Traces of the Ramayana and Mahabharata in Javanese and Malay Literature
Traces of the Ramayana and Mahabharata in Javanese and Malay Literature

Author: Ding Choo Ming

Publisher: Flipside Digital Content Company Inc.

Published: 2018-05-24

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 9814786594

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Local renderings of the two Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata in Malay and Javanese literature have existed since around the ninth and tenth centuries. In the following centuries new versions were created alongside the old ones, and these opened up interesting new directions. They questioned the views of previous versions and laid different accents, in a continuous process of modernization and adaptation, successfully satisfying the curiosity of their audiences for more than a thousand years. Much of this history is still unclear. For a long time, scholarly research made little progress, due to its preoccupation with problems of origin. The present volume, going beyond identifying sources, analyses the socio-literary contexts and ideological foundations of seemingly similar contents and concepts in different periods; it examines the literary functions of borrowing and intertextual referencing, and calls upon the visual arts to illustrate the independent character of the epic tradition in Southeast Asia.

Introduction to Old Javanese Language and Literature
Introduction to Old Javanese Language and Literature

Author: Mary S. Zurbuchen

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2020-08-06

Total Pages: 165

ISBN-13: 0472902180

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The oldest and most extensive written language of Southeast Asia is Old Javanese, or Kawi. It is the oldest language in terms of written records, and the most extensive in the number and variety of its texts. Javanese literature has taken many forms. At various times, prose stories, sung poetry or other metrical types, chronicles, scientific, legal, and philosophical treatises, prayers, chants, songs, and folklore were all written down. Yet relatively few texts are available in English. The unstudied texts remaining are an unexplored record of Javanese culture as well as a language still alive as a literary medium in Bali. Introduction to Old Javanese Language and Literature represents a first step toward remedying the dearth of Old Javanese texts available to English-speaking students. The ideal teaching companion, this anthology offers transliterated original texts with facing-page English translations. Theanthology focuses on prose selections, since their straightforward style and syntax offer the beginning student the most rewarding experience. Four sections make up the collection. Part I offers several short readings as the most accessible entry point into Old Javanese. Part II contains two moralistic fables from an Old Javanese retelling of the Hindu Pañcatantra cycle. Part III takes up the epic, providing excerpts from one of the books of the Old Javanese retelling of the Mahābhārata. Part IV offers excerpts from two chronicles, the generic conventions of which challenge received notions of history writing because of their supernaturalism and folkloric elements. Includes introduction, glossary, and notes.

Indonesian Manuscripts from the Islands of Java, Madura, Bali and Lombok
Indonesian Manuscripts from the Islands of Java, Madura, Bali and Lombok

Author: Dick van der Meij

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-07-31

Total Pages: 619

ISBN-13: 9004348115

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Indonesian Manuscripts from the Islands of Java, Madura, Bali and Lombok discusses aspects of the long and impressive manuscript traditions of these islands, which share many aspects of manuscript production. Many hitherto unaddressed features of palm-leaf manuscripts are discussed here for the first time as well as elements of poetic texts, indications of mistakes, colophons and the calendrical information used in these manuscripts. All features discussed are explained with photographs. The introductory chapters offer insights into these traditions in a wider setting and the way researchers have studied them. This original and pioneering work also points out what topics needs further exploration to understand these manuscript traditions that use a variety of materials, languages, and scripts to a wider public.

Banishment and Belonging
Banishment and Belonging

Author: Ronit Ricci

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-11-21

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1108570275

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Lanka, Ceylon, Sarandib: merely three disparate names for a single island? Perhaps. Yet the three diverge in the historical echoes, literary cultures, maps and memories they evoke. Names that have intersected and overlapped - in a treatise, a poem, a document - only to go their own ways. But despite different trajectories, all three are tied to narratives of banishment and exile. Ronit Ricci suggests that the island served as a concrete exilic site as well as a metaphor for imagining exile across religions, languages, space and time: Sarandib, where Adam was banished from Paradise; Lanka, where Sita languished in captivity; and Ceylon, faraway island of exile for Indonesian royalty under colonialism. Utilising Malay manuscripts and documents from Sri Lanka, Javanese chronicles, and Dutch and British sources, Ricci explores histories and imaginings of displacement related to the island through a study of the Sri Lankan Malays and their connections to an exilic past.

The Historical Construction of Southeast Asian Studies
The Historical Construction of Southeast Asian Studies

Author: Park Seung Woo

Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

Published: 2013-06-17

Total Pages: 486

ISBN-13: 9814414581

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"At a time when Southeast Asian Studies is declining in North America and Europe, this book serves to remind us of the fresh, constructive and encouraging view of the field from Asia. On behalf of Taiwan’s Southeast Asian research community, I sincerely congratulate Professors Park and King for making such a great and timely contribution to the making of Southeast Asian Studies in Asia." Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, Director of Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, and former President of Taiwan Association of Southeast Asian Studies "The Historical Construction of Southeast Asian Studies: Korea and Beyond is an important and long-overdue step in the task of bringing Southeast Asian Studies to where it rightfully belongs - the Asian region. At the same time, it avoids being narrowly regionalistic and instead views Southeast Asia as an 'open system' that transcends 'national units' or 'fixed territorial categories' and welcomes the contributions of both Asian and non-Asian scholars in crafting a fresh post-colonial approach to the study of the region’s societies and peoples." - Eduardo Climaco Tadem, Professor of Asian Studies, University of the Philippines-Diliman “An insightful and systemic analysis of the intriguing trajectories, evolving themes, and multi-lingual scholarship of Southeast Asian Studies in Asia and beyond, this book serves as an important foundation in setting future research agendas as well as for closer global collaborations in knowledge production in Asian Studies.” -Liu Hong, Tan Kah Kee Professor and Chair, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Bhomantaka
Bhomantaka

Author: A. Teeuw

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-10-01

Total Pages: 703

ISBN-13: 9004486755

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The Bhomantaka, or the Death of Bhoma, is a wide-ranging tale of the sweet romance of Samba and Yajñawati, of the defeat of the demon Bhoma by King Kresna and his minions in a truly monumental battle, and many more incidents and descriptions, a product of the sophisticated literary tradition of early Java. The poem is written in Old Javanese (composed by an author who does not mention his name or that of his king), in an idiom that presents many difficulties for the modern reader. This book contains an edition of the text, a translation, and an extensive explanatory introduction—enough to make the work accessible—and was produced by a team of two, both senior scholars of Old Javanese and experienced in producing readable English translations. It will become apparent in the course of reading that there are still numerous philological problems attaching to the text and its interpretation, but on the other hand it is also a fact that it contains many a passage of delightful poetry, philosophical teaching and other cultural information. As a result we get a glimpse of what Java was like perhaps eight and a half centuries ago, and of the thought-world of the Javanese of that age a world where legendary, mythological or divine beings do battle, and kings march out to restore the welfare of the realm. This publication takes its place in a long line, from the author via the copyists, in Java and in Bali, who faithfully and lovingly transmitted the work, down to the first edition of the text in 1852 and then the first translation in 1946. In this way a literary tradition of great value has been preserved for the future, and the KITLV Press now offers this contribution to coming generations of students of Old Javanese and to scholars of comparative literature around the world.

Contesting Malayness
Contesting Malayness

Author: Timothy P. Barnard

Publisher: NUS Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9789971692797

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Contesting Malayness assembles research on the theme of how Malays have identified themselves in time and place, developed by a wide range of scholars. While the authors describe some of the historical and cultural patterns that make up the Malay world, taken as a whole their work demonstrates the impossibility of offering a definition or even a description of "Melayu" that is not rife with omissions and contradictions.