Ancestral Voices in Island Asia

by Paul Stange

chapter three
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

The classical period of Southeast Asian states lasted from roughly the 5th to the 15th centuries of the Christian calendar. In that period profound Indian and Chinese influences facilitated construction of temple cities and development of court literati's and arts. Through this process ethnic identities of the Mon, Cham, Burmese, Khmer, Vietnamese and Javanese, were consolidated; the existence of those groups as we know them resulted from local interaction with classical traditions; the peoples of core areas came of age during the classical era. The Mon and Cham, powerful in early history, were later marginalised; the Thai and Tagalog only became prominent later; the Malays, Acehnese and Minangkabau, though influenced by Indic culture, were eventually more strongly stamped by Islam. If animism and peasant cultivation underpins core areas, the classical era especially gave rise to their court elites, to bureaucratic and charismatic systems of authority. In our time those owing the most to the classical have still been associated with bureaucracies which, even in modern form carry residues of courts which generated them.
With the emergence of states a new sense of time enters our field of vision, rhythms of dynastic periodicity joined the seasonal and life cycles of the substratum. Two themes keynote the classical: stateformation and ethnogenesis. By highlighting "stateformation" we shift attention away from thinking in terms of "outside influences" and direct attention to general social process; "ethnogenesis" turns attention from static opposition, between indigenous and external elements, to the dynamics of constituting new identies. So far as we can tell, local identities were already articulated through small states prior to outside influence and this implies that adaptation of religions, literacy and systems of government could not have been simply an uncomplicated imposition, within the region, of imported patterns. Hwever, as has also been suggested, early in the classical era there was a clear gap between newly formed elite and peasant cultures, one which closed only gradually as local states matured and imported systems were domesticated. Eventually, certainly by the end of the classical era, Indic and Sinic patterns belonged as much to Southeast Asia as to their places of origin. Trade, migration, conquest and religious pilgrimage all contributed as vehicles of external impact and, while Chinese and Indian systems contrasted in nature and extent of impact, both were influential almost everywhere.

maritime networks and ethnogenesis
Contact with extra-regional cultures came through trade along sea routes which cut through the region from before the time of Christ. Coincidence of power and wealth at the poles of Asia stimulated trade during the period when Han China and imperial Rome were at a height. The scale of each turned the earlier trickle of transit trade across Eurasia into a regular flow and new routes opened up. One, passing through Persia, Afghanistan and central Asia to North China, was known as the "silk route" by Romans, who paid in gold for Chinese silk and porcelain. The sea route through Southeast Asia originated as a coasting trade within which ships jumped from port to port along the Arabian Gulf, Bay of Bengal and South China Sea. Significant trade also passed up the Irrawaddy River, the only extensively navigable river apart from the Mekong, to connect with Chinese rivers across the mountainous interior of the mainland. Portage routes, especially across the narrow neck of the Malay peninsula, were originally more popular than the Straits of Malacca as that was considered a haven for pirates.
Proximity to the boundaries of contemporary India and China did not necessarily correlate with the extent of penetration of influences from each. Whether along the Malay Peninsula, in north Sumatra or in the Mekong delta every trading port was equally a lay over point within which traders from the whole network stopped. In each transit traders from the west and north waited, exchanging goods while they did, for seasonal winds which carried them to and from home ports. As early technology bound sailors to the winds, intermittent stops were more common that cutting across open oceans. Kutei, on the east coast of Kalimantan, and Taruma, in western Java, were among the earliest island states though not located on the most direct transit routes. Early states of the Mekong delta, Thailand, Burma, the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and other islands each become separate centres of exchange between China and India. Burmese hill peoples are related to and borrowed most from China; their valley neighbours were more indebted to India. Farther east the lowland Vietnamese accepted Chinese models while their neighbours in the hills learned more from India.
That influences came via trade does not explain the degree to which Southeast Asians became familiar with the intricacies of Indian culture. Merchants and sailors did not possess the technical and religious knowledge which became the basis of classical civilisations. It must thus be assumed that Brahman priests, those with access to the texts and technicalities of ritual magic, were the prime carriers of high culture. Though it is possible some came in the service of Indian princes who migrated, most historians hold it more likely they came on the invitation of local rulers who had heard of their skills, as much through their own sailors as through foreign traders. We know that the earliest temples conformed closely to Indian design and artistic styles and therefore that their specifications must have come through direct transmission, the importing of experts including Brahmans and also skilled artisans. We have concrete evidence religious specialists travelled, along with traders, on the sea routes. During the earliest active phase of exchange elite goods dominated and we should position exchanges of esoteric knowledge and texts, along with medicines and luxury goods, as a core object, not incidental by-product, of trade.
Among the earliest records of the trade routes are diaries of pilgrims. Quest for Buddhist knowledge led pilgrims, like those imaged in the Chinese fables of Monkey, to travel both overland and by sea. Chinese monks, including Fa Hsien in the 4th century and I Tsing in the 7th, passed through the archipelago on their way to India. I Tsing studied at Srivijaya in south Sumatra and described it as a leading centre of Buddhist learning in its own right. In the 11th century the Bengali monk Atisa spent seven years at Srivijaya as the disciple of a princely teacher before subsequently founding one of the three main lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. As he went to Srivijaya from Nalanda his career demonstrated that the islan world was not just a way station for east Asians enroute to India, but clearly host to centres of learning valued in its own right. At the ruins of Nalanda in India, the key Buddhist monastic university of the first millennium, inscriptions record that several asrama, dormitories, were commissined by rulers of Srivijaya to house students and pilgrims from the archipelago. Like the Chinese, Southeast Asians of that era sought religious knowledge from India directly and beyond that they were thoroughly integrated into and active travellers within the wider world of early Buddhist and Hindu cults.
Generally the stimulus of contact with traders created a cosmopolitan environment and thus a contingent imperative for those within that world to conceptualise in increasingly universal terms. Appropriations of new knowledge must have been stimulated, just as now with the diffusion of English language, by the readily apparent advantages of learning vocabularies which gave access to wider worlds. At the same time cities grew through trade their scale gave local people additional incentives to borrow. Ritual process illustrates. Annual harvest festivals in village communities were focal for maintenance of balance with spirits realms. These were initially coordinated by village elders in a context where everyone would have been kin, proximate populations scarcely exceeded a thousand. We may speculate that as populations grew to approach a million, as they did in early states, increasing specialisation was required to orchestrate the wider scope of social transaction. Indian and Chinese literate cultures offered instruments for this purpose, facilitating coordination of wider collective energies. Each provided a class of specialists with access to written texts, cohesive ceremonial magic and technical skills, all of which facilitated social organisation on a larger scale. The same principles which were at work in village rituals were expanded by courts, their logic amplified through literacy to wider effect.
Syncretism defined this process as local beliefs found new voice within, rather than being replaced by, introduced vocabularies. Spirits of local volcanoes were given new names, identified with deities such as Siva, recognizable to other peoples of Asia. Conceptualisation in these, more universalised, terms implied reframing and supplement, not a static discourse by which we might imagine a past being eliminated. McKinlay has suggested significant shifts in the process; sacral powers which had been located primarily in nature on the peripheries of human settlement were refocussed through courts and temples at the centres of kingdoms. However sacred banyan trees and ancestral shrines of the megalithic era also often sat in the centre of settlements. In any case as people incorporated new ideas in the first instance these fused into existing frameworks, providing ways of relating to the same energies of spirits, shrines, caves and ancestors they already knew. We may imagine that in the new order the spirit hierarchies still paralleled social structures, as had guardian spirits, but with kingdoms, kings, queens, princes and armies fought in the spirit as well as social realms.

Ethnicities emerged through fusion in the period we are referring to as tribal groups of iron and bronze age peoples merged with each other and a trickle of migrants. Chinese records provide direct information so this process is clearer in the Vietnamese case than it is for the rest of the region. There a mixing of early Yueh peoples, aboriginal to the region between Hanoi and Guanchao in prehistory, and Chinese migrants produced the Vietnamese we know from history. Just as we have to remind ourselves that contemporary territories are products of history, their peoples also emerged historically; while population movements occurred, for the most part ethnicities were forged and created as societies which produced them proved successful in time. Most of the currently dominant peoples of the region were not prominent two thousand years ago, ethnicities, like nations, are products of history.
In dealing with the substratum of peasant culture and spirit beliefs we touched an essentially timeless world characterised by mythic regeneration. This time sense, different from our rhythms of urban industry, was and is rooted in cycles of seasonal agricultural. As those cycles still exist as a primary structure for living communities the related sense of time continues. Simultaneously with the origins of states a new rhythm of cycles and contingent sense of time enters our field of vision, fluctuations of dynastic emergence and decline amplied seasonal cycles and within them the continuing village sphere was redefined, as 'peasantries' technically only exist through reciprocal relationship with cities, through their interaction with cultures of writing and the elaborated court hierarchies those sustain.
The impulse to contrast the degree of Indian and Chinese influence on the region produces non-questions as it arises from false images of prehistory, one constructed in terms of contemporary boundaries. Images should begin with a generalised substratum of ethnic diversity but characterised by similar patterns over most of the land mass we know as "Asia". Within this broad frame two kernels of civilisation emerged about four thousand years ago. One began around the Indus valley in northern India, near what we know as Kashmir and Pakistan, then spread across the Gangetic Plain, only gradually diffusing to southern regions of the sub-continent. The other began in a bend of the Yellow River in north China and gradually spread to incorporate the area north of the Yangtze and southern China. Extension of both expanding centres into what we call "Southeast Asia" was integral to the same processes which produced the heterogeneous regions we have homogenized under the labels "China" and "India". If "Southeast Asia" has definition within this early process it is only post hoc, through the fact its peoples did not, like cousins closer to the cores of those early cultures, end up being claimed by these overshadowing neighbours.

When Sinic influences reached Vietnam through military conquest in the 2nd century BC we can read that process easily as part of the ongoing southward extension of the Chinese core. Elsewhere local legends refer to migrant Indian princes founding kingdoms, and no doubt Indian migration occurred, but also certainly on a very limited scale. Elite marriage alliances must have occurred as local states emerged, but we have no evidence of extended conquests by south Asian centres of power, of royalty establishing offshoot courts and dynasties. The Chinese maintained records we easily register as "historical", so we trust what we know through them; Indians elaborated mythologies and genealogies instead and the nature of sources may thus contribute to our ignorance of early interactions. In any case the scrappy sources we do have, mainly through archaeology or Chinese records, lead us to emphasise the significance of traders and religious pilgrims in the transmission of Indian culture to Southeast Asia rather than the power of conquest dynasties.
Effectively Chinese emphasis on territorial control, a feature distinguishing its early empires from those of India, meant that parts of prehistoric Southeast Asia were swallowed into China. From this perspective India's influence on the region may have been less. However if thinking in terms of political and religious patterns within today's boundaries, we would have to conclude that the classical states of the region adopted Indian more than Chinese patterns. Chinese traders likely influenced economic life more widely and we know that even the essentially Indic kingdoms sent embassies and traders to Chinese courts, expressing not just economic interest by political deference in the process. The question of relative influence from China and India is complicated further however by the fact that China itself was absorbing Indian Buddhism during the same centuries in which Indic states formed in Southeast Asia. On balance we may have to conclude that India contributed most to defining pan Asian religious discourse in the first millennium, but balance that by observation that China's economic and political power touched the same peoples more directly. The depths of influences in different dimensions, not the geographical spread of states should be our measure.
Increasing contact with a multitude of cultures explains local interest in adapting the available Indic and Sinic models. Indic influences resulted in a pattern of society which focused on the devaraja or "godking"; Sinic influences centred on notions of the "mandate of heaven". Those systems had different implications for political life, social organisation and cosmology. To keynote contrast we can follow Leach in characterising the Sinic system as bureaucratic and the Indic as charismatic. As devaraja Indianised rulers were considered god kings, incarnations of cosmic principles identified with Siva, Vishnu or the Buddha and Southeast Asians may have extended this notion even farther than South Asians did. Rather than being mediators, as in China, they were meant to be embodiments in the flesh of deity. At the same time in both systems rulers were the linchpin of states and were meant to link and balance the social and political order to immediate nature and the wider cosmos.
The Chinese system defined territories of bureaucratic and rationalised court control. The kingdom was seen as the centre of the world, the "middle kingdom" around which peripheral states were oriented. Emperors were "sons of Heaven", power rested on alignment to cosmic forces through consulting astrologers to maintain rites which geared agricultural cycles and court life to harmony with nature. Rulers depended on a proper relationship with nature, they needed "the mandate of heaven" to justify their rule. If rulers had this mandate it was supposed to be demonstrated through actions, through manifest harmony within society and with natural forces. Floods, famine, pestilence or social conflict were taken as signs that an emperor was not attuned to nature, because they indicated there was something wrong in the connection between cosmos, nature and society.
Ancestral precedent was crucial as in the golden era, at the shadowy origins of Chinese civilisation, rulers were imagined to have been proper intermediaries, balancing points between tradition, nature and society. The political structure of the kingdom centred on a mandarin class of scholarly administrators who attained rank in theory by merit. Achievement was measured through performance within a rigorous examination system which centred on literary classics rather than bureaucratic or accounting procedures. In practice only the wealthy could afford to support children during the long study necessary to undertake imperial exams, so gauging of merit was never strictly egalitarian. Through preparation students engaged the social philosophy of Confucianism, a system of ethics and philosophy rooted in reference to ancestral precedent. The education of Confucian scholars, though humanistic rather than technocratic, resulted in relatively rationalised bureaucracies, with historical and tax records, and stressed ritual precedent as a basis for harmony with li, the principle of order embedded in the cosmos.
Indic conceptualisation differed, presenting spiritually based status as based on powers arising from reincarnation or ascetic achievement. Indianised rulers theoretically become so by birth, as incarnations of deity, and usurpers justified claims by constructing genealogies to link them to past royalty. Kings, often termed ratu, were supposed to demonstrate higher consciousness and power by their very being and its reflection in the state of the kingdom which depended on them. This is an ascetic or charismatic model, as it is based on directly spiritual ideas of kingship. Indic styled rulers did themselves spend time in spiritual retreat, at hermitages or monasteries before, after and even during their rule. Their hold on populations was based in theory, not on armies or bureaucracies, but on intuitive and mystical attunement with subtle energies operating in the collective. In practice the consensual complicity of widespread elite endorsement of their position was the most crucial measure of the power of rulers.
Chinese administration of Vietnam brought legislation to impose their norms and customs. During the 1st century AD Vietnamese were systematically instructed to cut their hair, dress and behave as Chinese did. Efforts to change inheritance systems, by abolishing the property rights of women, helped generate the most famous early Vietnamese revolt against China, that of the Trung sisters. Women were prominent within the earlier framework of Vietnamese society, as generally through Southeast Asia. The guerrilla war the sisters led disrupted administration and made them heroines, recalled up to the present in Vietnamese folk imagination. Forceful imposition of patriarchal culture reflected Chinese conquest. Nevertheless mixing in genetic as well as cultural terms meant a two way exchange through subsequent history, as the Chinese administrators and traders who periodically fed into the Vietnamese system often married locals to form alliances with the elite.
When Vietnam broke from China in the early 10th century it began to expand in much the same way as China had, through a series of conquests over several hundred years. The "nam tien" or "drive south" is a major theme of Vietnamese history. Once they were autonomous the wars Vietnam had already waged against Chams assumed new character and by the 15th century Champa had been essentially eliminated. It was the Indic kingdom, a once great trading state in what is now central Vietnam, most exposed to a Sinic polity. After Vietnamese expansion swallowed the Chams interaction increased with the Khmers. The Khmer empire of Angkor had dominated the Mekong delta along with most of what is now Thailand and Laos. Vietnamese expansion reflected the contrast between charismatic Indian and bureaucratic Chinese frameworks. The relatively rationalised infrastructure of Vietnam meant that dynasties could fall but the exam system and much of the elite remained stable.
Within the Indianised Cham and Khmer frameworks dynasties rose and fell as autonomous entities, as worlds to themselves. The system implied inbuilt instability, as whenever a dynasty crumbled little was left. Indic rulers had to evoke, summon or generate charisma and they depended most on relatives for support. Because the ruler was identified with deity the closer nobles were to the ruler in social and genetic terms, the more power and right to it they had. The prominence of marriage alliance, to consolidate wider power, was a corollary. But when dynasties collapsed within the Indic framework the system virtually fell apart. Thus instability within the Cham and Khmer kingdoms meant that new regions fell subject to the Vietnamese with every dynastic transition. This process subordinated the Chams, who have been reduced to a minority of a few hundred thousand within modern Vietnam. Vietnamese encroachment on Khmer territory continued over several hundred years. Expanding Vietnamese and Thai powers would likely have eliminated the Cambodian state in the 19th century, but for the intervention of French imperialism. Even the most recent conflicts, among Chinese, Vietnamese, Khmers and Thai, echo classical themes.

hierarchies of power
An extended exploration of the Indian spirituality which was imported into Southeast Asia would be an incredible catalogue. In India the Vedas, the earliest Scriptures, contained the ageless wisdom of sages and fire ceremonials of purification were critical. Castes, varnas, differentiated communities of people conceived of as having status related to degrees of purity relating to previous incarnations. The concept of karma, governing incarnation in physical form, implies that people are in precisely the position they need to learn the lessons of life. Yoga refers to the sciences of union or liberation, to disciplines exercised by individual seekers. On the path to realisation of the essence of spiritual life seekers are guided by guru, teachers, who have themselves achieved mastery. Each guru expressed, sometimes in radically divergent ways, vision of and techniques for the path to liberation. Teaching and practice took place within an apprenticeship pattern, paralleling the nature of learning in early arts and crafts, as disciples modelled themselves spiritually on their mentors.
Fundamental philosophical notions including karma, darma, moksa, and maya, are found everywhere in Indian thought. Karma, the law of cause and effect binds subtle spiritual life forms to the physical planet. It is the ordering principle by which cycles of life and events within it are regulated. Dharma refers to "truth", as embedded within the teachings of religion, and in its own terms Hinduism is perhaps best called sanhata dharma, or universal truth. Moksa, the goal of spiritual life, means absolute dissolution, releasing the soul from otherwise endless cycles of reincarnation. If liberation is achieved it implies essentially nothing is left, even in the subtle realms of the spirit, when death occurs. Every aspect of being then returns to the universe, not just the body. Maya is often translated as statement that we live in a world of illusion, but means philosophical recognition that domains of phenomena, which we experience through the limitations implied by our senses as real, are transitory rather than absolute.
Early states established patterns, especially of power, which still influence how people relate in the region. Though treating social relations, as distinct from cosmologies identified in myth, we can still move from formulations of the ideals to exploration of concrete practices. At the most general level we are concerned with the interplay between images and practices, ideals and realities. Understanding mystically conceived notions of power will help us grasp why Asian actors perform as they have, but does not imply we can explain politics entirely in these terms. Concentration on ideals, as here, does not mean that ideology is held to be more critical than economic or social factors in interpreting political practices. On the other hand we need to register the practical implications of the central logic which Indic notions of kingship brought to the region.
We can begin with conceptions of power. Anderson noted that the English word power is not an adequate translation of the Javanese term kesakten. That derives from the Sanskrit sakti, which refers to spiritual power. In the west we view power as unlimited, as coming from diverse sources which people accumulate and manipulate, ranging from control over economies, people, armies, machinery and guns. We see power as heterogeneous, unlimited and abstract, as a concept about relations we identify socially. According to Javanese notions kesakten is held to be concrete, to have substance in itself as a force suffusing everything and related to divine, cosmic or life energies as those are conceived in primordial animism. In this sense, power is homogeneous, even if it has many expressions, in itself it is singular and constant in quantity. In the traditional sense to attribute power to a person meant noting a quality they possessed, like hair colour, not comment on their social position.
Classical Indic notions of the devaraja and Sinic notions of the "mandate of heaven" were linked to a sense of the ruler as a bridge, a stabilising force responsible for aligning social rituals with the actual state of the cosmos. To serve as the lynch pin or "nail of the universe" as some were termed, kings had to embody cosmic principles or in the least, in the Sinic model, possess jen, "superior" qualities. Even later traditional cultures, of the Islamic and Theravada worlds, maintained closely related notions of power, distinction between Indic devaraja and later Buddhist dhammaraja or Islamic sultans is muted. According to Wales Thai rulers in the 18th and 19th centuries may have had more absolute power than the rulers of Angkor. Within Thailand a Brahmanic priesthood, centred on the court and responsible for courtly rituals, remained influential even as the centralising powers of states grew. The most cohesive recent example of this pattern directly linked to the Southeast Asian Indianised kingdoms of the classical era, has been Tibet, where the Dalai Lama, as in incarnation of a Bodhisattva, is still construed as an incarnate deity.
Although strictly speaking Indian notions of caste were not generally transplanted to the region, spiritual consciousness was supposed to correlate with social status in the way caste notions imply it should. As Dumont has suggested, through his study of hierarchy in India, in the post Enlightenment world our primary myth may be that all people are equal; in the Indic world the underlying interpretation of society is that people are differentially endowed with power. At their peak Indian models implied rulers were incarnations of deities such as Vishnu or Siva, at the apex of a spiritual pyramid, epitomising spiritual ideals and sitting at the top of the cosmic mountain as the centre around which the universe turns. Ruler theoretically held the highest social, political, economic and spiritual status simultaneously. Personal bonding, like relationships to spiritual guru, forged the links through which power channelled. As direct contact decreases with distance, the power of kings also faded as relationships became distant. Those closest to rulers had the greatest access to the power which flowed out.

Turning from general ideals to exploration of practices, we can identify a number of social patterns which are interwoven with conception of divine kingship. In the first place conception of the divinity of the ruler is linked to the cultic structure of religious organisation. The royal cult is mirrored also in a pattern of local spiritual guru, the structure of local spiritual movements mirrored the conception of the kingdom. Within classical states court ritual, orchestrated by Brahmans, was geared to bring about the realisation of royal divinity; the states as a whole may be conceived of as cults focusing on the personality of the ruler. In Angkor the capital of the state was conceived as a microcosm of the kingdom; the king as the centre piece within the city. Rituals and power relations existed through a cult pattern which focused on the ruler.
Identification of the King with the capital could make the palace a prison, if someone physically assumed the throne he could claim the kingdom. At its extreme this principle kept some 19th century Burmese kings tied to their palaces; one was afraid to attend his coronation, fearing a brother would sit on the throne. In this system instability was related to recognition that the ruler might not be what he was supposed to be. According to ideals as an incarnation the ruler is necessarily attuned to the cosmos and at once to apparent currents in the world of power. If kings appear frivolous or careless, if they fail to attend to the population's welfare, then people justifiably conclude that they do not have the true power which is meant to sanction their rule. Any imbalance in society could be taken as evidence to undermine rulers. As the ruler's claim rested on what was meant to be a uniquely attuned consciousness of the cosmos, those who were spiritually attuned independently, including mystics in remote hermitages, could also be a threat.
For this reason rebellion was usually cosmologically framed. Even villagers could mount competing claims to being more fully in tune with the true nature of the times. Claimants usually cited mystical powers to affirm they held a cosmic mission. Kings become vulnerable and villagers explicit actors if, when another claimant emerged, popular consensus did not appear firm. Thus, while in the ideal everything focuses on the ruler, in practice this worked only if the ruler brought actual prosperity. The notion that authority rested on superior consciousness implied that leaders were meant to be attuned to the subconscious of the collective. Oneness with the state was supposed to be reflected in a capacity to articulate what was collectively felt. A true ruler's had to sense what was implicit in the whole, articulating it in a fashion followings could affirm by their feeling that he spoke for them. As the focus of a ritualised cult the ruler was responsible for generating a unifying vision of the world as part of his balancing function. Thus rulers were especially concerned with symbolic synthesis.
A ruler's claim to legitimacy had to be witnessed by the populace, power never went only one way. Rulers could claim ownership of land by their identity in being with the state as a whole, thus having right to claim part of it's produce. At the same time rulers had to be the central points from which wealth and power flowed downward and outward to the populace. The system worked only when there was a two-way flow. If power came to rulers from the cosmos; demonstration of its reality had to be manifest through patronage. No king could be one unless dispensing wealth, building temples and irrigation works and passing out favours and titles. Rulers had to maintain courts and sponsor massive rituals to cement the consensus underlying authority. If a substantial portion of nobility, each with control over peoples of their own, no longer felt the king had power, then he lost it. In times of chaos the nobility would fight among themselves or coalesce in support of a new claimant.
Maintenance of power depended on patronage, on what royalty actually dispensed and not only on what they claimed to be. Patronage built on kinship models of relationship linked to practices we still see. Officials were identified with roles just as kings were, it is as easy for either to viewed state resources as rights, as in this view there is little separation between state taxes and personal possession. Official responsibility for timber resources might be interpreted as the right to parcel out concessions to extract it, a percentage of profits becoming the official's right. Thai officials were said to "eat the villages" they had authority over. There is still a notion of corruption within this system, though it does not arise from the same premises ours do. A percentage had to be passed upward in homage to rulers and downward in favours to subordinates. When reciprocity broke down, if wealth stopped flowing as it reached those in power, that indicated authorities failed to identify with the collective, showing absence of the attributes of consciousness theoretically required for their position.

At the national level these ideas entered most forcefully into synthesis with modern ideologies through Sukarno's political philosophy, especially as articulated in the period of Guided Democracy. Sukarno's thought is the most powerful and accessible example--many others with a similar bent remain numerous to the present. Sukarno referred to village values and sought to construct national ideology which had an indigenous root. As this feature of his enterprise has been repeatedly outlined, even filtering into press coverage of Indonesia, only brief suggestions bear repeating. Consensus through deliberation (musyawarah-mufakat) was taken as an ideal to replace the notion of representative democracy through elections. Sukarno presented himself as "the mouthpiece of the people" (penyambung lidah rakyat) implying that through his attunement to popular consciousness he spoke for the whole. The national motto of "unity in diversity" (bhinneka tunggal ika), is in this context explicitly linked to mystical sense that union lies in the realm beyond forms, just as is the parallel pronouncement that all religions lead to the same goal. Whether in statements of Sukarno and Suharto or critiques of them, it is suggested that the fundamental basis of power lies in the wahyu, the cosmic sanction which bestows both legitimacy and a spiritually charged authority.
The classical notion of the ruler held that the king's heart (sanubari) needed to be oceanic, embracing the realm so that his consciousness became a pure embodiment or reflection of the collective. Conversely, criticism becomes justified when it begins to seem that pamrih, selfish motive or self interest, rather than collective interest, guides government. These notions, still current, contribute to framing of dissent within Suharto's New Order. The leader is supposed to have, and this is a closely related conception, 'keenly attuned inner feelings', implying capacity to receive and register the qualities of sentiment moving through the public, so that direct consciousness rather than simply an intelligence system contributes to awareness of the kingdom. Finally, explicit traditional ideology of kingship attributes higher qualities of spiritual awareness, in the end merging into ideas of incarnated deity to the ruler. The highest ideal of traditional kingship called for a consciousness through which rulers could demonstrate attunement both to the natural world, through the mediation of the ancestral spirit realm, and to the social world of the realm.
Emphasis on the spiritual consciousness of rulers is directly related to the socio-political sensitivity of mystical men and movements, a relationship clear in Anderson's discussion. He pointed out, following Schrieke, that incidence of politicised mysticism has been a barometer indicating imbalance in the state. Conversely, if those who are thought to have spiritual awareness of a high order, and by direct correlation a high degree of actual attunement to the social realities of the time, are aligned with the ruler, then this is interpreted as confirmation that wayhu indeed rests with those in power. Insofar as this logic underlies general village ethos or ideologies of power implications are obvious. Mystical practice is precisely concerned with dissolution of ego and increasing sensitivity of intuition enhancing awareness of currents of energy, sentiment, or vibration beyond ego. Whether as leaders, advisors, neutral people, or critics, mystics are thought to have direct access to and awareness of the actual conditions of individuals, the collective, and the natural world. Their power, implicit in this quality of consciousness, is a consequence of attunement to objective realities, openness and clarity which allows in and registers events which remain unclear to most. A crucial paradox lies in the fact that it is precisely transcendence of ego, self, and concern for material gain that provides access to influence, explaining Javanese preoccupation with pamrih in those in power.
Finally, just as a village head or national leader is analogous, in the terms outlined above, to meditation guides, the significance of individual mystics or their movements as barometers is explained by the fact they are believed to have not just an unusual consciousness of the ineffable, but also particular clarity, as receptors, about the environment. Kings were supposed to be warana, 'screens' registering neutrally. As 'receptors' they do not simply register but also internalise and embody wider forces. In Sumarah meditation guides, pamong, are meant to consciously experience what a follower does; the leader to feel precisely what is implicit in the collective; the collective to mirror the currents within society. Mystical union is conceived as having practical implication and conviction in the parallelism, even identity, of microcosm (jagad cilik) and macrocosm (jagad gede) is a secondary reflection of practices of union cultivated through rasa; not simply philosophical belief inherited from India and carried within tradition. The mirroring suggested between pamong and student, leader and group, or Sumarah and nation is identical to that of ruler and realm, each linked, through rasa, to meditative consciousness. The ideal ruler is one who practices awareness attuned to the collective and rulers are usually imagined to have practiced meditation intensively. Insofar as ideals are embodied understanding is leaders actually are aware of their environment, directly experiencing currents of feeling implicit in collective of those ruled.
Conviction in and, from the perspective of mystics, experience of the unitary nature of reality is reflected into cosmologies and beliefs in the notion that microcosm and macrocosm correspond. If suggesting Javanese have been shaped in actions by beliefs and leaving it at that our image is incomplete--the dialectic of belief and experience proceeds both ways, there is a practical basis to world views. Within Sumarah the validity of a pamong's guidance or leaders Hak is tested by whether it strikes home in the group. By implication the measure of a ruler's wahyu lies not in debates about hypothetical imponderables, but practically at the level of whether leaders act on the basis of recognised consensus. Implications of this are not confined to dimensions of formal authority, but extend to everyday social relations. Javanese culture is characterised by emphasis on intuitive modes of knowing and relating and language in itself indicates this is so--fine distinctions in the realm of emotions and feeling contribute immensely to vocabulary, the word "rasa" having rich permutations and nuances.

domestication of imported myths
Mythology offers a gateway to the process through which foreign notions became domesticated and insight into the way local peoples thought. Historically myths were a prime channel taking imported ideas into village contexts; within that domain these ideas remain influential. Local myths are rooted in animism but became woven into epics which originated in India. Southeast Asians came to feel that even legends which had originated elsewhere were statements of events in their area, of their origins. Mythology has been articulated in villages as a supplement to communal agricultural rites and life cycle initiations. Court elites also domesticated myths through their sponsorship of drama, literature and monumental architecture. We can identify local thought structures in mythology because folk cosmology is expressed coherently through it. At the same time Southeast Asians present clear interpretations of their own mythologies. According to their framework mythical meanings become clear when set within conviction that the microcosm and macrocosm correspond, that the structures of inner experience, society and cosmos mirror each other.
Myths originate as oral tradition, as tales by story tellers within tribal or village communities. Verbally linking generations, they do embody effort to understand the origins and nature of existence, but colloquial views of myth, as fairy tales of imagined origins, are not helpful. We experience myths as vestiges; living myths have profound dimensionality. As central complexes within traditional cultures they provide systematic entry to underlying structures of thought. Cosmology, used as anthropologists use worldview, is not just reference to images of the physical universe. It refers to organising structures which shape perceptions of the world in all its dimensions. Myths reveal images of the nature of reality by simultaneously uncovering, extracting and injecting meaning into the world. When myths work they guide responses to living issues and crystallise pervasive thought patterns. As a gateway to the worldview of those who hold and are animated by them, mythology leads toward the inside of traditional imagery.
Prehistoric Southeast Asians believed in spirit worlds they interacted with through rituals, shamanic trance or involuntary possession. In primitive belief three major domains and many gradations were already distinguished. Nature spirits were later identified with Indian deva. Guardian ancestral spirits were those of honourable ancestors. Most were supposed to have been historical characters, like the nats of the Burmese, who effected links to the power of mountains, rivers, swamps and lakes. In northeast Thailand the tapuban and in Java the danhyang, including Semar, are related to sacred sites of prehistory. A host of wild, brutish or demonic spirits, some of them less honoured ancestors, populated the lower realms. Even in purely animistic terms the world is multilayered, human routines consciously inhabit only one plane, and that is understood as simultaneously and tacitly interacting with others. This sense of spiritual dimensions intermeshed easily and profoundly with imported myths because the new idioms appeared to be further statement on old issues.

Indian epics influenced the whole of what are now the Theravada and Islamic regions. The Ramayana and Mahabharata are not so much sacred books, as diverse cycles which appear in numerous variants. Originally neither were written texts. Like epics such as the Iliad and the Odyssey they are codifications of oral traditions which include a huge inventory of stories, most of which have never been written down. Even as recorded in writing they are immense, but for most people they were primarily, and in many areas remain, essentially oral and performance traditions. They originate as ancient stories of war between the various clans which settled northern India. Though characters and events are thus identified with specific places in India, at the grass roots level they have been treated as local wherever the epics have taken root. Localisation has been reflected in the way characters have been favoured or viewed and extended through a proliferation of branch stories which are unique to each local area.
The Ramayana is supposed to have taken place earlier and is a story of war between Rama, an incarnation of the god Vishnu, and Rahwana. Rahwana's kingdom is called Lanka and identified with SriLanka. Prince Rama was disinherited and forced into exile in the forest with his wife Sita and brother Laksmana. Meanwhile Rahwana exercised incredible spiritual powers to accumulate evil power in one place. As Vishnu, Rama is tacitly a high god and thus the epic can be read easily as a black and white interaction. Rama's war, with the help of the white monkey Hanoman, can be viewed as a straightforward victory of the "good". However there are noble characters on all sides . Kumbakarna, for instance, fought with his brother Rahwana, out of loyalty to family and despite disagreeing with him, and is generally viewed as a noble character. Though there is a struggle within the epics between forces of light and forces of darkness, the epics do not present a simple picture of good and evil.
The Mahabharata is a story of a war between cousins. On the one hand the Pandawa, five brothers; on the other hand the Kurawa, ninety-nine brothers. In this case the Pandawa are wrongly disinherited from their kingdom and, like Rama, spent long periods in exile. Eventually, only in the last of the eighteen books of the epic, final war, the Bratayuddha, breaks out between the factions. The Kurawa are annihilated and the children of the Pandawa die in battle, but the Pandawa are victorious and the result is tranquillity and a new order in the world. The essential framework of the epics is not complex, they read like any tale of medieval encounter between kingdoms. They are analogous not only to the Greek myths, but also to Arthurian legends in England and many of the same symbolic codes also apply within all of these myths.
Both epics are extensive repositories for Indian spiritual lore and guru of every school draw from them to illustrate points. One book of the Mahabharata, the Bhagavadgita, is particularly well known and often used. It treats the point when Arjuna, the third of the Pandawas, is about to enter battle. Knowing he will face cousins and his half brother Karna, he pauses to ask his charioteer Krishna, like Rama an incarnation of the god Vishnu, why he must fight. Through dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna spiritual teachings are particularly explicit. It is explained that notwithstanding love for his cousins he must fight because it was preordained, karma, as his darma, life work. Most episodes and exchanges are not so explicitly spiritual, but the epics are interpreted symbolically.
At the first level of interpretation characters represent individuals from an imagined past. Beyond that each simultaneously represents a specific aspect of the inner human psyche. For example, Krishna, or Vishnu, may represents the spiritual heart and the Pandawa can be related to the five senses. Because each character exists as an element of the microcosm, each story becomes a statement which details spiritual conflict, whether of an internal/ individual or external/ social nature. This coding of the epics is esoteric, a secret knowledge associated with the epics; it was articulated in ancient textual versions of the epics themselves, but noticed only by those whose spiritual practices went beyond conventional moralism. As cultic practices of initiation were fundamental within India and the early Indic cultures of Southeast Asia, precisely this esoteric knowledge constituted a key code within local readings of myth. Epic themes were not only deployed as moral models, but also used within early esoteric and mystical cults. The interpretive framework of microcosm/ macrocosm correspondence was central within classical religious knowledge.
In addition to the Hindu epics the Jatakas, stories which detail the prior incarnations of the Buddha, are multiplied by Buddhists on the mainland. Hundreds of tales describe his earlier lives, narrating the progress of the being who was to become the historical Buddha. Represented in local poetic literatures, they have also been used by monks as teaching stories and provide themes depicted through religious architecture and painting. Other stories emerged in association with Alexander the Great whose conquests bridged the Mediterranean and Indian worlds. In Sumatra and Malaya Muslim sultans have claimed Iskandar, as he is known, as an ancestor through lengthy silsilah, or genealogies. The babad, mythic histories of Islamic Javanese rulers, later constructed genealogies which subsumed local ancestors, Indic figures and the Semitic prophets going back to Adam. In claiming those lineages to sanction their authority they were obviously establishing spiritual lineages rather than prioritising genetic inheritance. These mythic genealogies constitute another form of localisation, affirming direct connection between local rulers and sanctioned powers from other contexts. All of these stories continued to have significance past the classical era within the societies in which they had taken root.

Having identified a few of the most influential frameworks of classical thought, it is worth examining how they interacted with earlier tradition and were expressed through use in architecture, drama and literature. Art and architecture has drew deeply on myths. In Bali, where Hinduism as such remains the dominant religious frame, Indian myths are pervasive in the arts. Traditional paintings from Klungkung still represent episodes of Indian epics, such as "the churning of the ocean of milk" from the Adiparwa, the first of the eighteen books of the Mahabharata. In them humanity is represented by tortured animal-like souls, inhabiting the sides of the cosmic mountain. Seared by the heat of fires, which result from the friction of conflict between gods and demons, people escape their purgatory by jumping into the ocean, representing death and transition to further reincarnation. Humanity is depicted as living in intermediate realms, almost as spectators within a cosmos of forces which work against each other through nature.
The carvings on the walls of the great temples of Angkor, Ayutthia, Prambanan or Borobudur, universally depict epic themes. But the impact of myths on those constructions is more profound and subtle than is suggested by relief sculptures. In every respect their construction embodied the myths as a model of the universe and pattern for human activity and thought. Angkor Thom, the most coherent complex in the field of remains we call Angkor, is a stone rendition of the Adiparwa, the "churning of the ocean of milk". It presents an image of the relationship between water, land, royalty, spirits and the teachings of the epics. The complex is as though floating, moats and reservoirs surrounded it to set buildings in relief against water. Within a large square four causeways move toward the central temple-mountain, built around a small natural hill, as a representation in microcosm of the cosmic mountain, of the world.
According to the Adiparwa the world, as the cosmic mountain, floats on a turtle, an incarnation of Vishnu, preventing it from sinking into the ocean. Along the causeways leading to the central temple is a great snake, Sanghyang Anantaboka, with a series of figures pulling at it. According to the story the complex depicted, the snake coiled around the mountain so that the gods and demons could pull on either end. As the mountain floats on a turtle, the pulling results in churning, creating a whirlpool in the ocean of milk. The whirlpool brings up the tirta amrta, the essence or water of life and elixir of immortality, from the bottom of the ocean. As the elixir comes up, the gods and demons compete for it. First Siva's son Kala, symbolising time, starts to swallow it, but as he does, Vishnu, in his primary form as the deity, cuts off his head. As his body disintegrates Kala's head is left, at once immortal and angry, as an image of time. The water of eternal life is then taken by the demons until a pretty girl, related to Siva, distracts them so that eventually the gods win.
Thus the overall layout of the temple is structured in terms of a cosmogenic story, a story of creation which explains the position of humanity in relationship to heaven and earth. The temple architecture, perhaps more clearly at Angkor than elsewhere, is beautifully integrated not only with mythology but also with the political and economic orders. The central deity, whether Vishnu or Buddha, was meant to be fused with the devaraja, the godking, as the apex of society. State rituals, carried out at the temple, aimed to effect embodiment of deity in the ruler and the cosmic mountain was simultaneously his "stone body", the body which would remain after his physical body disintegrated. Thus each ruler constructed his own monument and the remains of many are with us still. At the same time the vast reservoirs, which framed the temple, were linked to the irrigation process which sustained rice cultivation and thus central to the economy of the kingdom.
Borobudur the famous Buddhist stupa in Central Java holds reliefs around its lower walls which depict Jataka stories. They represent both prior incarnations of the historical Buddha and the condition of humanity generally, the realms of physical form, of souls entrapped or snared by worldly desires. The structure of Borobudur progresses through nine levels divided into three categories, the three lokas or main planes of being. The lowest stage was covered in earth, even though the walls were sculptured, because they represented the underworld of lower desires. The middle stages represent progression through animal and human states, also meaning levels of consciousness, all in the realms of form, of life as we usually know it. At the highest loka forms are increasingly abstract and geometric, though Buddha images remain at its lower levels. At that point there is not the substance of physical life, but movement toward a spiritual consciousness, one fading at the pinnacle, the spire of the monument, into nothingness. Borobudur is an image of levels of consciousness, a depiction of spiritual quest modelled on the path of the Buddha and an image of the place of humanity within the universe. We need not doubt that originally rituals also made it a context for initiating disciples into the higher truth of Buddhism.

In written works local versions of the epics were usually panegyrics, poetic tributes identifying rulers with epic characters and glorifying their reign. As early literature existed only in courts and monasteries it aimed to generate atmospheres of power by associating rulers, who commissioned works, with deity. These forms of literature were also meant to be historical, but prioritised the tracing or construction of spiritual genealogies. If courts drew directly on imported myths and reinscribed them as local, folk traditions built out of ancestral stories and then incorporated myths from high culture. Everywhere dance and puppet drama, painting and popular performances, still shade from highly refined court versions into rough village renditions. In drama stories were always communicated principally as oral traditions, just as earlier styles of mythic knowledge had been, and it is only recently that systematic compilation of written versions has been attempted.

symbolism in shadow drama
For those who become familiar with Javanese culture its magic has been epitomised in the shadow drama, the wayang kulit or wayang purwa. Study of wayang leads quickly from intuitive appreciation to profound respect for the intricate philosophical messages it conveys. Almost everyone who writes about wayang acknowledges its symbolism is mystical and closely tied to ancestral beliefs (though Javanese themselves note the basic framework of stories derives from classical Indian epics), that the symbolism refers to correspondence between the macrocosm and the microcosm (the cosmos and the psychic world), and that technical aspects of how puppets are made and presented lend themselves to the mystical intent of the drama.
Alongside general works on wayang the drama is related explicitly to mysticism by a proliferation of Indonesian works. Here I aim mainly to suggest how the wayang has been used and viewed by mystics; in doing so not speculating or interpreting on the basis of theories about mythology, but reporting on a living tradition. I cannot imply that a majority of Javanese see wayang as I am explaining it, but do hold that the whole culture has been influenced by its symbolism even if only certain individuals grasp it consciously. It is important to note there is no accepted code of correct interpretations; different mystics, even the same person on different occasions, put the same imagery to different uses. Nevertheless for those who cultivate mystical vision there is a common perspective on and sense of what wayang is and this is what I am trying to get at.
The term wayang derives from the Javanese word 'bayangan', meaning shadow', and it is likely the shadow drama called wayang kulit existed in some form one thousand years ago. Generically the term refers not only to shadow drama but also to wayang beber (performed with scroll paintings), wayang golek (using wooden puppets), wayang wong (dance drama), and other variants. Wayang exists outside Java but in this I am referring to perspectives on it within the kejawen (Javanist) heartland, the zone surrounding traditional court centres in Yogyakarta and Surakarta. Within this zone wayang is still the most popular and elaborate of the traditional arts, a focal node in the web of traditional culture.
Although performances draw from the Mahabharata and Ramayana for their structural core, the framework of mythology shades off into divinity on the far side and, through a series of subsidiary indigenous myths, into history on the near one. Actors in the epics are thought to be ancestral to Javanese and to have been acting on Java. Gatutkaca's kingdom of Pringgodani was near Tawamanggu on Mount Lawu; Baladewa meditated in a cave behind the waterfall at Grojokan Sewu; Hanuman stands guard on the hillock of Kendalisata (to prevent escape of the ever re-awakening Rahwana); Rahwana was finally felled at the sulphuric hot springs surrounded by the ruins of Gedung Songo (on the slopes of Mount Ungaran); Sokrosrono meditated in the cave called Gua Labuan near Pacitan; the Pandawa created their kingdom in exile on the Dieng Plateau; and Semar buried the tumbal (talisman) which dampened the power of Java's demonic forces on Gunung Tidar near Magelang.
Performance of wayang kulit is still usually associated with variations of slametan, communal meals basic to rituals. Occasions for performance include: harvest, birth, puberty, death, disease, and a variety of religious holy days. Performance of a particular story (lakon) lasts for nine hours, beginning at about nine in the evening and lasting until sunrise. The puppets are of delicately cut and ornately painted buffalo (kerbau) hide and they are manipulated by the puppeteer (dalang) in front of a screen (kelir) so that an oil lamp (blencong, replaced first by pressurised kerosene lanterns, then by electric light bulbs) casts a flickering and distorted shadow. The dalang is the focal point of performance. He narrates, sings the suluks (the songs which set scenes), speaks with a distinct voice for each of the many characters (ontowacono), and leads the percussion orchestra (gamelan) which accompanies him. The total impact and quality of a performance depends largely on the dalang's skill in manipulating the wayang (sabetan), on his singing and speaking voices, and on his ability to weave the sketch plots (pakem) into a fully fleshed tale which is at once entertaining, educational, and emotively engaging. He must be unusual not only in physical stamina allowing him to remain sitting cross-legged and active through the full nine hours of performance, but also in his technical and intuitive grasp of the lakons and their meaning. Traditionally dalangs tended to practise mysticism actively, which helps account for the respectful title of ki' normally allowed them, but now dalangs are more often technically skilled than consciously spiritual.
Javanese audiences flow around and breathe in the sphere of the event rather than hanging on every word as Westerners do. Throughout the night there are typically people moving in and out, falling asleep and waking up, chatting with friends, and making trips for coffee. Although there are hundreds of stories many of those present, especially the older ones, are familiar with the whole plot beforehand. People view the performances from both sides of the screen, some watching shadows and others the puppets themselves. At least currently, in the several dozen performances I saw, invited guests of both sexes sat inside the host's home, that is watching the shadows, while the general public crowded around the gamelan on the outside. The form of the dramatic presentation lends itself immediately to interpretation. Javanese quite commonly mention that the dalang functions in the performance just as God does within the cosmos; others that the blencong is analogous to the sun as a source of life.
Since it is fixed by convention rather than left to interpretation, symbolic meaning within wayang iconography is formalised. Although there are hundreds of characters until recently most adults readily identified major figures on sight. First-time viewers find this bewildering, given the complexity and seeming similarity of the figures, but there are innumerable cues. Details of shape reflect, in Javanese aesthetics, the personality represented. The fundamental axis of differentiation is in terms of contrast between halus and kasar, refinement and roughness. Wayang types are identified not only by size and shape of the whole figure, but according to eye shape (almond shaped, halus eyes, versus round and bulging kasar eyes), hair style (loose, knotted, or in a shrimp's tail), headgear (crown, turban or cap), clothing (floral patterns, plain colours, or absence of coat), and bodily carriage (modestly downcast versus proudly forward facial orientation). All of these combine to present characters who are not only identifiable, but whose personality type and moral standing can be read from their presentation. It would be impossible to represent a character with the wrong puppet.
Colour symbolism is highly developed and directly related to metaphysical psychology. Giants and demons (raksasa) are likely to be red faced, conveying impression of easily flashing anger and uncontrollable emotion. Characters such as Arjuna are represented by as many as eight puppets to portray him as a youth, as priest, as adult, in meditation, etc. The most developed colour symbolism follows identification of the four basic Hindu colours with the four elements and four desires (nafsu):

red fire amarah anger
black earth alaumah food
yellow water sufia sex
white air mutmainah purity

The significance of the colours is explained at length within the Dewaruci story, which I will refer to later.
Wayang symbolism is used within kebatinan circles to explain the function of desires within individual psychology, suggesting implicitly what actions ought to be based on. One image is used often to make this point, a scene showing Kresna in his chariot in the lakon "Kresna Duta" which depicts Kresna's chariot being drawn by four horses and accompanied by four other characters:

Batara Narada (symbolising intuitive feeling, rasa)
Bhagawan Respati (symbolising spirit, roh)
Batara Parasu (symbolising desires, nafsu)
Batara Janaka (Arjuna, symbolising compassion, budi)
Kresna (symbolising life essence, urip , nur)

The four horses are red, black, yellow and white, representing the four desires and implicitly signifying that without desires human life would go nowhere. This point is important because both within and beyond the boundaries of kebatinan practice there is a tendency to assume that spiritual practices of an aescetic sort require repression of desires. As kebatinan mystics point out, this image is a reminder for those on a spiritual path not to approach their desires as an enemy of the spirit, to accept rather than reject their intrinsic nature. There is poignance to this image for those who know its context. The story occurs late in the Mahabharata and deals with Kresna's last-ditch attempt to prevent the outbreak of the great war, the Bharata-yuddha. Kresna, incarnation of Vishnu and advisor to the Pandawa, knew better than any other actor the war was destined, yet consciousness of destiny did not prevent him from devoting himself toward reconciliation.
The chariot image has a number of applications. It was a common motif for tapestries which adorn homes and Pangestu, one of the largest spiritual sects, used a modified version as headpiece for its 1973 calendar. Sam Nursuhud, a leader of the sect in the town of Salatiga, explained his interpretation of the symbolism at length. The Pangestu version showed four coloured horses pulling an eighteenth century European styled carriage (as used by the courts in Yogyakarta and Surakarta) with a coachman, a passenger, and the sun illuminating the scene. Pak Sam suggested the passenger symbolises Roh Suci (pure spirit), the coachman ego (aku), the sun the source of life, and the horses four basic desires. By implication the function of ego is to ensure desires work harmoniously so the spirit reaches its destination.
The same point was brought home forcefully by an informant from a group called Mahayana (not the Buddhist branch) in Surakarta. Pak Haryono asked me to visualise myself taking a horsecart to market and back. He suggested that if the team lacked discipline, if individual horses pulled in different directions, then energy and attention would be required to co-ordinate them. While I might then make it home without incident, chances are by the time I did I would be exhausted and ignorant of what had happened along the roadside. On the other hand if the team is disciplined then the task is simple; light direction and peripheral attention to the team would allow full relaxed awareness of everything passed. For this mystical teacher the chariot image illustrates why desires are necessary and what can be gained once they have been disciplined.
Having introduced the wayang and illustrated the uses of images, I turn to suggestion of how the mythology is used by mystics as a spiritually redemptive device. In doing so I aim to clarify what is intended by "correspondence of macrocosm and microcosm" in Indic teachings. In order to do so it is necessary to shift away from the normal metaphorical senses of symbolism. In fact it is impossible to fully appreciate the functions of wayang without realising that it is not just a set of stories with symbolism but rather a concrete extension of the experience referred to.
Within Yogic theory there is understanding that a network of centres of perception and power is latent within every individual. Seven centres, called cakra, are located along a vertical axis from the base of the spine to the crown of the head. In practice of kundalini yoga the object is to awaken the latent power of kundalini, normally asleep within the Muladara cakra at the base of the spine, so it rises through all of centres. As it rises the effect is to activate occult power and awareness associated with each cakra, until union, bliss, and enlightenment is achieved through activation of the highest cakra at the crown of the head. The centres are related to organs and nerve centres and particularly the endocrine system of the physical body, but not identical to them. In addition to seven major centres there are several series of minor occult organs distributed throughout the body and also related to the channelling of power through it.
In kebatinan circles the tendency is to refer most often to an abbreviated version of the kundalini system referred to as Triloka or Trimurti. Those terms, as the "tri" (three) implies, refer to the head, heart and genital regions as the three basic centres of awareness. The three are associated respectively with Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma; with enlightenment, compassion, and life essence. Perhaps the most sophisticated Javanised variant of kundalini theory is developed within the Sapto Darmo sect. Within Sapto Darmo the system is called "tali rasa". Correspondence with yogic theory is acknowledged but Sapto Darmo does not claim the two are the same, or that its theory is derived from yoga. In addition to explaining that the centres of tali rasa each carry potential for specific occult awareness, Sapto Darmo relates each to a distinct wayang character and by extension to distinct aspects of every individual's psychological constitutions.
While correspondence of inner psychic organs and wayang characters is more formally elaborated within Sapto Darmo than generally, the sense there is such a relationship is general. Pak Hardjanto, leader of a Hindu sect called Sadar Mapan, makes exactly the same point with even more direct reference to yogic theory. He explains that the 148 major wayang figures represent different cakra and that full awareness requires activation of all of them. Returning to discussion of wayang performance, the obvious implication is that when a set of characters are interacting on the wayang screen they do so not just as symbolic representations of inner forces, but, for a mystic, as keys to activation of specific aspects of his own consciousness.
This point is difficult because, as with all fundamentals of mysticism, it can only be comprehended through the immediacy of experience. In attempting to clarify it, however, I focus first on a figure, Semar, then on the manner in which lakon become analogous to the meditative process of spiritual development. Semar helps clarify because he can be understood as a mythic figure, as a symbolic representation, as a literally understood spirit, and as a mystical reference to life essence. He is best known as one of the most popular and distinctively indigenous characters. In the process of adopting Indian myths, one of the notable alterations Javanese made was addition of the Punakawan--Semar and his sons Gareng, Petruk, and Bagong. In the lakon the four are servants to the Pandawa, especially to Arjuna, and take centre stage during comic interludes, the gara gara, occurring mid-way through a performance. Only occasionally are they featured as major characters in lakon which centre on them. They are far from being clowns, in fact interpretations of their roles are legion and the significance attached to them is rich. A wayang enthusiast in Cepu summarized their significance as follows:

Semar, symbol of God, the name is related to the word samar which means hazy or indefinable in Javanese. He defies description. Anyone he follows has to be right. His round shape indicates that he has neither beginning nor ending. He has a breast like a woman, but a moustache like a man. His narrow eyes (griyip) symbolise his mastery of creative power (cipta). Gareng is restrained and conservative in actions and works, he is strong in yogic disciplines and so is anyone he follows. His name, Nolagareng, means hati gareng (dry heart) and means that he is clever (pinter). His crippled hand (ceko) means he neither grabs nor steals; his crippled leg (kaki kencik) that he is careful in all his actions (waspada), his narrow mouth that he speaks only when it is necessary, and his wide eyes (mata kero) that he is strong in fasting (tirakatan). Petruk always laughs in his heart, receiving all things without being disturbed because he is unattached. He takes everything in but always remains empty (suwung), just like a pocket with a hole in it (kantong bolong). His shape, which is long in every respect, symbolises patience. Bagong always comes out on top, he is fearless of evil spirits and represents total faith (iman) --he is union (manunggal).

Semar is the older brother of Shiva and once resided in kahyangan (the realm of the gods, dewata) where his name was Ismaya. Although born divine Semar's inclination toward gluttony and crude jokes led to his assumption of the ugly and hermaphroditic form and menial status he has within the lakon. Recognition of his divine origin is reflected in the lakon by respect with which even the dewa address him. His power is most obvious, however, on rare occasions when he is forced to intervene in order to counteract unfair interference of gods within the struggles of men. Ordinarily he serves passively as retainer to Arjuna or one of his many sons (often being a clue to the fact the ksatria he serves is one of Arjuna's unacknowledged offspring). As a retainer he advises his masters, preventing them from getting carried away by inappropriately absolute judgements and bringing them down to earth through wry sarcasm. His presence alone is assurance that whoever he follows will prove right and victorious.
Semar is identified in several ways as a symbol of the Javanese folk. In the first place common Javanese identify with him because he speaks ngoko (the low form of Javanese) and because his crude jokes, rough manner, and coarse physique make it easy for them to emphathise with him. More subtly, his role within the mythology reflects a sense of how the masses relate to politics. Semar, like the traditional peasant, is usually willing to leave the drama of war and politics to the ksatria. But, again like the masses, he does intervene actively at times when the balance and use of power is abused by those who are its caretakers. His normally latent power is morally tied with the assumption that whoever he follows must be in the right. The implication is that only political actors who truly represent the good of the masses will prove successful. In this sense Semar's role in the wayang suggests peasant intuition of their relation to those in power--when powers have been abused Semar is transformed (tiwikromo) and demonstrates his usually disguised divinity. Similarly when injustices against peasantry become extreme they may rise in movements which reveal a powers which usually remains tacit.
At a more literal level Semar is viewed as founding ancestor and chief guardian spirit, the Promethian god-man who first reached accommodation with the natural forces of the island, thereby making it suitable for habitation and rice cultivation. He did that by planting a talisman (tumbal) on the hillock called Gunnung Tidar near Magelang, known as the navel of Java. Having established initial balance between social and natural realms, he remained an intermediary between them in his subsequent position as master of spirit kingdoms accessible through sacred sites (kramat) dotting the countryside. Although his function within spirit realms altered in response to successive Indic, Islamic and Western influences, he remains a key ancestral spirit (danhyang) a symbol of quintessential Javaneseness.
While many view Semar with a religiously tinged respect as danhyang, mystics suggest he is a representation of the life essence within every individual. Within the map of individual psychology provided by wayang, Semar is identified with the lowest of the centres of the triloka, specifically with the genitals. Like human genitals, Semar occupies a position which is often downgraded and rarely appreciated as the basis of life. In this respect it is likely that the symbolism of Semar has meshed with Tantric mysticism (here in its pure rather than popularised manifestation). Ibu Sri Pawenang, the national leader of Sapto Darmo, stressed that to her group (which has Semar as a central figure in its symbol) Semar represents neither the wayang figure nor the danhyang but the Roh Suci (pure spirit) as lodged within each person. Romo Suwarso, then leader of the Manunggal sect in Salatiga, suggested Semar is related to the lowest centre of the triloka. Thus among mystics Semar is primarily a representation of life essence.
Having juxtaposed mythic, symbolic, literal, and spiritual senses of Semar, I hope it is evident varying perspectives are complementary rather than conflicting. To rest with or argue for one interpretation is to make a mistake literally bound believers and one-dimensional sceptics share. Each perspective explains the others within a different dimension of the levels ranging from macrocosm to microcosm. So Semar is the older brother of Siva, he is a symbol of the Javanese folk, he is the guardian spirit of Java, and he is the life essence we transmit to descendants. This correspondence of levels and the absence of a sharp line between them is a basic perspective according to which the wayang lakon are not merely stories with symbolism or rituals of ancestor worship, but rather both of those and a concrete spiritual tool all at the same time.
In order to comprehend how cosmology functions as a spiritually redemptive device it is essential to realise there is not just an imagined "correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm". Indic cosmology is not so much a set of ideas of how things are thought to be as a reflection of monistic ontology within the realm of ideas; in this case its implication is that there is simply no line between micro and macro. It is only with this in mind that we understand the universal aspect of Javanism or other related traditions and that for the Javanese to speak of Semar is not to be retreating into parochialism and superstition but to use their own heritage as a mechanism for achieving a spiritual liberation every bit as universal as that called for by any of the "world religions".
Although wayang figures are identified with aspects of human psychology, understandings vary. For the most part, whatever meaningful association is made is welcomed as further confirmation of the richness of the drama rather than rejected because it might differ from other interpretations. Sri Sampoerno, a leader of Sumarah in Surakarta, described the Pandawa as follows:

Yudistra the superego (atman)
Bima compassion (budi)
Arjuna the source of thought (manas)
Nakula aims and ideals (cita)
Sahdewa desire for more (angkara)

But the five brothers are also associated with physical senses--smell, hearing, sight, feeling, and taste respectively--and Bima is more often identified with the will. I was especially taken by explanation that "Arjuna is very much like thoughts since he is constantly encountering offspring he does not recognize as his own progeny".
Having suggested how associations between characters and psychic qualities are made, we can consider the way in which both lakon and the whole wayang cycle symbolise spiritual quest. Each lakon encorporates steps analogous to a single meditation experience, to the overall evolution of a spirit, or to the evolution of humanity within the cosmos. The overall theme of the Mahabharata, conflict between the Pandawa on the right and their Kurawa cousins on the left, is understood to represent tension and struggle between spiritual and material dimensions. Some, I suspect in past as well as present, reduce that struggle to terms of "good and evil", but even many who see only simplified dualism in the wayang are aware the struggle referred to is not simply that of some distant and imagined time and place. It is common knowledge the mythology is a metaphor for personal and cosmic aspects of life struggle all engage willy nilly. Sophisticated informants spoke with recognition the spiritual and material spheres of life are interdependent, that life lies in interaction of the two and neither is evil in an absolute sense.
Correspondence between story form and spiritual evolution is reflected in the progression of three phases in each performance. The first phase, patet nem, starts at nine and lasts until midnight. It is identified with the period from birth through youth and involves introduction of characters and an issue and preliminary indecisive conflict. The second phase, patet sanga, lasts from midnight until three in the morning and is identified with maturity. It begins with the gara gara, the comic interlude focusing on the punakawan. They come to centre stage while the hero has withdrawn into the forest for meditation as preparation for the struggle. The final phase, patet manjura, lasts until dawn and is identified with old age. It is the time when the most serious philosophical points are made, when conflict is resolved, and the meaning of what passed is explained.
No attempt to summarise and systematise the symbolism of wayang can replace the impact of stories taken as they are presented. Two lakon will illustrate the parallels mystics draw between wayang and meditation. Moedomo, in Kediri, told how he was struck by parallels between his meditation experience and a lakon he happened to hear one night when he turned on the radio and found it tuned to a wayang broadcast. The lakon had begun and Moedono never learned its title, but he was drawn in and glued to the radio until dawn. He did recall the plot outline, as well as the connection he felt with his experience of meditation.
In the story the Pandawa were in the process of climbing a mountain in order to receive a wahyu (revelation). Reaching the half-way point with the greatest difficulty, they finally collapsed in pain. Then Bima, the strongest of the brothers, picked up the others and continued up the mountain. Seeing the progress of the Pandawa from his place in kahyangan (heaven), Indra tried to stop them. He sent down a bank of thick clouds which blocked out the sun and enshrouded the Pandawa in a damp mist. Even Bima could not continue, they all collapsed at the three-quarter point of the climb. Indra then sent Garuda, the eagle, to harass the brothers. Kresna, seeing Indra's interference and being an ally of the Pandawa, began to act in their defence. Using his pusaka (magic weapon) cakra he shot down Garuda. Kresna approached the half-dead bird with a deal: he would restore Garuda's health if he would help rather than hinder the Pandawa. Garuda concurred and in repayment for health used his wings to create a wind that dispersed the clouds. Once the sun returned the Pandawa revived and reached the top of the mountain. There Kresna appeared in front of them and through him they received the wahyu they had been seeking. Meanwhile, Bima's son Gatutkaca had been flying all over searching for his father and uncles, because they had left their kingdom without explaining where they were going. In the course of his search Gatutkaca noticed that the Kurawa were all imprisoned in a cage at the bottom of the ocean. Since at that point the Pandawa and Kurawa were not yet at war, Gatutkaca honoured his family obligation to the Kurawa as cousins--flying down to smash the cage which held them. At precisely the moment in which the Kurawa were freed, the Pandawa began to descend the mountain. Before long they were reunited with their family, the quest complete.
As Pak Moedomo described it, the lakon was a step by step description of the meditation process. He said the Kurawa represented senses which tie us to the physical world. In order to begin meditating we have to put them in a passive state so we are not distracted by external phenomenon; the Kurawa had to be caged so the Pandawa could gain revelation. The Pandawa represented five basic desires (nafsu) which motivate life. In his understanding at the half-way point in meditation desires become irrelevant with the exception of Bima, representing the will. But even the deepest will cannot carry us to our destination; that requires divine intervention, grace, represented in this tale by Kresna's aid to the Pandawa. Once we have reached our goal we find, as did the Pandawa, that the source of revelation is something that has been with us all the time. Gatutkaca symbolises the link between spiritual and material realms; it was in his search for his father that he inadvertently freed the senses which connect the spirit to the material and, once senses were activated, meditation ceased. Not every lakon ties so neatly to meditation and not every mystic would interpret this story in Moedomo's way.

The Dewaruci story is a second example and is anything but typical. It departs more than most lakon from formula structure and deals more explicitly with esoteric and mystical doctrine than most. It is purely Javanese in conception, having been conceived by court poets, and every mystic's favourite--certainly the first which comes to mind when mysticism within wayang is mentioned. The story is of Bima, second of the Pandawa, in his search for the elixir of eternal life (tirta amrta). The story begins in the Kurawa court of Ngastina where Suyudana, the king, and his advisors plotted to eliminate Bima soas to ensure victory in the upcoming war. It was agreed, not without debate, Durna should send Bima on an impossible mission leading to his death. Durna served as teachers to both the Pandawa and Kurawa (although his sympathies lay with the latter), so when Bima was given instructions he took it as his sacred duty to obey. Consequently Durna instructed Bima to search for the water of eternal life in a cave at the top of a mountain. Before setting off, Bima paused to take leave of his family and ask their blessing for his journey. On hearing his intention friends and relatives adamantly warned that the mission was a fool's errand, a ploy to get him killed. Ignoring protests, Bima insisted he had sworn to obey his guru even if he had to die in the process, so he set off.
As Bima set off his spectacular commitment was mirrored in an electrical excitement that rippled through the forests he passed. Nature seemed to be greeting and encouraging him. Reaching the top of the mountain he created a racket by rummaging around through the underbrush in search of the cave. The noise disturbed two sleeping giants and in their anger they attacked him. After a long struggle Bima was able to kill the two, but only once he realised doing so required smashing their heads together so they died simultaneously. Then he looked around the cave only to find it empty. Confused and tired he sat down to rest. Then he heard the voices of the giants he had killed. With sympathy, they explained they were dewa named Indra and Bayu, but had been transformed into demons (raksasa) by Batara Guru (Siva) as punishment for a misdeed. They thanked Bima for having released them from punishment and told him the elixir he was looking for was not there, that he had to return to Durna for further directions.
Angered at what seemed a pointless trick, Bima rushed back to Ngastina and confronted Durna. Durna calmed him down by explaining the errand had been a test, a preliminary to the true mission. He assured Bima he would find the water of eternal life if he looked at the bottom of the ocean. Again Bima took Durna on his word and set out; again he stopped to take leave of family; again they begged him not to leave on his mission; again he ignored their pleas. As he set out the second time, nature turned grey and foreboding--the air seemed heavy and omens against him. He paused when he reached the shore. Then plunged into the surf and strode in up to his neck. At that point he suffered a moment of doubt--wondering how he could function once submerged--then remembered a mantra (meditation device, sometimes a syllable or chant) which enabled him to continue moving and breathing in water as though as on dry land.
After he passed through the turbulence near shore, the waters became gradually quiet. Then, just as he was adjusting to the peace, he was suddenly attacked by a huge naga, a dragon-snake. Bima barely survived the first onslaught and was almost crushed by its coils, but managed to kill the naga finally by ripping it apart with his thumbnail (pancanaka). Once the naga had been defeated, Bima continued into the depths of the sea where the waters became calm and peaceful, life tranquil and harmonious. At the bottom of the ocean he encountered a dwarf he did not recognise, a thumb-sized miniature of himself. Bima addressed him scornfully until the dwarf, Dewaruci, blithely told Bima all about himself, forcing him to register he was dealing with a god rather than mortal, so he then asked respectfully for help in his search for the water of eternal life. Dewaruci responded by telling Bima to enter his left ear. He balked momentarily, then did after Dewaruci assured him "the whole cosmos lay inside so Bima should have little trouble fitting".
Having entered, Bima was disoriented at first, lacking sense of direction in what seemed empty space. Gradually everything returned to view, albeit in different light. Finally Dewaruci reappeared and launched into explication of esoteric doctrine, including revelation that the water of life was everywhere, suffusing all being. After the instruction Bima was reluctant to return to the world as he found the realm of these teachings incredibly "right" and pleasant, but Dewaruci reminded him of his unfinished duties in the world. Bima conceded and re-emerged into the world, returning to the same functions he had alway filled, but he was different: he had been fully initiated, he was aware of all three realms of the triloka, a realised being.

Mystics referred to the Dewaruci story as the most profoundly mystical lakon in the wayang. The lakon is represented by tapestries like those mentioned of Krishna and Arjuna in a chariot. Homes are decorated by hangings or pictures depicting Bima fighting the naga or listening to Dewaruci. Although it is so explicitly mystical that basic interpretations remain consistent, variations in emphasis are instructive. Hardjanto related the story to activation of the cakra; explaining the mountain represents the nose, the giants the eyes, and the cave the third eye (ajna cakra). Then he explained that the giants in divine form represent the sun and moon and the elements wind and rain. Killing of the snake meant total mastery of kundalini power, activation of all cakra; meeting with Dewaruci meeting with the essence of life, the true teacher within each of us; and Bima's entry into Dewaruci his achievement of union (manunggal).
Another mystic, Sudarno, read the story as about achievement of union precisely through liberation from magical powers and concentration. According to him the giants, cave and mountain indeed symbolise the ajna cakra, and the nose. But he stressed that through meditation on the ajna cakra Bima could not achieve his mission, that meditation should be relaxed and open and that Bima headed in the right direction only when he entered the ocean, symbolising the chest (sanubari). As his centre of attention shifted from the head into the chest he went through fear he would not be able to function, hesitation analogous to what meditators experience in their step from consciousness bound by thoughts into realms of intuition and feeling. In taking that, when thoughts are no longer in control, everyone wonders whether they can continue funtioning in the "real world". As Bima entered the sea he felt roughness and then peace; waves represent unpleasant feelings experienced as meditators come to know feelings; peace the state when senses and desires become passive and receptive. Encounter with the naga symbolises spiritual battle between drive toward union and temptation to use power for personal gain. Bima was able to conquer those temptations by using his thumbnail pancanaka, meaning by unity of the five sense or sharpness of will. Having transcended power, Bima met his true identity and through it realised life essence, finally understanding that regardless of how other-worldly such lessons seem their relevance was within the world of duties he had always known.

Elements of coding are standard: the cave represents the "third eye", the ajana cakra, in the centre of the forehead; the mountain the nose; and the giants the eyes. The eyes can be transformed, their sensory function becoming clairvoyance once they are united at the top of the nose (eg yogic concentration on the third eye). But having accomplished that task Bima realised the essence of life was not there--he found some insight, but that is all, and had to go back to his teacher and to be told to enter the ocean. The ocean or sanubari is the sphere of feelings or spiritual heart associated with the chest; in other words Bima had to leave the head, the region of mind, and enter the heart. On entering the chest he experienced doubt as to whether he could function, the doubt meditators experience when attention leaves thoughts and enters intuitive experience. When he (meaning his attention) entered his chest he experienced a battering of waves, the turmoil of suppressed emotions which surface when people begin to experience life from within. Disturbances dissipated gradually as he centred in his heart, neared the centre of the ocean, but as they decreased he was attacked by a naga, representing occult powers. That test is of whether will is sufficiently focussed so individuals proceed toward the true object of life--realisation and consciousness itself. The snake represents attractions of power; those who succumb to it focus on magic, accumulation of wealth or capacity to influence others. Pancanaka symbolises a one-pointedness of senses Bima had achieved through earlier trials (but nearly forgot). It allowed him to kill the snake and produced opening to true spiritual knowledge.
Dewaruci symbolises recognition that the true guide within spiritual life, after external guru who may take us through preliminary lessons, is our inner self and that the final esoteric lessons people may learn came directly, not through "external" teachings or teachers. Exactly this view of the nature of knowledge and how we access it is central within the highest teachings of all classical mysticism. The three worlds Bima mastered are the trinity or trimurti, a Javanese synopsis of the seven cakra (head/intellect; heart/intuition; genitals/will) associated respectively with the deities Siva, Vishnu and Brahma.
The symbolism embedded within such myths connects simultaneously to religious ideologies and experiential realisation. All classical myths informing monumental arts and drama, including Chinese tales such as Monkey, are coded by the same allegorical principle illustrated here. Most stories are not so explicit, many cultures not so articulate, but the resonances of myth within them nonetheless rest on similar esoteric knowledge. This pattern of "reading" explicitly underpinned early cult practices, philosophy, political theory, literature and the arts; it shaped wider patterns in the same way Christian idioms framed European consciousness. Indic cosmologies remain alive as even today esoteric teachers draw from them to illuminate their sense of the path of spiritual life. If interpretations vary as do individuals, it is clear enough how stories represent levels of realisation and that the outer form of drama relate directly to inner experience. Beyond symbolism mystics experience stories as progression through the states of awareness referred to; if the dalang is truly one he leads the way and performance is concrete enactment rather than just representation of the spiritual states alluded to. Awareness of connection between macrocosm and microcosm is not abstract, but experiential; the richness of wayang lies not so much in "symbolism" as in the fact that drama pulls people toward experience of the states referred to.

Javanese wayang, referring not only to shadow theatre but also to dance and other puppet performances, remains common, popular and familiar, thus constituting a still powerful mechanism carrying classical influences into present idiom. Though framed by the Mahabharata, local variations are rich, as in similar shadow theatres in Thailand and Malaysia. In philosophical debates through court literature poets used such myths as a stock of images for their points. At the popular level each performance was a ritual invocation of spirits and those who participated were meant to be blessed by experience of the atmosphere summoned through the power of the dalang. When ritual works, then performance become practice and people will feel peace. Beyond that social level of meaning, the dalang's power to bring an episode to life may connect each to individual experience of psychic forces, myths becoming maps of consciousness linking microcosm and macrocosm; the sun, seas, winds and world being the primal elements of fire, water, air and earth and internal elements of will, emotion, thoughts and flesh.
If the substratum of underlying cultures was re-expressed through melding with literate culture it filters into the present through political cultures and mythologies conveyed through classes associated with village and court spheres of early societies. Mythology and drama were gateways, channels through which new ideas reached ordinary villagers. Epics which had originated in India were adopted as local myths of origins and woven into ceremonies, depicted in drama, alluded to in literature, and carved into monumental architecture. All these explicitly articulated conviction, present also in medieval Europe, that the microcosm and macrocosm correspond; that structures of inner, social, and cosmic process mirror and are interwoven with each other.

ref to Leach for Burma and Condominias for VN

ref to van Leur Bosch and Hall

claire holt

find atisa reference

JC van Leur (1955)

(1979 p 307-8)

holmgrem

ref to Leach

Dumont ref

Kulke, Heine-Geldern etc

Geertz, (1971, ch.3); Anderson, (1972); Dahm, (1969); and many others.

Anderson, (1972) and Moertono, (1968).

Criticisms of the Suharto regime are concentrated on its moral qualities. Incidents such as the Sawito affair of 1976 underline the significance the regime itself attaches to these forms of criticism. See Bourchier, (1984). Bouchier's analysis suggests that the mystical' aspects of the affair were magnified by the Government to discredit the challenge implied by it (p.7-8 and 94). I do not see an opposition but rather a convergence between the framing of dissent in cosmological and moral terms and the reality' or substance' of the political challenge - which is what his analysis implies. In terms of the point I am making in this paper it is in any event incidental whether the challenge was in substance moral' or political'. In either event the framing of the challenge and the Government's response confirm the existence of an idea of power which relates it to the presence or the absence of a cosmological mandate.

The quote, to be a leader you must have keenly attuned inner feelings' (dadi pemimpin mono kudu duwe rasa rumangsa kang landep'), is from Horne, (1974, p.495). It is not incidental that this appears as her final illustration in defining rasa'.

The classical discussion of kingship is Heine-Geldern, (1956).

See Anderson (1972), and Schrieke (1957, pp 76-95). In general Schrieke emphasises succession as a basis of legitimacy, as opposed to the cosmological mandate; however in this section he deals with the ideal theory of royal power and the way that relates to protests which have been directed against rulers. He also points to the particular emphasis on Vishnu in Javanese ideals of royalty.

Moertono, (1968, p35) on warana' and kingship.

On the centrality of the notion of correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm see Heine-Geldern, (1956, p.3). As an element within the structure of Javanist ideology, this notion deserves more emphasis than it has generally been given.

For example see Zoetmulder's discussion of Kertanagara's spiritual practices (1965). connect this to Pemberton';s comment on PB IX's clairvoyance & my notes from Salatigo on even bupati's having this....

Coedes

The most helpful works on the mystical symbolism of wayang (in English) have been Mangkunagoro VII (1957); Ulbricht (1970); and Zoetmulder (1971).

Holt, (1967, p.128).

For a discussion of the ritual context of wayang see Geertz, (1976, pp.267-69).

It is common in the literature on wayang to see suggestion that traditionally women sat on the shadow side, men on that of the dalang and puppets. For example see Rassers, (1959, p.125).

There are a number of ways to connect the dramatic structure to the symbolic meaning of wayang. Ulbricht, (1970, p.1) points out that the shadow is the only visible non-material object and therefore especially appropriate for use in dealing with the spiritual realm. In Zoetmulder (1971, p.89), there is a very clear summary of the permutations attached to the comment that the dalang's role is analogous to that of God - especially in connecting the symbolism to monistic philosophy. One connection I find intriguing is that there is explicit recognition in the dramatic structure of various levels of meaning - people view shadows knowing there are puppets being manipulated by a dalang and that he is relating Javanese versions of Indian mythology. The number of levels of dramatic structure neatly reflect the sense of levels in the world itself.

The halus-kasar distinction is explained in Geertz, (1976, p.232). For further detail on the meaning of the iconography see Ulbricht (1970, pp.40-49).

This is a matter of general knowledge in circles of kejawen and kebatinan (Javanist and mystical) interest. For information of this sort, I am relying on my fieldwork.

It is necessary to re-emphasise at this point that symbolic interpretations are not standardised. This particular set of associations follow Pak Danusumartono of Cepu (August 1973).

Interview with Pak Sam Nursuhud in Salatiga (June 1973).

Interview with Pak Haryono in Surakarta (December 1971).

This transition, from metaphor to extension of experience, is one Mangkunagoro VII made in his presentation (1957, pp.11-12) which is unfortunately difficult to inject into written attempts.

The classical English language work on the kundalini is Woodruff, The Serpent Power, (1972). For an explanation of the relevance of kundalini theories in old Java see Forrester, (1968).

Interview with Ibu Sri Pawanang, Yogyakarta (May 1972).

Interview with Pak Hardjanto in Surakarta (May 1972).

Interview with Pak Danusumartono in Cepu (August 1973). Pak Danu was an artist, spending much of his time painting wayang scenes on glass for ornamental purposes. This is his modification of standard lore, it is interesting to note parallels and contrasts with the description in Holt,(1967, p.144).

Ulbricht, (1970, pp.22-28).

Interview with Ibu Sri Pawenang in Yogyakarta (May 1972).

Interview with Romo Suwarso in Salatiga (September 1972).

Interview with Pak Sri Sampoerno in Surakarta (January 1974).

Ulbricht, (1970, p.26).

Brandon, (1970, pp.20-29).

Interview with Pak Moedomo in Kediri (August 1973).

Note the contrast between this interpretation of the Pandawa and that given above.

For a longer summary of the lakon see Ulbricht, (1970, pp.84-98). For other interpretations of its symbolism see Mangukunagoro VII, (1957 pp.16-18).

Interview with Pak Harjanto in Surakarta (May 1972).

Interview with Pak Darno Ong in Surakarta (March 1972).

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