Is gold or suasa 'better'?

A. G. Maisey · 27th December 2015, 06:11 PM

Maurice, at the moment I do not have time to respond in depth to your post # 31, however, as you say G.E. Rumphius worked in Ambon, but he refers to the "Susuhunan" and to Jawa.

In the 1600's Ambon and Mataram (Central Jawa) were about as connected as Palermo and Port Moresby are today, in fact not as well connected as Palermo and Port Moresby today.

G.E.Rumphius was freed from his duties with the VOC to permit him to concentrate on his work as a naturalist. He was an amateur ethnographer, but his primary focus was the study of the natural history of Ambon.

It is entirely possible that he heard of the talismanic properties attributed to suasa in Mataram from some Ambonese traveller, or perhaps in Batavia, but his CV does not list duty in Mataram, and in the 1600's Mataram was pretty unsettled territory, delegations to the rulers in Mataram were very probably few and far between, if they existed at all.

In order to understand the veracity of G.E.Rumphius' comments on suasa, we need to try to place them into context. One way in which to begin this effort would be to look closely at his CV. There is a lot of info online concerning G.E.Rumphius.

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27th December 2015, 06:11 PM	#22
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 6,992	Maurice, at the moment I do not have time to respond in depth to your post # 31, however, as you say G.E. Rumphius worked in Ambon, but he refers to the "Susuhunan" and to Jawa. In the 1600's Ambon and Mataram (Central Jawa) were about as connected as Palermo and Port Moresby are today, in fact not as well connected as Palermo and Port Moresby today. G.E.Rumphius was freed from his duties with the VOC to permit him to concentrate on his work as a naturalist. He was an amateur ethnographer, but his primary focus was the study of the natural history of Ambon. It is entirely possible that he heard of the talismanic properties attributed to suasa in Mataram from some Ambonese traveller, or perhaps in Batavia, but his CV does not list duty in Mataram, and in the 1600's Mataram was pretty unsettled territory, delegations to the rulers in Mataram were very probably few and far between, if they existed at all. In order to understand the veracity of G.E.Rumphius' comments on suasa, we need to try to place them into context. One way in which to begin this effort would be to look closely at his CV. There is a lot of info online concerning G.E.Rumphius.