Marina V. Frolova

The Nusantara folklore studies are included into the basic course for IAAS students of Indonesian language groups. The renewed course of folklore paves the way for the future deeper understanding of Indonesian literature and culture. The course titled ‘Indonesian Folklore Guide’ is planned to be published. Its main topics are myths and rituals, folk tales, minor folklore genres, ghost-lore and modern forms of Indonesian folklore. Ten lectures are devoted to the following subjects: 1) Spirits, Shamans and Were-Demons: Spells and Incantations; 2) Gods and Heroes: Mythological texts; 3) Shadows, Puppets, Masks and People: Rituals, Sacred Performances and Story-Telling; 4) Giants, Hermits and the Royals: Wonder Tales; 5) Indonesian Cinderellas and Sleeping Beauties: Folktale Motifs and Archaic Reconstructions; 6) The Cunning Mouse-Deer Kancil and the Lazy Man Si Kabayan: Tales about Tricksters; 7) Minor Folklore Genres: Riddles, Pantuns, Jokes and Proverbs; 8) Ghosts and Ghouls: Indonesian Demonology; 9) Child-lore, Urban-lore & Internet-lore; 10) The Future of the Folklore. The course includes group discussions and creative homework assignments. The bibliography and recommendations for students include Indonesian and Malay original sources, translated texts as well as theoretical works by prominent folklorists, philologists and anthropologists.

This article examines the figure of the leak sorcerer in Balinese culture and traces the dynamics of its representation across folklore, traditional literature, cinema and contemporary digital lore. The study employs an interdisciplinary approach that integrates folklore studies, literary criticism and cultural anthropology. The analysis centers on ethnographic data regarding beliefs in leaks, the folk-performative cycle “Calon Arang”, the poem “I Gede Basur”, and the 1981 feature film “Mystics in Bali”. As a figure of folk belief, the leak serves as a personification of hidden threats within the community and a mechanism for explaining misfortune. In literary tradition, by contrast, its image is integrated into Hindu cosmology and systems of sacred knowledge, including literacy and the mastery of mantras. The cinematic interpretation, aimed at a mass audience, intensifies elements of monstrosity and the exoticization of the “Asian monster”, while simultaneously introducing new motifs absent from earlier tradition. Particular attention is paid to the phenomenon of “reverse involution”, whereby cinematic imagery returns to the oral tradition and begins to be perceived as part of authentic folklore. The resilience of beliefs in leaks is sustained by the image’s capacity to adapt to various medial forms and social contexts. This Balinese case study demonstrates that mass culture not only reflects tradition but also actively participates in its production and reinterpretation.

The article deals with the analysis of folklore texts of the peoples from the Indonesian provinces of Papua (written down in the 1960s–1970s). ‘Folk Tales from Irian Jaya’ may be considered to be a relatively new material in comparison with the field-work by Wirtz and Nevermann done before WWII. The study focuses on the archaic features of these texts such as etiologism, totemism, the cult of ancestors, belief in spirits, etc. The article attempts to identify the key elements of the most ancient layers of folklore, which are undergoing inevitable changes in oral transmission and written fixation. On having analyzed the texts the author has come to the conclusion, that the innovations are made in order to include the Papuan part to the melting pot of the pan-Indonesian culture, but such later interpolations do not ruin the archaic elements. The study of Papuan folk tales is intended to contribute reconstruction of a more complete picture of the primary forms of Indonesian folklore and its evolution.