- In 1945, the year of Indonesia's independence, there
were probably less than five million native speakers of dialects of Malay--the
language from which Indonesian has been developed--and a few million
speakers of various pidginized and creolized forms of Malay in different
formerly colonial cities. The 1971 national census shows some 40 percent
of the national population of 118 million to have known Indonesian; the
1981 census placed that number at almost half of 150 million Indonesians.
Abas (1987, source of these figures) projects
that 60 percent of approximately 190 million knew Indonesian as of 1991,
a figure which is projected to rise to slightly less than 70 percent
of a projected population of 240 million in the year 2001.
- See in this regard Pemberton's illuminating study (1989) of Dutch influence on ``high''
Javanese courtly tradition, and its place, in turn, among the New Order
elite. It resonates with appeals to a wholistic Javanese syncretism,
credited by Javanese and non-Javanese to a culture which assimilates
rather than resists ``outside'' influence, preserving itself by imbue
the foreign with an indefinite yet unmistakably Javanese cast. For examples
of such explanatory appeals--scholarly and journalistic, old and new--see
for instance Willner (1966) and The Economist special
survey on Indonesia 17 April 1993, esp. p. 18, and Robison's useful 1983 review.
- Richard Baumann kindly pointed this out during conference
of this paper; on reciprocal Javanese and Weberian perspectives on issues
of power see the conclusion of Anderson's 1972 paper.
- See, for a brief review of some of these, Anderson 1994 and Kedourie 1993:142-143.
- Standard Indonesian and Javanese orthographies are used
throughout this paper.
- In this respect Professor Gellner is by his own criteria
in the curiously conflicted position of being both demystifier/apostate
and ``high priest'' of the secular religion of nationalism.
- Space and thematic considerations prevent me from considering
the striking transition in Fishman's writings on such issues in his later
work.
- That this phrase is difficult to translate suggests something
of its breadth, ifnot vagueness: bangsa by itself suggests ``race''
or ``group of people linked by common descent;'' masyarakyat invokes
notions of ``people in socity.'' So, one can refer either to bangsa or masyarakyat
Indonesia, meaning roughly `the Indoenseian people' and `Indonesian
society' respectively.
- ``Gagasan tentang masyarakat bangsa tidak akan dipahami
dengan baik oleh masyarakat bila satu bahasa nasional...tidak ada. Negara
yang mempunyai satu bahasa umum yang dikenal oleh seluruh rakyatnya kan
lebih maju dalam pembangunan, dan ideologi politiknya akan lebih aman
dan stabil.''
- Known under the present regime as the Old Order (orde
baru).
- For example:
A culture begins to bud, when there grows up
within a society a conviction of the truth of a certain system of
values....the ability of a culture to develop is not unlimited, for
very culture contains within itself the dialectic of all growth.
As the papaya seed, which sprouts in the fertile soil and joyfully
thrusts up through it to greet the beneficent rays of the sun, must
experience, the further it rises up out of the earth, an increasing
remoteness from the soil, from which its roots suck up the sap, that
makes it grow, so every culture that gives expression to a definite
system of values, must eventually experience the limits to the possibilities
of its further development. (Alisjahbana 1961. p. 3)
- ``ibarat orang mendirikan gedung besar'' (Suharto 1971).
- For background and discussion see Budiman 1990.
- Anderson considers there obvious, relevant questions about
the relation of his effort to Weberian notions of charisma; space prevents
a review of this important issue here.
- Two Sanskrit-derived Old Javanese words are combined here
with an Austronesian Old Javanese deictic. For more detail on this vocabulary
and the other issues taken up in this section see Errington 1986.
- See Smithies 1982, Salim 1977,
Schmidgall-Tellings and Stevens 1981.
- For more discussion, see Errington 1989.
- This is the General Dictionary of Indonesian (Kamus
umum bahasa Indonesia, produced by the Center for the Improvement
and Development of Language (Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa),
of the Department of Education and Culture and published by Balai Pustaka,
the state publishing house.
- My thanks to Matthew Cohen for providing me with a copy
and translation of this play; I have however taken liberties with the
latter for my own purposes here.
- Because I have not been able to gain access to copies
of papers read at the conference, or minutes of its proceedings, I am
obliged here to draw on accounts in the mass media. For present purposes
these general reports suffice.
- For discussion of this convention see Errington 1992.
- Far from verging on extinction, these forms now appear
to be alive and well in the formal, public speech of Indonesian functionaries
in official Indonesian venues; on this topic see Errington forthcoming.
- My thanks to its author, Bapak Pramono, for permission
to include his cartoon in this paper.