The Cosmological aspect of Indonesian Religion

H. G. Quaritch Wales

doi:10.1017/S0035869X00118179

The Cosmological aspect of Indonesian Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011

H. G. Quaritch Wales

Article contents

Extract
References

Get access

Rights & Permissions

Extract

The cosmological aspect of religion, and the application of cosmic symbolism to religious architecture and social organization, were discovered relatively late, so that the attention rightly directed to the subject in recent years has engendered a tendency to overestimate its importance in Asian thought. Fortunately this has not escaped the notice of critics. The cosmological aspect of the ziggurat is now recognized to have been secondary. Further, with regard to Indian culture, Prof. A. L. Basham has uttered this timely warning: “It is hardly likely that the complex cosmic symbolism of the Vedic sacrifices was elaborated until long after the sacrifices themselves came into being. Similarly the cosmic symbolism of the Hindu temple seems to us to be a comparatively late and artificial growth, of far less significance than some authorities are inclined to attribute to it. The symbolism seems to have been somewhat esoteric, the preserve of schools of learned men who specialized in trying to explain every aspect of life by this means. We believe that for the early Indian man in the street it was of far less significance than might be believed from the emphasis which some modern students place upon it.” In the present article I shall try to redress the balance in the case of certain non-Islamized peoples of Indonesia, an undertaking which in view of some recent publications seems to be needed.

Type: Articles
Information: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 91 , Issue 3-4 , October 1959 , pp. 100 - 139

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00118179 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1959

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

^{page 100 note 1} Parrot, André, Ziggurats et Tour de Babel, Paris, 1949, pp. 204, 214Google Scholar.

^{page 100 note 2} ProfBasham, A. L., JRAS., 1958, p. 96Google Scholar, in review of Auboyer, J., La Vie Publiqiie et Privée dans l'Inde Ancienne, Fasc. vi, Paris, 1955Google Scholar.

^{page 100 note 3} Hardeland, A., Versuch einer Gramatik der Dajackischen Sprache, Amsterdam, 1858Google Scholar; Dajacksch-Deutsches Worterbuch, Amsterdam, 1859Google Scholar.

^{page 100 note 4} Kruyt, A. C., Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel, The Hague, 1906Google Scholar. A more recent valuable study is Mallinckrodt, J., “Ethnografische Mededeelingen over de Dajaks in de afdeeling Kcealakapoeas,” Bijdragen, 80–1, 1924–1925Google Scholar.

^{page 101 note 1} Perham, Archdeacon J., in Roth, H. Ling, The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, London, 1896, vol. iGoogle Scholar; That the Sea Dayaks practise strict shamanism, the manangs never being possessed by spirits, is confirmed by their latest investigator, Dr. J. D. Freeman, in a private letter to me dated 10th November, 1958.

^{page 101 note 2} Adriani, N. and Kruyt, Alb. C., De Bare'e sprelcende Toradjas van Midden Celebes (de Oost Toradjas), Amsterdam, 1951Google Scholar.

^{page 101 note 3} Wales, H. G. Quaritch, Prehistory and Religion in South-East Asia, London, 1957, Ch. III.Google Scholar.

^{page 102 note 1} Verheijen, J. A. J., S.V.D., Het Hoogste Wezen bij de Manggaraiers, Vienna, 1951, p. 4Google Scholar.

^{page 107 note 1} In this and the next paragraph the roles of Maharaja Buno and M. Sangiang seem to have been erroneously transposed, since it has been previously stated that M. Sangiang was associated with the Upperworld group. Cf. Schärer's statements on pp. 39 and 43, also text of Myth, p. 218.

^{page 115 note 1} H. G. Quaritch Wales, op. cit., p. 94.

^{page 118 note 1} “It was argued that social structure should be clearly separated from the other aspects of man's social heritage. These came to be subsumed under the title ‘culture’, a word which has often been used in the post-war years almost in a pejorative sense to describe a sort of rag-bag of odds and ends in which to thrust all facts and ideas in which the social anthropologist was not at the moment interested.” Richards, Audrey I. in Man and Culture, ed. by Firth, Raymond, London, 1957, p. 29Google Scholar.

^{page 118 note 2} Malinowski, B., in Science, Religion and Reality, ed. Needham, Joseph, 1925, pp. 25, 53–7Google Scholar.

^{page 118 note 3} Kroeber, A. L., Anthropology, New York, 1948, p. 347Google Scholar.

^{page 118 note 4} Radin, Paul, Primitive Religion, 2nd edn., New York, 1957, p. 29Google Scholar.

^{page 118 note 5} “It has been said (by Hubert and Mauss) that the social ‘origin’ of the reckoning of social time is borne out by the discrepancies between religious calendars and the rhythms of nature. In point of fact this divergence in no way disproves the link between man's systems of reckoning and the rhythms of nature; it simply proves on the one hand the inconsistency of primitive reckoning and chronometry, and on the other the non- ‘naturalist’ character of primitive piety, whose feasts were not directed to any natural phenomenon in itself but to the religious aspect of that phenomenon.” Eliade, M., Patterns in Comparative Religion, London, 1958, p. 390Google Scholar. (This is a translation of Traité d'histoire des Religions.)

^{page 119 note 1} Wensinck, A. J., Tree and Bird as Cosmological Symbols in Western Asia, Amsterdam, 1921, p. 46Google Scholar.

^{page 119 note 2} Eliade, M., Le Chamanisme, Paris, 1931, p. 238Google Scholar. Hornbills and snakes were of course widely venerated, without this implying a totemistic basis, cf. J. H. Hutton, The Angami Nagas, Appendix IV.

^{page 119 note 3} Eliade, M., Patterns . . ., p. 419Google Scholar.

^{page 120 note 1} Granet, M., La Pensée Chinoise, Paris, 1934, p. 325Google Scholar.

^{page 120 note 2} Pettazzoni, R., The All-Knowing God, London, 1956, p. 336Google Scholar.

^{page 120 note 3} Ibid., p. 334.

^{page 120 note 4} I. Sohapera, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th edn., art. “Dual Organization”.

^{page 120 note 5} H. G. Quaritch Wales, op. cit., p. 92.

^{page 121 note 1} Preuss, K. Th., Glauben und Mystik im Schatten des Hochsten Wesens, Leipzig, 1926, p. 38Google Scholar.

^{page 121 note 2} Hentze, C., “Cosmogonie du Monde Dressé Debout et du Monde Renversé,” in Serie Orientale Roma, xivGoogle Scholar.

^{page 121 note 3} C. Lévi-Strauss, “Le Symbolisme cosmique dans la structure sociale et l'organization ceremonielle de plusieurs populations nord- et sud-amerioaines,” ibid.

^{page 122 note 1} E.g. Kruyt, A. C., De Bare'e sprekende Toradjas . . ., i, p. 198Google Scholar; Gurdon, P. R. T., The Khasís, London, 1914, p. 92Google Scholar; and which indeed seems to have been generally understood as such by the Ngadjus, cf. Mallinckrodt, loc. cit., pp. 293 ff.

^{page 122 note 2} Mallinckrodt, loc. cit., p. 93.

^{page 122 note 3} Eliade, M., Patterns . . ., pp. 267–9Google Scholar.

^{page 122 note 4} Ibid., p. 420.

^{page 123 note 1} Ibid. Chapters XI and XII. My indebtedness to Eliade's study of these cosmological aspects does not mean that I subscribe to the extreme importance he would ascribe to cosmic features in culture generally; cf. my review of Patterns . . ., JBAS., 1958, p. 216.

^{page 123 note 2} Ibid., p. 311.

^{page 123 note 3} Crooke, W., The Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India, London, 1896, vol. ii, pp. 319 f.Google Scholar

^{page 123 note 4} Eliade, M., Patterns . . ., pp. 399 f.Google Scholar

^{page 124 note 1} Ibid., p. 408.

^{page 124 note 2} Ibid., p. 382.

^{page 124 note 3} Warneck, J., Die Religion der Batak, Leipzig, 1909Google Scholar; largely utilized by Loeb, E. M., Sumatra, Vienna, 1935Google Scholar, with further bibliography.

^{page 125 note 1} Eliade, M., Le Chamanisme, pp. 312 f.Google Scholar

^{page 125 note 2} Hidding, K. H. A., “Allah Ta'ala,” in Binlcisan Budi, Leiden, 1950, p. 147Google Scholar; Korn, V. E., “Batakse Offerande,” Bijdragen, 109, pt. 2, p. 116Google Scholar; Vergouwen, J. C., Het Bechtskven der Toba-Bataks, The Hague, 1933Google Scholar.

^{page 126 note 1} Eliade, M., Patterns . . ., p. 269Google Scholar, and cf. Ch. XIII, “ The Structure of Symbols.”

^{page 130 note 1} Schnitger, F. M., The Archaeology of Hindoo Sumatra, Leiden, 1937, Chapter VGoogle Scholar.

^{page 130 note 2} Bijdragen, 113, pp. 291 f. In my Ancient South-East Asian Warfare, p. 157, I gave a different explanation of this Naga, equating it with Rahu.

^{page 131 note 1} Bijdragen, 113, p. 396.

^{page 131 note 2} Schnitger, F. M., Forgotten Kingdoms in Sumatra, Leiden, 1939, pp. 128 f.Google Scholar

^{page 131 note 3} Annual Bibliography of Indian Archaeology for 1926, p. 25.

^{page 131 note 4} JSASMB., vol. xxii, 1949Google Scholar.

^{page 132 note 1} Schärer, op. cit., p. 234, n. 12.

^{page 132 note 2} Schärer, op. cit., Plate V, also Cultureel Indië, iv, p. 74.

^{page 132 note 3} Jung, C. G., The Secret of the Golden Flower, London, 1931, p. 97Google Scholar. The fact that something like maṇḍalas are known to some American Indians, as also to Jung's patients, would not appear to me, all things considered, to be a very strong argument against the Bornean maṇḍalas, if such they be, resulting from Tantric influence.

^{page 132 note 4} Schärer, op. cit., Plate XX also Cultured Indië, iv, p. 73.

^{page 133 note 1} The macrocosm-microcosm doctrine was also known in China as well as in India and the classical West. But Chinese influence here may be ruled out. There was no deity or spiritus rector concerned in the Chinese conception, which has much more in common with the organic naturalism of modern Western philosophy. Cf. Needham, J., Science and Civilization in China, vol. ii, p. 302Google Scholar.

^{page 134 note 1} SirWinstedt, R. O., The Malays: A Cultural History, 4th edn., London, 1956, p. 40Google Scholar.

^{page 134 note 2} van Leur, J. C., Indonesian Trade and Society, The Hague, 1955, p. 107Google Scholar.

^{page 134 note 3} Wales, H. G. Quaritch, Prehistory and Beligion . . ., pp. 171 ff.Google Scholar

^{page 135 note 1} SirEliot, Charles, Hinduism and Buddhism, London, 1921, vol. ii, p. 317Google Scholar.

^{page 135 note 2} That the cosmic symbolism of the stupa was secondary to its basic significance as a substitute body was recognized by Mus, Paul, cf. “Barabudur”, BEFEO., vol. 33, p. 620Google Scholar.

^{page 135 note 3} Hooykaas, Jacoba, “Upon a White Stone under a Nagasari-Tree,” Bijdragen, 113, pp. 329 ff.Google Scholar; also “Het Prae-Muslimse Huewelijk op Java en Bali”, Indonesia, April, 1957, p. 124.

^{page 135 note 4} Rassers, W. H., “Over den Oorsprung van het Javaansche Tooneel,” Bijdragen, 88, pp. 317–450Google Scholar.

^{page 136 note 1} Pigeaud, T., De Tanti Panggelaran, The Hague, 1924, p. 207Google Scholar. It may be mentioned here that for totem animals on the gunungan Rassers points to the two animals facing each other on either side of the Tree. Unlike the example illustrated by him, they are as often as not of the same species, and not particularly warlike in mien. Not recognizing the presence of the Cosmic Tree, Rassers did not appreciate that the animals facing it must be interpreted within the context of the widelyknown symbolism of animals facing a Cosmic Tree.

^{page 136 note 2} Heine-Geldern, R., “Uber Kris-Griffe und ihre mythischen Grundlagen,” Ostasiatische Zeitschrift, vol. xviii, pp. 260–3Google Scholar; SirWinstedt, R. O., The Malays, A Cultural History, 4th edn., London, 1956, p. 165Google Scholar.

^{page 136 note 3} Rassers, W. H., “Inleiding tot een bestudeering van het Javaansche kris,” Mededeelingen der Koninhlyke Nederlandsche Akademie van Wetenschap, 1938Google Scholar; “On the Javanese Kris,” Bijdragen, 99.4.

^{page 136 note 4} Ph. L. Tobing, op. cit., Pl. 9, and note 40.

^{page 136 note 5} Rassers, W. H., Bijdragen, 99.4, pp. 502, 523Google Scholar.

^{page 137 note 1} Walcs, H. G. Quaritch, The Making of Greater India, pp. 136 ff.Google Scholar

^{page 137 note 2} Rassers, W. H., Bijdragen, 88, p. 336Google Scholar.

^{page 137 note 3} Cuisinier, J., Le Théatre d'Ombres à Kelantan, Paris, 1957, p. 16Google Scholar.

^{page 138 note 1} Hooykaas, Jacoba, “Upon a White Stone . . .,” loc. cit., p. 331Google Scholar. Another point of some bearing on the matter is that she herself has shown elsewhere (“The Balinese Realm of Death”, Bijdragen, 112, pp. 74–87) that there is old Javanese literary evidence that in the thirteenth–fourteenth century a sky afterworld was conceived—which is not a union with Totality.

^{page 138 note 2} Bosch, F. D. K., “Uit de Grensgebieden tussen Indische invloedsfeer en oudinheems volksgeloof op Java,” Bijdragen, 110, pt. 1, 1954, pp. 1–19Google Scholar.

^{page 139 note 1} J. Cuisinier, op. cit., p. 74.

^{page 139 note 2} Hooykaas, J., “Upon a White Stone . . .,” loc. cit., p. 330Google Scholar.

^{page 139 note 3} Eliade, M., Patterns . . ., p. 147Google Scholar.

^{page 139 note 4} Eliade, M., Le Yoga, Paris, 1954, p. 211Google Scholar.

Article contents

The Cosmological aspect of Indonesian Religion

Extract

Access options

References

Save article to Kindle

Save article to Dropbox

Save article to Google Drive

Reply to: Submit a response

Your details

You have entered the maximum number of contributors

Conflicting interests