bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
On birds, ascetics, and kings in Central Java Rāmāyana Kakawin, 24.95–126 and 25
Authors: Acri Andrea
Published: April 2013

In the first part of the paper I introduce stanzas 95-126 of Sarga 24 and the whole of Sarga 25 of the Old Javanese Rāmāyaṇa, which present the most difficult and least understood pieces of poetry in the whole of Old Javanese literature. The two sections, displaying a close relationship between each other on account of several shared lexical items and corresponding motifs, describe in allegorical terms animals, birds and plants in order to satirically represent ascetic and political characters of mid-9th century Central Java. Because of their idiosyncratic language and style, and because of their allegorical content which find no correspondences in the Bhaṭṭikāvya or other Sanskrit versions of the Rāmāyaṇa, they have been for long regarded as a ‘corpus alienum’ in the poem. The thesis of interpolation was criticized by Hooykaas (1958a/b/c), who, however, did not rule out the possibility of their having been composed by a ‘second hand’. Having tried to distinguish the various textual layers that characterize those sections, I turn to analyse their contents along the lines set out in the masterful article by Aichele (1969) ‘Vergessene Metaphern als Kriterien der Datierung des altjavanischen Rāmāyaṇa’, discussing the allegories depicted there in comparison with the contemporary Śiwagṛha metrical inscription. By taking into account additional Old Javanese textual and visual documents, I suggest a fine-tuning for some of the identifications advanced by the German scholar. In particular, I argue that the character of Wibhīṣaṇa (instead of Lakṣmaṇa, as argued by Aichele) in the poem could allegorically represent King Rakai Kayuwaṅi, and that the satirical descriptions of various kinds of water-birds of the heron family deceiving the freshwater fishes are to be taken as a critique directed to historical figures representing covert agents of the Śailendra prince Bālaputra disguised as Śaiva (and not Buddhist) ascetics. My conclusion is that the satirical themes displayed in the stanzas represent a case of ‘localization’ of materials widespread in Sanskrit literature, which should be taken into due consideration in order to understand the identity and religious affiliation of the ascetic figures allegorically represented in Sargas 24 and 25.
Book reviews
Authors: KITLV Redactie
Published: April 2013

Birgit Bräuchler (ed.), Reconciling Indonesia; Grassroots agency for peace. (Renata M. Lesner-Szwarc) Elizabeth Fuller Collins, Indonesia betrayed; How development fails. (Ahmad Helmy Fuady) Grant Evans, The last century of Lao royalty; A documentary history. (Guido Sprenger) Tineke Hellwig and Eric Tagliacozzo (eds), The Indonesia reader; History, culture, politics. (Edwin Wieringa) Raymond Corbey, Snellen om namen; De Marind-Anim van Nieuw-Guinea door de ogen van de Missionarissen van het Heilig Hart, 1905-1925. (Anna-Karina Hermkens) Patrick Guinness, Kampung, Islam and state in urban Java. (Robert W. Hefner) R.E. Jordaan and B.E. Colless, The Māharājas of the isles; The Śailendras and the problem of Śrivijaya. (Hans Hägerdal) Henk Schulte Nordholt, Bali: an open fortress, 1995-2005; Regional autonomy, electoral democracy and entrenched identities. (Sita van Bemmelen) Sukardi Rinakit, The Indonesian military after the New Order. (Alexander Claver) Roxana Waterson, Paths and rivers; Sa’dan Toraja society in transformation. (Maria J.C. Schouten)
In memoriam Maria J.L. van Yperen: 23 February 1938 - 12 June 2010
Authors: Decoursey Rita , Van Doorn Marlene
Published: April 2013

In memory of Maria van Yperen, KITLV's associate editor for the Bijdragen.
Gatot Mangkupraja, PET A, and the origins of the Indonesian National Army
Authors: Sato Shigeru
Published: April 2013

Indonesian nationalist Gatot Mangkupraja (1898-1968) was politically active throughout his adult life that extended over the turbulent periods called tiga jaman ('three eras' under the Dutch, the Japanese, and the Indonesian administration) but he never reached real prominence, and is remembered primarily for his role in the formation of PETA (Pembela Tanah Air, Defenders of the Homeland). Gatot's fame rests on his own statement that he presented to the Japanese occupation authorities an impassioned petition written in his own blood pleading them to allow the Indonesians to form their own defence force. He made this statement in his memoirs, which were published in the journal Indonesia under the title: 'The PETA and My Relations with the Japanese; A Correction of Sukarno's Autobiography'. Some people cast doubt about the reliability of his statement, which resulted in heated debate in Indonesia in 1975. This debate however failed to clarify the issue in part because people’s access to source materials was limited at that time. Gatot's memoirs merit re-examination because they concern some key issues in modern Indonesian history and also because his memoirs, often cited uncritically, are, as this article will show, riddled with inaccuracies, both large and small.
Arabic loanwords in Indonesian revisited
Authors: Van Dam Nikolaos
Published: April 2013

How did Arabic loanwords end up in Indonesian? Various academic answers to this intriguing question have been put forward, but only rarely has any solid linguistic 'proof' been provided. General conclusions have been drawn on the basis of a few, rather unrepresentative or obsolete, examples. Academics have copied arguments and hypotheses from one another, without any independent research into their reliability. Some of the arguments, or pure hypotheses, have obtained the status of pseudo 'established fact', irrespective of the fact that they lack academic justification. This article makes an effort to put the record straight by showing that a Persian or Persianized connection cannot be proven statistically, as claimed by Stuart Campbell. It also shows that some loanwords have a colloquial, occasionaly even regionally identifiable Arabic origin, but that the claim by Versteegh and others of a South Arabian or Hadrami connection cannot be convincingly established. It finally demonstrates that more attention should be given to the linguistic particularities of the recipient (Indonesian/Nusantara) language, than to concentrate mainly on the characteristics of the Arabic language which provided these loanwords. Unknown Arabic phonemes deserve special attention because they were in some cases interpreted and adopted by Indonesian/Nusantara listeners as phonemes that were phonetically nearest to these, and which were part of their own phoneme system.
Early economic encounters in the Pacific or, proto-globalization in Tonga
Authors: Van der Grijp Paul
Published: April 2013

This article aims to demonstrate the degree and nature of local autonomy in long term processes of globalization in Tonga. Tonga is exceptional in that it has never been officially colonized and in the continuity of its political (paramount chiefly) system. Also, but this is less exceptional, it has never had a pure modernistic, capitalist economy. Globalization is a specific, contemporary configuration in the relationship between capital and the nation-state or, in the words of William Greider (1997), it is like ‘a runaway horse without a rider’. Global capital is characterized by strategies of predatory mobility. However, the global and the national are not necessarily exclusive but are interacting and overlapping. Social scientists work with the nation-state as a container which would represent a unit in time and space, a ‘unified spatiotemporality’ according to the sociologist Saskia Sassen (2000). She adds that much history failed to confirm the latter hypothesis. The author may add from his part that anthropologists, although alike ‘social scientists’, rather work with the notions of culture and society which, in the case of more recent Tongan history, overlap with that of the nation-state. Although the notion of globalization is a rather recent invention with an exclusive contemporary application, we may discern the roots of its practice already in the early trading contacts between Europeans and Tongans.
Andrew Beatty, A shadow falls; In the heart of Java.
Authors: Semedi Pujo , Peletz Michael , Wieringa Edwin , Beatty Andrew
Published: April 2013

In this feature we highlight a recently launched book. We invite specialists in the field to comment on the book, and we invite the author to respond to their comments. In this issue we focus on Andrew Beatty's, A shadow falls; In the heart of Java. Those invited to comment on the book are Puja Semedi, Michael Peletz and Edwin Wieiringa. Registered readers may participate in the debate.
Video spa : Krisna Murti's treatment of the senses
Authors: Jurriëns Edwin
Published: April 2013

This article discusses Indonesian artist Krisna Murti, whose video art and other creative work can be seen as a form of televisual metadiscourse. Murti’s artistic type of televisual metadiscourse provides insight into the commercial and ideological mechanisms behind the mass media industry; the cultural-technological features of various media; the historical dimensions of different genres of representation; the position of the artist and audience in processes of mediation; and alternative forms of intermediality and interactivity. Beyond merely television critique, Murti’s work presents an alternative vision of mixed environments where media and people harmoniously coexist and interact with each other. The author argues that this attempt at promoting pleasant, effective and sustainable communication environments could be seen as the media equivalent of ecology.
Porous boundaries : Addressing calamities in East Java, Indonesia
Authors: Wessing Robert
Published: April 2013

Social constructions of reality must account for adversity and calamities. In East Java this is commonly done with reference to the spirit world and to God, with only occasional appeals to modern science. Rather than being a uniform phenomenon, adversity can be conceptualized as happening on the individual, the household, the community, and the state levels. Explanations similarly vary from specific individual offences, to communal household or community culpability, and national-level disasters like tsunamis and volcanic eruptions that are blamed on the activities of gods and spirits. All these social units are seen as porous, and care must be taken to protect them from deleterious outside influences. Parallel to these explanations at all levels run appeals to God and His mercies. The difference between these streams of explanation is resolved in the case of the more pious by either denying the spirit world, or otherwise resolving them in various ways by unifying the categories of God and the spirit world.
Ann Laura Stoler, Along the archival grain; Epistemic anxieties and colonial common sense.
Authors: Gouda Frances , Raben Remco , Schulte Nordholt Henk , Stoler Ann Laura
Published: April 2013

In this new feature we highlight a recently launched book. We invite specialists in the field to comment on the book, and we invite the author to respond to their comments. In this issue we focus on Ann Stoler’s Along the archival grain; Epistemic anxieties and colonial common sense. Those invited to comment on the book are Frances Gouda, Remco Raben and Henk Schulte Nordholt. Registered readers may participate in the debate.
Old Javanese legal traditions in pre-colonial Bali
Authors: Creese Helen
Published: April 2013

Law codes with their origins in Indic-influenced Old Javanese systems of knowledge comprise an important genre in the Balinese textual record. Written in Kawi—a term encompassing Old Javanese, Middle Javanese and High Balinese—the legal corpus forms a complex and overlapping web of indigenous legal texts and traditions that encompass the codification and administration of civil and criminal justice as well as concepts of morality and right conduct. The most significant codes include the Adhigama, Kuṭāramānawa, Pūrwādhigama, Sārasamuccaya, Swarajambu, Dewāgama (also called Krĕtopapati) and Dewadanda. Each of these law codes belongs to a shared tradition of legal thought and practice that is linked to Sanskrit Mānavadharmaśāstra traditions. Manu’s code, most notably the aṣṭadaśawyawahāra section detailing the eighteen grounds for litigation, was adopted as the model of legal textual principle in the early stages of contact between ancient India and the Indonesian archipelago. Over the course of many centuries, this model informed legal and juridical practice and was adapted and modified to suit indigenous needs. The law codes remained in use in Java until the advent of Islam towards the end of the fifteenth century, and in Bali until the colonial period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Balinese legal textual corpus comprises dozens of interrelated manuscripts, some complete and some fragmentary. They provide significant insights in to pre-colonial judicial practices and forms of government. This article provides a survey of the corpus of legal texts and explores the nature of law in pre-colonial Bali.
When did legong start? A reply to Stephen Davies
Authors: Vickers Adrian
Published: April 2013

Stephen Davies has recently opened up new ways of looking at the history of Bali’s premier dance form, legong. He has argued that legong started in the late nineteenth century, more specifically after 1887, probably in 1889, and that it is primarily derived from a form which Balinese presently call andir. Davies’ article involves a substantial reconsideration of the canonical nature of certain dance forms in Bali. The evidence Davies used is largely oral history. What is missing from Davies’ account is evidence from closer to the time period, evidence that can allow us to fix the date of the origins of legong more closely, and also to understand precisely what its performative and musical associations and origins might be. This evidence is present in Balinese and Dutch-language sources, and while there are limitations to these sources, they certainly modify Davies’ thesis.
Conversion to Islam on Java and the Book of One Thousand Questions
Authors: Ricci Ronit
Published: April 2013

If numbers tell a story, the conversion to Islam of the peoples of the Indonesian archipelago can be counted as a great success. It is clear that Islam has taken strong root in the region and has influenced many facets of life – from politics and language to the economy and education – over several centuries, as it continues to do today. The protracted process of the region’s large-scale Islamization has given rise to various explanations and interpretations, representing different perspectives on when, where, how and why individuals and communities converted to Islam. The goal of this essay is to focus on a little-explored source for the study of conceptions about, and depictions of, conversion to Islam: the literary corpus of the Book of One Thousand Questions. Although this narrative is known in many languages, my emphasis here is on its versions in Javanese and their relationship to additional, more popular conversion narratives in that language. The comparative study of such sources reveals how early conversions were remembered, retold over time, and reconfigured to address local, and contemporary, events and concerns.
A temple, a mission, and a war: Jesuit missionaries and local culture in East Flores in the nineteenth century
Authors: Barnes R.H.
Published: April 2013

After temporarily acquiring Portuguese ‘possessions’ in Flores and islands immediately to the east in 1851, the Netherlands East Indies took full possession in 1859. An important condition guaranteed religious freedom to Catholics in the transferred territories. Dutch authorities took this concession seriously and requested that Dutch Catholic missionaries be sent to Larantuka, Flores. Eventually the Jesuits assumed responsibility. The Dutch Catholic priests objected to many aspects of local ceremonial practice and in particular to the local temples. Their efforts to abolish these temples and practices involved them in local disputes and eventually in a war. This article examines the complexities of the resulting events and in particular the tensions among the priests, colonial authorities and local leadership.
Religion, class and schooled sexuality among Minangkabau teenage girls
Authors: Parker Lyn
Published: April 2013

This paper examines the meanings attached to sexuality and femininity by Minangkabau teenage girls in schools in West Sumatra, Indonesia. Schools in West Sumatra communicate a hegemonic, normative understanding of womanhood, and a moral consciousness of the female sexual body, to students. Different types of schools – academic, vocational and Islamic senior high schools – have a different ‘curriculum of the body’ (Lesko 1988) and differently discipline bodies and shape sexuality. School girls articulate their understanding of and practise their sexuality in ways that are characteristic of their class, gender and religiosity, mediated by their schools. The schools articulate a religiously-ordained and gendered social order, and impose social control. The different types of school render girls chaste and virtuous to varying degrees. Through everyday practices, this curriculum effects girls’ embodied experience of sexuality. Minangkabau teenage girls have a highly developed sense of their own sexuality, but, far from experiencing a sexual revolution as a result of globalization, most have developed a sexual awareness that is weighted with cultural and religious burdens. Minang female adolescent sexuality is a moral sexuality based on Islam and adat.
Erratum Noriko Ishida; The textures of Central Javanese gamelan music: Pre-notation and its discontents (Bijdragen 164-4)
Authors: KITLV Redactie
Published: April 2013

Erratum to Noriko Ishida; The textures of Central Javanese gamelan music: Pre-notation and its discontents (Bijdragen 164-4).
Book reviews
Authors: KITLV Redactie
Published: April 2013

Johnny Tjia; A grammar of Mualang: An Ibanic language of West Kalimantan, Indonesia (Alexander Adelaar) Christopher Moseley (ed.); Encyclopedia of the world’s endangered languages (Peter K. Austin) Ian Rae and Morgen Witzel; The Overseas Chinese of South east Asia: History, culture, business (Chin Yee Whah) Ab Massier; The voice of the law in transition: Indonesian jurists and their languages, 1915-2000 (Dwi Noverini Djenar) Henk Schulte Nordholt and Gerry van Klinken (eds); Renegotiating boundaries: Local politics in post-Suharto Indonesia (Maribeth Erb) Nghia M. Vo; The Vietnamese boat people, 1954 and 1975-1992 (Martin Grossheim) O.W. Wolters; Early Southeast Asia: Selected essays [edited by Craig J. Reynolds] (Hans Hägerdal) Michael W. Scott; The severed snake: Matrilineages, making place, and a Melanesian Christianity in Southeast Solomon Islands (Menno Hekker) John H. McGlynn, Oscar Motuloh, Suzanne Charlé, Jeffrey Hadler, Bambang Bujono, Margaret Glade Agusta, and Gedsiri Suhartono; Indonesia in the Soeharto years: Issues, incidents and images (David Henley) Hanneke Hollander; Een man met een speurdersneus: Carel Groenevelt (1899-1973), beroepsverzamelaar voor Tropenmuseum en Wereldmuseum in Nieuw-Guinea (Anna-Karina Hermkens) Balk, G.L., F. van Dijk and D.J. Kortlang (with contributions by F.S. Gaastra, Hendrik E. Niemeijer and P. Koenders); The Archives of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the local institutions in Batavia (Jakarta) (Ton Kappelhof) Gusti Asnan; Memikir ulang regionalisme: Sumatera Barat tahun 1950-an (Gerry van Klinken) Lise Lavelle; Amerta Movement of Java 1986-1997: An Asian movement improvisation (Dick van der Meij) Nicole-Claude Mathieu (ed.); Une maison sans fille est une maison morte: La personne et le genre en sociétés matrilinéaires et/ou uxorilocales (Joke van Reenen) Henk Schulte Nordholt; Indonesië na Soeharto: Reformasi en restauratie (Elske Schouten) V.I. Braginsky; … and sails the boat downstream: Malay Sufi poems of the boat (Suryadi) Gilles Gravelle; Meyah: An east Bird’s Head language of Papua, Indonesia (Ian Tupper) Penny Edwards; Cambodge: The cultivation of a nation, 1860-1945 (Un Leang) J. Stephen Lansing; Perfect order: Recognizing complexity in Bali (Carol Warren) Roxana Waterson (ed.); Southeast Asian lives: Personal narratives and historical experience (C.W. Watson) Jean DeBernardi; The way that lives in the heart: Chinese popular religion and spirit mediums in Penang, Malaysia (Robert Wessing) REVIEW ESSAY Environmental and archaeological perspectives on Southeast Asia Peter Boomgaard; Southeast Asia: An environmental history Peter Boomgaard (ed.); A world of water: Rain, rivers and seas in Southeast Asian histories Ian Glover and Peter Bellwood (eds); Southeast Asia: From prehistory to history Avijit Gupta (ed.); The physical geography of Southeast Asia (Eric C. Thompson)
The works of E.M. Uhlenbeck (1913-2003): An annotated bibliography
Authors: Janse Mark
Published: April 2013

Eugenius Marius Uhlenbeck – Bob as he was known to his friends – was a multifacited (or many-sided) and multi-talented person. He was an accomplished scholar in the fields of Javanese language and literature and in general linguistics holding the hairs in these disciplines at Leiden University from 1950-1983 and 1958-1979 respectively. In the Netherlands and abroad he was widely acclaimed as an elder ‘statesman’. His publications reflect his rare combination of talents. I will limit myself here to brief comments about his publications on linguistics, both general and Javanese linguistics.
Sport, modernity and nation building: The Indonesian National Games of 1951 and 1953
Authors: Brown Colin
Published: April 2013

The study of sport – its social, political, cultural and economic aspects – is a well-established academic field, scholars widely acknowledging its significance in understanding how a society is organized and understood. As Perkin (1992:211) puts it: The history of societies is reflected more vividly in the way they spend their leisure than in their politics or their work […] the history of sport gives a unique insight into the way a society changes and impacts on other societies it comes into contact with and, conversely, the way those societies react back to it. Sport has a particular resonance in considerations of the emergence of modern nation-states out of colonialism, given the connections between the diffusion of modern sports around the world and the colonial experience. Although virtually all societies played games of various kinds, competitive, rule-based sports are essentially modern, western phenomena, dating back no further than the nineteenth century. Their spread through the world coincided with, and in many respects was an inherent part of, the expansion of western colonialism. In the British Empire in particular, sport was seen as reflecting the essential values and characteristics of the British race which justified the existence of colonialism. Wherever the British went, they took their sports with them, together with the social mores they represented.
The textures of Central Javanese gamelan music: Pre-notation and its discontents
Authors: Ishida Noriko
Published: April 2013

This study is an attempt to elucidate what kind of melody the texture of gamelan music is made up of. Through the reconstruction of the melodic texture of the pre-notation era and the examination of the impact of notation on performance practice, it is made clear that the monogenetic texture of the pre-notation era has developed into the diversified and enriched texture of current practice in response to the use of notation. The notion of an inner melody present in the performer’s mind as a basis for his performance is shown to be less than probable.
The return of the native in Indonesian law: Indigenous communities in Indonesian legislation
Authors: Bedner Adriaan , Huis Stijn van
Published: April 2013

Although the UN-proclaimed ‘Decade for Indigenous Peoples’ officially ended in 2004, the continuing array of activities in support of special ‘indigenous rights’ shows that this movement has lost little of its impetus. In spite of criticism of the underpinnings and of the consequences of attributing special rights to ‘indigenous communities’ (Kuper 2003), support for them has remained strong – among NGOs, international organizations, governments, and scholars who do not agree with the criticism. The most notable event in this context is that after having failed to do so in 2004 the United Nations finally adopted the ‘Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’ on 13 September 2007, with an overwhelming 144 countries voting in favour. Thus, there is little reason to suppose that the movement will run out of steam in the near future.
The Sultan and the Revolution
Authors: Monfries John
Published: April 2013

One of the most famous events of the Indonesian Revolution is Sultan Hamengku Buwono’s successful defiance of the Dutch occupation of his city of Yogyakarta from December 1948 to June 1949. It may be timely to re-examine the episode, bearing in mind that Hamengku Buwono’s early career established the unusual constitutional arrangements in the Yogyakarta Special District which still remain in place today, nearly 60 years later.
Structure, date and sources of Hikayat Aceh revisited: The problem of Mughal-Malay literary ties
Authors: Braginsky Vladimir
Published: April 2013

It is common knowledge that from the early centuries AD to the nineteenth century India remained an important source of inspiration for creators of traditional Malay culture and Malay men of letters. However, if literary ties between Hindu India and the Malay world, both direct and mediated by Javanese literature, have frequently drawn the attention of researchers, creative stimuli that came to the Malays from Muslim India remain inadequately studied. Yet the role of these stimuli, radiating from major centres of the Muslim, Persianate, India such as Bengal, Gujarat, Deccan, and the Coromandel coast, in the development of Malay literary culture was by no means inferior to the inspiration originating from Hindu India. In this context, cultural and literary contacts of the Sultanate of Aceh with the Mughal Empire in the seventeenth century are a particularly interesting and challenging subject.
The making and unmaking of tropical science: Dutch research on Indonesia, 1600-2000
Authors: Boomgaard Peter
Published: April 2013

The history of scientific research undertaken by Europeans in regions where they were the colonizing powers has been a popular and well researched topic for two decades now. A growing number of studies, with some preponderance of botany and medicine, have appeared on colonial and protocolonial science in the Americas and in Asia, and it seems likely that this is more than just a fad. However, scientific research by Europeans on and in the Indonesian archipelago does not figure prominently in this literature. Very few scholars working on Indonesia – with Lewis Pyenson (1989, 1998) as the main exception – have specialized in this potentially rewarding field. In order to give an impression of topics that could profitably be addressed, this article presents an overview, in very broad outline, of European – and particularly Dutch – scientific research on Indonesia during the last four centuries, with emphasis on the periods of the Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC, Dutch East India Company) and the Dutch colonial state.
The ‘talking machine’ comes to the Dutch East Indies: The arrival of Western media technology in Southeast Asia
Authors: Suryadi S.
Published: April 2013

The invention of sound recording technology in the nineteenth century was a modern miracle. Making possible the storage and preservation of sounds across time and distance, which previously could only be dreamed of, this invention contributed significantly to the developing entertainment world. Thomas Alva Edison first realized this dream in 1877 when he invented the tin-foil phonograph, which then inspired other scientists to perfect and develop his invention. During the last two decades of the 1800s sound recording machines were exhibited outside the United States of America, first in Europe and then in Australia and Asia. In Europe the machine was first demonstrated at the Academy of Science in Paris on 11 March 1878, where a French professor named Bonjour accused Edison of cheating. He stated that Edison was a ventriloquist.
Flores after floresiensis: Implications of local reaction to recent palaeoanthropological discoveries on an eastern Indonesian island
Authors: Forth Gregory
Published: April 2013

In a recent article (Forth 2005) I discussed possible implications for several sorts of anthropology of the discovery, on the eastern Indonesian island of Flores, of skeletal remains interpreted as a new species of Homo – Homo floresiensis. The discovery was, and remains, controversial, not least because the creature so classified, interpreted by the discovery team as an endemic dwarf descendant of Homo erectus, stood just over a metre tall and had a cranial capacity of just 380 cc, thus a brain about the size of a chimpanzee’s. It had also survived until at least 12,000 BP , well within the period modern humans (Homo sapiens) were present in this part of Indonesia (Brown et al. 2004; Morwood et al. 2004).
Explosions in Semarang: Reading Malay tales in 1895
Authors: Maier Henk
Published: April 2013

On the morning of 12 December 1895, a well-dressed young man enters the railway station in the city of Semarang. He purchases a ticket, walks around on the platform, and then gets on the train to Solo, ready for departure. Once the machine starts moving, the man looks out of the window, visibly confused. He turns to his fellow passengers, many of them unknown to him. In Malay, the language of travellers, he exchanges information, tells and hears stories, discusses issues of daily life, of himself, of the people who, out in the rice fields, on the roads, in the plantations, are staring at the roaring machine passing by. Now and then the man looks into his own heart again, losing himself in empty thoughts. And with every tick of his watch the landscape out there changes its appearance. And farmers and labourers stop their work, distracted by the awesome noise of the iron monster.
A note on the importance of developing digital facsimiles and a digital register of Javanese inscriptions
Authors: Sundberg Jeffrey Roger
Published: April 2013

There are many regrets to be entertained over the treatment of the inscriptions of Java. Many inscriptions are well preserved and relatively accessible to the public in the courtyard of the National Museum in Jakarta, but there are many others that suffer from poor documentation, especially at the hands of their most prominent epigraphers.
Descrying the bourgeoisie: Sugar, capital and state in the Netherlands Indies, circa 1840-1884
Authors: Knight G. Roger
Published: April 2013

Any attempt to descry the existence of a significant colonial bourgeoisie in Java during the middle decades of the nineteenth century might appear futile. An old, and apparently still lingering, orthodoxy postulates a colonial state uniquely in thrall to a powerful bureaucracy: one that exercised so extensive a control over resources as to largely preclude bourgeois capital formation. On this reading, colonial proprietorship, notably in sugar, was seignorial in nature rather than bourgeois.
In search of lost time: Javanese and Balinese understandings of the Indic calendar
Authors: Proudfoot Ian
Published: April 2013

The history of calendars is best approached as a technical subject that has cultural and political dimensions. The functions of calendars – to enumerate days, months and years – can be achieved in a variety of ways. In broad terms Muslims expect their calendars to predict the phases of the moon, Christians expect their calendars to match the seasons of the year, and Hindus and Chinese expect their calendars to do both. These expectations can be met by different technical means, so that even among those who subscribe to a common set of expectations, there are invariably differences in the working calendars.
The Naueti relationship terminology: A new instance of asymmetric prescription from East Timor
Authors: Hicks David
Published: April 2013

Relationship terminologies of an asymmetric prescriptive character are widespread throughout mainland and insular Southeast Asia. Their western limit is marked by the Kachin of northern Burma (Leach 1961:28-53) while their eastern limit is marked by the Mambai people of central East Timor (Figures 1 and 2). Between these limits are such other instances as occur, for example, among the Lamet of Cambodia (Needham 1960), the various Batak groups of Sumatra (Rodgers 1984), and the Rindi of eastern Sumba (Forth 1981). The principal intention of the present paper is to establish the existence of a new asymmetric prescriptive terminology in East Timor, and by doing so provide empirical justification for adjusting the easternmost limits of nomenclatures of this kind. A subsidiary intent is to offer a contribution to current speculations regarding the transformation of relationship terminologies in eastern Indonesia (Guermonprez 1998; Smedal 2002).
Religious and secular Cape Malay Afrikaans: Literary varieties used by Shaykh Hanif Edwards (1906-1958)
Authors: Stell Gerald , Luffin Xavier , Rakiep Muttaqin
Published: April 2013

In the context of the White and Christian-dominated Afrikaans language movements, followed by apartheid, little attention has been paid to an Afrikaans literary variety used among Muslim Cape Coloureds, a group often referred to as ‘Cape Malays’. Descending mainly from Asian slaves brought by the Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC, Dutch East India Company), and bearing the marks of cohabitation with non-Asian populations at the Cape, the Cape Malays at an early stage developed a distinct religious culture through their adherence to Islam, as well as a distinct Cape Dutch linguistic identity through their connections with the Dutch East Indies and the Islamic world. These cultural idiosyncrasies found expression in a local literature, religious and (more rarely) secular, using as a medium a variety of Cape Dutch/Afrikaans written either in the Arabic alphabet or in the Roman alphabet.
Narrating ‘the modern’: Colonial-era southern Batak journalism and novelistic fiction as overlapping literary forms
Authors: Rodgers Susan
Published: April 2013

As Lennard J. Davis (1997) points out in Factual fictions; The origins of the English novel, newspaper prose and novel writing had remarkably blurred boundaries throughout the late 1700s, the time when the early English novel was first gaining public currency on the popular print scene. Davis presents a complex argument. He first criticizes Ian Watt’s approach (1957) as set out in the latter’s classic The rise of the novel. Davis asserts that Watt relies on simplistic ‘evolutionary’ models about the ‘rise’ of genres. Davis goes on to observe that there was a generalized convergence of discursive forms in the English popular press and in storytelling in commercial print in the late eighteenth century.
The ‘Gestapu’ events of 1965 in Indonesia: New evidence from Russian and German archives
Authors: Boden Ragna
Published: April 2013

One of the unsolved riddles of Indonesian history in the twentieth century is the so-called Gestapu affair and its aftermath. For the murder of six army generals on the night of 30 September 1965 the Indonesian communists and President Soekarno were widely held responsible. Indonesian leftists – real and alleged – were persecuted; hundreds of thousands were killed. The longterm consequences affected Indonesian domestic as well as foreign policy: the changeover in government resulted in 30 years of rule by Soeharto; the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI, Indonesian Communist Party) and leftist organizations were banned; relations with China were severed, those with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were reduced; and ties with Washington and the Western world intensified.
Dislodged tales: Javanese goddesses and spirits on the silver screen
Authors: Wessing Robert
Published: April 2013

Indonesian films and television shows often feature popularly though only superficially known figures from Javanese mythology, including the Goddess of the Southern Ocean Nyai Roro Kidul and her counterpart the Queen of the Snakes Nyi Blorong. In this study I examine the effects of placing the stories about these entities in ‘media space’ (Sen and Hill 2000:199), thus removing them from the local context that in the past infused them with its truth, and making possible their apposition to other truths and values that were previously unconnected to them, and may or may not be congenial with them.
A note on Ade
Authors: Hägerdal Hans
Published: April 2013

In a recent issue of Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Andrew McWilliam undertakes an interesting study of the elusive traditional Timorese domain of Ade, which is often mentioned in Portuguese and Dutch sources of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His conclusion is briefly that there is a close affinity with the domain of Vemasse (Oymassin) on the north coast of present Timor Leste. While I agree with his conclusion, I would like to point out a few unpublished Dutch sources which provide more detailed information on Ade and its location.
Nature, landscape and identity in the Netherlands Indies: Literary constructions of being Dutch in the tropics
Authors: Protschky Susie
Published: April 2013

Recent trends in Indonesian history suggest a fruitful point at which two major fields of research might begin to converge: one is the growing body of literature on environmental history, the other is the abundant scholarship on social history and identity in colonial contexts. Studies of indigenous and colonial land-use patterns, conservation policies and practices, and Asian attitudes toward landscape and nature are some of the recent scholarly sojourns into Indonesia’s colonial past.
Book reviews
Authors: KITLV Redactie
Published: April 2013

Sitor Situmorang, Toba na Sae; Sejarah lembaga sosial politik abad XIII-XX (Johann Angerler) Raul Pertierra, Science, technology, and everyday culture in the Philippines (Greg Bankoff) Françoise Gérard and François Ruf (eds), Agriculture in crisis; People, commodities and natural resources in Indonesia, 1996-2000 (Peter Boomgaard) Kennet Sillander, Acting authoritatively; How authority is expressed through social action among the Bentian of Indonesian Borneo (Aurora Donzelli) Kathleen M. Nadeau, Liberation theology in the Philippines; Faith in a revolution (Gareth Fisher) Roy Ellen, On the edge of the Banda Zone; Past and present in the social organization of a Moluccan trading network (Gregory Forth) Roy Ellen, On the edge of the Banda Zone; Past and present in the social organization of a Moluccan trading network (J.M. Gullick) I.H.N. Evans, Bornean diaries, 1938-1942 (Fiona Harris) S. Margana, Kraton Surakarta dan Yogyakarta 1769-1874 (Mason C. Hoadley) Henry Frei, Guns of February; Ordinary Japanese soldiers’ views of the Malayan campaign and the fall of Singapore 1941-42 (Russell Jones) Gerrit Knaap and Heather Sutherland, Monsoon traders; Ships, skippers and commodities in eighteenth-century Makassar (J. Thomas Lindblad) David W. Fraser and Barbara G. Fraser, Mantles of merit; Chin textiles from Myanmar, India and Bangladesh (Sandra A. Niessen) Kees Snoek, E. du Perron; Het leven van een smalle mens (Frank Okker) Arthur J. Dommen, The Indochinese experience of the French and the Americans; Nationalism and communism in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam (Vatthana Pholsena) J.H.M.C. Boelaars and A.C. Blom, Mono Koame; ‘Wij denken ook’ (Anton Ploeg) James J. Fox and Dionisio Babo Soares (eds), Out of the ashes; Destruction and reconstruction of East Timor (Johanna van Reenen) Anke Niehof and Firman Lubis (eds), Two is enough; Family planning in Indonesia under the New Order 1968-1998 (Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill) Andrew MacIntyre, The power of institutions; Political architecture and governance (Henk Schulte Nordholt) Carol Ireson-Doolittle and Geraldine Moreno-Black, The Lao; Gender, power, and livelihood (Guido Sprenger) David L. Gosling (with a foreword by Ninian Smart), Religion and ecology in India and Southeast Asia (Bryan S. Turner) William C. Clarke, Remembering Papua New Guinea; An eccentric ethnography (Donald Tuzin) Review essay Gerben Nooteboom: Competition, collateral damage, or ‘just accidents’? Three explanations of ethnic violence in Indonesia: - Jacques Bertrand, Nationalism and ethnic conflict in Indonesia - Cristina Eghenter, Bernard Sellato, and G. Simon Devung (eds), Social science research and conservation management in the interior of Borneo; Unravelling past and present interactions of people and forests - Nancy Lee Peluso and Michael Watts (eds), Violent environments - Günther Schlee (ed.), Imagined differences; Hatred and the construction of identity
Red cocks and black hens : Gendered symbolism, kinship and social practice in the Ngada highlands
Authors: Schröter Susanne
Published: April 2013

Ngada is not only the name of a regency (kabupaten) in Central Flores, one of the Lesser Sunda Islands in eastern Indonesia (Nusa Tenggara Timur), but also refers to a people numbering about 60,000 who live in the southern and central part of the regency, extending from a small coastal section along the Savu Sea up to a highland plateau more than 1,000 metres in altitude. With the exception of the plateau, the region is extremely rugged, cross-cut by rough gorges. Many villages are still isolated and can only be reached by footpaths. Other villages are now connected by unpaved roads and a few even by paved ones.
Book reviews
Authors: KITLV Redactie
Published: April 2013

Peter Borschberg (ed.), Iberians in the Singapore-Melaka area and adjacent regions (16th to 18th century) (Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied) Katharine L. Wiegele, Investing in miracles; El Shaddai and the transformation of popular Catholicism in the Philippines (Greg Bankoff) Jean Gelman Taylor, Indonesia; Peoples and histories (Peter Boomgaard) Clive Moore, New Guinea; Crossing boundaries and history (Harold Brookfield) Nathan Porath, When the bird flies; Shamanic therapy and the maintenance of worldly boundaries among an indigenous people of Riau (Sumatra) (Cynthia Chou and Martin Platt) Paul van der Grijp, Identity and development; Tongan culture, agriculture, and the perenniality of the gift (H.J.M. Claessen) Tim Bunnell, Malaysia, modernity and the multimedia super corridor; A critical geography of intelligent landscapes (Ben Derudder) L. Fontijne, Guardians of the land in Kelimado; Louis Fontijne’s study of a colonial district in eastern Indonesia (Maribeth Erb) Karl-Heinz Golzio, Geschichte Kambodschas; Das Land der Khmer von Angkor bis zur Gegenwart (Volker Grabowsky) Emmanuel Poisson, Mandarins et subalternes au nord du Viêt Nam; Une bureaucracie à l’épreuve (1820-1918) (Martin Grossheim) Generale Missiven van Gouverneurs-Generaal en Raden aan Heren XVII der Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, Volume 10, 1737-1743 (Gerrit Knaap) Aris Ananta and Evi Nurvidya Arifin (eds), International migration in Southeast Asia (Santo Koesoebjono) Vladimir Braginsky, The comparative study of traditional Asian literatures; From reflective traditionalism to neo-traditionalism (G.L. Koster) Fiona Kerlogue (ed.), Performing objects; Museums, material culture and performance in Southeast Asia (Jennifer Lindsay) Th.C. van der Meij, Puspakrema; A Javanese romance from Lombok (Julian Millie) Robyn Maxwell, Sari to sarong; Five hundred years of Indian and Indonesian textile exchange -- Jasleen Dhamija, Woven magic; The affinity between Indian and Indonesian textiles (Sandra Niessen) David Bourchier and Vedi R. Hadiz (eds), Indonesian politics and society; A reader (Seije Slager) Howard Dick, Vincent J.H. Houben, J. Thomas Lindblad and Thee Kian Wie (eds), The emergence of a national economy; An economic history of Indonesia, 1800-2000 (Heather Sutherland) Roderich Ptak, China, the Portuguese and the Nanyang; Oceans and routes, regions and trade (c. 1000-1600) (Heather Sutherland) Stephen C. Headley, Durga’s Mosque; Cosmology, conversion and community in Central Javanese Islam (Robert Wessing)
Book Reviews
Authors: Bedner Adriaan , Sterly Joachim , Claessen H.J.M. , Rensel Jan , Eeuwijk Peter , Kohnen Norbert , Grijns C.D. , Smalley William A. , Kaptein Nico , Freitag Ulrike , Locher-Scholten Elsbeth , Kartini Raden Ajeng , Murray Alison , Manderson L. , Penders Chris , Poeze Harry A. , Robinson Kathryn , Schulte Nordholt Henk , Tagliacozzo Eric , Trocki Carl A. , Termorshuizen Gerard , Berge Tom , Vries Lourens , Dutton Tom E. , Vries Lourens , Knauft Bruce M.
Published: April 2013

- Adriaan Bedner, Joachim Sterly, Simbu plant-lore; Plants used by the people in the Central Highlands of New Guinea; Volume 1: The people and their plant-lore; Volume 2: Botanical survey of Simbu plants; Volume 3: Ethnographical key. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1997, 23 9 + 323 + 275 pp. - H.J.M. Claessen, Jan Rensel, Home in the islands; Housing and social change in the Pacific. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997, vii + 264 pp., Margaret Rodman (eds.) - Peter van Eeuwijk, Norbert Kohnen, Traditionelle Medizin auf den Philippinen; Angstbewältigung und kognition bei Krankheiten. Stuttgart: Steiner, 1992, 396 pp. [Beiträge zur Südasienforschung 154.] - C.D. Grijns, William A. Smalley, Linguistic diversity and national unity; Language ecology in Thailand. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, xv + 436 pp. - Nico Kaptein, Ulrike Freitag, Hadhrami traders, scholars, and statesmen in the Indian Ocean, 1750s-1960s. Leiden: Brill, 1997, x + 392 pp., William G. Clarence-Smith (eds.) - Elsbeth Locher-Scholten, Raden Ajeng Kartini, On feminism and nationalism; Kartini’s letters to Stella Zeehandelar 1899-1903, translated and with an introduction by Joost Coté. Clayton, Victoria: Monash Asia Instiute, Monash University, xxiii + 129 pp. - Alison Murray, L. Manderson, Sites of desire, economies of pleasure: Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997, xii + 367 pp., M. Jolly (eds.) - Chris Penders, Harry A. Poeze, Politiek-Politioneele Overzichten van Nederlandsch-Indië, Deel IV, 1935-1941. Leiden: KITLV Uitgeverij, 1994, xciv + 485 pp. - Kathryn Robinson, Henk Schulte Nordholt, The spell of power; A history of Balinese politics 1650-1940. Leiden: The KITLV Press, 1996, ix + 389 pp. [VKI 170.] - Eric Tagliacozzo, Carl A. Trocki, Gangsters, democracy, and the state in Southeast Asia. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1998, 94 pp. [Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Publication 17.] - Gerard Termorshuizen, Tom van den Berge, Karel Frederick Holle; Theeplanter in Indië, 1829-1896. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1998, 307 pp. - Lourens de Vries, Tom E. Dutton, Koiari. München: Lincom Europa, 1996, 77 pp. [Languages of the World/Materials 10]. - Lourens de Vries, Bruce M. Knauft, South coast New Guinea cultures; History, comparison, dialectic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, xiii + 298 pp.