One of Indonesia’s great traditions is that of Muslim religious learning as embodied in the Javanese pesantren and similar institutions in the outer islands and the Malay peninsula. The raison d’être of these institutions is the transmission of traditional Islam as laid down in scripture, i.e., classical texts of the various Islamic disciplines, together with commentaries, glosses and supercommentaries on these basic texts written over the ages. These works are collectively known, in Indonesia, as kitab kuning, “yellow books”, a name that they owe to the tinted paper on which the first Middle Eastern editions reaching Indonesia were printed. The corpus of classical texts accepted in the pesantren tradition is – in theory at least – conceptually closed; the relevant knowledge is thought to be a finite and bounded body. Although new works within the tradition continue to be written, these have to remain within strict boundaries and cannot pretend to offer more than summaries, explications or rearrangements of the same, unchangeable, body of knowledge. Even radical reinterpreta­tions of the classical texts are not acceptable. The supposed rigidity of this tradition has come in for much criticism, both from unsympathetic foreign observers and from reformist and modernist Muslims themselves. In practice, however, the tradition appears to be much more flexible than the above sketch would suggest.

The pesantren (or pondok, surau, dayah, as it is called elsewhere) is not the only institution of Muslim religious education, and the tradition it embodies is only one out of several tendencies within Indonesian Islam. Modernist, reformist and fundamentalist currents emerged partly in opposition to it, and to some extent developed into rigid traditions themselves. My concern here is exclusively with the former, although a strict delimitation from the other currents – with which there has always been interaction – is not possible, and in recent years even a certain convergence is perceptible. Muhammadiyah, the major reformist organisation, for instance, now has its own pesantren, where besides its usual school curriculum, classical Arabic texts are also taught (although a different selection from the classical corpus is made than in the traditional pesantren).[1] In the average pesantren, on the other hand, there has been a shift of emphasis within the traditional corpus of texts, apparently under the influence of modernism. Different qur’anic exegeses (tafsir), the canonical collections of traditions (hadith)[2] and the principles of jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh) receive much more attention than a century ago, in a development parallel to (and perhaps responsive to) the modernist “return to the Qur’an and hadith”.

It seems best to delineate the Islamic tradition with which I am concerned here by enumerating its most important characteristics, while acknowledging that none of them represents a clear-cut and unambiguous criterium, and that the boundaries with other currents are often fuzzy.

Delineating the tradition

Key elements of the tradition are the institution of the pesantren itself (the school with its core of resident students), and the crucial personalistic and charismatic role of the kyai (or ajengan, tuan guru, etc.) – charismatic in the full Weberian sense of the term. An attitude of reverent respect for, and unquestioning obedience to the kyai is one of the first values installed in every santri. This reverend attitude is extended to earlier generations of `ulama and, a forteriori, to the authors of the texts studied. It might even seem to the outside observer that this attitude is deemed more important than the acquisition of knowledge; but to the kyai it is an integral part of the knowledge (ilmu) to be acquired. Hasyim Asy`ari, the founding father of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), is known to have been a great admirer of Muhammad `Abduh’s tafsir, but to have discouraged his students reading it; his objection was not to `Abduh’s rationalism but to the contempt `Abduh showed for traditional `ulama.

Although the material studied consists exclusively of written texts, their oral transmission is essential. These texts are read aloud by the kyai to a group of students, who have their own copies before them and may take notes on the proper vocalisation and the kyai’s explanations of grammatical niceties or the meanings of certain terms. Students may ask questions but these usually remain within the narrow context of the text itself; there are rarely if ever attempts to relate them to concrete, contemporary situations. The kyai rarely tries to discover whether the students actually understand the texts on any but the linguistic level; elementary texts are memorised, the more advanced ones simply read from beginning to end. (In a small circle of pesantren graduates, however, there is now much talk of understanding the kitab in their historical and cultural context, and to look for their contemporary relevance). Perhaps the majority of pesantren now operate on the madrasi system, with graded classes, fixed curricula and diplomas, but many important pesantren still use the more traditional method where the student reads a few specific texts under the guidance of the kyai (together with other students of various ages). For each text read he receives, after completion, an ijaza (usually oral only), after which he may move on to another pesantren to study other texts – many kyai are known as specialists of a number of specific kitab. Beside their more or less specialist teachings to the students in the pesantren, many kyai also hold weekly pengajian umum for the general public, in which they discuss relatively simple texts.

The central intellectual contents of the tradition are inscribed within the parameters of Ash`ari doctrine (as mediated especially by Sanusi’s works), the Shafi`i madhhab (with nominal acceptance of the other three Sunni madhhab), and the ethical and pietistic mysticism of Ghazali and related writers. The vast majority of the texts studied in the pesantren[3] – including the most recent works added to the tradition – fall within these three categories or that of the “instrumental science” of traditional Arabic grammar (nahw). In the last-named branch of learning, too, the cumbersome tradi­tional method (see Drewes 1971) continues to be preferred over more modern approaches. Modern currents of Islam partly defined themselves in opposition to the “petrified” madhhab and Ghazalian quietism, advocating the reopening of the gate of ijtihad (indepe­ndent judgment on the basis of the original sources, Qur’an and hadith) and social and political activism instead. While to the pesantren tradition Ghazali represents the ideal pinnacle of scholarly and spiritual achievement, the fundamentalists have chosen Ibn Taymiyya as their culture hero (significantly, the latter’s works are forbidden reading in many pesantren).[4] In practice, however, there is a considerable overlap of the texts read by “traditionalist” and other `ulama.

Most kyai content themselves with teaching existing kitab kuning, but not a few have added works of their own to the tradition. There is a remarkable formal difference with the writing modernist and reformist `ulama: the latter write their works in (romanized) Indonesian (the reformist public reads works by Arabic authors also usually in Indonesian translations). To the “traditionalist” `ulama, on the other hand, the Arabic language and script represent noble values in themselves; not only do they often write in Arabic,[5] but when they write or translate in vernacular languages, they almost exclusively use the Arabic script. The script is a badge of identity that, better than most criteria, differentiates the “traditionalists” from the other currents. Well over 500 different works by Indonesian traditional `ulama are currently in print, ranging from simple pious tracts through straightforward transla­tions to sophisticated commentaries on classical texts.

The pesantren tradition is pervaded by a highly devotional and mystical attitude. Supererogatory prayers and the recital of litanies (dhikr, wird, ratib) complement the canonical obligations. Many kyai are moreover affiliated with a mystical order (tariqa) and teach their followers its specific devotions and mystical exercises. A quarter of the literary output of the traditional `ulama consists of mystical and devotional texts. The Prophet is highly venerated and the object of numerous prayers; even the most undeserving of (those claiming to be) his descendants is deemed worthy of the highest respect. Saints are similarly venerated, and their intercession is frequently invoked. Visits to the graves of saints and lesser kyai are an essential part of the annual cycle; most Javanese pesantren hold annual celebrations (khaul, Ar. hawl) on the anniversaries of the deaths of their founding kyai.

A kyai’s charisma is based on the belief in his spiritual powers and ability to bestow blessing due to his contact with the world unseen; he is generally believed to retain this ability beyond the grave. It is this attitude towards the dead that most sharply distinguishes traditional Islam from the modernists and fundamen­talists, who hold that after death no communication is possible and who condemn all attempts to contact the dead as shirk, idolatry. To the traditionalists, on the other hand, it is an integral aspect of the essential concept of wasila, spiritual mediation. An unbroken chain from one’s teacher, living or dead, through previous teachers and saints to the Prophet and hence to God is deemed necessary for salvation. (The same reasoning is responsible for the curious fact that a kyai’s membership of NU is not considered to end upon his death, for that would imply that his wasila is cut off).[6]

The concept of an unbroken chain to the Prophet is central to the tradition, and is encountered in various aspects of it, as in the spiritual genealogy (silsila) of a tariqa[7] and the line of transmission (isnad) of hadith and of traditional texts in general.[8] The chain is a guarantee of the authenticity of the tradition. The numerous Hadrami sayyid (who have had a great influence on the formation of Indonesian traditional Islam) are the physical embodiments of such a chain; drops of the Prophet’s own blood are thought to flow in them, which makes them superior to the rest of mankind. In somewhat different form we recognize the same concept in the preoccupation of many kyai with their own genealogies and in their claims, spurious or correct, of descent from the great Javanese saints or ruling houses.[9] Modernists, of course, deny that heredity gives anyone claims to spiritual superiority.

The political “opportunism” for which NU is often criticised by other committed Muslims is, in the case of many kyai, a conscious emulation of the Sunni tradition’s political conservatism, which considers one hour of political chaos (fitna) worse than a century of tyranny. Political accommodation is almost a matter of principle in the Sunni tradition, not just one of expedience. All of NU’s important political moves in the past, legitimated if not actually initiated by its body of leading legal scholars, the Majlis Syuriah, are based on solid references to kitab kuning[10] – which proves that this theoretically closed corpus is not so rigid after all.

An Indonesian or a foreign tradition?

There is something paradoxical to the pesantren tradition. It is firmly rooted in the Indonesian soil; the pondok and pesantren may be called typical Indonesian institutions, in several respects unlike traditional schools elsewhere in the Muslim world. But at the same time this tradition is self-consciously international in orientation and continues to see not some place in the Archipelago but but Mecca as its focus or orientation.

The kitab kuning tradition is, obviously, of non-Indonesian origin. All classical texts studied in Indonesia are in Arabic, and were written well before Indonesia was islamicised; the same is true of many of the commentaries and glosses used, although there are increasing numbers of commentaries and adaptations written by Indonesian `ulama. Even shifts of emphasis within the tradition have in most cases followed earlier similar shifts in the major centres of the Islamic world. Numerous kitab studied at present in the pesantren are of relatively recent date but were written not in Indonesia but in Mecca or Madina (even in cases where the authors were Indonesians themselves).

The particular form of the pesantren as an educational institu­tion, too, reflects foreign influences if not origins (possibly superimposed upon older local traditions). It resembles the Middle Eastern or Indian madrasa, and I shall discuss below to what extent these may have provided its model. Foreign influences have, over the past centuries, become stronger rather than less. Most of the great kyai completed the highest stages of their education in the prestigious centres of learning of Arabia. They are best seen, perhaps, as mediators between the great international learned tradition of Islam and its more modest Indonesian variant(s).

This is not Indonesia’s only tradition that has unmistakably foreign origins; but unlike those of Chinese and Indian origins, which have become much more integrated into local culture and continue to develop independently of their foreign source,[11] the pesantren tradition tends to be wary of such syncretism and constantly seeks renewal at the source itself. The source par excellence, to Indonesia’s traditional Muslims, is the Holy City of Mecca, the qibla or centre of orientation of all the Muslim World, and secondarily Madina, where the Prophet himself established the first mosque and where he lies buried. These Arabian, and indirectly a few Indian centres, have provided the major impulses to the ongoing process of Indonesia’s islamisation.

Most of the early Indonesian authors of Islamic literature spent considerable periods in Mecca, Madina and other Middle Eastern centres of learning. Not only those with scholarly pretensions, also the early Indonesian Muslim rulers looked to Mecca, for legitimation if not also for useful ilmu, spiritual powers. It was from Mecca that, in the 1630′s, the fourth Muslim ruler of Banten, Abu’l-Mafakhir Mahmud, requested recognition as a sultan, as well as the explanation of certain kitab, and even the dispatch of an expert of the Law to enlighten Banten.[12] A decade later, in 1641, the ruler of Mataram too requested the title of “sultan” from the ruling Sharif of Mecca, as one of several efforts to reinforce his religious legitimation (de Graaf 1958:264-8). Although our knowledge of pre-17th century Indonesian Islam is extremely limited, it seems likely that this orientation towards Mecca had been established well before the cited events.

This is not to deny that Indonesian Islam, especially during the first centuries, had a distinctly Indian flavour, noticeable for instance in the preponderance of the tariqa Shattariyya[13] and the popularity of various adaptations of Ibn `Arabi’s wahdat al-wujud metaphysics,[14] as well as, perhaps, the choice of religious texts studied during the first centuries (see below). This Indian flavour, however, was also mediated through the Holy Cities of the Hijaz, where several great Indian `ulama (and their non-Indian disciples) taught. The Indian-born Arab, Nuruddin ar-Raniri, represents one of the very few known direct links between India and Indonesia.

Because of this continuing foreign orientation of the pesantren tradition, it cannot be studied in isolation; in order to under­stand its dynamics, we have to take developments in Arabia (and secondarily India) as much into account as those in Indonesia itself. Snouck Hurgronje’s pathbreaking studies of Islamic education in Mecca (1887a, 1889) still rank among the few essential works on the pesantren tradition. In the century that has since passed, scholarship on Indonesian Islam has almost entirely neglected Mecca and the other foreign centres, or contented itself with a few highly superficial observations.[15]

Beginnings of the pesantren tradition

We know very little of the precise origins of the pesantren, not even when the institution made its first appearance. Much that has been said about early pesantren seems to be based on an extrapola­tion into the past of the 19th-century institution and on much speculation. Pigeaud and de Graaf speak of pesantren as a second type of important religious centres, beside the mosques, for a period as early as the 16th century: independent communities, often located far away in the mountains, and having their their origins in the pre-Islamic mandala and ashrama (Pigeaud 1967:76ff; de Graaf & Pigeaud 1974:246-7). There are indications that monastic communities of the pre-Islamic type existed well into the Islamic period and that new ones continued to be established,[16] but it is not at all clear whether these were ever educational institutions where textual learning was transmitted. To call them “pesantren” (a term that, to my knowledge, does not occur until much later) is begging the question.

Some authors have wished to see in the desa perdikan (Fokkens 1886) the vehicle of continuity linking the pesantren with pre-Islamic religious institutions. There is no doubt that the perdikan as an institution is of respectable age (Schrieke 1919), and several of the 19th-century perdikan villages may in fact have enjoyed that status since pre-Islamic times. However, it would seem that the existence of a pesantren in a perdikan village is quite incidental to the latter’s status. Out of 211 perdikan villages listed in a late 19th-century survey (Anon. 1888), there were only four where (a part of) the revenue was explicitly reserved for the upkeep of pesantren. There were pesantren in several other perdikan villages, but these did not receive a share of the revenue and were therefore clearly not the reasons of the villages’ perdikan status. The most common rationale for this status (apart from the rulers’ political reasons for establishing perdikan in the periphery, on which Schrieke has commented) was the existence of important graves. The maintenance of spiritually potent graves has traditionally been a respected religious function, irrespective of what the official religion was. The families to whom the perdikan were entrusted thus enjoyed a certain religious authority, and it is not surprising to see some of their members emerge as influental religious teachers (teaching, one would surmise, magical-mystical practices initially, and only much later also bookish Islamic learning). In due time the teaching roles of some of these men became institutionalized in the form of a pesantren with resident santri, a process that has been perceptively sketched for the case of Tegalsari by Guillot (1985). It should be stressed, however, that only a small minority of Javanese pesantren has such a background, and even these are not very old. The pesantren of Tegalsari, the oldest that still functioned until recently, was established in 1742. The first Dutch survey of indigenous education, made in 1819, suggests that pesantren proper did not yet exist all over Java. Institutions recognizable as pesantren were reported from Priangan, Pekalongan, Rembang, Kedu, Surabaya, Madiun and Ponorogo; in other districts there was hardly any education at all, or it took place in private homes and mosques. Madiun and Ponorogo (in which Tegalsari is located) then boasted the best pesantren; it was here that children from the north coast went for education beyond the elementary level (van der Chijs 1864:215-9). There is, as far as I am aware, no unambiguous evidence for the existence of pesantren (in their 19th-century form) much before that of Tegalsari.

It should be borne in mind that there were no pesantren-type institutions in Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Lombok before the 20th century. The transmission of Islamic learning there was highly informal. Children and adults received rudimentary lessons in reading and reciting the Qur’an from a co-villager who had more or less mastered these skills; a passing haji or Arab trader would stay a few days and read, after prayers in the mosque, a kitab to those willing to learn. Where there was an local ulama of some renown, he would similarly read and explain kitab to the general public assembled in the mosque (in the way of the extracurricular pengajian umum given by kyai to those outside the pesantren). The most interested students would visit the ulama at home and even stay there, and the really ambitious would seek more learning in Java or, when possible, Mecca. It seems highly likely to me that this was also the situation in Java and Sumatra during the first centuries of islamisation, and that the first pesantren proper were not established before the 18th century.

The “pesantren” of Karang

One dubious case is the “well-known pesantren” of Karang in Banten (presumably on the mountain Karang to the west of Pan­deglang), that is occasionally referred to, primarily on the basis of its occurrence in the Serat Centini (e.g. Drewes 1969:11). One of the characters in this work, the ascetic Danadarma, relates that he studied three years in Karang under a certain Seh Kadir Jalena (which perhaps means that he studied there the mystical and occult sciences associated with the great saint `Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani).[17] The Centini’s chief protagonist, Jayengresmi or Seh Among Raga, also studied at the “school” (paguron) of Karang, under a guru of Arab origin, a certain Seh Ibrahim bin Abu Bakar, known by the title of Ki Ageng Karang. From there he later travelled to another great school, in the East Javanese village of Wanamarta, led by Ki Baji Panurta, where he showed himself highly competent in orthodox bookish learning.[18]

A teacher on the Karang is also mentioned in a Javanese primbon from the Banyumas district, of unclear date. It refers to a certain Seh Bari of Karang (Seh Bari ing Kawis), who is said to have taught doctrines first propagated by the saints of Java. Drewes (1969:11) suggests that he may perhaps be identified with the Seh Bari whose teachings are laid down in one of the two oldest (16th-century) Javanese Islamic manuscripts still extant. If this identification is correct, this would mean that some time between 1527 (formal introduction of Islam in Banten) and the end of the century, Karang became a well-known centre of orthodox Islamic learning – for the “admonitions of Seh Bari” are definitely orthodox and not of the syncretistic kind as are often attributed to the saints of Java. But even if Drewes is correct in making this identification (which I find rather speculative), I would hesitate to speak of a pesantren; the presence of a well-known teacher or lineage of teachers does not yet make a school in the sense conveyed by that term. The Banyumas manuscript does not speak of a school but only mentions the shaykh. (The Centini, incidentally, which does speak of schools, does not call them “pesantren” but “paguron” or “padepokan”).

The Centini’s Jayengresmi was a contemporary of Sultan Agung of Mataram and must therefore have lived in the first half of the 17th century. The Centini, however, was compiled in the early 19th century (although partly from older materials), and it would be naive to consider it as a reliable source on anything but contem­porary matters. The Sajarah Banten (Djajadiningrat 1913), which is in date of composition close to Jayengresmi’s supposed lifetimes, does not mention a paguron on the Karang (or elsewhere, for that matter) but suggests that it was a favourite spot for tapa, meditational practices.[19] The only religious instruction[20] mentioned in this text consists of the private education of a prince at the hands of a Kyai Dukuh and of the kali (qadi) of the sultanate (ibid.:37). This seems to confirm my suggestion above, that there were, in the 16th and 17th centuries, both individual teachers of the Islamic scholarly disciplines, teaching mainly in mosques or at the court, and masters of the mystical-magical sciences based mainly (but not exclusively) in hermitages or near sacred graves. Pesantren as we know them may partly have developed out of these various locations, but not until a later period.

The kitab studied in the 16th-19th centuries

My suggestion that the institution of the pesantren did not emerge before the 18th century of course does not mean that kitab kuning were not studied before that time. Classical Arabic texts were definitely known and studied (although we can only guess how widely) by ca. 1600. A few works had already been translated into Javanese and Malay, while several Indonesian authors had written works in these languages that in style and content belonged to the orthodox kitab tradition. Around 1600, the first Indonesian manuscripts, in Malay, Javanese and Arabic, made their way to Europe. They give us a precious, though very incomplete, impression of the aspects of the Islamic scriptural tradition then known in the Archipelago.

The Malay manuscripts (van Ronkel 1896) contain, among other things, commentaries on two important chapters of the Qur’an, two hikayat with Islamic themes, a text on Muslim marriage law (in Arabic, with interlineary translation) and a translation of a celebrated devotional poem in praise of the Prophet (Busiri’s Qasidat al-burda, edited by Drewes 1955). The two major Javanese Islamic manuscripts, also (re-)edited by Drewes (1954, 1969) show little of the metaphysical speculation and syncretism so often thought to be typical of Javanese Islam. They are firmly within the orthodox tradition (of Shafi`i fiqh, Ash`ari doctrine and Ghazalian ethics), without any traces of local influence. They refer, moreover, to various Arabic kitab, which gives a clearer idea of how these authors relate to the Middle Eastern tradition.

Of the various Arabic works mentioned in the “Admonitions of Seh Bari” (Drewes 1969, previously known as “the Book of Bonang”), only two titles are recognizable: Ghazali’s magnum opus Ihya `ulum ad-din and a work called Tamhid, which is probably Abu Shukur al-Kashshi as-Salimi’s at-Tamhid fi bayan at-tawhid, of which a Javanese interlinear translation exists (Kraemer 1921:6). The latter work was, interestingly, especially popular in India.[21] The same two works are mentioned in the other early Javanese Muslim text (Kraemer 1921, Drewes 1954), along with a Talkhis al-minhaj (“summary of the Minhaj”, probably referring to Ghazali’s Minhaj al-`abidin), a Sharh fi’l daqa’iq (possibly a commentary on the popular text on cosmology and eschatology, Daqa’iq al-akhbar).[22] The other two titles, al-Kanz al-khafi (“the hidden treasure”) and Ma`rifat al-`alam (“Gnosis of the world”) suggest works on mysticism and metaphysics, although they could not be identified.

This short list would suggest that the emphasis in teaching was on doctrine and mysticism. The existence of several (younger) manuscripts, in Arabic as well as Javanese translations, of Burhanpuri’s well-known wahdat al-wujud text at-Tuhfat al-mursala (Johns 1965) suggests that there was a strong predilectance for “pantheist” mysticism.[23] However, among the said few manuscripts brought to Europe from Jawa around 1600, there are also two Arabic works on fiqh, Abu Shuja’ al-Isfahani’s still widely used at-Taqrib fi’l-fiqh (with an interlineary Javanese translation) and an anonymous (and now virtually unknown) al-Idah fi’l-fiqh. These form clear proof that fiqh was also studied in Java in the late 16th century at the latest (and perhaps much earlier).

Those Indonesians studying in Arabia became acquainted with a much wider range of texts, but what was taught in Indonesia itself must, initially at least, have been a rather limited and poor selection from the rich classical tradition. The knowledgeable Mahmud Yunus (1979:223-6) gives — it remains unclear from what sources, but presumably from oral tradition — rather detailed information on the “pesantren” in (18th-century?) Mataram and mentions three kitab studied at the lower levels: Taqrib (the said fiqh work), Bidayat al-hidaya (Ghazali’s work on sufi morality, excerpted from his Ihya) and a text known as Usul 6 Bis,[24] which must have been Abu’l-Layth as-Samarqandi’s little work on doctrine, also known as Asmarakandi.[25]

The Serat Centini, as first shown by Soebardi (1971), contains more detailed information on the works studied in the “pesantren”, but it would be rash to assume that this is valid for a period much earlier than that when the Centini was composed. In the discussions of its protagonists, twenty different kitab are mentioned, six of which are major fiqh texts (including the ones mentioned already, Taqrib and Idah),[26] nine works on doctrine (including Samarqandi’s introductory text and Sanusi’s two well-known works on `aqida with various commentaries), two tafsir (the near-ubiquitous Jalalayn and that of Baydawi) and three works on sufism. This last group includes Ghazali’s Ihya and also the only work in the list that is of disputed orthodoxy, `Abd al-Karim al-Jili’s al-Insan al-kamil, a systematic presentation of Ibn al-`Arabi’s wahdat al-wujud metaphys­ics.[27]

The first hesitant Dutch observations on pesantren education confirm the impression given by the above sources. In the first survey of indigenous education, in 1819, the district authorities of Rembang listed the kitab studied in pesantren there (van der Chijs 1864:217). The santri learned the basics of Arabic grammar through well-known works as Jurjani’s `Amil (or `Awamil) and the Jurumiyya (still used in virtually every pesantren), and then read selected parts of the Qur’an and elementary works on fiqh (Sittin) and doctrine (Asmarakandi and Sanusi’s small work ad-Durra), that were also mentioned in the earlier Javanese sources.

Towards the end of the century, L.W.C. van den Berg visited a number of important pesantren in Java and Madura and compiled, on the basis of interviews with the kyai, a list of the Arabic works commonly studied (1886). His explicit mentioning of the word “Arabic” suggests that works in other languages (presumably Javanese) were in also use but deliberately not taken notice of. (As I shall show below, around that time there was at least one famous Javanese ulama, Kyai Saleh Darat of Semarang, who wrote several works in Javanese, that were later widely used). Van den Berg’s list shows a clear continuity with the earlier ones, in the sense that both the introductory works used and the prestigious texts mentioned remained the same, and that the additional titles basically represent elaborations upon subject matter already well circumscribed, no new orientations. Striking is the absence of a few dimensions of the classical tradition: while many fiqh works were studied, not a single one on its theoretical principles (usul al-fiqh) was listed; as tafsir, we only find those by the two Jalaladdin (Jalalayn: Suyuti and Mahalli) and by Baydawi; and although Bukhari’s canonical hadith collection was read by some kyai, no work of hadith was actually taught in the pesantren. In these three subjects, pesantren education has become considerably richer since the 1880′s (van Bruinessen 1990). Other dimensions of the classical intellectual tradition, however, continued to remain absent from the pesantren, notably philosophy and metaphysics,[28] Van den Berg lists no works on wahdat al-wujud; these may have been taught in a number of pesantren, but less conspicuously and only to selected students, as is still the case at a few places.

The range of these works studied in pre-20th century Java is particularly narrow if one compares it with the intellectual horizons of the early Muslim authors from the outer islands. In the works of Nuruddin Raniri, Yusuf Makassar and Abdurra’uf Singkel, we find references to a much more varied and intellectual­ly interesting range of texts. To some extent this was, no doubt, mere name-dropping but they must have acquired at least a superfi­cial (and in Raniri’s case even profound) knowledge and understand­ing of the rich intellectual tradition then flourishing in the Hijaz and India. Al-Attas has culled from Raniri’s works an impressive list of highly sophisticated sufi and philosophical books referred to by this author (1986:15-24). Even if one may remain sceptical towards Al-Attas’ conclusion that Raniri had actually read all of these works, it is obvious that the man was highly cultured. Yusuf, in the course of his many years in Arabia, studied with many a master and mastered no doubt more than the tariqa for which he remains known. He too refers in several risala to works well beyond the narrow range studied in Java.[29] And Abdurra’uf lists in his `Umdat al-muhtajin dozens of Meccan and Madinan teachers with whom he studied or was acquainted. He remains silent on what exactly he studied with these masters, but from his own works it is evident that he covered the major Islamic sciences, and given the identity of his major teacher, Ibrahim al-Kurani, he must have been immersed in metaphysics as well as hadith studies too.

The classical learned tradition and its impact in Indonesia

The works that constitute the central core of the Islamic learned tradition were written during the 10th through 15th centuries. A few important works were written before that period, and new works in the same vein continue to be written, but by the end of the 15th century Arabic thought had reached it most consummate form, and no significant further development of the tradition took place. The modes of thought, at least in the Islamic sciences, remained the same (in the other sciences, mathematics, physics, medicine, the paradigms changed under European influence).[30] In this medieval tradition, all the sciences were considered as essentially finite systems of knowledge. The very idea of making significant additions to the body of knowledge was therefore absurd and even heretical. This view strictly limits the nature of works that can be written within the tradition. Aziz Al-Azmeh, whose recent work (1986) is an excellent analysis of the metaphysical bases of medieval Arabic thought, neatly sums up what sort of works medieval scholars and scientists wrote: “Thus dissertation of any topic falls into seven types: the completion of the incomplete, the correction of the mistaken, the exegesis of the obscure, the epitome of a long text, the assembly of disparate but connected writings (and this seems understood in terms of a spatial metaphor, without the implication of synthesis), the organisation of disorganised writing and the extraction of what had not previously been extracted, presumably from a given body of premises” (1986:152, after Ibn Hazm and Hajji Khalifa). This is still valid as a description of kitab kuning after the classical period. If we add translation into local languages as an eighth type, this summary covers virtually all kitab written by Indonesian ulama during the past century.

Finite and unchangeable though it was believed to be, the tradition was very rich. And it remained flexible because there had never been attempts to make it consistent. Each of the sciences was a closed system, in which propositions were possible that contradicted those in other sciences. Philosophers and theologians, sufis and metaphysicians, scholars of fiqh and of hadith, each had their own discourse, sometimes at odds with the others (although there was an underlying unity of patterns of thought).[31] Even within the major discipline of fiqh, four schools (the survivors of an initially much larger number) were considered as equally orthodox although they differed on many points. On almost any subject, different views existed (and exist) next to each other. Such development as took place, usually under the influence of political developments, often took the form of a shift of emphasis in favour of one discipline against another. Many reformist movements within the tradition, for instance, are associated with a firm insistence on hadith as against kalam (theology) or even the established schools of fiqh. We often perceive an element of populism or anti-elite sentiment among the strong proponents of hadith. The learned elite lays claims to special privileges on the basis of its oligopolistic possession of sophisticated knowledge; hadith are relatively straightforward and can be understood without special training, and have moreover the stamp of Prohetic authority. They can therefore be used to declare the validity of the intellectual disciplines null and void.[32] Overall, the rational (`aqliyya) sciences (logic, philosophy, metaphysics, kalam, medicine, etc.) have since the classical period gradually had to cede field to the religious sciences in the narrow sense, the `ulum naqliyya (“traditional” sciences: hadith, tafsir and other Qur’anic sciences, etc.), which means a considerable impoverishment of the tradition.

The first generations of Indonesians studying in Arabia assimi­lated only a fraction of the tradition as it still existed, initially those to which their own culture made them most receptive (notably metaphysical mysticism, cosmology, the tariqa and associated occult sciences, but also the central science of fiqh). In the course of time, more and more dimensions of the tradition became accepted into Indonesia’s own Islamic tradition, which thus gradually became richer, in spite of the progressive impoverishment of what the Arabian centres had to offer.[33]

Foreign models for the pesantren

The transmission of learning in Islam did not become formalized and institutionalised in the madrasa until the 10th century. Initially, it was primarily fiqh (the most essential science from the state’s point of view) that was taught in the madrasa; the other sciences continued to be transmitted more informally, in mosques (Makdisi 1981:9). By the time of the first documented intensive contacts of Indonesia with the central Muslim lands, the late 17th and 18th centuries, the two great Sunni empires (the Ottoman Empire, which included most of Arabia, and Mughal India) had centrally controlled networks of great madrasa (beside numerous schools of lower levels) with more or less standardized curricula.[34] The Ottoman madrasa was typically built by one of the sultans or a high official, and was endowed with waqf (“pious foundations”, usually in the form of land) that brought enough revenue for its upkeep and for allowances of food and candles to the students. Its director, the mudarris, received a government stipend. In Mughal India, state patronage was less pervasive, the learned establish­ment somewhat more amorphous and less close to the court. The subjects taught in the two empires differed little; they included the Qur’an, with much attention to its proper pronunciation (tajwid) and style of reciting (qira’a); Arabic grammar and rhetoric (sarf, nahw, balagha), (Hanafi) fiqh[35] and its principles, tafsir, kalam, hadith (mostly non-canonical collections, but in the Ottoman Empire also Bukhari), as well as logic, arithmetics, astronomy, adab (literature) and hikma (philosophy and metaphysics).[36]

The Turkish traveller Evliya elebi, who visited Mecca and Madina in 1671, reports that there were then forty madrasa in Mecca, of which he mentions twenty-two by name (1935:771-2); he also mentions four in Madina and claims that there were many more (ibid.:640). His descriptions of them are, however, very meagre compared with those he gives at other places, and one gathers that they were not exactly flourishing (two centuries later, Snouck Hurgronje found the major madrasa in Mecca converted into private mansions). Significantly perhaps, Evliya has more to say of the numerous convents (tekye or zawiya) of sufi orders in Mecca, several of which lodged numerous residents (ibid.:772-3).

When looking for Middle Eastern models for the pesantren, we should perhaps, besides the madrasa, think of the zawiya as another likely candidate. It even seems improbable that the Indonesians staying in the Hijaz had at this stage much contact with the madrasa there, which were more geared to careers in the Ottoman Empire, and where moreover the Hanafi madhhab predominated. There is not much overlap between the books known to Indonesians in the 16th-18th centuries and those of the madrasa curriculum: the only common works are the two tafsir by the Jalalayn and Baydawi, and the Tamhid, studied in India but not the Ottoman Empire. The scholar and sufi who had the greatest impact on Indonesians studying in the Hijaz in the 17th century, Ibrahim al-Kurani (significantly a Shafi`i), seems to have had more interaction with Indian than Ottoman `ulama (we find more references to him in Indian than in Ottoman sources), and seems to have stood outside the Ottoman learned hierarchy. He taught also subjects that were not part of the official madrasa curriculum.[37]

During the 18th and early 19th centuries, madrasa education in Arabia seems only to have further declined. Little is known of the form and content of education received by the Indonesians studying in Mecca and Madina during this period. Even the biographies of the greatest among them, Muhammad Arshad al-Banjari, `Abd as-Samad al-Palimbani and Da’ud bin `Abdallah al-Patani list only the names of some of their teachers (most conspicuously the sufi Muhammad bin `Abd al-Karim as-Samman and the shaykh al-islam of Egypt, Muhammad ibn Sulayman al-Kurdi) and the titles of some of the works they read.[38] They did not study in madrasa but apparently attended the informal lecture circles (halqa) given by independent `ulama in various mosques; with some teachers they had apparently no more than a few private sessions.

Snouck Hurgronje’s path-breaking work on Mecca has shown how by the late 19th century, education in the Hijaz was dominated by Mecca’s Masjid al-Haram, which was then (and may well have been for some time) a veritable university, supervised by a government-appointed rector (shaykh al-`ulama), who allowed only selected `ulama to have their lecturing circles (halqa) there (1887; 1889:235-56). Less favoured `ulama taught at various other places in the city. The system on which the “university” was run differed from the madrasa in that there was no established curriculum; it was up to the individual teacher and his students to decide which text was read, and the students did not live together in a college. The madrasa that had existed in the past, as Snouck Hurgronje remarked, no longer functioned.

This short historical survey, then, suggests that the Indonesians studying in the Hijaz never had significant direct contacts with Ottoman-type madrasa, and it is therefore not very likely that these formed the model on which the Javanese pesantren, with its resident santri and more or less fixed curriculum, were based. Two important experiences with madrasa-type education, however, seem to have been overlooked by previous research. In studies of Indonesian Islam, I have never seen references to Indonesians studying at Cairo’s Azhar university before the 20th century. These must nevertheless have been quite numerous from the first half of the 19th century on, and possibly earlier. By the mid-19th century, the Azhar had around 30 colleges (riwaq), in which the students lived; one of these was reserved for “Jawa”, i.e. Muslims from the Archipelago. Turks, Kurds and Iraqi Arabs also had only one riwaq each, which suggests that the “Jawa” must have been more than a handful (Vollers 1913; cf. Heyworth-Dunne 1938:25-6). The kitab studied at the Azhar (where fiqh of all four madhhab was taught) in the 18th and 19th centuries show moreover a much closer correspondence with the 19th-century pesantren curriculum than the syllabus of the earlier Ottoman and Mughal madrasa. Most of the works listed by van den Berg (1888) also occur in the Azhar syllabus as culled from Egyptian sources by Heyworth-Dunne (1938:43-65). The importance of this finding should not be overrated, for the same works were also read in Meccan halqa; but it allows at least the possibility of an Azhari influence on the early pesan­tren. Perhaps the number of Indonesian students at the Azhar decreased in the second half of the 19th century because of its relative loss of status vis a vis Mecca due to Egypt’s westernisa­tion, but until then it had long been considered as “the Athens of Shafi`i learning” (cf. Snouck Hurgronje 1889:255).

The other relevant madrasa was founded more recently in Mecca by Indian Muslims, a decade before Snouck’s stay there but apparently overlooked by him. In 1874, an Indian lady by the name of Sawlat an-Nisa endowed a waqf in Mecca for a madrasa (the Sawlatiyya), to be led by the celebrated and militant Indian scholar Rahmat Allah bin Khalil al-`Uthmani (`Abd al-Jabbar 1385:121-7). Rahmat Allah had gained renown in India and abroad through his sophisticated (and successful) polemic with the German missionary Pfander, and had been one of the leaders of the anti-British Mutiny of 1857.[39] After the defeat of this rebellion, he had taken refuge in Mecca, where he became one of the leading `ulama, and one of those most firmly committed to the defence of Islam against colonialism and westernisation. The Sawlatiyya was part of the movement of educational reform in Indian Islam that had given rise to the Deoband school (Darul `Ulum, established in 1867) and numerous affiliated madrasa (Metcalf 1982). Like at Deoband, the curriculum was probably traditional, though with a heavier emphasis on hadith;[40] what made it modern was its institutional form, with classrooms, a fixed course of study and examinations. Many of its teachers, incidentally, were drawn from the among the `ulama teaching at the Masjid al-Haram.[41]

In the early 20th century, and perhaps earlier as well,[42] the Sawlatiyya had a great influence on Indonesia’s pesantren world. Many Indonesians studied at this school and founded pesantren or madrasah (in the Indonesian sense of the term) upon their return, more or less modelling these on the Sawlatiyya. There was then yet another, similar madrasa in Mecca, also established by Indians, the Madrasat al-Falah (mentioned by Gobée 1921:199-200 and in the biographies in `Abd al-Jabbar 1385), but this seems to have had no Indonesian students. In 1934, a third madrasa of this type, named Dar al-`Ulum ad-Diniyya, was established in Mecca, this time by Indonesians, who walked out of the Sawlatiyya because of a conflict over the use of the Indonesian language that had become a matter of national pride.[43] The Indonesians resident in Mecca collected the money necessary to establish their own school. Over a hundred Indonesian students, most of whom had been at the Sawlatiyya, at once enrolled; Muhsin al-Musawwa, a sayyid born in Palembang, who was already a teacher at the Sawlatiyya, became its first rector.

To summarize, then, I would suggest that the riwaq at the Azhar university may have provided one of the models for the organisation of pesantren founded in the late 18th and 19th centuries, as well as for their curricula, and that around the turn of the century the Indian educational reform movement began to exert its influence through the Sawlatiyya. With the establishment in Mecca of the Indonesian Dar al-`Ulum, which imitated the Sawlatiyya in most respects, and which in its name echoes the reformist colleges of Deoband and Cairo,[44] the reformed madrasa became the dominant model to be emulated throughout the Archipelago. It was the Sawlatiyya and the Dar al-`Ulum that were the major influences in the development of traditional Islamic education in Indonesia (di­scussed extensively in Steenbrink 1974 and Yunus 1979).

Indonesian `ulama in Mecca

The existence of these madrasa in Mecca has been little noticed so far, largely because of the tremendous prestige of the Masjid al-Haram (and because of the towering place of Snouck Hurgronje’s work on the latter in western scholarship). The great teachers at the Sawlatiyya, moreover, also taught in the Mosque. Because of the importance attributed to the isnad (chain of transmission of a text), students were more likely to refer to the names of their teachers than to the institution where they studied. Changes in intellectual discourse, such as took place in the beginning of the century, were therefore commonly attributed to individual teachers rather than to institutional and wider socio-economic developments.

In retrospect, the decades around the last turn of century stand out as a decisive phase. Three Indonesian `ulama then teaching in the Masjid al-Haram (and not in the Sawlatiyya) exerted a great influence on their compatriots and, through their disciples and their writings, on the following generations. Nawawi of Banten (d. 1896-7), praised by Snouck as the most learned and modest of the Indonesians (1889:362-7) was the most prolific author of them. Beside his well-known tafsir (Johns 1984, 1988), he wrote works on virtually every discipline studied in the pesantren. Unlike earlier Indonesian authors, he did so in Arabic. Several of his works are commentaries (sharh) on kitab that were already used in the pesantren, explaining, supplementing and sometimes also correcting them (see the example in Steenbrink 1984:133-4). These commentaries virtually came to supersede the original texts. Others are commentaries on works that, due to him, have become part of the pesantren curriculum. No less than 22 of his works (he wrote at least twice that number) are still in print, and 11 of them figure among the 100 kitab that are most frequently used (van Bruinessen 1990). Nawawi stands, as it were, on a watershed between two periods in the pesantren tradition. He acknowledged and reinter­preted its intellectual heritage and enriched it with adaptations from material hitherto neglected. All contemporary kyai consider him as their intellectual ancestor, but also Ahmad Khatib Minang­kabau, the “father” of Indonesian Islamic reformism, was his student.

Ahmad Khatib (d. 1915) is best known for his polemics against the matrilineal adat of his native region and against the tariqa Naqshbandiyya (which had more followers in West Sumatra than elsewhere), but his role in Mecca was wider than that. He was one of the first Indonesians to acquire a licence to teach in the Masjid al-haram, and was made one of the Shafi`i imam there, a privilege usually reserved for the Mecca-born.[45] Both contributed much to his influence among the entire Indonesian community in Mecca. His reformist attitude is apparent from his writing a commentary on an early text on usul al-fiqh, Juwayni’s Waraqat, but it would be wrong to perceive him as a rebel against the tradition as such, in which he was deeply steeped. His students included both reformists and traditionalists (some of them even became tariqa shaykhs!), and two of his works are still used in several pesantren.[46]

The third great figure was Kyai Mahfuz Termas (d.1919-20), of whom the Javanese kyai speak with even more respect than of Nawawi. He was the venerated teacher of several of the founders of the NU, which no doubt added to his reputation. He had completed his education at the feet of the greatest Arab teachers in the Masjid al-Haram and also became an expert in Qur’an recitation (on which he wrote several books). His major work is a four-volume commentary on a fiqh work that used to be popular in Indonesia,[47] and he seems to have been the first Indonesian scholar to teach the canonical hadith collection of Bukhari. His favourite student, Hasyim Asy`ari took this tradition to Indonesia, where his pesantren at Tebuireng (Jombang) became the most renowned pondok hadits.

I have observed above that one of the conspicuous developments in the pesantren curriculum since the 1880′s is the appearance of usul al-fiqh and hadith, and the greater variety in tafsir studied. One would be tempted to credit this to these three `ulama, who made their marks in precisely these fields. There is probably some truth in this, but only a partial one; the pattern of intellectual influences must have been highly diffuse. The reorientation towards these subjects was a general trend in the Islamic world, that had begun earlier and was also reflected in the new madrasa.

After these three `ulama, there have been no Indonesians of comparable standing teaching in Mecca. `Umar `Abd al-Jabbar’s work on the `ulama in the Masjid al-Haram in the 14th century of the hijra mentions three later Indonesians (or rather two Indonesians and a Mecca-born Malay), but these never achieved the same renown: Muhsin bin `Ali Musawwa (the first rector of the Dar al-`Ulum, d. 1935), Muhammad Nur al-Patani (a grandson of Da’ud bin `Abdallah, d. 1944) and `Ali Banjar (d. 1951). Apart from the first, they do not even seem to have had very numerous Indonesian students. The Indonesians studied at the Sawlatiyya and the Dar al-`Ulum or, when in the Mosque, with the more reputed Arab teachers. These different institutions are represented by the two contemporary `ulama in Mecca who stand out as the major authorities for Indonesians, the kyai’s kyai. One is Shaykh Yasin of Padang, the rector of the Dar al-`ulum, the other Sayyid Muhammad bin `Alwi al-Maliki, whose father and grandfather also, in spite of their belonging to the Maliki madhhab, taught numerous Indonesians in the Masjid al-Haram. Both teach not only the entire range of subjects studied in the pesantren, but are also shaykhs of various tariqa.[48]

Mecca is no longer the most important place where contemporary Indonesians of pesantren backgrounds seek higher learning, and those who still do so usually stay for much shorter periods than in the past. I have the impression, although I cannot back it up with statistical data, that the Azhar has become much more important again,[49] while also the school of the Nadwat al-`ulama in Lucknow (see Metcalf 1982:335-47) has been attracting students from “traditional” circles in various parts of Indonesia. Many more santri now continue their studies at the Indonesian state in­stitutes of Islamic learning (IAIN), which probably offer a better education than that received in Mecca by the average student of previous generations. But an IAIN diploma still lacks the prestige and charisma bestowed by ijaza given by famous teachers with proper isnad in the major foreign centres, and the pesantren world is not likely to give up its Arabian (and Indian) orientation.

APPENDIX: Kitab by Indonesian `ulama currently used

A final short look at the works by Indonesian `ulama that are currently in print will give an impression of their lasting contributions to the Indonesian pesantren tradition. The early Sumatran mystics have virtually disappeared from sight. Hamzah and Syamsuddin are only accessible in foreign scholarly editions, and of Raniri’s works only his short fiqh work, as-Sirat al-mustaqim is still widely available in the Malay world, and that only because it is printed in the margin of M. Arshad al-Banjari’s more substantial Sabil al-muhtadin.[50] `Abd ar-Ra’uf’s Malay translation and adaptation of the Tafsir Jalalayn, at-Tarjuman al-mustafid, is still regularly reprinted, as is one other short work, Kitab al-fara’id (on inheritance law).

The earliest author of whom more numerous works are available is Da’ud bin `Abdallah al-Patani. At least eighteen of his works, all in Malay, have been printed but several of these have long been out of print. His works are mainly used in Malaysia and Patani, and to some extent also in Sumatra. They include several works on fiqh and doctrine, a work on tasawwuf (after Ghazali’s Minhaj al-`abidin) and a hadith collection (see also Matheson & Hooker 1988; van Bruinessen 1990). His contemporary `Abd as-Samad al-Palimbani is represented by his widely available Sayr as-salikin and Hidayat as-salikin, adaptations of Ghazali’s Ihya and Bidaya, respectively. An anonymous fiqh work still read in parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan, Fath ar-raghibin, is also attributed to `Abd as-Samad by some authorities (Quzwain 1985), while others believe it to be by the third great Malay author of that period, M. Arshad al-Banjari, whose larger fiqh work Sabil al-muhtadin is still found all over the Malay-speaking world but rarely taught in pondok. A widely popular guide for worship, Perukunan besar Melayu, was compiled by his descendants from the master’s teachings. Another descendant, `Abd ar-Rahman Siddiq, who migrated to mainland Riau, became there a well-known author, but the three of his works that are in print can only be found in the Banjar area.

Nawawi Banten and his impressive contributions have already been mentioned. Two of his contempories, living in Indonesia, were also prolific authors and are still read. Sayyid `Uthman (Snouck Hurgronje 1887b, 1894) wrote numerous tracts in Malay, twelve of which are still found to be used in Jakarta and West Java. Several deal with fiqh, doctrine, and morals; there is a mawlid, a collection of litanies (awrad) and a work on Qur’an recital (qira’a). Kyai Saleh Darat (d.1903) wrote in Javanese. He trans­lated and adapted major sufi texts (Ibn `Ata’illah’s Hikam, parts of the Ihya) and a popular work on doctrine (Jawharat at-tawhid), and wrote on fiqh, Arabic grammar and tajwid. Several of the seven printed works that I have seen are no longer available, which shows that their popularity has been decreasing.

A younger Javanese author of great repute was Kyai Ihsan of Jampes (Kediri). His two-volume Siraj at-talibin (in Arabic), a commentary on Ghazali’s Minhaj al-`abidin, is considered as the most important work recently written by an Indonesian, and studied in various pesantren by the more advanced students. The most prolific contemporary Javanese author is Bisyri Mustofa of Rembang, who wrote well over twenty books, including a three-volume translation of the Qur’an, his best-known work.

Most of the kitab written in this century fall within three categories. The first consists of translations, usually with extensive commentaries, of classical works already widely used in the pesantren. Ahmad Subki Masyhadi of Pekalongan, Asrari Ahmad and the said Bisyri Mustofa have made numerous such translations into Javanese, of works on fiqh, doctrine, and morality, as well as of hadith collections (the first two both translated Riyad as-salihin, the most “devotional” collection of hadith) and books of prayers and litanies. Similar works were translated into Madurese by Abdul Majid Tamim of Pamekasan.

The second category, partially overlapping with the first, consists of books with largely devotional purposes, such as texts in praise of the Prophet or the saints, litanies and prayers, and introductions to the various tariqa. These works are usually not part of the pesantren curriculum, but widely used by both santri and the general population. Many kyai wrote works of these types or translated Arabic devotional texts; among the most outstanding among them is Kyai Muslikh of Mranggen near Semarang (d. 1986), one of the great masters of the Qadiriyya wa Naqshbandiyya, known especially for his translation of Shaykh `Abd al-Qadir’s hagiog­raphy[51] and related works, and the somewhat earlier Ahmad bin Abdul Hamid of Kendal, who translated and adapted the same hagiography as well as several works on the Prophet.

The third and largest category is that of simple introductory texts for use in the pesantren or by the general public, without any scholarly pretention. Numerous `ulama, all over the Archipelago, have produced such texts. Most of these books or booklets are in the vernacular languages, except where their object is the teaching of Arabic. A distinct subgroup consists of the textbooks especially written for the (reformed) madrasah, which often deviate from the traditional way of presenting the material. Two major authors of this type of textbooks are, not accidentally, of West Sumatran origins, and wrote in Malay as well as simple Arabic: Abdul Hamid Hakim and Mahmud Yunus.[52]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

‘Abbas, K.H. Siradjuddin

1975 Ulama Syafi’i dan kitab-kitabnya dari abad ke abad. Jakarta: Pustaka Tarbiyah.

`Abd al-Jabbar, `Umar

1385/1965-6 Siyar wa tarajim ba`d `ulama’ina fi ‘l-qarn ar-rabi` `ashar li ‘l-hijra. Makka: Mu’assasa Makka li ‘t-taba`a wa ‘l-i`lam.

Abdullah, H.W. Muhd. Shaghir

1985 Perkembangan ilmu fiqih dan tokoh-tokohnya di Asia Tenggara (I). Solo: Ramadhani.

1987 Syeikh Daud bin Abdullah Al Fathani: Penulis Islam produktif Asia Tenggara. Solo: Ramadhani.

Abdurrahman, Moeslim

1981 Mengenal ciri pesantren di Jawa Timur: kearah menyusun tipologi. In Pesantren: Profil Kyai, Pesantren dan Madrasah [=Warta-PDIA no.2]. Jakarta: Badan Litbang Agama, 9-38.

Aboebakar, H.

1957 Sedjarah hidup K.H.A. Wahid Hasjim dan karangan tersiar. Djakarta: Panitya Buku Peringatan Alm. K.H.A. Wahid Hasjim.

Abu Daudi

1980 Maulana Syekh Moh. Arsyad Al Banjari (Tuan Haji Besar). Dalampagar, Martapura: Madrasah Sullamul `Ulum.

Ahmad, Mohammad Akhlaq

1985 Traditional education among Muslims: A study of some aspects in modern India. Delhi: B.R. Publish­ing Corporation.

Ahmad, Mohiuddin

1975 Saiyid Ahmad Shahid: His life and mission. Lucknow: Academy of Islamic Research and Publications.

Anon.

1888 Register betreffende de vrijstellingen welke door de bevolking der perdikan-, pakoentjen- en midjen-desa’s worden genoten, en de diensten en leveringen, waartoe zij verplicht is. Batavia: Landsdrukkerij.

Al-Attas, Syed Muhammad Naquib

1986 A commentary on the Hujjat al-siddiq of Nur al-Din al-Raniri. Kuala Lumpur: Minstry of Culture, Malaysia.

Atay, Hüseyin

1983 Osmanl?larda yüksek din e?itimi. Istanbul: Dergah yay?nlar?.

Al-Azmeh, Aziz

1986 Arabic thought and Islamic societies. London: Croom Helm.

Baltac?, Cahid

1976 XV-XVI. as?rlarda Osmanl? medreseleri: te?kilat, tarih. Istanbul.

van den Berg, L.W.C.

1886 Het Mohammedaansche godsdienstonderwijs op Java en Madoera en de daarbij gebruikte Arabische boeken. Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 31, 519-555.

Brockelmann, Carl

1937-1947 Geschichte der arabischen Literatur I-II, zweite den Supplementsbnden angepasste Auflage. Leiden: Brill, 1943-1947; Supplementsbnde I-III. Leiden: Brill, 1937-1942. (referred to as GAL and GAL S)

van Bruinessen, Martin

1989 Penggunaan kitab fiqh di pesantren Indonesia dan Malaysia. Pesantren No.1/Vol. VI, 36-51.

1990 Kitab Kuning: Books in Arabic script used in the pesantren milieu. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 146, 226-69.

Castles, Lance

1965 Notes on the Islamic school at Gontor. Indonesia no.1, 30-45.

van der Chijs, J.A.

1864 Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van het inlandsch onderwijs. Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 14, 212-323.

Dhofier, Zamakhsyari

1982 Tradisi pesantren: Studi tentang pandangan hidup kyai. Jakarta: LP3ES.

Djajadiningrat, Hoesein

1913 Critische beschouwing van de Sadjarah Banten. Haarlem: Johan Enschede en Zonen.

Dohaish, A.A. & Young, M.J.L.

1975 An unpublished educational document from the Hijaz (A.H. 1299). Annali dell’ Istituto Orientali di Napoli 35, 133-7.

Drewes, G.W.J.

1954 Een Javaanse primbon uit de zestiende eeuw. Leiden: Brill.

1955 Een 16e eeuwse vertaling van de Burda van al-Busiri (Arabisch lofdicht op Mohammad). `s Gravenhage: Nijhoff.

1969 The admonitions of Seh Bari. The Hague: Nijhoff.

1971 The study of Arabic grammar in Indonesia. Acta Orientalia Neerlandica, 61-70.

1978 An early Javanese code of Muslim ethics. The Hague: Nijhoff.

Eickelman, Dale F.

1978 The art of memory: Islamic education and its social reproducion, Comparative Studies in Society and History 20, 485-516.

Evliya Çelebi

1935 Seyahatnamesi. Vol. IX. Istanbul: Devlet Matbaas?.

Fokkens, F.

1886 Vrije desa’s op Java en Madoera. Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 31, 477-518.

Gobée, E.

1921 Indrukken over het schoolwezen in de Hidjaz. Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 60, 187-206.

de Graaf, H.J.

1958 De regering van Sultan Agung, vorst van Mataram, 1630-1645, en die van zijn voorganger, Panembahan Seda-ing-Krapyak, 1601-1613. ‘s Gravenhage: Nijhoff.

de Graaf, H.J. & Pigeaud, Th.G.Th.

1974 De eerste Moslimse vorstendommen op Java. ‘s Gravenhage: Nijhoff.

Hadidjaja, Tardjan & Kamajaya (eds)

1979 Serat Centhini (Ensiklopedi Kebudayaan Jawa) dituturkan dalam bahasa Indonesia. Jilid I-B. Yogyakarta: U.P. Indonesia.

Heer, Nicholas

1979 The precious pearl. Al-Jami’s al-Durrah al-Fakhirah. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Heyworth-Dunne, J.

1938 An introduction to the history of education in modern Egypt. London: Luzac & Co.

Jandra, Mifedwil

1985-1986 Asmarakandi (Sebuah tinjauan dari aspek tasawuf). Yogyakarta: Dep. P dan K, Proyek Penelitian dan Pangkajian Kebudayaan Nusantara (Javanologi).

Johns, A.H.

1965 The gift addressed to the spirit of the Prophet. Canberra: ANU.

1978 Friends in grace. Ibrahim al-Kurani and `Abd ar-Ra’uf al-Singkeli. In Spectrum. Essays presented to Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana (ed.) S. Udin. Jakarta: Dian Rakyat, 469-85.

1984 Islam in the Malay world. An explanatory survey with some reference to Quranic exegesis. In Islam in Asia, vol.II: Southeast and East Asia (eds.) Raphael Israeli and Anthony H. Johns. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 115-161.

1988 Quranic exegesis in the Malay world: In search of a profile. In: Approaches to the history of the Qur’an (ed.) Andrew Rippin. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 257-287.

Jones, Sidney

1981 Arabic instruction and literacy in Javanese Muslim schools. Prisma, The Indonesian Indicator no. 21, 70-81.

Kraemer, H.

1921 Een Javaansche primbon uit de zestiende eeuw. Dissertation, Leiden.

Madjid, Nurcholish (ed.)

1984 Khazanah intelektual Islam. Jakarta: Bulan Bintang.

Makdisi, George

1981 The rise of colleges: Institutions of learning in Islam and the West. Edinburgh: University Press.

Matheson, Virginia & Hooker, H.B.

1988 Jawi literature in Patani: The maintenance of an Islamic tradition, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 61 pt.1, 1-86.

Metcalf, Barbara Daly

1982 Islamic revival in British India: Deoband, 1860-1900. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Mottahedeh, Roy

1985 The mantle of the Prophet. Religion and politics in Iran. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Mujeeb, M.

1967 The Indian Muslims. London: Allen & Unwin.

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein

1987 The traditional texts used in the Persian madrasahs. In Traditional Islam in the modern world (by) S.H. Nasr. London: KPI, 165-182.

Nor bin Ngah, Mohd.

1983 Kitab Jawi: Islamic thought of the Malay Muslim scholars. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

al-Padani, M. Yasin bin M. `Isa

1402/1982 Ittihaf al-mustafid bi-ghurar al-asanid. 3rd printing. Jakarta: At­tahiriyah. [first edition: 1370/1951].

Pigeaud, Th.G.Th.

1967 Literature of Java. Vol. I. Synopsis of Javanese literature 900-1900 A.D.. The Hague: Nijhoff.

Powell, A.A.

1976 Maulana Rahmat Allah Kairanawi and Muslim-Christian controversy in India in the mid-19th century. J. Roy. Asiatic Soc., 42-63.

Pusat Penelitian dan Pengembangan Lektur Agama

1978/1979 Laporan penulisan biografi tokoh Islam di Indonesia. Jakarta: Departemen Agama R.I.

Quzwain, M. Chatib

1985 Mengenal Allah. Suatu studi mengenai ajaran tasawwuf Syaikh ‘Abdus-Samad al-Palimbani. Jakarta: Bulan Bintang.

Repp, Richard

1972 Some observations on the development of the Ottoman learned hierarchy. In Scholars, saints, and sufis: Muslim religious institutions since 1500 (ed. by) Nikki R. Keddie. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 17-32.

Ricklefs, M.C.

1974 Jogjakarta under Sultan Mangkubumi, 1749-1792. A history of the division of Java. London: Oxford U.P.

Rizvi, S.A.A.

1978-83 A history of sufism in India. 2 vols. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal.

Roff, William R.

1970 Indonesian and Malay students in Cairo in the 1920′s. Indonesia no. 9, 73-88.

van Ronkel, Ph.S.

1896 Account of six Malay manuscripts of the Cambridge University Library. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 6e volgreeks, 2, 1-53.

Schrieke, B.J.O.

1919 Iets over het perdikan-instituut. Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 58, 391-423.

Simuh

1982 Mistik Islam Kejawen Raden Ngabehi Ranggawarsita (Suatu studi terhadap Serat Wirid Hidayat Jati). Jakarta: Penerbit Universitas Indonesia.

Sivan, Emmanuel

1985 Radical islam. Medieval theology and modern politics. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Snouck Hurgronje, C.

1887a Een rector der Mekkaansche universiteit. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 36, 344-395.

1887b Een Arabische bondgenoot der Neder­landsch-Indische regeering. Mededeelingen vanwege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap 31, 41-63 [repr. in Verspreide Geschriften 4/1, 69-85].

1889 Mekka, Bd.II: Aus dem heutigen Leben. Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

1893-4 De Atjehers. 2 vols. Batavia: Landsdrukkerij/ Leiden: Brill.

1894 Sajjid Oethman’s gids voor de priesterraden. Indisch Tijdschrift van het Recht 63, 722-744 [repr. in Verspreide Geschriften 4/1, 283-303].

1957-1965 Ambtelijke adviezen (ed. by) E. Gobée and C. Adriaanse. 3 vols. ‘s Gravenhage: Nijhoff.

Soebardi

1971 Santri-religious elements as reflected in the book of Tjentini. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 127, 331-349.

Steenbrink, K.A.

1974 Pesantren, madrasah, sekolah: recente ontwikkelingen in Indonesisch Islamonderricht. Diss. Nijmegen.

1984 Beberapa aspek tentang Islam di Indonesia abad ke-19. Jakarta: Bulan Bintang.

Uzunçar??l?, ?.H.

1965 Osmanl? devletinin ilmiye te?kilat?. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu.

Vajda, Georges

1983 La transmission du savoir en Islam (VIIe-XVIIIe siècles). London: Variorum Reprints.

Vollers, K.

1913 Azhar. Enzyklopädie des Islam, I, 553-61.

Yunus, H. Mahmud

1979 Sejarah pendidikan Islam di Indonesia. Cetakan ke-2. Jakarta: Mutiara.

Zamzam, Zafry

1979 Syekh Muhammad Arsyad al-Banjary: ulama besar juru dakwah. Banjarmasin: Penerbit Karya.

[1] Before Muhammadiyah’s own pesantren, there were already several others with a definitely reformist orientation. The best known, but not the only one, is that of Gontor (Castles 1965). A summary survey of types of pesantren in East Java in the 1970′s is given by Abdurrahman 1981.

[2] Notably those of Bukhari and Muslim; the other four collections of “authentic” (sahih) hadith are much less used. Non-canonical collections such as the Riyad as-salihin and the Bulugh al-maram, with their much heavier emphasis on devotional than on legalistic matters, are still more popular in the traditional milieu, but these too were hardly studied a century ago.

[3] A detailed survey of these works is given in van Bruinessen 1990.

[4] On Ibn Taymiyya’s place in the late medieval tradition and his engagement with Ash`arism, philosophy, mysticism and political theory, see Al-Azmeh 1986, passim; Hourani 1962:18-22; on his impact on later fundamentalism Sivan 1985. A generation ago, the NU still had a body of censors; they placed Ibn Taymiyya’s works high on the index. Many kyai, in fact, own copies of some of his works, notably his Fatawa, but keep them locked away to protect their pupils from their influence. Like elsewhere, such a ban only acts as an invitation to the more intelligent santri to read these works in secret.

[5] Out of the 500-odd kitab by Indonesian (and Malay) `ulama presently in print, almost 100 are in Arabic. Over 200 are in Malay and 150 in Javanese; the remainder are in Sundanese, Madurese and Acehnese.

[6] Abdurrahman Wahid, personal communication.

[7] In this case, there may be shortcuts in the chain. Numerous mystics have claimed spiritual initiation, in a dream or vision, by a predecessor long dead or even by the Prophet himself. The latter was the claim, for instance, of Ahmad Tijani, the North African founder of the tariqa Tijaniyya; it is a highly con­troversial claim, and is rejected by many traditionalists. The former claim is more common (also among contemporary Javanese kyai); even the silsila of the quite orthodox Naqshbandiyya contains several “jumps” across the generations due to such ruhani initiations.

[8] Indicative of the importance attached to isnad is a book by the leading Indonesian ulama in Mecca, Shaykh Yasin of Padang (the director of the traditionalist school Dar al-`Ulum there), which lists nothing but the classical kitab he is allowed to teach, with for each the name of the master under which he studied it and the entire preceding isnad up to the author (al-Padani 1402). For earlier examples of this sort of work see Vajda 1983.

[9] The well-known Madurese Kyai As’ad Syamsul Arifin of Situbondo (East Java), NU’s minence grise, has recently constructed an intricate family tree showing most Madurese kyai to be descen­dants of the wali Sunan Giri. Hasyim Asy’ari and Wahab Hasbullah, two of the founders of NU, traced their pedigree to Jaka Tingkir, who according to tradition was a son of Brawijaya VI and became the first Muslim ruler of Pajang (Aboebakar 1957:41-2).

[10] Important decisions by the Majlis Syuriah are laid down in a series of volumes titled Ahkam al-fuqaha (“Rulings of the legal experts”), usually with the relevant references to authoritative fiqh works.

[11] With the partial exception of sections of the Chinese com­munities and Bali’s Hindu reformists, but even here contacts with the foreign source are quite ephemeral.

[12] This mission is mentioned in the Sajarah Banten (Djajadiningr­at 1913:49-52, 174-8). The titles of the kitab that the ruler wished to have explained are given as Marqum, Muntahi and Wujudi­yah, by which no specific work can be identified. Djajadiningrat believes these titles to be pure phantasy, but we may, for instance, read the last as kitab wujudiyah, i.e. book[s] on [the metaphysical doctrine of] wahdat al-wujud, which would make perfect sense in this context. In some cases, after all, this doctrine proved extremely useful for the legitimation of the ruler as insan kamil, perfect man.

[13] The Shattariyya, which was first introduced into Indonesia in the mid-17th century, is a tariqa of Indian origins, that never gained much of a following in the Middle East. See Rizvi 1983 and T. Yazici, attariye, Islam Ansiklopedisi 11, 355-6. The ear­liest Indonesian branches of the Qadiriyya and the Naqshbandiyya, too, were of Indian rather than Middle Eastern affiliation.

[14] The concept of emanation in seven stages (martabat tujuh), instead of Ibn `Arabi’s five, is to my knowledge only encountered in Indian and Indonesian mystical-metaphysical treatises.

[15] A rare exception is Roff’s study of Indonesian students in Egypt (1970), but this is only marginally relevant to the pesan­tren tradition since most of these students belonged to other social and cultural environments.

[16] According to the Sejarah Banten, Maulana Hasanuddin, Banten’s first Muslim ruler, founded a new petapan on the moun­tain Pinang at the instigation of his “father”, the saint Sunan Gunung Jati (Djajadiningrat 1913:34).

[17] Popular tradition in Cirebon still holds that the saint himself came to Java and took part in its islamisation; his grave is even shown on Gunung Jati. Shaykh `Abd al-Qadir is, not only in Indonesia, believed to have taught his disciples invulnerability, an ilmu highly desirable to many Indonesians. The Bantenese invulnerability cult of debus is strongly associated with `Abd al-Qadir.

[18] Soebardi 1971. See Hadidjaja & Kamajaya 1979, 11 and 49-53.

[19] The Karang is mentioned as one of three mountains on which Maulana Hasanuddin, the first ruler of Banten and the bringer of Islam, practised tapa (Djajadiningrat 1913:38).

[20] Apart from Maulana Hasanuddin’s initiation in ilmu Islam by two jinn at a deserted petapan (ibid.:32).

[21] As-Salimi lived in the first half of the 5th/11th century. His Tamhid surveys doctrine, paying especial attention to the views of the Mu`tazila and the philosophers. It is known to have been widely used in religious education in India during the 13th through 16th centuries (Mujeeb 1967:406), and seems to have been less popular elsewhere, since most of the mss. mentioned by Brockelmann are in Indian collections (GAL I:419; S I:744).

[22] This work is now quite popular throughout the Archipelago, the Arabic original as well as Malay, Javanese, Sundanese and Madu­rese translations being printed locally. Raniri refers several times to another(?), so far unidentified, work with a similar title, Daqa’iq al-haqa’iq.

[23] The great Madinan teacher, Ibrahim al-Kurani, wrote a commen­tary on this work especially for his Indonesian students, ap­parently to correct the heterodox interpretations to which it gave rise. As Simuh has shown (1982:295-6), Ronggowarsito’s Wirid Hidayat Jati shows a clear influence of this work, with which he may have become acquainted in the pesantren of Tegalsari, where he studied.

[24] I.e., a work on usul ad-din (doctrine), consisting of six chapters (each beginning with the opening “bismillah”).

[25] In the 19th century, this was usually the first text on doc­trine studied (van den Berg 1886:537). Javanese translations (of indeterminate date) are extant in manuscript, and one was recent­ly edited in Latin transcription (Jandra 1985-1986). This Javan­ese Asmarakandi also contains a section on elementary Shafi`i fiqh added by the anonymous translator (Abu’l-Layth himself was a Hanafi). The text is presently best known through a commentary written by Nawawi Banten, Qatr al-ghayth, and a Javanese transla­tion by Ahmad Subki of Pekalongan entitled Fath al-mughith, both of which are widely used.

[26] The other four being the prestigious standard works of Shafi`i fiqh, Rafi`i’s al-Muharrar and Ibn Hajar Haytami’s Tuhfat al-muhtaj (that were more often respectfully mentioned than actually used), the introductory Sittin by Abu’l-`Abbas Ahmad Misri (now little used but still available) and a work not satisfactorily identifiable (Soebardi 1971:335-6).

[27] The third tasawwuf text is Zayn ad-Din Malibari’s Hidayat al-adhkiya’, a simple work that is still widely used, together with various commentaries and translations. See for more detailed comments on these and other works also: van Bruinessen 1990.

[28] These two subjects, however, have since the 17th century virtually disappeared from Islamic education throughout the Sunni world. Only in Iran, and to some extent in India, have they remained an important part of the intellectual tradition (see Nasr 1987).

[29] He quotes, for instance, numerous sufi anecdotes, some of which are attributed to Jami’s Nafahat al-uns, while others must be culled from unmentioned other works or heard from a range of teachers. There are also quotations from Ibn `Arabi, Muhammad Fadlillah Burhanpuri and other wahdat al-wujud sufis, that seem based on actual reading of their works, etc. Two copies that he made of Jami’s ad-Durrat al-fakhira, which he apparently studied under supervision of Ibrahim al-Kurani in Madina, are still preserved (Heer 1979:13, 15; this reference was kindly brought to my attention by Professor Anthony Johns)

[30] Albert Hourani’s excellent work on modern Arabic thought (1962) shows how even the thought of those who consciously departed from the tradition was still influenced by it. It pays, however, no attention to the thinkers who remained within the tradition and were not interested in a dialogue with western thought.

[31] Brought out beautifully in Al-Azmeh’s important work (1986).

[32] This populist strain runs through Islamic history, from Ahmad ibn Hanbal, through Ibn Taymiyya and Muhammad bin `Abd al-Wahhab to the neo-fundamentalists. In Indonesia, the modernist attack against traditional `ulama, with the call for reopening the gate of ijtihad, had a great impact in the first half of this century. In 18th-century Iran it took the form of a struggle between pro- and anti-`ulama currents, known as usuli and akhbari (after the intellectual discipline of usul al-fiqh and akhbar, a term almost synonymous with hadith). Perceptive observations on this conflict (which ended in a victory of the usuli) in Mottahedeh 1985.

[33] Some dimensions of the classical tradition, Mu`tazili ration­alism and philosophy, became only known in Indonesia (apart from the summary presentation in the Tamhid, see note 21) in the past two decades, through modernist Muslims who studied in North America, notably Harun Nasution and Nurcholish Madjid. The latter published an important collection of classical philosophical and theological texts in translation (1984); significantly, he is much closer to the pesantren world than earlier generations of modernists. There are now students of pesantren backgrounds working on theses on previously neglected Islamic intellectual currents.

[34] On the Ottoman madrasa and their curricula: Uzunçar??l? 1965; Baltac? 1976; Atay 1983. These works are rich mines of source materials but somewhat ahistorical in their approach; Repp 1972 gives a more systematic treatment of the development of the hierarchy of the madrasa and the scholarly careers of Ottoman `ulama. On the Mughal madrasa (whose curriculum still continued to expand and reached its most comprehensive form, the Dars-i Nizami, only in the early 18th century): Mujeeb 1967:389-414; Ahmad 1985; Metcalf 1982:16-45.

[35] The Hanafi madhhab was the official one in both empires, and official sources mention only works on Hanafi fiqh. Shafi`i fiqh was presumably studied mostly in mosques, in the districts with a Shafi`i population such as Kurdistan and parts of Egypt. The relatively independent Azhar mosque and university was perhaps the major centre of Shafi`i learning.

[36] In Mughal India, philosophy and metaphysics, and the rational sciences in general, were more prominent parts of the learned tradition than in the Ottoman Empire. The Dars-i Nizami even included a work by Mulla Sadra Shirazi, who seems not to have been known elsewhere outside Iran (Mujeeb 1967:407).

[37] On Ibrahim, see Johns 1978 and the same author’s article “al-Kurani” in the Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.); also Rizvi 1983, passim. Of great interest is his intel­lectual autobiography, al-Amam li-iqaz al-himam, which was, significantly, printed in India (Haidarabad in the Deccan) in the beginning of this century (1328/1910).

[38] The most complete list of teachers in Abdullah 1987 (on Da’ud, who was the most wide-ranging scholar of the three). On the others, see Abu Daudi 1980, Zamzam 1979 and Quzwain 1985. Arshad studied especially fiqh, and his own work Sabil al-muhtadin is primarily based on two great classics, Malibari’s Fath al-mu`in and Ansari’s Manhaj at-tullab; `Abd as-Samad’s chief topic was sufism, and his major works are adaptations of Gha­zali’s Ihya `ulum ad-din and Bidayat al-hidaya.

[39] See Powell 1976. Rahmat Allah’s refutation of Christianity was based on a deeper understanding than that of most other polemi­cists, and on an acquaintance with recent Biblical criticism. His arguments were set out in several books, and he con­vincingly defeated Pfander in a public debate. He was one of the signat­ories of the fatwa calling for jihad against the British in 1857 (ibid.:59-60), and led the movement in Muzaffarpur in Bihar (Ahmad 1975:328).

[40] “The [Deoband] school taught basically the dars-i nizami (…) The Deobandis, however, reversed the emphasis on “rational” studies in favor of an emphasis on hadis, which was to be the basis of their popular teaching (…) The most influential teacher at the school was the shaikhu’l-hadis; and only good students were encouraged to study the subject.” (Metcalf 1982:100-1).

[41] This is evident from the biographies of these `ulama in `Abd al-Jabbar 1385.

[42] The school occurs in the biographies of `ulama studying in Mecca in the 1920′s and 1930′s; there are insufficient detailed biographies of earlier students to determine since when there were Indonesians at the Sawlatiyya.

[43] One account of the conflict (Aboebakar 1957:88-90) has it begin because one of the teachers tore up an Indonesian newspaper that a few students were reading; other reading than the Arabic textbooks was forbidden in the school. One participant (Shaykh Yasin al-Padani, presently rector of Dar al-`Ulum, interviewed 6-3-1988) adds that the teacher mocked Indonesian nationalist aspirations, saying that such a stupid people would never attain independence. (Given the radical attitudes of its founder, the teachers at the Sawlatiyya may well have mocked the Indonesians for their lack of firmness vis a` vis their Dutch colonisers). Others have suggested that the Indonesians’ wish to be able to speak to their teachers in Indonesian rather than Arabic lay at the roots of the conflict.

[44] The Dar al-`ulum in Cairo was established in 1872 as a teacher training college, whose students were recruited from al-Azhar; the curriculum included the Islamic as well as modern “western” sciences. One of the teachers was Muhammad `Abduh (Heyworth-Dunne 1938:377-9).

[45] Snouck Hurgronje, who strongly disliked Ahmad Khatib, claims that he owed these positions not to his learning but to the fact that his father-in-law, the bookseller and “usurer” Salih al-Kurdi, intervened for his son-in-law with the Sharif `Awn, who owed him a favour (Adviezen III, 1846, 1853, 1914, 1928). Even Snouck, however, had to admit that Ahmad Khatib was “highly learned by Malay standards” (ibid., 1846).

[46] These are the said usul al-fiqh work, an-Nafahat `ala sharh al-waraqat, and a short Malay work on doctrine, Fath al-mubin. He wrote much more (`Abd al-Jabbar 1385:37-44 lists no fewer than 46 works), but only these two are still in print in Indonesia.

[47] His Mawhaba dhawi ‘l-fadl is a sharh on `Abdallah Ba-Fadl’s al-Muqaddimat al hadramiyya, known as “Bapadal” in the pesantren. It was printed in Egypt in 1315/1897-8 but is no longer avail­able. His only work currently in print is a difficult text on Arabic grammar, Minhaj dhawi ‘n-nazar (a commentary on Ibn Malik’s Alfiyya). `Abd al-Jabbar lists 12 other works (1385:323-4).

[48] Shaykh Yasin studied in his youth at the Sawlatiyya, which he left, with the other Indonesians, for the Dar al-`ulum, of which he finally became the most prominent teacher. In his intellectual autobiography (al-Padani 1402), he lists his teach­ers and the books that he is himself authorised to teach. On Sayyid Muhammad bin `Alwi see Tempo 2-1-1988, on his grandfather `Abbas al-Maliki, `Abd al-Jabbar 1385:163-5. I heard that Muhammad bin `Alwi is no longer allowed to teach in the Masjid al-Haram because of his open support of, and instruction in, various sufi orders, including the Tijaniyya and the Naqshbandiyya.

[49] Al-Azhar is often, incorrectly, considered as a haven of Islamic modernism (mainly because `Abduh was once associated with it). The Indonesians studying there now are almost invariably of “traditional” backgrounds, and even among these I have heard complaints of its “old-fashioned” methods of education.

[50] Another short text, al-Fawa’id al-bahiyya, has similarly survived in the margin of Da’ud al-Patani’s Jam` al-fawa’id. This work, however, is only very rarely used.

[51] an-Nur al-burhani, after Ja`far Barzinji’s al-Lujayn ad-dani.

[52] Abdul Hamid Hakim wrote textbooks on fiqh (al-Mu`in al-mubin) and usul al-fiqh (as-Sullam, al-Bayan); Mahmud Yunus also on fiqh (the widely used al-Fiqh al-wadih), on the science of hadith and on comparative religion.

*) “Pesantren and kitab kuning: maintenance and continuation of a tradition of religious learning”, in: Wolfgang Marschall (ed.), Texts from the islands. Oral and written traditions of Indonesia and the Malay world [Ethnologica Bernica, 4]. Berne: University of Berne, 1994, pp. 121-145.

Adopted from: http://www.let.uu.nl/~Martin.vanBruinessen/personal/publications/pesantren_and_kitab_kuning.htm

Written by Nurel Javissyarqi *
Translated by Agus B. Harianto

Despite as Indonesian Presiden Penyair, Sutardji Calzoum Bachri once said; “a great poem had ever been created in the history of this nation.” It is the text of Sumpah Pemuda, which had announced on October 28, 1928. And before the term of swearing, sumpah pocong, etc. It had resonated sturdy grandeur of Palapa Oath, which had echoed by Patih Gajah Mada, from the empire of Majapahit in the land of Dwipa, which indelible in the world of Nusantara.

To declare that Bung Tomo is the Hero of Indonesian Poet, or even Indonesian Literary Hero, here I performed the text of his speech, when he was flaring up the spirit of the struggle of the people in Surabaya. Which is not less qualified than other great poems.

Then all doors could be opened, all ears should listen, no term that can be allotted only a poet, everyone could be the same. Except, for the loser who made off with state property, for the corruptors that are no deterrent to treasure up the fire of hell.

At that time, to welcome the Ultimatum of General Mansergh on November 10, 1945, Bung Tomo read the text of his speech with a blazing soul, in front of radio of Pemberontak, with a loud and echoed voice, shrieking the sky, lighted on the state and nation independence of Indonesia:

Bismillahirrohmaanirrohim **
Freedom!
Brothers commoners all over Indoneisa
especially the brethren resident of Surabaya.

We all know, that today
British soldiers are spreading pamphlets
which gave us all a threat.

We are obliged in the time they specified,
to submit all weapons we had taken
from the hands of Japanese soldiers.

They have asked that we come to them
with the over the head.

They have asked that we all come to them
by carrying a white flag
sign that we gave up on them.

Brothers and Sisters
in the past battle,
we all have shown already
that the people of Indonesia in Surabaya:

young men who came from Sulawesi,
young men who came from Bali,
young men who came from Borneo
young men who came from Sumatra,
youth of Aceh, youth of Tapanuli
and the entire Indonesian youth
which is in Surabaya.

In their own armies
with the civilian troops,
established in kampongs
has shown a defense
that can not be uprooted,
had shown a strength
until they were stuck everywhere.

Just because the cunning tactics of theirs brethren,
by brought the president
and other leaders to Surabaya,
then we are subject to and lay off the battle.

But in those days, they have strengthened themselves,
and after they were strong, now here’s the situation.

Brothers and sisters,
all of us – we are Indonesian nation
that is in Surabaya
will accept the challenge of British soldiers,
and if the leader of British troops in Surabaya
want to listen the answers of all youth of Indonesia
which is in Surabaya, hear these British soldiers!

This is our answer!
This is the answers the people of Surabaya!
This is the answers of the youth of Indonesia!

To you all the British soldiers!
You want that we
will take the white flag
to surrender to you!

You told us to bring the weapons
that we have taken from the Japanese soldiers
to be submitted to you.

That demands, though we know
that you’re once again going to threaten us
to demolish us
with existing strengths you have!

But this is our answer:
“As long as Indonesian ox
still have the red blood
which can make a piece of white cloth,
into red and white,
as long as we have it,
we will never surrender
even to anyone ”

Get ready fellows brother of Surabaya people.
Precarious state.
But I warn you once again
do not start shooting,
just when we were shot,
then we’ll strike back to them!

We show that we are
actually the people who want to be free!

And to us brothers,
we better destroyed than no freedom!

Our motto remains!
FREEDOM OR DIE!

And we believe brothers,
in the end it must be
victory will fall into our hands.
Because Allah is always on the right side.

Believe it brothers,
The God will protect us all.

Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar!
FREEDOM!

The speech text is not just a sense of poetry; it was also not only relying on the sounds of literary, but it has exceeded poetical events. What I meant with the text has sense of poetry; it’s easily understandable without breaking a sweat of brain and squeezing the heart. And I think if merely the sounds, that was just writing the lyrics of poetic, and yet at the level of the essence of poetry, moreover to be called as events of the meaning of poetical.

I believe, the poem above has the power of usefulness that is not less heroic than the text of Hikayat Perang Sabil that took long time to get in peace, *** in flaring up the spirit of jihad to the enemy in battle. This is where the lies, the true function of literature, not just game of words after enjoying time, but the legs of the reality of the struggle was the one who gave it birth.

The artwork is not the kind of technology assembly that facilitates the people in life, if once considers that the words is not just plumbing. The words come from the awareness, trust, confidence that puts the way on the first place. Then forms of fad, shivering in the far corners, thrown away from the surface of the light, if not realize the foolishness at the first step.

What would they get from taking journey till the furthest besides just pleasure? Read the books for example. Behold many memories and find quintessence of science. Some people think that writing poetry is easy, some others not; it’s more difficult than creating a book with similar ideas. Many poems reader have problems to find an equivalent meaning. The others fell silent, as they felt the inner struggle of awareness of the words, along with the times breathe it.

An apple is an apple, instead of papaya. Adam was given the consciousness of words by the god, along with the objects He mentioned. So, essentially, there is no freedom of the meanings of words, when realized that every word has meaning. It’s paradoxical, if he believes that every word carry the meaning, but then released it.

In every brain has different event to be saved. Even if a similar reading, it is not automatically to be one color, that’s the freedom of interpretation. The man could be reckless to interpret, but one thing we should remember, the ink of Divinity has been brazing; “in any overlooking, the face of the truth remains the same”.

No judge to decide, as the words penetrated into the heart. Only the belief defined it, which had been planted awareness of the words with its forms. The whole reading, experiences educated the life, reflected each other to interpret the words. This is the seriousness of interpretation; open all the organs of the self in embracing and understanding the poetry, or the self that had interpreted by the poems of life.
___________________________
*) 4 Nov 2008, the wanderer from Kendal-Kemlagi village, Karanggeneng, Lamongan, JaTim.
**) Surabaya at the end of 1945, written by; Mohammad Moestadji, BA. Published by Bina Pustaka Tama Surabaya, first printing 1994.
***) Sastra Perang, A discussion about Hikayat Perang Sabil, written by Prof Ibrahim Alfian, published by Balai Pustaka, 1992.
http://sastra-indonesia.com/2009/01/bung-tomo-pahlawan-penyair-indonesia/

By: Suryanto Sastroatmodjo
To my darling: Angela Wardhani Dewayani
(copyright PUstaka puJAngga)

VOLUMES
1. Sign by Signs
2. Approviating Adult
3. Intimity
4. Road to Exile
5. Lalanatursita (Courtbohemian-sight)
6. The Ruins to be an Ancient City
7. Conversation
8. A Long Distance From Home
9. A Notable Copy of Heritage
10. Covering Ideas
11. Death
12. Case of a Sinner
13. A Time of Change
14. The Quiet Answer
15. Over the Stagnant
16. Telling Intermedias
17. Where the Sun Desires
18. Morning to Twilight
19. Resort of Rest
20. Kissing Peace

SIGN BY SIGNS

the grand theme
the circumstances that will lead up
it’s development of the wonderful prophecies
revelation sees that as the grand outcome all things

whose shall reign forever and ever?
whose name appear other people
can be found in several ancestors
are assembled together
sometimes upon external findings
leaves in lotus family
chacravati varasdaya
being established on the earth
scripture echo this truth
hallelujah beyond warasdaya
they will be futile too.

a bigger barn of wood
every faithful longing heart
sign and symbol
by these evil influences
will eventually only be put right
Atman and Brahman’s kingdom created
signified it by his angels
around the valleys, around the caves

APPROVIATING ADULT

powerful rules of conformity
large eyes are another notable element
showing us victimization
and revenge drama into life
scenes ballot against prejudice burning
twisted minds of villagers
bullying by classmates
upon systematic failure of tendency

- among the punishment
and un-confession obtained trough torture

something terrible will happened
our family in empty living school
strong pressure from sawoes and mangoes
and cherry-trees near river
I’m worried about absent less urgent
that reminds of audience
suicide pact
to bury the nameless bodies in forest
opposite of fine episode

- in our age of forty
including embroil then in choice
and dilemma remembering in youthful

being forced to use increasingly parents
one day in still a living media
with symbol of hungry and fever in summer

INTIMITY

a tolerably easy rise along the back of forest
rescued from slavery there
determined into fertile plains
attarvabadra : the song of duty
built through the orchids : gleaming
this land that flowing milk and honey
sancarawiddy : oh what’s care in it
far away for generation to day
determined to send out spies

to have gained the highest ridge
I should have endeavoured
how far a passage over these lofty range
finding my initial in my diary
my tents for a couple of days
sandragopta : since it appeared
runts south to north along almost dividing range
spoilt spilt valleys of white
and chocolate rivers surrounding Amrta-waters

between highways and up way grazing stones
found a passage where the road be constructed
our man confined to their tents for a couple
a mountain gain, remembering prajapiluta site
to day is known as caraka
after a single man enduring grace-groce

ROAD TO EXILE

this is not the first time
that Diva has appear in prophecy

200 years of dispersion
was indicative of divine, o my dear

use our best endeavours
to facilitate the achievement of objects

Krishna is sometimes referred to as a miracle
a marvellous event attributed to a supernatural cause
the word of century

has come down to us through the ages
and is entirely truth worthy

one which was to be ratified
by the privy council and King Krishna himself

knowledge of what the Holy Vedha
taught fostered growth
of the Kaindran movement

this appeared in genesis, known as Lelana Adiwedya
all clergy were ordered in advance
to place it conveniently within temple
accessible to all for reading Ahimsa
or made unreadable, to eliminate
old century’s influence

LALANATURSITA (Courtbohemian-sight)

when you became queen and all things were abolished
to common language without Deva approval
the renaissance advanced learning
purwasaksinaprana! scholars awake quite!
ecclesiastical and civil authorities
have sought to destroy Vedha and those
who identified with common in any way

a marvellous event attributed
to a supernatural

cause the past is true
left its imprint upon the earth
fallen inscriptions and abandoned burial grounds
could possibly have been written by him
but date from many hundreds of years later
yet many simplifying character
mentioned in them have been confirmed
by someone writing centuries after
Lalanatursita : a form of writing meant wedge-shaped
covered with thousands of tiny-arrows heads
but much of its ancient history
and culture remained a mystery
as well as shedding light on the great empires
a key role in facade conflicts statement
burning awakens during my glory :
eureka ! Shanty, Shanty, understanding obtained.

THE RUINS TO BE AN ANCIENT CITY

the ruins to be an ancient city
until the decipherment of its language
critical scholars doubted such a people
ever existed, until in an ancient couples
it is inscribed in three parallel scripts :
maha, cakra, advaita : had been significant changes
more recently, two silver amulet

small pieces of jewellery
the monk, patriarch Sarvaneth exactly
even more exciting have been

the recent publication of seals
in private collections
belonging to two of masters :
Adibava, Ragava, Anangyana
offering tribute to his overlord
once upon a times, providing ample testimony
fit into a dependable picture
of the historical period of Jataka.

for this is the whole duty of man
how we compare with yourself and colour of happy
the degree of blessedness of happiness
how we beseech you therefore
living sacrifice, brethren, by the mercies of God
for out the abundance of heart of his mouth speaks
it is a harmony to be realized & experienced within
our passions do not have to be annihilated
and useful direction
A Ritual Benefits and Sword Mans change into a ploughshare

CONVERSATION

this is where the substitutionary comes
to suffer and die instead of
or in the rest of humanity should bear
agree they believe it sincerely
and put their faith in it as understanding
of how Radysattvika, saviour of the World.
this is whenever his laws must always obeyed

Lord of Nature : Dayapunika, when there is
a breach of Divine law

and Man has to inflict the penalty
that he had ordained

if the result of empowering faithful
is the substitute, yet we do elsewhere strong
Lord of Nature : development of Amrtapura
save Puntadeva, Bima, Arjuna, Nakula, Sadeva
all kings in silhouette symbol in Ordeals
surely it ought to be the same on the substitutionary victim.

this is whenever he looked carefully
created inflicted death
substitution stamps and steps in health
the full and better significance
to conclude that an idea not only untrue
hungry problems that impugn and righteousness
from within Sunan Kalijaga as helper beggar kings
from inferno, from the lying bodies, indeed
be willing to inflict the punishment in pure history
unless death becoming thaksful generation

A LONG DISTANCE FROM HOME

A Long Distance from Home
but to learn to live by faith
which is still apposite for all
who feel burdened and oppressed
Sarvadayinta, humble yourself under

the mighty hand of God
nowadays grown-ups call that skill tasking
having the ability to do things at once

A long, long distances from Home
our life should be equally joyful and reward
but it takes time to assimilate Nature’ message
unless displaced by another doll and toy.

A long, long distances from Home
tomorrow morning gave things another sorrow
the banana-trees, apple-leaves and papaya-fruits
usually that have proved unstable.

A long, long distances from Home
here a Dayagupita, prevent others from gaining
was there ever a better justification

for the suicide, murder
or dislike intense scrutiny?

A long, long distance from Home
for think tank read stink-tank
with a range of ideas almost congratulate passages
when his origin by a fellow members
When the ancestors striking uncertain place
like first such great even was a picture of my destiny.

A NOTABLE COPY OF HERITAGE

our Heritage like a dream beyond trial & error
our heritage stook trouble and fortune
there is no soundness in our flesh
my wounds are foul and festering
I’m troubled, I’m bowed down greatly
I go mourning all day long.

My folktales and legends hoped true
please, my son, write those words
and felt the consequences
of misbehaviour weighing him down.

My Lord’s presumption was that
we are all burdened by circumstances of life
My son, that’s believer contact gentle
to his would-be-followers in demands
anxiety can easily creep in to blight

a situation added
thought we have burden of sin we felt
and we perceive to carry.

For my iniquities have gone over my head
that happy state of affairs may not last
festering because of my foolishness
self-sacrifice only really qualifies
as such if it hurts.

Besides that, dearest, declare my iniquity
I will be in anguist over my sin
sufficient for the day is its own trouble
what to wear for any occasion
in the things that matter eternally!

COVERING IDEAS

as an alternative translation renders it
blessing and choicest
blessing of enjoyments
declare a life of sorrow
shall build houses and inhabit them
hundreds instead of tens of years

their savage nature is to be tamed
flourish for centuries
for as the days of a tree
days of roses and white lotus
”waladipa taratulavidhi”
men will be removed
long life with our freedom
from disease and suffering
but the sinner again and again
hundred years of course
plant vineyards of eat their fruit
my elect shall long enjoy
their works of their hands

covering ideas of hundred-thousand ages
flourish for centuries
all mankind will rejoice
in the deliverance effected by Atman
present short tenue of life
has not always been the lot of man.

by reason of his longevity
be able to occupy the houses they build
”sandratanaya avinaya gatra”
world men reckoned their lives
under its many burdens.

DEATH

including death will finally be no more
it is evident that he
who put all things under him is excepted
all the wished are ultimately is to be destroyed
with all its horrible effects
shall be filled
and of the privileged subjects of his rule

they shall not hurt nor destroy
in all the mountain
as the waters cover the sea
when the last enemies
put and ending all authority and power
may be manifested
lord of glory reigns supreme
bliss on earth

his gracious rule
is summed up in the promise
”deva, deva, vajirapadmana”
god and goodness
the cows and deer will graze
god’s heart and desire
come to its gracious close
god’s appointed King’s

is to rule in the midst of enemies
they will be songs instead of sighing

the garment of praise, darling
”tattadeva sastrawardhani”
replace the spirit of heaviness
another blessing of Millenium.

CASE OF A SINNER

in the case of a sinner
who shall die one hundreds years old
as in ancient days
glorious period their days
infirmities of age
their savage nature
truly this will life
”sampagiata naraswari”
all creation is brought into state
of peace and friendship
in former years death

not now hear of people
who are infested with a tape form
cold storage
in conditions that prevailed
in the wilderness

various lists of animals
they must circumcise
these speedy healing of the wound
it was that far ahead of its time
birds of love : “taravanaya viveka nala”
happy and eternally healthy life
were excellent instructions
after its first appearance.

The people clamour vociferously
out of rock a murmur of abundant waters
”caraca cakradewanata”
plunge into sin against Mahadeva.

A TIME OF CHANGE

priest and scholars
were forced to find refuges

over the rainbow
of typical romantic comedy

this formula somewhat
by handing a jigsaw puzzle to viewers

how to realize suffering
from partical amnesia

a monumental sugar rush
of cinematic enjoyment

cryptically telling the son, loyal wife
telling them that he has no need anymore, friend
this copy is perfectly faced
and to be discovered by pilgrimages

the family excellent performances
throughout, friends, awfully to very sorry

horror, humour, becomes nightmare
a guest arrives to make a room
the diversity

THE QUIET ANSWER

if you’re interested in watching one
darkest yet most entertaining play

not seriously injured
haunting melody a yellow rivers
a missing person investigation
the presence is causing the tumult
alive at the stake
leaved from the own lake, dear

yeas and tears are poems in guitar
since your piano sang wild song
it’s often dangerous to be different from others
flick that attempts to explore

a dark site in your live
yet powerful rules of conformity
the question to an individuals perspective
rapidly evolving warriors seriously
tackles the troubles
showing and why dodge this dreadful death
deeply divided and readily attack anyone

OVER THE STAGNANT

a statement after the rate-setting
meeting, meeting emphasizing the need more

he will face further government pressure
this year can’t be ruled out
which in its research note
have fanned concerns about rice tapering off

he estimates that local demands
such as massive costumer-debt
beating the call rat under benefit
year-on-year during the first half of this year
oh, the latest works on their contemporaries
writes should produce literary prose
about tastes, about file of smiling
good translation is a prerequisite for this, brother
will inspire readers and rulers overseas

our emotion will continue
will hesitate to divide those
who express the dead weight of ideology
beyond his frontiers

TELLING INTERMEDIAS

when I’ll also admired outside of beloved country
shackles of recent history
is a frequently asked question
their writer harbours a tortured soul
impact for healing methods
when they should be universal enough
to strike a chord with readers everywhere

the owner distinction it deserves for its
Indian literate said imperative moves
extraordinary differentiated and un-monolithic
touching to the heart
I should only be concerned with what is ours

foreign’ tastes improve delightful
literature generally tends
in ways capable of interesting readers
enjoying a much literary community
keeping up on current issues
and assiduously reading recognizes
in other fields that blooming apple and srikaya
painful to read customary effects
this every tortured imaginary scenes

WHERE THE SUN DESIRES

love story had admitted the teenagers
be lovely to dream of freedom
not all fiction or movies
they will inevitable get tired
of the same old story line and lost storm
and some swearing vigorously at the villain
without the agony of worries in reasoning
a new cultural trend of Price & princes
novels have gained more complexity
fighting and swear whenever reprimanded by adults
a great satisfaction of age
we stand in fantasized world

receiving hopes in same sort intention
people want a quick glance
and keeping overhead low
those with disability or low income levels
many down sizing to reduce cost
refuse to sell any of them
to demands, it meant a loss of revenue
have allowed disadvantaged love-abilities

MORNING TO TWILIGHT

how were to be ability to control
everything that happens

because itself be liberated
from its bondage to decay

spoke to the storm
that even wind and waves obeyed him?

the world as we now experience
it has been blighted by human disobedience
which has led to global warning
and the consequent upset the weather
and get the world back in harmony with God
please, darling, how established on earth
our only hope for a much
improved environment?

including tempest and earthquake
Merapi mount and the princess of light
expressions of divine displeasure
so why would she speak against Nature?
passion, character is rooted
in and determined by that conviction
will avail nothing unless

her teaching revolution
in clothing patient morning and twilight

you will be pretending to believe in things, sister
for Deva-Devi will bring every work into judgment
and combine a mystery and powerful throne

RESORT OF REST

coming as prophesied, activities
and teaching were recorded

by well-informed teacher
alone against togetherness
testament books as we know them into a list
many of energy

nation verses ready to concern ready for that
existing of their valuable in world’s future
from the coming of sin and death
then was marvellously preserved review
about communicated by God to man
Rajyvartani, sustaining the faithful
by its promise of Redeemer

Wisnu is widely ignored
in an age of wonderful scribe
keep silent, please darling
the stones would immediately cry out

numbers of people still battle and sieges
emperor here took place
emperor of our concept in dynamics
chief characters in the crucifixion area
the lord silent joyous acclaim
yet have confined by head people
thousands still were burned at the stake

KISSING PEACE

the anointed one who is spoken
of in the prophecy is

My Lord of Heaven
the covenant answered us that in
the Kingdom of Patience

you are worthy to take the scroll
it is important to note that the future
reward Deva has promised
to the Saint, my love.

Phinehas, roses from among
the thrust both of them

and took javelin in his hand
he has upholding Deva’s honour
because he jealous for his God
and made atonement for the son of Kahyangan
God renewed the covenant
of a continuity priesthood

who shall do according to appeal Him
what is in our head and our mind, my love.

that was being offered to Him
will push down southwards and attack them
so in desperation, they need the prophet
one which was to be ratified

by the Prime Subordinate too
would have meant burning in Winners

Literature is a spirit of culture. It is born from a very complicated process of the author anxiety upon the social condition and a tension between individual and his surrounding culture. Literature is also frequently located as the social portray. It reveals the particular society at the particular time. It is sometimes considered to voice the spirit of its period. And it is there that literature gives the specific understanding about social situation, belief system, ideology, and individual expectation which is basically represent the culture of the nation.

In this context, studying literature of a nation is fundamentally similar to an effort to understand the culture of the nations. In other words, learning culture of a nation will be incomplete if the existence of literature of the nation is neglected. The position of a culture does not only represent the social condition in a particular period, but also a reflection of a thought development and culture of the related society.

Indonesian literature, as any other literature in any nation, is basically a social portray of its society. It is related with the journey of the nation. It is also a cultural anxiety as well as a manifestation of the national thought. It is also seen in the journey of the Indonesian culture since its birth until the present day.

During the Balai Pustaka Period (1920-1933) for example, we see, the literary works at this time show its concern with the cultural problem when the Indonesian face Western culture. The tension between tradition and western influence is manifested in the fictional character representing the old (traditional) and the youth (modern). The tension is also seen from the theme proposed in the literature at this period. The customary problem related to marriage and woman position almost dominate the Indonesian novel in this period.

In poetry, the cultural problem is seen from the tight obedience to rules of the form of traditional literature such as pantun or syair. Though Muhammad Yamin introduces sonnet (:western culture), the rhyme is still dominated by the pantun pattern. Meanwhile, the theme seems to propose the nationality concept, although Muhammad Yamin still concern with the Sumatra Island scope.

In drama, Rustam Effendi in Bebasari (1926) symbolically offers the struggel against the foreign domination (Dutch). The kidnap of Sita (Motherland) by Rahwana (colonial) finally won by Rama symbolizing Indonesian youth. Symbolically, this drama has proposed the nationality concept and the importance to fight against colonialism.

In the mean time, ideologically, literature, particularly ones published by Balai Pustaka show that the novels published by this board go along with the ideology of the Dutch colonialism. Balai Pustaka as the publishers managed by the Dutch government, of course has its own ideological interest. Therefore, it is common that the novels also bring the interest of the colonial ideology.

During the Pujangga Baru Period (1933-1942), tension between west and east seems not only in the Cultural Polemic, but also in their attempt to translate the ideas into the works. So, we can see the poems of Amir Hamzah tend to express the Sufism and old Malay vocabulary (East) He also frequently translate the literature from the |East, particularly India. Baghawas Gita and other Chinese poem translation is one attempt to introduce East literature. Different fro Amir Hamzah, Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana cries out loud to advise Indonesian to imitate the west. It is the only way, according to him, that the Indonesian will reach the progress. One of Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana novel which seems to bring his idea about the west Spirit is Layar Terkembang.

At that time, the Indonesian poem has left the stuyle of pantun or syair. The influence of the west Romanticism –through the ’80’s Generation (De Tachtiger Beweging)Dutch – was accepted with adaptation. Poetry is not only the mean for bringing the ideal world, but also a mean for disseminating awareness about the greatness of the past. Pujangga Baru romanticism is born not only the anxiety of the moral decadence,spirituality and the environment destruction, but only to express a new way in Indonesian poetry.

Drastic change in the social, culture, and politics and Indonesia takes place after the arrival of the Japanese replacing the Dutch position. During the Japanese occupation (March 1942 – August 1945). all potential is focused on the war purpose. Therefore, literature is also used as a mean of Japanese occupation propaganda enhancing the spirit of Great East Asia. The Indonesian literary life during this period is heavily influenced by the socio-political, and economic condition. The collide of economy in this period place literature in the lowest position, which in turn influence the life of the literary men. Making creation for money become the rational choice. Therefore, short-stories and poems are many more numbers than novel. Playwright also have a good position at this time because drama performance is considered a more effective propaganda. Therefore, Japanese occupation government provides many stages and theaters for disseminating their propaganda through drama performance.

After independence, August 17, 1945, awareness of national sense and the important to face the new world becomes a trend which manifests in literary works published in this period. Chairil Anwar emerges with his poems full of spirit and vitality. Along with Asrul Sani and Rivai Apin, Chairil Anwar publishes Tiga Menguak Takdir (Three Reveals Destiny) ( 1949) showing the refusal to the spirit of Pujangga Baru. Tiga Menguak Takdir can be considered as a double blade knife: (1) carrying the spirit of struggle that the nation future heavily relies on the resistance not to surrender to destiny; (2) refuses all ideas as suggested by Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana, that (i) national culture should not be decided by the west but by oneself:”We are the legitimate heritage from the global culture and we will develop this culture with our own way.” (ii) it is not anymore necessary the form of expression in the poem use the stylistic and bombastic language, but with the everyday language and direct. Chairil Anwar who is the key person of 45 Generation seems to be a strong model in the map of Indonesian poetry. His influence is very significant even to the subsequent period.

In prose – novel and short story – bitter experience during the Japanese era and the trauma of independence war (1945-1949) becomes the inspiration for the Indonesian prose writers. Therefore, Idrus raise the bitterness during the Japanese occupation, Pramoedya Ananta Toer explores his own experience becoming a gurella and struggles against the Dutch. So do Mochtar Lubis, Balfas, Toha Mohtar, Subagio Sastrowardojo, Nugroho Notosusanto, and other Indonesian novelist who were raised in the revolution era. |They write their war experience as a bitter tragedy of humanity, and on the other hand they write them for disseminating the spirit of nationalism.

Entering the 1950’s decade, Indonesian literature undergoes the spectacular period. In addition to the war theme, spirit of regionalism and existentialism philosophy begin to emerge. Sitor Situmorang, Nasjah Djamin, and especially Iwan Simatupang are several names who enthusiastically introduce existentialism philosophy into his works. Iwan Simatupang later becomes one of the most prominent writer when his novels are published after September 30, 1965 tragedy.

In the early decade of 1960’s (1961-1965) Indonesian literary life in particular and the cultural life in general are not very appealing. At this time, “Politics is the Commander” slogan has position politics above everything. Literature and culture have been put as the political struggle. There are a lot of pros and cons. Indonesian literary persons has been separated into several fractions, which leads into two poles: a group of literary men who bring the spirit of universal humanism and the ones who propose culture and literature as a mean of political struggle with the emphasis that literature should struggle for people interest. The first group declares their mission through what is called “Manikebu” (Manifesto Kebudayaan or Cultural Manifest) and the second one is grouped into Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat (People Culture Institution or abbreviated into Lekra) which is the communist affiliation.

The life of culture and literature was in the worst condition. The different opinion and ideology become the physical conflict and a sequence of terrorism. The ban of Manifesto Kebudayaan indicates the exile of manifest group from various cultural aspect although they keep moving for struggle.

The breakout of September 30, 1965 which leads the wave of student demonstration destroy communism life from nationally political life. Lekra as the Indonesian Communist Party’s affiliation automatically becomes the victim. The manifest group looks like coming out from the death hole. Then they bring the protest works. Taufiq Ismail, the key person of this group, carry his struggle through poems. The other poets such as Bur Rasuanto, Slamet Sukirnanto, Wahid Situmeang, are some of his followers. H.B. Jassin, the prominent Indonesian critic, said that the movement is called 66 Generation.

The wave of student demonstration have got the goal by PKI dismissal and turn to the downfall of Soekarno. PKI along with his affiliation practically becomes a looser. And the new regime who call himself the New Order (Orde Baru) conduct cleansing. The literary persons belong to Lekra automatically become a loser: they are captured, put into jail, and the prominent actors are exiled to Buru Island.

The new era emerges in the journey of Indonesian literary journey. Trauma to the political intervention, particularly in the literary life, has brought the awareness, that literature, art, and as a whole, the culture could not be used for political interest. The life of culture should be separated from the political life. There is no more place for politic to enter and disturb the literary life. The assumption that the politics only will destroy the aesthetic of artistic activities become such a kind of important label in Indonesian culture, particularly Indonesian literature. Then, what is the influence to the Indonesian literature when politics is not legitimate to enter the art and literary area?

After 1965 and mainly in the mid of 1970 decade, Indonesian literary persons look as if he got the wider channel of freedom. On the other hand, they refuse political intervention. So, the attempt to exploit aesthetic object located outside of politics is done by the revivalism of tradition, at the source of wealth coming from the literature itself. Here the up side down narration in the people folk literature become one source of their creativity. In addition, the elements of Javanese-Islam misticism, sufism, and traditional legacy can be wrapped or inserted into a more modern poems. Sutardji Calzum Bacri, for example, successfully takes the advantage of mantra for the sake of his own poetry aesthetics which relies on the melodious expression. Through his creed refusing meaning in the word, Sutardji become one of the key person in this decade of literary life. Arifin C. Noer – in Drama – also successful in his depicting traditional folktale and folk theater, such as ketoprak and tanjidor, to be an important element in his drama. Meanwhile, Kuntowijoyo who is born in the Javanese tradition, but also absorbs tasawuf and western philosophy (existensialism), succeeds in producing one novel , Khotbah di Atas Bukit (Sermon on the Hill) which shows the mixture of the influence.

1970 decade – which is later called as 1970’s Generation – is the period of the experimental works. Iwan Simatupang through four novel Merahnya Merah, Ziarah, Kering , and Kooong, emerges as one move Indonesian contemporary maestro. Other names, are still abundant. But however, they have the similar spirit, namely “return to the root, return to the source”

Entering the 1980’s decade until the mid of 1990’s, Indonesian literature runs in a quietness, no sensation, no noise. Several works emerge with the surprising wonder. Ahmad Tohari through his trilogy Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk (The Dancer of Dukuh Paruk) awake our awareness to the realm of the grass- root and the marginalized people. Umar Kayam with his work Para Priyayi strengthen the wealth of javanese culture. The other surprise appears when Pramoedya Ananta Toer introduce his tetralogy, Bumi Manusia, Anak Semua Bangsa, Jejak Langkah, and Rumah Kaca (Earth of Mankind, Children of all Nation, Trace, and Green House). All of them are written when Pramudya is in his prison in Buru Island.

Other surprise occurs at the end of the 20th century. Ayu Utami, through her novel, Saman (1998) startles the public because of her courage to reveal the sexual matters in her novel. After that, several woman writers even have more courage in exploiting sexual matters than Ayu Utami, such as Dinar Rahayu (Ode untuk Leopold, 2002),Djenar Maesa Ayu (Mereka Bilang, Saya Monyet!, 2002, and Jangan Main-Main (dengan Kelaminmu) 2004), Maya Wulan (Swastika, 2004).

Long before Ayu Utami, many woman writers have actually shown the significant achievement, such as Nh Dini, Titis Basino, Marianne Katopppo, Leila Chudori ratna Indraswari, Abidah El-Khalieqy, Helvy Tiana Rosa, or Dorothea Rosa Herliani. Hence, their emergence become more apparent after Ayu Utami. It is possible, that this condition occurs after the downfall of the New Order which creates repression. Therefore, when there is a channel for freedom, woman writers appear with their courage and qualities. It is noted that some of them as Fira Basuki, Anggie D. Widowati, Naning Pranoto, Ana Maryam, Weka Gunawan, Agnes Jesicca, Ani Sekarningsih, Ratih Kumala, Asma Nadia, Nukila Amal and Dewi Sartika.

The most interesting thing from a number of the works, it seems that the women were not tied merely on the domestic affairs. They do not talk about the problems in their household affairs, but problem of a woman in her relationship with cosmopolitan society. There the woman became the main character who easily go abroad and makes interaction in the international circle.

In short, the trace of Indonesian literary journey is just a passing sight description. The change in a socio-political-economics-cultural, directly influence the style of expression and themes of literature. Hence, the Indonesian literary journey actually represent the development of thought about the social shift in this country. In this case, literature becomes the social portray and reflect the spirit of its age.

http://mahayana-mahadewa.com/2008/10/22/a-trace-of-a-long-journey/

THE STREAM OF LOVELY AUTUMN (Branches of Poems)
By: Suryanto Sastroatmodjo
@2005 (copyright PUstaka puJAngga)
To my dear
Angela Wardhani

RICE AND NOODLES

rice and noodles in heritage paper
can be sure of a grand feast in this house
living testament unique
unfortunate enough
our corner, interest and willingness
to expressing inexpressible is music
empowering design
regardless of the hurt that is caused
(alone-backing with Cakranahiswan)

rice and noodles equal sometimes
desperately wicked
deceitful above
the man whom he has ordained
both of them desperate
not abandon his plans
when perfection take place at first
(also strike by Uttapalasanti)

lonely organ smiles up and down
describes a surrounding globe
see things somewhat differently
remember his holy covenant
without fear, brother
despite our initial reluctance, brother
holy spirit approve in façade
be a truly speaker in capability

A CONSTANT STICK

be filled with the spirit,
speaking to one another
in prays, hymns and making melody
certain of improving
meaning in life
how that affective gracious there’re in
it is song that call of neighbours

civilians rhythm are blown to surprises
doing that different inside
persuasive force whispering
polluting world that now exist
rules glory, rules gracely
a law in the pursuit planning
mainly voice, the honest remarks
recycling needs, perhaps stick
to make command to new melody

is still a stick standing front?
Is still a stick spears pruning hook?
Whenever you turn to the right hand
Or whenever you turn to the enemies

PALACE BLUE, BLUE

the correct form of adjectivism
was evident from the previous essays
in this fails and other copies
watches earnestly for the sign of his coming
truly image, truly committed
thousand years we waited
(offering-toast with Prabanarawidya)

the dead were judged according works
life, lived and reign
had restored his sight
he had received the holy spirit
ye the first action the took
was to submit to odjectivism
(terminology with Andrana-Riswami)

revelation that is prospect for all true believers
hear the rings and bells
eternal live, who still alive
equal to the angels
and we shall reign on the earth

BEFORE FAILURE

there will be an abundance of grain in the heaven
its tastes lovely confession
of which were are witnesses
holy, harmless, become higher than stars
gentle and lowly in heart
a man where right values prevail
somebody knows

beat their swords into ploughshares
neither shall they learn war anymore
war through wars
diligently happened
blood out of every tribe and tongue
break in pieces the oppressor
as such he will be among these
find rest for your souls
how happy, brother, how happy for you

before failure from sadness and inferno
people is real and full of compassion
and we stand in focus of moon
in a strong blues

RETURN HOPELY

steps are necessary
to achieve a happier
and more fulfilled life
clear, friend, clear message
though miles away
from high clouds to own clothes
from their erstwhile adversary now at home
no doubt in deep contemplation

steps are resorted
to their favourite tactic
to eliminate the troublemakers
to become the typical sawfish responses
the disciples took
a measure of calm descended
upon the early believers
and their number began to increase

once can imagine his initial consternation
at finding himself alone
with a strange man
though a gentle pointer towards
become a powerful force
have the same effect in our lives

WINTALA’S DECENDANTS

write to appropriate address
often summaries the gospel
in these tow ways
the kingdom of earthly words
the name of the steps in god’s willing
references in years’ issues
outlined about
life without death, own mystery

write to appropriate address
far away from this grass-hard
to believe all these things
endless simply entire world
the time is fulfilled
the wall is a state of decay
anger and violence
from the power of natural sign

now, read reign as king of the world
in a way which is appropriate to those
who seek to follow him
in their daily lives

INSIDENTLY STAMPS

who could rightly be called
who could seemly be called
who could first be called homer dancer
this profound statement
has far-reaching implications
hopely answered
(fly stupid how to access)

stamps beyond stamps included
not so much as to set his foot on
there would be many descendants
which is causing so much fear
and sit on the throne of father
from where he will rule
the world in sign of Hopeless
(high cost how to prefer)

answer’s today means
promises included possession
looking upwards
and the child bearing age
yet that he was promised before it
a further point to include all those
who belong to the lord

SADNESS’ HOMELY

indeed, my son
you will look diligently for your house
the world will learn righteousness
when your judgments
are in the earth
and will break in pieces
the oppressor
they learn war anymore
indeed, my son, please
open your door
morning full comfort
on the top of the mountains
(by the times how to pretend the ancestors)

believes speaks:
I am gentle and lowly the heart
all nations shall serve me
grass in emotion’s judge
turn from the left
ever after

WONDERFUL BLESSING

not yet fulfilled
drew attention to this significant facts
if you able to number them
that it is wall watered everywhere
bearing in mind
that those promised included procession
belongs to god’s children
alright told by genesis
into starlit sky

lovers gone with the wind
will not need
to be reminded of its significance
nor man nor nations
hearing wonderful blessing
the one from the other
chose them all the plain of heaven
during eyes shut

look now toward heaven
northward and eastward
these promises were made for us
society union was descended
incidentally

REBECCA’S QUESTION

what I could not accomplish ourselves
who had lived perfect
identifying with that sacrify
could be reckoned as right in God’s sight
remembrance heart by heart
only spoke signaturing twilight
oh, the personal failure to please God?
when destiny despaired
about goddess’s evil nature said :
”Bring your cruelty from my room!”
So then, with the mind
I my self serve the law of God
but with the flesh the law of sin.”

Rebecca’s talks again kindly
my world is now over fun
with evil and wickedness
from those questions
by the way they respond to God’s invitation

HONESTY

as we pray each day, honest true and pure
our heart walks in dwelling place
life blessing beyond we’re blessed
alone sky clouds swear
home, be after seeking souls homely
and trough earth by earth snowy
impressed quality files following days
because we’re alone without happiness

we have cigarettes, leaving dirty tobacco
fortune as quick as telling true
give a little smile, please
dwelling place nor palace ones
God’s values becomes early morning
the youthful kindly obscured
endless homely

WARNING ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS

faith if those believers
the spiritual spoke sparing the flack
do not touch, do not taste
and by smooth words
flattering speech
deceive the hearts
unless departure savage wolves
be turned aside to fables

his kindness and mercy in giving us opportunities
need to take not and act accordingly
as some count slackness
shall longsuffering toward us
shall come to repentance
see word events moving towards their final phase

white and rose in autumn sight
be a creation beginning innocent
flame a naked individual conflicts
describe outward circles
portrayed among you
human nature
bears no title of authorship and opinion

MAN OF MYSTERY

descendant of a great fore father
its lessons we should take to heart
its grand theme
to spare the time, God obey
about the circumstance that
as only be put right
has been lead up
keep their faith alive

power language obsession
hit and run, hit and run
chance there’d be
helpful traditions in saint
is remarkable inscription
the grand outcome of all things
overcome the temptations

letter to parents then heritages
all allowed important hearings
death on the cross
render it powerless
please the shining sun flaming
return from captivity
perform the miracle preaching

need of praying
finding a good place to settle
finding about gospel truth
ultimately find their fulfilment established

ENDLESS DIALOGUE

is the tower in your empowering promise
catching by the times your holiday
keep cruelty erected
and father and son grow
being oppositioned low
tell the imaginary song happily
towards to the be fresh  combine increase
endless dialogues
endless catalogues similarly
the bridal rhythm passing true
neither composed by rainy season
hassles voiced in water tremendous
(adore you among Tirtapramesthi)

because the drawing wholesome
cocktail party in suddenly fever
lost in passage, perishable stress
postulate dreams congratulate
spear and spoils
the poems intended loss through habits
endless kissing
imperial words in terminology
remembrance dialogue actually
(the victim implicate Saviratanjali)

and may unhappy sentences during dinner
approval capability
adjective consinary victims
subjects during dangerous term
while cries oppositely
compilation without dirty forms
you belongs to me

LONG AND TERRIBLE SIEGE

thousands were sold as slaves
bearing their fruits of it
he is announcing privileges
taken place in the fortunes
they were to be found in the great sites
flowers of flowers out from destiny
end of centuries
what will he do to those vinedresser?

but to be spiritually minded
is life and peace
about he taught when he instructed comer
but the Kingdom of Heaven
might choose again
will not inherit the palace of evident

longsuffering, kindness, faithfulness
there are hugely contrasting consequences
during describing came expressly
abandoned mankind

human affairs and take over the rulership
to be camally minded is death
covering compower works of the flesh
beyond truly ambitions
followers pray how to make distance
dynasty and closing numbers
in the new age and golden years

CLEARLY SHOWED

as so clearly showed
we recognize the abnormality and enlist God’s help
the same bias and the same, tendencies within themselves
master destroyed or put to death
that bias in our selves
partakers of nature
their lifetime subject to bondage
those tendencies to death, we shall live!

that anything else I long to be clean
oh our Grace, do long to be there
standing for all that is opposed to him
a marvellous hope
as promises great are unfurled

apostle Kamajaya trying power love
unchanging law arose through man’s disobedience
and the result would be the complete breakdown
of moral tradition of Javanese suggestion

will be present so long as man is mortal
these teaching of scripture
the clear statements we were going struggle!

WAITING FOR PANDAVAS & KURAVAS

they were magnificent physical specimen of manhood
allowing kind Pandavas and Kuravas
in the centre Javadwipa rivers and sea
by mountains in Hyang, by the hill of Deva’s mounts
increasingly jealous of Giants Count,
when they went out to battle
everyone in the well-known word of chronicler
(approach recycling karmayoga above)

please, god and goddess’ fellow
they was a disaster
they serve the purpose of uniting the tribes
when Sri, Laksmi, Saraswati, Devi Tara
shakti’s of Siva, Visnu, Brahma, expose
implicative of pilgrimage shadow-play

making observers-legends
around the world of imagination
due to indigenous ancient story-tellers
the literal meaning of the points of energy
(maybe the beginning of this process or re-gathering
in the establishment of the state of Amrtapura)

(the Book of Judges describe how,
because of their failure to keep Natural Command,
they were oppressed by nation of the land)
the people had so degenerated that eventually
the whole nation be united under one Head
just Amrtapura trouble Pandava and Kurawa each other
specimen of manhood into the royal court
and exalt the home of his anointed

SCRIPTURES OF TRUTH

it is a sad reflection
that far too many who profess
to be followers of our head of time
stabilizing master
was understanding and understandably distressed
”clearly this is no ordinary person had made mention of my name”
(in Prabhu-Satyawidya-title)

for any angel, for somebody’s need
prophet addresses people
showed how God foresees the future
especially bearing in mind
recognize the importance of the Master
his evidently miraculous acts
what sense can we make these words?
(precious willing : Pranadevantacakra)

what kind of life is for you
had learned a huge
amount about how best to live
enjoy today a famous
thoughtful consideration
what life has offer before telling happiest?
(habitually among Bhaqavalanaditantra)

when he was arrested
was seized in the Garden of Hopes
a fully times denied that they had connection?

PROPHECY

if you thinks carefully
people salvation would come to nations
the courage and resourcefulness
of the human spirit
camp of the last few verses
speak of a worldwide dispersion
that terror will your hearts and green sights
instead of maintaining their racial purity
this is telling reminder
man’s inhumanity to man
revolt against angels in powerful witness
that happened their Messiah
would appear on earth

we are not concerned with here
hunger’s judgements for integrated
so much with other man
yet those sufferings were not to last forever
only too vividly portrayed here :
”eyes weary with longing and a despairing hearth
if the refused to obey Him”

a scarce commodity and ethnic violence
telling reminder of unhappy situation
but a tool in God’s hand
nothing less than two world wars
millions rebirth a clean miracle
will possess the land forever

THE OWNER

at last the owner goes to pilgrimage temples
cutting pilgrimage journeys
since relief confused
during the purification of mankind
long long age diffused
sometimes the delightful plunged
sincerely between I and children
towards impress livingly
towards our publics mean offerings
bitter conclusions were gleaming
purpose deeply
often hearing pilgrimage tours indeed
(usually façade Tattwa-wardhayanta)

since comrades-in-arms being composed
may be actually tempest
alone in the yard of smiles
public regards congratulate
owners in the circumstances
times formal future tongue
sincerely my finest and holy figures
(impressed about Satyanamanti)

when the relief confused
beliefs sincerely ours, brother
owner the going truly acceptable
clover leaves pursuit happiness
going on true

ACTS OF INNER SOUL

a precise act of obedience
born a new
how men can insert reasons
for not accepting
such KONFERCAB appeal
they went down the road
he was oppressed
and he was afflicted
yet he opened not his mouth
(ever dream only Handayana-huning)

for the transgression of my people
he was stricken
the passage which he was reading
the virgin birth
quite probable
a proselyte convert
(trust improve Moqatista-Kiwan)

pointless of sprinkling
was acceptable
God’s purpose, my dear
event more significant
the accord with other descriptions
until the water indicated that immersion

CHARACTER

a personality, my dear
just an impersonal power
a character of his own
which made known to mankind
(seek effectually Wimana-Karkandari)

the Holy Spirit declare his generation
ancient times they suggest

this man a proselyte convert
for the transgressions of people
that he was quite probable
and complete letters had been

purchased during
the visit of Peck and Pock
about the trial

had not defended himself
against the false charges
(going improve Bojawali-Andhuswinala)

character opens silent mouth again
when villages pocket shut the doors
but people design yellow leaves become green
last floors to be attitude
injurted bloody and then black

OUT OF EVIL

the camp was cunningly as a contained community
a flourishing cultural life and the nights
as a self-contained community
to write family and local-friends
villages in spare hearth covering yellow
gave any hint of their ultimate fate
togetherness, friendships, allowing enlightened
where barracks once stood there camp site area
(sightflies :Ambarabadrawanti)

the original lay out, improve totally- white resort
and a stretch of a railway line
the fate of those who departed by train
diary after their skin-war
survived, only their further survived
but strained to the limit
sometimes queue to view the hidden staircase
a testimony to the courage of human spirit
these victims of year solution
drink blue, eat experiences
when barracks once stood
beyond a sting violins and violence
symbolized the fate of those
(including Mahisa-Mandhala)

moreover to catch signal of signatures
prophets run, just as predicted
or a bit quiet reflection beforehand
and heaven declare the glory of God!

By: Suryanto Sastroatmodjo (1957 – 2007)
@2005 (copyright PUstaka puJAngga)
VOLUMES IN ANTOLOGY OF POEMS

OBSERVER AND RESEARCHER

but whichever you and fear will abound
upon the earth, upon a single name of lovability
either they ascend fear of fevers
white army, black personal seal, darling
certainly not all sombre, do not like to be rebuked
they descend by way of doubt and organs of human society
on recent regency archaeological discovery
to denounce the idolatry
bearing the name of royal starts and tribe astray

it would be a marvellous bonus true coming
it seem the seal performed a role similar
it is fascinating that there
is actually a mention in youthful prophet
when he was killed in battle
kiss the draw expressing foolish characters
a rest from their wickedness
other than deporting all peoples

were given no such promise
signature’s master of love and against enemies

(or I ask smoothly : when The Golden Age standing here?)
northern tribes having been deported by knights
survivors and princess due to the clown hungry

observed them factually
he said, that son and daughter go into captivity
exiles from parenthood throughout for habitual days
these ordinary adultery tropical researches
five years ago killing thousand monks in temples

RELATIVELY OBSCURE

their continuance was conditional
upon obedience and faithfulness
forty years of the throne of my lord
even the desperate times
have lived through
the full inscription

bearing the name of ancestors
my dynasty of returning old and ancient land
those yellow and bloody arumdalu in summer
seems the seal performed a role figures
a business carnivals in blue-leaves
were characterized by dreadful wickedness
among other workers apple garden
the one day he saw something startling, darling

they descend by way of doubt
and rejection and come disintegration and doom
your lawful king and take refuges in holy name
spread doom and gloom
we can imagine that a message like that was
no more popular, under inspiration of wickedness
the prophecy is certainly not all sombre, spiced
with vision of hope, glorious future and nights wars
due to take refuge, though lour relatively obscure
everyone may turn from evil ways, lovely darling
only scorn and derision to history’s needs

A REAL FINGERPRINT

the prophecy have been found
though this was probably a common name in those days
confirm that this is the seal of count’s friends
even carries Duke’s fingerprint, luxury prospect
made when he held the moist clay to make impression
the prophecy have been found
a remarkable testimony
that is talking about real people
with a copy of real fingerprint

(a bronze Sunday night keep sailors
when the wavy clouds like an elegy!)

faith that requires proof is not faith
but the large and older monk hunting
stuntman from arise bridges
stuntman from damaging pictorial warriors
duke’s scribe earned him
an evitable reward

(the pillar into size sea bowling sands)
now, reigned there, how this steps lost?
now, reign those, how figures signed the deed and
sealed it, my dear?
It adds the dimension of reality to pictures
That otherwise would be strange

And somewhat unreal being
And therefore it provides an element of credibility
With real fingerprints, surely, sailors win them all

MIRACLE’S OWNERS

when my lord delivers Lord of lords
from troubles, he will come to fulfil
an event wide remit
appointing a day in the world in righteousness
command men skilfully judge earth
conceal communities of real failure
before death into straight forward
become death-stricken and sin-filled
old testament plainly state position :
“the wages of sinner during reminiscence”

(a sadness overcome Saturday sunrise pretty set
to wards skylines orchestra beyond another harmony … )

this view of atonement
is believed serenely by thousands
because mankind’ rest of humanity
substation substitute
suffering dead into life forever
plainly state position :

to clear and be declared!
By judgement of victuals in sharing you and me
Under the sunflower-tress inside
Growing yard beyond smiles
Blue cloudy, blue ocean, miracle’s owners

UNASSAILABLE ARE BREAKING DOWN

he has been rich, deepest part
of him he was poor-startling

our man of departure is willing
the child was named from little heaven
the angels cry from stages in fear a bound
rolling doors in rulers, empowering souls
even the young men and the virgins
shall faint with thirst, dear friends
when will you find security, obedience
no one rejected terms during satisfy submit to the world of god
for fear looking after disintegration & doom
becoming more and more urgent
bathara prabandara is highlight reality
I may forgive their iniquity and their sin
amanuensis talk story in healing words
who will respond and serve him in love
why reject yesterday’s command
glorious future is the only remedy
be unassailable is breaking down

ESTABLISH THRONE

that’s obviously
sincerity and single-mindedness
and made his misery a matter of prayer
I will be in anguish over my sin
understand the message

that contains and really skilled
(a Sunday morning load song dignity
an intemperately wall dissonant hearth)

he has faithfully fulfilled
and continues to fulfil
that we have proved unstable
becoming products of the obligations

prevent others from gaining
bring an unprecedented of out pouring
grief from people all over the world

to intense public beyond them
(a buying moonlights expose youth beach
spread dancing moves heavy waves only!)

there is no longer a universally had few
for tomorrow will worry about own things
casting all your care upon him
all his attention whilst carrying God & Goddess
(and silver eyes, gold nose kindly salute)

its power and longevity are well
expressed in this quotation from proceedings
up were brutal savages in an unknown land
the volume jasmines and : white and red
including chocolate umbrella like mid summer night screamed
establish of his throne forever

PROSPERITY IS PRECARIOUS

fortunately we all follows
for each of us
they would prefer to be alone
and what of your relationship with God?
(how long did you desperate home, dear?)

by what they have perceived
to be burden of sin
they had to carry

for men iniquities
have gone over my head
because of my foolishness
(twinkle ruby hinterland awakes
twinkle the grass noon impetrate poetries)

they who sometimes had successful life
some self-inflicted
felt the consequences
misbehaviour weighing him up
would prefer to have company
good health doesn’t always last
(father’s tears unhappy took place
and mother’s surrounding interludes)

it was going to be hard following devas
some people have to contend it
there is no hard sing never enjoyed
self-sacrifice only really qualifies as such if it hurt
prosperity is precarious
once expressed his feelings
is everything all right in every respect?
that is how it should be

A HEAVY BURDEN

so that the call of follow the
Syiwa Bathara affect us
in different ways

the believer’s life has to become God canted
putting God at the joy and rejoicing
this was the invitation

Brahma and Vishnu
still extends : Shanti, Shanti, Aum Awighnam Astu”

for I’m gentle and lowly in heart
and you will rest for your soul

(nearest glassy in strike stripes
long sorrowing a dream dilettante sorry
during heavy birth day steps)

that the Susuhunan’s presumption
that we are all burdened
by the circumstances of life

is everything all right in every respect everywhere?
(whose bloody gown into slaveries mutiny?)

when I wrote those words I was clearly depressed
felt the consequences

of my misbehaviour
weighing them down

that happy state of affairs not last
prosperity is precarious

anxiety can easily creep into
is no reasonable cause

PRAISE ENDEAVOUR

in the event of war, also against enemy
those freedom that is descendant strangers
when they left that foreign country
with the passage of time, come out possession
correcting patience receiving brutal treatment
fore seen and wilderness occupancy
not need gold necessary
being elder and oldest finally
beginning person in health but tinny ones
and both of lucks endeavour mistakes and weak
and finance that passing above simultaneous way
(the really vision answers : here I am)

instructive which was why initially, darling
we may remarkable descendant bright jewels
home page by graceful boughs
in inferno’s gentle slopes
with which they had been endowed
prince and saviour in red cliff tango
hear their silk and priestly lamb, hear sky-song
so they wear chocolate sin impeaching dark-subtitles
among ambiguity, among the circumstance instead
(the ultimate person come here from the bushes)

he had his suspicions that the origin of new faith
commanded the accused be taken out
of the court for a while, darling, whose refugees
it is supernatural for he added the comment
that if, this can not overthrow it
lest you even be found to fight again of my lord
oh, master of brides-screen-joyful and great fun
oh, master, beloved creating times born-break-latter
perhaps in far away, holes, praise endeavours, hear!

PASS AFTER DREAM FILES

once again, my sophisticative figures asked public :
once again we have the benefit of looking back

and seeing exactly how these events
came about, precisely as predicted
samanalaya : the preaching told in bronze
in as much as you saw pass after dream
unrivalled world empires
but rulership will be forever
prayed about sequent destruction
the silver and gold imperial left to other
once upon a time, nation seized accurate
(I know, I know my reality, your Majesty)

a later never with the same unrivalled plans
collapses seeing preliminary exile toward smiling
imaginary giving ways to feet of iron and clay
after worldwide dispersion and eventual re-gathering
they must have feared for existence as people
ransomed him from the hand of stronger than he
must have wondered at the like likelihood
without a shepherd being savaged by wolves
(I know, I know my duties, your Majesty)

a later never with the same unrivalled destroys
could witness the marvellous way generally stood
he wants us to prepare for what is coming
our letters conformity to younger generations
often they were persecuted and pillaged
they must have feared for their existence
about the improve talents stories departure
could witness the marvellous way
satisfy our curiosity to impress us
(yes I know what you want, your Majesty)

way of describing one of the hills Imagiriyana
snows covering mountain fugitive pluggery
the story of innocentious victuals roles
which about disamusing parent with big umbrellas!

STORAGE STEALS

if my ethical ideas have wrongly
mixed into conquest corporate actual primes
his offer of salvation includes the meek

inheriting the yard of earth
and Kartasura today becoming the city of devote
many people make restore palace of integrity
a future inheritance about heaven in great fun
(where a gold key in both hands of Kanjeng?)

who is above all and through fitness
is angel spoke hearing transformed to state
is his same this immoral and immortal condition
believers who are still loving inter medias
shall be filled with the glory of Kraton Dalem – resort
make sure in the offer of salvation defences

give a new start and steps allowed highest
base up something both wrong and black misleading
only one hope gradually increases and extend worst
he means hope and fertile will be destroyed
why we properly understood the nature and both
become helpers and true followers of worship once
into our saving faith and made immortal finders
(terrible voices took depart Priyagung-fertiles)

be save, brother, in live in peace and harmony
many of parables began naughty words
help in steady boys, that topic of heaven concerned
return to divine flavour, elegancy rush and risk
human existence only foretold and his resurrections
nature of first ring to future inheritance
that quite clear but also re-birth in classic-form
facing formula about it constantly teaching birthday

ACROSS DYNAMIC SHOTS

when summer leaves are delicate groaned greens
a bit of a laugh to the childhood communities
these counselled frugality with the grain
the buzz of excitement so beloved ancestor
the sixth consecutive pronounce Court geld
as individual’ lucky in the quarterfinal
during the unprecedented winning titles
a woolly by sunburnt red-ready-morning full
that he could be a loser the moment
he began becoming complacent

prince Indriyana Kandalavindi : champion at last
but he was vowed to learn from it and improve

when summer file days comfort unforgotten flies
he game-add-thanks-giving
he think requires in precisely-rising-demands
beyond language skill noted winy-rose-improve
he certainly kept the lesson in his mind
is known for his perfect skills and hatred to lose
befalling rapidly evolving horror genre-climate
that discourages overused in an effort

to dodge this dreadful death
fun finally consist queue attack
members invite a severe backlash

yet power widely held beliefs began lifestyle
of const harassment meaning dead lost-try
and eyes lock something terrible will happen
in lack historical Javanese references there
regain in his memory suffered to viewers about
with a spirit cherish belongings introduce human
cryptically telling them but he has no need for it anymore
they soon stumble across conclusive stories in dynamic shots

OTHER DUTIES OF MY LORD

there is no reason to be stuck in Yogya
recently considering trembesies offer green
on Javanese rapidly growing unclogged roads
biggest draws in hungry black colours and

east storages winy talks
(constantly loyal to the sweet Kraton)

believers among others : how providing lower
dangling similar incentive locations
even smiled touch into orange hybrids summertime
my ideal base, my access significantly red coast
solid under a creative environment
while having more to spend on mine own

(Sri Sultan’s spoil sprees into Segara Kidul)

there is invest more lease spending advances
the partnership will secure fully integration
a new cultural signs and cultural trends
in reality I kept the guy of various agony
a risk – taking romance and fist-fighting desire
although school violence to make highness degree

a truly valuable character
to make just a few of changes
lowly and slowly climate interests
that need correction phenomenal
chain-reaction victimity
(credential shadow-play above Njeron Beteng)

it should rather is truly designed shortcomings
in such an early lame-duck habits

if it doesn’t pursue partisan interest truly
brown cloudy sky in entirely white snowy hills
each revision had followed great political turmoil
it’s job to foreign and defence affairs
while relegating other duties to my Lord of Bright

LABYRINTH VALUES

meanwhile a cultural kaleidoscope
by extensively promoted and marketed

in Eastern literacy
carry works that will inspire reader overseas
who never shies from singing reader overseas

of the exquisite poems Canyabadra
such as the Alaslange derives continuous song
he state to deride weight of homogenous things
while we admire foreign taste translating methods
there has been and to some extent remains
conceded at the conference glad stones
(I re-actualized old forestry beyond Parangkusuma, dear)

when with selecting on a regular basis
from which derives continuous inspiration
need windows’ opening white marriage

truly uplifting
gently pleasurable
touching to our heart
(here disappointed swear points shows Ratu Kidul)

as a result noted several rightly asserted
enjoying a much highly profile in community
poetry market alone achieve worldwide a news
by on un-monolith recognize myth, hybrid, pure
not are generally prose instead naively assume
and essarily the case surroundings equal in values
that were associated with the recent history
produced worldly acclaimed likely address many themes
heterogeneous different oval face neither local face
shall know the respect of more people

BREAKFAST SONG

in extraordinary couples in traditional songs
beside the faithful explores unhappy
white-half-yellow kantils and jasmine’s power breakfast
hallow light heart, allow pig fords
satisfying scarcity of virtually gloom
in the laughing priest toward eventual horn
precise songs syllabus red orchid
against habitual kindly beautiful melody
towards happening act dances in hurt
nevertheless expose in-a-burry
empowering the regards about miles-stop
please, owner neighbours display clocked
twelve hours in steady couples and drank
disappear legends
(currently disappointed to Royal Dignity)

how to disappoint November’s love
by distinguished fever of holy lovers
attribute by contributed personality
thus in appropriate discovery
skilful morning month
warning into warmth facsimiles too
(sun shining display improves your Majesty Ingkang Sinuwun)

afterwards these abstract compilate others
in determine obviously dominations
sincerely ours directed similarly
toward hearing our minutes past-offer
skilfully endevior lightly dependence
(hear the intrinsic voice from Kanjeng Ratu!)

the circumstances by families beyond songs
though breakfast becomes ambivalences
in the pillow of bullocks in hurt costumes
enter few any lover’s orchestra denied
white-half-yellow kantils and marine lotus
catches breakfast near green forest
long times by couple

WATERFAL’S ANSWER

exalt the lowly, and abase the exalted
overthrown, overthrown in similar time
finally God breathes life into sleepy death
almost becoming throne’s faithful one
before this mountain break and fall
and the volcanic stones in flock down-rivers
something jewellery hopeful hopes
thus yard near float-handle mangoes in hell
remember the sight of grown valley
when we lost our last heaven
far from heart, far from yellow forest
that overload smiling happy
near my blessing infinitival duties
wherever you noticed white poems actually

how wondrous are God’s ways
landscape’s gentle slopes
the wonders of his earth
this is so contrary to normal human behaviour
instead of feeling badly let down
and ill-rewarded for their effort
on behalf of Natural Spirit
the bursting forth of buds

the guards were still outside doors permit
excuse high priest included condemnation
of the authorities for their part
in the crucifixion of my lord, darling
bring your body to court of Bumisagara
bring the spokesman for the whole group
forgiveness told not sin in saviour
because you and me were prince of preach
and the consternation ever guard in youth and old
unaware of what had happened
in the mighty waterfall’ answering orange problems

EVER GOLDEN AGES

come again, took the city
destroyed it, burned it like Nero’s accident
and they would be deported for years
also predicted this eventual outcome :

“I’ll end correct you in justice
let you go altogether unpunished”
it is against this background
that the words of the pretentious assemble
many of the ancient races have been lost
in the branches of lost history
in the pronounce full stories
of the safeguarding the banner
out of kind of faithful refugees
beyond cruelties and unfinished sayings
prefer to skylight
prefer to clouds of the becoming!

they would lose their identity
for those very reasonable offering globe
having you accept cultures and gradually
of those amongst whom they lived
they re-gather the dispersed nation
satyvardanta vidi-vara
special roles of plundered all precious things
their identity notwithstanding dispersion
from kingdom to people
from queen-meaningful of mankind
to glorious immaterialize effects
and a picture of resurrection of a nation
created personality and white-red banner
picture of a valley full of dirty leaves, black holes
stand upon your feet, please
keep your judgement and do miscellaneous heritage
ever after, ever golden ages

MY HEARTH’S ENEMY

an adversary on hearing storm disease
moved the capable due to reply drew
upon we heard the things
such in the confine increasing numbers
eventually proved too much
be arrested however
go to stand in the temple of independence
words of covenant life
solution fingers, actually fever
clearly included miracles
(breakdown in speaking Wayang Purwa’s Concelling)

a passage in the use of common application
where holy spirit shadowy
that such gifts into hope
burning the wallows of healing times
and effect of instead continuing paging
in your couples down burnt beyond
endeavour almighty
endless ever after
(footnotes intend above Kanjeng Sinuwun)

can be being discovered in scriptures if truth
can we show us former things?
let me declare righteousness
witness to the existence of purposeful God
and control of all that was happening
who was directing history towards his end
moreover almighty?
(rolling stones in first earth quacking Pagelaran)

darling, Denver, danger, doubt to love
keep her as a shepherd does his flock
keep her as long as enjoy fully togetherness
this prophecy becomes all the more remarkable
although mystery misery among my hearth’s enemies

RESULTED IN CURES

human determinant of endeavour scales
empower ideals, high as they might be
yearly determination are achieved ambition
wrestle the opponent to the ground
fire more accurately
the persist are endless and exhausting
score more goals of points
endeavour imaginary talks of creek-sank
since ceased and have to do a heroic noble
and please, your strategy in persuasive-moods
opening doors beyond human-dignity
man under stars, man under noon
and straight-holly-stocks under sun
to took closely at what is involved

thus laying up of themselves image future
this requires the exercise of the mind
to be rich in good deeds
charge them not to be haughty
godliness into profitable diversity
under disappointments become truth
may be a conversation match

contract to the joy of evidence
going quite as God wanted them to
perhaps without the rulers complain
perhaps without finger signatures plot
ones once the assumed exposure possibility
to be danger to dangerous limited happen
which your aspects through deliberate attempt
except your believer’s promise
days delivering damage

RAINY MORNING BLUES

the floating eagles turn from blue sky
to speed branches in green
roar idols in ones impeach balancing
those follow swallows
borrow underground bells and sudden violent

roars due to regarding tears
it seem chained melody by effort
and condors as soon as lightning
seals pages introduce awfully quickly
in-at hurry in centre’ cumulus nimbus
catches directly by moving ocean needs
through paraprow endeavour hallow
just like any couples in canvas there in
(the wind blows, the ship roars)

I felt obvious pretty holes on lovely panorama
duty-in-roar-abroad latter, facade obvious blest
minutes over but my red-stripes soil breaks beam
nearer by nearest session, talks into doors in rocks
oh, I plug moreover covenant during marine-voile
all tenures, checkpoint bleak, up-down singular
at last their neighbours’ interest side become sites
rainy coming daybreak, oh diversity April-love
obviously Campbell daddy-offering
(are sophistication’ points brought dangers)

the forest upright, first of blooming shadows
even the careful insight question’s lack
milestones knocked super hurry convenient-off
because slight under the bridegroom orchid
hear my clover-haut-head due to darling
now wear rainy capulet – jacket rainbow
following my children-day and shut obviously
chanced the white morning gleam tune-tonal
almost ring-twist dances energetic putting
sprees and spread natural kid blues, a canoe alone!

MISCELLANY STROKE

still he has no official post, my dear
he consoled frugality with grain, of course
a brilliant account of trove is in Old Java
with the culmination of country’s top
he was lucky with his last shot and moreover
let the heavens decide the outcome of the match
(my brave Master shut the door : what happen?)

by longing comfort prepare for them events
started to improve after taking advise for Pitrayana
the delightful mistaken breaking disappointed
space features several nice touches
don’t like messing with the flavours too much
aggressively masculine environment
aggressively feminine regardless of gender
gleaming yellow spite leaves and red fruits-fresh
until yellows pock bananas in speak autumn-lesson
for reservations increase demanding works
(the Mirror said : help yourself tomorrow!)

but the difficult though females and males story
even becoming known to novices and aficionados
thousand differences labels around the Duty’s globe
that focus on matching Avarana Radanatha’s
the prestigious and regardless happy, darling
vintages available points of sin, covering skill made
the soil hard-in-black against interval meanings
realized for weeks at time
experts of weeks at time
experts of trial generation, how its truffle indeed
the bronze masker by destiny, wearing appoint sticks
inherent between markets and lakes and written beaches
(the candle of wind foreseeing ahead)

and tell the pyramid’s parallel into cosmic’s purpose
during fourth folktales in my country, miscellany stroke

MERCIFUL CONTEMPLATION

the park in blue eyes dwelt passed away remained
and neither comeliness renders
not our glimpse never meant
for clouds that bring storm and rain

helping strength and another pass
beyond its guidance keep light more
his come along, years burnt up
his footsteps fail not from dwelling
and not being able to procure it
help me, my dear, recording the most precious

of metals, stones, luxuries
is such variety of shades
come along, reminiscence block notes
this ancient cities shell good life
(sarasyvanaga : early in daybreaks rose)

give us confidence in the authority took troubles
a desire but for region-lords invited warriors
please, on a marble ruined fortress on seashore
the prolonged famine that affected Roman, Turkey,
and earliest Java under making surrounding nation
it was fully supported during seventeenth centuries
to bring me back a measure of flour nothingness
(oh, your smiled eyes took the windows)

Lord has purpose for each of us, took the troubles
his existence long trouble by according in hell, please
uphill journey’ is lands and be loves angrily houses
closely associated with the truth ocean loss
redeemed, reconciled to God, slowly rendezvous, dearest
good excites through the end of beginning
as cleansing memorable white temporal opened hill

we are not as prodigal or as guilty in associated princes
created for us, through the veil, that is
or bodies must be washed by water intense “tirtamrta”
very guidance on this question, which makes it quite clear

wrote about a prodigal son there in
rainy waters, rainy absolute inversion
spirit of god descending and alighting
ignorance guiding merciful contemplations

Written by Nurel Javissyarqi
Translated by Agus B. Harianto

Two essays of Tardji as an attachment is sufficiently to identify his anatomy in the field of literature that deals with “the mantra” from its roots, which is the tradition.

In the knowledge about the mantra in the Java land, there is term ajian panglimunan, it’s useful not to attack, nor fortified from an ambush. Precisely it uses to blurred the view of the enemy in order to pass through or give wrong understanding to those he is dealing with. This deed could create confusion so it is easy to strike back. This spell is usually used in total desperation. If it performed at the beginning, it would be detractors. In the simple way, it calls pretend or deceive.

Ajian panglimunan equals with disappeared from sight. They can not find out the presence of the doer, so it is easy for the user to hit or flee from the arena of fighting. In the other hand, this skill uses to cover or protect the doer to commit other skills, so that the enemy underestimated. Such as he used low skill, but he was dealing with high levels.

The form of this esoteric knowledge has some characters; there is a thick translucent glass, there is a kind of fog, there is also inhabit the location of the void. His opponent is as if facing a ordinary man, without knowledgeable magic.

Those strategies derived from the root of the mantra he used, also shrewdness in using it. It’s related to patience in breathing it. Piles of experience in reciting the mantra, is above understanding its supernatural.

In addition to the above benefits, ajian panglimunan uses to unify several powers of the mantras in a single dealing of practicing. Furthermore, this spell can also accompany other spell he dealt so to those who stroke are difficult to know what type of esoteric knowledge or even the doers.

Let’s take look at my attachment from the essay “Menulis di Atas Mantra” by Tardji, at paragraphs II and IV (because at part III is the describing of part II):

“Saya adalah penyair yang menulis tidak dari suatu kekosongan. Saya menulis di atas kertas yang telah berisi tulisan. Saya menulis di atas tulisan. Tulisan itu adalah hasil budaya dari subkultur yang sangat saya akrabi, yaitu budaya Riau berupa mantra.“, (paragraf 2).

“Maka menulis di atas tulisan atau di atas mantra bukanlah sekadar menerima mantra sebagai sesuatu nilai yang siap pakai, tetapi suatu pertemuan atau dialog kritis kreatif yang pada akhirnya memberikan upaya perpanjangan makna bagi mantra lewat kemampuan kreatif dari penyairnya.”, (paragraf 4).

“I am a poet who writes not from emptiness. I wrote on papers that is already contained texts. I wrote on the writing. The writing is the result of the culture from the subculture that is familiar to me, which is Riau culture in the form of the mantra.” (Paragraph 2 ).

“Then write out on the writing or on the mantra is not simply accept the mantra as something ready-made values, but a meeting or creative critical dialogue that at the end gives efforts of meaning prolongation to the mantra through the creative abilities of the poet.” (Paragraph 4).

It clearly defines; Tardji’s poems are derivative mantras of the boulder-rock of the tradition that enlivens spiritual nature of Riau. He inserts and grafts aura of the original mantras in Indonesian literature. Like the mantra or the wird of Islamic teachings that are translated, interpreted and collaborated in the Java language, but it still has meaning, has same magical power, equals to the previous bulbs, although the packaging is different.

So from where Tardji claimed that his poems are deeply rooted from the root of mantra that grows in the plains of Riau, whereas the body formation of its rhythm and mysteriousness relies on the similarity without explored a whole or redeveloped its origin spirit? Does this instead affected, coquettish, or even pretended like the clever to spell the old aura through the Indonesian language and failed because no magical power?

If there were criticists who have described the power of Tardji’s poetry, certainly it did not in terms of supernatural powers, but rather placed on the outer function, such as the reasoning of the achievements of his authorship mind findings. At there, I suspected whether it merely subterfuge to explore its uniqueness.

For intelligent, anything can be played, be equaled to, aligned, and interpreted in the considering of reason. This is similar in learning to put the brain in determining causality. So the enthusiasts of logic do not bother to interpret the poetry of the poets, such as Tardji’s poetry. At the lower level, he failed to establish his concept. Ah, I remembered the expression of Mochtar Lubis; “… bim salabim, well … out a rabbit from the hat”.

So far, he’s creative to define the sounds infiltrated into the rhythm of his poems and also to explore the energy of vowels and consonants for his poetry like a mantra. But until more than thirty years, Tardji has not proved successful to transfer the power of mantra into his poetry of mantra. He does not seem powerful enough as the king of mantra in entering in empowered alphabet that used to be called the mantra.

If Tardji performed the alphabet and the mantra as his concept, he should describe letters A to Z on the functions to, such as the weaknesses, the strengths, and things that thwart or made fail if used as a rajah. Here we can see, the first failure of ideas would have been fatal if passed, among the liberating word from the burden of the meaning behind the mantra as the standpoint.

In the realm of science of mantra, it had indeed presented the face of poetic rhythm, line construction of its writing when it used to make the rajah. Those are learned by the buff of tracing along the invisible realm. They were not just reading, listening, recording the cue of learning, but also practicing, exploring the efficacy fro related destination. They were learning from the smallest things, such as motivation of intentions, revealed for those who ever-introspective, sharp sighted and patience, and the terms of sacred feelings. As the spirit of science departs right from the mind through the ladder of life so as not to mistaken for prejudice, doubt nearly ignorance, and blind following.

If it was compared on the poetry of mantra by Tardji, it seems just word games, in the lower level it playful the language, even it nearly disdained traditional values he has been dealing with. And much worse, he claimed that Sumpah Pemuda (Youth Pledge) is poetry, more clearly that he was dealing with an empty carriage with convincing arguments:

“Sumpah Pemuda selama ini memang tidak dikenal sebagai puisi. Tetapi jika kita lihat apa yang dikandung dalam teksnya adalah imajinasi yang ditampilkan lewat kata-kata yang padat, ringkas, dan kuat makna. Karena itu, ia memiliki syarat sebagai sebuah puisi, sebagai karya imajinasi yang padat kata dan kuat makna.”

“Kami putra-putri Indonesia berbangsa satu bangsa Indonesia, bertanah air satu tanah air Indonesia, berbahasa satu bahasa Indonesia’. Dalam kenyataannya, pada waktu itu tahun 1928 belum ada atau tidak ada putra-putri Indonesia, yang ada putra-putri Jawa, Sumatra, Sunda, Maluku, Sulawesi dan seterusnya. Juga tidak ada bangsa Indonesia atau tanah air Indonesia, yang nyata ada adalah Hindia Belanda. Tidak ada bahasa Indonesia yang ada bahasa-bahasa daerah dan bahasa Melayu sebagai lingua franca”.

“The Sumpah Pemuda (Youth Pledge) for this time is not known as poetry. But if we observe carefully within the text, it is the imagination that is displayed through the solid words, compact, and powerful in meaning. Therefore, it has the qualifications as a poem, as a work of imagination that is solid in the words and strong in the meaning. ”

“We the sons and daughters of Indonesia, acknowledge one motherland, Indonesia.

We the sons and daughters of Indonesia, acknowledge one nation, the nation of Indonesia. We the sons and daughters of Indonesia, respect the language of unity, Indonesian.’ (The source of Youth Pledge translation is taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_Pledge). In fact, at that time, in 1928, there were no sons and daughters of Indonesia or didn’t exist yet, there were only sons and daughters of Java, Sumatra , Sunda, Maluku, Sulawesi and so on. And also there was no nation of Indonesia or motherland of Indonesia, the only exist was Dutch East Indies. No Indonesian language, there were only regional languages and Malay as lingua franca “.

If “… the imagination that is displayed through the solid words, compact, and powerful in meaning. Therefore, it has the qualifications as a poem …”, I think almost all the action of my essay is more poetic than the Youth Pledge. This is the curse for Tardji!

Now, let’s take look at what Asep Sambodja narrated in his book “Asep Sambodja Menulis”, published by Ultimus 2011, in the chapter Peta Politik Sastra Indonesia (1908-2008) “page 13: (And I translated into English that would be more or less like below)

“The spirit of youth emitted by Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana was actually following in the traces of its predecessor who held the Youth Congress on October 28, 1928. In the congress, Muhammad Yamin, who was 24 years old, became a key figure of the Congress, and it was he who codified the composition of the resulting congressional resolution, which we know as the Youth Pledge (Foulcher, 2000: 8). The Youth Pledge codified by Muhammad Yamin read like below:

Kami poetra dan poetri Indonesia mengakoe
bertoempah darah jang satoe, tanah Indonesia

Kami poetra dan poetri Indonesia mangakoe
berbangsa jang satoe, bangsa Indonesia

Kami poetra dan poetri Indonesia mendjoendjoeng
bahasa persatoean, bahasa Indonesia.”

And in the chapter “Epilog: Kronik Sejarah Sastra Indonesia,” page 46, Asep Sambodja attached some explanation, in 1928:

“In the second Youth Congress in Jakarta, May 28, 1928, the youth of Indonesia issued a resolution in the form of the Youth Pledge. Malay language was set to be Indonesian language. And then Novel Salah Asuhan by Abdul Muis was published. Indonesian-language script, Ken Arok dan Ken Dedes, the work by Muhammad Yamin performed at the Youth Congress “.

Then I remembered the words of Taufik Ikram Jamil that here I used to interpret Tardji from his authorship until his desire to enter the text of Youth Pledge as a work of poetry, which he said: “Sebagaimana halnya puisi, kandungan teks Sumpah Pemuda adalah imajinasi. Suatu imajinasi yang diungkapkan dengan bahasa yang ringkas, padat, ketat, dan tangkas, suatu hal yang lazim disyaratkan pada puisi (As the poetry is, the text content of the Youth Pledge is imagination. An imagination that is expressed in the compact, solid, tight, and agile language, a common thing required on the poem)”.

Below is the phrase of Taufik Ikram Jamil:

“Untunglah belati yang selalu terselip di kaus kakimu -yang selalu engkau bawa entah untuk apa- tidak sempat “beroperasi”. Di Paris van Java, yang sekarang lebih banyak terdengar cerita-cerita miang membara, orang semula mengenalmu sebagai calon politikus gagal -benar juga, kuliahmu di Fisipol tak selesai. Engkau adalah kata-kata itu sendiri, sehingga ah…”rasa yang dalam”.
“Luckily the dagger that is always tucked in your socks – which you always take for none knows what for – had no chance “to operate” yet. In Paris Van Java, which is now more audible stories about flaring Miang, the people used to know you as a failed political candidate – indeed true, your college in Fisipol never finished. You are the words themselves, so ah … “deep feeling”.

Tardji failed to transfer the power of the mantra into the form of his poetry which he says as poetry of mantra. He just shallow reconstructed the power of the mantra, fall in caulking and forgetting, editing it, as in third paragraph, the activities of describing:

“With or from or on the mantra I wrote. In the activity of writing, sometimes parts of the mantra I strengthened with my writing. Sometimes the mantra instead closed, erased, or forgotten because of my writing is on it. Indeed, one of the roles of writing is an attempt to cover or to forget, which is to forget the values or particulars that are no longer relevant for the present days or for the future, thus it’s more focused (additional meaning) on the parts or the values that are still meaningful to the present days or even for the future “.

After I felt his poetry of mantra that doesn’t have magical power, meaning, Tardji was in rush to search for the concept that is equal with the value of mantra, which is the value of pledge. In this case, he took the Youth Pledge that its rhythm is clear and authoritative and also definitely historical course, than his work.

With the joking ring tone and at the same time seriously can be said, Muhammad Yamin more poets than Sutardji Calzoum Bachri. With this, the concept he has been dealing with firmly fell. His exasperation was obvious, if we drew the correlation of the words of Taufik Ikram Jamil above.

Whether there are still criticists and poets that have minded tail to follow his style. Certainly, if any, they are also lower and could be expressed have no magic power as well, because they do not reach the spiritual tradition and only the worn clothes in use, although the success had shown in entertaining the Indonesian literati.

And so is “my interpretation” to Sutardji Calzoum Bachri, a man who said the God dreams, imagines. In fact, he likes to imagine otherwise, likes to dream. Because the God Most Gracious, then the dream of Tardji became the Presiden Penyair and the Raja Mantra was achieved. But of course, with the quality of doesn’t understand the schools of Ibn Arabi.

* Nurel Javissyarqi, wanderer from the land of Java, Lamongan.
http://sastra-indonesia.com/2011/06/akhirnya/

VII

This section I followed an odd number VII, the final space of my disagreement with Tardji. Which was begun by his delirium that the Lord imagined, dreamed, had inspired me to visit:

“Jika tidak satu pun kritikus dapat memberikan penilaian atau pemahaman yang meyakinkan atau malah hanya sekadar komentar asal bunyi atau lip service saja, maka pengarangnya harus angkat bicara. Pengarang tidak mati karena karyanya selesai ditulis, tetapi malah harus hidup mendampingi karyanya yang “aneh” itu memberikan komentar, visi, dan penjelasan agar para pembaca yang kebingungan bisa mendapatkan bandingan dari penafsiran pengarang terhadap penafsiran pembacanya. Hal ini perlu karena pembaca tidak mendapatkan bandingan pengalaman dalam membacanya, karena karya itu adalah karya baru yang sebelumnya tidak memiliki pendahulunya.” (Esai pembuka, ihwal personal, dari buku Isyarat Sutardji Calzoum Bahri).

“If none of the criticist can provide an assessment or convincing understanding or even just a comment talked as he likes or merely lip service, then the author must speak up. The author did not die because his work completed, but instead he had to live to accompany his “strange” works to give comment, vision, and explanation to the confusing reader could get comparison of the author’s interpretation from the reader’s interpretations. This is necessary because the reader did not get a comparative experience in reading it, because the work is new work and previously had no such. “(The preface essay, acknowledgment, from the book Isyarat Sutardji Calzoum Bahri).

***

A work could be meant as an art, created by artists, whether painting, sculpture, music, literature and so on, truly is the serve to the life for who enlivens. Worship is done very carefully, meticulously-carefully; always treat the content of the value that he has been studying from his soul for the sake of the result in the future.

The author hopes minimal uselessness, and then the revision of view is important, besides to renew the intention also the power he has. This was done to get the freshness to step on the level of broad consciousness under destination to increase the degree he ever had.

At there, hard efforts are required; seriousness was taken by quiet space and also the crowd all around. The better view would be grabbed in achievement of the people afterwards. Finally, there was disappointed by the attitude of disdain, ignorant around the working.

The top of knowledge is searching, take all the field and the dropping of essential springs, climb up the hill of conviction, believing in the certainty of destiny within the body as well as the responsibilities, also suspecting the results before and after that at the time of vigilance developing the issue of vibration to attract the signs, a hunch. In order to have better progress to reflect mono-submission, after sailed the boat of lamp of the heart.

Therefore, a mature work doesn’t need to be explained by originators, just simply. At there it doesn’t observe deeply, merely a kind of abstraction for wildness of the readers to get illumination; by itself the readers know the existence of those values from within, not completely from the understanding of its creator. Here, the responsibility in the meantime, and the introduction can be done by someone else; observers, criticists, friends, or creative enemies.

If the artists explain the details of his work, it is not the responsibility, but his work is shoddy, until it needs a kind of introduction from the owner, despite his work practically is new, even strange schools of thought. Moreover the mantra, it is familiar to the people of the world who discover the meaning behind the material nature.

If in sufficient detail, I suspected his heart didn’t sincerely relinquish. There was regret in the face of his work. Apparently, his creation can not be enjoyed and doesn’t satisfy the mind. That is failure of the artists. He didn’t release the communication concept, the colors he ever seriously with by the whole self.

Thus, the principal of masterpiece is the concept that always studies. If there is signs of deviation, he would be quickly to correct it in order to the concept he proclaimed won’t run off of the reader and himself. It’s true, the work that would be like to be known as long as possible, it crashed down before it possessed the readers, just because of the branches of deed were merely estimation, it was not tested, although at lower levels.

This usually occurs onto ambitious artists with immature believe, but he rarely suspects his achievement and satisfied enough to the grabbing he got. Whereas the first achievement may be poisoned, before he reached the content of the fruit in order to bed out on the fields of wanderer.

***

Two paragraphs below, I quoted from my essay entitled Intrik Penyair dan Karyanya (Intrigue Poet and His work), in the book Trilogi Kesadaran at page 284:

”Puisi ialah masa-masa mati. Terhenti atas kekakuan dirinya yang telah terselubung kelenturan. Ia tidak bisa bergerak terlampau jauh, ketika “kata-kata” sudah mewakili kehadirannya. Maka penciptaan puisi, sejenis latihan bunuh diri berkali-kali”.

”Siapa yang mati di sana? Penciptanya, dipermalukan kejujurannya. Meski berselimutkan kerahasiaan, tetaplah ada keinginan untuk diketahui, difahami. Mungkin ini sisi lain kebinalan puisi sebelum mati, sedurung dikubur dalam keranda kata-kata”.

“Poetry is dead periods. It is stopped on the stiffness of itself that had been hidden by flexibility. It could not move too far, when the “words” had been represented its existence. Hence the creation of poetry is a kind of training suicide so many times.”

“Who died there? It’s creator, humiliated by its honesty. Though it’s wrapped in secrecy, there remains a desire to be known, to be understood. Maybe it’s another side of the wild behavior of poetry before it dies, before it buried in coffin of the words.”

***

Sense of dead is shy, humiliated, because of the secret he had all this time, of the truth of poetry is known by audience, though covered by tone of meaningful words. The poet is shivering like when he was creating, the shy makes him to be constantly at work, a form of double life that rose from the fire of spirit.

And die so many times is similar a workout of suicide. Someone likes to try out magic in learning invulnerability, and it was tested to establish personality and to understand as far as the level of esoteric knowledge he ever studied.

If died at the early of fighting, we still have thousands of troops that have been trained to avenge the defeat of their brother. These include forms of responsibility, rather than helping in the middle of a fight with a companion argument like throwing a shield, if it lost off from the grip.

The seconds of responsibility come to observe the defeat or even the victory, when it was compared to another masterpiece. It was borne by those who crazy about him, because of the author is such as mother born it. Would not the mother be shame, if her children deviate? The mother is chevalier who sincerely gave up her children slain in the field of battle with pride.

The sense of responsibility lies on the moments of lulled, growth, the times of revision. When it published, the branches of troops follow the path of their own destiny, as far as the certainty desired has gravity he had of air-ground attack and from the wind constantly with the change driving the laws of nature. Thus, it is not right enough if Tardji understood the responsibilities like below:

“Dan lebih penting lagi dengan pengarangnya angkat bicara, ia telah menunjukkan tanggung jawabnya sebagai pengarang. Jika ia berdiam diri bisa timbul kesan hanya sekadar beraneh-aneh, cari sensasi, atau menulis secara untung-untungan atau dengan kata lain ia kurang bertanggung jawab atas karyanya”.

“And more important of the author spoke, he had shown his responsibility as an author. If he just speechless, it could arise an impression that he was merely made peculiar, looked for sensation, or wrote a chancy, or in other words, he is not responsible for his work “.

At there, it seems that Tardji only dare to play mobilizing when the children saw his work interpreted deeply, its entrails and intestines scattered and poured all around the battlefield, performed a lot of facts in the court. If he came for correction, his work looks much worse, because it makes the audience confused thousand around the square.

Don’t blame the readers if they do not understand and then assumed that they are confusing. But it is also necessary to suspect the works, is it powerful or just chit-chat and lost in the arena? I assumed the character of mobilizing as the form of doesn’t understand to the true responsibilities, and much worse is gathering the forces for the sake of attacking by overwhelming numbers.

The poet should introspective into his self and his work, so the energy he used is not in vain, moreover spent the sentences of suggestion without having philosophically content. Then get ready to be tipped and bounced out right from the circle of understanding that anyone expected, because he didn’t occupy a comfortable chair in the studying the work. The concept of anxious rose only from immature mental. Beware, raw fruits make stomach ache!

Then what would be of the book reviewer, the interpreter of knowledge, and the criticists, if the artist who created the work, explains the results until its all detail? As Tardji stated, ” If none of the criticist can provide an assessment or convincing understanding or even just a comment talked as he likes or merely lip service, then the author must speak up.”

I thought that it just the reflection of doubts in his work. Dissatisfaction above is the searching result of the criticists, inappropriate with him at the beginning of creation. This may be the form of redundantly self confidence, besides by the interpreters of shadows. In fact, the imagination of translators can be varying in opinion; nevertheless they got to the main point. Doesn’t the assessment of others tend to fill?

It should be the area of freedom. The mother of the knights blesses the children to the battlefield and only prayer and sufficiently efforts. For example, we made a better works to prepare the wave of arguments for the sake of the betterment of his artist’s prestige.

Do not the artists (the writers) demanded to refresh his views, like in every morning the sun rises and then follows by the moon, rearrange the intentions, have no feeling of complacent. In the process, willing attitude of cutting is embedded, buried the arm until the entire body of the work, if have no power of fighter. Soul of the work that has warrior mentality will inspire the works afterwards. Therefore, the independence of the work attitude should be present, not covered by speech that increases the shallow of its presence, and made its existence confused as a solid unified of a masterpiece.

Exceptions, if forced, coerced, main spiritual of the works was mugged by desperation. It must be underlined. Provided an illustration at its side, issued another example that was equal to the case at hand so as not to seem funny and can reduce the authority of the work. Similar to investigators make laws by studying various cases that looks like to conclude the value of wise remains within the scope of ideals. Those were required to develop the medium of reasoning to enlightenment that is desired by the opponent.

If using that way there are who still demand the responsibility at the wrong place, let’s just look upon that he is in different classes by giving him the way necessarily. The way of interpreting should still have limiting on the work, to omit the image that we are enlivening the work that has been considered dead by the criticists.

http://sastra-indonesia.com/2011/06/menggugat-tanggung-jawab-kepenyairan-sutardji-calzoum-bachri-vii/

”Penyair-penyair itu diikuti oleh orang-orang yang dungu.
Tidakkah kau lihat mereka menenggelamkan diri dalam sembarang lembah hayalan dan kata,
dan mereka suka mengujarkan apa yang tak mereka kerjakan  kecuali mereka yang beriman,
beramal baik, banyak mengingat dan menyebut Allah dan melakukan pembelaan ketika dizalimi”.
(Terjemahan QS. Asysyu’araa: 224-227)

As for the poets, [only] the perverse follow them.
Have you not noticed that in every valley they rove.
and that they say what they do not do?
Save those who believe and perform righteous deeds and remember God frequently and vindicate themselves after they have been wronged, and those who are wrongdoers will soon know the reversal with which they will meet. (QS. As-Syu’ara, 224-227). (original translation from the link http://www.altafsir.com/ViewTranslations.asp?Display=yes&SoraNo=26&Ayah=227&toAyah=227&Language=2&LanguageID=2&TranslationBook=3)

Read the book written by Nurel Javissyarqi entitle Menggugat Tanggungjawab Kepenyairan Sutardji Calzoum Bachri (Sue Responsibility of Authorship of Sutardji Calzoum Bachri), which is printed in the book by publisher sastraNESIA & Pustaka puJAngga, in 2011, as if flinched and awakened to anyone seriously in the fields of poetry and authorship. Nurel’s enthusiasm is so flared up, it seems that he – I borrowed the term stated by Mr. Maman S. Mahayana – (telah sekian lama menyimpan sejumlah kegelisahan dan gagal menjumpai katup pembukanya) had long kept a number of anxieties and failed to encounter the opener, luckily he is a pious artist, or an artist who is pious, hence what he described are still under control. In the writing, the spirit of Watawaa Shauu bi al-Haqi Watawaa Shauu bi al-Shabri (edify each other to truth and advised each other to patience) was really explicitly performed.

At the first part, Nurel revealed that the standpoint of the book “Sues Responsibility of Authorship of Sutardji Calzoum Bachri”, originated from an essay of Sutardji Calzoum Bachri entitled Sajak dan Pertanggungjawaban Penyair; his culture oration in the event of Pekan Presiden Penyair, published by Republika, at September 9, 2007. In the article Tardji states that Sumpah Pemuda is poetry, which is based on the schools of Ibn Arabi about kun fayakun, then expanded to the following phrases: “Peran penyair menjadi unik, karena—sebagaimana Tuhan tidak bisa dimintakan pertanggunganjawaban atas ciptaannya, atas mimpinya, atas imajinasinya— secara ekstrim boleh dikatakan penyair tidak bisa dimintakan pertanggungjawaban atas ciptaannya, atas puisinya.” (The role of poet becomes unique, because – as the God could not be requested the responsibility of His creation, of His dream, of His imagination – extremely we may say that the poet can not be asked the responsibility of his creation, of his poetry.)”

With those statements, Nurel shocked; his eyes looked angry, his teeth chattered, although he only prays five times a day, he became very ireful when Tardji said that God dreams, imagines, and Tardji treated the same as the poet, which can not be asked his responsibility for his creation, whereas Allah says Faman ya’mal mitsqaala dzaarratin khairan yarahu Waman ya’mal mitsqaala dzaarratin syarran yarahu.

The poet is common human being, and Tardji too, he is not a rasul nor a prophet, his degree is no better than shoe soles, he is a creature (who created) seemed to equate his position with Al-Khaliq (the Creator), so hastily he declared “—sebagaimana Tuhan tidak bisa dimintakan pertanggunganjawaban atas ciptaannya, atas mimpinya, atas imajinasinya— secara ekstrim boleh dikatakan penyair tidak bisa dimintakan pertanggungjawaban atas ciptaannya, atas puisinya.”  (- as the God could not be requested the responsibility of His creation, of His dream, of His imagination – extremely we may say that the poet can not be asked the responsibility of his creation, of his poetry.)”

Allah is Al-Khaliq (the Creator). The word “Khaliq” came from the verb “khalaqa”, which is in the dictionary of Al-Ashri the word ”khalaqa” means “to create”, “create original,” “produces”. It’s different from the word “Ja’ala” which means “to make” even though it could also mean as “to create”, but the word “khalaqa” more refers to the meaning of “to create” of which previously did not exist into existence, while the word “ja’ala” means “to make” from that already existed to be made in another form. While the word “makhluq” includes the noun of object (isim maf’ul) which means “made” or “created.”

In second part, Nurel expressed that “If only Tardji took anywhere of Ibn Arabi’s thought, it is not worth to re-compound and make it into another sense, which is then further stressed on the imagination. Truly, in Ibn Arabi’s work there are no words referring to the imagination, but it’s the emanation. “Ibn Arabi thought that the God is Absolute Essence, it’s impossible to be known or how might possibly He be called as God, if no one considered that He is the God, Ibn Arabi took the basis of Hadith Qudsi which means “I am a hidden treasure, I’d like to be known, so I created the world”.

In third part, Nurel said that how could the credo of Tardji liberate the words from the colonialism of understanding, from the burden of ideas, let the words to define its own, writing poetry for Tardji is to restore the word to the mantra, whereas according to Nurel the mantra is fully meaning, because of its meaning the power of voices can break through anything desired. While on the set of books and working papers of international seminar and numerous essays about Tardji, entitle Raja Mantra Presiden Penyair published by Yayasan Panggung Melayu, 2007, the title seems frightening, wonderful, intoxicating and unmatched, and therefore Nurel became increasingly amused.

In forth part, Nurel revealed the birth process of Sumpah Pemuda (1928), which previously (1920?s) there were Indonesian Renaissance by Indonesian Youth movement, and also elaborated on the human condition of Indonesia until now that is still believe in the symbols, slogans, amulets, the mantra and jampe-jampe. Nurel also described how the writers and the poets who do not afraid of jail, the hunger of his family, and also their bravery which inspires human being around them and their successors such as Mochtar Lubis, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, W.S. Renda and so on. They are responsible for the behavior of fate and their works.

In the fifth part, Nurel expressed how the mantras are expanded, ranging from the values of Islam teachings to adopt until the mantras that have low spiritual power, which has red aura appearance, it’s easy to learn because it serves to the jinn or other forms of falsification of the pure teaching that is deliberately reorganize for the sake of reversal prestige, which usually worn by shamans. So what would be if Sutardji in his mantras turn blindly the language as he likes until the meaning is somersault, has no content, and not magical power. Please pay attention to his poem entitle Shang Hai below:

SHANG                         HAI

ping diatas pong
pong diatas ping
ping ping bilang pong
pong pong bilang ping
mau pong? bilang ping
mau mau bilang pong
mau ping? bilang pong
mau mau bilang ping
ya pong ya ping
ya ping ya pong
tak ya pong tak ya ping
ya tak ping ya tak pong
kutakpunya ping
kutakpunya pong
pinggir ping kumau pong
tak tak bilang ping
pinggir pong kumau ping
tak tak bilang pong
sembilu jarakMu merancap nyaring

(Sutardji Calzoum Bachri, O Amuk Kapak, three anthology of poems, 1973)

In the poem above, it just seemed that he has a game of the words or the language. So, to Nurel, it’s questionable, doesn’t Tardji’s creed make the people into the abyss of Jahily (stupidity)?

At the end of his writings, Nurel affirmed “so far, Tardji is creative to parse the sounds infiltrated into the rhythm of his poetry which is also willing to explore energy of any vocal or even consonants for his poetry to be like the mantra, but up to 30 years, he has not proven successful in transferring the power of mantra into his poem of mantra. He was not sufficiently powerful as Raja Mantra.”

Jerukmacan, May 21, 2011

Art is long
Life is short
Religion is deep

*) Presented at the event Bedah Buku dalam Safari Sastra organized by Sanggar Belajar Bareng Gubug Liat Jombang, at Sunday, May 22, 2011, on the Hall of SMA Muhammadiyah 1 Jombang.
**) Aktifis Komunitas Sastrawan Pesantren Jawa Timur, now living in Pondok Pesantren Darul Falah Jerukmacan, Sawo Jetis, Mojokerto, HP 081 931 091 965. E-mail: www.ppdf @ yahoo.co.id
http://sastra-indonesia.com/2011/05/nurel-javissyarqi-menggugat-sutardji/

VI

In the book Raja Mantra Presiden Penyair, the poet, Taufik Ikram Jamil, wrote an essay entitle Bersama Sutardji Calzoum Bachri which has 16 pages, from page 64 to 79, tells of his familiarity with the figure which is known as mantra maker. Ikram told the story of Tardji since he was a kid to the creative process on the land of Pasundan, with warm hug of longing, it seems that Ikram knows exactly tread step and sniffed the scent, sign and shape of any cloud shades.

On tenderness of the Malay’s, Ikram was slowly entering reality around the story with fragrance flower, which is fine to the eyes. And in fact, it seemed that he totally criticized the mantra maker. Or it just my view, or amazement means more to boomerang alias weapon strikes its own master. But, although I do not know Ikram, I don’t think so. He’s been sneaking into the softness of manners of language like teachers teach the knowledge to the elementary children, through politeness of rhythm and sound; he took off one by one robe of Presiden Penyair.

I do not know how many times I mentioned in my writing. I’m jealous to the people of Sumatra (her literary man) in the past. Which affected to almost all my writing, as if I want to preserve the unique repertoire of Malay poets. But, because of I was born in the Java land, hence I sent the wind to the spirit of natural content of Dwipa land while expecting a blessing, in turn, as if I was chosen, to straighten out the darkness.

What I got into the sky of upper world, since known ages expanded the horizons of thought, enriched the mind, seriousness to draw scientific. The bones of ancestors are always clinging to be born by the feet step on the world of safety. That is the undeniable law; there is no escape except the bitter fate of simalakama inflicted, such as the practice of jailangkung; “arrived uninvited, return undelivered”.

Who is he? He is spirits irresponsible to the line of his writings, on the orders of the fad caller and those who faltering their heart. While the calling of ancestor spirits bases on the law of tranquility, which is recorded in each dust of traveling, on the foot of wanderer who considers as foreigner in the nature of life.

***

Almost all article of Ikram criticized deeply, or in other words peeling fruit of virgin by force and early raping. Slowly I paralyzed to quote:

“Maka, aku datang dalam tidurmu, dalam mati sementaramu, ketika rohmu diangkat ke Arasy. Tapi, kau lupa berwudhuk, maka engkau hanya dapat berada di pinggir. Kau lupa ucapkan ayat mantra, tak terbaca engkau seperti Al Qur’an. Pada gilirannya engkau berteriak, “Emak… Allah… Allah…” Lalu, aku sambut “Alif lam mim…”.

“So, I came in your sleep, in your temporarily death, when your spirit is raised to the Arasy. But, you forgot to ablution, and then you can only be on the edge. You forgot to say the verse of mantra; you were not read like the Qur’an. In turn, you shouting, “Emak (mother)… Allah … Allah … “Then, I answered ” Alif lam mim …”.

With the word “tidur (sleep)”, Ikram spread granules of ash that has written sirep megananda (spell to lull people) by shaman to the fontanel of Tardji which was crowned presidency. Then raised it with the power of unconsciousness “mati sementara (temporarily death)” which means that the life is fully guile, mirage, near to haze hocuses attitude of authenticity.

As logical as the Divinity, Arasy is especially for only the Prophet Muhammad Saw., the angel Gabriel and also his mount Buraq was not allowed by Him. This is cleverness which has ingenuity to rise gently, but in fact it’s in the contrary. But Ikram worried, his expression was not read, hence he reminds that anyone void ablution when he is writing, so quickly to take the ablutions.

Each drop of ablution waters incarnates guardian angel, to increase solemnly to Him. Then the guardian angels of the grave ask things about displacement of the spirit power in the body through legislation have been determined. Tardji shocked and afraid because of his mantras burned. Then the mantra sheets revealed by the angel, his face became dark by opened up every verse of Scriptures that emits the light until its letters so difficult to read, his eyes dazzled. Finally he shouted, Ikram politely led him to pray “Alif lam mim …”. The word “sambut (answer)” is merely expressions of friends, so there won’t be deeper hurt feeling among friends with a little teasing.

As a good friend, Ikram reprimanded through the words of A’ishah r.a., or as vague as ascertained that Tardji will not buy it deeply. That is her softness; the beauty came out of the mouths of women:  “Seandainya aku dilahirkan sebagai daun…” Sebab, manusia pada hakikatnya kekal dan karenanya harus bertanggung jawab di depan mahkamah paling agung dengan hakim tunggal Yang Mahaagung pula.

***

“Tidak, engkau tidak bebas mencari Tuhanmu. Sebab, begitu kau mengembara dalam aorta, dalam rimba darahmu, hanya tertuju kepada-Nya, Ia menemukanmu dalam wajah yang tidak engkau ketahui, sebab tidak ada contoh pada pandanganmu, tak ada padanan dalam rasamu. Sebab itulah, engkau kemudian memandang pada berjuta-suatu angka yang dapat engkau namakan-apa pun, tak teduh dengan seribu pohon, tak jatuh pada seribu perawan, engkau tak akan bisa mengeluh….”.

“Had I been born as a leaf …” Because, truly the man is nature, and therefore he must be responsible in front of the Supreme Court with one and the only judge which is Sublime as well.”

***

“No, you do not free to seek your Lord. Because, once you’re wandering in the aorta, in the jungle of your blood, only directed to Him, He found you in the face that you do not know, because there is no example in your view, there are no equivalent in your feel. For that is, then you look at the millions and a number that can be-whatever you call, no shade with a thousand trees, no fall in a thousand virgins, you can not complain ….”.

The words “tertuju pada-Nya (directed to Him),” sweet and charming flattery, it seems that Ikram have memorized the mathematical formulation of the Sufis, ascending-down melodies with the word pressure at the ends are deadly and philosophically difficult to argue, if not contemplate it. Accounting of moral and manner on the meter of Shari’a that is reflected by spiritual deed, true dreams is not the truth, and the reality of things. The creatures glorify such as the angels only recognize the holy allegiance a number of creation, while the tune follows the rhythm of light letters, the God’s speech enlivens the joints of Islamic civilization. As the transparent circular form, the values emitted since confinement, in the depths of mirror reflected Ikram’s face was in the middle of solemn pray to the Sole Reality.

There are a few sentences dismantle Tardji’s habits through symbols of the Scripture, he was only ever come across or just saw it. Oh, the beauty gives clear parable to roughly one for those who understand. Here, I realized. Heart is more ancient than the languages of mind, thus the concepts of philosophers are right, it’s all about the feeling is the beginning of knowledge. Here, though Ikram is younger than 22 years of him, he showed that he could control situation of the field with the blown of small memories which all people used to enjoy it.

Here it can be summed, count of mathematical reasoning that is easily traced its formation, while the history of the inner and mind concentration, it’s hard being tracked, unless wisely contemplating the life, then figured out. It’s not wrong if Leo Tolstoy and others nearby with the nature of peace settlement as the foundation of values the declared for the next thinkers.

***

“Dulu, kita menyebut selat yang memisahkan Riau dengan Singapura dan Johor hanya dengan sebutan parit (long time ago, we mention the strait separates Riau with Singapore and Johor just with trenches)”. The statement by Ikram was reminiscent of the expression of the Java community who live in villages, especially on the mountains. If there are wanderers asked, how far distance to be taken to get to the destination, it is usually answered, “only a few mounds of earth”. It looks like very close to the eyes, but actually it’s far and inappropriate with the imagined.

So be aware, the power of past people is superior than the state nowadays which was considered lightly to go along the long road as if so close, and now it’s answered by technological progress. But there are still eliminated; familiarity, measuring physical power, levels of walking through the nature, on the whole body through the pores; the wind blow permeates the content of life.

Is this the location to sum the breath, measure the clarity of nature love achievement to the human to expand the petals of life to the limit of consciousness to struggle. Without forgetting the edge of heart, until slightly exceeded but more acquisition, the true values capable to explore the genuine destiny, with spiritual comfort from the reflection of essence of sensory. Those which is appeared by the power of pure remorse, not soon be gone a change, then repeat the folly again.

***

“Untunglah, belati yang selalu terselip di kaus kakimu -yang selalu engkau bawa entah untuk apa- tidak sempat “beroperasi”. Di Paris van Java, yang sekarang lebih banyak terdengar cerita-cerita miang membara, orang semula mengenalmu sebagai calon politikus gagal -benar juga, kuliahmu di Fisipol tak selesai. Engkau adalah kata-kata itu sendiri, sehingga ah…”rasa yang dalam”.
(“Fortunately, the knife that is always tucked in your socks – which you always take which I don’t know what for” – had no time to “operate”. In Paris Van Java, which is now more audible stories of flare up Miang, the used to know you as a failed political candidate –it’s true, your college in Fisipol didn’t finish. You are the words themselves, so ah … “deep feeling”.)

At first glance Tardji looks like he is not a figure of “thugs” in TIM nor in Bandung, his stage is only in the space of art. His artist characteristic is not hot temper by in and out of jail, he is the degree of reality to determine the pattern of beyond merely staging. His vagrant can be categorized as warm, he has not enough guts if attacked or have never touched by another power.

It appeared in my magic mirror, the totality of his modernity in the city is respected by the people of night, but his annoyance is not famous. Ah, if Tardji was in Yogyakarta, I would have teased him. Because of at the limits of particular anxious, knowable easily, how deep the power of creation consisted in from it. The word “operate” could be interpreted as has not stroke into the truth of humanity.

The word “failed politician” reminded me of the end of his essay about responsibility, more apparently he wished to control the stage of social, but caught by the dark scope that its nature of reality is not controlled yet. Walking in hunger, eyes are dizzy, ready to challenge of stabbing of sharp times. Doesn’t wave of fist of pedestrian perform the power of swing, with once bit would tear down opponent. This knowledge is not in the books, but do not we prefer to smell the fragrance of the garden than the bouquet?

“Ya, ibu, seseorang yang harus diabdikan tiga kali lebih utama dari yang lainnya dalam hubungan sesama manusia (Yes, the mother is someone who should be served three times more primarily than any other in human relations)”. This sentence is correlation point of the previous sentence: “Emak … Allah … Alah …” which should be: Mother, Mother, Mother, father …. Here, I sensed the outrage of Tardji, next to the selfishness of his authorship as if he wished to erase the memories of ancestors.

“Astaga, tak serta-merta engkau diterima. Karya-karyamu dinilai bukan sajak, sebagaimana pernyataan Sutan Takdir Alisyahbana sampai akhir hayatnya yang begitu fanatik pada aliran konvensional. Betapapun, pada gilirannya engkau harus berbicara lewat kredomu bahwa kata-kata memiliki semangatnya sendiri, orang tak peduli karena mereka menganggap kata-kata hanyalah gula-gula. Tapi, Horison acuh saja dengan pandangan sinis penganut konvensional tadi. Sajak-sajakmu tetap dimuat-entah dengan alasan apa, tentulah bukan karena alasan temporer agaknya. Ketika O Amuk Kapak terbit 1981, satu generasi yang lalu, engkau telah mencari dan menemukan tempat, kata Hasan Junus”.

“Oh my God, you were not simply accepted. The work of yours is considered not the rhyme, as the state of Sutan Takdir Alisyahbana to the end of his life he was so fanatical in conventional stream. However, in turn, you should talk through your creed that the words have their own spirits; the people do not care because they think the words merely candy. But, Horison was indifferent with cynical view of those who follow the convensional view. Your rhyme was still printed – for some reason; certainly it’s not presumably for temporary reason. When O Amuk Kapak published in 1981, a past generation, you have searched and found the place, Hasan Junus said”.

There is a tendency, hot-tempered literary man has a strong belief, although his concept is weak but he would be arisen by his surroundings. Perhaps with specific destination that he would be realized on previous achievement through more robust construction. But the fatal mistake of the criticists, they are not seriously pay attention of any symptoms with any indication surrounded. So discrepancy strikes major failures, the foundation that takes care to be towering, forgotten that the initial of spike was not as deep as searching.

The most important is to understand the intentions. The passion of blossoming flowers in the same direction of certainty, thus how sturdy the bridge of crossing, if it’s built on a swamp (weakness), it’s worrying that it would be fell into the belly of the policy. But Tardji is still the presiden penyair, he would adorn the media until the school, while the writer, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, is at the overhang of the history of Indonesian literature, because of his destiny was born in a small town, Blora.

I heard a voice, “ah it couldn’t be equated.” And the another voice came, “how couldn’t be, both are writers”. Those who said ‘couldn’t’, like dry and stiff branches that is easily broken, but the history doesn’t run merely for ten, twenty and one hundred years. The quality of the work roared louder when it left over by the owner. Also noteworthy, propaganda makes different destiny, a working of revising of the masterpiece refreshes the memory. However, at some level, the laws of nature remain valid. A powerful reverbs, fasting and efforts of physical and mental remove forcibly the fate covered by signed fog. Literature of this homeland is just like this; despite it had sacrificed a lot of victimizing everywhere.

***

“Kawanku, Abdul Wahab dan Bayau setuju dengan pendapat beberapa kalangan yang menyebutkan bahwa sajak-sajakmu berada dalam tataran transendental. Hasrat merasa adanya sesuatu yang agung, menguasai, dan sejenis dengan itu, sesuatu yang tak terjangkau, adalah naluri -fitroh. Sufi? Entahlah, sebab sufi cenderung pada menjalani suatu peristiwa dengan cara yang telah dicapainya, sementara engkau senantiasa dalam proses untuk berbagai hal termasuk cara mencapai sasaran, bahkan sasaran itu sendiri”.

“My friend, Abdul Wahab and Bayau agreed with the opinion of some society who said that your rhymes are in a transcendental grade. The desire to feel the presence of something grand, master, and such kind of it, something unattainable, it is instinct –pure destiny. Sufi? I don’t know, because Sufis tend to undergo an event in a way he has been achieved, while you are constantly in the process for various things including how to get to the target, even the target itself.”

Several times Ikram supported the rate of Tardji’s authorship through someone else’s voice. It made me remembered to the phrase of French literary and philosopher, Voltaire: “Even if I do not like your opinion, I would still support the right of your tongue”.

In the matter of seriously into Sufis and so on, back to the map of Indonesian literature, the owner of tendency manner to equate their own friends. If we compare Tardji with great predecessors, he’s nothing in drawing scientific and struggle of telling to the other. As if he ignored saga written, suddenly juxtaposed without a historical depth searching of each figure that reflects his achievements, then it could be said as practically magic.

At last, as the final writing in this session, the writer who was born in Telukbelitung, Bengkalis, Riau; Taufik Ikram Jamil, wrote an expression of Ratnawati S., an elementary school child in Jakarta, in early 1980′s, published in daily newspaper, Sinar Harapan, entitled “Puisis Buat Kak Sutardji”. He created the impression that Tardji is deserved to be example. But if you read the whole essay, the views deviated (purposely deviated) a little bit.

Indeed there is some certainty of Ikram’s voices to Tardji, but rather for the sake of the land of Malay’s, or as if there is no power of echoes buzzing loudly in his ears; Tardji is truly exist. About the celebration of his establishing, only the One knows more the secrets in its depths.

Ikram finished with tender words: “Kepada Allah saya minta ampun, segala kebaikan bersumber dari-Nya, sedangkan segala keburukan maupun kekurangan berasal dari saya sebagai tanda rahmat Allah yang menunjukkan bahwa saya tidaklah memiliki kemampuan apa-apa (In the presence of Allah I ask for forgiveness, all kindness comes from Him, while all the evils and shortcomings come from me as a sign of God’s grace that shows that I have no capabilities at all)”.

So do I, just as additional writing. If there is a form of Him Alhamdulillah, otherwise, hopefully may be given forgiveness, because of all the effort only comes from Him and also return to Him.

http://sastra-indonesia.com/2011/06/menggugat-tanggung-jawab-kepenyairan-sutardji-calzoum-bachri-vi/