Ancestral Voices in Island Asia
by Paul Stange
Contents
Ch 1 VISION ACROSS CULTURES AND TIMES
--constructions of 'culture' and 'Asia'
--localising historical perspective
Ch 2 THE INDIGENOUS SUBSTRATUM
--ecologies of cores and zones
--patterns of primal spirituality
--the transactive grammar of spirit relations
Ch 3 COSMOLOGIES OF STATE FORMATION
--maritime networks and ethnogenesis
--hierarchies of spiritual power in classical cores
--domestications of imported myths
--mystical symbolism in wayang drama
--the logic of rasa and politics of psychic space
Ch 4 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
Ch 5 APPROPRIATIONS OF MODERNITY
--globalisation of industrial capitalism
--crystallisation of bounded community
--scriptural reformations & spiritual visions of independence
--chronicles of Javanese transition
Ch 6 FORMATIONS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY
--neotraditional ideologies & the politics of contending values
--policies of integration, regulation & constraint on religious discourse
--the Sabdopalon prophesy under Suharto
Ch 7 RESONANCES IN PRESENT PRACTICES
--secularism, revivalism, syncretic orthodoxies, mystical undercurrents
--resonances of the substratum
--silences in Solonese dance
Ch 8 THE POLITICS OF DEPLOYMENT OF ATTENTION IN THE BODY
--
--deconstruction as disempowerment; a philosophical imperialism?
--reading habits and the genealogy of margin and centre
....WHEN THERE WERE TREES...
The great tree marked the head of a high valley. Twenty twisted trunks, each equalling other huge and vine draped trees around, wove through each other, consuming space enough for a dwelling. Though not a banyan, it spread like one, with roots everywhere stretching to become trunks. Immense branches reached beyond reason, each hosting multitudes of flowering guests. Once, not so long ago, the tree marked where vibrant rain forest began, extending uninterrupted toward the dominating peaks of Gede and Pangrango.
Then the crisp clear waters of a mountain stream danced beneath. It brushed past fern carpeted banks, dropped into shaded pools and swirled over boulders, the gifts of a volcanic past, before joining the river Liwung, where the valley opened to wider world. Woodcutter's trails, narrow moist paths which leaches loved, were overhung by dense foliage and led, an hour's walk away, to a high waterfall. Water buffalo grazed, snakes explored beyond the forest, monkeys chattered in the trees and roaming wild boar brought hunters.
Villagers held the tree sacred, as banyan are. They tilled the fertile paddies, fed by water from the stream, on the valley flats below. Hushed warnings urged against offences to the tree, as there were tales of those who, having dared to cut its wood, had died. In its moist atmosphere floated the lost souls of children, those who died before time, at birth or through accident and illness. Ancestors honoured the tree with flowers; these Muslims still offered attention and respect.
After centuries of being buried, as the heart of the forest, the tree became its guardian. Once Dutchmen cleared the forested shoulders of the valley and turned its land to tea, the tree was left standing, as a gateway to the forest beyond. The migrants pushed a rough dirt road to their factory, erected in the orbit of the tree. Eventually the factory was reduced to scorched earth, torched during revolutionary upheaval. Tea receded and rice revived, as centre of valley life, while the tree stood still, silent witness to the tides.
It also spoke. In the faded afterburn of derelict plantation children played. It whispered every time they passed and they, awed by its mystery and immensity, hardly dared touch it. But it reached out through magical dreams in the night. Stars sent flying saucers scattering rice, subtle shapes slid into consciousness, and powers of earth penetrated visiting lives. The tree of life was known.
An army came, claiming even sacred sites as campaign bases, but village voices joined to save the tree. A decade on the tree still stood; uniforms had passed but in their stead came new regime. Paddy fields became holiday cottages and villagers, pressed into service or beyond the valley, moved up the slopes. Remaining forest, for an hour's walk, dissolved into vegetable fields. The lone tree remains, as a sentinel presence, but amidst the din of cars on a now paved road......what voice has forest in human mind?
New: 26 October, 2021 | Now: 26 October, 2021
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/index.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.