「ジャワ年代記」の時空性 : 分裂王国マタラム宮廷作家の世界像(<特集>東南アジアの世界像)

Abstract

The 'Babad Tanah Jawi' was begun in the 17th century, but was largely written and compiled in the 18th century, when the Mataram Dynasty began to be enclosed and isolated by the V. O. C. (The Dutch East India Company). The content of the manuscripts remaining in the Yogyakarta and Surakarta courts is roughly divided between the main trends of the two courts. This paper deals with 'Babad' entries concerning the Hindu kingdom of Majapahit, Islam in the Pasisir district (Java's North Coast), and the V. O. C. at Batavia, in terms of their time sequence and the expansion or contraction of the space of the Mataram kingdom. Under such serious circumstances as the political and economic isolation of the Mataram court by the Dutch, the authors of the 'Babad', the pujanggas, tried to escape from the outer world into the inner world of literature. They revived the glorious past of Majapahit in contemporaneous events, and they incorporated into the 'Babad' foreign elements of Islam and the V. O. C., not as heterogeneous but as homogeneous elements, as, for example, in the episodes of the 'Wali Sanga' (Nine Saints), or Jangkung in the Baron Sakender story. Throughout the chronicle, the pujanggas shift back and forth in time and space, like the native Goddess of the Southern Ocean, in order to assert or protect the true kingship of the Mataram rulers.