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Javanese Messianic Expectations: Their Origin and Cultural Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Justus M. van der kroef
Justus M. van der kroef
Affiliation:
University of Bridgeport
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Extract

When a generation ago G. W. J. Drewes brought to a close his trailblazing study of Javanese millenarian concepts he predicted their decline. As a propaganda device in the arena of modern politics they might perhaps retain some value, he believed, but their inherent strength and uniqueness would gradually diminish. Perhaps Drewes' philological pre-occupation led him to neglect the anthropological dynamics of the messianic currents that he studied in the Javanese religious records. In any event his prediction seemed to assume that the efficacy of the millenarian expectations as propaganda could be independent of the enduring cultural matrix of which these expectations are an inseparable part. Far from losing their inherent vitality the messianic ideas of the Javanese have, as the following pages will argue, remained strong and influential; only the cultural forms by which they are nowadays expressed have changed. In this analysis attention will first be paid to the traditional cosmology of the Javanese as it is reflected in their major cultural motifs. Next the impact of Hindu-Indian, Islamic and Western (both religious and secular) influences on this cosmology will be considered. Finally, the nature of the messianic expectations in the Javanese experience will be described, also in terms of their contemporary manifestations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , June 1959 , pp. 299 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1959

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86 The following points seek to answer some of the relevant questions raised in Bulletin no. 2, April, 1958 of this journal (mimeographed).

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