Clifford Geertz’s ethnography on Javanese religion is a contribution to the interpretive approach in anthropology. Geertz, an American anthropologists, is hailed a symbolic anthropologists. His book on Religion of Java(1960) is one of the few books on the religion of a non-Western people. The book apprises the reader of the intricacies of Javanese spiritual life.
The time when this work was carried out was mostly devoted to the study of small-scale tribal communities. Geertz thought of carrying out a study in a small town. This work is famous for syncreticism. Geertz was highly influenced by the writings of two philosophers, Gilbert Ryle and Ludwig Wittgenstein. He drew upon the tradition of ordinary language philosophy. He followed the concept of ‘thick description’ from Gilbert Ryle and the concept of ‘family resemblance’ from Ludwig Wittgenstein
Geertz (and his wife, Hilda geertz) carried out a long fieldwork in Java, publishing a number of works, one of which is on religion. The fieldwork was carried out in Modjokuto, a small town in east central Java, using the method of history and anthropology.
The ethnography focuses on Modjokuto constitute three cultural forms: abangan, santri and prijaji. The religious system consists of a balanced integration of animistic, Hinduistic and Islamic elements. This syncretism is the island’s basic folk tradition predominantly found in Javanese villages. In the towns most of lower-class and the dispersed peasants continue to follow the tradition known as abangan tradition. The purer Islamic tradition is called santri mostly followed by Javanese traders, but not strictly confined to this group as it has great influence even in villages among the peasants. The social elites, who have roots in the Hindu — Javanese courts and entered in salaried civil service as white-collar elites, and conserved a highly refined court etiquette, are called prijaji. Their tradition includes complex art of dance, drama, music, and poetry, and a Hindu-Buddhist mysticism. While abangan stress the animistic aspects, the santri represent a stress on Islamic aspects, and the prijaji stress the Hinduist aspects of Javanese syncretism of religion. These are not constructed types but the Javanese themselves apply to their societal divisions. Though these three appear to be three sub-communities, they are actually enclosed in the same social structure, and share many common values.
The Abangan variant of religion:
The abangan religion represents the peasant synthesis of tribal inheritance and urban tradition besides several others. It is an amalgam of a little native curing, a little Tantric magic, a little Islamic chanting and so on. The communal feast called slametan forms the cultural base of abangan religion which is found uniformly in all the three religious variants of Java.
The Slametan Communal Feast: It is small but constitutes the core ritual in Javanese religious system, wherein food forms the significant symbol and recurs on all occasions such as birth, marriage, sorcery, death, house moving, bad dreams, harvest, name-changing, opening a factory, illness, supplication of the village guardian spirit, circumcision, and starting off a political meeting and so on. The components of the ritual include, special food which differs depending on the intent of the slametan, incense, Islamic chant, the extra-formal high-Javanese speech of the host which varies with the occasion, but it lacks drama. It is mostly held in the evening, just after the sun has gone down and evening prayer. As the guests, neighbours, friends, kinsmen and others arrive, the host opens up a speech expressing gratitude for accepting the invitation, and hopes everyone shares the benefit of the slametan and then states the intention of giving the slametan.
Lastly he begs pardon for any errors that he may have made in his speech. It is followed by Arabic chant-prayer. Each participant is served a cup of tea and a banana-leaf dish into which is put a sample of each food item from the centre of the food which was already placed, before the slametan started. When everyone has filled the dish, the host bids them to eat. After half-dozen scoopfuls one by one they stop eating and ask for permission to leave, while most of the food remains uneaten, as they desire to eat in private or with their family members
and leave the place. The meaning of slametan is drawn from the result; no one feels different from others, and no one has a wish to split off from the other person. Also importantly the local spirits will not cause ill feelings among the people and keep them unhappy and confused. These spirits are believed to be existing at old Hindu ruins, woods and unusual points in landscape. The incense and aroma of food pacify the spirits. There are three main kinds of spirit: memdi (frighteners), lelembut (ethereal ones) and tujul (spirit children). While the memdis are harmless and enjoy playing practical jokes, the lelembut possess individuals, cause illness, even death and these are to be driven out by dukun (curer). Tujuls are familiar spirits, one get them by fasting and meditation and one has to make devil’s pact of satisfying them and in return get wealth from the spirits; if one becomes rich suddenly, the reason is attributed to the tujul owned by that person and are encountered by prayers and magical spells. There are other spirits called as demits (place spirits) which inhabit certain places, trees and so on which respond to the pleas of people and receive slametan with special foods and danjangs (guardian spirits) are like demits but the difference is that they are spirits of historical figures like village headman. The slametan concentrates, organises, and summarises the general abangan ideas of order, their “design for living” (Geertz 1960:29). The slametan falls into four main types: (1) those centering around the crises of life like birth and death, (2) those associated with the Moslem ceremonial calendar like birth of the Prophet, (3) those concerned with the integration of village, the cleaning of the village of spirits and (4) those concerned with occasions like departing for a long trip, changing place of residence or changing name and so on. The limit of space forbids going into details about these. On each of these, there is change of food which obtain certain symbolic meaning relevant on the occasion and change of chants or spells. However, the basic structure and meaning remains the same. It may be important to note here about the dukuns who are curers, sorcerers and ceremonial specialists. There are a variety of them dealing with various physical ailments and disharmonies. They are believed possessing ilmu, a special knowledge having even magical powers, sometimes learned from a teacher. In several cases the powers do not remain with the individual permanently. Not only that there are different opinions about the dukuns, but the general belief is negative as they inevitably die violent death. The abangan worldview in slametan practices are infused with the Permai political and nationalist ideology which shun the strict Islamic tradition though general cooperation is extended to people of all walks of life.
The Santri variant of religion:
There are three elements in the santri ummat (community) in Modjokuto: peasants, traders and penghulu family members. From northern Java, peasants who were already attracted to Islam migrated to southern part of the island for various reasons around 1825AD. This was followed by a group of itinerant Javanese traders in cigarette, cheap cloth, dry fish, leather goods, small hardware came from northern Javanese towns in sixteenth century and propagated Islam in Modjokuto and the country side. They aped the business and life styles and religious customs of the Arabs, and gradually became wealthy. As time passed more of these peripatetic traders settled in Modjokuto. The penghulu family members are a sort of aristocrats worked for Dutch government under colonial rule. The santri religious ideological background rests on the core of Islam – Koran, Hadith, Sharia, and the five pillars (confession of Faith in Allah and the Prophet, the five time prayers, fasting in the month of Ramadan, pilgrimage to Mecca) and zakah or zakat, religious tax. The difference between the abangan and satri is that the former are indifferent to orthodox Islamic doctrine. but fascinated with ritual detail while among the santri the concern is with the doctrine overshadows the attenuated ritualistic aspects of Islam. The santri find themselves in conservative group called kolot or modern group identified with a charitable non-political entity called Muhammadijah. There are two political parties of santri in Modjokuto: Masjumi and Nahdatul Ulama (NU). The Masjumi has close association with Muhammadijah and the NU represents the conservative group. There is a minor third party called Partai Sarekat Islam Indonesia (PSII) which identifies with the modern group. The loyalties of the santri swing largely between the Muhammadijah and NU parties. As the abangan religious form is tied up with the custom it does not need formal training to support it and it can be learned in peasant’s life following examples set by others. But for santri Islamic school system is necessary specially to combat with the religious illiteracy and backsliding, neither of them is less meaningful to abangan. The traditional school system of santri lies in pondok. A pondok consists of a teacher-leader, commonly a pilgrim who is called kijaji and a group of male pupils anywhere three or four to a thousand, called santri. The santris live at the pondok in dormitories, cook their own food and wash their own clothes.
They live by themselves either working in the fields of the kijaji or others or supported by the parents. The kijaji is not paid, and the students do not pay tuition. All costs of the institution are born by pious members of the ummat as part of their religious duties under the zakat. The pondoks are located in country side, usually consists of a mosque, a house for kijaji and dormitories for santri.
Classes are held in the mosque where the kijaji chants passages from books of religious commentary and interprets the same. The verses from Koran are memorised by the santri. There has not been time regulation and grading of the students. This kind of school later got influenced with the secular school system. The NU started secular schools with strong religious component on the lines of modern education, called madrassah while the Muhammadijah started modern schools not totally without religious instruction. Both paved way for reformation of the santri traditions.
The Ministry of Religious Administration has an office at Modjokuto which looks after the affairs of marriage and divorce. This office is headed by naib and assisted by chotib and others. Under the Muslims Law if a man pronounces the talak only once, he may change his mind within three menstruation periods and take back his wife. He may again dismiss his wife later and take her back again within three menstruation periods. If he does not take back his wife either first
time or second, the man and his wife are irrevocably divorced. If the talak is pronounced third time, they cannot remarry unless the woman is remarried to someone and divorced. These matters are looked after by naib. The officials also collect information about the running of mosque and giving courses for the village religious officials about Muslim Law.
The Prijaji variant of religion: The prijajis are Java’s gentry while the abangans its peasantry. They trace their ancestry back to the great semi-mythical kings of pre-colonial Java, who did “refined” and “non-refined” work. This is said to be an outgrowth of the old Hindu system that had five groups – Brahmans, Satrijas (Kshatriyas), Vaisias, Sudras, and Paraiah. They represent mainly Great Tradition and have always mainly been in towns, while the abangan represent Little
Tradition peasantry of the villages. The prijajis are seen as self-controlled, polished, learned, and spiritually refined. They symbolise alus, meaning pure, refined, polished, polite, exquisite, ethereal, subtle, civilised and smooth. The outlook of prijajis is also explained with a pair of concepts: lair and batin. Batin means the “inner realm of human experience” and lair “the outer realm of human behaviour”. The religious life or values of prijaji focus on etiquette, art and mystical practice. The etiquette conceals the alus prijaji the real feelings from others, manifests in humbling oneself politely and is the correct behaviour to adopt toward anyone who is of equal rank or higher. There are different linguistic styles to be employed when interacting with people of different ranks. The Great Tradition of Javanese has three varieties of art complexes: Alus Art, Kasar Art, and National Art. Each of these complexes consists a variety of play, orchestra,
myth or story, poetry, performance/dances, text and set ups.
The mysticism of pre-Colonial Java forms the basis of prijaji religious variant. It can be summarised in eight postulates. (1) In the everyday life of man “good” and “bad” feelings, “happiness” and “unhappiness”, similarly other emotions are inherently and indissolubly interdependent. No one can be happy all the time or unhappy all the time. The aim in life is to minimise the passions in order to find out the real feelings behind. (2) Underneath these coarse human feelings there is a pure basic feeling-meaning, rasa, which is the individual’s true self and a manifestation of God within the individual. (3) The religious aim of man should be to “know” or “feel” this ultimate rasa in himself. (4) In order to achieve this ultimate rasa one must have purity of will and must concentrate one’s inner life by instinctual discipline such as fasting, staying awake and sexual abstention. (5) Besides the spiritual discipline, one must empirically study the human emotional life; a metaphysical psychology leads to an understanding and experience of rasa. (6)As people vary both in their ability to carry out the spiritual disciplines, it is possible to rank individuals according to their spiritual abilities and achievements. (7)At the ultimate level of experience and existence, all people are one and the same and there is no individuality for rasa and others are the same in all. (8) Since the aim of all men should be to experience rasa, religious systems, beliefs and practices are only means to that end and are good only insofar as they bring it about. This leads to a relative view of such systems.
Within this broad mystical conceptuality of human emotions and experiences, there are variants such as Budi Setia which is heavily influenced by the international theosophy movement of Annie Besant. Sumarah believes in the existence of God who has created heaven and earth and all in it, and acknowledge the prophets and the Holy Books, but not idolize them but practice self-surrender.
Kawaruh Kasunjatan recognises guru who exhorts to plain living and high thinking, use techniques of breath regulation, concentrate on inner life, and perceive the ultimate rasa-sounds in one’s inhaling-exhaling (hu Allah).
Conclusion
Geertz finally concludes, the “three groups are all enclosed in the same social structure, share many common values, and in are, in case, not nearly so definable as social entities as a simple descriptive discussion of their religious practices would indicate” (1967:355). He says, “religion does not play only an integrative, socially harmonising role in society but also a divisive one, thus reflecting the balance between integrative and disintegrative forces which exist in any social system” (ibid).
Geertz’s work is often referred to in the context of the functional theory of religion. Durkheim, who is regarded as the primary contributor to the functional theory, saw that religion binds people in a moral community called church. However, in reality, this thesis is applicable to those situations where there is a singularity of religion– all members of the community belong to one religion and obviously it creates solidarity among them. Geertz’s work draws our attention to a situation of religious pluralism where religion instead of creating solidarity in society produces divisiveness, and may become the main source of conflict and disintegration. So, from one perspective religion is the source of social integration, but when we look at social reality from the perspective of the entire society, it creates divisiveness and conflicts.
A Comparison
Other than the fact of different geographical locations, the two studies focus on the population that is different in its political and economic background. As the Ndembu is primarily hunting tribe, the Javanese society is basically agrarian.
The Ndembu are largely conservative animists though some converted to Christianity, whereas the Javanese religion is syncretism of animism, HinduBuddhist and Islam. In both the cases religion plays significant role in the day to day life of people; among the Ndembu the political aspect of religion has not been highlighted perhaps it is underplayed under the powerful colonial British rule, but among the Javanese it has strong political links at regional and national level.Apart from these, the significant difference between the two is the theoretical approach. While Turner adopts Field Theory, Geertz depends on phenomenological and epistemological approach. Geertz finds that religion is integrative as well as disintegrative force but in case of Turner, it appears more as an integrative force bringing back social harmony as the social structural principles, practical and idiosyncratic behaviour often create social conflicts and tensions.