The wong Tenggers of Java
Yoginder Sikand
The Observer
May 15, 1999
Title: The wong Tenggers of Java
Author: Yoginder Sikand
Publication: The Observer
Date: May 15, 1999
Perhaps the only country in the world outside the Indian sub-continent
where indigenous Hindus still survive is Indonesia. While much has
been written about the Hindus of the Indonesian island of Bali, little
is known about the small native Hindu population of Java, the
country's largest island. Numbering some 50,000, these Hindu are
known as the Wong Tengger ie 'the people of the mountains'.
There are a total of 30 Tengger villages in Java, all in the
mountainous eastern part of the island settled at the base of a large
volcano, Mt Bromo. Scattered groups of Tenggers are also found in the
neighbouring Pasuruan, Probolinggo, Malang and Lumajang districts of
eastern Java.
Java, along with several other Indonesian islands, was once a
Hindu-Buddhist land till the mid-16th century, when Islam arrived in
the region. With the collapse of the Hindu Shaivite Majapahit
Javanese dynasty, and the Islamisation of most of Java, the island's
remaining Hindus moved to the remote eastern districts, where their
descendants, the Tengger, are still found to this day.
The Tengger refer to their religion as Hindu agama, a Sanskrit-derived
word meaning 'religion'. It is also known as naluri or 'the
traditions of the ancestors'.
Tengger villages do not possess any large temples, and public worship
generally takes place at a little shrine called the sanggar pamujan.
Shrines in all villages are identical. They are all built on an axis
determined by the village's relation to the sacred Mt Bromo, and their
four-cornered roofs point in each of the four directions of the wind.
The east is identified with the god Iswara, the south with Brahma, the
west with Mahadewa, the north with Vishnu and the centre with Shiva.
The shrine contains no idols, and has space only enough for the priest
to conduct his rituals.
Besides the gods of the cardinal directions, the Tengger worship a
host of spirits. These include the cikal bakal, the spirits of the
founders of the village, the rohbau rekso, the village guardian
spirits and the roh leluhur, the spirits of the ancestors. Rituals to
propitiate these spirits are conducted by special priests. During
these rites little doll-like figures representing the spirits are
clothed in batik cloth and are presented with food and drink. It is
believed that the spirits partake of the essence of these offerings.
Many Tengger Hindus also acknowledge the presence of a monotheistic
God above and beyond the spirits. He is generally known as Tuhan
('Lord') or, more commonly, Sanghyan Widi ('God Almighty'). Unlike
the spirits this deity cannot be invoked in priestly worship and is
never presented with any offerings.
Offerings to the spirits take different forms. One sort, sajenan, is
presented to the guardian deities by the priest in formal liturgy.
For different occasions different sorts of food are offered as
sajenan. For instance, during weddings a cone of rice, tumpeng
walagara, is offered, and this is considered to be a source of
blessing for the couple as well as the whole village. The second sort
of food offering, suguhan, are those that are offered by ordinary
Tengger Hindus to their ancestral spirits. The third kind, tamping,
are food offerings to evil spirits so as to ward off bad luck, and
typically consist of meat, rice and bananas wrapped up in leaves and
placed at places considered inauspicious such as cemeteries, bridges
and road intersections.
Priests, known as dukun or resi pujangga, play a central role in
Tengger Hindu worship. They are considered to possess special
knowledge (ilmu) of the gods and the spirits, which they carefully
guard from ordinary Tenggers. Membership of the priesthood is
hereditary, and generally passes down from father, to son. Occult
powers are transmitted through a secret training process, the
culmination of which is a ceremony organised at the foot of Mt Bromo.
Each village has only one priest at a time, and he is helped by three
assistants. The first of these, the Wong Sepuh, is charged with the
care of the family spirits once they have been invoked to a ritual
site by the priest.
The junior assistant, the legen, is responsible for carrying the
priest's ritual implements. These include a incense brazier, a holy
water pot, a holy thread and the scriptures. The third assistant, the
Wong Dandan, is always a woman, and she is responsible for preparing
trays of food that are offered to the spirits. In the course of the
worship, the priest recites a number of prayers or the japa mantras.
The entire corpus of these mantras is recorded in palm-leaves known as
kropak, and written in the old Javanese language.
Only the priests are allowed to recite these mantras, and the other
Tenggers have to be satisfied with other chants that the priests have
specially prepared for them.
The chief festival of the Tenggers is the celebration of Kasada at the
holy Mt Bromo, considered to be the abode of Brahma (Bromo), from whom
the volcano de-rives its name. This celebration is held in the last
month of the Tengger year and is attended by thousands of people.
Here, ritual offerings are made by the priests to Brahma, which am
then consigned into the crater of the volcano.
These are also accompanied by fire offerings, or what the Tengger
refer to as pahoman, a word that derives from the Sanskrit homa.
The festival concludes with a ritual invocation to a deity who is
considered to be the founding father of the Tengger people, who goes
by the S tic-sounding name of Deva Kusuma.
The Tengger year is dotted with a number of other ritual celebrations
that are also occasions for the entire community to celebrate, eat,
drink and dance. These occasions are marked by community feasts for
the safety (slamet) of the community and are therefore called as
slametan.
The most important of these is the pujan, a Sanskrit and Old Javanese
term for worship. This is conducted in the fourth, eighth, ninth and
tenth months of the year. Another slametan is held in the second
month of the year and is known as karo, which commemorates the souls
of all the ancestors, and is an occasion for the ritual dance by
special female performers known as tandak.
Pujan and karo are slametans for the entire village, but individual
households also hold slametan feasts for such occasions as the birth
of a child, the child's first hair-cutting ceremony, weddings or
death.
Till recently the Tengger Hindus, living in the remote mountains of
Java, were completely isolated from other Hindu groups in Indonesia
and beyond. As a result, they had managed to pre-serve their ancient
Tengger form of Hinduism untouched by external influences.
Today, however, the Tengger Hindu tradition is increasingly coming
under pressure from two fronts. The first of these is Javanese Islam,
itself an admixture of orthodox Islam and Hindu-Buddhist mysticism.
Reports speak of a marked Islamisation among Tengger in villages in
the less inaccessible parts of eastern Java. Secondly, Balinese
Hinduism, closer to Brahminic Hinduism and which Tengger Hindu
reformists are increasingly looking to for guidance and support.
Faced with these twin pressures, Tengger Hinduism faces a rather grim
future.
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