Hello Alan,
I'm not questioning your general line of reasoning (and certainly not the choices you made). I hope you bear with me for the fun of it.
Quote:
|
I investigated the keris situation in the area of Malaysia that was comprised of Old Malaya, and what I discovered was that a combination of the British presence, very aggressive Islam, and a national character that was pushing to modernise had reduced the conscious presence of a keris culture to virtually nil.
|
Ignoring the different time points, would it be really be that much off to state the following for the current situation in Indonesia and most of Java?
"I investigated the keris situation in the area of Indonesia that was comprised of Netherland's East India, and what I discovered was that a combination of the Dutch [and Japanese] presence, very aggressive Islam (maybe let's call this increasing Wahabite influence), and a national character that was pushing to modernise had reduced the conscious presence of a keris culture to virtually nil."
Sure, there are some very knowlegeable people from the heart of Jawa still extant. But how much do they really relate to the keris culture(s) as seen/practised by (major sections of) the general public?
Quote:
|
It has even been said to me by more than one person living in Malaysia that the keris culture in present day Malaysia has very little to do with keris and more to do with social climbing. It has also been remarked that people raise their own societal position by pretending to have "secret knowledge" when in fact they themselves are inventing this knowledge.
|
Considering how the tangguh system got pretty much corrupted, etc. pp., not really unheard of on Java, too, isn't it? In an urban setting, is Kuala Lumpur so much different from, say, Jakarta these days? It's usually more the backwaters where traditions are kept alive in a post-colonial setting.
I'm not contesting that the conditions in Malaya have been more problematic for traditional knowledge to survive (no long-standing center of gravity for keris culture with many smaller sultanates; earlier loss of their importance; considerable proportion of the population of Tamil and Chinese descent; traditionally high mobility of the populations; increasing Thai influence in Pattani; and political turmoil in northern Malaysia).
Regards,
Kai