Modern Javanese Research Articles

The new muslim romance: changing patterns of courtship and marriage among educated javanese youth

this article explores changing attitudes towards courtship and marriage among educated muslim javanese youth, as seen against the backdrop of islamic resurgence, growing educational achievement and socioeconomic change. through a comparison of earlier forms of courtship and marriage with emerging trends, it sheds light on some of the tensions and ambivalences surrounding the new social freedoms and autonomy modern javanese women have come to enjoy.

ANALISIS GRAMATIKAL TEKS CANTAKAPARWA

Cantakaparwa Manuscripts (CP) written on palm-leaves are prose texts in old Javanese. These texts considered unique and interesting because they contain the famous story of Sutasoma and the language used in it is the combination of old and modern Javanese. These are the main reason why the grammatical aspects of CP texts become the focus of this research. This research, which is still in its early stage, chose verbs as the focus of the analysis. The reason is that verbs dominantly function as predicate, and predicate is the most important part of a sentence. There are two topics that will be focused on, i.e. (a) what are the forms of polymorpheme verbs in CP texts?, (b) what are the structure of sentences with verbal predicates in CP texts? The method used in this research is a synchronic language method, which is also known as a descriptive method. This method is considered in accordance with the objective of this research because it tries to find out a language that exists at a certain time. The results of the research show that there are some combinations of old and modern Javanese grammatical aspects in CP texts. Most affixes that function as verb formers in modern Javanese are the same as those in old Javanese. However, the forms that can only be found in modern Javanese began to appear. The sentence patterns with Predicate + Subject in old Javanese are usually marked by particles of emphasis, but they are rarely found in CP texts. Keywords: Cantakaparwa manuscripts, old and modern Javanese grammatical

Mpu Panuluh's puzzlingPanakawans: do clown-servants feature in the Old Javanesekakawin Gaṭotkacâsraya?

The motto of this article, taken from a novel by Rushdie (1995: 3), briefly summarizes its theme. The ‘traveller’ I wish to discuss is the love story of Abimanyu and Ksiti (or Modern Javanese Siti) Sundari. The earliest account of this story seems to be the Old Javanesekakawin Gaoṭkacâsraya(‘Gaṭotkaca's help’), said to be composed bympuPanuluh in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century (Zoetmulder, 1974: 277). But how the story travelled and what mouths it ended up in! In 1990, for instance, Kamal Z. recorded his performance of the Javanese pop song ‘Siti Sundari’, composed by himself, in which he sang the following lines:

The Yasadipura problem

Soebardi (1975:20) describes Yasadipura I (1729-1803) as 'a prolific and many-sided writer, who may be studied equally as a poet, historian, religious teacher and mystic'. He 'left a legacy of books in Javanese which are still popular. His language has exercised a tremendous influence on the development of the Javanese language of Surakarta.' Poerbatjaraka (1964:129) wrote, 'Those who really have to be regarded as developing Javanese literature in the early Surakarta period are two high officials, Ky. Yasadipura I and II [flourished 1790-1820], father and son'. Pigeaud (1967-80:1, 237) referred to the two Yasadipuras as the 'leaders' in the flourishing period of Javanese literature in Surakarta in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The present writer, too, has described Yasadipura I as one of the greatest court poets in the history of Modern Javanese literature (Ricklefs 1974:xx). This man's name has a formidable stature in Javanese literary historical tradition. This article will suggest, however, that modern scholars may have been too uncritical in accepting this traditional view.

Modern Javanese theatre and the politics of culture; A case study of Teater Gapit

Modern Javanese theatre and the politics of culture; A case study of Teater Gapit

An Underlying Aspect of Islamization in Java

It has long been accepted in academic circles that after the first wave of Islamization in Java, Muslim society became rather stagnant until the rise of the Modern Islamic Movements at the beginning of this century. Such a view overlooks the dynamism of Islam, and has contributed to creating the image of a “superficially Islamized Java”. However, if we look into this problem from another aspect, namely language, we can find a new dimension and it will show how deeply Javanese society has in fact been Islamized.The Arabic Language forms the basis for Islamic concepts. In the development of Islam Arabic words were borrowed by many Asian and African languages. Javanese also contains a plenty of Arabic words with certain phonetical changes. These Arabic loan words carry Islamic messages and influence the way Javanese think. Nowadays in daily conversation the fact of using Arabic loan words is almost unnoticed since such words are so deeply rooted in modern Javanese and so commonly used.Historically speaking by the beginning of 19th century Javanese had already contained many Arabic words. For examble, in Yasadipura I's Serat Cabolek which reflects the Javanese intellectual standard of the time, we find more than 150 Arabic loan words, which are used not only as religious and ethical terms but also scientific and legal ones.Furthermore, from the Arabic loan words that appear in Raffle's lexicon of the Javanese language, based on his stay in Java during the years 1811-1816, we recognize a great change taking place in Javanese religious life. First, time concepts are expressed by Arabic words, meaning that their daily life was organized around Muslim pious duties and festivals. Secondly, it became more important to record, and also more socially respectable to have “knowledge” or to become a learned man. Thirdly, Islamic law was applied and disputes were judged based on it. Moreover, Javanese values were manifested in Arabic loan words. It can safely be said that by this time Javanese life was deeply influenced by Islam.In the late years of the last century, a Dutch Orientalist, Juynboll, collected Arabic loan words in Javanese. From his list we can add more terms to those found in the work of Yasadipra I concerning religion, ethics, psychology, science, law, and society.How these words came into the Javanese language is somewhat of an enigma, since Java had never been colonized by the Arabs and the number of Arab inhabitants in Java was so very limited. We should give notice to the fact that most of those Arabic words carry rather abstract meanings and do not express concrete things. This means that these words were learned as scholastic activities and spread from there throughout the rest of society.In this respect it is noteworthy that the traditional religious schools, like the langgar and pesantren were the source of Javanese knowledge until the end of the 19th century. In these schools kitab (religious books written in Arabic) were used, and the main subject was Islamic Law, followed by Islamic Theology. Islamic Law is designed to regulate the relationships between God and human beings, as well as also relationships among “the faithful”. Islamic Jurisprudence as taught in the kitab discusses interpretations and applications of the law. Islamic Theology concentrates on the problem of how human behaviour is recognized rationally, arguing human beings are responsible for their own conduct, so it requires normative terms. It is strongly suggested that Arabic words were first learned by santri (pupils of Islamic schools) and then carried to the rest of society.In the modern age Arabic loan words still form the core of the Javanese language, and without them the Javanese would be unable to express their thoughts. This is even more true with the Indonesian language and the Indonesians. A lot of new foreign words from Dutch and Eng

The Litany of “The World's Beginning”: A Hindu-Javanese Purification Text

Tengger Javanese are an ethnic Javanese people who live in the rugged uplands surrounding Mount Bromo in eastern Java. Tengger are unique among modern Javanese in that they alone trace their religious traditions back to a non-Islamic, Hindu-Javanese priesthood thought to date from the time of the last of Java's great Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms (the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries). Specialists of Java's ancient Hindu traditions, however, have generally concluded that liturgical manuscripts from the Tengger region can tell us little about Old Javanese religion. The eminent Dutch historian Th. G. Th. Pigeaud writes that the people who preserved the religious texts among the Tengger never belonged to the class of cultured ecclesiastics so prominent in Hindu-Javanese times. Many of the Tengger manuscripts in museum collections are written in a rustic and non-standard,budhascript, and do not contain any learned Sanskrit slokas or other easily identifiable references to classical Hindu-Javanese traditions. These facts led Pigeaud to speculate that the Tengger population had always formed a separate community, only superficially influenced by Hindu tradition, and primarily involved in the worship of Mount Bromo, the volcano located at the centre of the region.

Reading Old Javanese inscriptions

Among the editions of Old Javanese inscriptions that are at present available, those prepared by W. F. Stutterheim deserve special praise. In general they are more accurate than any of the other editions and, owing to the author's unparalleled knowledge of ancient and modern Javanese civilization, of great interest to Indonesian studies. Yet, even Stutter heim sometimes made mistranslations or incorrect interpretations due to his probably exaggerated view of the continuity between old and modern Java. His transcriptions, however, are nearly always completely reliable nearly always, as there are a few exceptions. It is true that any transcription involves an element of interpretation, for instance in the separation of the words of the original text, but this is hardly a problem, since every reader knows that the original inscriptions do not separate the individual words.1 In a few cases Stutterheim went too far, however, for example when he transcribed rame in some inscriptions as rama /, 'village elder of, followed by the name of a village. This no doubt is the correct interpretation, but it is not an accurate representation of the original. There are, however, cases where a given interpretation is not beyond doubt. Thus, Stutterheim occasionally transcribed rake of the original as raka /, as he thought that this title should be interpreted as 'Raka of (some place over which the dignitary concerned exercised some form of authority). Such an interpretation would be plausible if the inscriptions sometimes give rake and at other times raka i (just as they usually give rama i but occasionally rame), but this is by no means the case; I have never found raka i in an original inscription. Once Stutterheim even admitted that he tacitly ('stilzwijgend') corrected any clerical errors he found in an inscription!2 Unfortunately even Stutterheim sometimes made mistakes in his transcriptions. In his otherwise exemplary edition of a copper-plate inscription of Balitung, rightly described by him as 'an important inscrip tion of the K?du' (Stutterheim 1927:173-216), one reads just after the beginning of line B-16 the words: mati tanpa kasangk?n mati tanpa wacu bratan. The passage occurs in the middle of the imprecation against all those venturing to violate the integrity of the foundation with its numerous privileges. In this case, the text of the imprecation is particu larly elaborate, as also the king's ancestors are invoked as protectors of the foundation. In this connection the text gives us the famous list of the early kings of Mataram prior to Balitung, starting with Rakai Matar?m sang ratu Sa?jaya. Stutterheim fully translated and discussed this im

Java at the crossroads; Aspects of Javanese Cultural history in the 14th and 15th centuries

The study of Javanese literature still has a long way to go. Many more texts need to be edited and translated, but this by itself will not be enough. The works that make up Javanese literature also need to be placed within a wider framework, both the framework of history and that of the achievements of Javanese culture as a whole. It is a question of perspective. The significance of the part is only fully appreciated when it is seen in the company of its fellow-parts making up the sum total. And so two basic assumptions to be found here are, firstly, that it is possible to view Javanese literature as developing and changing over a of time, and, secondly, that it is useful to see this process against the background of the culture of which, after all, literature is only one expression. The certain period chosen here is the 14th and 15th centuries, although it will be necessary to stray over the borders at either end: history can very rarely be cut into neat blocks. The significance of this is that it lies in the middle; the great classics of Old Javanese belong for the most part to an earlier time, and the literature of Modern Javanese has yet to be born. And yet, seen in another light, it is a time when both meet. This is, then, the age of Middle Javanese literature, a literature that arose in Hindu Java and was continued in Bali, a literature that used new themes and a different form, the kidung. So it is from a desire to explore the background to the rise of this literature that the present study comes.

Modern Javanese Historical Tradition: A Study of an Original Kartasura Chronicle and Related Materials. By M.C. Ricklefs. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1978. Pp. xi, 281. Abbreviations, Introduction, Appendices, Glossary, Bibliography, Index, Maps. £10.00.

Modern Javanese Historical Tradition: A Study of an Original Kartasura Chronicle and Related Materials. By M.C. Ricklefs. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1978. Pp. xi, 281. Abbreviations, Introduction, Appendices, Glossary, Bibliography, Index, Maps. £10.00. - Volume 11 Issue 2

M. C. Ricklefs: Modern Javanese historical tradition: a study of an original Kartasura chronicle and related materials. xi, 281 pp., 3 maps. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1978. £10.

M. C. Ricklefs: Modern Javanese historical tradition: a study of an original Kartasura chronicle and related materials. xi, 281 pp., 3 maps. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1978. £10.

Modern Javanese Historical Tradition: A Study of an Original Kartasura Chronicle and Related Materials. By M. C. Ricklefs. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1978. xi, 281 pp. Glossary, Bibliography, Index. £10.00.

Modern Javanese Historical Tradition: A Study of an Original Kartasura Chronicle and Related Materials. By M. C. Ricklefs. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1978. xi, 281 pp. Glossary, Bibliography, Index. £10.00. - Volume 38 Issue 2

Modern Javanese Historical Tradition: A Study of an Original Kartasura Chronicle and Related Materials. By M. C. Ricklefs. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1978. xi, 281 pp. Glossary, Bibliography, Index. £10.00.

Modern Javanese Historical Tradition: A Study of an Original Kartasura Chronicle and Related Materials. By M. C. Ricklefs. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1978. xi, 281 pp. Glossary, Bibliography, Index. £10.00. - Volume 38 Issue 2

Modern Javanese Historical Tradition: A Study of an Original Kartasura Chronicle and Related Materials. By M. C. Ricklefs. pp. London, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1978.

Modern Javanese Historical Tradition: A Study of an Original Kartasura Chronicle and Related Materials. By M. C. Ricklefs. pp. London, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1978.

Babad Kandha, Babad Kraton and variation in modern Javanese literature

Students of Modern Javanese literature have long been aware of, but seldom grappled with, interpretative problems posed by variant versions of historical and mythical tales written in tembang macapat. In 1779, for example, Josua van Iperen surmised that his fragmentary Sadjara Rad ja D jawa, which had been acquired in Surakarta in 1750, was the product of constant additions to and alterations of a repeatedly copied text, (van Iperen 1779: 136). At the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth, Brandes and Djajadiningrat encountered the bewildering multiplicity of Modern Javanese poetic versions of Java's real and imaginary past. (Brandes 1897: 176ff. ; Djajadiningrat 1913: 195-288) . But Brandes was less interested in that multiplicity than in simplifying it in order to discover the truth about Majapahit, while Djajadiningrat's division of texts into two groups, those which treat mythical history briefly and those which do so at length, did not even begin to illuminate the problem of how to analyze poems in all their varieties of age, provenance, genre and style. More recently, as if in answer to Brandes' plea for an investigation of Javanese manuscripts in the Raffles, Crawfurd and Mackenzie collections (...vooral van belang om hare oudheid tegenover latere verzamelingen ... Brandes: 176), M. G. Ricklefs has addressed himself to the issue of textual variation in the interest of historical precision through a series of studies on the early political and literary history of Yogyakarta. In his A Consideration of Three Versions of the Bab ad Tanah Djawi (1972), for example, he compares the Yogyakarta Babad

The Wajang as a Philosophical Theme

There exist large numbers of modern Javanese texts relating to the wajang. There are, in particular, collections of short resumes of wajang lakon, that is, of plots or scenarios of wajang performances. These collections, called pakem, are more or less manuals for datang and may contain, apart from the stories themselves in bare outline, technical instructions concerning the music which is to accompany the various scenes, the chants sung by the dalang, etc. A good dalang would, however, consider it beneath his dignity to use these pakem, as he is the bearer of a tradition transmitted orally from father to son or from guru to pupil. That is why there are so few librettos of these Javanese operas written down just as the dalang speaks them in his eight-to-nine-hour-long performance. Those that exist were written down in the nineteenth century for the benefit of those westerners whose interest in the wajang was aroused and who wanted to read and to study at their leisure what they had heard in those fleeting moments when the wajang was performed, or to study the peculiarities of the dalang's language. Indeed, these pakem (as manuals) can hardly be called literature at all. The complete lakon texts are only to be thought of as literature in a rather general way. But during the literary revival at the court of Surakarta in the early nineteenth century the wajang stories also became a source of inspiration for important works of considerable literary merit. Some of them, put into verse, belong to the best specimins of modern Javanese poetry.

The Javanese Term Boedjangga

CONCERNING THE original meaning and the etymology of the Old Javanese term bhujanga, (in modern Javanese: boedjangga or poedjangga) considerable confusion exists, and studies of the semantic development of this word have by no means been satisfactorily completed. The common meaning of boedjangga is 'philologist, poet' or 'literary councillor,' and the term indicated in Old Javanese a more or less officially appointed professional scholar usually residing in or near the court. At the court of Madjapahit, the boedjangga was a priest, and according to the Javanese epic, Nagarakrtagama, in which several references to this official can be found, he also had a political function.' Kern and Berg both have equated him with the medieval 'clerk' of Western Europe, while in later times, as Hazeu has shown, the boedjangga was the official student of Old Javanese literature and law employed at the courts or in the major cities as both religious and legal adviser to the king or administration.2 This position also involved him in a study of history and genealogy as well as philology, and the catholicity of his studies made him the professional intellectual of his day.3 As far as etymology is concerned, the term has usually been connected with the Sanskrit bhujanga (or bhujaga) of which the most-widespread meaning is that of 'snake.' Although the words thus appear to be alike it would be difficult to prove any semantic connection between ' snake' and ' scholar.' How is it that the Sanskrit word, in a derivative language such as Old Javanese, has come to mean a totally different thing ? There is the added difficulty that in Sembiran bhoedjangga connotes a special caste of people (possibly descendants of brahmans). In this case also the transition of one meaning to the other is by no means clear. Expla-

Art. IV.—Brief Account of a Javanese Manuscript, in the possession of the Society, and entitled “Babad Mangku Nagárá”

The subject of this manuscript is the War of the celebrated prince Mangku Nagárá against the Dutch and their allies, which began in the latter half of the 17th century. The language is the modern Javanese, with here and there a word or two in Kavi, the ancient poetical idiom of Java, and in one passage wholly in Kavi. The composition is metrical; the metre is that which is usually employed in works of this nature, and the style is somewhat monotonous. The MS. is dated in the Javanese year 1724 (A.D. 1798), and the owner, and perhaps author of the work, is stated at the end to be Rader Fumenggung Suma diningrat.