under attack – which occurred again in his final year of life, 1873 – the very different experience of the innovative writer Purwalĕlana is also considered.