In the past, no research has been found on onomastics from a mystical perspective in literature. This study investigated onomastics in the tetralogy of novels by Ki Padmasusastra. The main point of view is the meaning of Javanese cosmology. Qualitative methods are used as research guidelines. The primary data are four Javanese novels. Hermeneutic techniques and content analysis are applied to analytical strategies. The results showed that the onomastics in TNKP are symbols of Javanese cosmology. This element (...) of Javanese cosmology has transformed onomastics through three things: the novel title, figure's name and location name. The symbolisation of the onomastic is implicit because it is wrapped in the aesthetics of the literary language. The name structure of each onomastic subsection has no clear meaning because the name element is intended for the sense of 'the other'. Names have an explicit function, namely as hypertextual fragments of symbols that transcend the narrative text structure. An important implication of this investigation is that onomastics can promote the transdisciplinary aspects of religion in international theology in the study of narrative texts. The cosmological transformation of Java can be reflected in various parts of culture, including in novels. TNKP is a cross-disciplinary meeting: fiction, linguistics, mystical, social, cultural and philosophical, contributing to further theological studies.CONTRIBUTION: This article contributes to the purpose of HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies to promote the transdisciplinary aspects of religious studies in the international theological arena of hermeneutic and philosophical studies behind the narrative text. (shrink)

Javanese people have unique characteristics and traditions that make them appealing for research. One of the unique things of the Javanese tradition called bancaan is that it is aimed at appreciating children. Bancaan is a simple banquet of gratitude on the occasion of a child’s birthday by inviting their playmates to pray together for their good. This tradition is rich in the value of hospitality but began to disappear as influences of current development overtake. Given this reality, this (...) study discovered Christian values of hospitality in the bancaan tradition. This discovery is based on a survey by Lee Roy Martin and Michele Hersberger. This research is based on the paradigm of qualitative research. Data collection was conducted by examining the literature and studying the Bible. The problem was analysed using interactive analysis, revealing Christian hospitality values in the bancaan tradition. The values showed are as follows: bancaan is open to everyone in nature despite their backgrounds, bancaan is a form of interaction of hospitality in simplicity and bancaan is a form of regeneration of hospitality values to the child.Contribution: This manuscript provided an overview of one form of Javanese culture, which was then linked to the principles of hospitality from Jesus. This culture was a form of Javanese culture towards children’s appreciation. It is hoped that this manuscript contributes to the preservation of Javanese bancaan culture. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology Jahrgang: 8 Heft: 2 Seiten: 189-208.

The Old Javanese Rāmāyaṇa Kakawin, the earliest known Javanese literary work, is based on the sixth-century Sanskrit Bhaṭṭikāvya. It is an outcome of a careful and thorough project of translation and adaptation that took place at a formative moment in the cultural exchange between South and Southeast Asia. In this essay we explore what it was that the Javanese poets set out to capture when they rendered the Bhaṭṭikāvya into Old Javanese, what sort of knowledge and (...) protocols informed their work, in what way the outcome was different from the original, and what the Old Javanese Rāmāyaṇa can teach us about Bhaṭṭi’s poem and the nascent poetics of kakawin literature. In particular, we show how Sanskrit figures of speech, or ornaments were understood, commented upon, expanded, and reconfigured. A close look at these texts allows us insights into this remarkable moment of cultural exchange. (shrink)

This study aims to reveal the interaction of local Javanese culture with an Islamic philosophical approach originating from the Cowongan tradition performed by shamans accompanied by dances with holy ladies and reciting mantras. This tradition is a prayer asking the gods to send down rain. This article emphasised that the Cowongan tradition places mystical power as the dominant element in life, which is embodied in symbols. The study of mysticism is closer to the study of Sufism which presents it (...) as Islamic mysticism with the color of syncretism of religious teachings with local cultural practices embodied by mystical-occult practices as the Penginyongan culture.Contribution: This research contributed to the fact that traditions that are good and acceptable to society can become the law as part of the Urf, which need to be maintained as long as they do not conflict with Sharia. (shrink)

Our examination of Javanese Islam has attempted 1) to assess aesthetics as a major component of religious revelation, 2) to establish aesthetic elements as major factors in motivating religious conversion into Islam for the Javanese (or others), and 3) to delineate aesthetic elements as stimulants to subsequent spiritual growth for the born-Muslims. We attempt to describe a highly sophisticated sensitivity to aesthetic elements within their religious rites and rituals among the village Javanese, along with sometimes eloquent expressions (...) of these understandings. Hopefully, our results will serve to inspire further studies of aesthetic rather than theological validation of Revealed or Prophetic Knowledge, a form of cognition and knowledge long familiar to traditional religious cultures that is now coming to be considered a valid form of reality even in the western world, by such influential scholars as Leo Strauss. (shrink)

The history of the development of Islam in Indonesia often fails because of the rejection of the local community. Therefore, it is necessary to make ethical efforts so that society can accept Islam. This research is an attempt to explain the Mantra by Sunan Kalijaga (after this referred to as SKM) as a medium for spreading Islam. This research uses a qualitative research paradigm. The primary data source is the spell text in Serat Kidungan ingkang Jangkep. Data analysis techniques use (...) content analysis techniques and hermeneutics. The results showed that SKM is a philosophical representation of Javanese mantras with the spirit of Islam. Mantras are not simple texts but rather acts of establishing the understanding of Islam through integrating literature and culture. Hindu-Islamic syncretism is wrapped in the symbolisation of the text. Word choice is not always of magical significance because the text is oriented towards the purpose of ‘the other’. Restructuring the relationship between text and symbols reflects a strategy for changing the nature and purpose of spells. In turn, SKM is a quality ritual language that has an essential role in the history of the Islamic movement in Java, Indonesia. Axiologically, SKM provides necessary educational knowledge about the ethics of proselytising without being hurt. Sunan Kalijaga combines literary, cultural, educational, and ethical values for religious purposes. An important implication of this research is that mantras can contribute to promoting the transdisciplinary aspects of religion in the international theological arena through mantra texts. Thus, SKM has an essential role in spirituality and science. Contribution: This article contributes to the HTS Theological Studies’s goal of promoting the transdisciplinary aspects of religious studies in the international theological arena on the study of mantra texts. (shrink)

Centhini manuscript is one of the ancient manuscripts from Kesultanan Surakarta Hadiningrat in the 19th century which has had a role in the cultural and ecological aspects in regulating the use of teakwood. Therefore, deep study into utilization of teak wood in Centhini Manuscript will be conducted as cultural heritage from Indonesia. Narrative methods is used in this research to present thematic results. Direct observation is conducted on various artifacts to analyze the symbolic value of teakwood. The results show that (...) in the past, religious considerations, alertness and well-being is an important factor in the selection of teak in the Javanese community. Selection of teak is carried out strictly as accountability to the environment. The purpose of this research is to build cultural values as strategy on teak wood utilization in Indonesia and to develop ecology-minded design in the future. (shrink)

Contextualising biblical teaching entails the adoption of certain forms, terms or thought patterns that might confuse the original message, especially if the effort takes place in a Javanese culture context that is full of subtlety and indirect communication. This study analyses a Javanese poetry form that contains the narrative of Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman. The indigenous poems are widely sung by the adherents of Javanese indigenous religions. However, only a few studies are conducted on such (...) indigenous poems that contain Christian messages. This study examines whether or not the poetry form and religious terms that the writer used could serve as a vehicle to convey the good news message of the narrative of John 4:4–42 instead of creating impediment. Through literary form analysis followed by content analysis, the results showed that the Javanese poem contains several cantos, each with an embedded meaning. Finally, it intends to demonstrate how a combination, instead of contestation, of the indigenous, Islam and Christian terms is effective for the writer’s purpose. Thus, the writer’s choice was suitable in his effort to communicate the original teaching.Contribution: This study contributes to inter-religious communication by identifying the Javanese indigenous communication pattern, particularly the placement of their messages inside their poem’s structure and in various terminologies. Strengthening inter-religious communication to create a mutual understanding in Indonesian pluralistic society is needed especially as the Javanese indigenous religions are often misunderstood. (shrink)

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral--Gregorian University).

One of the many faces of Islam in Indonesia is the abangan Muslims or the abangans. As one of the most populous Muslim groups in the country, it is important to know them. To understand Indonesian Islam or Muslims, one cannot overlook them. The article argues that, amid recent escalating Muslim–Christian tension in the country, this majority Muslim group can play a significant role in enhancing Muslim–Christian relations in the future, on account of their worldview that emphasizes and maintains cosmic (...) harmony and balance of all existence. Their open and syncretic attitudes toward other religions may foster religious tolerance and coexistence. These are attested in the author’s personal engagement with them. It is suggested that Christians be more inclusive toward them, but, at the same time, be critical in engaging their worldview. These attitudes are necessary for building a mutual and peaceful Muslim–Christian relationship in the region. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between religion, tradition and identity as seen from the myth about eclipses in a village in Central Java. Javanese people in rural areas still hold beliefs passed down from their ancestors about eclipses, both lunar and solar eclipses. Using a qualitative approach, the results of the study showed that the villagers believe that eclipses occur because of evil giants called buto named Batara Kala who try to devour the sun or the moon. This natural (...) phenomenon is believed to bring disaster to pregnant women and livestock. To fight the disaster, they must perform certain ceremonies or rituals. Based on ethnographic studies, this research provides an overview of eclipse mythology for Javanese locals and analyses it from identity theory. This shows that mythical rituals reflect a continuous identity formation. Although the traditions associated with these myths to some extent transcend the boundaries of the Islamic religion, they remain unchallenged. CONTRIBUTION: This research suggests that myths play an important role in the life and identity of the people who believe in them and perform the rituals associated with them. (shrink)

Rasa is the most thorough treatment to date of this all-important concept at the heart of Javanese aesthetics. Rasa encompasses not only mood and intuition, but also theories of musical perception and cognition, as well as meaning and expression in music.

The complex notion of rasa, as understood by Javanese musicians, refers to a combination of various qualities, including: taste, feeling, affect, mood, sense, inner meaning, a faculty of knowing intuitively, and deep understanding. This leaves us with a number of questions: how is rasa expressed musically? Who or what has rasa, and what sorts of musical, psychological, perceptual, and sociological distinctions enter into this determination? How is the vocabulary of rasa structured, and what does this tell us about traditional (...) Javanese music and aesthetics? In this first book on the subject, Rasa provides an entry into Javanese music as it is conceived by the people who know the tradition best: the musicians themselves. In one of the most thorough explorations of local aesthetics to date, author Marc Benamou argues that musical meaning is above all connotative - hence, not only learned, but learnable. Following several years performing and researching Javanese music in the regional and national cultural center of Solo, Indonesia, Benamou untangles the many meanings of rasa as an aesthetic criterion in Javanese music, particularly in court and court-derived gamelan traditions. While acknowledging that certain universal psychological tendencies may inspire parallel interpretations of musical meaning, Rasa demonstrates just how culturally specific such accrued, shared meanings can be. (shrink)

This study investigated the perspective of Javanese Islamic philosophy on the Apak 'Beringin' rock fossil and its impact on the level of spirituality and community behavior, using a qualitative descriptive method with a phenomenological approach. Data analysis techniques were carried out using observation, interviews, and literature studies focusing on textual and contextual interpretations of the 'Beringin' Apak Fossil Rock. The main data sources came from the book of philosophy otak-athik gathuk (Javanese Islamic philosophical thought) by Damardjati Supadjar and (...) the book of commentary as-Sulami by Imam Abu Abd. Muhammad bin Husayn as-Sulami. The findings revealed that in Javanese Islamic philosophy, the symbolization of the universe depicted in the form of fossilized rocks aimed to train the soul in understanding the origin and purpose of everything in the universe or known as 'sangkan paraning damadi'. This is a manifestation of the Javanese Muslim community's way of knowing God or what is known as divine awareness ‘ilahiyah’. In the rock fossils that have been found, there are words Allah and Muhammad considered by the Javanese as a natural permit that is only obtained by people who reach certain maqam. The conclusion is that based on the elaboration of the meaning of the natural text which is symbolized in the form of the 'Beringin' Fossil rock, it is a reflection of oneself to always be close to Allah SWT. (shrink)

This article is a result of a massive survey conducted in Tulungagung, a south-eastern Javanese middle town in the early 2022. The survey involves 2569 data collectors that successfully, following a series of data cleansing, reported refined 7140 data survey. The article is a descriptive analytic which shows the views of respondents of the survey. They are leaders in many Javanese villages in the city which include religious leaders (RL), leaders of community (LC), and young leaders (YL). The (...) survey addresses four important issues that have been officially recognised as the official four pillars of religious moderation (_moderasi beragama_), namely commitment for Indonesian nationalism, tolerance, anti-violence, acceptance to local cultures. The survey finds that there has been no worrying indicator threatening the four pillars of _moderasi beragama_ and argues that a challenge for religious pluralism in contemporary Java lies at the coexistence between groups within the same religion. It also suggests that “moderating the moderate” has been a key challenge for the state’s initiative of _moderasi beragama_, otherwise the project becomes obsolete. (shrink)

Dharma Pātañjala, a Śaiva Scripture from Ancient Java, Studied in the Light of Related Old Javanese and Sanskrit Texts. Gonda Indological Studies, vol. 16. By Andrea Acri. Pp. xviii + 706. Gronin- gen: Egbert Forsten, 2012. €170.

The influence of Aśvaghoṣa on the later tradition of kāvya was largely passed over in the South Asian tradition, even though the debt to his influence is clear in processional scenes developed by Kālidāsa and the attempted seduction of Arjuna developed by Bhāravi in his Kirātārjunīyam. We know from the testimony of the Chinese pilgrim Yijing that the Buddhacarita was a revered object of study in the Sumatran capital Śrībhoga near the close of the seventh century CE. It thus perhaps (...) comes as no surprise that three tropes or themes developed by Aśvaghoṣa were developed by several important composers of kakawin, the Old Javanese literary genre comparable to the kāvya of South Asia. This paper looks at the development of the themes of processions, divine battles and attempted seductions in a long history beginning with Aśvaghoṣa and closing with the work of the Javanese author Mpu Tantular, who completed the Buddhist kakawin Sutasoma c. 1365–1389 CE. This paper is partly based on a revised perspective on the history of the Shailendra and Sañjaya dynasties of central Java developed by examining the role of the “Shailendra royal preceptors” in bringing Sanskrit learning to Central Java in the period 778–847 CE. (shrink)

The doctrine of the sleeping soul is a doctrine developed to accommodate local wisdom in Indonesia. This doctrine describes the metaphysical part of man after death. A local pearl of wisdom discussed is the Javanese death slametan tradition. The purpose of this article is to develop the doctrine of the sleeping soul according to the narrative of Jesus’ words in Mark 5:35–42 and the Prophet Daniel in Daniel 12:1–3 in representing the metaphysical anthropological view of the Javanese death (...) slametan tradition in terms of the theory of collective memory. The descriptions of the sleeping soul doctrine in the Javanese death slametan tradition are as follows: Firstly, there is a collective memory in giving appreciation to the metaphysical side of humans after death. Secondly, the sleeping soul doctrine is developed from the collective memory of the Javanese death slametan tradition and the Hebrew view. Thirdly, the sleeping soul doctrine is a contextualisation doctrine of the Javanese death slametan tradition. Contribution: The implications of this research give birth to the doctrine of the sleeping soul in the framework of the preservation of Javanese culture, especially in the Javanese culture of death [ slametan ]. This study proves that Christianity has contributed to caring for culture rather than alienating it. (shrink)

Organising smallholder farmers into groups or co-operatives is widely promoted as a strategy to connect farmers to markets and turn them into price makers rather than price takers. This pathway usually combines co-operative organisational models, based on collective ownership and representation in internal governance, with measures to shorten the agri-food chain, shifting the ownership of intermediary sourcing, aggregating and trading functions to the group. The underlying assumption is that this improves smallholder farmers' terms of inclusion in markets. To scrutinise this (...) assumption, our study compares two examples of farmer-led auctions facilitating trading in the chilli market in Java, Indonesia. The auctions' ownership, management and performance evolved differently: one was run by a group and the other by a family. The comparison brings nuance to the prevalent emphasis on co-operative ownership structures. By researching practices central to collective trading at the chilli supplier–trader interface, this study unravels four dimensions—ownership, voice, reward and risk—capturing smallholder chilli farmers' terms of inclusion in both the auctions and the market. Our comparative analysis suggests that shared ownership and control of the trading function, a central feature of co-operative models, does not necessarily ensure favourable terms of inclusion for smallholder farmers with little capacity to take risks. The capacity to reconfigure the terms of market inclusion for vulnerable smallholder farmers involves direct payment modalities and risk taking. A collectively owned trading organisation does not necessarily imply an inclusive business concept when the organisation cannot acquire sufficient working capital to pay its suppliers. (shrink)

This study describes Raden Panji Natarata's thoughts as a humanist, poet and religious scholar who thinks that the concepts of Javanese Sufism and Islamic Sufism are two contradictory ideas. Raden Panji Natarata describes his ideas through the medium of têmbang macapat (Javanese song) in a classic Javanese literature entitled Sêrat Bayanullah. Sêrat Bayanullah, which is used as a source of data for this research, is a collection of the Pura Mangkunegaran library, Surakarta, with catalogue number A-393. The (...) scope of this study focuses on Raden Panji Natarata's thoughts on the nature of life, which include the concepts of human creation, human death, and the after-death union of the servant with God. To obtain objective and comprehensive research results, the researchers used a qualitative descriptive research paradigm by applying hermeneutic theory. The results showed that Raden Panji Natarata's thoughts about the nature of life did not go beyond the limits of monotheism, while other poets tended to acculturate Javanese Sufism thoughts, which sometimes were not in line with the teachings of monotheism. CONTRIBUTION: As an academic contribution, this research is expected to enrich and preserve the repertoire of local research literature with Sufism nuances and their relationship with the thoughts of Sufi experts. Differences in perspective is natural, and the most important thing is mutual respect for differing opinions for the sake of creating harmony in life. (shrink)

. Besides a philosophical exposition of the tenets of a form of Śaiva Siddhānta, the Dharma Pātañjala contains a long presentation of the yoga system that apparently follows the first three chapters of Patañjal’s Yogasūtra , either interweaving Sanskrit excerpts from an untraced versified version of the latter text with an Old Javanese commentary, or directly rendering into Old Javanese what appears to be an original Sanskrit commentary. Although the Old Javanese prose often bears a strong resemblance (...) with the arrangement and formulation of the topics treated in the Yogasūtrabhāṣya , it diverges from that commentary in several respects. The Dharma Pātañjala often presents specific doctrinal details that are found in other (sub)commentaries or in the Arabic rendering of the sūtra s-cum-commentary composed by al-Bīrūnī before 1030 AD , or adds original elements that are unattested elsewhere. The testimony of the Dharma Pātañjala turns out to be useful in order to solve some of the dilemmas posed by the selected sūtra s. It may also help us to better understand the textual cultural transmission and cultural reception of Patañjali’s work in both South and Southeast Asia, for its author, rather than freely borrowing from different Sanskrit commentaries, appear to have drawn upon an as yet unidentified, and possibly lost, ‘common source’. (shrink)