Papers by Thomas M Hunter
![Research paper thumbnail of 2020. [Acri and Hunter] Translation as Commentary in the Sanskrit-Old Javanese Didactic and Religious Literature from Java and Bali](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/63841894/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Medieval Worlds 11 (Ideologies of Translation I), Jun 2020
This article discusses the dynamics of translation and exegesis documented in the body of Sanskri... more This article discusses the dynamics of translation and exegesis documented in the body of Sanskrit-Old Javanese Śaiva and Buddhist technical literature of the tutur/tattva genre, composed in Java and Bali in the period from c. the ninth to the sixteenth century. The texts belonging to this genre, mainly preserved on palm-leaf manuscripts from Bali, are concerned with the reconfiguration of Indic metaphysics, philosophy, and soteriology along localized lines. Here we focus on the texts that are built in the form of Sanskrit verses provided with Old Javanese prose exegesis-each unit forming a ‘translation dyad’. The Old Javanese prose parts document cases of linguistic and cultural localization that could be regarded as broadly corresponding to the Western categories of translation, paraphrase, and commentary , but which often do not fit neatly into any one category. Having introduced the ‘vyākhyā-style’ form of commentary through examples drawn from the early inscriptional and didactic literature in Old Javanese, we present key instances of ‘cultural translations’ as attested in texts composed at different times and in different geographical and religio-cultural milieus, and describe their formal features. Our aim is to document how local agents (re-)interpreted, fractured, and restated the messages conveyed by the Sanskrit verses in the light of their contingent contexts, agendas, and prevalent exegeti-cal practices. Our hypothesis is that local milieus of textual production underwent a progressive ‘drift’ from the Indic-derived scholastic traditions that inspired-and entered into a conversation with-the earliest sources, composed in Central Java in the early medieval period, and progressively shifted towards a more embedded mode of production in East Java and Bali from the eleventh to the sixteenth century and beyond.
[All papers of the peer-reviewed open access journal Medieval Worlds 11.2020 are available via http://dx.doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no11_2020]
Wacana, 2018
This article focuses on two issues in the study of the syntax and semantics of the Old Javanese: ... more This article focuses on two issues in the study of the syntax and semantics of the Old Javanese: (1) the effects of irrealis on the marking of the "passive" or Undergoer Voice verb phrases of Old Javanese, and (2) the study of complementation in Old Javanese, with particular reference to a particle n/an, first studied in an article by E.M. Uhlenbeck (1986). The study is introduced with a brief survey of some of the major components of the morphosyntactic system of Old Javanese developed largely using the analytical framework of Nicholas Himmelmann's study (2005) of the symmetrical voice systems of the Austronesian family. Some terms like PRO have been adapted for use from more recent transformational models with a view to making the research for the paper accessible to a wider range of readers interested in syntactic and semantic issues in language.
Hunter, Thomas M.
2009
“Bahasa Sanskerta di Nusantara: Terjemahan, Pemribumian, Dan Identitas An... more Hunter, Thomas M.
2009
“Bahasa Sanskerta di Nusantara: Terjemahan, Pemribumian, Dan Identitas Antardaerah.” In Henri Chambert-Loir, (ed.) Sadur: Sejarah Terjemahan di Indonesia dan Malaysia. Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, pp. 23-47.
Catatan: Abstrak untuk makalah ini belum diterjemahkan ke dalam Bahasa Indonesia. Versi Bahasa Inggeris dimuat sementara di bawah ini.
Abstract: In this study I suggest that we should understand process of translation from Sanskrit into Old Javanese in terms of the role of transculturation and processes of translocal identity formation as explored in the works of scholars like Sheldon Pollock with reference to a “Sanskrit cosmopolis” or “Sanskrit ecumene” (1996) and the development of “cosmopolitan vernacular” languages (1998) within the same socio-cultural zones at the end of the 1st millennium CE. I begin this study by comparing claims made by Pollock regarding the role of Sanskrit and Prakrit languages in the Indian inscriptional record with the evidence of the Malay-Indonesian archipelago, concluding that a basic similarity stands out, but that developments in the archipelago take a different course at various times due to local historical and socio-economic constraints. I then study the early literary history of Java and Bali in terms of “a culture of diglossia” that I claim was basic to the development of a wide variety of textual discourses of insular Southeast Asia during the era of the Sanskrit ecumene.
I draw on works like Braginsky’s (1993) contrast of literatures that “shape literary zones” and those that connect pre-existing zones, and Nihom’s (1994) use of the term “narrativization” to help explain the way that South Asian philosophical and religious discourses were developed in the context of the archipelago. In order to describe a common form of rhetorical structure characteristic of the didactic tradition in Old Javanese (OJ) I develop the term “translation dyads”, noting that it can be applied as well to the study of the OJ Parwa and that its role continues to be felt in the noetics of Javano-Balinese theatrical traditions, which I suggest should be understood in terms of a performance culture of “theatrical diglossia.” Finally I suggest that diglossic linguistic practices, the text-building strategies of Old Malay and Old Javanese, and processes of lexical incorporation that evolved during the era of the “Sanskrit ecumene” had a long-lasting influence on later cultural practices in the archipelago whose roots go back to the development of the Old Javanese language as a “cosmopolitan vernacular” (Pollock 1998), and the consequent emergence of a fully self-conscious literary tradition in the archipelago.
Keywords: Sanskrit poetics, Old Javanese poetics, kāvya (literary genre), kakawin (literary genre), court centres (kraton), ritual labour (buat hyang, buat haji), Sanskrit cosmopolis, Sanskrit ecumene, Bhaṭṭikāvyam, Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa (Old Javanese Rāmāyaṇa)
Hunter, Thomas M.
2011 “Sanskrit in the Archipelago: Translation, Vernacularization and Translo... more Hunter, Thomas M.
2011 “Sanskrit in the Archipelago: Translation, Vernacularization and Translocal Identity.” In Suchorita Chatopadhyay (ed.) Tracing Transactions: An Anthology of Critical Essays on India and Southeast Asia. [a Centre for Advanced Study Publication of the Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India]. New Delhi: Worldview Publications (2011; in press)
Abstract: In this study I suggest that we should understand process of translation from Sanskrit into Old Javanese in terms of the role of transculturation and processes of translocal identity formation as explored in the works of scholars like Sheldon Pollock with reference to a “Sanskrit cosmopolis” or “Sanskrit ecumene” (1996) and the development of “cosmopolitan vernacular” languages (1998) within the same socio-cultural zones at the end of the 1st millennium CE. I begin this study by comparing claims made by Pollock regarding the role of Sanskrit and Prakrit languages in the Indian inscriptional record with the evidence of the Malay-Indonesian archipelago, concluding that a basic similarity stands out, but that developments in the archipelago take a different course at various times due to local historical and socio-economic constraints. I then study the early literary history of Java and Bali in terms of “a culture of diglossia” that I claim was basic to the development of a wide variety of textual discourses of insular Southeast Asia during the era of the Sanskrit ecumene.
I draw on works like Braginsky’s (1993) contrast of literatures that “shape literary zones” and those that connect pre-existing zones, and Nihom’s (1994) use of the term “narrativization” to help explain the way that South Asian philosophical and religious discourses were developed in the context of the archipelago. In order to describe a common form of rhetorical structure characteristic of the didactic tradition in Old Javanese (OJ) I develop the term “translation dyads”, noting that it can be applied as well to the study of the OJ Parwa and that its role continues to be felt in the noetics of Javano-Balinese theatrical traditions, which I suggest should be understood in terms of a performance culture of “theatrical diglossia.” Finally I suggest that diglossic linguistic practices, the text-building strategies of Old Malay and Old Javanese, and processes of lexical incorporation that evolved during the era of the “Sanskrit ecumene” had a long-lasting influence on later cultural practices in the archipelago whose roots go back to the development of the Old Javanese language as a “cosmopolitan vernacular” (Pollock 1998), and the consequent emergence of a fully self-conscious literary tradition in the archipelago.
Keywords: Sanskrit poetics, Old Javanese poetics, kāvya (literary genre), kakawin (literary genre), court centres (kraton), ritual labour (buat hyang, buat haji), Sanskrit cosmopolis, Sanskrit ecumene, Bhaṭṭikāvyam, Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa (Old Javanese Rāmāyaṇa)
The Indonesian translation of this article has been published as:
“Bahasa Sanskerta di Nusantara: Terjemahan, Pemribumian, Dan Identitas Antardaerah.” In Henri Chambert-Loir, (ed.) Sadur: Sejarah Terjemahan di Indonesia dan Malaysia. Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, pp. 23-47.
Hunter, Thomas M.
2001 Wṛttasañcaya Reconsidered.” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde... more Hunter, Thomas M.
2001 Wṛttasañcaya Reconsidered.” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde, Vol. Vol. 157, no. 1, pp. 65-96. [published]
Abstract This study of the Old Javanese Wṛttasañcaya composed by the Javanese author Tanakung in fifteenth century east Java looks in detail at how Tanakung made use of the Indian tradition of metrical studies. I propose that Zoetmulder’s understanding that there is no Indian prototype for Tanakung’s composition needs to be re-examined by taking into account the possibility that Tanakung chose a variety of sources for his work. In carrying out this study I first note that there are two main traditions of metrical analysis in the Indian tradition. The first, based on the Bhārata-ṇātya-śāstra (BNS) analyzes meters according to the linear order of “heavy” (guru) and “light” (laghu) syllables, while the second, which begins with the Chandah-śāstra (C´S) of Piṅgala (composed ca. 200 BCE) and is continued with the Vṛttaratnakāra of Kedāra and Mṛtasañjīvanī of Halāyudha is based on analysis of quantitative meters in terms of eight varieties of three-syllable metrical feet and four varieties of two-syllable feet.
Demonstrating first that Tanakung follows the Bhārata-ṇātya-śāstra in his description of kakawin meters, I develop an analysis of the meters exemplified in his Wṛttasañcaya through comparison with Indian texts that list and exemplify meters of the quantitative type. From this study I conclude that Tanakung had access to, and drew upon, a variety of metrical texts of the Indian tradition whose history stretches from approximately the second century BCE to the end of the first millennium CE. These include the Chando-vicitiḥ section of the Bhārata-ṇātya-śāstra, the Chandaḥ-sūtra of Piṅgala and the Vṛttaratnākara of Kedāra.
I then look c at a number of bilingual puns that Tanakung developed in the figures called mudrālaṅkāra that contain the names of meters of the Indian tradition exemplified in the his verses of his Wṛttasañcaya, showing that a correct understanding of these bilingual puns depends on a knowledge of both the Indian and Javanese literary traditions. I conclude that Tanakung's work has much to teach us about shared notions about language that were an important part of the “transculturation” that was distinguishing factor in the processes that shaped history for over a millennium in India and Southeast Asia.
Keywords: metrical analysis, quantitative meters, transculturation, bilingual puns, Wṛttasañcaya, Tanakung, Chandovicitiḥ of Bharata, Nātya-śāstra of Bharata, Chandaḥ-sūtra of Pinggala, Vṛttaratnākara of Kedāra, mudrālaṅkāra, Sanskrit cosmopolis, Sanskrit ecumene
Hunter, Thomas M.
2007 “The Poetics of Grammar in the Javano-Balinese Tradition.” In La Porta, S... more Hunter, Thomas M.
2007 “The Poetics of Grammar in the Javano-Balinese Tradition.” In La Porta, Sergio and David Shulman (eds.) The Poetics of Grammar and the Metaphysics of Sound and Sign. [Jerusalem Studies in Language and Culture] Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 271-303.
Abstract: In this paper I develop a response to a call for papers on the theme of “the poetics of grammar and the metaphysics of sound and sign” for a seminar convened by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 2003. I develop two approaches to the theme, focusing first on the development of what might be termed “orthographic mysticism” in the kakawin tradition of India. Using a Balinese “magical drawing” (rĕrajahan) to open the discussion I develop a study of the importance of orthographic representations of mantras in Bali, where written symbols are regarded as having, if anything, more inherent power (sakti) than the enunciation of mantras,
I then look at the prominence of “figures of writing” in the kakawin literature. This refers to the fact that many elegant figures of speech in Old Javanese are developed around the implements of engraving writing surfaces of lontar palm, using a stylus to write on a chalkboard of volcanic tuff, or lightly incising the leaves of a blossom sheath of the pandan tree.
Calling attention to distant echoes with the play of presence and absence notable in the work of Derrida, I develop an analysis of two major categories of ancient Javanese figuration based on an unfolding of the terms wĕkas, “traces” and tĕmahan, “transformations.” I conclude that what Zoetmulder (1974: 173-186) referred to as the “religio poetae” of the Javanese poets—their preoccupation with the search for the ephemeral presence of the divine in the beauties of nature and human love—is linked to an acute sensitivity to the “traces” of emotions, memories and events, and to writing that records them.
Keywords: orthographic mysticism, alphabet mysticism, rĕrajahan (Balinese mystical drawings) visible and invisible realms, mantras, religio poetae, aesthetic rapture, kalangwan, langö
Hunter, Thomas M.
2011 “Figures of Repetition (yamaka) in the Bhaṭṭikāvya, the Raghuvaṃśa, the Ś... more Hunter, Thomas M.
2011 “Figures of Repetition (yamaka) in the Bhaṭṭikāvya, the Raghuvaṃśa, the Śiwagṛha Inscription and the Rāmāyaṇa Kakawin.” In Andrea Acri, Helen Creese and Arlo Griffiths (eds.) From Laṅkā Eastwards. The Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa in Literature and the Visual Arts. [Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 247] Leiden: KITLV Press, pp. 25- 52. Open Access at: Open Access at: http://www.brill.com/lanka-eastwards
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to reopen a discussion of the development within the Old Javanese literary tradition of the “figures of repetition” called yamaka in the Sanskrit tradition of poetics. These figures were exemplified by the Indian poet Bhaṭṭi in verses 10.2-22 of his Bhaṭṭikāvya (BK 10.2-22). While much of the first 16 cantos of the Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa (KR), or Old Javanese Rāmāyaṇa (OJR), has been shown to be a translation of this work, the relevant verses illustrating yamaka are not translated using these sonorous figures of speech, but are instead matched by a series of verses in the virtuoso Daṇḍaka meters.
However, figures that can clearly be identified as yamaka are found throughout the KR, to the extent that yamaka can be counted as one of the most important “figures of sound” (śabdālaṃkāra) in that work. These figures also figure prominently in the Śivagṛha inscription of 856 CE, which Aichele (1956) has argued should understood as reflecting the same culture that is evident in the Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa and Rāmāyaṇa reliefs of Candi Prambanan. I begin this article with a review of the subject in the works of Hooykaas (1958) and Aichele (1926/1931). I then turn to more recent studies of yamaka in the Sanskrit tradition, and finally to instances of yamaka found in the ninth canto of the Raghuvaṃśa of Kālidāsa, the Bhaṭṭikāvya, the Śivagṛha inscription of 856 CE and the Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa.
I conclude that the use of yamaka in the Old Javanese tradition reflects a high degree of attention to the sonorous aspects of literary figures that began to wane in India ca. 900 CE after Ānandavardhana introduced his “school of suggestion” (dhvani, vyañjana) and that the further study of yamaka in the Old Javanese tradition may shed light on problems like the apparent “change in voice” that is evident in the Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa after verse 24.92.
Keywords: yamaka, “figures of repetition.” Sanskrit poetics, Old Javanese poetics, Raghuvaṃśa, Kālidāsa, Bhaṭṭi, Bhaṭṭikavyam, Śiwagṛha inscription, Old Javanese Rāmāyaṇa, Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa, dhvani, suggestion
Hunter, Thomas M.
2009 “Yati, a Structural Principle in Old Javanese Versification.” Indo-Irani... more Hunter, Thomas M.
2009 “Yati, a Structural Principle in Old Javanese Versification.” Indo-Iranian Journal 52 (August), pp. 1-52.
Abstract: The principle of yati, divisions of the metrical arrangement of Sanskrit meters at line-end or at specified points internal to the line (pada), has often been likened to caesura in meters of the European tradition, and in the Indian tradition to a “break in recitation”. However, in a principled study of the subject Pollock (1977) has shown that when line- internal yati is specified it is not linked to matters of recitation but rather to the arrangement of syntactic units (or “cola”) within the line. Given that the majority of meters of the Old Javanese kakawin genre are based on the quantitative meters of the Indian kāvya, it is natural to suppose that line-internal yati may have been preserved in some of the Old Javanese quantitative meters. This study is devoted to an examination of this question for a selection of the Indian quantitative meters adopted for use in the kakawin, and for a further set of Indo-Javanese meters that were developed in the archipelago and also follow the isosyllabic requirements of the Indian system. Special attention is given to the meter Śardūlavikrīḍita (“Play of the Tiger”), a meter important in both India and Java and to the Indo-Javanese meter Jagaddhita (“Welfare of the World”).
Key-words: versification, Sanskrit quantitative meters, Indo-Javanese quantitative meters, yati (caesura), sperrung (poetic suspension), syntactic cola, kāvya, kakawin,
Hunter, Thomas M.
2002 "Indo as Other: Identity, Anxiety and Ambiguity in Salah Asuhan.” In An... more Hunter, Thomas M.
2002 "Indo as Other: Identity, Anxiety and Ambiguity in Salah Asuhan.” In Anthony Day and Keith Foulcher (eds.) Clearing a Space: Postcolonial Readings of Modern Indonesian Literature. Leiden: Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, pp. 109-143.
In this study of the novel Salah Asuhan (Wrong Upbringing), written by the Indonesian nationalist Abdul Muis and published by the colonial period publishing house Balai Pustaka in 1928, I examine the way that late colonial anxieties were inscribed in policies on race, marriage and descent that had long-term effects, initially on colonial subjects, and later in the haunting presence of colonial formulations of race in representations of the Eurasian, or 'Indo', in modern Indonesian literature.
In addition to looking at the remarkable history of Abdul Muis’ encounter with the editors of the Balai Pustaka, and the changes to his formulation of this novel to fit the mold of the “assocationist” perspective favored by the Dutch colonial administration and conservative members of the “Council of the Indies” (Volksraad) I also look at the history of the colonial regulation of race and gender and the related effects of the policy of gelijkstelling whereby an Indonesian native (‘Inlander’) could attain the rights of a Dutch citizen by giving proof of having abandoned the values and practices of ‘the natives.’
In assessing some of the text-building elements Muis uses in building his novel I look at the long history in the Malay world of a understanding the affective life of others through the reading subtle gestures (inggita) that led to terms like “the water of the face” (air muka), and contrast between passion (nafsu) and a calm, self-aware perspective on events and emotions (akal) that is developed particularly among Islamic communities of Malaysia and Sumatra.
Keywords: Salah Asuhan, Abdul Muis, Abdoel Moeis, Balai Pustaka, Nyai novels, Indo,
nafsu, akal, inggita, science of gesture Nyai novels, Ethical Policy, gelijkstelling
The Aridharma Reliefs of Candi Jago, 1999
Hunter, Thomas M.
1999 “The Aridharma Reliefs of Candi Jago.” In Lokesh Chandra (ed.) Society an... more Hunter, Thomas M.
1999 “The Aridharma Reliefs of Candi Jago.” In Lokesh Chandra (ed.) Society and Culture of Southeast Asia: Continuities and Change. New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan, pp. 69-101.
Abstract: This paper represents a response to a criticism of my earlier paper (1987) on the subject of the Aridharma reliefs of Candi Jago to the effect that my analysis of the meaning of these reliefs was based on a story told by the present gate-keeper of that temple, whom the critic (Klokke 1982: 143, fn 9) considered an unreliable source. The main point in question here is my contention that the reliefs of the story of a king (Aridharma) who gained the power to understand the languages of the entire animal kingdom, which is well-known from both Indian (Jātaka) and Old Javanese sources (the prose text Tantri Kāmandaka and descendant works in kidung metres), is followed at Candi Jago with a “Buddhist sequel story” that tells the story of Aridharma and a paramour who appears to be a reincarnation of his wife (who perished through her own folly in the original story). In this sequel story Aridharma and his paramour encounter an ascetic priest with a shaved head who may be the girl’s father and appears antagonistic to the couple, and a portly figure who wears a robe and headdress very similar to those associated with a well-known statue of the sage Agastya found at Candi Singhasari, which predates Candi Jago and was located within the same geophysical area of the Singhasari-Majapahit dynasty.
In this narrative Aridharma and his paramour are clearly protected by the Agastya-like figure, who twice leads them into the presence of Vairocana, a central figure in the Vajradhara school of Buddhist soteriology represented at Jago, and clearly assists Aridharma in his struggle with the ascetic priest, whom Aridharma slays at one point, but is subsequently revived and allowed to travel with Aridharma and his paramour on a second visit to the abode of Vairocana. In order to move from elements of this narrative that were provided in a pamphlet produced by the gate-keeper of Candi Jago (cf. Bambang Soetrisno 1983) to an understanding of a tale of salvation and transformation mediated by Vairocana.
I make use of elements of visual imagery drawn from the traditions of the shadow theatre (wayang) and “painted scroll wayang” (wayang beber) and from sculptural representations of the sage Agastya. I then discuss thematic elements drawn from the textual tradition of the kakawin genre of metrical, court romances in the Old Javanese language. Important elements in these studies include an analysis of the development of a tradition of special garb for priest-ascetics (wiku, mpu) of the East Javanese period that is reflected in the clothing and visual representations of the “high priests” (pedanda) of the Balinese tradition, an analysis of the tradition well-known from the kakawin literature of “jātismara lovers”, who are lovers over many lifetimes and often must overcome a series of vicissitudes before being reunited in their current incarnations. I conclude that the Aridharma reliefs of Candi Jago have much to tell us about the development of the Vajrāyana form of Buddhism in East Java of the first half of the second millennium CE, the nature of sectarian rivalries in that period, and a movement towards the dominance of “high priests” in religious processes that in time came to transcend sectarian differences.
Keywords: Candi Jago, Aridharma story, wayang (shadow theater), wayang beber (painted scroll theater), Vairocana, Agastya, Singhasari-Majapahit dynasty, tripaksa (three denominations of East Javanese religion), jātismara, kakawin literature, Jātaka stories, Tantri Kāmandaka
Drafts by Thomas M Hunter
Hunter, Thomas M.
2005 “The Impact of Indian Forms of the Commentary on Text-Building Strategies ... more Hunter, Thomas M.
2005 “The Impact of Indian Forms of the Commentary on Text-Building Strategies in Old Javanese.” A seminar paper prepared for the conference entitled “Forms and uses of the Indian commentary.” Institut Français de Pondichéry/École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 23 February 2005.
Abstract In this paper I began to reconstruct the nature of pedagogical institutions in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago during the period c. 600-1500 CE when major urban centres and religious complexes of the archipelago were part of a transcultural world of discourse that has been described by Pollock (1996, 2006) under the terms “Sanskrit cosmopolis” and “Sanskrit ecumene”. Building on my earlier work on the “textual diglossia” that is most prominent in the Old Javanese didactic tradition I argue that this form of text-building grew out of the practice of Buddhist and Hindu pedagogical institutions, which operated initially under conditions of bilingualism, and in their further history under conditions of “learned diglossia’. In these institutions the transmission of theological and philosophical ideas and the formulation of literary practices depended on an ongoing practice of translation and commentary in local vernaculars on foundational texts of the Buddhist Mahāyāna canon or works of the Śaivāgama tradition of India. One of these practices was the process of incorporation of Sanskrit lexical materials into the morphology of the Old Javanese language that I have described under the term “em-bhāṣā-ment”, taking the term bhāṣā here in the sense of a language qua language that shared many formal and lexical features with Sanskrit that enabled it to achieve a status beyond that of an everyday vernacular tongue. I then discuss one of the main variants on the composition of commentaries in the Sanskrit tradition, called the vyākhyā, or “expository” style, and demonstrate how it was adapted in the Old Javanese didactic tradition as a mode of translation. I conclude that the vyākhyā form of translation became an important mode of text-building in ancient Java, so much so that its use spread beyond the didactic tradition to play a role in all later prose styles in Old Javanese, including the Parwa literature and prose works like the Tantri Kāmandaka, which combines a Scheherazade-like framing tale with a collection of animal fables drawn partly from the Indian Pañcatantra.
Key Words: Indian commentaries, vyākhyā, dyadic technique, pratīka technique, Old Javanese Parwa literature, Old Javanese theological literary, Amaramālā, Sang Hyang Kamahāyānan Mantranaya, Vṛhaspatitattva, Sanskrit Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa, Sanskrit Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa
Hunter, Thomas. M.
2012 “A.L. Becker’s Textual Coherence —Two Examples.” A seminar paper for Pa... more Hunter, Thomas. M.
2012 “A.L. Becker’s Textual Coherence —Two Examples.” A seminar paper for Panel 14 of the annual AAS Conference entitled “Leading 'Beyond Translation': A.L. Becker and the Interpretation of Southeast Asian Literature and Performance.” Toronto, 15 March, 2012.
In an important article drawing on the work of Alton Becker on “text coherence” and “parallel coherence systems” Richard McGinn (1985) drew attention to Becker’s claim that sentence cohesion in Indonesian is based on a “bond between grammatical subject and discourse topic”. McGinn went on to note another of Becker’s suggestions—that “the Indonesian topic may be part of a larger deictic category of person, which may be related in discourse to orientation in space—both physical and social—of participants in the speech event”.
This in turn leads to the suggestion that “the contrast between English and Indonesian coherence systems may be found in the opposition between tense/time vs. person/space”, a view clearly shared by McGinn and Becker.
In this paper I seek to carry forward the insights of Becker and McGinn. I first draw on Becker and Oka’s seminal work on deixis in Old Javanese (1974, 1995) to elucidate the subtle shifts of spatial and temporal reference in a classic. I focus in this effort on “Sītā’s Letter”, an episode in the Old Javanese Rāmāyaṇa (OJR 11:18-34) that portrays Lord Rāma reading a letter composed by Sītā during her captivity in the kingdom of Lanka that she sends to him along with her signet ring.
I then turn to an example illustrating Becker’s analysis of the role of Indonesian verbal markers in text-building first put forward in his essay titled “The Figure a Sentence Makes, an Interpretation of a Classical Malay Sentence” (1979, 1995). I take these suggestions as a starting point in en effort to illuminate the way that contrasts in discourse perspective are established through contrastive uses of clauses built on the symmetrical voice markers of Indonesian language. In this case my examples are drawn from “Facing the Judge” (Menghadap Sang Hakim), a short story composed in 1974 by the late Putu Arya Tirtawirya, a Balinese short-story writer from the Balinese community of Lombok. In both of these efforts my aim is to illustrate Becker’s dictum that we should look within languages and cultural systems for the elements of structure that give coherence to literary and cultural texts, fashioning our academic studies so that they reveal these coherencies and do not sacrifice them in our efforts to achieve an understanding of the universals of human language and experience.
Keywords: deixis, sequence of tense, cline of person, symmetrical voice, Austronesian languages., Old Javanese Rāmāyaṇa (OJR), Putu Arya Tirtawirya, grammatical subject, discourse topic, A.L. Becker, Richard McGinn
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Papers by Thomas M Hunter
[All papers of the peer-reviewed open access journal Medieval Worlds 11.2020 are available via http://dx.doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no11_2020]
2009
“Bahasa Sanskerta di Nusantara: Terjemahan, Pemribumian, Dan Identitas Antardaerah.” In Henri Chambert-Loir, (ed.) Sadur: Sejarah Terjemahan di Indonesia dan Malaysia. Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, pp. 23-47.
Catatan: Abstrak untuk makalah ini belum diterjemahkan ke dalam Bahasa Indonesia. Versi Bahasa Inggeris dimuat sementara di bawah ini.
Abstract: In this study I suggest that we should understand process of translation from Sanskrit into Old Javanese in terms of the role of transculturation and processes of translocal identity formation as explored in the works of scholars like Sheldon Pollock with reference to a “Sanskrit cosmopolis” or “Sanskrit ecumene” (1996) and the development of “cosmopolitan vernacular” languages (1998) within the same socio-cultural zones at the end of the 1st millennium CE. I begin this study by comparing claims made by Pollock regarding the role of Sanskrit and Prakrit languages in the Indian inscriptional record with the evidence of the Malay-Indonesian archipelago, concluding that a basic similarity stands out, but that developments in the archipelago take a different course at various times due to local historical and socio-economic constraints. I then study the early literary history of Java and Bali in terms of “a culture of diglossia” that I claim was basic to the development of a wide variety of textual discourses of insular Southeast Asia during the era of the Sanskrit ecumene.
I draw on works like Braginsky’s (1993) contrast of literatures that “shape literary zones” and those that connect pre-existing zones, and Nihom’s (1994) use of the term “narrativization” to help explain the way that South Asian philosophical and religious discourses were developed in the context of the archipelago. In order to describe a common form of rhetorical structure characteristic of the didactic tradition in Old Javanese (OJ) I develop the term “translation dyads”, noting that it can be applied as well to the study of the OJ Parwa and that its role continues to be felt in the noetics of Javano-Balinese theatrical traditions, which I suggest should be understood in terms of a performance culture of “theatrical diglossia.” Finally I suggest that diglossic linguistic practices, the text-building strategies of Old Malay and Old Javanese, and processes of lexical incorporation that evolved during the era of the “Sanskrit ecumene” had a long-lasting influence on later cultural practices in the archipelago whose roots go back to the development of the Old Javanese language as a “cosmopolitan vernacular” (Pollock 1998), and the consequent emergence of a fully self-conscious literary tradition in the archipelago.
Keywords: Sanskrit poetics, Old Javanese poetics, kāvya (literary genre), kakawin (literary genre), court centres (kraton), ritual labour (buat hyang, buat haji), Sanskrit cosmopolis, Sanskrit ecumene, Bhaṭṭikāvyam, Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa (Old Javanese Rāmāyaṇa)
2011 “Sanskrit in the Archipelago: Translation, Vernacularization and Translocal Identity.” In Suchorita Chatopadhyay (ed.) Tracing Transactions: An Anthology of Critical Essays on India and Southeast Asia. [a Centre for Advanced Study Publication of the Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India]. New Delhi: Worldview Publications (2011; in press)
Abstract: In this study I suggest that we should understand process of translation from Sanskrit into Old Javanese in terms of the role of transculturation and processes of translocal identity formation as explored in the works of scholars like Sheldon Pollock with reference to a “Sanskrit cosmopolis” or “Sanskrit ecumene” (1996) and the development of “cosmopolitan vernacular” languages (1998) within the same socio-cultural zones at the end of the 1st millennium CE. I begin this study by comparing claims made by Pollock regarding the role of Sanskrit and Prakrit languages in the Indian inscriptional record with the evidence of the Malay-Indonesian archipelago, concluding that a basic similarity stands out, but that developments in the archipelago take a different course at various times due to local historical and socio-economic constraints. I then study the early literary history of Java and Bali in terms of “a culture of diglossia” that I claim was basic to the development of a wide variety of textual discourses of insular Southeast Asia during the era of the Sanskrit ecumene.
I draw on works like Braginsky’s (1993) contrast of literatures that “shape literary zones” and those that connect pre-existing zones, and Nihom’s (1994) use of the term “narrativization” to help explain the way that South Asian philosophical and religious discourses were developed in the context of the archipelago. In order to describe a common form of rhetorical structure characteristic of the didactic tradition in Old Javanese (OJ) I develop the term “translation dyads”, noting that it can be applied as well to the study of the OJ Parwa and that its role continues to be felt in the noetics of Javano-Balinese theatrical traditions, which I suggest should be understood in terms of a performance culture of “theatrical diglossia.” Finally I suggest that diglossic linguistic practices, the text-building strategies of Old Malay and Old Javanese, and processes of lexical incorporation that evolved during the era of the “Sanskrit ecumene” had a long-lasting influence on later cultural practices in the archipelago whose roots go back to the development of the Old Javanese language as a “cosmopolitan vernacular” (Pollock 1998), and the consequent emergence of a fully self-conscious literary tradition in the archipelago.
Keywords: Sanskrit poetics, Old Javanese poetics, kāvya (literary genre), kakawin (literary genre), court centres (kraton), ritual labour (buat hyang, buat haji), Sanskrit cosmopolis, Sanskrit ecumene, Bhaṭṭikāvyam, Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa (Old Javanese Rāmāyaṇa)
The Indonesian translation of this article has been published as:
“Bahasa Sanskerta di Nusantara: Terjemahan, Pemribumian, Dan Identitas Antardaerah.” In Henri Chambert-Loir, (ed.) Sadur: Sejarah Terjemahan di Indonesia dan Malaysia. Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, pp. 23-47.
2001 Wṛttasañcaya Reconsidered.” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde, Vol. Vol. 157, no. 1, pp. 65-96. [published]
Abstract This study of the Old Javanese Wṛttasañcaya composed by the Javanese author Tanakung in fifteenth century east Java looks in detail at how Tanakung made use of the Indian tradition of metrical studies. I propose that Zoetmulder’s understanding that there is no Indian prototype for Tanakung’s composition needs to be re-examined by taking into account the possibility that Tanakung chose a variety of sources for his work. In carrying out this study I first note that there are two main traditions of metrical analysis in the Indian tradition. The first, based on the Bhārata-ṇātya-śāstra (BNS) analyzes meters according to the linear order of “heavy” (guru) and “light” (laghu) syllables, while the second, which begins with the Chandah-śāstra (C´S) of Piṅgala (composed ca. 200 BCE) and is continued with the Vṛttaratnakāra of Kedāra and Mṛtasañjīvanī of Halāyudha is based on analysis of quantitative meters in terms of eight varieties of three-syllable metrical feet and four varieties of two-syllable feet.
Demonstrating first that Tanakung follows the Bhārata-ṇātya-śāstra in his description of kakawin meters, I develop an analysis of the meters exemplified in his Wṛttasañcaya through comparison with Indian texts that list and exemplify meters of the quantitative type. From this study I conclude that Tanakung had access to, and drew upon, a variety of metrical texts of the Indian tradition whose history stretches from approximately the second century BCE to the end of the first millennium CE. These include the Chando-vicitiḥ section of the Bhārata-ṇātya-śāstra, the Chandaḥ-sūtra of Piṅgala and the Vṛttaratnākara of Kedāra.
I then look c at a number of bilingual puns that Tanakung developed in the figures called mudrālaṅkāra that contain the names of meters of the Indian tradition exemplified in the his verses of his Wṛttasañcaya, showing that a correct understanding of these bilingual puns depends on a knowledge of both the Indian and Javanese literary traditions. I conclude that Tanakung's work has much to teach us about shared notions about language that were an important part of the “transculturation” that was distinguishing factor in the processes that shaped history for over a millennium in India and Southeast Asia.
Keywords: metrical analysis, quantitative meters, transculturation, bilingual puns, Wṛttasañcaya, Tanakung, Chandovicitiḥ of Bharata, Nātya-śāstra of Bharata, Chandaḥ-sūtra of Pinggala, Vṛttaratnākara of Kedāra, mudrālaṅkāra, Sanskrit cosmopolis, Sanskrit ecumene
2007 “The Poetics of Grammar in the Javano-Balinese Tradition.” In La Porta, Sergio and David Shulman (eds.) The Poetics of Grammar and the Metaphysics of Sound and Sign. [Jerusalem Studies in Language and Culture] Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 271-303.
Abstract: In this paper I develop a response to a call for papers on the theme of “the poetics of grammar and the metaphysics of sound and sign” for a seminar convened by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 2003. I develop two approaches to the theme, focusing first on the development of what might be termed “orthographic mysticism” in the kakawin tradition of India. Using a Balinese “magical drawing” (rĕrajahan) to open the discussion I develop a study of the importance of orthographic representations of mantras in Bali, where written symbols are regarded as having, if anything, more inherent power (sakti) than the enunciation of mantras,
I then look at the prominence of “figures of writing” in the kakawin literature. This refers to the fact that many elegant figures of speech in Old Javanese are developed around the implements of engraving writing surfaces of lontar palm, using a stylus to write on a chalkboard of volcanic tuff, or lightly incising the leaves of a blossom sheath of the pandan tree.
Calling attention to distant echoes with the play of presence and absence notable in the work of Derrida, I develop an analysis of two major categories of ancient Javanese figuration based on an unfolding of the terms wĕkas, “traces” and tĕmahan, “transformations.” I conclude that what Zoetmulder (1974: 173-186) referred to as the “religio poetae” of the Javanese poets—their preoccupation with the search for the ephemeral presence of the divine in the beauties of nature and human love—is linked to an acute sensitivity to the “traces” of emotions, memories and events, and to writing that records them.
Keywords: orthographic mysticism, alphabet mysticism, rĕrajahan (Balinese mystical drawings) visible and invisible realms, mantras, religio poetae, aesthetic rapture, kalangwan, langö
2011 “Figures of Repetition (yamaka) in the Bhaṭṭikāvya, the Raghuvaṃśa, the Śiwagṛha Inscription and the Rāmāyaṇa Kakawin.” In Andrea Acri, Helen Creese and Arlo Griffiths (eds.) From Laṅkā Eastwards. The Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa in Literature and the Visual Arts. [Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 247] Leiden: KITLV Press, pp. 25- 52. Open Access at: Open Access at: http://www.brill.com/lanka-eastwards
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to reopen a discussion of the development within the Old Javanese literary tradition of the “figures of repetition” called yamaka in the Sanskrit tradition of poetics. These figures were exemplified by the Indian poet Bhaṭṭi in verses 10.2-22 of his Bhaṭṭikāvya (BK 10.2-22). While much of the first 16 cantos of the Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa (KR), or Old Javanese Rāmāyaṇa (OJR), has been shown to be a translation of this work, the relevant verses illustrating yamaka are not translated using these sonorous figures of speech, but are instead matched by a series of verses in the virtuoso Daṇḍaka meters.
However, figures that can clearly be identified as yamaka are found throughout the KR, to the extent that yamaka can be counted as one of the most important “figures of sound” (śabdālaṃkāra) in that work. These figures also figure prominently in the Śivagṛha inscription of 856 CE, which Aichele (1956) has argued should understood as reflecting the same culture that is evident in the Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa and Rāmāyaṇa reliefs of Candi Prambanan. I begin this article with a review of the subject in the works of Hooykaas (1958) and Aichele (1926/1931). I then turn to more recent studies of yamaka in the Sanskrit tradition, and finally to instances of yamaka found in the ninth canto of the Raghuvaṃśa of Kālidāsa, the Bhaṭṭikāvya, the Śivagṛha inscription of 856 CE and the Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa.
I conclude that the use of yamaka in the Old Javanese tradition reflects a high degree of attention to the sonorous aspects of literary figures that began to wane in India ca. 900 CE after Ānandavardhana introduced his “school of suggestion” (dhvani, vyañjana) and that the further study of yamaka in the Old Javanese tradition may shed light on problems like the apparent “change in voice” that is evident in the Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa after verse 24.92.
Keywords: yamaka, “figures of repetition.” Sanskrit poetics, Old Javanese poetics, Raghuvaṃśa, Kālidāsa, Bhaṭṭi, Bhaṭṭikavyam, Śiwagṛha inscription, Old Javanese Rāmāyaṇa, Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa, dhvani, suggestion
2009 “Yati, a Structural Principle in Old Javanese Versification.” Indo-Iranian Journal 52 (August), pp. 1-52.
Abstract: The principle of yati, divisions of the metrical arrangement of Sanskrit meters at line-end or at specified points internal to the line (pada), has often been likened to caesura in meters of the European tradition, and in the Indian tradition to a “break in recitation”. However, in a principled study of the subject Pollock (1977) has shown that when line- internal yati is specified it is not linked to matters of recitation but rather to the arrangement of syntactic units (or “cola”) within the line. Given that the majority of meters of the Old Javanese kakawin genre are based on the quantitative meters of the Indian kāvya, it is natural to suppose that line-internal yati may have been preserved in some of the Old Javanese quantitative meters. This study is devoted to an examination of this question for a selection of the Indian quantitative meters adopted for use in the kakawin, and for a further set of Indo-Javanese meters that were developed in the archipelago and also follow the isosyllabic requirements of the Indian system. Special attention is given to the meter Śardūlavikrīḍita (“Play of the Tiger”), a meter important in both India and Java and to the Indo-Javanese meter Jagaddhita (“Welfare of the World”).
Key-words: versification, Sanskrit quantitative meters, Indo-Javanese quantitative meters, yati (caesura), sperrung (poetic suspension), syntactic cola, kāvya, kakawin,
2002 "Indo as Other: Identity, Anxiety and Ambiguity in Salah Asuhan.” In Anthony Day and Keith Foulcher (eds.) Clearing a Space: Postcolonial Readings of Modern Indonesian Literature. Leiden: Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, pp. 109-143.
In this study of the novel Salah Asuhan (Wrong Upbringing), written by the Indonesian nationalist Abdul Muis and published by the colonial period publishing house Balai Pustaka in 1928, I examine the way that late colonial anxieties were inscribed in policies on race, marriage and descent that had long-term effects, initially on colonial subjects, and later in the haunting presence of colonial formulations of race in representations of the Eurasian, or 'Indo', in modern Indonesian literature.
In addition to looking at the remarkable history of Abdul Muis’ encounter with the editors of the Balai Pustaka, and the changes to his formulation of this novel to fit the mold of the “assocationist” perspective favored by the Dutch colonial administration and conservative members of the “Council of the Indies” (Volksraad) I also look at the history of the colonial regulation of race and gender and the related effects of the policy of gelijkstelling whereby an Indonesian native (‘Inlander’) could attain the rights of a Dutch citizen by giving proof of having abandoned the values and practices of ‘the natives.’
In assessing some of the text-building elements Muis uses in building his novel I look at the long history in the Malay world of a understanding the affective life of others through the reading subtle gestures (inggita) that led to terms like “the water of the face” (air muka), and contrast between passion (nafsu) and a calm, self-aware perspective on events and emotions (akal) that is developed particularly among Islamic communities of Malaysia and Sumatra.
Keywords: Salah Asuhan, Abdul Muis, Abdoel Moeis, Balai Pustaka, Nyai novels, Indo,
nafsu, akal, inggita, science of gesture Nyai novels, Ethical Policy, gelijkstelling
1999 “The Aridharma Reliefs of Candi Jago.” In Lokesh Chandra (ed.) Society and Culture of Southeast Asia: Continuities and Change. New Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture and Aditya Prakashan, pp. 69-101.
Abstract: This paper represents a response to a criticism of my earlier paper (1987) on the subject of the Aridharma reliefs of Candi Jago to the effect that my analysis of the meaning of these reliefs was based on a story told by the present gate-keeper of that temple, whom the critic (Klokke 1982: 143, fn 9) considered an unreliable source. The main point in question here is my contention that the reliefs of the story of a king (Aridharma) who gained the power to understand the languages of the entire animal kingdom, which is well-known from both Indian (Jātaka) and Old Javanese sources (the prose text Tantri Kāmandaka and descendant works in kidung metres), is followed at Candi Jago with a “Buddhist sequel story” that tells the story of Aridharma and a paramour who appears to be a reincarnation of his wife (who perished through her own folly in the original story). In this sequel story Aridharma and his paramour encounter an ascetic priest with a shaved head who may be the girl’s father and appears antagonistic to the couple, and a portly figure who wears a robe and headdress very similar to those associated with a well-known statue of the sage Agastya found at Candi Singhasari, which predates Candi Jago and was located within the same geophysical area of the Singhasari-Majapahit dynasty.
In this narrative Aridharma and his paramour are clearly protected by the Agastya-like figure, who twice leads them into the presence of Vairocana, a central figure in the Vajradhara school of Buddhist soteriology represented at Jago, and clearly assists Aridharma in his struggle with the ascetic priest, whom Aridharma slays at one point, but is subsequently revived and allowed to travel with Aridharma and his paramour on a second visit to the abode of Vairocana. In order to move from elements of this narrative that were provided in a pamphlet produced by the gate-keeper of Candi Jago (cf. Bambang Soetrisno 1983) to an understanding of a tale of salvation and transformation mediated by Vairocana.
I make use of elements of visual imagery drawn from the traditions of the shadow theatre (wayang) and “painted scroll wayang” (wayang beber) and from sculptural representations of the sage Agastya. I then discuss thematic elements drawn from the textual tradition of the kakawin genre of metrical, court romances in the Old Javanese language. Important elements in these studies include an analysis of the development of a tradition of special garb for priest-ascetics (wiku, mpu) of the East Javanese period that is reflected in the clothing and visual representations of the “high priests” (pedanda) of the Balinese tradition, an analysis of the tradition well-known from the kakawin literature of “jātismara lovers”, who are lovers over many lifetimes and often must overcome a series of vicissitudes before being reunited in their current incarnations. I conclude that the Aridharma reliefs of Candi Jago have much to tell us about the development of the Vajrāyana form of Buddhism in East Java of the first half of the second millennium CE, the nature of sectarian rivalries in that period, and a movement towards the dominance of “high priests” in religious processes that in time came to transcend sectarian differences.
Keywords: Candi Jago, Aridharma story, wayang (shadow theater), wayang beber (painted scroll theater), Vairocana, Agastya, Singhasari-Majapahit dynasty, tripaksa (three denominations of East Javanese religion), jātismara, kakawin literature, Jātaka stories, Tantri Kāmandaka
Drafts by Thomas M Hunter
2005 “The Impact of Indian Forms of the Commentary on Text-Building Strategies in Old Javanese.” A seminar paper prepared for the conference entitled “Forms and uses of the Indian commentary.” Institut Français de Pondichéry/École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 23 February 2005.
Abstract In this paper I began to reconstruct the nature of pedagogical institutions in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago during the period c. 600-1500 CE when major urban centres and religious complexes of the archipelago were part of a transcultural world of discourse that has been described by Pollock (1996, 2006) under the terms “Sanskrit cosmopolis” and “Sanskrit ecumene”. Building on my earlier work on the “textual diglossia” that is most prominent in the Old Javanese didactic tradition I argue that this form of text-building grew out of the practice of Buddhist and Hindu pedagogical institutions, which operated initially under conditions of bilingualism, and in their further history under conditions of “learned diglossia’. In these institutions the transmission of theological and philosophical ideas and the formulation of literary practices depended on an ongoing practice of translation and commentary in local vernaculars on foundational texts of the Buddhist Mahāyāna canon or works of the Śaivāgama tradition of India. One of these practices was the process of incorporation of Sanskrit lexical materials into the morphology of the Old Javanese language that I have described under the term “em-bhāṣā-ment”, taking the term bhāṣā here in the sense of a language qua language that shared many formal and lexical features with Sanskrit that enabled it to achieve a status beyond that of an everyday vernacular tongue. I then discuss one of the main variants on the composition of commentaries in the Sanskrit tradition, called the vyākhyā, or “expository” style, and demonstrate how it was adapted in the Old Javanese didactic tradition as a mode of translation. I conclude that the vyākhyā form of translation became an important mode of text-building in ancient Java, so much so that its use spread beyond the didactic tradition to play a role in all later prose styles in Old Javanese, including the Parwa literature and prose works like the Tantri Kāmandaka, which combines a Scheherazade-like framing tale with a collection of animal fables drawn partly from the Indian Pañcatantra.
Key Words: Indian commentaries, vyākhyā, dyadic technique, pratīka technique, Old Javanese Parwa literature, Old Javanese theological literary, Amaramālā, Sang Hyang Kamahāyānan Mantranaya, Vṛhaspatitattva, Sanskrit Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa, Sanskrit Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa
2012 “A.L. Becker’s Textual Coherence —Two Examples.” A seminar paper for Panel 14 of the annual AAS Conference entitled “Leading 'Beyond Translation': A.L. Becker and the Interpretation of Southeast Asian Literature and Performance.” Toronto, 15 March, 2012.
In an important article drawing on the work of Alton Becker on “text coherence” and “parallel coherence systems” Richard McGinn (1985) drew attention to Becker’s claim that sentence cohesion in Indonesian is based on a “bond between grammatical subject and discourse topic”. McGinn went on to note another of Becker’s suggestions—that “the Indonesian topic may be part of a larger deictic category of person, which may be related in discourse to orientation in space—both physical and social—of participants in the speech event”.
This in turn leads to the suggestion that “the contrast between English and Indonesian coherence systems may be found in the opposition between tense/time vs. person/space”, a view clearly shared by McGinn and Becker.
In this paper I seek to carry forward the insights of Becker and McGinn. I first draw on Becker and Oka’s seminal work on deixis in Old Javanese (1974, 1995) to elucidate the subtle shifts of spatial and temporal reference in a classic. I focus in this effort on “Sītā’s Letter”, an episode in the Old Javanese Rāmāyaṇa (OJR 11:18-34) that portrays Lord Rāma reading a letter composed by Sītā during her captivity in the kingdom of Lanka that she sends to him along with her signet ring.
I then turn to an example illustrating Becker’s analysis of the role of Indonesian verbal markers in text-building first put forward in his essay titled “The Figure a Sentence Makes, an Interpretation of a Classical Malay Sentence” (1979, 1995). I take these suggestions as a starting point in en effort to illuminate the way that contrasts in discourse perspective are established through contrastive uses of clauses built on the symmetrical voice markers of Indonesian language. In this case my examples are drawn from “Facing the Judge” (Menghadap Sang Hakim), a short story composed in 1974 by the late Putu Arya Tirtawirya, a Balinese short-story writer from the Balinese community of Lombok. In both of these efforts my aim is to illustrate Becker’s dictum that we should look within languages and cultural systems for the elements of structure that give coherence to literary and cultural texts, fashioning our academic studies so that they reveal these coherencies and do not sacrifice them in our efforts to achieve an understanding of the universals of human language and experience.
Keywords: deixis, sequence of tense, cline of person, symmetrical voice, Austronesian languages., Old Javanese Rāmāyaṇa (OJR), Putu Arya Tirtawirya, grammatical subject, discourse topic, A.L. Becker, Richard McGinn