Javanese studies

The dislocated, deterritorialized discourse produced by repatriates from formerly European colonies has remained overlooked in academic scholarship. One such group is the Eurasian “Indo” community that has its roots in the former Dutch East Indies, today’s Indonesia. This article focuses on Tjalie Robinson, the intellectual leader of this community from the 1950s to the mid-1970s. The son of a Dutch father and a British-Javanese mother, Robinson became the leading voice of the diasporic Indo community in the Netherlands and later also in the United States. His engagement resulted in the foundation of the Indo magazine Tong Tong and the annual Pasar Malam Besar, what was to become the world’s biggest Eurasian festival. Robinson played an essential role in the cultural awareness and self-pride of the eventually global Indo community through his elaboration of a hybrid and transnational identity concept. By placing his focus “tussen twee werelden” (in-between two worlds) and identifying “mixties-schap” (mestizaje) as the essential characteristic of Indo identity, Robinson anticipated debates on hybridity, transnationalism, and creolism that only much later would draw attention from scholars in the field of postcolonial studies. This article highlights Robinson’s pioneering role in framing a deterritorialized hybrid alternative to nationalist essentialism in the postcolonial era.

The use of 'traditional' medicine, or a combination of biomedical treatment and 'traditional'
medicine, is a common phenomenon all over Indonesia. In today’s Indonesian healthcare system
'traditional' and alternative medicine coexist with globalized biomedicine. It has been found only
recently that Indonesian urban, educated households are more likely to use 'traditional' than
biomedical healthcare (Nurhayati & Widowati 2017). As early as 2003, Liebich described 80% of
the urban population of Jakarta as occasionally or frequently using 'traditional' medicine. Despite
the dominance of biomedical approaches in the Primary Health Care (PHC) system and the
accompanying skepticism towards other health etiologies, the 'traditional' and complementary
medicine (T&CM) market in Indonesia has experienced a veritable boom during the past 30 years.
Drawing on the transdiciplinary field of health psychology and medical anthropology, this thesis
discusses concepts and approaches that explain the use of T&CM in urban Yogyakarta (Java,
Indonesia). These discussions are based on a Reflexive Grounded Theory study, conducted with
semi-standardized interviews as the main source. The interview questions were designed to elicit
narrative elements addressing previous experiences and evaluations of illness and previous
treatment as well as possible combinations of medical practices. Additionally, expert interviews
with different health agents illustrate conflicting interests and controversies. Even though this study
focuses on illuminating issues of healthcare in urban Yogyakarta, it also finds a textual form to trace
the journey of a 'Western' researcher, who tries to understand the meaning of healthcare in urban
Yogyakarta. Thus, in addition to the substantive focus, this thesis has a methodological focus,
aiming to trace the formative influence of the author along different steps of meaning making about
healthcare in urban Indonesia.
The first part of the dissertation gives insights into the contextual, epistemological and
methodological background of the study (chapters 1 and 2). The second part analyzes interview
narratives. This is done, on the one hand, by highlighting narrations of binary conceptualizations of
'health', 'illness' and 'healing', presented in the model of natural versus kimia. On the other hand, the
analysis follows the ways in which my interviewees navigate healing, where they transcend conceptual
differences by referring to their 'traditional' Javanese rasa of cocok (chapter 3). The third part of the
thesis identifies the author as a situated outsider, highlighting the entanglement of a Western researcher
in conceptual constructions used during interviews with Javanese women (chapter 4). The last part
argues that binary thinking needs to be overcome in order to offer health seekers a truly people-
centered and context-sensitive navigation of healing (chapter 5).
This study highlights different voices of health seekers who emphasize that the current healthcare
system in Indonesia does not meet their needs: neither the needs of the female Javanese health seekers,
nor those of the medical experts and practitioners of both sectors, natural as well as kimia.
Consequently, research on healthcare needs to recognize and accomodate the plurality and complexity
of medical approaches, in order to bridge the rhetoric of healthcare systems and the experienced reality
of health seekers as well as the formal and the informal healthcare system. Similar to bricoleurs,
researchers need to consistently reflect upon and adjust their assumptions, introduce new
methodological tools and use different forms of representation and interpretation to unite various
disciplines, multiple methodologies, and various theoretical perspectives in their healthcare research.

Usually in the oil mining area was exploited by oil company that under licensed from the state. Nevertheless on an oil mining field in East Java Province in Indonesia there is people oil mining that exploited and distributed by the people. They are working on the people oil mining area. Working is a phenomenon inherent to adults in satisfying their needs. People work for a multitude of motivation. Working may lead a particular worker to occupy certain social status within the society. This paper aims to examine the phenomenon of people working in the oil distribution link from people oil mining to consumer. More specifically, this study aims to describe the impacts of working in the oil mining on the miners' social and economic life. The method used in this research is ethnography. Data were collected through observation, in-depth interviews, note taking, and recording. The location of research is in a petroleum artisanal mining area in East Java Province. The results showed that the impact of working in the oil distribution link from people oil mining to consumer is the generation of income used to meet the basic needs, to purchase personal means of transportation, to purchase some piece of land, and to pay for the children's education.

Kyai Omyang Jimbe minangka arane sawijining keris kang ampuh lan akeh digoleki de-ning para kolektor/pandhemen barang antik, utawa barang kang ana tuah/kasiyate. Saliyane dipercaya duwe kagunan kang minulya kanggo nglancarake rejeki, keris "Omyang Jimbe", wis kaloka nduweni isoteri/tuah/kabisan kanggo ngayomi bandhane sing kagungan lan nggampa-ngake kanggo nagih utang. Malah pawartane, sawetara keris Omyang Jimbe bisa digunakake kanggo narik dana ghaib/pesugihan.

On Wednesday, 4 March 2020, the Ethnographic Museum (Museum Volkenkunde) in Leiden announced that it had discovered the Indonesian freedom fighter, Prince Diponegoro's (1785-1855), long lost heirloom dagger (keris), Kangjeng Kiai Nogosiluman (His Highness the Unseen King of the Snakes). It is being given back this week in the context of a rare royal visit to Indonesia by King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima (11-13 March), which in turn is being preceded (8-13 March) by one of the largest trade and technical missions sent by the Netherlands to their former colony. So what is going on? Has this fortuitous location of the Javanese freedom fighter's keris a political agenda? The present paper (in Dutch) explains some of the background.

Pancasila adalah sebuah pijakan, ruh, semangat, fondasi, dan ideologi Indonesia sebagai sebuah bangsa dan negara. Maka dari itu upaya gerakan radikalisme agama dalam memperjuangkan ideologinya yang berlawanan dengan Pancasila adalah bentuk rong-rongan terhadap NKRI. Dengan banyaknya fenomena kekerasan, teror bom, kampanye hoax, ujaran kebencian, dan penghakiman massal, yang kesemuanya didalihkan atas pembelaan terhadap agama secara tidak langsung adalah menodai Pancasila sebagai persatuan bangsa. Dan dengan demikian, penafsiran dan kampanye Pancasila secara komprehensif perlu dilakukan kembali mengingat dampak tragedi pertumpahan darah yang pernah terjadi di masa lalu atas dalih issu SARA.

Tulisan ini membahas tiga hal: (1) gambaran singkat tentang radikalisme di Indonesia, (2) ancaman radikalisme terhadap Pancasila, dan (3) semangat Pancasila dalam membangun bangsa.

Much of the storytelling in Java is the profession of the puppeteers (dalang; also spelled dhalang) who perform and direct shadow theatre plays (wayang). They improvise their stories in the context which their performance requires. Unless commissioned to do so by a patron, it is very unusual for a dalang to sit down and actually write out a story (lakon). In the early decades of the twentieth century in the area of Yogyakarta, a kind of storytelling mini-industry arose at the instigation of some western scholarly patrons and laymen interested in Javanese popular culture. One such patron was Ir. J.L. Moens. He encouraged dalangs to write down folk tales and, as they were dalangs, they clothed these in the wayang idiom. After Moens' death in 1954, his unpublished collection of wayang stories was dispersed. In 1964 one part found its way into the Leiden University Library. The topics discussed are: how the Collectie Moens originated and what its purpose was; who its authors were; which tradition they acknowledged; and the relationship between the Collectie Moens and the court collections of Surakarta and Yogyakarta.

Full Text:
http://wacana.ui.ac.id/index.php/wjhi/article/view/458/422

In memory of Bruno Latour who responded quickly to this paper upon its publication////
This is an experimental essay to reconsider the meaning of animism in the time of science and technology studies when the boundary between human and non-human entities is being redrawn. Referring to  various sources from my earlier research on Javanese animism and peasant movements such as Saminism to the recent social studies of life sciences that are related to such issues as artificial life and so forth, this article tries to redefine what is animism in the contemporary techno-cultural landscape.  This is related to the exhibition of Animism curated by Anselm Franke.

Cloud computing is the latest distributed computing paradigm and it offers tremendous opportunities to solve large-scale scientific problems. However, it presents various challenges that need to be addressed in order to be efficiently utilized for workflow applications. Although the workflow scheduling problem has been widely studied, there are very few initiatives tailored for cloud environments. Furthermore, the existing works fail to either meet the user's quality of service (QoS) requirements or to incorporate some basic principles of cloud computing such as the elasticity and heterogeneity of the computing resources. This paper proposes a resource provisioning and scheduling strategy for scientific workflows on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds. We present an algorithm based on the meta-heuristic optimization technique, particle swarm optimization (PSO), which aims to minimize the overall workflow execution cost while meeting deadline constraints. Our heuristic is evaluated using CloudSim and various well-known scientific workflows of different sizes. The results show that our approach performs better than the current state-of-the-art algorithms.

This is a paper I wrote for the five-day conference (5-9 October 2020) entitled 'Forum Sejarah dan Jejak Peradaban Mataram Yogyakarta: Sri Sultan Hamengku Buwono II “Menggali Warisan Membangun Masa Depan” [History Forum and Tracing Yogyakarta Mataram Civilization: His Highness Sultan Hamengku Buwono II, Excavating Heritage to Build the Future', which was convened to explore the possibility of putting the Second Sultan of Yogyakarta (1750-1828; r. 1792-1810/811-22/1826-28) forward as an Indonesian National Hero (Pahlawan Nasional). The paper was presented on Wednesday, 7 October 2020 under the title 'De mortuis nihil nisi bonum — Mengenai orang yang sudah wafat hanya ucapkan hal yang baik: Renungan atas Pencalonan Sri Sultan Hamengku Buwono II sebagai Pahlawan Nasional [Speak only good things of the dead; Reflections on the Candidacy of HH Sultan Hamengku Buwono II as a National Hero].

Raffles’ reputation as a scholar rests almost solely on a hastily compiled two-volume publication and a collection of surviving artefacts, manuscripts, prints, and drawings now mainly housed at the British Museum, the British Library, and the Royal Asiatic Society. These materials offer a window onto his viewpoint of Java and Southeast Asia in general, and also a reflection of the zeitgeist of his age. This coloured his view of history, determined how he chose to interpret the facts at his disposal, and inevitably had a strong bearing on how he represented Javanese society. It is from this colonial-tinted gaze that we must understand Raffles’ attempts to document and reconstruct the history of Java.

This is my introduction to the new (2017) Indonesian edition of Soemarsaid Moertono's classic 'State and Statecraft in Old Java; A Study of the Later Mataram Period, XVI-XIX Century', which was originally published by Cornell University's Modern Indonesia Project (CMIP) in 1968. This Indonesian edition (the second - the first having been brought out by Yayasan Obor in 1985) was published by Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia under the title "Negara dan Kekuasaan di Jawa Abad XVI-XIX", pp.xiv-xxiii, on 27 September 2017 and launched at Universitas Negeri Surakarta (UNS) in the presence of sixteen members of Mas Moer's surviving family including his widow, Ibu Savitri S. Moertono. My preface looks at the enduring importance of this pioneering study and the intellectual influences from the Dutch historians and sociologists, HJ de Graaf and BJO Schrieke in particular, who shaped Mas Moer's approach to the history of Java in the 16th to 19th centuries.

Berbagai praktik mistik telah berkembang di kalangan masyarakat Jawa. Kemunculan praktik tersebut sebenarnya dapat dilacak dari konteks sejarah masuknya Islam ke Indonesia, dan Jawa pada khususnya. Artikel ini bertujuan untuk mengeksplorasi Islam dan mistisime di Jawa, yakni menjelaskan rasionalitas dari penerimaan komunitas Muslim atas penyebaran mistisisme Islam dan penyebaran mistisisme Islam itu sendiri di Jawa. Penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa mistisime Jawa tumbuh subur dalam hampir setiap sendi kehidupan; di lingkungan keluarga istana, pesantren, grup kebatinan, dan di tingkat publik secara umum. Hal ini terjadi karena Islam yang sebenarnya diperkenalkan ke Indonesia dan Jawa, khususnya, adalah Islam yang dirumuskan sebagai Islam mistik. Mistisisme Islam lebih mudah berkembang sebagaimana ia juga dapat menyesuaikan diri dengan pemahaman pubik masyarakat Jawa.
Various mystical practices are found in Javanese Islam. Genealogically, the emergence of these practices can be traced back in the history of the penetration and development of Islam in Indonesia and Java in particular. This article aims to glimpse the accounts of Islam and Javanese mysticism in, explaining the way in which Javanese Muslims accommodate local mysticism in their religiosity. This article finds that Javanese mysticism grows in the fertile Java, found in the royal family, boarding school, Sufi group, and other sectors. Indeed, Islam and Javanese culture has met and mixed, so that Islamic mysticism survives and evolves and can be found in daily life of Javanese society.

2000 KITLV Uitgeverij Leiden Déwa Rutji De Maleise versie is uitgegeven en vertaald door Poerbatjaraka (1940:35-7, 52-4), de Oud-Javaanse prozaversie door Prijohoetomo (1934:27-139) en het Oud-Javaanse gedicht afkomstig uit Java door Poerbatjaraka (1940:11-28). Het corpus van Wrekudara-Déwa Rutji-verhalen wordt nader besproken in Arps, te verschijnen.

BLURB: Javanese shadow puppetry is a sophisticated dramatic form, often felt to be at the heart of Javanese culture, drawing on classic texts but with important contemporary resonance in fields like religion and politics. How to make sense of the shadow-play as a form of world-making? In Tall Tree, Nest of the Wind, Bernard Arps explores this question by considering an all-night performance of Dewa Ruci, a key play in the repertoire. Thrilling and profound, Dewa Ruci describes the mighty Bratasena’s quest for the ultimate mystical insight.
    The book presents  Dewa Ruci as rendered by the distinguished master puppeteer Ki Anom Soeroto in Amsterdam in 1987. The book’s unusual design presents the performance texts together with descriptions of the sounds and images that would remain obscure in conventional formats of presentation. Copious annotations probe beneath the surface and provide an understanding of the performance's cultural complexity. These annotations explain the meanings of puppet action, music, and shifts in language; how the puppeteer wove together into the drama the circumstances of the performance in Amsterdam, Islamic and other religious ideas, and references to contemporary Indonesian political ideology. Also revealed is the performance’s historical multilayering and the picture it paints of the Javanese past.
    Tall Tree, Nest of the Wind not only presents an unrivalled insight into the artistic depth of wayang kulit, it exemplifies a new field of study, the philology of performance.

The research attenots to analysis the historical genealogy and press movement and Javanese public sphere in the colonial age, 1915-1950. By focusing the site of Boekhandel Tan Khoen Swie (TKS) in Kediri-East Java during the colonial period, this research is specifically to explore the roles of TKS and Tan Khoen Swie's ideas (as a person) in the press movement in East Java over 35 years. The research used qualitative research with historical-discourse perspectives. It combines the archeology/genealogy methods proposed by Michel Foucault, historical and archives study. Through a historical archive investigation, both of material and ego documents, the study mapped on how the production of the public sphere in colonial age happened. The result of this study shows that the works and ideas published by through Boekhandel Tan Khoen Swie (TKS) are full meaning of spiritual and culture values. TKS has encouraged the transformation of Javanese values to the wider community. We argue that the idea and efforts of the public sphere in Javanese community during the colonial era, especially through it controversial publications. As an individual, Tan Khoen Swie established himself as the cosmopolitan elite in the fight against the colonialism. In other words, the study is success to showed the importance roles of Tan Khoen Swie inspiring the emergence of press movement in East Java and it also supports for creating the alternative public sphere for Javanese. Abstrak Penelitian ini secara umum bertujuan untuk memetakan studi genealogi sejarah dan pergerakan pers dalam membentuk ruang publik orang Jawa di masa kolonial 1915-1950. Dengan mengambil situs pada usaha penerbitan Boekhandel Tan Khoen Swie di Kediri Jawa Timur pada periode tersebut, secara spesifik penelitian ini mengeksplorasi peran Boekhandel Tan Khoen Swie dan gagasan Tan Khoen Swie (sebagai individu) dalam pergerakan pers di Jawa Timur masa kolonial kurun waktu 35 tahun. Melalui penelusuran arsip sejarah baik dokumen tertulis maupun secara lisan, penelitian ini berupaya menguraikan nilai-nilai lokal yang membentuk ruang publik pada masa kolonial yang luput dari kajian komunikasi, sosiologi maupun sejarah pada masa itu. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif dengan pendekatan historical-discourse yaitu menggabungkan metode genealogi/arkeologi Foucault, pendekatan historis dan studi arsip. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa karya dan gagasan yang diterbitkan melalui usaha penerbitan Tan Khoen Swie sarat akan nilai-nilai spiritual. Usaha penerbitan Tan Khoen Swie telah mendorong transformasi nilai-nilai kesusastraan Jawa kepada masyarakat luas. Penelitian ini juga memperlihatkan bahwa gagasan dan usaha penerbitan TKS berperan membentuk ruang dikursus pada orang Jawa khususnya melalui karya kontroversial. Sebagai individu, Tan Khoen Swie membuktikan dirinya sebagai salah satu elite kosmopolit dalam melakukan perlawanan terhadap penjajah kolonial. Dengan kata lain, hasil penelitian ini berhasil menunjukkan pentingnya peran Tan Khoen Swie menginspirasi kemunculan pers di Jawa Timur dan sekaligus memunculkan ruang publik alternatif bagi orang Jawa.

In the second decade of the 20th century a number of Indonesian intellectuals, dancers and artists were collaborating with Dutch organisations and individuals to promote Javanese culture in the Netherlands. Whilst superficially appearing as a benign series of theatrical and dance performances that excited the Dutch imagination of the exotic other, these performances were pregnant with the aspirations of Javanese intellectuals who challenged the political association of the two countries. In fact, in many cases they were produced and even performed by some of Indonesia’s most prominent and historically significant nationalists including Soewardi Soerjaningrat ( aka) Ki Hadjar Dewantara.

This paper examines the relationship between members of the  Javanese aristocracy living in the Netherlands and resistance to colonial domination by addressing their role in performing cultural nationalism alongside Dutch artists. Specifically the very dynamic and fruitful relationship between the Dutch artists Chris Lebeau, the Javanese dancer and artist Raden Mas Jodjana and the very prominent pedagogue and nationalist Soewardi will be revealed through a series of portraits made circa 1920.

This is a personal enquiry into the role of public intellectuals in Indonesia since the mid-18th century, the current problems of Indonesia's tertiary (university) sector, in particular history teaching and research/writing, and the present-day challenge of orbiting the country's soft power so it can punch above its weight in the world rather than remain a nonentity as it is today.

Section 5 on the present-day state of the country's university sector and the prevalence of plagiarism and other ills, which was originally held back when this paper was first posted in mid-2020, has now been published for the first time. This is because the Indonesian translation, originally shared with only three people, appears to have been pirated from the internet and widely circulated. At the same time, many of the issues relating to plagiarism involving the FIB-UGM are now [post-2 November 2024] in the public domain and have been openly discussed in the mainstream and social media, when the issue became viral. So, this paper has been updated with the additional information originally contained in Section 5 ("Present-day Realities, Academic Corruption, Identity Politics and the Challenge of Indonesia in the New Millennium") and posted on Tuesday, 26 November 2024.

Raden Adjeng Kartini (1879 – 1904) was a Javanese princess as well as an Indonesian heroine, who fought for the women’s rights to get a better education. As a noble person or priyai, she had privileges to be educated; while the Javanese tradition, feudalism and colonialism, and uncomprehensive Islamic teaching became issues for her to pursue education. This paper will specifically focus on how those three aspects contributing to Kartini’s rebellion. The historical analysis is done by corroborating and contextualizing Kartini’s letters, Letters of A Javanese Princess, translated into English by Hildred Greetz (a primary resource); and other pieces of literature about gender and politics of Kartini’s voices, Javanese culture, and the history of Dutch colonialism in Indonesia (the secondary resources). There are some findings of the analysis: 1) Javanese tradition, along with its formality, restricted Kartini’s intention to get liberty and instead put her as the threat to the harmony in the royal family; 2) The role of Kartini’s family in colonial administration enabled her to read Dutch books and to share as well as to strengthen her progressive feminist ideas to European pen friends; and 3) Islamic tradition, although was not largely explained in her letter, impeded women to be active outside home and prioritised domestic duties.

"Selected proceedings of the “First International Conference on Ethnoastronomy: Indigenous Astronomical and Cosmological Traditions of the World”held at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 5-9 September 1983."

Available on Amazon.com  - see link in listing. Ships internationally from the USA.

Feng-shui konsep worldview vernacular terbukti dapat bertahan ribuan tahun hingga sekarang. Tulisan ini bertujuan menelusuri awal konsep fengshui, sehingga dapat dipahami falsafah dasarnya. Analisis ditelusuri secara hermeneutik mengacu pada naskah kuno Zang shu; 葬書; 葬书; Kitab Penguburan, dikatakan sebagai karya Guo-pu 郭璞 (276-324 CE), dari masa dinasti Jin Timur; Dong Jin; 东 晉;(317-420). Buku ini diyakini merupakan awal pertama kali sejarah istilah feng -shui 风水 diuraikan secara tertulis (merupakan sourcebook). Hasil penelitian ini mengungkap bahwa feng-shui sekarang telah bertransformasi menjadi sangat beragam aliran. Manfaat dari penelitian ini agar para praktisi dapat memiliki pembanding dalam penerapan masa kini. Melengkapi tulisan ini dilampirkan terjemahan Zang shu; dalam bahasa Inggris.

Jathilan is one of the names for traditional Javanese trance dance which takes its roots in the most archaic levels of local culture but remains very popular nowadays. It is also described as a horse dance for the horse effigies made of woven bamboo are the hallmark props used by the performers. Horse dance is a part of the folk culture, still untouched by institutionalization or commodification; it can be performed for both ritual and entertainment purposes. Trance is its main attraction, though through the lens of local beliefs it is interpreted in terms of spirit possession thus it is understood that spirits can enter performers' bodies and fulfill their needs while being manifest in material world, but also allow the dancers to perform various feats demonstrating invulnerability to physical harm (like eating glass, walking over hot coals, being whipped or even run over by a motorcycle). The purpose of this paper is to provide a thorough description of how trance in jathilan is performed and understood, based on existing literature, practitioners' first-hand accounts and numerous performances observed and documented; but also to consider it in the wider context of Javanese beliefs and practices involving spirits, possession, and exorcism, which persist alongside with Islam.

Kanuragan is a secret ritual initiation tied to local cosmological practices and cults used by the Javanese as a source of self-help on issues related to health, welfare, and protection. At basic levels, the practitioners of kanuragan use special entities called aji to gain strength and invulnerability. At the next level, the teaching of the master involves a specific mystical knowledge tied to the acquisition of spiritual authority. This article describes the process of transmission, the persons involved, and the role that kanuragan plays in Javanese society for security purposes and in warfare. The analysis shows how kanuragan competes with new secular and religious systems of value as well as with sorcery and new embodied practices such as sports competitions, to provide comparative insights on the formation of social categories.

B elajar menurut Kamus Umum Bahasa Indonesia adalah berusaha memperoleh kepandaian atau ilmu. Perwujudan dari berusaha adalah berupa kegiatan belajar. Sebagaimana dalam tembang macapat pocung ada nasehat tentang belajar yang pantas kita baca sebagai berikut : Ilmu iku kalakone kanti laku, Lekase lawan kas, Kas tegese nyantosani, Setya buda pangekesing dur angkara Ilmu itu dapat dicapai dengan usaha yang terus menerus, Diawali/ dimulai dengan semangat, Semangat artinya kemauan yang kuat tidak mudah putus asa, Kemauan yang kuat tersebut dapat menghilangkan sifat-sifat angkara/jahat. Didalam belajar harus berusaha sungguh-sungguh, terus menerus, tidak mudah putus asa, dan dengan kemauan yang kuat. Kita dapat belajar dari peristiwa air yang menetes jatuh di batu lama-lama dapat membuat lubang pada batu tersebut. Dengan semangat yang kuat dan terus-menerus cita-cita kita dapat tercapai. " Golek Banyu Bening " secara harfiah berarti mencari air jernih. Air jernih diidentikkan dengan air bersih yang membawa kesejukan, kesehatan, pemenuhan akan dahaga, dan kehidupan. Dalam kondisi tertentu air semacam ini kadang sulit didapatkan. " Golek Banyu Bening " dalam filosofi ini sebenarnya lebih berkonotasi pada proses pencarian seseorang pada seorang guru sejati/benar yang dapat memberikan pengajaran mulia dan luhur (bening) itulah tujuan utama dan tujuan akhir dari ungkapan atau filosofi Jawa " Golek Banyu Bening ". Lalu, bagaimana dengan Filosofi " Golek Banyu Bening " dalam belajar ? Orang yang belajar tidak kepada guru tapi hanya menggunakan buku atau semacamnya maka ia akan menemui kesalahannya karena buku tidak bisa menegur sedangkan guru bisa menegur, jika ia salah atau jika ia tak paham ia bisa bertanya, tapi kalau buku jika ia tak paham ia hanya terikat dengan pemahaman dirinya, oleh sebab itu guru tetap penting. Namun, sosok yang bagaimanakah yang harus kita jadikan guru dalam belajar ? Seorang guru adalah seorang pendidik. Pendidik ialah " orang yang memikul tanggung jawab

Reading the Bas Reliefs at Borobudur
Reading the bas reliefs at Borobudur requires a specific technique. The panels on the wall read from left to right, while those on the balustrade read from right to left, conforming with the pradaksina, a ritual performed by pilgrims who move in a clockwise direction, whilst always keeping the sanctuary to their right. The story begins and ends at the eastern side of the gate at every level.

This article is a preliminary exploration of suluk texts aiming at advancing P.J. Zoetmulder's ideas with respect to the Indic origins of some characters and doctrinal elements in Javanese mystical texts. It will identify possible continuities between Indic and Islamic paradigms, thereby revisiting and rebalancing scholarly perspectives that have stressed the Sufi origins of Javanese Islam-or uncritically posited its inherent, yet nebulous, 'Javaneseness'-at the expense of its being situated in, and indebted to, a context of religious discourses and practices rooted in the Indic paradigm. Having introduced and evaluated Zoetmulder's hypotheses about the figures of the santri birahi and Lĕbe Lonthang, it will analyse some passages of suluk that show indebtedness to ideas stemming from a pre-Islamic tantric fund. It will then link the figure of heterodox Muslim mystic Siti Jĕnar to other antinomian characters described in Javanese literature, and contextualise them against the background of the wider issue of the synthesis between Hindu-Buddhist (tantric) and Islamic (Sufi) identities in Java.

When religious affairs in Indonesia (casually glossed as a country with the largest Muslim population) grab international attention that mostly comes down to Islam and attempts of further Islamisation of the Archipelago. However, local forms of syncretic and pre-Islamic mysticism, magic and spirit beliefs persist and their adherents keep fighting for recognition on the state level (as Indonesian freedom of religion is limited to the choice between several state-recognised confessions). The objective of this paper is to discuss how pre-Islamic beliefs exist and persist among the Javanese (the largest ethnic group in both Indonesia and entire Southeast Asia), alongside with Islam and despite the advances of modernity. A more detailed outlook on the contestation and resistance is meant to be based on the example of traditional dance known as jathilan or kuda kepang. Trance (believed to be caused by the spirits possessing the dancers' bodies) constitutes the main attraction of the performance which is commonly held on various celebratory occasions (marriages, circumcisions, village festivities and even national holidays). During the past two decades, it has been enjoying an ever-growing popularity and nowadays most of the shows are advertised via social media. The resilience of the trance dance is meant to be analysed by superimposing its own specific features against the background of the national religious and cultural policies.

Masyarakat Jawa ialah mereka yang menggunakan bahasa Jawa sebagai bahasa ibu dan secara geografis mereka dijumpai di Jawa Tengah dan Jawa Timur. Menurut Magnis, secara sosial masyarakat Jawa dibedakan menjadi tiga, yaitu: wong cilik (orang kecil) yang terdiri dari kaum petani dan mereka yang berpendapatan rendah, priyayi yakni para pegawai pemerintahan dan kaum intelektual, dan ketiga ndara atau kaum ningrat dalam arti keluarga kerajaan.

This is a brief overview of the family history of the celebrated Arab-Javanese painter, Raden Saleh Syarif Bustaman (born Semarang circa 1811-died Bogor 1880), looking in particular at the ways in which his Semarang-based family's political choices both before and in the early months of the Java War may have influenced Saleh's anti-colonial themes in his paintings, in particular his 'Capture of Diponegoro' (1857) and 'Flood in Java' (1861). This paper was first presented at the Bicentennial Seminar (1810-2010)  'Raden Saleh Syarief Bustaman; An Artist and His Life, The Many Worlds of Raden Saleh' organised the Jakarta Institute of the Arts (IKJ - Institut Kesenian Jakarta) at Raden Saleh's former Gothic-style Villa (now the RS Cikini / Cikini Hospital) from 23-26 June 2010. An Indonesian-language version of this paper was published in September 2018 in the paperback version of Werner Kraus's 'Raden Saleh: The Beginning of Modern Indonesian Painting' ('Raden Saleh: Kehidupan dan Karyanya. Jakarta: KPG). But readers should note that the present English version reflects the latest research, so the preface in Werner's fine biography now needs to be updated with new information kindly provided by the Hague-based Raden Saleh expert, Dr Marie-Odette Scalliet. This updated version was posted on 14 August 2021.

This short work brings together three articles on the origins of the place name Yogyakarta and its central highway - Jalan Malioboro. Two of these articles (those by Peter Carey and Jacobus (Koos) Noorduyn) appeared in the Archipel journal in Paris in the 1980s and the third (by Merle Ricklefs) was written especially for this publication by Komunitas Bambu in Depok (Jakarta)

Cerita diawali ketika Yadiran merasa sangat jengkel, bahkan sampai misuh-misuh setelah mengetahui bahwa sepatu barunya hilang di masjid kantor yang beberapa hari yang lalu selesai dibangun. Peristiwa yang dialami oleh Yadiran tersebut kemudian diceritakan kembali oleh Yadiran sendiri, secara runtut sesuai dengan kronologis sebelum sepatu barunya hilang. Hari itu adalah hari Jum'at, Yadiran telat masuk kantor. Alasannya adalah karena hujan, takut pakaian kerja yang dikenakannya basah kuyup maka ia memutuskan berangkat ke kantor setelah hujan cukup reda. Mengingat hari

This paper entitled "Raden Saleh, Dipanagara and the Painting of the Capture of Dipanagara at Magelang (28 March 1830)' appeared in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society no.262 (pp.1-25) in 1982. It was republished in Indonesian translation in Harsja W. Bachtiar, Peter B.R. Carey and Onghokham (ed JJ Rizal), 'Raden Saleh: Anak Belanda, Mooi Indie & Nasionalisme' (Jakarta: Komunitas Bambu/Kobam, 2009), hlm.85-162. It constituted one of the first attempts to trace the historical details and context of Raden Saleh's famous painting of the Capture of Diponegoro (Dipanagara) in the Residency House in Magelang on Sunday, 28 March1830. In the light of recent research by the young Indonesian artist, Guntur Triadi, in the Rijksinstituut voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, in The Hague, some of the key details are wrong (e.g. the prominent figure to the lefthand-side of the picture leaning against a pillar and looking away from the main group, which was identified in the JMBRAS article as the cavalry commander Major Johan Jacob Perie, is in fact the senior Dutch officer and Bagelen commander, Colonel Jan-Baptist Cleerens (1785-1850), who conducted the first negotiations with Diponegoro at Remokamal (16 February 1830), gave him safe passage to Magelang and ultimately betrayed him). Nevertheless, the article highlighted the historicity of Saleh's famous painting and provided the foundation for the German Raden Saleh expert, Werner Kraus's, important 2005 Archipel (Paris) article, 'Raden Saleh's Interpretation of the Arrest of Diponegoro; An example of Indonesian 'proto-nationalist' modernism" (No.69, pp.259-94). It also helped to awaken art historians worldwide to the significance of Raden Saleh's work.