![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The Suluk Gaṭoloco is a notoriously anti-Islamic satirical narrative poem, composed anonymously sometime in 19th-century Java. This article challenges Pigeaud’s hypothesis that it once belonged to the curriculum of Islamic religious schools in Panaraga. The contents of the so-called Sĕrat Suluk Panaraga, i.e. a two-volume compilation of texts on Islamic mysticism and theology, kept in the Berlin State Library (Ms. or. oct. 3999 and 4000), is discussed in some detail, showing that it contains variegated teachings. The version of the Suluk Gaṭoloco in the Berlin manuscript is close to Philippus van Akkeren’s 1951 edition, but exclusively concentrates on the theological disputes of Gaṭoloco with his scripturalist Islamic adversaries. The argument in Gaṭoloco’s narrative is built upon a discourse of ‘turning to the origins’. At a time when the traditional Javanese way of life was threatened by Dutch colonialism and ‘Arabised’ Islam, the Suluk Gaṭoloco constituted a nativist defence of indigenous customs which must have struck a chord among educated Javanese readers, but it is hardly conceivable that students of Islamic boarding schools were its primary readers. The Sĕrat Suluk Panaraga was originally compiled in 1894 and it was copied in 1901 in Blora on behalf of a Dutch colonial administrator called Paardekooper (1857–1905). This compilation is one among many more Javanese texts in Paardekooper’s overall copying programme which focused on the reading material of the Javanese bureaucratic elite.
Acknowledgements
I thank Dr Thoralf Hanstein (Berlin State Library) for his kind help with my study of the Paardekooper collection and for permission to reproduce . I am grateful for incisive comments from Professor Nancy K. Florida and Dr Jochem van den Boogert on an earlier draft of this paper.
Note on contributor
Edwin P. Wieringa is Professor of Indonesian Philology with special reference to Islamic cultures, University of Cologne. His research interests are literary and religious practices in traditional and modern insular Southeast Asia. Email: [email protected]
Notes
1 Cod. Or. 1795, which has 967 pages, consists of two ‘leather bound volumes in quadratic kraton [palace] script written in Surakarta’ (Pigeaud Citation1968: 27– 28), and Cod. Or 1796 with 463 pages, is also a ‘[l]eather bound volume in quadratic kraton script written in Surakarta’ (Pigeaud Citation1968: 28).
2 See Kruithof (Citation2010) for an overview of Poensen’s life and work.
3 See the following links: <https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suluk_Gatoloco>; <https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serat_Gatholoco> and <https://jv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serat_Gatholoco>
4 I merely happened to see the opening pages and the short description of this manuscript at the exhibition Festival Naskah Nusantara II, held at the Indonesian National Library in Jakarta, 26–29 September 2016. In a newspaper article (Putra Citation2015), the manuscript is described as ‘Surat Darmo Gandhil [sic] Gatholotjo’, allegedly inscribed in the 1800s (tahun 1800-an).
5 Describing Ms. or. oct. 3999 and 4000, a new catalogue of the Indonesian manuscripts in Berlin edited by Pudjiastuti and Hanstein (Citation2016: 210–212) adopts verbatim Pigeaud’s claims without adding new information.
6 A compilation entitled Suluk Panaraga is not listed in Behrend (Citation1998: 49–113) which covers the complete collection (Br 1–665).
7 According to the curator of the Islamic manuscript collection in Berlin Dr Thoralf Hanstein, the documents in Berlin pertaining to the purchase were lost during WW II (pers. comm., 15 June 2018). Leiden University Library Cod. Or. 8315 is a typed list of Paardekooper’s collection, which informs us that chest C must have contained the two-volume Suluk Panaraga. It is described under number 14 as ‘Soeloek deel I. Godsdienstig mystiek geschrift’ (Suluk part I: Religious mystical text), referring to the introduction of Gunning’s 1881 doctoral dissertation number 15 is ‘Het tweede deel van hetzelfde werk’ (The second part of the same work).
8 See the notification of his death in ‘Jaarverslag over 1905’. He also appears under this name in Naamlijst (Citation1879: 251). The official registration of his death can be found in the archive of the Registry Office in The Hague, 1 April 1905, archive number 959. <https://www.openarch.nl/show.php?archive=hga&identifier=85344029-C36B-4021-BFE0-DC836CCB85D4&lang=de&six=2>
9 See a scan of the archival entry at <http://denhaag.digitalestamboom.nl/(S(2f3ycddtku5h0ew1ur1kuot5))/scan.aspx?book=O&id=3931065&utm_source=OpenArchieven&utm_medium=browser&utm_campaign=OpenData>
10 His birth is registered in the archive of Dordrecht, birth certificates, archive 256, inventory number 46, 19 April 1857, archival number 302 (see <https://www.openarch.nl/show.php?archive=rad&identifier=5CE55A25-F91D-4497-84D3-64BFE8D6A282&lang=de&six=6>; on the examination, see Leidsch Dagblad, 17 July 1877, p. 3, <https://leiden.courant.nu/issue/LD/1877-07-17/edition/0/page/3>
11 Leidsch Dagblad, 28 August 1903, p. 5, <https://leiden.courant.nu/issue/LD/1903-08-28/edition/0/page/5>
12 Leidsch Dagblad, 2 May 1903, p. 16, <https://leiden.courant.nu/issue/LD/1903-05-02/edition/0/page/16>
13 However, this book does not appear in the Berlin collection.
14 See the descriptions of items 10 and 11 of Ms. Or. oct. 4038 in Pigeaud (Citation1975: 200) and Pudjiastuti and Hanstein (Citation2016: 256).
15 Ms. or. oct. 4038 item 31.
16 Cf. Pigeaud (Citation1975: 201) and Pudjiastuti and Hanstein (Citation2016: 256 under Ms. or. oct. 4038, item 12).
17 Cf. the colophons of Ms. or. oct. 3998, 4002, and 4004 which are all in Yuda’s hand and made in Blora in 1901.
18 The word artati (‘sugar, sweet’) is a common allusion to the verse form ḍanḍanggula or ‘sugar crow’.
19 However, according to the calendar in Anonymous (Citation1990: 36), 25 November 1894 fell on Sunday, whereas the ‘market day’ was Wage.
20 It occurs in the first line of Hamzah al-Fansuri’s poem XXIX, see Drewes and Brakel (Citation1986: 128). The term is translated as ‘the sea of the deeps’ in Drewes and Brakel (Citation1986: 179). For references to the sea and seafaring in suluk literature, see Zoetmulder (Citation1935: 314 ff.; 1995: 275 ff.); for its use in Malay mystical literature, see Braginsky (Citation2007: passim).
21 The smaller version is inscribed on only 28 manuscript pages kept in the Mangkunagaran palace (call number A 94) and was originally produced in Kalinyamat on 3 August 1880 (Florida Citation2000: 233), whereas the larger version has 67 pages, also kept in the Mangkunagaran palace (call number A 139a) and was composed c.1860–1880 (Florida Citation2000: 234).
22 The expression that someone lives in the mountains can be understood as meaning that this person is not part of courtly culture. Normally, this has a negative connotation ‘rustic’), but it may have a positive ring when religious recluses are concerned; cf. the description in another 19th-century Javanese narrative poem of a famous pundit residing on a mountain whose knowledge is much sought after (Wieringa Citation2018b: 110).
25 This is Arps’s (2016: 6) translation of the term Dewa Ruci to whom the reader is also referred for a more elaborate study about this well known Javanese text in which Bima undertakes the quest for ultimate mystical insight.
26 Berlin Ms. or. oct. 4000, pp. 8–9. The same stanza can be found in a slightly different wording in canto 40: 7 in Kamajaya’s (1985: 135) romanised edition.
27 See e.g. Pigeaud (Citation1970: 189) and Florida (Citation2000: 524); published with Indonesian translation by Simuh et al. (Citation1988–1989: 170–174).
28 It is comparable to the text in Simuh et al. (Citation1988–1989: 175–182).
29 Its final stanzas 9–14 in the verse form ḍanḍanggula run parallel with stanzas 1–6 of the so-called Suluk Sarengat; see <https://www.sastra.org/agama-dan-kepercayaan/suluk/1049-suluk-sarengat-anonim-1527>
30 BSB Ms. or. oct. 3999, p. 70.
31 The manuscript has mujud.
32 The manuscript has Kusti.
33 For wordplays on oneness and separateness in suluk, see Zoetmulder (Citation1935: 148; 1995: 131).
34 This stanza also occurs in slightly different wording as the first stanza (also in sinom) in a suluk collection in the Leiden University Library (Cod. Or. 7564, pp. 69–70), but there it is part of a Suluk Martabat Pitu (beginning on p. 63 in ḍanḍanggula with Pan pinurwa panjĕnĕnging urip / ajalullah ingkang winicara / martabat pitu namane / apan wontĕn ing guyup), see Amin (Citation1989: 75ff.).
35 The citation is from BSB Ms. or. oct. 3999, p. 40.
36 The turtle dove is called kitiran.
37 The name is humorously composed of pĕrji (derived from Ar. farj or ‘vulva’; Gericke and Roorda Citation1901, II: 241; cf. Malay parji) and wati (derived from Ar. waṭ’ or ‘sexual intercourse’; Gericke and Roorda Citation1901, II: 34; cf. Malay watik). Furthermore, the joke is that this fictional name is fully in accordance with the normal system of forming female Javanese names: ‘Within the names with a-i-vocalism the intervocalic consonant is nearly always t (e.g. Maryati)’ (Uhlenbeck Citation1978: 342).
38 As Nancy Florida astutely points out, tekat has nothing to do here with tekad (“determination, resolve”), but in the context of suluk literature it is a clipped form of Arabic i‘tiqād (Malay iktikad, iktikat, itikad), i.e. “faith, belief, conviction” (personal communication, 25 February 2019).
39 The comparable text of canto 6:67 in van Akkeren (Citation1951: 80) and Anderson (Citation1981: 148) is rather different and the last line reads tĕtĕp sira uripmu datanpa matya.
40 Buda denotes the pre-Islamic religion, i.e. the ancient faith or ancestral religion of the Javanese, which in comparable texts is also described as the cult of budi (mind, intellect, reason, genius, wit, discretion, judgment, wisdom, aptitude, character, disposition, sense, desire, longing), see Drewes (Citation1966); Ricklefs (Citation2007: 181).
41 Differs slightly as canto 5: 38 in van Akkeren (Citation1951: 77; 121-122); Anderson (Citation1981: 141) and Ricklefs (Citation2007: 192).
42 The manuscript has bangsa.
43 Cf. Van Akkeren (Citation1951: 77; 122) and Anderson (Citation1981:141). Van Akkeren (Citation1951: 122) had difficulty with the word Kristĕn and thought that the term Srani (from Arabic Naṣrānī or ‘Christian’) would have been used if Christians were meant, speculating that Kristĕn might refer to the Quraysh, i.e. the Arabic tribe of the Prophet Muhammad which historically controlled Mecca. According to Anderson (Citation1981: 141 n. 72), this reasoning ‘seems implausible’ and he ‘assumes’ that this word denotes ‘Christians’. I concur, because I think Gaṭoloco’s critique is that the Javanese are behaving like aliens in their own country, arguing that being a Christian in Arabia is just as abnormal as being a Muslim in Java. Although Kristĕn is not included in the comprehensive dictionary of Gericke and Roorda (Citation1901), it is clearly a Dutch loanword (‘Christen’). The word Kristĕn (in both Javanese and Malay) in modern-day Indonesia not only denotes Christians in general, but more specifically, Protestants.
44 Differs slightly from canto 6: 60–61 in van Akkeren (Citation1951: 85) and Anderson (Citation1982: 42).
45 The topic of the abominable ma-words is treated at more length in Wieringa (Citation2018b: 121ff.).
46 Intriguingly, the Suluk Gaṭoloco is oblivious to the fact that the Buda religion had its fair share of foreign influences. Cf. modern Muslim perceptions of the Hindu political concept of the ‘Eight Rules of Life’ (Astabrata) which counts as local wisdom from Indonesia’s own heritage (Wieringa Citation2018a: 181).