Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Michelle Miller, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. 

ABSTRACT

The talk will showcase my ongoing research on textual corpora in vernacular languages (e.g. Old and ‘Middle’ Javanese, Old Sundanese, Balinese) survived to us through Javano-Balinese Indic traditions of palm-leaf manuscripts (lontar). By focusing on the aspect of manuscript (material) culture, and by documenting some interesting—yet neglected—palm-leaf manuscript collections and repositories (scriptoria) from Java dating back to the early modern period, I shall attempt at illuminating some socio-cultural aspects of the period from the early 15th to the early 17th century. This relatively little known period appears to have been crucial for future Javanese (and Balinese) history, insofar as it witnessed the fall of the Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms of Majapahit and Pajajaran, the ensuing shift from the Hindu-Buddhist paradigm to Islam, and the ‘transplantation’ of the Hindu-Buddhist culture and political model of Majapahit to Bali. In the light of material and textual evidence, I shall document the existence of intra-regional intellectual networks, and highlight the importance of ‘travelling cleric’ as agents of knowledge-production and circulation in the early modern Javano-Balinese world. Finally, I will elaborate on the ‘tensions’ existing between local and cosmopolitan elements in the Javano-Balinese literary culture, and engage with Pollock‘s models of ‘Sanskrit Cosmopolis’ and ‘Vernacular Millenium’.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Andrea Acri is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre, ISEAS. He obtained his PhD from Leiden University (2011), an MA in Southeast Asian Languages and Literatures (with focus on Old Javanese) from the same University, and a ‘Laurea’ degree in Oriental Languages and Cultures (with focus on Sanskrit) from the University of Rome ‘Sapienza’. Since 2011 he has held postdoctoral fellowships in the Netherlands (International Institute for Asian Studies), Australia (Australian National University), the UK (Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies), and Singapore (Asia Research Institute, NUS). Besides Sanskrit and Old Javanese languages and textual criticism, his main interests are Hinduism, Śaivism and Tantric Buddhism, and in particular, their transfer and transformation along the so-called Maritime Silk Road(s). He has authored the monograph Dharma Pātañjala; A Śaiva Scripture from Ancient Java Studied in the Light of Related Old Javanese and Sanskrit Texts (Gonda Indological Studies XVI, Egbert Forsten Publishing/Brill, 2011), and co-edited From Laṅkā Eastwards: The Rāmāyaṇa in the Literature and Visual Arts of Indonesia (KITLV Press, 2011) with Helen Creese and Arlo Griffiths.

REGISTRATION

Admission is free. We would greatly appreciate if you RSVP Mr Jonathan Lee via email: jonathan.lee@nus.edu.sg