Helen Creese - Women of the Kakawin world : marriage and sexuality in the Indic courts of Java and Bali

Marriage and Sexuality in the
Indic Courts of Java and Bali

Helen Creese

An East Gate Book

An East Gate Book

First published 2004 by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Creese, Helen, 1955
Women of the Kakawin world: marriage and sexuality in the Indic courts of Java and
Bali / by Helen Creese.
p. cm.
An East Gate book.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7656-0159-1 (hardcover: alk. paper)ISBN 0-7656-0160-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Javanese poetryHistory and criticism. 2. Epic poetry, BalineseHistory and criticism.
3. Women in literature. 4. Courts and courtiers in literature. 5. Java (Indonesia)Social life
and customs. 6. Bali Island (Indonesia)Social life and customs. 7. Indonesia
CivilizationIndic influences. I. Title.

PL5172.C74 2004
899.2221032093522dc22

2004008282

ISBN 13: 9780765601605 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 9780765601599 (hbk)

For here is the soul of all that pleases the heart,
the epitome of the essence of beauty, said the Poet,
Originating in the doctrines of the sacred Kamatantra,
kept ever secret, composed in colloquial form to give
birth to tales of wonder.

Mpu Dharmaja, Burning of Smara 1:23.
Twelfth century, East Java

The Kakawin World

For more than a millennium, the poets of the Indic courts of Java and Bali composed epic kakawin poems in which they re-created the kakawin world, the court environment in which they and their royal patrons lived. Yet their endeavors have remained relatively unmarked. Although the academic study of indigenous textual traditions was a hallmark of much humanities scholarship in the colonial period, since World War II these traditions, including kakawin, have rarely been incorporated into more broadly focused studies of the culture and history of the Indonesian archipelago. Still produced in Bali in the twenty-first century, kakawin have remained of ongoing interest and relevance to Balinese cultural and religious identities. They also provide much of interest for contemporary scholars.

The foundations of this bookthe basic empirical spadework of trawling the texts themselveswere laid down many years ago. In his seminal study of Old Javanese literature, Kalangwan: A Survey of Old Javanese Literature, published in 1974, the renowned Old Javanese scholar, P.J. Zoetmulder, relying on kakawin poetry as the major source for his own work, noted that kakawin provide a rich supply of interesting material for a cultural history of ancient Java. In response to his suggestion that the lengthy descriptions of royal weddings represented one such area of potential interest, I devoted one chapter of my doctoral thesis to this topic. It is a reflection of shifts in both my own academic interests and those of Indonesian and Southeast Asian studies more generally that a single chapter has now grown into a full-length book.

This book is multidisciplinary in its focus. Its primary purpose is to document the experiences of women belonging to the kakawin world, although the texts, by nature, reveal more about the discourses concerning women, sexuality, and gender than about the historical experiences of individual women. More important, they reflect the ongoing construction and perpetuation of gender ideologies in Java and Bali, ideologies that are closely linked to and intertwined with the discourses of power that arise from the political, religious, and social institutions of their times. While the principal analytical focus of this book is more on the description of marriage and sexuality as social institutions than on the literary aspects of the kakawin genre, because the sources themselves are overwhelmingly literary I hope it will also introduce a wider audience to what is perhaps one of the worlds best-kept literary secretskakawin literature.

In writing this book I have benefited from the advice and encouragement of many colleagues and institutions. My largest debt is to my guru, Dr. S. Supomo, who not only introduced me to Old Javanese studies and supervised my doctoral research but who, even in his retirement, has continued to provide support, encouragement, and advice as I have worked on this material. Fundamental to the completion of this volume have been the collaboration and support of my colleagues who work in Old Javanese studies, especially those involved in the Sekar Iniket projectan ambitious translation project of kakawin excerpts envisioned by Professor Zoetmulder, before his death in 1995, as a companion to his Kalangwan volume. Tom Hunter, Pak Supomo, Peter Worsley, Kate OBrien, and Maggie Fletcher have generously allowed me to make use of and quote from their unpublished translations. Kate OBrien has also allowed me to make use of her forthcoming major study of the Sutasoma. Those who work in the often-difficult field of Old Javanese studies will appreciate the value to me of such unparalleled access to so many unpublished kakawin sources. Another group of colleagues who have offered ongoing encouragement over many years is the network of scholars working in literary and gender studies in Asia and the Pacific, in Bali studies, and in Old Javanese studies. There are too many to name individually, but the ongoing interest of such a diverse group gave this project a focus when I might otherwise have been tempted to give up. Barbara Watson Andaya, in particular, has offered her unfailing support and encouragement. Special thanks are due to Robert Cribb, who not only read and commented on earlier drafts of some chapters of this book, and always listened patiently to my ideas as this project developed, but also drew the maps. Jo Sbeghen drew my attention to the importance of visual evidence and also helped in a practical way by drawing the illustration of the nymph cradling a love poem on a petal in chapter 1, and providing additional photographic material for inclusion in this book. I am also grateful to Lyn Parker, Margaret Jolly, Roly Sussex, Lene Pedersen, and Peter Creese for comments on earlier drafts. I Nyoman Darma Putra provided assistance in obtaining photographic material in Bali. For editorial assistance, I am especially grateful to Brian Creese, Peter Creese, and Jennifer Arnold. The School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland provided a supportive and collegial environment; a School Research Grant (2003) supported the illustrative material in this book. Thanks are also due to the helpful staffs of the Pictorial Section of the National Library of Australia in Canberra and the Historical Documentation section of the KITLV (Royal Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies) in Leiden. Any errors of course remain my own.