Hindu Javanese

The description for this book, Hindu Javanese: Tengger Tradition and Islam, will be forthcoming.

This book assesses the continuity and significance of Hindu-Buddhist design motifs in Islamic mosques in Java. The volume investigates four pre-Islamic motifs in Javanese mosque ornamentation from the 15th century to the present day: prehistoric tumpals, Hindu-Buddhist kala-makaras, lotus buds, and scrolls.

Gamelan is the first study of the music of Java and the development of the gamelan to take into account extensive historical sources and contemporary cultural theory and criticism. An ensemble dominated by bronze percussion instruments that dates back to the twelfth century in Java, the gamelan as a musical organization and a genre of performance reflects a cultural heritage that is the product of centuries of interaction between Hindu, Islamic, European, Chinese, and Malay cultural forces. Drawing on sources ranging from a twelfth-century royal poem to the writing of a twentieth-century nationalist, Sumarsam shows how the Indian-inspired contexts and ideology of the Javanese performing arts were first adjusted to the Sufi tradition and later shaped by European performance styles in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He then turns to accounts of gamelan theory and practice from the colonial and postcolonial periods. Finally, he presents his own theory of gamelan, stressing the relationship between purely vocal melodies and classical gamelan composition.

This is the astonishing and inspiring story of millions of Muslims returning to their ancestral faith of Hinduism. A country with the largest Muslims population of the world, Indonesia where majority of the Indonesian Hindus are located in Bali Island, Java, Sumatra, Lombok, Kalimantan and Sulawesi. Hinduism in Indonesia is conspicuously different from India as they never apply the Indian caste system rigidly. The Balinese caste system is a system social organization similar to and yet different from the Indian caste system. In recent years, the resurgence of Hinduism in Indonesia is occurring in all parts of the country. Inspirations from Hindu Majapahit Empire, influence of Ramayana, Mahabharat, and Sanskrit are few reasons for resurgence among Muslims. The author has presented this book in a meticulous way for all the readers.

Exploring the distinctive nature and role of local pilgrimage traditions among Muslims and Catholics, Muslim and Catholic Pilgrimage Practices draws particularly on south central Java, Indonesia. In this area, the hybrid local Muslim pilgrimage culture is shaped by traditional Islam, the Javano-Islamic sultanates, and the Javanese culture with its strong Hindu-Buddhist heritage. This region is also home to a vibrant Catholic community whose identity formation has occurred in a way that involves complex engagements with Islam as well as Javanese culture. In this respect, local pilgrimage tradition presents itself as a rich milieu in which these complex engagements have been taking place between Islam, Catholicism, and Javanese culture. Employing a comparative theological and phenomenological analysis, this book reveals the deeper religio-cultural and theological import of pilgrimage practice in the identity formation and interaction among Muslims and Catholics in south central Java. In a wider context, it also sheds light on the larger dynamics of the complex encounter between Islam, Christianity and local cultures.

A fascinating account of the role of language in radical social transformation in Javanese-Indonesian community.