Substantial transmissions; A presuppositional analysis of ‘the old Javanese text’ as an object of knowledge, and its implications for the study of religion in Bali

Abstract

R. Fox Substantial transmissions; A presuppositional analysis of the old Javanese text as an object of knowledge, and its implications for the study of religion in Bali In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 159 (2003), no: 1, Leiden, 65-107 This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl RICHARD FOX Substantial transmissions A presuppositional analysis of 'the Old Javanese text' as an object of knowledge, and its implications for the study of religion in Bali The Kavi contained all those works by which the religious ideas and the cherished mythology of the priests were communicated to the people (Friederich 1959:8). In preparing this analysis, I have limited my inquiry to articles and books published between 1957 and 1983, partly on the basis of the recognition that there have been few kakawin text editions published since the early nineteen-eighties.4 In this paper I argue, through close readings of scholarly representations of 'the Old Javanese text', that a particular set of philological practices has contributed to an ongoing discursive exclusion of Balinese 2 As A. Vickers (1989:81) noted, the 'main reason Van Hoevell's Batavian society sent Friederich to Bali was that he knew Sanskrit, which they thought would enable him to understand the Kawi language of the ancient literature' (compare Stutterheim 1935:1, note 1). The kakawin were read from printed books brought to the temple by various people from the village, and the readings were broadcast across the temple grounds using microphones anda karaoke machine in a style often called mabasan or pepaosan. In his translation, the phrase fish's tang dasadesa dusta maliwer was taken in the context of a full stanza in which it need not syntactically stand alone (hence the rather 5 Although I have reservations regarding Rubinstein's use of the term 'religion' as a critical category, I believe my argument is not entirely unrelated to the general tenor of her observation that 'kekawin philology as practised to date undermines the religious beliefs and values upon which kekawin composition has been based' (Rubinstein 2000:225).