Hindu Javanese: Tengger Tradition and Islam

by Robert W. Hefner

Overview

An illuminating account of cultural resilience in Java

Five centuries after the fall of its last Hindu Buddhist kingdom, Java retains only one small population that preserves a non-Islamic priestly tradition descended from early Hindu clergy. Known as the Tengger, these mountain Javanese lack the courts, castes, and religious scholars that transmit Hindu tradition in nearby Bali, the only other area in Indonesia to have kept a Hindu faith. What explains the cultural resilience of the Tengger? Robert Hefner blends historical and ethnographic research to explain the enduring strength of a religion in the face of a revitalized Indonesian Islam. He provides insight into Java’s earlier Hindu traditions and the process of Islamization that swept them aside and shows how the Tengger example speaks not only to cultural change in a corner of Java but to the dissolution of traditional religions amid the advance of world faiths.

Exploring how meaning is derived from public symbolism, Hindu Javanese emphasizes the centrality of tacit knowledge in religious practice and the role of history and community in continually shaping and renewing spiritual experience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691028569
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	02/13/1990
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	303
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Robert W. Hefner is professor of anthropology at Boston University. His books include Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia and Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education (both Princeton).

Table of Contents

	List of Tables	viii
	Preface	ix
1.	Introduction	3
2.	The Setting: History and Identity	23
3.	Region and Ritual	44
4.	Village World and Village Concepts	65
5.	Village Ritual and Islam	104
6.	Culture Challenge and Culture Hero: The Tale of Ajisaka and Mohammad	126
7.	Life Passage and Ritual	142
8.	Ritual Form and Meaning: The Entas-Entas Purification	163
9.	Priest and Priestly Faith	189
10.	The Economics of Ritual Reproduction	216
11.	Islamization and Hindu Reform	239
12.	Conclusion	266
Appendix	Resi Priesthood in Tengger and Bali, a Comparative Note	271
	Bibliography	277
	Index	287

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This book is an exemplary model of sophisticated use of sociological and semiotic theory in the analysis of complex historical and ethnographic materials. It will interest not only anthropologists and Indonesianists, but also historians, linguists, and students of the history of religion and mythology. The general reader would also enjoy the work, for it is gracefully and vividly written.”—Hildred Geertz, Princeton University

Hildred Geertz

This book is an exemplary model of sophisticated use of sociological and semiotic theory in the analysis of complex historical and ethnographic materials. It will interest not only anthropologists and Indonesianists, but also historians, linguists, and students of the history of religion and mythology. The general reader would also enjoy the work, for it is gracefully and vividly written.
— Hildred Geertz, Princeton University

Editorial Reviews

"Elegantly written, convincingly argued, and painstakingly researched, this study of a Javanese mountain people is the most paradigmatic work in the anthropology of religion to appear since Nuer Religion."—-E. Valentine Daniel, Religious Studies Review

"The description of ritual, the priestly role, and prayer in the contemporary setting is careful, subtle and original. The challenges from and reactions to Islam are well delineated."—-R. H. Barnes, Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher

"The most important study of Javanese religion since Clifford Geertz's Religion of Java (1960). An ethnographically rich and historically detailed portrait of the last Hindu enclave in Muslim Java, Hefner's work is also a compelling account of the symbolic processes involved in religious conversion. . . . This is a brilliant study which is certain to appeal to readers concerned with post-structuralist theory as well as specialists in Asian Studies, Hinduism, and Islam."

Choice

[T]he description of ritual, the priestly role, and prayer in the contemporary setting is careful, subtle and original. The challenges from and reactions to Islam are well delineated.

Times Literary Supplement - R. H. Barnes

Elegantly written, convincingly argued, and painstakingly researched, this study of a Javanese mountain people is the most paradigmatic work in the anthropology of religion to appear since Nuer Religion.

Religious Studies Review - E. Valentine Daniel

[T]he description of ritual, the priestly role, and prayer in the contemporary setting is careful, subtle and original. The challenges from and reactions to Islam are well delineated.

Times Literary Supplement - R.H. Barnes

[T]he description of ritual, the priestly role, and prayer in the contemporary setting is careful, subtle and original. The challenges from and reactions to Islam are well delineated.
— R. H. Barnes

Times Literary Supplement

Elegantly written, convincingly argued, and painstakingly researched, this study of a Javanese mountain people is the most paradigmatic work in the anthropology of religion to appear since Nuer Religion.
— E. Valentine Daniel

Religious Studies Review