Old Javanese texts republished by Muslim courts in the 18th century: Bernard Arps

On the second day of the farewell seminar celebrating the coming of retirement age of Willem van der Molen at KITLV/Leiden University, Ben Arps gave a fascinating talk on Islam at the court of Surakarta in the 1780s. Several classical works of the older Javanese period (Ramayana, Bharatayudha, Arjunawiwaha, Bima's search for knowledge with Dewa Ruci) were re-written in an Islamic atmosphere. Arps calls this a renaissance of Old Javanese culture, but in a positive Islamic style. There must have been some kind of double loyalty: both to Javanese culture and its heritage and to the Islamic background, confession and faith of the authors at the courts. This reminded me of the pious Catholic priest who taught me Latin and Greek in the gymnasium, the secondary school of my youth. He gave us texts from many classical authors. We, his students of the age of 15-16, once asked him to give us a text of the Greek New Testament. He look surprised and said: 'The New Testament is in simple, but bad Greek, you better learn good Greek first!' I told this several times to my students at the IAIN, the Islamic State University in Jakarta and Yogyakarta. They were surprised: as if someone would say that the Qur'an is in bad Arabic and that you should learn the Kitab al-Aghani first before the Qur'an!  But for Western Catholics Homer, Plato and Xenophon represent a high culture, at the same level as the Jewish-Christian one.

From the same period of the later 1780s, but in this case from Yogyakarta, Arps also gave a strange theory about Aji Saka. Here Aji Saka was described as number five of the companions of the prophet Muhammad. After Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali, he was sent on a long journey to India, Sri Lanka and finally to Java, where he brought the right religion. So: Islamization of Java directly by order of the Prophet Muhammad! As once also was stated by Buya Hamka, that Islam came from Arabia during the lifetime of the Prophet and the Sahabat. This only was possible for Aji Saka with the help of the great prophet of the seas and oceans, Nabi Khidr.

Willem van der Molen was not too active in these quite fantastic speculations and interpretations. I suggested that in the present quest for an interpretation of local Indonesian Islam as Islam Nusantara, the revival of Javanese texts could be very interesting. Therefore it would also be becessary not only to look to the great kakawin but also to the texts of Suluk which were once also studied at the Yogyakarta IAIn under Pak Simuh. But Van der Molen  remained quite realistic and sober about the possibility to develop a centre of Javanese studies in Europe of even Leiden, but mentioned his own website with his latest project, the diary of a Chinese-Javanese citizen of Yogyakarta in the middle of the 19th century, who followed the 'Javanese love of writing texts of great length' and composed some 700 pages about his family, his work in selling opium, lending money, talking to Dutch, some Chinese and most of all Javanese people. Look at http://willemvandermolen.nl/blog.


Just a last picture. Anbiya, or stories of the prophets, are very popular in Java: Amin Soedoro used to say that Javanese know no boundary to their fantasy and as to the prophets they have contributed an umlimited number of miracles. Images are also no exception. See below!