People/paulstange/voices/4.html

Ancestral Voices in Island Asia

by Paul Stange

chapter four
TRADITIONAL IDIOMS AND INSTITUTIONS

--mercantile closure of Eurasia and emergence of regional zones
--the idioms of world religions
--adaptations of ritual monasticism
--Javanist Islam as text or praxis

Within the multiplicity of substratum cultures there had been emphasis on local ancestral cults and relative isolation was moderated by a slow percolation of influences through trade. Later complex Sinic and Indic traditions brought writing, courts and conceptions of the devaraja to the cores areas. Islamic, Theravada and Christian societies filled in the zones, as their literate traditions extended to reach most peoples of Southeast Asia. Between the 13th and 15th centuries the major temple building states of the classical era declined, partly through the impact of increasing Muslim trade and Mongol conquests. Classical idioms remained influential in modified form, but Theravada Buddhism became predominant on the mainland and Islam in the islands, dividing most of Southeast Asia into two broad spheres. In the same period Sinicised Vietnam became increasingly part of the region and the Hispanisation of the Philippines resulted in a Catholic variant of local tradition.
These traditions remained culturally dominant until this century as frameworks for the cultural life of local peoples. The new religious patterns overlaid previously developed Indic and Sinic cores and extended farther into the zones, so that literate traditions took root in a multiplicity of more widely scattered states. In this context existing states could no longer so easily conceive of themselves as encapsulated or autonomous worlds. The classical cult of the devaraja, which had been underpinned by Brahmanic ceremonial magic, was modified through Theravada and Islamic conceptions of polity. The position of rulers remained central and their function was still cosmological, to facilitate alignment of society with nature. But in this middle period of history rulers were no longer presented as incarnations of deity and states were framed by religious cosmologies rather than defined by ethnicity or their own unique centres.
Increasing communication between Southeast Asians and the rest of Eurasia and intensified interactions among local peoples were keys to the rise of Theravada and Islam. Socially Buddhist monks and Islamic teachers assumed great significance. Earlier priests and monks had also been teachers, but for the most part attached to courts, now religious teachers spoke to villagers. Virtually every village came to have its own Buddhist temple or Islamic mosque and this added a critical new element to internal social communications. Theravada Buddhism did not extend to all tribal peoples, but reached valleys suitable for wet rice throughout the Shan plateau and those became centres of small kingdoms. Similarly the scattered river mouths of the archipelago became sites for sultanates which were characterised by a culture of Islam, trade and Malay language. The extension of both these religious patterns meant the initiation of a process which has been continuing into the present and not, as we may imagine in thinking of religious conversion, a sudden, overall or pervasive transition.

mercantile closure of Eurasia and the emergence of zones
While it is impossible to understand classical Southeast Asia without reference to China and India, the traditional period requires thinking in terms of events which spanned the whole Eurasian land mass. Other theories, apart from trade and increasing communication, are brought to bear to explain the decline of classical states. One has been that empires such as Angkor declined through internal over elaboration. According to this argument so much labour was required, to construct temples and irrigation works, that people were driven away. Internal contradictions, a combination of stresses including wars between Khmer, Chams and Thai, overbuilding and disease may all help account for the disappearance of these great kingdoms. But changes in the context of local life were clearly critical and it was increasing trade above all which brought locals into the sphere of world religions.
During the early centuries of this millennium two powerful and expansive forces, Islam and the Mongols, changed the landscape of Eurasia. Both the Mongols and Arabs had been marginal to deeply rooted classical civilisations, they were primarily trading and pastoral peoples. Each had a nomadic base and moved rapidly by horseback to extend their empires with remarkable speed. Their centralised control collapsed almost as rapidly, but some of the patterns they generated became absorbed into the older cultures they had conquered. More critically, the context for all local cultures was changed, because the extremities of Eurasian were connected as they never had been. In the 11th century Mongol expansions penetration Russia and eastern Europe, creating a bridge for inner Asia just as Islam created it along the sea routes.
Until then the major centres of civilisation in China, India, the Middle East and the Mediterranean were relatively autonomous. Haphazard contacts were significant, but did not so pervasively frame local interactions. Through Mongol conquests, Islamic expansion, Christian crusades and European explorations societies everywhere became parts of a wider world. At the western extreme of Eurasia the Hanseatic ports of the Baltic and North Seas, with guild based crafts, challenged earlier feudal states; in the Middle East the end of the Caliphate saw the rise of Sufi orders and a new wave of Islamic extension into Africa and Asia, through trade rather than conquest; in the east Japan opened itself to a wave of Zen Buddhism hand in hand with the rise of the samurai class. The expansion of Islam, the consolidation of a Theravada Buddhism and the arrival of Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch traders must all be considered within a unified framework related to those wider trends.

The Mongol Yuan dynasty in China looked for a new relationship with local kingdoms. Earlier Chinese dynasties had expected Southeast Asian states to bow before them. Local kingdoms periodically sent tribute missions to China, but these were diplomatic and trading missions as much as acknowledgment that the court in Beijing was the greatest. Typically sending emissaries did not require loss of face for Southeast Asian rulers and all parties gained through the exchanges these missions facilitated. The Yuan dynasty demanded direct influence and power rather than just ritual or ceremonial acknowledgment. They required some states to send members of their royal family to reside in Beijing, effectively as bonds or hostages, and other rulers were asked to present themselves humbly at court. Wars between the Yuan dynasty and Southeast Asian states were precipitated by this shift in attitude.
No devaraja could present at the court in Beijing and bow and local rulers sent hostile responses to Yuan requests. Resistance led to wars between the Mongols and Nanchao, Vietnam, Pagan, Champa, Angkor and Java. They conquered Nanchao, previously a Southeast Asian kingdom, making it part of China in 1253. This conquest was part of the Mongol attempt to encircle and subjugate the southern Sung, who remained independent for forty years after the Mongol conquest of north China. They also struck into Burma and in 1283 sacked Pagan, certainly contributing to the elimination of that classical state. They invaded Vietnam, having temporary impact, but were harassed by guerrilla warfare and unable to cement control. They withdrew because events elsewhere required the forces they had engaged in Vietnam and did not penetrate to Angkor, which was already weak by that time in any case.
In 1293, the year after Marco Polo visited Sumatra, a Chinese army landed in Java. They arrived during a dynastic transition and the king the Chinese fleet had been sent to punish had already been killed by a usurper. When the Chinese armies arrived it was no longer clear who they were supposed to defeat. A wily Javanese prince, son of the ruler who had insulted the Chinese, convinced them to wage war on the usurper. They joined him in defeating the usurper, but were subsequently drawn into guerrilla warfare by the prince, who was to became the founder of Majapahit. Mongol invasion of Java ironically thus assisted the founder of what became the greatest classical Javanese kingdom. In any event Yuan interest in pragmatic domination marked a change in the times. A Chola fleet from south India had attacked Srivijaya in the 11th century and the Chinese had long before conquered Vietnam, however external invasions had not been the norm, now armies from the north intervened in local politics, as Europeans began to several centuries later.
The Mongol interventions were followed, and also well before European traders entered the region, by massive Ming fleets under Cheng Ho in the 14th century. These fleets cruised the whole Indian Ocean and visited the archipelago repeatedly. Though focused on trade, less militant an invasion than those of the Mongols, the fleets heightened local consciousness of Chinese wealth and power. The Ming assisted the rise of Malacca, which was to become the gateway for Islamisation of the archipelago, by sanctioning its autonomy from Thai rulers. In Semarang, on the north coast of Java, one of the oldest Javanese mosques was established through these visits. Resembling a Chinese temple, it is testimony to the fact that Chinese Muslims, including the admiral Cheng Ho himself, facilitated Islamisation as a prominent part of the then already predominantly Islamic Asian trading world.
The Chinese fleets set a stage for increasing presence of Chinese traders, along with Arabs and Gujarati's, within the multi-ethnic trading ports of the region. If the winds of change were growing strong, they came first through an influx of newly vigorous Chinese and Muslim traders. Within a few years after its origins, in the mid 7th century of the Christian era, Islam expanded dramatically. It dominated the Middle East, North Africa and Spain while the Indian Ocean became a "Muslim Sea". Islam powers came to dominate the Persian Gulf and Bay of Bengal, including India under the Moguls, and until the 13th century, when the Mongols also sacked Baghdad, a degree of political unity centred on the Caliphate there. Islamic extension combined with European crusades to generate awareness of Asia among Europeans. Following on the crusades, Marco Polo's journey, in the late 13th century, took him overland, using the bridge controlled by the Mongols, to reach the China of Khublai Khan. He returned, by the sea route through Southeast Asia, and gave one of our earliest reports on the presence of Islam in the region.
Through the crusades, which took Europeans to the Levant, they became familiar with Asian spices. Their subsequent explorations sought routes which would "break the Islamic monopoly" implied by its domination of the Indian Ocean. Not incidentally, new demand for spices helped make Southeast Asia an object of rather than just a route for international trade. Cloves, nutmeg, sandalwood and pepper had long been items of trade, but the increase in demand for them changed archipelago trading life. Earlier trade had mainly been transit trade and the power of earlier Funan, prominent from the 4th century in the Mekong delta, Champa and of Srivijaya, which dominated the Straits of Malacca from the 9th to the 11th centuries, rested not so much on products as on control of the route through which they passed. Demand for pepper from Sumatra, Malaya, and west Java and cloves and nutmeg from the Moluccas, made those regions a prime object of international trade and with that both the centre of gravity and quality of the trading routes changed.
There was an increase in the simple volume of trade, as products were bulkier than the luxury goods which had been shipped through in earlier periods. At the same time because the number of traders increased the cosmopolitanism of the trading cities increased. Like Chinese, Gujarati's, Bengalis and Arabs, Europeans became significant actors within Southeast Asia by the 16th century. Although they brought distinct beliefs and forms of organisation, on the whole until the 19th century their presence did not fundamentally alter the rules of local transaction. Early European presence was significant, but should not be confused with modernity. That, arising from the industrial revolution, is expressed in capitalism and liberal notions of ownership and rights. Preindustrial patterns dominated until the end of the 19th century, even economically and politically. If our focus rests on cultural patterns then it is especially clear that the traditional era extended through the early centuries of European presence.
The Portuguese were the earliest Europeans to have influence on Southeast Asia. They established "forts", essentially trading posts, in Macau, Malacca, Timor, Formosa, Nagasaki and Goa, the centre of its network. The Portuguese system did differ from earlier Asian systems, they aspired to monopoly and possessed an effective chain of command which linked disparate trading posts relatively tightly. However the projected Portuguese monopoly never came close to eventuating, they were not able to eliminate Asian competitors. Early European visitors had noted that the emporium port of Malacca, in the Straits, was the key to archipelago trade. When the Portuguese captured control of it in 1511 they expected to dominate the system. However in the wake of their victory remnants of the Malaccan sultanate re-established at Johore, on the peninsula facing what is now Singapore, and the sultanate of Aceh, at the northern tip of Sumatra, rose to prominence. Those competed with Portuguese Malacca as favoured ports for traders and replaced it as centres for the dissemination of Islam. Islam, not Iberian Catholicism, was the most dynamic transformative force in the archipelago at the time.
Though European in origin the Portuguese operated as part of an ongoing Asian system. During the same period Chinese, Gujarati, Arabs, Javanese and Buginese also migrated widely to establish cohesive communities within the dispersed trading centres of the archipelago. Regardless of which ethnic group controlled it, each port contained semi-autonomous districts housing diverse ethnicities, each having a degree of internal self-governance. The bulk of Portuguese trade was private pedlar trade, like that of their competitors and at the expense of royal claims to cargoes. Ultimately the richest earnings of the Portuguese system came through their function as intermediaries between China and Japan, not as we imagine from the spices they carried to Europe. On scrutiny, even the composition of their cities, ships' crews and armies was multi-racial and mestizo. Asian and mestizo Catholics "became Portuguese" in very much the way others "became Malay", so the empire was Asianised in the flesh as well as in its mode of operation. European traders initially appeared as just another element within a pre-existing pattern, their arrival did not bring transformation in the nature of trade or the cities it took place within.
The Spanish did have profound impact in the Philippines, the central areas of which became Catholic in the 17th century. But however profound that influence was it was not modern; it was traditional in the same way that contemporaneous Islam and Theravada Buddhism were. Initially Manila was essentially a trading post, a stopover point for the romantic Spanish galleon, the one English pirates pursued as it crossed the Pacific. Each year one galleon travelled between Acapulco in Mexico and Manila. There it met Chinese traders from Canton, many of whom settled there along with some Spaniards, and exchanged new world gold and silver for Chinese porcelains and silks. Initially this trade was the sole basis of Manila's existence. Rice growing developed around it to feed the growing migrant, mainly mestizo, or mixed population of Chinese, Tagalog and Spaniards. Outside Manila there were periodic raids by Spanish military bands but the prime agencies of influence were the monastic structures of the Catholic church. The Philippines was carved up into spheres of influence, especially by the Dominican and Franciscan orders.
Though the Spanish were European the nature of their impact closely resembled that of earlier Indianisation. The organisation of the resulting local state, though based on a royalty located in Spain, drew from spiritual senses of court mission. Syncretism merged popular Tagalog and Visayan with Catholic beliefs, paralleling the process which occurred in other areas through the Buddhist sangha or Sufi brotherhoods, which also came through trade and spread into rural areas through monastic institutions. In each case the result was a royal state characterised by mercantile, patrimonial and hierarchical religious organisation. In the Philippines, as in Sinic Vietnam or Indianised Java, the process involved synthesis which resulted a new society; it was forged from multiple sources and peopled by an urban elite which itself represented fusion of ethnicities. Thus in Smail's terms Hispanisation, as the Spanish impact has been called, is best viewed as resulting in the "formation of a new core". The area around Manila, in the Tagalog region of central Luzon, was the last truly extensive area suitable for intensive wet rice cultivation to become a state through the impact of an imported culture.
The Dutch became territorial rulers on Java well before the 19th century and after 1830 controlled all of it. Like the Portuguese they arrived aiming primarily to establish trading posts and monopolies, their interest was not initially territorial. Nor were the Protestant Dutch religious crusaders. The Iberian Catholics saw their encounter with Asian Muslims as a continuation of their wars against the "Moors", the Muslims of their home peninsula. The Dutch operated until the end of the 18th century as a mercantile trading company, the Dutch East India company or VOC, the Dutch East India Company, which had power until the end of the 18th century, at which point the Dutch crown took control. In the beginning of the 17th century the VOC located its base port at Batavia, present day Jakarta, but was not interested in Java as such. The Dutch chose that site mainly to avoid Portuguese influence in the Straits of Malacca, as the passage between Java and Sumatra was an alternative for ships arriving from the Dutch post at the Cape of Good Hope.
As the Dutch established Batavia, Sultan Agung was in the process of consolidating a new Mataram empire. He came closer to fully integrating Java within one political framework than any previous state, as even at the time of Majapahit the kingdom of Pajajaran controlled the west of Java. Agung's armies nearly eliminated the small Dutch outpost. Subsequently the VOC became involved in Javanese politics whenever dynastic disruptions occurred. When Trunajaya, based near Surabaya, rebelled against Mataram in the late 17th century, the Dutch allied themselves with Mataram. In exchange for helping put down the rebellion they took concessions in land, coming to control the interior of west Java, and gained ground at the expense of trading states along the north coast, the pasisir. This recurrent process paralleled progressive Khmer losses, during the same period, in the face of Vietnamese expansion. The stability of the Dutch system, like that of the Vietnamese, preserved it against dynastic transitions, as it was an outpost of a trading system based in Holland. When military conflicts, which had been a normal dynamic of transition, broke out within the Javanese state the new element of Dutch stability resulted in concessions of increasing territory.
By the 18th century the Dutch supervised plantation production of coffee in west Java, in the upland Priangan; in the 19th century a cane sugar industry extended through central and east Java. Mercantile capitalists focussed, beyond spices, first on marketing and ultimately on producing plantation crops of sugar, tea, coffee, tobacco and opium. It may be that the "new" aspect of this production, as a feature of local landscapes and society, was neither the European origin nor distribution network, but the fact that production became increasingly oriented toward addictive substances, products which, while lacking intrinsic value (if anything characterised by the opposite) stimulate increased demand through use--in short production and marketing of addictive substances signalled the initial stage of capitalism in the region and did, as such, constitute a "structurally new" feature of local organization. Europeans thus did have significance in introduced new crops and, to some extent, means of production. On the other hand, however plantation systems, especially initially (until roughly the late 19th century), accommodated to pre-existing systems of production more than introducing new ones.
During the 18th century coffee, for instance, was collected through tribute payments mediated by regents who maintained local systems of authority on the surface. Indirect rule at another level did imply changes in local power: colonial endorsement of particular rulers released those individuals increasingly from the reciprocal obligations which traditionally ensured the complicity of their cohort, of other regional leaders whose support was previously essential. The Dutch required coffee from regents as an enforced tax in kind, but local rulers had always demanded levies, if previously in rice. Within their regions of power Dutch regents for their part adopted local practices, becoming Javanised more than establishing a version of European bureaucratic culture. They readily traded bourgeois practicality for elaborate ceremonialism and took shares of produce and trade as local rulers did rather than operating as rationalised bureaucrats. In their mythohistorical construction rulers of Mataram viewed the VOC as a successors to the kingdom of Pajajaran, even constructing genealogies to establish the link. From a Javanese perspective the Dutch established a conquest dynasty. Ricklefs noted the fundamental logic of local power and diplomacy remained Javanese until the late 18th century, that thus from the local perspective the Dutch became part of a Javanese framework.
The period up to 1870 should be viewed as traditional: the Portuguese established yet another trading post empire, Spaniards created a new core in the Philippines and the Dutch consolidated a conquest dynasty, organised mainly on Javanese lines. The ideas of emergent modern capitalism did have brief impact in the early 19th century. Governors like Dandaels and Raffles, at the time of the Napoleonic wars, were men of the Enlightenment and thought in terms of market incentives and private ownership. But their tenure was followed by a "culture system" in Java, a reversion with vengeance to extractive production based on political authority rather than private capital. In the middle of the 19th century plantation production was based on forced levies, on mercantilism rather than capitalism. In the same period the Iberian systems stagnated. The Portuguese never mastered extensive territories, their power waned in the 17th century and their outposts remained as minor eddies within a world of more dynamic forces. Hispanic Filipino society was stimulated by Visayan sugar plantations in the 18th century. When Spain lost its American colonies in the 19th century the Philippines remained as a residue of more interest to Catholic orders, who with the local illustrado elite held semi-feudal control of its land, than to the crown.
The Dutch gradually dominated island trade, in the 19th century their competition was English, and their control of the sea did insulate Java and end Mataram's dynamism. This represented a new victory, like that of Srivijaya over the early Mataram, of trading over rice power. Though the Dutch consolidated control of Java early in the 19th century and by then dominated trade, their power through most of the archipelago remained nominal, as had been the claims of Majapahit. Until the turn of this century indigenous societies, were governed by their own rulers and patterns of everyday social life remained autonomous. Even where colonial political and economic power touched large populations, notably among the Javanese and Tagalog, local authorities and the textures of cultural life were not shaped by that domination; the cultural domain remained responsive to separate rhythms. At the same time, the Dutch conquest dynasty was not the only expanding force, nor were its competitors only English in this period. Until the late 19th century Burmese kings were preoccupied more with the Thais than with Europeans on their periphery. Under Ayutthia in the 16th and 17th centuries and Chakri rulers in the 19th century Thailand was an expanding and increasingly powerful state. Vietnam was an expanding power well into the 19th century.
Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries Europeans did gain power relative to local states. However the system within which that balance of power shifted remained premodern. The structure of local societies began to be altered radically after 1870, the watershed which marked the general entry of private capital. At the end of the 19th century the British consolidated hold over Burma and extended from trading posts in Penang, Malacca and Singapore to control within the Malay sultanates. In the 1870s the French moved from a foothold in Saigon toward control of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and at the close of the century American dynamism displaced the Spanish in the Philippines. Those changes mark entry to the modern. An overview perspective on the premodern period suggests that the most dynamic and widespread transformations, in the everyday practices of the majority of Southeast Asians, were taking place through the expanding grip of Theravada Buddhist and Islamic patterns. Whatever our judgement of shifting balances in the political and economic realms, within the cultural and social domains of ordinary peoples practices lives were being most affected by reorganisations contingent on religious change.

Indianised states had slid back and forth between being Hindu and Buddhist and most fused elements of what we imagine as two systems. Theravada was present from an early period, notably in the 7th century Mon state of Dvaravati, in what is now Thailand. The establishment of Theravada Buddhism did not represent an obvious break with the past. If we are predisposed to expect that Islam represented a more radical break in the island world, then we must unseat contemporary senses of what constitute religions. Classical states were neither "Buddhist" nor "Hindu" as we imagine those, but cults, focused on rulers, in which priests had ceremonial functions. Tambiah called early states "galactic polities", universes within which the ruler was central and each state was conceived as hermetically sealed. It became less feasible to sustain notions of devaraja, employing a sense of the ruler as the turning point of the cosmos, as neighbouring kingdoms interacted with increasing frequency.
Establishment of Theravada and Islam coincided with a shift leading people to see themselves as belonging to wider world religious patterns rather than primarily to a local state. It is at this point that a sense of world religions enters the scene. With the dominance of Theravada, starting in the 12th century on the mainland, and with the shift to Islam in the islands, people started to think of themselves as being part of a religious world that reached far beyond the boundaries of the political systems they inhabited. With this shift identification was no longer restricted to an imperial system, usually dominated by one ethnic group, and people placed their state within a larger world of Islamic or Buddhist states they knew existed elsewhere. World religions suited the more pluralistic times, and as the cosmopolitanism of local societies increased it became imperative for local people to find universalising ideologies, cultural and religious idioms which facilitated conversation across boundaries of state and ethnicity.
The emergence of new religions was reflected in political patterns, the dominance of new language groups and changes in the structure of religious institutions. The Theravada pattern differed from classical patterns on a number of counts. The political situation of the classical era provides an image of several great kingdoms standing out against a background of political fragmentation. The Mongols helped eliminate Angkor and Pagan, the greatest of the temple building states on the mainland, and annexed Nanchao. On the other hand Pagan's decline allowed a fluorescence of Mon culture in the south. The Mons had maintained Theravada Buddhism and with their rise established fresh connections with the roots of their religion in SriLanka. Theravada may have been growing through several channels, but a brief resurgence of Mon power contributed to its wider spread among the Tai, Burmese and Khmer. Ethnic groups which had been relatively disadvantaged became more prominent as the times changed. The hills or zone area of mainland Southeast Asia began to fill in politically with a large number of smaller states.

Chinese defeat of Nanchao has been seen as the background to modern Tai expansion. Although dominant in present day Thailand, the Tai ethnic family had not been significant politically in that vicinity prior to the Mongols. On the other hand Nanchao had been an ethnic Tai state. Contact between the Mongols and Tai led to exchanges, in military technology and patterns of alliance, which gave the Tai a comparative advantage over other states in the mainland and lay the basis for the rise of Ayutthia, the ancestor of present day Thailand. The Tai speaking people, already dispersed through the upland valleys of the hills, became more prominent at the expense of the Khmer and the Mons, who previously dominated the Menam valley, now central Thailand. The Tai came into view initially within small states on the periphery of Angkor. Through the fact that these were able to form effective alliances with each other they were able to achieve parity and then supremacy over Angkor. Rather than seeing rising Tai prominence as southward migration, it is more accurate to see it as reflecting the growth of their states, within contexts where they already existed as marginal peoples, at the expense of previously the dominant Khmer and Mon.
Theravada, which brought less stress on centralised kingship, was ideologically more suitable for groupings of states than earlier royal cults. In Theravada rulers were no longer chakravartin, centres around which the wheel of the universe turns. Instead they become dhammaraja, guardians of the vinaya, custodians of the rules guiding monastic life and rooted theoretically in the dhamma, the truth as taught by the Buddha. This did represent a significant shift in gestalt, in the way people related to their kingdom within the wider world context, as it situated local states within the frame of an Asia wide and comprehensive Buddhist history. But earlier Indic ideals also continued to have strength within the Burmese, Thai and Khmer polities. Continuing belief in the divine powers of the king was reflected in 19th century Thai prohibitions: commoners were not even allowed to look directly at the ruler, as they were thought to lack the purity which would be a prerequisite to even perceiving that degree of spiritual power without damage to themselves.
In classical states religion focused on courts, rulers and the capital. The main social vehicle of formalised religion was a Brahmanic priesthood with access to Scriptures; villagers for their part tended to remain almost exclusively involved in the animistic religion which had characterised pre-historic cultures. In contrast to heredity Brahmanism, Theravada reached villages through monks, the bhikkhu, who originated from any class and theoretically served all classes. Village temples became a key feature of mainland societies and the rise to prominence of these village based institutions may even have been associated with the late stages of Angkor's demise. Through them the doctrines of Buddhism reached villagers and interacted directly with spirit cults, local rituals and healing practices. Through them literacy extended to people away from cities and royal temples, so the gap between court philosophy and cosmology and village ritual was reduced. A middle rung, rural religious specialists, linked the great traditions of the court with the little tradition of the peasant.
The ummat, or brotherhood of Islam spanned the Eurasian ecumene, eventually reaching from Indonesia to Morocco. Within that a religious framework also rose above political authority in every locality. Within the island zone Islam also overlaid an Indic framework, similar to that of early mainland states. Muslim Southeast Asians rulers became custodians of Islamic law and belief in a context of related states. They adopted titles, including sunan, sultan and kallipatullah, indicating Islamic conception of themselves and resembling the Theravada notion of the dhammaraja. Islamic conceptions of the ruler suggest that the ruler is a representative of God's revelation through the Koran. As in the case of the Buddhist dhammaraja, the ruler became responsible for guiding people and maintaining the purity of religious practice, in this case Islamic. The law is conceived as an embodiment of revealed truth, thus in the Islamic conceptualisation the ruler has legitimate claim to power by virtue of access to, awareness of and attunement to an absolute. As that attunement now came through a religious medium, it meant that authority did not rest on incarnation, on the very being of the ruler as a centre of the state cult, but on a law recognised as being above the personhood of kings.

Syncretism, clearly relevant everywhere, had most pertinence in the Islamisation of Java. There Indic culture had taken deep root within a peasant society which thus had the sheer mass to sustain it strongly. Earlier patterns thus obviously shaped the way Islamic states emerged. Because Indic ideals continued to be relevant within Mataram, from the 16th century, some argue that its conversion was nominal, a profession which did not reach its heart. However few argue that the same might degree of syncretism characterised the formation of other Islamic states in the Malayo-Muslim zone. Our general image is that the Islam which took root in Sumatra, Malaya, Kalimantan, Borneo, Celebes and Sulu drew more exclusively on traditions of the prophet, as populations were generally less dense and thus the continuity of earlier traditions less assured. However even within 17th century Aceh, a pinnacle of Islam and centre for its expansion, the court and its rituals were informed by Indic notions. Attending the sultan, whose title came from Mecca, there were four harbour officials representing the cardinal points and the layout of the palace presents the court as a cosmic mountain, consistent with the Indic imagery we have considered.
Both Islam and Theravada were amenable to syncretism and it is not safe to interpret either through modern understandings of what constitute religion. We are also likely to exaggerate the contrast between early Islam and Indic religions, so we must note that the Islam which arrived in the islands contrasted sharply with the characteristics we identify with Islam today. Sufism, Islam conveyed through mystical brotherhoods, had been established in India for several centuries before the religion spread widely in Southeast Asia. Membership in brotherhoods was perhaps more essential, as an indicator of affiliation in those days, than regular presence in a mosque and ritual prayer. From the Indonesian and Malay point of view Islam appeared as a new family of sects or cults among many which were already known, not as a total departure from the known.
As we know Islam was established in Southeast Asia before the 13th century it is significant that it did not gain momentum until the 15th century. Islam was marginally present throughout the Majapahit period, but only had wide impact in the 15th century. Its rise coincided with both the rising power to trade ports and the arrival of Sufism. Sufism dominated Islam from the end of the Baghdad Caliphate until the 18th century. It is mystical, so it harmonised with the Indic worlds it filtered into, thus arriving not as something radically foreign but as another esoteric teaching brought, like earlier ones, by holy men coming from India. Establishing dominance first in the small north Sumatran ports of Pasai and Pedir, which Marco Polo noted were Muslim in the late 13th century, Islam diffused through the trading world in the 15th century on the strength of florescence in its rising Malaccan centre. Through early texts, from 17th century Aceh and Java in particular, we know that Arab and Indian Muslims were prominent and that in these early stages local Muslims already drank deeply from currents of international Islam. In 17th century Aceh the debates between Hamzah Fansuri and Raniri indicate that sophisticated probing, of implications of the shift from Indic to Islamic philosophies, was in process.
Economic and social changes set the stage for Islam to take. When the multiplicity of trading states expanded a new society and culture emerged within them and that became Islamic as it grew. Malay became a lingua franca, a common trading language. Originating in the Straits of Malacca, and native only for people in them, it borrowed from Arabic, Portuguese, Dutch and Javanese, but remained distinct. The coastal trading culture which emerged took in the north coast of Java, Aceh, Johore and Malacca in the straits and Sulawesi, the Moluccas and the coasts of Borneo and the people who joined it originated from diverse backgrounds but united in speaking Malay, adopting Islam and taking on trading lifestyles. This pattern, still termed "masuk Melayu", or becoming Malay, refers to the formation of Malayo-Muslim ethnicity out of a conglomerate of elements, not to simple religious conversion. Religious change was not so much, in this context a deliberated choice of ideology as a product of convergence between social and economic changes which generated a new society within which Malay language and Islam were both foundational to identity.
Within the archipelago there remained a fundamental contrast between the trade based polities of the zone and the rice based polities of a Javan core. The fertile soil and extensive irrigation of Java resulted in population densities far exceeding those of the maritime kingdoms. In classical times early Mataram dominated the inward looking rice economy of Java; Srivijaya became the focus of emporium trade centring on the Straits of Malacca. Majapahit bridged that gap, for a time dominating the trade routes as well as interior Java. Tension between these rice and trade based societies converged with other factors to close the Indic era and usher in an Islamic pattern. When new port societies grew powerful along Java's north coast, in association with the rising trade pattern we have referred to, the balance of archipelago power shifted toward the trading world and their dynamism became less and less congruent with the ethos of rice and ritual which characterised Majapahit.
Islam entered Java via Malacca, gaining roots in the trading principalities of Java's north coast: Bantam, Cirebon, Demak, Jepara, Tuban, Gresik, and Surabaya. Toward the end of the 15th century a coalition of these pasisir ports joined under Demak leadership and brought the downfall of Majapahit. For about fifty years inland Java was dominated by Demak. Fragments of Majapahit, in Ponorogo and south central Java, clung to Tantric practices; remnants of royalty fled to Bali; regions like Tengger, in mountainous east Java, still maintain Hindu traditions. But gradually and generally both inland elites and hermitage communities were coerced or converted. Javanese legends emphasise the role of the walisanga, nine saints, within this transition. With origins reflecting the mestizo culture of their ports, they were at once political rulers, warriors, and religious pioneers. They led the armies which brought Majapahit's downfall and held council to forge the basis of an Islam within which currents of orthodoxy and heterodoxy were both strong. Collectively they are credited with a range of innovations, including even the reinvention of wayang, to bridge the gap between Indic traditions and Islamic practices.
Conversion of courts, priests and peasants redirected the flow of spiritual evolution toward Islamic moulds. Practical encounter centred not just on efforts to recast court ritual, but also to win monasteries, village burial customs, and isolated hermits to Islam. The Sufism of the wali facilitated entry into mystical Javanese tradition, as interaction between spiritual adept's typically took place within a framework of testing powers (kasekten). According to longstanding patterns, cults spread and replaced each other if adherents demonstrated superior occult power. Tantric adept's deferred to Sufi saints, wali, if swayed by wisdom reflected in demonstrated power. Village dukun and Indic styled hermits no doubt continued practising as Sufi brotherhoods filtered among them, as Indic influences have persisted to the present in village habit and sacred mountain retreats, but change was substantial.
The introduction of Islamic burial rites can be seen as a great unsung transformation. Earlier magicians had used corpses, so the practices of some magical technicians were contained implicitly. Impact is reflected in the simple lines and sterility of the mosque when contrasted with the baroque statuary of Indic temples. But Sufis did not have the exclusive attitude of modernists, they did not deny the existence of nor precluded interaction with the devic and spirit forces which preceded them. Islam did bring new senses of time and space. In the brotherhood of believers (ummat) the prime space is the sphere of submission to Allah (dar al-Islam), a space which is meant to expand through time into areas of unbelief (kafir) and culminate in union of believers through submission. These new priorities shifted temporal emphasis toward the linear axis and spatial orientation towards social structures of community ritual and law. Cyclical repetition of a golden era and focus on the ruler still resonated in local idiom, but combined with the new Islamic tradition of the Mahdi.
After the brief period of pasisir dominance the Javanese interior reasserted itself through the Mataram dynasty. Emerging towards the end of the 16th century, the kingdom rose from the same heartland that had housed the earliest states. The significance of the peasantry is evident from the fact that as soon as Demak asserted itself over the rice growing interior its expansion was countered. The manpower of peasant society became the basis upon which the interior launched its bloody campaigns against pasisir states and Mataram thus subjugated most of Java. In the early 17th century Sultan Agung sought legitimacy in Islamic as well as Javanese terms. He introduced a syncretic version of the Islamic calendar, solicited the title of sultan from Mecca, and adopted the title susuhunan to set himself both with and above the walisanga, who carried the title sunan. His son and successor Amangkurat I was less powerful and less Islamic by inclination. He launched an extravagant destruction of the pasisir, slaughtering thousands of Islamic religious teachers (kyai) those carrying the torch of the wali.
His demolition of the trading states converged with Dutch interest in trading world. Mataram's wars combined with rising Dutch power over trade to cut the kingdom off from both trade wealth and the wider Islamic culture of the islands. Through the 18th century Mataram lived increasingly in its own world. Dutch presence led to division of the kingdom in 1755, when Batavia's intervention transformed dynastic transition into stalemate. The Surakarta court was matched by a new kraton in Yogyakarta, both of which were subsequently fractured by the same process later. The final blow to Mataram's power came with the Java War of 1825-1830. Diponegoro led the last military stand against Dutch domination. With his defeat the kraton submitted to the Dutch empire centring in Batavia.
Divisions and reduction of the courts to political symbols resulted paradoxically in extreme cultural refinement. Competition within the elite was rechannelled into embellishment of traditional culture. With less opportunity to assert primacy through military and political channels, courts vied for prestige and power through their patronage of ritual and the arts. Although it gave way to foreign control in economic and political spheres, Mataram remained the focal point of ethnic Javanese social and cultural life up to World War II. Courts turned inward toward refinement of dramatic, literary, and spiritual arts. Within their world the social ethos and cosmological images maintained many Indic notions of traditional quest within a Sufi Islamic frame. Mataram and its successors revival Indic styles, albeit strongly tinged by Islam, and an ethos rooted in both peasant and court society.
In the religious pattern which emerged in Java, mosques became gateways to the graveyard. Like temples of the Indic era, mosques were erected on a landscape infused with sacred lore. At the same time mosques mark entry to ancestral shrines, graves of saints or rulers which became the object of pilgrimage. The graves of the walisanga became centres of pilgrimage, in a pattern consistent with both earlier ancestral cults as well as Sufism. Animistic logic and Indic frames still defined these transactions. Mosques provided a safeguard against paying karmic debts. Villagers approach spirits not only to honour them, but also to solicit assistance toward accomplishment of worldly goals. Acceptance of aid results in bonding, the living commit themselves to suspension in the spirit realms on their death. Some Javanese felt they could use Islam as a buffer, to save paying the price of spirit relations. For those viewing Islam in these terms, acceptance of the faith did not so much alter ancient practices as provide an accomplice to their fulfilment.
Islam brought an emphasis on God which contrasts with Theravada atheism, but also social changes not unlike those associated with Theravada on the mainland. As within Buddhism, within Islam religious teachers became an intermediating class who were no longer so easily subordinated to rulers. The ulama conveyed Islamic teachings and Arabic literacy to the folk level. In the islands as well, predominance of "galactic polities" was replaced by a pattern of states interacting. Throughout Southeast Asia new traditions brought the rise of a middle classes, both traders and religious brokers; politically it involved levelling, city states characteristic; world religions reached the zones and villages. One important divergence, important to later development and apparent in the origins of this era, is rooted in contrast between Islam and Theravada. The mainland remained in an Indic mould, albeit in a new Theravada version of it, and its societies have remained amenable to syncretism. With the transition to an Islamic and Semitic path on the islands, the seed for tension between the substratum and civic religions was sown. Semitic religions are doctrinally less amenable to synthesis than Indic religions. This meant that later, as the nature of religion as such shifted to prioritise ideologies, religion became a source of conflict in the island world.

the idioms of 'world' religions
If we assume that the issues and the patterns which characterise Christianity are essential to religion our reflexes are natural and such reflexes also clearly operate with the same limiting implications in Muslim or Buddhist cultures. Even early academic definitions of religion in general terms reflect limits we have to question. Thus Durkheim defined religion as:

... a unified system of beliefs and practices, relative to sacred things, that is to say things set apart and forbidden--beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.

He stressed not only the significance of distinction between secular and sacred, but the social basis of religious thought, as a projection into the realm of culture of forces rooted in interaction between groups in society. Durkheim's theory lends itself to analysis of the ways in which religion can be used as a system of social control. But at the same time both his conception of division between secular and sacred and his notion of "church" are problematic.
Either explicitly or implicitly each religion defines its own sense of the term. Thus within the Semitic family of religions generally the only "true religions" come through prophetic revelation from the one God and are enshrined in holy books, making truth and law accessible to demarcated communities of believers. Durkheim's definition implied Semitic notions. On the other hand within Indic religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism the boundaries of religious community are not highlighted in the same way, fundamentally within those frames truth is beyond symbolic representation and individual spiritual liberation is achieved through self realisation within a communal context in which all people are tacitly implicated. Even if not overtly, each religious system is not just a variation on an easily identifiable set of forms, of either thought or organisation, but a distinct way of shaping what "is" religious.
Nevertheless most of us will intuitively remain convinced that something characterises religion. In attempting to identify it we may look first, as Tylor did, for a common or underlying element of belief. However in technical philosophical terms systems such as Theravada Buddhism are "a-theistic", they deny the ultimate existence of either gods or self, at least as we can conceive those in thought form. Thus the diversity of belief makes it awkward to identify religion in general with any particular structures we can observe in the social and cultural realms. The most useful recent definitions draw attention not to particular structures of experience, thought or action, but to the nature of the linkage between them. Thus Bellah spoke of religion as "a set of symbolic forms and acts which relate man to the ultimate conditions of his existence" and Geertz defined religion as:

...the conviction that the values one holds are grounded in the inherent structure of reality, that between the way one ought to live and the way things really are there is an unbreakable inner connection.

In these definitions stress falls on the tightness of the connection between inner experience, belief systems and actions. They suggest that if the system is one in which people experience inner conviction that their beliefs, and the actions prescribed by them, are rooted in self-evident reality, then the system is religious. In these terms each religious system, like every culture, defines a universe of meaning which in the end is only intelligible to itself.
The implication of these definitions is that the most important elements of belief are implicit, hidden or taken for granted. Unstated world views are both critical to action and distinct from consciously subscribed beliefs. So, while religion may include formalised beliefs which do shape tacit views of the world, practiced or lived religion may also depart radically from orthodox doctrines, drawing on a range of other tacit convictions which inform local uses. In practical terms, religion must be treated as an aspect within society and defined by its relations to the whole. The utility of this emphasis was already clear in Malinowski's argument that ritual and magic function and find their meaning through their relation to the social and economic exchanges they rationalise. Similarly Harris, in exploring the sacredness of cows in Hindu doctrine, related that to their economic significance as a source of labour, fuel and milk.
We should bear in mind, as a prelude to exploring Southeast Asian cultural transitions into the modern era, that until recently religious worlds have been "the world" for most local peoples. Familiarity with the origins, doctrines and practices of Islam and Buddhism in general terms is therefore clearly essential prior to exploring their practical impact on socio-cultural life in Southeast Asian contexts. Buddhism has been the major export from the Indic family of religions. Islam, of the Semitic family from the Middle East, is part of the tradition which includes Judaism and Christianity. The contrast between them, in the way the ultimate is conceived, could not be more striking: Buddhism is technically atheistic and philosophically monistic, Islam is emphatically monotheistic and dualistic. Here we will outline and contrast key elements of the two systems.

Theravada Buddhism is the southern school of Buddhism, "the way of the elders" as defined by the corpus of works codified in SriLanka almost two millennia ago. Until recently Mahayana Buddhism, the northern school, had more exposure in the west and our popular images of Buddhism tend to be dominated by what we know of it through China, Japan, Tibet, Korea and Vietnam, all Mahayana Buddhist. In any case, though present as one of the earlier cults as well, a new wave of Theravada Buddhism, the one which produced its currently dominant pattern, came from SriLanka to Southeast Asia in the 12th century. Mon monks, from Thaton in the southern part of Burma, were sent to SriLanka to re-establish the purity of lineages of ordination and to bring fresh versions of Theravada Scriptures, which had been preserved there. The essence of Buddhist teaching is extremely direct and helped make it one of the great missionary religions, along with Christianity and Islam.
The historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, was born in the 6th century B.C. in the foothills of the Himalayas and is presented within the religion as fully human, if unusual. In Buddhist terms he had passed through profound spiritual lessons in earlier lives which prepared him for his mission. He was born into luxury as a prince, and among the omens surrounding his birth was the prediction that he would either become a "world redeemer" or a "world conqueror", an ascetic saint or a great ruling conqueror. As a king his father naturally wanted him to be a conqueror rather than a renunciate and brought up in the lap of luxury to protect him from worldly traumas.
Overprotection set the stage for confrontation with realities which counterpointed the comforts of palace life. His father's effort to create a cocoon of the palace meant that when, on successive trips outside the palace, he confronted sickness, old age, death and a monk his sense of the world was shattered and he became a seeker after truth. He experimented with the cults common to his day, practices of extreme ascetic renunciation, and found himself nearly dead and without enlightenment. He experienced enlightenment on his own and his teachings took the form of "the middle path", meaning that they neither required asceticism nor indulged materialism. The Buddha was concerned with practical awareness rather than philosophy. He admonished against speculations, such as about what happens after death. Once he deflected a metaphysical question by pointing out that if punctured by an arrow it is no use wasting time finding out who shot it and why, the object is get the arrow out. The thrust of Buddhist teachings is practical and empirical, to deal with reality now.
His basic teaching is summed up in the Four Noble Truths. First, life is dukkha, as we translate it suffering and pain. This is the state of samsara, meaning we are bound to the "wheel of rebirth" due to dissatisfaction with our condition. The second is that the root of suffering is tanha, craving or desire. The third is that the cessation of suffering is through the elimination of desire and that freedom from suffering is nibbana, release or extinction. The fourth is that the way to bring about the cessation of desire is the Noble Eight Fold path, which can be summarised as "the middle path". It is the path of adopting and applying the "right" or correct attitude within whatever we do. The Three Gems of Buddhism, its foundation as a religion, are the Buddha, as exemplar; the dhamma, the truth as contained in the teachings; and the sangha, the community of monks which perpetuates the dhamma.
The centrality of bhikkhu leads us to imagine Buddhism as a religion only of monks, but this has never been the case. Buddhist theories of rebirth present life cycles as fragments of a larger pattern. The attainment of release does not depend on caste, as in Hinduism, though positions in life are seen a consequence of past lives. Though theoretically accessible, it is thought that most people will not attain nibbana within this life. Thus while some take on the direct striving implied by the monkhood, many do not and exist as householders, students, children, mothers, fathers and merchants. At the same time within each of these situations it is held that we can act correctly, according to the dhamma, the truth or law of nature. Buddhism does not imply that one formula will apply to every person, but images a many tiered universe within which every person progresses toward the dhamma in accordance with their condition.
Within Theravada polities kings were "custodians of the dhamma". Pragmatically this meant they were to preserve the vinaya, the list of 227 rules and prohibitions for monks. The politics of religiosity in Theravada systems centred on schools of interpretation, such as whether the saffron robe should be worn over the left or the right shoulder. As rulers were supposed to guard the vinaya, there was also periodic effort to find original texts, to minimise perversions in their translation into sangha teachings and to bring monastic practices in line with original tradition.
In the Theravada system monasteries, in Burma kyaung or Thailand wat, and temples, vihara, were no longer royal enclaves. In classical Southeast Asia hermitages existed beyond the sphere of royal influence, as temples or sanctuaries in mountains, forests and caves, but major establishments were associated with courts. With Theravada monasteries reached villages, resulting in the pattern we see today in Thailand, with wat virtually defining village boundaries. The sangha, the community of monks, the bhikkhu, become brokers and the sacred language of Scriptures was not Sanskrit, the high language of early Indic religion, but Pali, the language of everyday speech at the Buddha's time. Though still distant from local vernaculars, this moved toward language comprehensible to ordinary folk.

Turning to Islam, we do note striking contrasts. Theravada Buddhism is atheistic in the technical sense that it does not involve conceptualisation of supreme being. From the Buddhist point of view it is understood that everything we could possibly conceive of is finite. As our consciousness is limited everything we perceive, see or think we know is "maya". This does not just mean "illusion", as it is often interpreted, but that everything in the realms of form we know is passing and not absolute, the absolute being beyond conception. Buddhism emphasises that whatever we can conceive or name is not the absolute, in consequence it gives the absolute no name. This sense of the unnamable is present in early Semitic religion, as "Yahweh", "that which cannot be named", is the Old Testament name for "God". But the Islamic response to the dilemma of referring to an ultimate that we cannot characterise has been to give God a thousand names, holding that in the end there is nothing that is not God. Here we have the basic assertion of the Islamic faith: "there is no god but God", which in mystical terms reads as meaning that in the final analysis "there is nothing but God".
Islam is a religion which has grown "in the full light of history". There is no doubt that the Prophet Muhammed was an historical individual nor that the Koran ascribed to him was a product of his lifetime. Islam, the religion of those who are called "Muslims" was born in 622 AD, the first year of the Muslim calendar. It spread within the lifetime of Muhammed from its birthplace in Medina to take in the Arabian peninsula, and soon afterwards all of North Africa and the Middle East. In Islamic terms the prophet was fully human and "the seal of the prophets", the last and final receptor of divine revelation in a chain of beginning with the Judaic Adam, extending through Moses and the Old Testament prophets to and including Jesus. In Islam the miracle of revelation is associated not with the man, Muhammed, but with the Koran, the book of revelation. The fundamentals of Islamic belief are also straightforward, though as in all religion their realisation is never so simple.
The Five Pillars are the foundation of practice. These include: the profession of faith, prayer, almsgiving, fasting and pilgrimage. The profession of faith, the shahadat, is affirmation that "there is no God but Allah, and Muhammed is his Prophet". Repetition of the profession, assuming it is understood and meant is the first requirement. The basis of practice lies in the second pillar, prayer or solat. Each Muslim is to pray five times a day, at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset and evening, in a pattern set down by Muhammed himself. The Friday noon prayer is to be carried out at the mosque. Almsgiving, the zakat, was once centrally regulated, as a religious tax, but has become (in most Islamic countries) voluntary. Fasting takes place during the Islamic lunar month of Ramadan, during which all Muslims must abstaining from food, drink and stimulants during daylight hours. The final requirement of the faith is that every Muslim who is able to should take the pilgrimage to Mecca, the haj, once during their life.
Beyond the Five Pillars there are other central ethical, moral and social obligations, but emphasis on them is variable. The law, the shariah, guides social life of believers, the ummat or community of the faith. It derives from the Koran and the Hadiths, or "traditions of the Prophet", a collection of stories about Muhammed and his statements during life. Within Islam there is strong emphasis on the equality and unity of believers, who together make up the dar-al-islam, "the house of Islam". Within that community each believer is enjoined to expand the faith and this is the much misunderstood "jihad", or holy war. This does not mean obligation to wage war physically, though that interpretation of it is relevant at times. More fundamentally it means obligation to increase the sphere of submission to God, which is what the word "islam" means in Arabic. This increase is in the first instance internal, those who profess Islam are obliged to surrender resistance inside themselves so as to become agents of God's will. It also means, by extension, that the life of surrender will overflow, that magnetic attraction will subsequently increase surrender to God in others.
In Islam there are neither priests nor monks. Each individual is thought to relate directly to God and in theory no one has the right to meddle in the inner spiritual life of another. There is authority invested in the ulama, the class of scholars who are acquainted with the Koran and Hadiths, as they are thought best able to interpret the law for the ummat, the community of believers. Because the law and community, the shariah and ummat, are integrally bound to the practice of submission which is, in the ideal, Islam, there is a strong emphasis all through Islamic history on the ideal of a state and society fully guided by Islamic principles. It is significant in this respect that the first year of the Islamic calendar marks its birth as a practice in the community of Medina; not the prophet's birth, his reception of revelation or even his first following. "Religion" in the Islamic case cannot be separated from the state or society, it depends on being actualised through those.
Two variants within Islam deserve mention. First there is division between two major schools, Sunni and Shi'a. Shi'ites are concentrated in Iran and Iraq, most Muslims, and virtually all in Southeast Asia, are Sunni. The Shi'ites emphasise a line of succession, based on a genealogy extending to Ali, the son-in-law of Muhammed, and transmission of an esoteric, or secret knowledge through a line of imams, leaders of the spiritual community. Sunnis emphasise consensus of the ulama, called ijma, as representatives of the ummat, who interpret the law for its application within present society. Powerful social emphasis within Islam is evident in the extreme importance of law within it. Rulers, Caliph or Sultan, are supposed to act as guardians of the law, as representatives of God's will, expressed through revelation in the Koran, in social life.
Secondly, and of particular relevance to the extension of Islam into Southeast Asia, there is a distinction within Islam between levels or depths of realisation. These are related to tasawuf, mystical philosophy, as taught even in orthodox Islamic schools. The "sarengat" refers to fulfilment of ritual obligations based on literal understanding; "tarekat" refers to those inwardly seeking the truth within doctrines "hakekat" to the level of those who have direct knowledge of the Truth in its absolute sense; "makripat" describes the state of those who not only know, but are experientially united with ultimate Truth. This conception of stages of spiritual life underlies Sufism, the mystical or esoteric element within Islam. On the surface of Islamic life the community is guided by literal teachings; those who follow the tarekats, the spiritual brotherhoods which comprise Sufism, are seekers after inner truth.

In the early decades of this century observers of Southeast Asian religions, influenced by readings of religion which prioritised formal doctrinal and ritual practices such as we have just touched, held that most local Buddhists or Muslims were secretly animists, that either their conversion had been nominal or syncretic mixing so pervasive that the religions were not pure. Imported religions thus appeared to them as a "thin veneer" above resilient local cults. Even through the 1950s and 1960s most studies of local religions dealt with the Buddhist and animistic elements of Thai religion as though they were separate traditions interacting. It was only in 1970 that Tambiah presented them as components within a single system, implying that "Buddhism" as practice involved a complex range of ideas in its Thai context and could not be understood only against the background of formal Buddhist doctrines.
Similarly in the Javanese case there has been a tendency to assume that the same visible persistence of animistic and Hindu beliefs, at least within significant segments of the population, meant that the Javanese have not been really Muslim, or that only those among them who are purist in their approach to the faith deserve the label. This interpretation followed, like readings of Thai Buddhism, from textually based or scriptural views of religion, a perspective according to which Islam cannot include beliefs which preceded it. We need to operate with a sense of what religion is which helps us register the reality of local practices as unities. We must see religions first as multi dimensional rather than attempting to define it in one realm, that is as including domains of ritual, doctrine, technique and social structuring. At the same time we need to allow that there may be differing local meanings and manifestations, some departing from the orthodoxy exponents of Islam or Buddhism may endorse. In taking these lines we cannot escape tension between the way outsiders, or an academic discipline, define a religion and the perspective of those within it.
A century ago Snouck Hurgronje revolutionised understanding of Islam by approaching it through the way it was practiced in Mecca and Aceh. His approach was sociological and sensitive to interplay between doctrines and their context. Such approaches shift attention from formal institutions and conceptions to local practices and lead to views, such as Gilsenan's that:

... Islam will be discussed not as a single, rigidly bounded set of structures determining or interacting with other total structures but rather as a word that identifies varying relations of practice, representation, symbol, concept, and worldview within the same society and between different societies.

This view of religious systems, rooted in everyday social praxis, is a long way from the assumption that religion can be defined entirely by its own central doctrines. We cannot employ a sense of religion rooted in the simple view that they involve readily identifiable beliefs. We should approach interpretation of local practices with Geertz's sense of what constitutes religion and the perspective of Gilsenan or Tambiah on reading local systems as sets of discourses which shift in time and space.

adaptations of ritual monasticism
The new religious networks constituted a middle level of the Southeast Asian world from several perspectives. If peasant animism was an underlayer and royal cults formed a superstructure we are focusing now on intermediating institutions. In treating institutions, not ideals, we focus on practiced religion within local communities. We can nonetheless see institutions, rituals and teachers as vehicles for religious purpose if we attend to the interplay between outer forms and inner experience. Sociological parallels between the systems are evident to us through Redfield's framework, which draws attention to the broker role of intermediators between court and village traditions. Like the bhikkhu the ulama were agents of literacy conveying syncretic religions emphasising ritual, esoteric learning, meditation, and experiences tinged by magic.
In shifting to consider local interiorisation of religious idioms, Weber's contrast is an apt starting point. He suggested contrasts though distinction between "emissary" and "exemplary" styles of teaching. Exemplary prophecy, characteristic of Indic religions, emphasises inward process, teachers are meant to be illustrate their message through their being. Thus Theravada bhikkhu are supposed to be beacons, radiating peace and by inwardness a point of orientation for others. In contrast emissary models suggest transmission of experience derived through prophetic revelation and teachers, like the ulama, reach out to make their message clear to others.

In the Buddhist region the sangha was hierarchically organised and linked closely at its apex to the monarchy. Some Islamic teachers belonged to brotherhoods called tarekats, but these were not so uniformly structured, and generally the ulama competed more directly with rulers than the sangha did. In the Islamic zone religious life centred on mosques, as places of worship, and schools, in Java called pesantren, where young students pursued teachings deeply. Within both systems lines of political patronage reached from court centres into village society and often rebellions relied on the support of religious figures, as the new hierarchies could threaten those in power. Rural institutions centred on temples or schools. Theravada wat became features of village life, a focus for worship, they have been central in village ritual and as educational institutions.
The sangha is the primary physical vehicle for the Buddhist message in the world. Bhikkhu are nevertheless only one aspect of a total system including villagers and royalty. Theravada rulers also experienced monkhood, but not as they occupied thrones, and royalty was a source of patronage for the sangha. But the sangha had autonomous existence beyond royal patronage and rooted in international lineages and schools of thought. Within the kingdom rulers themselves made merit by giving donations and serving as protector of the religion, they received by giving. Tension between the state and the sangha arose from the nature of the monkhood. As monks were linked to the grass roots they could represent village communities, becoming channels for criticism and petitioning rulers and their position meant they could claim to be disinterested parties, giving them high moral standing.
There have been three distinct types of wat: village, urban and forest styles. Urban temples are often massive institutions and have become the basis for universities, centres of excellence in the study of Pali or in fine points of philosophy. The village wat are interwoven with the communities and rituals, which in all wat include chanting of Scriptures at length. Forest wats are the isolated hermitage like centres which have minimal connection with society. Dispersed in remote forests or mountains they are the centres within which most of the meditation teachers are found, sites for intensive practice of vipassana, or insight meditation. The sangha was not isolated or separate from village society, but a fluid entity which a majority of people experienced continually.
Relationships between the sangha and community were conditioned by the fact that the monkhood was a phase of life for most people. In theory monks wander, having renounced home and security, with nothing except their robe, an umbrella and a begging bowl; in fact most have been rooted in specific wat. All stay settled for the three months of the annual rain retreat, when agricultural activity lulled, chanting, studying Scriptures, meditating and officiating within local rituals. The majority of men became monks for a period, though most only as novices, or samanera. Village boys entered virtually as an initiation, marking transition prior to marrying and raising a family. Through association as novices age-mates, the same cohorts who later became elders, bonded into cliques. Even village children who never entered the sangha were sent to temples to help and take classes, being inducted into the essentials of Buddhist morality and ethics in the process, and the rate of premodern male literacy was thus extremely in Theravada states.
Even lifelong monks, a minority, have not usually striven to attain the ideal, the end point of Buddhism. Though all monks command respect, few have been seen as saints, arhant, who had achieved nibbana. Nevertheless, even at a lower level, monks could be beacons, radiating awareness and peace so that ideals become manifest. At the same time many have simultaneously been specialists in astrology, divination and exorcism, the casting out of spirits, they had individual reputations and have been sought out for advise on the timing appropriate for naming ceremonies or the building of houses. Such expertise, not part of doctrinal Buddhism, reflected syncretism with the substratum of folk tradition and, in the case of astrology, maintenance of earlier Indic numerological sciences. Ordinary people conceived of themselves as on a spiritual ladder. Woman hoped to reincarnate as a man; men to reincarnate as a committed monks.
For ordinary Buddhists the most pertinent guide to action has been that people should perform "merit making actions". Working to accumulate merit is their proximate goal, not achievement of nibbana, which for almost all Buddhists is imagined as beyond reach. In practice this principle was translated into graded listing of actions which earn merit and many imagined they could cancel bad deeds mechanically by gifts to wat or through having a son who entered the sangha. For instance a corrupt politician in Orwell's novel Burmese Days spent his life stabbing others in the back, confident that in the end he could donate money to build a temple and earn merit. But if considered closely merit making is in essence not far from the heart of the Buddha's teaching. In principle merit comes through giving without ego, without desire for reward. "Selfless action" is the channel for releasing kamma (karma) to facilitate spiritual improvement and this is close to the essence of Buddhism in doctrinal terms.
To illustrate consider merit making implications at what appear as the extremes of the Buddhist spectrum. The ostensibly most merit making extreme might be a monk in a forest wat meditating under a master who received the transmission of the dhamma through a lineage straight to the Buddha. He might own nothing and spend all his time in silent walking or sitting meditation. The other extreme may be an ordinary village woman, relating to Buddhism by the fact she provides rice for monks and attends ceremonies. Surface correlation to ideals would indicate that the monk was gaining more merit than the villager and indeed such hierarchy is explicit in Theravada. But spiritually merit making depends on selfless motive. The forest monk may be constantly, even unconsciously, glorifying himself. If so the very intensity of practice works against him, strengthening the kamma of ego. The village woman may give only because of social pressure to conform, she may not pause to consider why, acting automatically as dictated by tradition. It may be that she gives without thought of herself, earning more merit than the misdirected meditation of the monk. This possibility is integral to the notion of merit making and relevant to the translation of the Buddha's message into everyday ritual actions.

Though at first glance appearing radically different, there were profound convergences between Islamic and Theravada structures. Even senses of membership in religious community differ. In Buddhism the sangha is the primary vehicle of explicit practice. In Buddhist theory the hierarchy within the sangha connects not only states to villages, but ordinary people to the dhamma. Guidelines for the sangha were established by the Buddha himself and the vinaya, the rules of monastic conduct, has origins in the sayings of the Buddha. Bhikkhu taught ideally through radiating metta, or compassion, through their own meditative realisation, so that others would be blessed by it through hearing or in rituals.
Islamic concepts of community centre on a brotherhood of believers which is theoretically democratic--all relate to God directly without the intermediary role of a priest or hierarchy. Muhammed did not talk about special orders. Even in Sufi orders members were not separated from society, they were undistinguished, except in privately sitting at the feet of a master or performing exercises under his guidance. However, within Islamic practice teachers have had special status. Masters of mystical Islam and the ulama, experts on the texts, have often been seen as having special power as transmitters. In north Africa they are spoken of as having "baraka", charisma, a magnetic quality which radiates outward in a fashion not unlike that of a bhikkhu.
Though there is no doctrinal place for spiritual renunciates in formal Islam, there were wandering seekers, santri, and even spiritual beggars in practice. These approached the ideals of monkhood while, on the other hand, many bhikkhu have been far from being the wanderers their tradition images. In traditional pesantren the begging rounds and bowls had a place; in Buddhism some monks have not even begged. Thus, though in theory a class of intensive seekers after truth is central in Buddhism and non-existent in Islam, in practice similar groups existed in both contexts. Ostensibly ideals in Islam hold that everybody relates directly to God and in Buddhism that they are placed on a spiritual pyramid of inequity. Counterpointing this, within Buddhism virtually all males move in and out of the monkhood and Sufi orders distinguish the intensity of individual experience of truth. While at one level Buddhism is hierarchical and Islam democratic, in practice the Theravada monkhood is not extraordinary and in Islam there are notions of special power in saints or mystics.
Within Buddhism, especially after the monastic university of Nalanda was eliminated, there is no equivalent to the haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. In Islam the pilgrimage constituted a linking point, currents from throughout the Muslim world always met there and this constantly linked movements across the Islamic world. Committed Muslims who could afford the haj undertook it. Those who were serious not only visited briefly, but studied for years under masters of law, theology, morality or mysticism. Those who had stayed at Mecca often became teachers in their home communities upon return. To begin with they would know and understand Arabic. Arabic remains the key textual language because in Muslim terms the Koran cannot be translated, it only exists in its original language and thus Muslims depend on Arabic fundamentally, as do Buddhists on Pali to a lesser degree.

Pesantren do not have the place within Islamic teaching that Buddhist wat do, yet they are the prime village institutions of Javanese Islam and perform many of the same functions. Local villagers sent their teenage boys to spend time chanting the Koran, memorising parts of it, and being introduced to the basics of Islamic theology, morality, and law. Students, called santri. also practised Islamic versions of the martial arts, participating in a relatively ascetic life as frugal and sparse as those of most Buddhist monks. Involvement with pesantren never became pervasive, as participation within Theravada wat did, as only families who were especially serious about Islam would send their children to them. However in both cases attendance has been essentially voluntary and the institutions provided education in morality and religious ethics, introducing ordinary people to whatever literacy they were going to get at the same time.
The nature of learning within traditional religions was similar. Chanting, repetition and meditation, in the Islamic case called dikir, repetition of the name of God as a centring device, were basic. In Theravada essential Scriptures have been in Pali, not in the living language of ordinary people. Student energy went into rote memorising and chanting of Scriptures in a language they could not usually interpret. In Islam Arabic is fundamental, no translation can be the Koran. Teachers became famous for memorised the Koran even without necessarily understanding Arabic. Both systems did not prioritise mental understanding of theological intricacies, though those were explored, but intuitive experience ritually felt. According to traditional systems, including that of Filipino Catholics, repetition of sacred texts in ritual context makes words sacred. The vibrational quality of sounds are held to resonate with states of being; the power of the word was not in literal meaning, but in the utterance itself. Every word or letter in the Koran is, like a Sanskrit mantra, considered to be power infused. Repetition was not meaningless, but "meaning" lay in the feeling or atmosphere which was ritually generated.
Both formulations of orthodoxy and of the social networks defining communities of practice have differed. Within Theravada issues of orthodoxy centred within the sangha rather than on the purity of popular practices, those who remained involved with spirits fitted into an accepted continuum. As within Theravada support for a wat came from nearby communities and novices from the immediate area, there has been also been coincidence between regional and religious community. Within Islam support for pesantren generally came from the dispersed families of the immediately involved. Consequently santri senses of community correlated with intensity of commitment, which cut across village identification. Both doctrines and the interweaving of wat with villages explain why there has been a relatively harmonious relationship between Buddhism and the substratum. Conversely within regional Islam religion more easily became a source of social tension. Islam holds a more exclusive doctrinal attitude. Tensions did take shape in every local context between customary law, termed adat by Islam, and spirit beliefs on the one hand and orthodox doctrine and ritual on the other. With the advent of Islam in the region that theme becomes a consistent and powerful axis of local social tensions.

local Islam as text or praxis
My focus here is especially on the basis of Woodward's recent and significant reinterpretation of Javanese Islam. In his book, Islam in Java: Normative Piety and Mysticism in the Sultanate of Yogyakarta (1989), he has clearly made a useful contribution through synthesising secondary sources. Because his work is informed by a mature grasp of Islam he brings an advance, as appreciation of the complexities of local Islam has been lacking from much of the English language work on Javanese religion. He is right to present Javanism, the term most used for the syncretic local religion, as a variant of rather than an aberration from Islam in general.
However Woodward's presentation is undermined, if viewed as primary scholarship, by reliance on secondary sources and a limited ethnographic foundation. These constraints result in a view which is overly shaped by the perspective of the Yogya court (kraton). Consequently while he has opened up an important and previously underrated perspective on the complex world of Java, important everywhere in the same way that a Vatican version of Catholicism is, his study is also nevertheless more specific and partial than it pretends to be.
It is worth approaching Woodward's reassessment of Javanese religion as an opening to wider consideration of theory and method in the study of religion, as the conjunction between ethnographic and textual approaches which he attempts is indeed timely and important. At the same time students, or for that matter protagonists in religious debate, frequently argue at cross purposes when their enterprises differ at base. Such confusions often arise very often in both scholarship on and public discussion about religion. Certainly within debates about the nature of Javanese religion a great deal turns on variant fundamental assumptions about what does or can constitute 'religion', and by extension on how to approach it.
Recently there has been increasing prominence within cultural studies to exploration based on texts. The new emphasis contrasts with earlier philological models of textual study. In it the term 'text' is enlarged to refer to cultural practices in general. According to this view quite varied expressions, including body language and other tacit dispositions of power, can be best decoded as semiotic systems. While there have been great gains through these developments, a foundational gift of anthropology may be at risk through them. Anthropology has unquestionably contributed to the enlargement of general understanding of humanity and, specifically through emphasis on social practices, to general senses of what constitutes 'religion'.
The boundaries which had defined that domain of human enterprise were linked to specific communities of faith, in the Western context specifically to Christian experiences of and imagination of what could constitute religion. Ethnography expanded that sphere through space and time. In addition ethnography situated faith in lived practices within varied communities. Classical and theological studies appeared to imply that religion was a matter of doctrine and philosophy embedded in texts or of faith as a private experience. Anthropology can claim substantial credit for the degree to which we now understand religion as, like politics, a multidimensional domain of human experience.
At this juncture it is especially worthwhile focussing on the counterpoint implied in attempts to bring text and practice, as well as textual and ethnographic approaches, together in the study of religion. In Woodward's work the term 'praxis' is emphasised in the outset (p 4) and conclusion (pp 245-251) to a worthy attempt to bring textual and ethnographic methods together. In attempting to draw from the strengths of classical literary approaches and, simultaneously, ethnographic analysis, Woodward argues with some justice that he is arriving at a different, and relatively new (if mainly for the English speaking world) perspective on the essential nature of Javanese religion. In effect Woodward presents, as though it is a discovery contrary to Geertz (1976), the realisation that the Javanese 'really are' Muslim after all.

The term 'Javanism' (kejawen) refers at once to the geographical zone centring on the courts of Yogyakarta and Surakarta and the cultural style of those within it who prioritise their ethnic traditions. Javanists generally have spiritual commitments conditioned by a cultural gestalt while others within the same language family, and no less Javanese, hold their institutional religious beliefs as a more exclusive frame of reference. Despite recent and pervasive social changes traditional spiritual culture nevertheless continues to exercise a powerful influence throughout the heartlands of Java.
Many people remain committed to rituals, influenced by courts and engaged with the philosophy of the Indian derived wayang mythology. All of that is part of a cultural style which continues to define the spiritual orientation of perhaps half of the island's population, which altogether approaches one hundred million. Influences from historically conditioning forces are obvious and acknowledged, most immediately in the fact that most Javanists are also professing Muslims. Thus debates about the nature of local religion, both within Java as a political and social issue and among students of it, usually centre on effort to specify how traditional socio-cultural practices relate to the Islamic faith.
Almost every observer, however they position themselves in relation to whether the Javanese are 'truly' Muslim, would agree readily that Javanism is aptly termed mystical. Within it there is general acceptance, consonant with traditional Islam in any event, that religious life contains both an external domain of doctrines, rituals and social affiliations (alam lahiriyah) and an internal spiritual sphere (alam batiniyah), within which people experience and realise the truths contained in religion. The prominence given to this distinction, between esoteric and exoteric spheres, is linked to a widespread adherence to a relativistic conviction, rooted in Indic culture, that beneath variations in symbolism there remains a single, albeit ineffable, essence which is accessible through practices of consciousness development.
This tradition of beliefs, previously usually termed 'kebatinan' and now more often called 'kepercayaan', is consistently presented by its adherents as being rooted in the prehistoric origins of their culture. In the terms of those who adhere to this tradition, a single ageless wisdom extends from ancestral animism through interactions with Indian, Islamic and modern eras into the present. This perceived continuity with ancient roots is generally emphasised precisely in order to affirm the autonomy of Javanese spirituality from the conditioning influences, arriving from outside, which have attempted to claim possession of the hearts of the Javanese. In spiritual terms Islam has the strongest counterclaim, as it has been the dominant formal religion for most people on the island since the seventeenth century.
Contrasts between textual, especially philological works in the Dutch tradition, and ethnographic study are quite dramatic in scholarly assessments of Javanese religion. Rasser's (1982) work, first published in Dutch during the 1920s and 1930s, approached Javanese religion through structuralist analysis of mythology and led naturally to emphasis on deep Indic influences and the persistence of animism. This tradition of scholarship is more recently embodied in Hadiwijono's (1967) exclusively textual and implicitly theological exploration. His approach resulted reflexively in an emphasis on the continuing relevance of elements of underlying Hindu philosophy. Textually based works are most starkly counterpointed by Geertz's (1976) Weberian styled classic, first published in 1960. In it he drew from descriptive ethnography of Pare, the town he studied in East Java, and hardly even noted either the literate tradition of the Javanese or the wealth of Dutch scholarship on it.
I will not attempt even a partial stocktaking of the many subsequent studies of Javanese religion, but comments on a few other significant studies will help set a stage for my reflections on Woodward's new work. Implicitly a review of what has been written is already available, even if only as embedded within the lengthy chapter on religion in Koentjaraningrat's authoritative book, Javanese Culture(1985). Like Kartodirdjo's (1972) work, Koentjaraningrat's is informed by and spiced with description which benefits from native sensibility. However both of them mainly worked with written material, ironically usually Western in origin. Though each has carried out field research they do not attempt the blend of ethnography and textual study we are moving toward. Such choices and constraints condition any work in all fields and become problems only when they are implicitly denied. Here my aim is mainly to draw attention to how focus, sources and methodology influence interpretation.
Mulder's (1978) ethnography of Yogyanese religion touched only lightly on formal religion because his concentration centred on the resonances of mystical religion in daily life. In following the style of Geertz's ethnography he also found little need to consult texts. Keeler's (1987) ethnography of wayang, the famous Javanese shadow drama, sidestepped both the urban links and psychological resonances of that art form, imitating Geertz in failing to acknowledge the literary wealth of Java or of scholarship on it.
As a counterpoint, De Jong's (1973) exploration of mystical philosophy continues the philological tradition, exploring texts of the Pangestu movement. Nakamura's monograph (1983), which foreshadowed Woodward's perspective on local Islam in some respects, at least combined elements of textual and ethnographic method. But of recent studies the best in this respect is Hefner's (1985) work on the Tenggerese, as he finely blended ethnography and history, text and practice, while focussing on a community just beyond the margins of the Javanist cultural zone.
Geertz's work, referring in this instance mainly to his representation of the abangan, santri and priyayi elements in Java (1976), still overshadows other studies of Javanese religion. Notwithstanding critiques of his ethnography, including very important points registered by Koentjaraningrat (1963), Bachtiar (1973), Hooykaas (1976), Brakel (1976) and Shankman (1984), no other study has had remotely comparable impact. The gestalt he established has moulded interpretation for three decades, several generations have been introduced to the field through it and almost every serious work still addresses his framing at length. Even scholars who object fundamentally to his framework and conclusions have been forced to debate on his ground.
During the past decade Koentjaraningrat's formulation of the ways in which the major strands of Javanese religion relate (1985), one which stresses distinction between Islam and Javanism, has become increasingly predominant. But even he was repeatedly at pains to refute Geertz. Woodward's work pushes beyond Koentjaraningrat through the fact that he prioritising Islam as the overridding gestalt within Javanese religion. While I do not intend to exhaustively discuss Geertz's framework, several comments about it are essential in order to put his work into perspective in this context. This is relevant prior to exploring Woodward's (1989) book at length, because the latter is centrally and continually concerned with revising Geertz's reading of Javanism.
Limitations in Geertz's study, including, for instance, a failure to register the logic of spirit beliefs as Javanese hold them, are important. I have the same interest others do in revising Geertz on many such points, many of them far from being trivial. However in this context the critical issues have to do with overall conceptualisation of Javanese religious life. More especially they centre on how he presented and others register the relationship between Islam and other aspects of local religion.
In Woodward's opening reference to Geertz he stressed that Geertz "...divides Javanese society into three primary groups... that the vast majority of Javanese are only nominal Muslims..." (1989 p 2). Given the centrality of this point to Woodward's endeavour he does not represent Geertz's position adequately. Geertz said in his introduction that

...any simple unitary view is certain to be inadequate...and conflict in values lie concealed behind the simple statement that Java is more than 90 per cent Moslem. If I have chosen, consequently, to accent the religious diversity in contemporary Java -- or more particularly in one given town-village complex in contemporary Java -- my intention has not been to deny the underlying religious unity of its people... but to bring home the reality of the complexity, depth, and richness of their spiritual life. (1976 p 7)

Throughout the book it is quite clear in the fine print of analysis that abangan, santri and priyayi all consider themselves Muslim; variation, as expressed in Geertz's typology, relates to what that means and how it is effected in social life. In conclusion Geertz emphasised values which crosscut the three subtypes (pp 355-381) and it is apparent there that these types refer primarily to cultural orientations rather than to rigidly fixed social categories.
Nevertheless by now all serious students would follow Hodgson, as Woodward sets out to (1989 pp 1-3), in recognising limitations in Geertz's understanding of Islam. In his 1960 book Geertz clearly lacked the sophistication of Drewes (1955) understanding of Islam; Tambiah's later (1970) capacity to envision similar diversity as components within one system; or Gilsenan's (1983) capacity to conceptualise Islam as a set of discursive practices. Nevertheless he is commonly misread and debates about Geertz's framework are misplaced in at least two respects.
The overwhelming impression among readers appears to be that according to Geertz only the santri are 'really Muslim', that abangan correlates so strongly with 'animistic peasants' and priyayi with 'Indic court derived elites' that neither are recognisably Muslim. While his implicit Weberian model leans heavily in that direction and reification does occur I believe this impression is generated more by the strength of the visual division of the book into three sections than by the analysis in the text. There (as on pp 127-130) these are presented as variants within one system even if different groups interpreted and practiced Islam in contrasting or competing ways.
Secondly, commentaries often treat the book as a general statement about Java 'now'. In doing so they appear to be caught by the impression generated through the title, failing as a result to situate the work adequately in time and place. Woodward's debate with Geertz, for example, takes no account of changes in the three decades between their fieldwork -- there is no doubt that those have been substantial. Nor does Woodward take account of contrasts between Yogya and Pare. In this he follows others who sometimes present or read ethnography as though it is globalised general description instead of situating it precisely -- as it must be and as historians more normally would. Incidentally, at this distance in time we also easily forget the service Geertz's study provided in context of its advent. For Indonesianists, for the moment putting aside the concerns of anthropology, it facilitated interface between various social and cultural studies in a way previous studies had not, opening understandings previously obscure within philological scholasticism.
Notable features of Geertz's analysis are clearly dated. At the simplest level Geertz was actually reporting about the town of Pare during 1953 and 1954, just after the revolution and before the 1955 elections. As a later study (1965) of his did clarify, the historical circumstances and peculiar, especially polarised, characteristics of his Brantas valley locality strongly conditioned the society he described. These features or time and place are naturally reflected in analysis. If he is responsible for misimpression, in this as above, he is nevertheless quite clear about the context and limits of his study in the fine print of his text.
In retrospect the overwhelming clarity of Geertz's analysis became one of its major problems: categories of analysis are so clearly presented that modulations and qualifications are implicitly obscured. He can be, and has been, rightly 'accused' of conceptualising and writing with such extraordinary clarity that readers are seduced into oversimplifying. But can we blame authors for the misuses their work may be put to?

Having touched on the established interpretations of Javanese religion we can consider Woodward's reinterpretation of Javanese Islam more fully. The central thrust of his argument is clearly spelled out. He states in the introduction that his aim is to answer a question framed by Marshall Hodgson, the noted Chicago Islamicist. Hodgson essentially inverted Geertz and querried how it could be that Java became so thoroughly Islamicised. Woodward holds that:

...Islam is the predominant force in the religious beliefs and rites of central Javanese, and that it shapes the character of social interaction and daily life in all segments of Javanese society... Islam has penetrated so quickly and so deeply into the fabric of Javanese culture because it was embraced by the royal courts as the basis for a theocratic state. Sufism (mystical Islam) forms the core of the state cult and the theory of kingship, which... is the primary model of popular religion. Religious discord is based not on the differential acceptance of Islam by Javanese of various social positions, but on the age-old Islamic question of how to balance the legalistic and mystical dimensions of the tradition. (1989 p 3)

He explains that he had arrived in the field with conviction that Indic religions were a powerful undercurrent of Javanese practices which he could expose. Four days after arrival and failing, after "days" of effort, to see suitable evidence of Hindu elements in the garebeg malud festival, a celebration commemorating Muhammad's birth and death (was this the place to look?), he "put away" his collection of books on Indology in favour of everything he could find on Islam. As he puts it he was convinced to do so by a neighbor, a prominent Muhammadiyah member who became one of his "most trusted informants", who "confided" as fact that court rituals and kejawen beliefs generally were essentially Islamic, albeit impure (p 3). I will return to this admirably frank admission of a flawed method in concluding assessment, but will first introduce the book to provide an outline of its overall contours.
Woodward considers definition of and approaches to religion in the introduction. He establishes the objectives already referred to, draws on works by Ricklefs to introduce the history of Yogyakarta and then provides a sense of Yogya as a research site before opening up his reflections on theory. His discussion of theory refers mainly to Tylor, Frazer, Durkheim and then, for the Southeast Asian context, to Lehman, Schulte Nordholt and Wessing. Building on these essentially intellectualist and structuralist foundations he follows Wessing and refers to his own approach as "axiomatic structuralism" (p 27).
Though he notes the reservations others have registered about the limits of structuralism and nods to Foucault, when indicating that his objective is to chart how the cultural grammar of classical Islam reformed Javanese culture (p 30), a preference for formalist and textual modes of analysis is apparent. Though he had invoked Ortner and praxis in opening, his avowed methodology is anchored in Tylor and Durkheim, in intellectualism and structuralism rather than in Malinowski's ethnography, Weber's sociology, or Bourdieu's theory of practice. As will become apparent this formalism constrained his analysis of discursive practices.
Woodward says that his second chapter compares ethnographic and textual approaches and aims to work toward the conclusion that:

... the polemical nature of... the debate between mystics and proponents of Islamic reform obscures the underlying unity of Javanese religious thought... only the conjoint use of textual and ethnographic materials allows us to... arrive at an understanding of the fundamental questions at issue... (p 51).

However only three paragraphs in the chapter touch the relevance of ethnography, even then only by suggesting the obvious -- that interviews can show how the range of cultural knowledge is used (pp 48-9). The remaining twenty-one pages deal with mythic history and symbolic interpretation of it.
His textual sources are strictly secondary, as he does note and as is the case throughout the book. Santoso's Indonesian translation of the Javanese Babad Tanah Jawi comes the closest to being a primary text, unless we also include Brongtodiningrat (1975), who I will refer to later. Some important points are made in this chapter. Woodward successfully establishes the central role of meditation in Javanese epistemology (p 34), Javanese emphasis on the legitimising importance of myth (p 36) and, via Sperber's theory of "passive memory", that indigenous histories embody clearly specified and engrained constraints. Later (p 100) he makes his most critical point, about local uses of mythic history, though even there he does not fully register the significance of the spiritual lineages which are at issue within them.
As a summary contribution to interpretation of myth Woodwards comments are important. However the chapter touches neither primary texts nor ethnography and this is cause for some concern, as he claims to do both. If there is any dialogue with ethnography it is only implicitly, through dialogue with the unmentioned shadow of Geertz: the actual achievement of the chapter is to establish why ethnographers should consider even secondary texts more than Geertz did. That this may indeed have been Woodward's tacit objective becomes evident later, in the conclusion to his book, where he notes that

...study of cultural traditions that are not derived from social reality or lived experience may...offer insight into the axiomatic principles of cultural knowledge and interpretive strategies used by actors in the construction of meaning in daily life...it is essential that anthropologists take them into account...because they are a source of information and inspiration for native actors. (p 249)

It becomes apparent increasingly that Woodward's emphasis is on argument that insights from secondary textual sources can provide critical insights into practice. This is so and his clarification that it is is the real virtue of his work.
At the same time readers would have been more correctly alerted to both his thesis and method had he said so in these terms. His invocations of praxis and references to ethnography are misleading, they establish the wrong grounds for evaluation of the contribution made. The book is not a counterpointing of textual and ethnographic approaches to Javanist Islam; it is instead a useful synthesis of grounded secondary sources moderately spiced with ethnographic observation.
In a third chapter, on Islamic traditions, we are introduced to the historical context of Java's Islamisation through cogent summary of recent research results complied by others. Then Woodward considers the tensions between mysticism and orthodoxy within international Islam. He refutes the claims of legalistic orthodoxy to defining what can constitute an Islamic discourse and suggests that:

Roman legal principles or Neoplatonism becomes Islamic if interpeted in terms of a system of symbolic knowledge derived from Quranic or other Islamic principles. The same, it will be argued, is true of the Hindu elements of Javanese Islam. In an attempt to explain the history and development of the various branches of the Islamic tradition, we should look not for a pristine notion of orthodoxy, from which subsequent traditions deviate but for principles of interpretation that underlie both the unity and diversity of the tradition. (p 63)

This builds well on his theoretical comments and more clearly establishes the probing mode of analysis he uses as a basis for general argument. The third chapter moves on to explore how Islamic, especially Sufi, concepts became localised in Javanese notions of piety, through Mataram state ideology relating to theories of microcosm and macrocosm parallelism. With Woodward's theoretical strategy in mind I will briefly outline the substantive territory covered through the rest of the book before returning to assessment of his argument.
The fourth, fifth and sixth chapters are the core of the book. "Sufism and Normative Piety Among Traditional Santri" introduces the pesantren tradition of local Islamic schools and the textually based learning prioritised within it; the philosophical basis of distinction between orthodox and heterodox; the archetypal stories of the wali , the warrior saints who, according to myth, pioneered Javanese Islam, and the shifts from nineteenth century tarekat, the brotherhoods of Sufism, to contemporary pesantren styles of Islam. While drawing heavily on the fine scholarship of Johns, Drewes, Kumar and Dhofier, Woodward makes excellent use of these secondary source, but only occasionally spices his text with anecdotes from his own field experience.
The fifth chapter, "Royal and Village Religion: the Social Interpretation of Sufism", touches myths of kingship, rites of passage, ideas of revelation (wahyu) and power (kasekten), and beliefs relating to death and pilgrimage. It then moves to consideration of the structure and goals of the mystical path, trying in conclusion to tie that to social practices. The sixth chapter is shorter, cohesive and particularly powerful -- though perhaps its limitations, which I will return to, relate to its cohesion. Focussing on the structure of the kraton, in its extended context, and based almost entirely on Brongtodiningrat's (1975) English language pamphlet describing the kraton, Woodward outlines the Sufi reading of its design as a model of the spiritual path and for its embodiment in social life.
The seventh and concluding chapters consider Hindu elements still apparently present in Javanese religion. It argues that within the gestalt provided by Sufi Islam they represent the heresy of attributing power to other than God (shirk). The conclusion returns to review of Islamisation and then discussion of structure, history and praxis. It is incidental here, but the fourth and fifth chapters range through too many issues to cover comfortably. Many individually excellent points are made in them, but integration of argument is at risk and the chapter structure of the book could definitely have been improved. However I will not linger on organisation or presentation, as I want to focus on the nature of argument and quality of evidence.
It should be clear, notwithstanding my objections with respect to detail and framing, that this study deserves close inspection as an important work of synthesis offering a vital perspective. My aim is not to dismiss, but to qualify and contextualise so that we can absorb the kernel of value while minimizing distortion. I will concentrate first on particular points of issue, then conclude with a general assessment.
On several counts there are excesses and these indicate limits in both ethnographic foundation and philosophical understanding. Woodward goes beyond the margins of the strategy he has outlined, and much too far, when he says that

Even mystics who use the term nirvana... use it to refer to the Sufi notion of gnosis. I did not meet a single Javanese mystic, even among those who claim to be Buddhist, who accepted the Buddhist doctine of anatta.... The goal of Javanese mysticism is always union with an omnipotent and omnipresent God. (p 71)

Appeal to his own authority on this count was injudicious because it serves mainly to alert us to the limits of his knowledge of local mystical practices. Due to its extended intrinsic interest this point would be worth exploring at length, but as that it not necessary here I will simply note one counter example from my own fieldwork.
During my research in Surakarta during the early seventies I focussed on recent Javanese meditation practices and one of my teachers was Sudarno Ong, a Buddhist Sumarah guide (pamong). Incidentally Sudarno once commented that he was an incarnation of Empu Bharada, a powerful sage who features in Balinese and Javanese tales of the division of Java. Sudarno understood absolutely, and explicitly professed, a Krishnamurti styled distaste for both theism and philosophical dualism, remaining rigorously monistic (Stange 1990).
The philosophical question is profoundly relevant to consideration of the extent to which Javanese are Islamic and in this case an unsupported assertion about a critical issue is simply wrong. At least Woodward should have acknowledged the complexities implied in the monistic phrasing of the highest state as it is understood even within classical Sufism, as is well clarified by Bousfield (1983). He does go on to refer to the archetype provided by al-Hallaj and should have explored the issue of monism and dualism further. Neither does he appear to consider the significance of pressures which arise through context, as in Indonesian public discourses today no purely monistic positions are allowable, due to the dominance of dualistic versions of Islam within the bureaucracy (Stange 1986).
Several of Woodward's repeated statements, like the one above, are at once critical to his position and aimed to discount argument that there are substantial Indic residues in Java. In several cases bald faced and misleading statements are amazing. He acknowledges frequent popular reference to karma, but goes on to state that it is only ever used in relation to a law of retribution. He says that "... the notion of rebirth is absent from even the most radical formulations of Javanese mysticism" (p 258). In the least he should have addressed the counterarguments contained within some of the sources he already quotes. Hadiwijono, for example, maintained as a central feature of this thesis that all contemporary schools adhere to belief in reincarnation (1967 p 249). Sudarno, already mentioned above, provides a counter-illustration and I have know many Yogyanese mystics and healers (dukun) from diverse contexts who maintain ideas of reincarnation. We must conclude either that Woodward only actually talked to a few mystics, perhaps relying too much on his Muhammadiyah informant, or that he ignored both readily available written works and important circles of mystics who hold counter positions. The only other possibility is that he did not understand the notion of reincarnation sufficiently to put the question properly.
Following in this vein and more generally, Woodward shows a worrying tendency to argue one sidedly and by negation. This raises concerns about the way his judgements are formed. He considers counter-positions most when attempting to represent Hindu elements as aspects within an Islamic field. Despite claims to having seriously explored Indic philosophies and religion we may reserve judgement about his credentials. To claim, as he does, that we can disagregate wayang and Hinduism raises severe questions about what he thinks Hinduism is. He says that, "Even the philosophy of the Javanese wayang (shadow play), which is loosely based on the great Hindu epics Mahabharata and Ramayana, did not seem particularly 'Indic'." (p 3) If he considers the wayang only 'loosely' tied to the epics, a statement he does not sufficiently explain in any event, then what would 'a tight connection' be; if they did not seem Indic, then what would? His statement is quite silly and this is unfortunate.
When this same position is amplified later, in showing intersections between wayang and Sufism and introducing ways in which Islam has attempted to encorporate its iconography and symbolism (pp 218-225), the argument is unbalanced. What he does present, relating to understanding of the gods (dewata) for example, draws from eccentric Muslim interpretations which have little currency. Some of them would be widely viewed as wrong by both orthodox and heterodox Javanese. Given the complexity of competing interpretations such globalising is inappropriate. A reference to the way babad geneologies, in Javanese histories, subsume wayang (p 221) properly indicates the function of myth as a tool to establish the spiritual lineage of Javanese rulers (cf p 100). But even in this instance this is to speak of a specific claim, one the rulers themselves assert, and not to judge the weight of implicit messages to Javanese publics. It begins to appear that we are presented with a polemic on behalf of an orthodoxy rather than a balanced assessment.
Several other points illustrate the same one-sided nature of argumentation. Woodward uncritically adopts the argument of Brongtodiningrat's kraton published pamphlet, well founded though it may be. All of his concentration, in his outlining of the structure and cosmological symbolism of the kraton, is on what the structure means from the viewpoint of this one specific Sufi vision. We are left with little doubt that the architects in question were self consciously employing the map implied. As scholars we should note that the same layout and iconography resonates powerfully with earlier Tantric Hindu sites such as Sukuh or Ceto, on Mount Lawu. Those parallels, well documented in secondary literature, provide every reason to at least consider probing continuities, but Woodward never begins to entertain such obvious counterarguments. In a similar vein, is it enough to say that the Yogya monolith (tugu) represents an Islamic notion of union (p 179) and neither note nor speak to the clear resonances of such symbols, resonances already much noted in the literature, with Siva lingga cults or the megalithic?
The uncovering of esoteric Islamic readings of such symbols may be a significant service in itself, but it is not a basis for academic judgement that the implicit grammar of Javanese spirituality is Islamic. Ironically it could be noted that precisely the same type of evidence and mode of argument was used by Zaehner to exactly the opposite effect. He argued on the basis of similar parallels that Sufism as a whole derived fundamental inspiration from India (1969). We must read Woodward's construction of argument as at once bounded and self serving.
At a general level there is considerable irony in how Woodward positions himself in relation to Geertz. He is on safe ground when he outlines how Sufi conceptualisations converged with Mataram state ideology. He makes excellent points when he touches how the notion of correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm translates into distinct communities of spiritual practice (pp 76-77). But when he notes that the ruler (sultan), Islamic teachers (kyai) and mystics have variant readings of what constitutes the bridge linking planes, he seems ironically unconscious of the resonance between his phrasing and Geertz's typology. I read Geertz as suggesting the same sort of variation, in perspective on what constitutes Islam, Woodward is himself outlining. Throughout Woodward's book there are references to divergence between santri and kejawen reactions which are only a shade away from the kind of distinctions Geertz made. Mention of tension between santri and kejawen occurs (p 142), but the most detailed ethnographic evidence of the book is unfortunately buried in a lengthy endnote (p 264). It deals with "a major controversy" over use of loudspeakers at the mosque in his neighborhood, a conflict between Muhammadiyah and kejawen adherents. Why would such evidence of divergence be subordinated to endnotes?
Despite the strength of these reservations, Woodward's book remains a substantial service to students of Java. By providing an excellent summary of otherwise scattered secondary sources they become more accessible, and students will benefit. At the same time he has genuinely reconfigured the gestalt we hold that information in, through the degree to which he has been able to bring this well grounded secondary material on international Islam into view.
But this is not the balance of ethnography and textual analysis it claims to be; on both counts it is several steps removed from primary work. Ethnography enters in mainly as invocation or rhetorical ploy, never as sustained analysis of local sites of religious practices. Woodward may have been in Yogya over a year (p ix) but the evidence used in the book could have been accumulated in several months. In published essays he has done better. The strength of his ethnographic capacity is clearer in his paper on healing (1985) than in the book; his essay on the slametan , the communal meal, (1988) is far superior to the book, whether in detail of textual explication, in quality of reference to social practices or in the construction of argument.
On his own account (p 3) of the way analysis proceeded, already alluded to, we must see Woodward's study as one eyed. After a very early change in direction he appears to have proceeded with the exclusive aim of substantiating his line of thought rather than testing his theory against the evidence. Without considering the common ground mystical systems engage he appears satisfied to conclude that "Java is Islamic". His strategy is essentially only to show correspondence between Javanese and Sufi notions. While applauding this accomplishment, we must reject the claim that it presents a balanced assessment of Javanese religion grounded in textual and ethnographic spheres. It does neither fully and in the structure of argument it is quite partial.
Woodward fails to achieve his central stated objective. He does not actually employ either indigenous texts or ethnographic perspective to establish a sound basis for assessing the nature of Javanese religiosity. His service lies in another direction and enough has been said on that score. In practice he employed a limiting textual orthodoxy as his criteria for determining the nature of Javanese religion. Having set down his measure he collated sympathetic evidence and dismissed contrary suggestions without proper consideration. The assembly of secondary texts results in a perspective which is important, but essentially presents the slant of Yogya kraton orthodoxy on Javanist Islam. In his book Woodward never properly entertained local Islam as praxis.

Having considered a variety of approaches to Java we can return again to the question of how to establish a sound basis for conceptualising religion in general. Woodward's book and the preceding discussion open the door to such reflection, once we leave aside limitations in execution, through clarification of the significance of differing approaches. Underlying problems of interpreting local systems such as the Javanese, whether as academic debate or local political issue, is the basic question of primary definitions of religion.
In this context underlying definitions clearly condition reading of whether and in what way Javanese are Islamic. This is after all the root of the critique by Hodgson of Geertz's work, which Woodward refers to (1989 p 1). In debates within Java, the actual issue is just as often implictly one of how religion is defined and that has implications for what sources are mobilised as evidence in argument. Conclusions about whether the Javanese are 'genuine Muslim' usually rest on definitions, either of religion or of Islam, and it is worth returning to reconsider definitions so as to sidestep what may otherwise be pursuit of non-issues.
In 1964 Benda's influential review (1982), of Feith's book on Indonesia during the 1950s, he brought out a famous 'non-question' of Indonesian studies. He noted that Feith's enterprise was guided by assumptions about democracy and development, common throughout postwar scholarship, which framed the ending of Parliamentary government as 'decline'. Benda argued that it was irrelevant to question why democracy 'failed', that the trajectory of Indonesian history did not have to match presumptions about global progress as embedded within Western visions of the time. Bearing in mind that even useful contributions may err in some respect by addressing non-issues, it is worth again considering definition of religion as praxis.
The notion of praxis became prominent in the 1970s but is rooted in early ethnography. Ortner's (1984) recent emphasis merely marks recall of the most crucial gift anthropology has made to general understandings of religion. Even quick mention of the contributions by some of the enshrined superheroes of the field can highlight the extent to which this is true. From Malinowski onward recognition of the importance of praxis is embedded implicitly and pervasively in the anthropology of religion. Dialectical gestalts situated religion in its social field: Malinowski understood ritual and magic in functional relation to social exchange; Radcliffe-Brown's focussed on integrative interactions between structures; Harris argued that the sacredness of cows for Hindus related to their economic significance.
Holistic and functional perspectives also provide an underlying framework and contribute much that is distinctive about anthropological approaches. The anthropology of complex societies brought increasing concern with conflict and change: Gluckman foregrounded dispute in traditional societies; Redfield saw the folk traditions of peasant ritual magic as interacting with textually defined philosophies of literate high cultures; and Weber drew attention to interactions between inner orientations, defined by religious ethos, and socio-economic actions. The holistic aspect of anthropological theorising is specifically critical to the study of religion because it indicates the necessity of relating to it not only as idea/text, but also as economy/polity and, not least, experience, however awkward that may be to theorise.
In building on such footings the most significant recent definitions of religion draw attention not to a particular structure of experience, thought or action, but to the nature of the linkage between them. Bellah (1970) spoke of religion as "... a set of symbolic forms and acts which relate man to the ultimate conditions of his existence." In his influential essay on "Religion as a Cultural System" Geertz (1966 p 4) defined religion painstakingly, Elsewhere he has been at once more off-handed and elegant, referring to religion, to the same effect, as:

... the conviction that the values one holds are grounded in the inherent structure of reality, that between the way one ought to live and the way things really are there is an unbreakable inner connection. (1971 p 97)

The greatest virtue of these definitions is that they stress the tightness of the connection between inner experience, belief systems and actions. They suggest that if the system is one in which people experience inner conviction that their beliefs, and the actions prescribed by them, are rooted in self-evident reality, then the system is essentially religious. In this way of constructing definitions emphasis is thus placed on the nature of the dialectical interplay which links levels , not on the content of particular levels. This is where praxis lies.
The advantages of this definition should still be self-evident. As it is 'content free' it allow us to easily see how institutions such as football, or ostensibly secular ideologies such as Marxism, may function in religious terms. Most religions will include explicitly 'religious' statements which do indeed shape privately held views of the world, statements such as the five pillars of Islam. But practiced or lived religion always differs from formalised beliefs and there is no a priori reason for prioritising explicitly avowed standards in deciding what constitutes membership in a particular system.
In fact in recent explorations of culture phrases such as 'coherence systems' and 'implicit meanings' signal efforts to expose underlying world views. There is generally agreement that the most important elements of belief are precisely those which may be implicit, hidden or taken for granted. Thus in Bourdieu's theory of practice, which has obvious resonance here, there is continual effort to uncover unstated elements of world view which are at once critical to actions in the world and distinct from the beliefs we may consciously subscribe to (Miller & Branson 1987).
Anthropology places religion in the context of social life and definitions of religion within it do not coincide with those specific religions prioritise. So we can expect that any universal theory of what constitutes religion must necessarily be at odds with definitions maintained within specific fields of religious life, including those held by any self-conscious orthdoxy. Each religious system, like every culture, effectively defines a universe of meaning in its own terms. The circularity of such religious logic, or as in Godel's theorum even of all matematical logic, ensures that in the end each system is only intelligible to itself. On this basis in each religious system meaning and significance cannot be apprehended or judged by standards foreign to it.
The ethnoscience attempt to avoid imposing European thought, implicit in terms such as social, cultural, economic, political, on other cultures led students like Rosaldo to organise descriptions (1980) on the basis of conceptions central within the society they represented. Symbolic anthropology then moved toward focus on 'praxis', on the interactive relationship between symbolic systems and experience within both the internal, psychological, and external, sociological, domains. This has shifted attention from formal institutions and conceptions to practices and discourses internalised implicitly.
When the Dutch social historian Van Leur commented that "...the sheen of the world religions was a thin and flaking glaze..." overlying indigenous faiths his conclusion grew from awareness that many local practices in Indonesia had no relation to the central tenets of Islam. On that basis it seemed to him that 'conversions' had been nominal, or at least in the end they had been diluted through syncretism with pre-existing systems. Woodward's debate with Geertz is framed by similar undercurrents, as Geertz certainly drew on established images of the Javanese.
This view was given force by the scriptural version of religion which Geertz (1971) himself recognised as essentially a modern phenomenon facilitated by the print revolution, one which defined religion textually. The visible persistence of animistic and Hindu beliefs has often seemed to mean that the Javanese are not fundamentally Muslim, that only purists deserve the label. Similarly early studies of Theravada dealt with doctrinal Buddhism and animistic magic as separate traditions interacting in opposition until Tambiah (1970) presented them as components within a single system, as practices involving a complex range of cultural ideas common in one context.
If we follow the trend of recent anthropology, seeing religion as multidimensional and many-faced, as having different local meanings and manifestations, we are clearly departing from what the orthodoxy of particular local religions would accept. When Snouck Hurgronje revolutionised understandings of Islam, by approaching it through practices in Mecca and Indonesia a century ago, he exemplified a combination of textual and ethnographic sophistication few have matched since. But sustained ethnographic exploration has only become common in the past several decades.
Whatever the realities of practice among those who call themselves Muslim, every teacher of the religion has a clear definition which would want to exclude, from the category of 'believer', many others whose practices which go by that name. Similarly many Indonesian Muslims still take exception to the way in which Western scholars have interpreted Islam (Sumardi 1982). There is always a tension, and it will often be severe, between the way outsiders or an academic discipline such as anthropology define religion and the internal perspective of those who are being described.
In the ethnography of Islamic societies the most important recent advances are suggested in Gilsenan's Recognizing Islam (1983). His view is extremely perceptive and clearly conditioned by sensitivity to both lived religion and knowledge of textual orthodoxy. He establishes a characterisation of the diversity of practices which go under the name Islam by suggesting that:

... Islam will be discussed not as a single, rigidly bounded set of structures determining or interacting with other total structures but rather as a word that identifies varying relations of practice, representation, symbol, concept, and worldview within the same society and between different societies. (1983 p 19)

Such a view of religious systems, rooted in a sense of praxis, is a long way from the assumptions that Muslims themselves, or for that matter the followers of any other religion, can adopt comfortably. The insights he provides into Islam within the Arabic world, as a network of social practices and inner orientation, make explicit in a way that doctrinally, institutional or ritually based definitions fail to, how Islam as a religion shapes and penetrates social and personal spaces.
A sensitivity to praxis is especially critical as a concept in dealing with Javanism (kejawen) because in that sphere social patterns and cultural images are explicitly understood as making sense only through the ways they are interiorised. Certainly in local terms analysis of articulated structures or intertextual defined meanings is never sufficient basis for either understanding or explanation. Comprehension of the significance and nature of the wayang mythology, ancestral spirit beliefs, local meditation practices, millenarian imagery or possession cults, all fundamental elements of Javanism which I have dealt with in other works, only comes after contextualising them through what individuals experience in the microcosm (jagad cilik), that is to say within the inner realms of religious life which constitute the practical domain for individuals.
In studies of Java philology, anthropology, history and textual analysis have each established distinct angles of emphasis. Differences in interpretive conclusion are fundamentally, and not incidentally, tied to approaches arising from such differences of perspective. Every interpretation extends from specific approaches, materials, questions, times and sites explored and none should pretend that it can operate in isolation. Methodologies often correlate with contrasting conclusions about the relationship between Islam and Javanism. If ethnographers have too often acted as though texts are irrelevant to considerations they analyze through everyday social interactions; conversely philologists have often focussed so exclusively on written words that they ignore practice.
While these approaches cross fertilize and intersect increasingly they rarely meet in the balance which makes for the synergetic synthesis which we must aim to attain. Social practices are not embodied ideas, they are the life contexts from which we construct abstraction. It is thus simple truism to emphasise that praxis is critical to understanding the structures we analytically isolate as cultural or social. Structures are always implicitly in process and meanings are located only through the ways in which they are experientially reproduced. Such recognition should fundamentally condition all academic understandings of religion. Every interpretation must take account of this no matter how they may vary according to the operations of their underlying methodologies.

With the transition to "world religions" construction of geneologies became extended and lineages in every region traced to the origins of new spiritual frameworks. In the Islamic context this meant tracing back to Adam through Abraham. These geneologies, silsilah in the Islamic world, are essentially spiritual lineages, their "a-historical" character in our terms really being just a reflection of the fact their focus differs, relying not on physical or genetic connections, but on establishing lineages of spiritual authority underlying the ruler. At the same time historical imagination was substantially reconstructed through newly religious frames which connected regional traditions to global patterns. Whereas within Indic frames imported deities were localized as ancestors, in Catholic, Islamic and Buddhist idioms local rulers derived their authority through lineages connecting them to what were unquestionably foreign sources. The magical and esoteric function of geneologies remained primary however, historicity in modernist terms was never the issue and the utility of pangyrics lay in cementing of spiritual sources of power, as had been the key issue within Indic or animistic phases of evolution previously.

Ricklefs (1974)

L Brakel

Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York, Free Press, 1965) p. 62.

R Bellah uses this as his working definition in an essay on "Religious Evolution", in Beyond Belief (New York, Harper & Row, 1970)

C Geertz, Islam Observed (Chicago: U Chicago P, 1971) p. 97.

Marvin Harris, Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches (London, Hutchinson, 1975) pp. 11-34.

HAR Gibb

Especially by the way Geertz's ethnography, The Religion of Java (Chicago: U Chicago P, 1976 (1960)) was framed, making these elements seem quite distinct even though that was not his purpose.

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This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally hosted at freotopia.org/people/paulstange/voices/4.html, and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.