Traditions of knowledge in Old Javanese literature, c. 1000-1500

This article is a synthesis of and reaction to recent scholarship that is based in the translation and interpretation of Old Javanese kakawin. (1) The present study of the Old Javanese literary sources derives from my prior work on early Javanese epigraphy and archaeology, and is based on an attempt to bring together these three types of sources. While the study does not cover any new ground relative to the translation of the primary sources, it does represent a new synthesis of material not widely or generally known in Southeast Asian/Indonesian studies. It continues the discussions of S. Supomo, Stuart Robson, Helen Creese, Peter Worsley, K. P. O'Brien, Thomas Hunter and others, who write on and offer interpretations of separate works, but seem reluctant--in large part due to the controversial nature of the sources themselves--to consider the literature as a whole. Disagreements over specific textual characterizations are cited in the footnotes, to underscore the lively debate among researchers in this field of early literary analysis. Javanese literary development c. 1000-1226 The era of the East Java-based Kadiri court is not known for its temple architecture; Kadiri monarchs were patrons of monastic retreats rather than royal temples. There were, however, important developments in the creation of icons of Indic deities at both the court and local levels. (2) Perhaps the Kadiri era's greatest intellectual achievement, however, was in the literary arts, specifically the evolution of Old Javanese poetic literature known as kakawin. Kakawin were modelled on Sanskrit kavya, metrical court poetry that developed in the era of the Gupta kings (320-600 CE). Kadiri kings venerated Wisnu, and thus he and his incarnations are foundational to the Kadiri-era kakawin, which are described by their poets as 'temples of language' (candi bhasa) in contrast to 'temples of stone' (candi sila). (3) At the beginning of the Wirataparwa, the fourth book (parwa) of the Indian Mahabharata epic poem, the unknown author states that his purpose was to 'Javanize Byasa's thought' (mangjawaken Byasamata); and in his epilogue he reflects that he has 'rendered the story into the vernacular' (pinrakrta/mrakrta). (4) In other words, in his own mind he was not translating the Mahabharata parwa from Sanskrit, but adapting it in an abbreviated form from Sanskrit verse into Old Javanese prose, while maintaining the essence of the original. Sanskrit literature that derived from the Mahabharata parwa as well as the Ramayana kanda became the subsequent basis for kakawin, which took their themes from the Indian epical literature. (Old Javanese parwa and kanda were not the basis of the Kadiri-era kakawin, and would not be until the post-1500 Balinese period. Kakawin is a derivative of the Old Javanese kawi, 'poet', from the Sanskrit kavya, 'court poetry'.) These kakawin maintained the metrical pattern of the Sanskrit epics: each stanza consisted of four lines; each line had a fixed number of syllables and a fixed metrical pattern based on the quantity of the syllable (whether the syllable was long or short). (5) The earliest surviving kakawin is the Old Javanese Ramayana ('Rama's journey'), composed in ninth-century central Java, which derived from the North Indian version of the epic (viracarita) that focused on the story of Wisnu's incarnation as Rama and his banishment from Ayodhya. (6) The ninth-century Javanese version maintained the essential Indic plot as well as the Indian names and places, but gave the main characters Javanese characteristics and placed them in a Javanese setting. (7) This Ramayana kakawin is based not on what was then the best-known version of the Rama tale, namely Valmiki's epic, nor on the earlier text that is the inspiration for the bas-relief at Prambanan, but on the Ravanavadha, 'The slaying of Ravana', which was a sixth- or seventh-century poem by the Indian poet Bhatti, popularly referred to as the Bhattikavya. …