tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70650039839848244582024-02-20T22:38:28.434-08:00Nirleka...an Indonesian history and prehistory blog.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7065003983984824458.post-11779897438466566232016-09-01T04:43:00.002-07:002016-09-01T04:43:38.930-07:00When Did Horses Come to Indonesia/ISEA? [old post]<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>I'm taking part in an in<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">duction week here in Leiden and thi<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ngs are very busy at the moment. I'm writing a few <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">brand new things for this site but I haven't had time to finish them<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, so here's some old cont<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ent<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> while <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">you wait. Things will suddenly be a lot quie<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ter at the weeken<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">d and for most of next week<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, so ex<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">pect new posts then.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></i> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Horses (<i>Equus ferus caballus</i>)
are not native to Indonesia or Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) and their
bones are not commonly found at archaeological sites in the archipelago.
They were first domesticated on the Eurasian steppe, with the earliest
known sites discovered in Kazakhstan, and were introduced to Indonesia
at some point in the last few thousand years. Precisely when is
difficult to ascertain, although horses appear in inscriptions and texts
from fairly early periods. </span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> A <a href="http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/12/08/a-tale-prehistoric-horses-south-sulawesi.html">recent article</a> in the Jakarta Post talks about horses and their introduction to Indonesia in the context of rock-art depictions from <a href="https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situs_Peninggalan_Purbakala_Liang_Kobori_dan_Metanduno">Liang Kobori</a> on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muna_Island">Muna Island</a>,
NW of Buton, off the southeast coast of Sulawesi. Rock art is
notoriously difficult to date, and so far no dating methods have been
applied to the depictions from Liang Kobori as far as I'm aware, so the
JP article is necessarily speculative. Either way, the images clearly
show horses (as you can see at the link).</span></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHDk5AMMMR2olQNsRx586WBCMPBrK-_H6291UzuPfiJccGKVGvltmRl8cUCIzOOqVncq9SRRuvJUL2mkRjiiR3qYCQQV7XZUOGNJ0WCtAdVmsmxdQKkxPXZ0sa1dPSFFzI5qofA8qbivc/s1600/Dudumahan1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHDk5AMMMR2olQNsRx586WBCMPBrK-_H6291UzuPfiJccGKVGvltmRl8cUCIzOOqVncq9SRRuvJUL2mkRjiiR3qYCQQV7XZUOGNJ0WCtAdVmsmxdQKkxPXZ0sa1dPSFFzI5qofA8qbivc/s640/Dudumahan1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My
sketches of Austronesian Painting Tradition (APT) rock art from
Dudumahan, Kei, Indonesia, including what is apparently an image of an
adze. Copied from Ballard (19<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">88</span>).</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
I suspect they're metal age images for three reasons: 1) they're in a
cave near the sea, 2) they're painted red, and 3) they depict things
that we have no reason to believe were present in Indonesia until the
late Holocene, including horses. That's consistent with other rock art
from eastern Indonesia in the 'Austronesian Painting Tradition', most of
which appears to be fairly late in date and often depicts relatively
recent technologies, including probable metal tools. I could be wrong,
of course.</span></span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGLSTTvEaevPheywZdGmEeTZSo4rk0f3TtCa4yDJ7FHAv46SPjfGVQdD-I91caarkMMrzhwxfpg9iBuNf3GxMOykqyAMWtyT8fbapBnd96zACHcPLgZtAl3AGMmFEj-B7sTb8w_y_n3s0/s1600/Racolo1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGLSTTvEaevPheywZdGmEeTZSo4rk0f3TtCa4yDJ7FHAv46SPjfGVQdD-I91caarkMMrzhwxfpg9iBuNf3GxMOykqyAMWtyT8fbapBnd96zACHcPLgZtAl3AGMmFEj-B7sTb8w_y_n3s0/s640/Racolo1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">More
of my sketches from one of my notebooks - these are APT petroglyphs
from Racolo, Baguia, Timor Leste. One of the images matches the shape of
excavated bronze axeheads from eastern Indonesia. See O'Connor &
Oliveira (2007).</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
Horses probably weren't introduced way back in prehistory, as the
writer of the piece seems to suggest, and the images from Liang Kobori
do little to change that (although it might help with a relative
chronology of Indonesian rock art). But when <i>were</i> horses
introduced? There isn't a lot of archaeological evidence to go on in
answering that question; fortunately, though, there <i>is</i> some linguistic evidence to consider.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> There are two sets of 'horse' cognates in use in ISEA. One is an Old Javanese coinage: <i>ajaran</i>, meaning 'trained animal, horse, talking bird', from a root meaning 'to learn' (compare modern Malay <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ajar#Indonesian"><i>ajar</i></a>). This was loaned into <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makassarese_language">Makassarese</a> (Sulawesi) and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manggarainese_language">Manggarai</a> (Flores) as <i>jara</i></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ŋ</span></i><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">, into <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngadha_language">Ngadha</a> (Flores) as <i>dzara</i>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kambera_language">Kambera</a> (Sumba) as <i>njara</i>, all meaning simply 'horse' (Blust 2002:98). The modern Javanese word is <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%EA%A6%97%EA%A6%AB%EA%A6%A4%EA%A7%80#Javanese"><i>jaran</i></a>.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)"> The other set of words derive from Malay <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kuda#Malay"><i>kuda</i></a>,
which means simply 'horse'. Tetum (Timor) and Sundanese (West Java)
borrowed this directly in presumably quite recent times, and cognates
are found in the Philippines (Maranao, Tagabili, Manobo). <i>Kuda</i> was previously thought to come from <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%98%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%9F%E0%A4%95#Sanskrit">Sanskrit</a>,
which has a lot of different words for 'horse', or perhaps from another
Indic (Indo-Aryan) language - see, for example, W. E. Maxwell's <i>A Manual of the Malay Language</i>
(1907, London: Kegan Paul). But Robert Blust, perhaps the world's
foremost expert on Austronesian languages, suspects a Dravidian origin
(compare Kannada <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%B2%95%E0%B3%81%E0%B2%A6%E0%B3%81%E0%B2%B0%E0%B3%86#Kannada"><i>kudure</i></a> and Tamil <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%AE%95%E0%AF%81%E0%AE%A4%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%B0%E0%AF%88#Tamil"><i>kuthirai</i></a>). Blust is also clear that he believes horses came to Indonesia from India - and whatever the case, <i>kuda</i> came from a language with South Asian origins.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)"> In any case, '[n]either <i>kuda</i> nor <i>ajar</i>
has an ancient Austronesian pedigree', as Blust puts it (2002:98).
There is no Malayo-Polynesian protoform meaning 'horse', and therefore
no reason to believe that horses were present when Austronesian speakers
first settled in Indonesia a little over 4,000 years ago. Horses are,
however, mentioned fairly frequently in medieval works from Java. For
example:</span></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)"><i>Now was the time for the king to set out to visit<br />the holy river of Narmada,<br />And the queen, who was like the goddess of flowers, accompanied him beautifully adorned,<br />All the tributary kings and the officers accompanied him with their weapons, vehicles and armies in readiness;<br />The trumpeting of elephants and the <b>neighing of horses</b> were thunderous and tumultuous. </i>(<i>Victory of Arjuna</i> 22:2, by <a href="https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empu_Tantular">Mpu Tantular</a>, fourteenth century - quoted in Creese (2004:63).)</span></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)"> The horse seems to have swiftly become an essential animal in Indonesia</span>,
for ritual, trade, transport, and war<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, both in the <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">east and the 'Indianised' west (where horses<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, at least in literature, took on much of <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">th<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">e <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">character and many of the tropes <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">from ancient India)</span></span></span></span></span></span></span>. Islands in both the east and
west specialised in raising horses in historic times, including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandalwood_Pony">Sumba</a>
and Buton, and they seem to have had a radical impact on the nature of
warfare on larger islands like Timor, where warriors would ride
decorated horses to show off their wealth and power. You might also
think of the now-rather-famous Sumbanese spectacle of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasola"><i>pasola</i></a>,
in which men hurl blunt javelins at one another from the backs of
Sumba-raised horses. You can find a sensationalised account of <i>pasola</i> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIu38uhrBFk">here</a> (warning: it's <i>Vice</i>).</span></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Pferde_in_Maubisse_klein.jpg" height="433" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Pferde_in_Maubisse_klein.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Timor ponies. h/t <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pferde_in_Maubisse_klein.jpg">J. Patrick Fischer</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
Anyway, the point is that horses were an introduced species in
Indonesia, and they were almost certainly introduced from India in late
prehistory or the very early historic period. This is true of several
animals that we think of as normal, fundamental domestic creatures -
including the domestic cat, which may have been introduced to Indonesia
as late as the seventeenth century.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Finally,</span> check out <a href="https://kudakhatulistiwa.wordpress.com/">this blog about Indonesian horses</a>. <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Some interesting posts over there.</span> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">More next time. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">*****</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ballard, C. 1988. Dudumahan: a rock art site on Kai Kecil, S.E. Moluccas. <i>Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific prehistory association</i>. 8:139-161.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Blust, R. 2002. The history of faunal terms in Austronesian languages.<i> Oceanic linguistics</i>. 41(1):89-139.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Creese, H. 2004. <i>Women of the kakawin world</i>. New York: M. E. Sharpe.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">O'Connor, S. & Oliveira, N. V. 2007. Inter- and intraregional variation in the APT: a view from East Timor. <i>Asian perspectives</i>. 46(2):389-403.</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7065003983984824458.post-23273148558128509302016-08-28T04:19:00.003-07:002016-08-28T04:19:45.692-07:00Eastern Indonesia in the Desawarnana [repost]<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>This is the first post from </i>West's Ancient World<i> that I'm putting on this site. It<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> was originally published in Decembe<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">r 2015, and can be found <a href="http://alwestmeditates.blogspot.nl/2015/12/eastern-indonesia-in-desawarnana.html">here</a>. I'll <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">start putting up original material in a couple of days, but <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">this is just to populate the site a little.</span></span></span></span></i> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> The earliest written documentation of several Indonesian islands occurs in canto 14 of the <a href="http://alwestmeditates.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/mpu-prapanca-and-desawarnana.html"><i>Desawarnana</i></a>, the East Javanese <a href="http://press.anu.edu.au/austronesians/poetic/mobile_devices/ch05.html">topogenic</a>
poem of 1365 <span style="font-size: small;">CE</span>. There's been a lot of academic discussion about which
names refer to which places, especially in the case of some particularly
obscure ones, but it's generally easy to tell which part of Indonesia
or Malaysia is being described. It's rather harder to tell whether the
text accurately depicts the actual realm of Majapahit, though. In any
case, the full text of the fifth stanza of the fourteenth canto goes
like this (Robson's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Desawarnana-Nagarakrtagama-Verhandelingen-Koninklijk-Volkenkunde/dp/9067180947">1995 translation</a>):</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Taking them island by island: <b>Makasar</b>, <b>Butun</b> and <b>Banggawi</b>,<br /><b>Kunir</b>, <b>Galiyahu</b> and <b>Salaya</b>, <b>Sumba</b>, <b>Solot</b> and <b>Muwar</b>,<br />As well as <b>Wa</b></i></span><b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span class="Unicode">ṇ</span></i></span></b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><b><span class="Unicode">ḍ</span>an</b>, <b>Ambwan</b>, <b>Maloko</b> and <b>Wwanin</b>,<br /><b>Seran</b> and <b>Timur</b> as the main ones among the various islands that <b>remember their duty</b>.</i></span></span></blockquote>
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
This is clearly a list of toponyms from Sulawesi and eastern Indonesia.
Some of them are familiar, like Timur (clearly Timor) and Seran
(clearly Seram), and others haven't changed at all from their present
forms, including <i>Makasar</i> and <i>Sumba</i>. Others need a little interpreting, however.</span></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Sulawesi_Topography.png" class="shrinkToFit" height="591" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Sulawesi_Topography.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sulawesi
- probably the strangest-shaped large island on the planet. It has an
amazing geological history (as you might expect). Borneo (Kalimantan) is
to the west; Maluku Utara is to the east.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <i>Makasar</i>, <i>Butun</i>, and <i>Banggawi</i> are all on or around <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulawesi">Sulawesi</a> (as are several placenames in preceding stanzas). <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makassar">Maka(s)sar</a>
is now Indonesia's fifth biggest city, on the west coast of the
southwestern leg of Sulawesi (in the province of Sulawesi Selatan); <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buton">Buton</a> is the modern spelling of <i>Butun</i>, and it's an island off the southeastern leg of Sulawesi; Banggawi is apparently best interpreted as Banggai, probably the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banggai_Islands_Regency">Banggai archipelago</a> off the east coast of Sulawesi.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
In pre-colonial times the Banggai Islands were known for their
production of iron swords - not the best swords in Indonesia, but
reportedly quite serviceable ones (Tome Pires mentions them). Sulawesi
as a whole was renowned for its iron (especially around <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Matano">Lake Matano</a>), and the <i>-wesi</i> in 'Sulawesi' probably refers to the metal (compare modern Malay <i>besi</i> 'iron', and <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/besi">other Malayo-Polynesian cognates</a>). Both Buton and Banggai later came under the authority of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternate_Sultanate">Sultanate of Ternate</a> in far-eastern Indonesia (see Leonard Andaya's brilliant <i>World of Maluku</i> (1993) for more on this).</span></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Maluku_Islands_en.png" class="shrinkToFit transparent" height="628" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Maluku_Islands_en.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="570" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A
map of the modern Indonesian provinces of Maluku and Maluku Utara,
showing the positions of several of the islands in the text. h/t <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maluku_Islands_en.png">Lencer</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> The next set of placenames are a little harder to work out. <i>Sumba</i> is certainly <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumba">Sumba</a> and <i>Solot</i> is probably <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solor">Solor</a> or the Solor archipelago, a set of islands east of Flores. <i>Salaya</i> is Selayer, a teeny-tiny archipelago between Sulawesi and Flores, known for its horses and buffalo. <i>Galiyahu</i> is actually the island of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantar">Pantar</a>;
in the earliest Portuguese documents it's referred to as 'Galiyao', and
the linguist Marian Klamer says that "[t]he name originates from the
Western Pantar <i>Gale Awa</i>, literally 'living body'" (Klamer
2015:15). It is possible that the name referred to a political
confederation of several villages, although of course that's rather
difficult to verify. Kunir and Muwar I know nothing about, but they must
be elsewhere in eastern Indonesia.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <i>Ambwan</i> is clearly <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambon_Island">Ambon</a>, the small-but-important island to the south of Seram. <i>Maloko</i> is modern Maluku, but precisely which polity or region it refers to is difficult to say; presumably it's one of either <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternate">Ternate</a> or Tidore, the spice-trading polities based on tiny volcanic islands off the Halmaheran coast (probably Ternate). <i>Wwanin</i> is an interesting one, though: it refers to the Onin Peninsula on the west coast of New Guinea south of <a href="http://www.geographic.org/geographic_names/name.php?uni=-3718415&fid=2590&c=indonesia">MacCluer Gulf</a>, and it must count as the earliest, or at least one of the earliest, recorded placename(s) in the history of the island. </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Wa</i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span class="Unicode">ṇ</span></i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span class="Unicode">ḍ</span>an</i> must refer to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banda_Islands">Banda Islands</a>, by far the most important spice-producing archipelago in the world in the fourteenth century.</span></span></span></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Ternate_Island.jpg" class="shrinkToFit" height="480" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Ternate_Island.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ternate,
Maluku Utara - a tiny round island with a large volcanic mountain at
its centre. From the fifteenth century until the Dutch conquest it was a
major regional power, and there's some evidence of significant Javanese
and Malay influence (at least culturally). h/t <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ternate_Island.jpg">A. Rabin</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> As I said before, <i>Timur</i> is Timor and <i>Seran</i> is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seram_Island">Seram</a>
- no mysteries at all there. Why two totally separate and distant
islands are mentioned together last is a mystery to me; they're nearly
900 kilometres apart. It might, however, indicate nothing more than the
imperfect knowledge of a fourteenth-century Javanese Buddhist describing
things he had never seen.</span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
So what does this stanza really tell us about the political
authority of Majapahit outside Java? Did the Javanese really have an
outpost as far east as New Guinea? What does 'remember their duty' mean?
As one of the more contentious issues in the historiography of medieval
Indonesia, I'd like to leave that for another time. There are sceptics,
including famously <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelis_Christiaan_Berg">C. C. Berg</a>,
who think/thought that these Javanese texts represented little more
than magical/wishful thinking or exaggeration, and there are proponents
of Greater Majapahit (including the Indonesian government) who think
these references amount to a medieval antecedent of Indonesia. And then
there are scholars who take a middle way. The evidence is necessarily
inconclusive, naturally.</span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> You can find an Indonesian translation of the entire poem <a href="http://sejarah-puri-pemecutan.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/kakawin-nagarakertagama.html">here</a>,
by the way. You can also find the Javanese text online, and while I
don't know Old Javanese (I can sort of work out some meanings on
comparative grounds, but I've never had any training in it), here's the
original text (romanized and <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">without some needed diacr<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">itics</span></span>):</span></span></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>ikaɳ saka sanusanusa makhasar butun / bangawi,
<br /> kunir ggaliyau mwan i salaya sumba solot / muar,
<br /> muwah tikhan i wandan ambwan athawa maloko wwanin,
<br /> ri seran i timur makadinin aneka nusatutur. </i></span></span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: center;">
*****</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Andaya, L. 1993. <i>World of Maluku</i>. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Klamer, M. 2015. <i>The Alor-Pantar languages: linguistic context, history and typology</i> (Studies in Diversity Linguistics 3). Berlin: Language Science Press.</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7065003983984824458.post-43201544435384032862016-08-28T01:04:00.000-07:002016-08-28T02:31:20.840-07:00INTRODUCTORY POST<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I've decided to start a new blog on history and prehistory in Indonesia and the southwestern Pacific. My earlier blog, <a href="http://alwestmeditates.blogspot.nl/"><i>West's Ancient World</i></a>, included lots of material on Amazonia, Africa, and Australia, as well as plenty of other tangential topics. This one is exclusively about Indonesia, New Guinea, and the surrounding area. I'm starting a master's degree in Southeast Asian Studies at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leiden_University">Leiden University</a> in the Netherlands in a few days, so concentrating on Indonesia - not just academically but also online - seems like a good idea at this point.</span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I'm particularly interested in eastern Indonesia, mainly the Indonesian provinces of Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT), Maluku, and Maluku Utara - but I have plenty of material on the western islands too (Java, Sumatra, etc) and New Guinea (which is often considered separate from Indonesia). I'll also have a little to say about early Islamic culture, so the focus here isn't exclusively 'Hindu-Buddhist' or 'animist' Indonesia. At the moment I'm looking a little at village confederations in eastern Indonesia, and one of the most important primary sources on that subject is the <a href="http://mcp.anu.edu.au/N/Hitu_bib.html"><i>Hikayat Tanah Hitu</i></a>, a seventeenth-century historical piece written in Malay in the <a href="https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjad_Jawi">Jawi script</a> (an <i>Arabo-Persian</i>-based writing system) in Ambon, far in the east of Indonesia. It's simultaneously an indigenous and a Muslim account, written in a script brought by Muslim traders but concerned with non-Islamic native history from the fifteenth century on. It's all connected, and to separate Islamic history from the re<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">st just seems a<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">rbitrary</span></span>.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> The name, <i>Nirleka</i>, is the Indonesian pronunciation of a neologism based on the Sanskrit words <i>nir</i> ('no', 'non', a negative) and <i>lekha</i> ('writing'), and is sometimes used as a synonym for 'prehistory' (<i>prasejarah</i>) in Indonesian (see e.g. <a href="https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prasejarah">Wikipedia</a>). I don't like to think too much about titles - I once heard someone criticise Derek Freeman's <i>Report on the Iban</i> (1970) for having a crap title, for being too descriptive, but it seems fine to me to just say what the contents of the book are. However, prehistory, Sanskrit, and Malay are all mashed up in early Indonesian history, and to be able to express that melange in three syllables is a rare boon.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> My main aim with this blog is to attract an English-speaking audience in Indonesia and Malaysia as well as in America, Britain, Australia, &c. The old posts on Indonesian history got plenty of hits from Indonesia and I'd like that to become a regular thing. I am, of course, living in the Netherlands now, and I'm back in an academic setting, so I should have plenty of material to put up on here. I live less than five minutes from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijksmuseum_van_Oudheden">Rijksmuseum van Oudheden</a> (the national archaeology museum of the Netherlands) and the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde (the anthropology museum) is literally around the corner from the flat. There's also a superb botanic garden (the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hortus_Botanicus_Leiden">Hortus Botanicus</a>) with lots of Indonesian plants in it - it also has a great place to sit and study inside the greenhouse. I don't think I'm going to have any problem coming up with things to post, and now I'm no longer working full-time I should have the time to do it. I'm going to start by migrating my old Indonesian posts over here, maybe with a few tweaks.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> In other news, I got married a little over three weeks ago at a small ceremony in Gibraltar. We got married there for visa reasons (my wife is American and was on a student visa in Britain, and new rules mean that we would have needed permission from the British government to get married in the UK - things are getting pretty right-wing anti-immigration alt-rightish over there these days...). We've both been extremely busy getting ready for the wedding and the move and things are only now calming down. The Netherlands is really nice but it's a little bureaucratic (in a way the Anglophone world generally isn't), so there's still more to do here. And I'm getting a bit tired of constant mandatory table service in bars and cafes. But I'm sure we'll settle in properly within a few months, especially once my course starts. </span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0