Dr Jarrah Sastrawan
@infiniteteeth
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Lecturer at @ANU_CHL , specialising in medieval and early modern Indonesian history (he)
Canberra
Joined December 2012
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It can be very hard to get access to key scholarly works on early Indonesian history. I've uploaded PDFs of some of the main publications of Indonesian inscriptions here: . Feel free to make use of them and let me know what else you'd like to see!
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Stop talking shit about Indonesian presidents!
Joko Widodo is DOWN-TO-EARTH
SBY was TRUSTWORTHY
Megawati was TRAILBLAZING
Gus Dur was KIND-HEARTED
Habibie was a GENIUS
Suharto
Sukarno was a VISIONARY
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My colleagues Eko Bastiawan and Arlo Griffiths at
@EFEO_Paris
have asked me to share their preliminary reading of the first two lines of the newly discovered Gemekan inscription. Importantly, their reading of the calendar elements confirms the date to be 7 October 930
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Hayam Wuruk's reign in Majapahit (1350s–1390s) is often called a 'golden age'. This is problematic for several reasons. His reign was characterised by increasingly severe political divisions within the royal family, culminating in a civil war in the years after his death
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Early Java had unstable governments, but stable states. We have much evidence of kings being overthrown, multiple kings fighting each other, even periods with no monarchs at all. But through all that, laws kept being upheld, property was maintained, and the bureaucracy functioned
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In the Old Javanese, the Milky Way is called "wintang wuwur" The Strewn Stars, which is a completely indigenous name. The Agastyaparwa (circa late 10th century) states that this Javanese name corresponds to the Sanskrit term "suranadī" Celestial River
Etymology question: Why is the Milky Way galaxy called Bima Sakti in Malay and Indonesian – after Bhima from the Mahabharata, allegedly – while most Indian languages call the same galaxy ‘Ganges of the sky’?
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This claim that Majapahit under its first king Raden Vijaya had a red-white flag (like modern Indonesia) comes from a misreading of the Kudadu inscription. In fact it says that it was *enemies* of Vijaya who had the red-white flag in early 1292, before Majapahit was founded
Indonesia menggunakan corak bendera merah putih sejak jaman Kerajaan Majapahit berdiri tahun 1293.
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"The Bhārata War" (Bhāratayuddha) is one of the most loved Old Javanese poems. Written in 1157 under the patronage of king Jayabhaya, it tells the story of a vicious conflict between the Paṇḍava and Kaurava. This painting by I Made Djata (1996) depicts Bhīma killing Duḥśāsana
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Turns out you can't understand K-Pop Twitter controversies without a thorough grounding in Austronesian historical linguistics
Both Malay/Indonesian sayang 'love, pity' and Tagalog sayang 'what a waste' are derived from PMP *sayaŋ 'too bad! it’s a pity! what a shame!'. Actually, it can also translate to 'it's a pity that...' in Malay, but in this context it can only be translated to 'love'.
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In the last episode of Ancient Indonesian Obscenities, we traced jancuk back to Old Javanese añcucuk "to peck". Today we have what I think is the earliest attestation of koṇṭol "cock, penis" (also "scrotum") in the 13th-century Sumanasāntaka (canto 113 stanza 5)
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I've shifted my research focus to Central Java, so please enjoy these memes that are even more obscure than usual
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1 like = 1 history fact, probably about SE Asia, possibly unpopular
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Perhaps the most exciting development in Javanese history in the last two decades has been the archaeological research on the north coast sites of the first millennium CE, like Batujaya. These excavations show the importance of the north coast before the rise of Mataram
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Since the newly discovered inscription in Mojokerto is reminding us of the mystery of why the Javanese state shifted from Central to East Java in the late 920s...
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M.C. Ricklefs has passed away. He was his generation's leading historian of Java. He shaped our knowledge of the 17th and 18th centuries. He broke new ground in the interpretation of Javanese sources. He worked tirelessly and continued to publish until this year. Thank you.
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I've written a new article for
@newmandala
on what we know about Majapahit's empire in the archipelago. I spend a bit of time going through the evidence (mostly Javanese inscriptions and chronicles) to try to substantiate what "empire" meant to Java
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The Pararaton is an authentic Javanese historical text compiled in the 15th or 16th century. It is not a forgery by Dutch scholars. I'll talk about how we know this, drawing on my recent article
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I have a new article out "Natural Disasters throughout Indonesian History". This one was a lot of work and I'm so pleased it's now available. Big thanks to the editors at Indonesia journal for making it available open access!!
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People of the Indo-Malay archipelago made maps of land and sea at least as far back as the 13th c. Unlike medieval European maps, none of these early indigenous maps survived, but we know they existed because foreigners wrote about them and probably copied them
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Java is the world's biggest island by population, but its history is pretty much unknown outside Indonesia. It will take a lot of work to change that, but we have to do it.
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Tomorrow is Nyepi, the Balinese New Year's Day. The Balinese calendar has one major difference from the Indian tradition on which it's based: the standard Indian year begins in the month Caitra, but the Balinese year begins in the following month Vaiśākha! Why?
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A bit of Old Javanese poetry, from the Marriage of Arjuna (canto 11 stanza 1):
śaśivimba haneng ghaṭa mesi bañu
ndan asing śuci nirmala mesi wulan
"The moon's image appears in jars containing water,
For anything that's pure and clean contains the moon"
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Amazing preserved ship from north Java, radiocarbon dated to the 7th or 8th century – further information:
Kapal Kuno sepanjang 15 meter yg diketemukan di Punjulharjo Rembang. Menurut arkeolog Prancis Prof. P.J. Manguin uji karbon kapan ini menunjuk kapal ini dr abad 7-8 masehi
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A lot of people seem interested in Old Javanese poetry!
Here is a collection of scholarly editions and English translations of several kakawin poems written between the 11th and 15th centuries.
First the Arjunavivāha (Marriage of Arjuna):
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An interesting thread on the massacre of Sundanese in 1357. Lots of scepticism among Indonesians about whether this event really happened, and suspicion that the Dutch used this ethnically-divisive narrative as a tool of colonial rule
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Are you interested in Balinese history? Here is a list of somewhat recent English-language works that I've found really helpful in understanding different periods of the island's history.
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The surviving babad/serat histories are no older than 1700, so they are at least two centuries later than the fall of Majapahit. They differ not only from the inscriptions issued by Majapahit itself, but also from each other. The tradition gives no single version of these events
Apakah Raden Patah dari Demak menyerang bapaknya sendiri selaku raja Majapahit? Serat Sejarah Demak menyatakan tidak! Teks: ikang wayah tur sembah, tumukul abukuh, kawarnaha kalih dina
kya dipatya Bintara neng Surengwesthi, wus kudur prapta Demak.
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Western takes on Islam in Indonesia:
2019: "Is Islamic radicalism changing a traditionally tolerant society?"
1990s: "Is Islamic radicalism changing a traditionally tolerant society?"
1820s: "Is Islamic radicalism changing a traditionally tolerant society?"
1510s: "Is Islamic ra
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The Javanese title “rakai” like English “duke” indicates an aristocrat’s jurisdiction, usually held by several people one after another. To avoid ambiguity we should refer to Javanese kings by their personal name if possible: Saladu not Rakai Pikatan, Lokapala not Rakai Kayuwangi
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One of the oldest collections of Indonesian manuscripts is in the Vatican! This beautiful Arabic-Javanese grid calendar was collected in Java sometime between 1690 and 1710, and was just digitised last year
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Hayam Wuruk is very unusual among Javanese rulers in that we know when he was born, but we're not sure when he took the throne or when he died. Usually it's the other way around – we know monarchs' regnal periods but not their years of birth
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Javanese Islamic kingdoms of the 16th century (e.g. Demak, Pajang and Mataram) are often called "Sultanates". But their rulers were not called "Sultan" in their lifetimes. Only in 1638 were the co-kings of Banten officially given the title Sultan by the Sharif of Mecca
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If you are in Yogyakarta tomorrow, I will be giving a talk at UNY in the opportunities and challenges for Indonesian ancient history in the 21st century!! Register at
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A nice post on some speculative (“folk” or “false”) etymologies in Javanese, showing a tendency towards filling words with surplus meaning. I might add a certain obscenity believed to be come from the name “Jan Cox”, but in fact derived from the PMP root *-cuk “penetrate”
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A fantastic new paper by Abimardha Kurniawan that finally deciphers the mysterious Javanese dating system called 'sakala dihyang'. This practice, which disguises year numerals in multiple layers of encoding, was particularly common in the mountains of Java
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"serat era" I whisper as I illustrate a 295-page Javanese manuscript containing the tale of Prince Selarasa's adventures in exile with his brothers in gorgeous polychrome while drawing on traditional shadow puppet iconography
@BLAsia_Africa
@BLMalay
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It’s a remarkable coincidence that the oldest vernacular chronicles that survive from England and Java both date from the first decade of the 10th century: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle A (ca. 900) and the Wanua Tengah III (908)
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Amazing discoveries in Javanese history are being made constantly! The top line contains a year in the 850s Śaka (i.e. 930s CE), and the second line mentions the king Siṇḍok. If anyone has found any high res photos of the stone, please let me know
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Wuku is a Javanese system of naming weeks in a 30-week cycle (eg Sinta, Landep etc). It first appears in 10th century inscriptions from East Java: Kubu-Kubu (904) and Kinawe (928). No evidence of wuku in Central Javanese inscriptions, so it may have been invented in East Java
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I see Ken Angrok is trending, with the usual mistaken claim that the Pararaton is forgery made by Dutch scholars. If you'd like to know why this is mistaken, here is a thread:
The Pararaton is an authentic Javanese historical text compiled in the 15th or 16th century. It is not a forgery by Dutch scholars. I'll talk about how we know this, drawing on my recent article
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Since this week is all about Siṇḍok, a reminder of how extensive his authority was. He issued inscriptions as far south as Turen, west as Nganjuk and north as Surabaya. Mojokerto was at the centre of his realm. This great map is from Hadi Sidomulyo's 2011
@IndonesiaMalayW
paper
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So many Javanese kings had a ‘partner king’ who had significant sovereignty of their own: Balitung/Daksa, Wawa/Sindok, Visnuvardhana/Narasingha, Vijaya/Viraraja, Hayam Wuruk/Vijayarajasa, Suhita/Krtavijaya. What do these duumvirates mean for our concept of monarchy in Java?
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"In November 1894, the Netherlands Indies language official Dr JLA Brandes, being on the island of Lombok during the conquest of Cakranagara, had the good luck of saving the library and manuscripts of the king."
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Check out this amazing picture of Leiden's leading Indonesianists, when they were fresh-faced and celebrating Stutterheim's graduation in the mid-1920s. Stutterheim is seated, in a black suit holding a top hat. But can you guess who the mad lad in the beige suit and goatee is?
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Interesting question: when exactly does "nusantara" cease to mean "the other islands" (as it does in Old Javanese) and start to mean "archipelago"? In the early 17th c. Sejarah Melayu, we still have the old usage: "all the kings of the other islands" in explicit contrast to Java
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This evening I will present my collaborative work on the Sangguran inscription, which was taken from East Java to Scotland in 1812-13. I will present our new readings and translations of the charter, the first complete revision since Brandes’ 1913 edition.
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A reminder that we know almost nothing for sure about Śrīvijaya. Even basic facts about its rulers and the Java-Sumatra relationship are contested, as shown in this table by Jordaan and Colless 2009. Speculation plays a huge role in research on this topic
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I have a Gajah Mada joke, but I won't enjoy it until all the other countries are defeated: Gurun, Seran, Tañjungpura, Haru, Pahang, Ḍompo, Bali, Suṇḍa, Palembang, Tumasik; only then will I enjoy the joke
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Another fascinating growth area in recent years is the early history of northern Sumatra. New philological and archaeological work has improved and often challenged our understanding of 13th–15th century polities like Lamri and Pasai, and the communities around them
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My favourite thing about Old Javanese poetry is the way nature is described. Here's a fantastic example from Canto 8 of the Ghaṭotkacāśraya (written circa 1200). An entourage from the palace has just arrived by the seashore and are looking out at a volcanic island off the coast
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Historians of ancient Java: *focus solely on royal politics, ignore the wealth of sources for cultural history of various social levels*
Also historians: "Wow the Javanese were so raja-centric, the state didn't exist outside palace walls, their everyday lives are unknowable"
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One of the most significant (re-)discoveries in Javanese archaeology of the last decade. I was privileged to be studying Old Javanese at Penanggungan on the very night that the fire burned down the mountain slopes – a beautiful and eerie glow that helped us to learn a great deal
Tim Ekspedisi Ubaya menemukan 'jalur pendakian kuno' yang mengitari Gunung Penanggungan tak lama setelah terjadi kebakaran hutan tujuh tahun lalu. Mahakarya orang² zaman dulu itu untuk mempermudah transportasi logistik ke pertapaan² dan punden berundak di Pawitra
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The Deśavarṇana (aka Nagarakṛtāgama) is the most important single source on Majapahit history, but it can be hard to get access to reliable editions of the text. Here is Pigeaud's edition of the Lombok manuscript, the best one currently available:
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I’m thrilled to announce that we are organising a big event in Bali to explore Kawi Culture: the cosmopolitan culture that thrived from the late 1st millennium to the present. A wonderful line-up of scholars, established and emerging. Register now at
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Today is World Orangutan Day! I recently wrote for The Conversation about the etymologies of the word 'orangutan' and those of other forest creatures of Southeast Asia
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I'm pretty sure this fulfils all the requirements for being awarded my Ph.D. in Indonesian history
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My essay in this book looks at how Raffles brought crucial Javanese texts to European attention in the 1810s. However, his interpretation of Java's history was seriously compromised by his lack of access to the Old Javanese language. Book launch on Wed!
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Impressed by the arrogance of the King of Bali in 1633 referring to Sultan Agung, who had recently crushed Surabaya and almost conquered Batavia, as a mere "patih" (from Hägerdal 1998: 65)
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The Kawi script of island Southeast Asia (circa 9th–15th centuries) has been encoded in Unicode!! A great achievement by
@inurwansah
and Aditya Bayu Perdana
#Kawi
and
#NagMundari
are the two newly-encoded scripts in
#Unicode15
, thanks to the efforts of Aditya Bayu Perdana,
@inurwansah
, and
@Biswaji13480606
→
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A great video in Indonesian that systematically goes through the lack of evidence for the Salakanagara kingdom, and why we should not believe anything the Wangsakerta manuscripts say
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I’m delighted to share that from today, I’ve joined
@ANU_CHL
in Canberra as Lecturer of Indonesian Studies, together with my wonderful colleague
@EllyKentNow
. I’m very excited to get to work teaching Indonesian, researching early SE Asian history and meeting scholars at the ANU!
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Historians of early Indonesia are either normies (Krom, De Graaf, Boechari, Sedyawati, Ricklefs, Wisseman Christie) or eccentrics (Berg, Wolters, Yamin, Slametmulyana). Normies stick to the nitty-gritty data, while eccentrics prioritise their Big Vision. Which are you?
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Still relevant. Scholars of previous generations speculated constantly abt the dynasties, I suppose bc they felt royal history is incomplete without a family tree. But it’s harmful bc the guesswork is accepted as fact by everyone else, despite the total lack of evidence behind it
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I can't see any possible connection nusa and Greek nesos. Nusa isn't just a Javanese word, it appears throughout the Malayo-Polynesian languages
Ada beberapa peneliti bahkan punya anggapan yg lain, bhw 'Nusa' mungkin sj bukan dr 'Jawa Kuna'.
Dikatakan kata 'nusa' pd istilah 'nusantara' bs jd berakar ke bhs Yunani yakni kata 'Nesos'/'Nesias', yg artinya jg pulau/kepulauan.
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A new year, a new inscription discovered in Java! Unearthed during excavations of the Watu Genuk site, the first reports indicate that the text is in Sanskrit and is in fair to middling condition. Let's hope that good photographs will soon be taken of the inscription!
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I don't really like historical myth-busting because it can be negative and unconstructive. But there are a few persistent misconceptions about premodern Javanese history that it might be useful to clear up, once though probably not for all.
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The Balinese manuscript tradition is one of the best documented and most publicly accessible from Indonesia. You can find a wealth of manuscripts from Bali, including a vast range of genres, in a few key public institutions that I list here
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Interesting reflections by Mulaika Hijjas on why there are no Malay royal libraries surviving in situ. It illustrates how vulnerable Southeast Asian manuscript traditions are to disruption, and why there are so few manuscripts from before 1800
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Vīravikrama was a powerful figure in Java during the reign of Balitung. During this time, his title changed: in 901 he was Rakai (Lord of) Pager Wesi, in 904 he was Rakai Halu, and in 905 he was Rakai Wungkal Tihang. A good reason NOT to use these Rakai titles if we can avoid
Prasasti Rabwan berbentuk genta perunggu, ditemukan petani yg sedang membajak sawah pada 1952 di desa Tlogopakis, Pekalongan. '°i śaka 827 phālguṇamāsa tithi saptamĭśukla, tu, va, so ...' atau 3 Februari 906 M, era Maharaja Balitung (📷 TS Nastiti, PusArkeNas)
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The Netherlands is returning major pieces of Indonesian and Sri Lankan cultural heritage. One part of the Lombok treasure *not yet* returned is the exceptional royal library of palm-leaf manuscripts. This is an ongoing focus of my own research
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A topic that Javanese inscriptions tell us very little about is the military. We know war that happened frequently, but we have almost no detailed knowledge about how armies were recruited, organised or paid in early Java
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Next Monday I'm giving a talk in Indonesian on the use of Balinese manuscripts as historical sources – check out the free registration details below!
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Old Javanese poets were not above using a bit of cliché to fill a line. Here's one from a lovely poem attributed to the 15th-century poet Tanakung:
kitan kĕmbang ngwang kumbanga mangarase rūmta satata
"If you are the flower, I'll be the bee who constantly savours your scent"
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The Javanese genealogical genre called 'babad' is relatively recent. The very oldest babad manuscripts we have go back only to the 1720s and 1730s, though they may draw on sources from the late 1600s. The surviving texts therefore reflect 18th and 19th century perspectives
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We think of “patih” as a term for “vizier/chief minister”, but in early Java, a patih was a village leader. The vizier was “rakryan mapatih”, a very different title meaning “the lord who has patihs”. It was only many centuries later that the word patih began to mean “lord”
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In terms of surviving documents, Old Malay goes back as far as Old English (7th century), and Old Javanese as far as Old French (9th century). All four vernaculars emerged out of cosmopolitan literate cultures: Sanskrit in Indonesia and Latin in Europe
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The world’s oldest figurative art, only recently discovered in Sulawesi, is in danger of being lost 😢 Both physical protection and digital archiving is essential to saving this crucial piece of human history .
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The Old Javanese word for the official demarcation of a tax-privilege zone by the government ("susuk") seems to share the same root as the modern obscenity "jancuk", going back to the PMP pair *suk/*cuk "pierce". I guess tax officials were already screwing people back in 800 CE
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ways Suharto thought he was like Gajah Mada:
- united the archipelago
- mystically powerful
- his name remembered for centuries
ways he was actually like Gajah Mada:
- usurped power through a conspiracy
- used mass murder for political leverage
- no proper succession plan
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My word for the 2023
#BahasaSesh
is “bhinneka”, which means “diversity”. Used in the Old Javanese poem Sutasoma, it came into Indonesian in the national motto Bhinneka Tunggal Ika. Our differences and diversity are essential to who we are!
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In 1894, a large collection of palm-leaf manuscripts was seized by Dutch military action in Lombok. I looked into these manuscripts to explore their rich variety – what they contain matters just as much as how they were obtained!
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There's a difference between dated and datable inscriptions. Java's oldest datable inscription is the famous Canggal stone, issued on 6 October 732, expressed in the Śaka era. But the oldest dated inscription is Tugu, from the 22nd year of Pūrṇavarman's reign, circa 6th century
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Javanese kings: "I am the greatest hero ever known, the whole archipelago bows to me, I am Viṣṇu in the flesh"
also Javanese kings: "hey villagers, wondering if I could stay with you tonight, got kicked out of my palace by enemies again, don't mind sleeping in the rice fields"
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@sefkelik
Membaca ulang prasasti Kudadu ternyata cerita ini terbalik. Bukan Raden Wijaya yang memakai bendera merah-putih, melainkan musuhnya: "hana ta tuṅgulniṁ śatru layū-layū katon· vetani hañiru[h], bāṁ lāvan putiḥ varṇnanya" (4v3). Sayang, jarang ada yg merujuk kepada sumber asli
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I've been reading the sources on Vijaya, king of Java from 1293 to 1309. He's often viewed as a hero for defeating many enemies in battle and founding the Majapahit court, which would later become very powerful. But he strikes me as a confusing and slightly tragic person
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Medang was one place in Central Java where there was once a kraton. It was not “the name of the palace” as Brandes speculated. De Casparis’ idea of Medangs in many places (Poh Pitu, Mamrati, Watu Galuh) is also shaky. We shouldn’t refer to Sindok’s kingdom in East Java as Medang.
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If I wrote a pop hit it would be like ABBA's "Waterloo": vaguely alluding to romantic love while primarily focusing on key events during the Hundred Days in 1815 between Napoleon's return from exile on Elba on 20 March and the restoration of Louis the XVIII on 8 July
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“Laser mapping reveals oldest Amazonian cities, built 2500 years ago.
Neighborhoods, farms, and roads are 1000 years older than previous discoveries” - Lidar has changed archaeology forever; I can’t wait till it gets going in island SE Asia!!
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One of the most impressive Gaṇeśas I've ever seen in person, located next door to a Chinese cemetery
Arca Ganesha di Karangkates ini sangat unik, berbeda dengan kebanyakan arca Ganesha pada umumnya. Ganesha yang melenceng dari pakem Hindustan. Saya menyebut arca ini dengan arca Ganapati Tantra, karena terpengaruh dengan budaya Tantrayana.
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The so-called Golden Age of Java (1330-70) coincides squarely with periods of crisis in much of the rest of Eurasia: the Yuan regime crumbling in China, the depopulation of Angkor and the Black Death in the Middle East and Europe. What are the connections here?
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@siwaratrikalpa
My favourite is this cute fella from Boro (Blitar) with a Kala head freakishly latched on to his back and a pretty chronogram written on his base: "haṇa ghaṇa haṇa bumi" 1161 Śaka = 1239 CE
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I came across a beautiful Old Javanese word: sār sə̄k, a compound of sār "spread out" and sə̄k "fill up", connoting both vast expanse and outpouring volume. Deśavarṇana (61.1) describes Hayam Wuruk on a hunt where "the game overflowed through the forest" (burwan sār sə̄k i alas)
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This is why I'm sceptical of modern theories that take the royal palaces as the be-all and end-all of the Javanese state. Palaces were destroyed, moved, and rebuilt all the time. Inscriptions show that how social, institutional and legal relationships endured much longer
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The southeastern tip of the Malaysian peninsula is called Ujung Medini ("end of the earth") in the 14th-century Old Javanese text Deśavarṇana
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A great article in Indonesian on references to Islam in Balinese palm-leaf texts. The positions of Islam in the spectrum of Balinese religious life is still an open question. But we know Islam has been in Bali since at least the 17th century.
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What looks like a fascinating discussion tonight on the early civilisations of Central Java, 19.00 WIB. Join on Zoom here:
@sraddhasala
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This is a tricky one. Brawijaya ("Bhra Vijaya") as depicted in the modern Javanese tradition (post-1650ish) cannot be verified by primary sources. But Pires, writing in 1513–15, mentions the king of Java in that time as "Batara Vojyaja/Vigiaja".
Masih percaya bahwa Brawijaya [V] adalah maharaja terakhir Majapahit?
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