2021.4

The present article is a sequel of a series of articles on history of Javanology based on biographies of its most prominent personalities. The article dwells on J.F.C. Gericke, who being a scholar, teacher and administrator played an exceptionally important role at an early stage of Java academic studies. If we name Baptist pastor Gottlob Brückner (1783–1857) (who is the first translator of the New Testament into Javanese and author of the first Javanese grammar book) a founding father of Java studies, then J. Gericke may be considered as belonging to the second generation of scholars engaged in the Java studies: he was fifteen years younger than G. Brückner, he arrived at Java later than G. Brückner, his works were also published later. While G. Brückner, being a priest, had no ties with academic environment, J. Gericke did a lot for its establishment, both as a scholar and as an administrator. J. Gericke contributed a lot to the development of Javanology in its infancy. Starting from the very beginning J. Gericke proved to be a practicing Orientalist (he established contacts with the Java nobility while performing a task entrusted by the government), an administrator in the academic field (he was one of the founders of the Institute for the Javanese Language), a teacher, a linguist (he compiled a practical grammar book and the first Great Javanese-Netherlands Dictionary) and also an illuminator of the Javanese people (he translated the Bible and adapted the Bible stories).

The first Order of independent Indonesia – Bintang Gerilya, or the Guerilla Star – was instituted in 1949, to praise those Indonesians who fought for the Independence against the Dutch. The evolution of Indonesian award system is inextricably intertwined with the developments of the Indonesian state and Indonesian Armed Forces (Tentara Nasional Indonesia, TNI). In the late fifties, the Indonesian Armed Forces became more professional. They adopted the dual function of security and politics and managed to suppress rebellions throughout the Indonesian Archipelago. They needed to be granted for their heroism and service to the Government. As a result, two military orders were instituted in 1958, Bintang Sakti, or the Sacred Star, and Bintang Dharma. Later on, when Suharto established his New Order Regime (Orde Baru) and made the Armed Forces the main actor in Indonesian politics and society, he instituted several orders to buy loyalties of Indonesian top brass officers. All main branches of the Indonesian Armed Forces received their professional orders in late 1968 – Bintang Jalasena for the Navy, Bintang Kartika Eka Pakçi for the Infantry, and Bintang Swa Bhuwana Paksa for the Air Force. But three years later, in 1971, Suharto instituted a new military Order – Bintang Yudha Dharma, or the Grand Meritorious Military Order Star of Indonesia. This award has been a means to praise those military and civilian officials as well as foreign military officers who helped and facilitated the development and strengthening of the National Armed Forces of Indonesia. My paper focuses on the statute of the Order and several cases of its bestowal. The main sources are legal documents of the Indonesian Government and the mass media as well as other open sources.

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.

The collection of legal documents of the Lingga Sharia court (Mahkamah Syariah Kerajaan Lingga) from the Daik museum (Lingga island, modern Indonesia) is a collection of court judgments regarding various types of commercial acts, financial obligations and disputes over property. The collection contains about 350 documents written in the Malay Jawi language and dating back to the early 20th century (from 1905 to 1909). Among documents there are: promissory notes, judgments on the imposition of fines, claims for the payment of alimony/maintenance, claims, disputes over property, documents on the purchase and sale of goods and property; waqf documents etc. A preliminary review of the documents helps to identify personalities among the participants in the court proceedings: their race, cultural and religious background, social status, places of origin etc. Texts mention Muslims and also non-Muslims, first of all, Chinese, Indian and a number of European names. Apparently the Lingga Sharia Court was engaged in the implementation of legal proceedings and the consideration of cases not only for Muslims, but also for other groups of the population. Hence textual analysis of documents will help to reconstruct various legal, socio-economic and cultural aspects of life in Johor. The application of an integrated systematic scientific approach to the studies of these new mass historical sources will reveal new material on the regional history and historical realities of the Malay society in the late 19th – early 20th centuries.

The paper claims that tracing Philippine literature back to the pre-colonial epics is an extrapolation of the European model, paradoxically supported by the ideology of nationalism. Russian essays on the history of Philippine literature share the same drawbacks: they claim the existence of pre-colonial written literature, including epics, and trace the genesis of Philippine literature to them. There is no doubt that the archipelago was rich in oral epics, it is documented in early Spanish sources. However, epics were wiped out in the process of Christianization, not a single text in the vernacular has survived. The existence of a vast body of ancient manuscripts written in syllabic scripts in pre-colonial times, as shown by A. Ocampo, is a romantic idea that dates back to presumptions made by Jose Rizal and has never been proved. Written literature with a novel as its pinnacle was formed in medieval Europe on the basis of Greco-Roman heritage, local oral traditions and Christianity. Early written Philippine literature, on the contrary, has excluded local folklore as a pagan lore. Only poetic elements of rhyme and rhythm were preserved, but not the contents. Written literature has evolved during the 17–18 cc. in a society oriented on Christian values and Spanish culture under the influence of borrowed ecclesiastic and lay literary genres of European origin. It is only recently that the rich Philippine oral literature starts to find its way into urban forms of art through theatre, ballet, dance, cinema, TV, comics and horror stories. It presently dominates the last of those ‘democratic genres’. The author’s field materials (1995–2020) on the present-day living epics of several mountain areas of the archipelago are used.

The paper focuses on a so far understudied and underestimated problem of contacts between early modern Malay literature with Western writing. Undertaken analysis demonstrates the modes chosen by the Malay author to adapt a well-known foreign novel to literary and ideological context of British Malaya before World War II. The message of Malay version is inspired by Islamic reformist thought and Malay nationalism, which in the first half of the 20th century strongly colored the atmosphere in the colony, producing a socially and politically engaged type of writing. Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster most probably attracted the Malay writer with its focus on the problems of women’s emancipation and education, actively propagated by reformist thought. A certain didacticism of the American novel must have also appealed to Malay audience, brought up on the edifications of traditional verbal culture and literature. The engaged character of the Malay rendering of Daddy-Long-Legs made the writer turn down epistolary form of the original and replace the first-person narrative with third-person. It also led to introduction of a new plot line, which contains the main conflict and partially sidelines the romantic topic. As a result, in Malay reinterpretation, the source text loses its basic generic features.

The paper aims to analyze adjectival paradigms of degree in Tagalog as influenced by Spanish. The subject appears to be of interest to the researchers of language contact with Spanish, as the contact-induced changes in the Tagalog grammar are still understudied. The impact of Spanish borrowings on the whole system of degrees in Tagalog adjectives has not yet received any particular attention. Following the approach by I. Melchuk, the paper offers descriptions for both the adjectival paradigm of intensity category and comparison category in Tagalog. The impact of Spanish borrowings in these two paradigms are analyzed based on the Leipzig Corpus of Tagalog. It is shown that Spanish-derived moderative marker medyo and elative markers masyado and sobra have contributed considerably to the inventory of the intensity paradigm of Tagalog. In the comparison paradigm which includes comparative, superlative, equative, and also attenuative degree forms, Spanish comparative marker mas has been shown to prevail, while pareho has been adopted as a new equative degree marker (infrequent). Along with the native relator sa, two Spanish-derived relators kaysa and kumpara sa are part of the Tagalog comparison inventory. Finally, it is suggested that the use of mas as a double-marker in comparison of inequality may indicate a tendency to grammaticalization of mas towards a general “comparison of inequality” marker.

The research of Tagalog phraseological units contributes to the study of almost all spheres of private and social life of the Tagalogs, their national and universal human values. One cannot claim complete language proficiency in Tagalog without knowledge of its phraseological units. The article deals with the methods of identification of Tagalog phraseological units and ways of their classification on the basis of different criteria: (1) affiliation of the key word to a certain part of speech, (2) origin, (3) topics, (4) degree of semantic fusion. The first three criteria have already been used in the classification of Tagalog phraseological units whereas the last one is used for the first time. This classification based on the degree of semantic fusion was introduced by V.V. Vinogradov for the analysis of Russian set expressions. This research proves the universal character of this classification and possibility to use it for the description of the Tagalog phraseological units as they possess the features of semantic fusion similar to those of the Russian set expressions. Most of phraseological units are based on metaphors and can be described using methods of cognitive linguistics. It’s possible to group them in target domains and determine their source domains that facilitates understanding of mental and perceptive peculiarities of the Tagalog native speakers. Four target domains (“intelligence”, “stupidity”, “beauty” and “ugliness”) are analysed in the article and their source domains are detected. Thus the research shows that analysing Tagalog set expressions one can use different approaches that reveal various aspects of such complex phenomenon as phraseological units.