A nativist defence of Javanism in late 19th-century Java

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Suluk Gaṭoloco is a notoriously anti-Islamic satirical narrative poem, composed anonymously sometime in 19th-century Java. This article challenges Pigeaud’s hypothesis that it once belonged to the curriculum of Islamic religious schools in Panaraga. The contents of the so-called Sĕrat Suluk Panaraga, i.e. a two-volume compilation of texts on Islamic mysticism and theology, kept in the Berlin State Library (Ms. or. oct. 3999 and 4000), is discussed in some detail, showing that it contains variegated teachings. The version of the Suluk Gaṭoloco in the Berlin manuscript is close to Philippus van Akkeren’s 1951 edition, but exclusively concentrates on the theological disputes of Gaṭoloco with his scripturalist Islamic adversaries. The argument in Gaṭoloco’s narrative is built upon a discourse of ‘turning to the origins’. At a time when the traditional Javanese way of life was threatened by Dutch colonialism and ‘Arabised’ Islam, the Suluk Gaṭoloco constituted a nativist defence of indigenous customs which must have struck a chord among educated Javanese readers, but it is hardly conceivable that students of Islamic boarding schools were its primary readers. The Sĕrat Suluk Panaraga was originally compiled in 1894 and it was copied in 1901 in Blora on behalf of a Dutch colonial administrator called Paardekooper (1857–1905). This compilation is one among many more Javanese texts in Paardekooper’s overall copying programme which focused on the reading material of the Javanese bureaucratic elite.