Most recent work by Bernard Arps
To appear in: Anna Maria Busse Berger and Henry Spiller (eds.), Missionaries, Anthropologists, and Music in the Indonesian Archipelago. Oakland: University of California Press., 2025
A key component of Protestant worship is congregational singing. 1 Imagine a church service in mi... more A key component of Protestant worship is congregational singing. 1 Imagine a church service in mid-nineteenth-century Amsterdam. Solemn-looking citizens, dressed in sober black, intone a psalm at the top of their voices to organ accompaniment, slowly paced and deliberate, from memory or a hymnal, in a vast stone building that resounds majestically. 2 Despite the difference in climate, the Willemskerk in Weltevreden or the Protestant Church in Surabaya looked and sounded much the same. Decades after the event, Javanese villagers who had discovered Christianity in the remote countryside but received baptism in the latter church in 1843-46 still cherished a lively recollection of their experience that night: For one person, as he entered that glorious building with its lighting, it was as if he entered the portal of heaven, filling him with holy reverence and timidity; for another those solemn organ tones, later coupled with the singing of the gathered multitude, were like hearing songs of praise from the saints in heaven, collectively lauding God's greatness and love. 3 A service in the village church of rural Swaru, Karangjasa, or Waru Jayeng was a different matter. The walls and ceiling of bamboo matting were hardly conducive to stately resonance. An organ was lacking, as were hymnbooks. The women wore ankle-length wraparound skirts and blouses with a sash over the shoulder, the men the same kind of lower garment and high-collared jackets, often without headcloth and never with a kris-preferably no covered heads and certainly no weaponry in the house of God. If the turnout was good, some of the congregation sat on mats on the floor. Even so, the liturgical procedure differed little from the Dutch one. This is how Reformed (Gereformeerd) preacher F. Lion Cachet describes the first
From: Ronit Ricci (ed.), Storied Island: New Explorations in Javanese Literature, pp. 96–125. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 316., 2023
As a contribution to the study of emotions and ambience in Javanese literature, drama, and cultur... more As a contribution to the study of emotions and ambience in Javanese literature, drama, and culture more generally, I argue that there is a Hamza affect, or more precisely a complex affect-in-action paradigm, which is intrinsic to how plots in the epic of Amir Hamza are built. In the sixteenth-century Java Sea world, where this paradigm was established, it stood out, as other narrative works featured rather different relations between feeling and action. This paradigm became typical of Javanese Hamza storytelling. It found its way into puppetry with other narrative repertoires as well, and helped to promote an action-oriented sensibility in society.
The Newsletter (IIAS), 2023
(By Bernard Arps, Siti Muslifah, and Asti Kurniawati.)
European-style maps of Java exist in t... more (By Bernard Arps, Siti Muslifah, and Asti Kurniawati.)
European-style maps of Java exist in the thousands, but *Javanese* maps are exceedingly rare. Until recently only three specimens were known. In the National Archives of the Netherlands, a collection has recently come to light of eleven Javanese manuscript maps, dated 1825, depicting the districts of the regency of Semarang. Almost everything about these maps is a mystery. They belong together, but their visual aspects vary considerably. Some are real works of art. They turn out to be of great interest as artistic and scientific works produced at the interface of Dutch and Javanese colonial cultures, on the eve of the Java War (1825–30).
The Routledge Performance Archive. https://www.routledgeperformancearchive.com/multimedia/video/dewa-ruci-a-shadow-puppet-performance, 2023
Reflections on Ki Manteb Soedharsono’s video rendition of the famous Javanese shadowplay Dewa Ruc... more Reflections on Ki Manteb Soedharsono’s video rendition of the famous Javanese shadowplay Dewa Ruci (‘The Resplendent Deity’).
In: David Henley and Nira Wickramasinghe (eds.), Monsoon Asia: a reader. Leiden: Leiden University Press., 2023
From Mahabharata and Ramayana to stories of Amir Hamza, Jesus, and Gesar: across a spectrum of lo... more From Mahabharata and Ramayana to stories of Amir Hamza, Jesus, and Gesar: across a spectrum of locally and historically peculiar inflections, epics in South and Southeast Asia embody a typical epicality. The author examines seven of its characteristics. South and Southeast Asian epics are fashioned by kinship; they revolve around love, leadership, and land; the dramatis personae exhibit complex patterns of idiosyncrasy versus genericness; the heroes' adventures tend to be instigated by others; storyworlds and forms of narration highlight feeling (affect); the narration is lavish and organized modularly; the resulting epic realism is heightened, alternate, and mediagenic. Epics are stories, but their critical characteristics are projected on lived experience, yielding understandings of past and present and paradigms for the future.
Wacana: Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia , 2021
MS Jav. b. 2 (R) is among the earliest Javanese manuscripts brought to Europe by seafarers. It wa... more MS Jav. b. 2 (R) is among the earliest Javanese manuscripts brought to Europe by seafarers. It was presented to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, in 1629. Its text-titled Stories of Amir (Caritanira Amir)-sheds new light on the literary and cultural history of Java and the wider Java Sea world. Probably composed in the 1500s, possibly in Banten, the text contains part of an adaptation of the Malay Hikayat Amir Hamzah, itself a rendition of an eleventh-century text in Persian. The protagonist Hamza was an uncle of the Prophet Muhammad. His epic story used to be told across Islamic Asia in a range of literary and performance genres. The text is Javanized not only in its language but also its poetics and (selectively) its natural and cultural settings. Among other things, Caritanira Amir helps to clarify the relationship between Middle and Modern Javanese, and it problematizes social, political, and religious issues that were evidently of concern in the early modern Java Sea world. Several appear in the excerpt presented here.
Manuskripta, 2020
The author argues for the importance of a scholarly attitude and competence he terms philological... more The author argues for the importance of a scholarly attitude and competence he terms philological sensitivity. Philology is usually associated with the study of manuscripts, where it is a sophisticated approach for making sense of texts. It entails a specific focus and mode of understanding. But the significance and utility of philology are not restricted to texts or manuscripts. Its scope is wider. Its approach is grounded in a cultural tendency that lives in society, namely the tendency to experience and try to understand five aspects of a cultural process or object: its artefactuality, apprehensibility, compositionality, contextuality, and historicity. If cultivated to meet the requirements of academic scholarship, this philological sensibility may form a perspective for understanding other kinds of artefacts too-especially if selectively enriched with elements from philological traditions worldwide. The author discusses examples from his own research: a manuscript with the narrative of Amir Hamza in Javanese, religious sermons in Osing on Youtube, and oral critique regarding shadow puppetry.
Abstrak: Penulis mengemukakan pentingnya sebuah sikap dan keterampilan ilmiah yang disebutnya kepekaan filologis. Filologi lazim dihubungkan dengan studi naskah tulisan tangan, di mana filologi merupakan pendekatan canggih untuk mengapresiasi teks. Pendekatan tersebut membawa fokus dan cara pemahaman yang khas. Tetapi makna dan guna filologi tidak terbatas pada teks, apalagi naskah. Jangkauannya lebih luas. Pendekatan yang telah dikembangkan dalam rangka filologi teks itu berdasarkan kecenderungan kultural yang hidup di masyarakat, yaitu kecenderungan untuk menghayati dan memahami lima aspek dari sebuah proses atau benda budaya: keterbuatan, ketercerapan, ketersusunan, kontekstualitas dan kesejarahannya. Jika dipupuk sehingga memenuhi syarat ilmu pengetahuan, sensibilitas filologis tersebut bisa menjadi wawasan yang andal untuk pemahaman artefak budaya lain pula-apalagi kalau wawasan tersebut diperkaya dengan menyerap unsur-unsur terpilih dari tradisi filologi seantero dunia. Penulis mengutip contoh dari penelitiannya sendiri: naskah berisi ceritera Amir Hamzah berbahasa Jawa, ceramah agama Islam berbahasa Osing di Youtube, dan kritik lisan atas pertunjukan wayang.. Kata Kunci: Sensibilitas Filologis; Filologi teks, media, dan pertunjukan; Filologi dunia.
![Research paper thumbnail of The power of the heart that blazes in the world: an Islamic theory of religions in early modern Java [2019]](https://a.academia-assets.com/images/blank-paper.jpg)
Indonesia and the Malay World, 2019
(Open access, see below.)
The prominence of Hindu-Buddhist mythology, imagery, and religiosity i... more (Open access, see below.)
The prominence of Hindu-Buddhist mythology, imagery, and religiosity in Islamic Java has puzzled observers. The shadow play with its Mahābhārata- and Rāmāyaṇa-derived subject matter is a prime example. Another is the late 18th-century ‘renaissance’ of Old Javanese literature in the Islamic kingdom of Surakarta, which produced classics still celebrated today. Beyond a misguided assumption that the Javanese were so strongly disposed to syncretism that blatant doctrinal clashes did not bother their intellectuals, the factors that animated this enterprise remain obscure, despite its critical consequence for the development of Javanese religiosities. I scrutinize several unstudied manuscripts and piece together information from hitherto unconnected scholarship to try to understand these factors, with reference to pressing circumstances, living theories, as well as people who think, feel, and hope. First I examine Javanese theoretical ideas about the relationship between the Hindu-Buddhist and Islamic traditions and the connection between epic narratives and the present and future of Java. Against this background I consider the initiative, in 1778, to reinterpret the ancient epic heritage, beginning with the Arjunawiwāha (composed c. 1030). Focal points of interest in the Islamic hermeneutics of this poem were a quest for inner potency and the resulting external power of violence, knowledge and revelation, and future kingship.
Bernard Arps. Published in: Zane Goebel (ed.), Rapport and the discursive co-construction of social relations in fieldwork encounters. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2019
About urban Banyuwangi (East Java) as a contact zone between languages, ethnicities, and religion... more About urban Banyuwangi (East Java) as a contact zone between languages, ethnicities, and religions, focusing on models of communication in academic linguistics and in local ideologies of language and ethnicity. It is proposed that incorporating narrativity into linguistic models enriches the insights they may yield, not least with regard to rapport.
Articles and book chapters by Bernard Arps
![Research paper thumbnail of Drona's betrayal and Bima's brutality: Javanaiserie in Malay culture [2018]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/55151128/thumbnails/1.jpg)
From: Ding Choo Ming and Willem van der Molen (eds.), Traces of the Ramayana and Mahabharata in Javanese and Malay literature, pp. 58–98. Singapore: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, 2018
The presence of elements explicitly identified as "Javanese" or "from Java" in traditional Malay ... more The presence of elements explicitly identified as "Javanese" or "from Java" in traditional Malay literature and performance — settings, characters, objects, idioms, stories, texts, even entire genres like the renditions of Mahabharata story-matter — has mostly been ascribed to the putative prestige of the historical civilization of Java. Here I explore another point of view. Focusing on religiosity and ethics in a hikayat with Mahabharata stories, I propose the notion of javanaiserie, the creation of texts, performances, and other cultural artefacts designed to be considered Javanese. Javanaiserie has proven alluring in Malay contexts. Rather than as a matter of influence I suggest regarding javanaiserie as an active process of worldmaking, the creation of a reality that is culturally at once close to and distinct from an audience's everyday lifeworld, a reality that can be both elegant and evil, appealing as well as appalling.
From: Yumi Sugahara and Willem van der Molen (eds.) 2018, Transformation of religions as reflected in Javanese texts, pp. 77–102. Tokyo: Research Institute of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 2018
This paper, part of a project on religious worldmaking at the court of Paku Buwana IV in Surakart... more This paper, part of a project on religious worldmaking at the court of Paku Buwana IV in Surakarta, focuses on a category of ideas about worldmaking that were ambient among the Javanese social elite. The quest, an agential, typically person-focused form of worldmaking, narrative in character, appears in variable figurations in many historical environments and different cultural domains across the globe. I describe how a literary rendition of the Javanese mythological narrative of quest known as "Bima Purified" (Bima Suci) was made into a shadowplay in 1817–1818 and how it resonated with ideas of Sufi questing in court circles.
Reviews of Tall tree, nest of the wind (Arps 2016) by Helen Creese, Matthew Cohen, and Kathy Fole... more Reviews of Tall tree, nest of the wind (Arps 2016) by Helen Creese, Matthew Cohen, and Kathy Foley, followed by a response from the author (from BKI 173)
Co r(e{-lro¡¡ Religion in Southeast Asian Studies 1 fio,n, ø ßr'n^Å Over the past few decades, th... more Co r(e{-lro¡¡ Religion in Southeast Asian Studies 1 fio,n, ø ßr'n^Å Over the past few decades, the heartland of Area Studies has witnessed regular assessments of the state of the southeast Asian studies freld as practised in the United States, in the form of symposia and their proceedings. Religion is remarkably thin on the ground in these self-reflections. In his introduction to the volume Southeast Asian Studíes in the ßalønce (Hirschman, Keyes and Hutterer 1992) that came out of one of these exercises, Keyes noted a lack of humanities research in US-based Southeast Asian Studies. He specifically mentioned cultural history and, as part of it, religious history (Keyes lg92: l7). The participant who focused on the humanities in his contribution, Reynolds, was of the opinion 'that history of religions is in the best position to establish an effective humanistic beachheacl within Southeast Asian studies' (1992: 64), although up till then 'the relationship between fthe history of religions discipline] and Southeast Asian studies has been minimal indeed ' (1992: 65) . h was not to be. In a renewed stocktaking a decade later, the underdevelopment of the humanities is again noteð (Weighíngthe Balance 2000: 33) and the history of religions is conspicuous b)¡ its absence. Religious stuclies is represented by a statement from an anthropological point of view about the importance of religion in modernifv in Southeast Asia (2000: 29). In his contribution to another bigger survey a few years later one of Area Studies at large, anthropologist of religion Bowen (2004) showed that the lack of Southeast Asia-focused humanities research in the United States was compensated for by work done in other circles: 'The striking feature of Southeast Asianist anthropology, the dominant discipline in U.S. studies of the region, has been its consistent attention to those performance forms that constitute the primary object of study for the humanities' (Bowen 2AA4: 420).
The puppets are flat, the screen against which they are placed and moved is white and devoid of s... more The puppets are flat, the screen against which they are placed and moved is white and devoid of scenery. In what kinds of space do the stories of the classical shadow-play of Java, Bali, Lombok, and the Malay world unfold despite this double flatness? How do performers use not only puppets and screen but also music and language to bring space into being? What must spectators know and do to make sense of these storytelling techniques? As a contribution to the narratological study of the multimodal making of storyworlds, I demonstrate that wayang kulit caters for different degrees of interpretive competence, which yield different understandings of the space that wayang portrays. An expert way of apprehending space requires seeing beyond the screen, puppets, and silhouettes, or even looking away from them. At the same time the peculiar ways of narrating space in wayang point to a deeply felt spatiality in real-life contexts as well.
“The lettuce song and its trajectory: the vagaries of a pop song in three eras”, 2011
Vers une anthropologie de la prière. Atelier, Jan 1, 1996
Geliat bahasa selaras zaman: perubahan bahasa-bahasa di Indonesia pasca-Orde Baru, 2010
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Most recent work by Bernard Arps
European-style maps of Java exist in the thousands, but *Javanese* maps are exceedingly rare. Until recently only three specimens were known. In the National Archives of the Netherlands, a collection has recently come to light of eleven Javanese manuscript maps, dated 1825, depicting the districts of the regency of Semarang. Almost everything about these maps is a mystery. They belong together, but their visual aspects vary considerably. Some are real works of art. They turn out to be of great interest as artistic and scientific works produced at the interface of Dutch and Javanese colonial cultures, on the eve of the Java War (1825–30).
Abstrak: Penulis mengemukakan pentingnya sebuah sikap dan keterampilan ilmiah yang disebutnya kepekaan filologis. Filologi lazim dihubungkan dengan studi naskah tulisan tangan, di mana filologi merupakan pendekatan canggih untuk mengapresiasi teks. Pendekatan tersebut membawa fokus dan cara pemahaman yang khas. Tetapi makna dan guna filologi tidak terbatas pada teks, apalagi naskah. Jangkauannya lebih luas. Pendekatan yang telah dikembangkan dalam rangka filologi teks itu berdasarkan kecenderungan kultural yang hidup di masyarakat, yaitu kecenderungan untuk menghayati dan memahami lima aspek dari sebuah proses atau benda budaya: keterbuatan, ketercerapan, ketersusunan, kontekstualitas dan kesejarahannya. Jika dipupuk sehingga memenuhi syarat ilmu pengetahuan, sensibilitas filologis tersebut bisa menjadi wawasan yang andal untuk pemahaman artefak budaya lain pula-apalagi kalau wawasan tersebut diperkaya dengan menyerap unsur-unsur terpilih dari tradisi filologi seantero dunia. Penulis mengutip contoh dari penelitiannya sendiri: naskah berisi ceritera Amir Hamzah berbahasa Jawa, ceramah agama Islam berbahasa Osing di Youtube, dan kritik lisan atas pertunjukan wayang.. Kata Kunci: Sensibilitas Filologis; Filologi teks, media, dan pertunjukan; Filologi dunia.
The prominence of Hindu-Buddhist mythology, imagery, and religiosity in Islamic Java has puzzled observers. The shadow play with its Mahābhārata- and Rāmāyaṇa-derived subject matter is a prime example. Another is the late 18th-century ‘renaissance’ of Old Javanese literature in the Islamic kingdom of Surakarta, which produced classics still celebrated today. Beyond a misguided assumption that the Javanese were so strongly disposed to syncretism that blatant doctrinal clashes did not bother their intellectuals, the factors that animated this enterprise remain obscure, despite its critical consequence for the development of Javanese religiosities. I scrutinize several unstudied manuscripts and piece together information from hitherto unconnected scholarship to try to understand these factors, with reference to pressing circumstances, living theories, as well as people who think, feel, and hope. First I examine Javanese theoretical ideas about the relationship between the Hindu-Buddhist and Islamic traditions and the connection between epic narratives and the present and future of Java. Against this background I consider the initiative, in 1778, to reinterpret the ancient epic heritage, beginning with the Arjunawiwāha (composed c. 1030). Focal points of interest in the Islamic hermeneutics of this poem were a quest for inner potency and the resulting external power of violence, knowledge and revelation, and future kingship.
Articles and book chapters by Bernard Arps
European-style maps of Java exist in the thousands, but *Javanese* maps are exceedingly rare. Until recently only three specimens were known. In the National Archives of the Netherlands, a collection has recently come to light of eleven Javanese manuscript maps, dated 1825, depicting the districts of the regency of Semarang. Almost everything about these maps is a mystery. They belong together, but their visual aspects vary considerably. Some are real works of art. They turn out to be of great interest as artistic and scientific works produced at the interface of Dutch and Javanese colonial cultures, on the eve of the Java War (1825–30).
Abstrak: Penulis mengemukakan pentingnya sebuah sikap dan keterampilan ilmiah yang disebutnya kepekaan filologis. Filologi lazim dihubungkan dengan studi naskah tulisan tangan, di mana filologi merupakan pendekatan canggih untuk mengapresiasi teks. Pendekatan tersebut membawa fokus dan cara pemahaman yang khas. Tetapi makna dan guna filologi tidak terbatas pada teks, apalagi naskah. Jangkauannya lebih luas. Pendekatan yang telah dikembangkan dalam rangka filologi teks itu berdasarkan kecenderungan kultural yang hidup di masyarakat, yaitu kecenderungan untuk menghayati dan memahami lima aspek dari sebuah proses atau benda budaya: keterbuatan, ketercerapan, ketersusunan, kontekstualitas dan kesejarahannya. Jika dipupuk sehingga memenuhi syarat ilmu pengetahuan, sensibilitas filologis tersebut bisa menjadi wawasan yang andal untuk pemahaman artefak budaya lain pula-apalagi kalau wawasan tersebut diperkaya dengan menyerap unsur-unsur terpilih dari tradisi filologi seantero dunia. Penulis mengutip contoh dari penelitiannya sendiri: naskah berisi ceritera Amir Hamzah berbahasa Jawa, ceramah agama Islam berbahasa Osing di Youtube, dan kritik lisan atas pertunjukan wayang.. Kata Kunci: Sensibilitas Filologis; Filologi teks, media, dan pertunjukan; Filologi dunia.
The prominence of Hindu-Buddhist mythology, imagery, and religiosity in Islamic Java has puzzled observers. The shadow play with its Mahābhārata- and Rāmāyaṇa-derived subject matter is a prime example. Another is the late 18th-century ‘renaissance’ of Old Javanese literature in the Islamic kingdom of Surakarta, which produced classics still celebrated today. Beyond a misguided assumption that the Javanese were so strongly disposed to syncretism that blatant doctrinal clashes did not bother their intellectuals, the factors that animated this enterprise remain obscure, despite its critical consequence for the development of Javanese religiosities. I scrutinize several unstudied manuscripts and piece together information from hitherto unconnected scholarship to try to understand these factors, with reference to pressing circumstances, living theories, as well as people who think, feel, and hope. First I examine Javanese theoretical ideas about the relationship between the Hindu-Buddhist and Islamic traditions and the connection between epic narratives and the present and future of Java. Against this background I consider the initiative, in 1778, to reinterpret the ancient epic heritage, beginning with the Arjunawiwāha (composed c. 1030). Focal points of interest in the Islamic hermeneutics of this poem were a quest for inner potency and the resulting external power of violence, knowledge and revelation, and future kingship.
between researcher and researched. It is viewed as a prerequisite to be
achieved before fieldwork can start, or used as evidence to judge the value and robustness of an ethnography. Yet, we know little about how such social relationships emerge through conversations in the field. This collection addresses this issue through the lens of contemporary sociolinguistics.
The book presents Dewa Ruci as rendered by the distinguished master puppeteer Ki Anom Soeroto in Amsterdam in 1987. The book’s unusual design presents the performance texts together with descriptions of the sounds and images that would remain obscure in conventional formats of presentation. Copious annotations probe beneath the surface and provide an understanding of the performance's cultural complexity. These annotations explain the meanings of puppet action, music, and shifts in language; how the puppeteer wove together into the drama the circumstances of the performance in Amsterdam, Islamic and other religious ideas, and references to contemporary Indonesian political ideology. Also revealed is the performance’s historical multilayering and the picture it paints of the Javanese past.
Tall Tree, Nest of the Wind not only presents an unrivalled insight into the artistic depth of wayang kulit, it exemplifies a new field of study, the philology of performance.