It may not be an exaggeration to say that the ideas C. Geertz presented in his books, The Religion of Java and Agricultural Involution, have dominated the scholarly discussions about the socio-political, cultural, economic and religious behaviour of the Javanese. Although there are abundant discussions of these books, there are reasons for me to carry out another review of Geertz's work and of scholarly debates on it. My orientation in doing field research was influenced by these debates and, although the main purpose of this thesis is not to support nor to refute Geertz, his paradigm has influenced the course of my writing. The 'spectre' of Geertz has been with me throughout the whole period of doing fieldwork and of writing this thesis. ^[2]

In The Religion of Java, Geertz proposes three main cultural types which reflect the moral organisation of Javanese culture, the general ideas of order in terms of which the Javanese shape their behaviour in all areas of life: abangan, santri, and priyayi (1976:4-5). The abangan sub-tradition is characterised by a balanced integration of animistic, Hinduistic, and Islamic elements, a basic Javanese syncretism which is the island's true folk tradition, the santri sub-tradition by a stress on the Islamic aspects of the syncretism, and the priyayi sub-tradition by a stress on the Hinduist aspects. These three religious sub-traditions are associated in a broad and general way with three major social-structural nuclei in Java, namely, the village, the market and the government bureaucracy (ibid.:5-6).

One of the debates concerning Geertz's trichotomy has centred on the relevance of the priyayi variant. Some scholars argue that santri and abangan are the terms designating differences in the religious outlook cutting across social classes, while priyayi is a term referring to a social class, namely, the aristocrats (Bachtiar,1985; Boland,1982:4; Koentjaraningrat,1963:188-189; Noer,1973:19). People belonging to the priyayi may show strong santri or abangan orientation, implying that priyayi on the one hand and santri and abangan on the other are not mutually exclusive. Those dissatisfied with Geertz's trichotomy on this basis support one of the two alternative positions. The first is to drop the priyayi variant in favour of the dichotomy of abangan and santri: the Javanese should be grouped into two, those who look on their Islamic duties seriously and those who do not. ^[3] The second position tries to incorporate a concept or concepts comparable to priyayi. One of the concepts thus selected is wong cilik (literally, small person), a term referring to the lower class living mainly in rural areas. With the introduction of this concept, the Geertz’s trichotomy expands to quadri-partite system: wong cilik-abangan, wong cilik-santri, priyayi-abangan and priyayi-santri. The incorporation of new concepts, however, also has an analytic problem: the concepts which can be included seem to be almost inexhaustible. For example, Ricklefs, in addition to his use of wong cilik as opposed to priyayi, incorporates a lateral axis of kolot-moderen (old fashioned-modern) (1979:118), while Koentjaraningrat contrasts priyayi to wong cilik and wong sudagar (traders) and includes another axis of urban and rural (1967:245-46).

These two alternative positions seem to be based on different understandings of Geertz's paradigm and its applicability. Those who confine the relevance of Geertz's paradigm to the study of Javanese religion take the first position, while those who apply his paradigm to the general study of the Javanese worldview take the second. To the latter, religion is not a sufficient condition to understand the world outlook of the Javanese, so that social class, kolot-moderen and city-urban should be included as relevant variables to understand the different world outlooks. Whatever positions are taken, however, all scholars supporting either of the two positions agree on one point, namely, that in terms of the religious orientation, the Javanese are divided into two groups, those who take their Islamic duties seriously and those who do not. Some of them prefer the term 'kejawen', 'agami Jawi' (literally, Javanese religion) and 'Javanism' to the term abangan. 'Javanism' in this context may be defined as the indigenous elements of Javanese religion which have remained constant in the face of the tremendous impact of foreign ideas (Zoetmulder,1967:16) or, more broadly, the religion of those who do not take their Muslim religious duties seriously (Jay,1969; Koentjaraningrat,1985a; Mulder,1978).

By contrast with the critics of Geertz who generally agree to the dichotomy of abangan-santri but try to modify the priyayi variant, another group of critics evaluates Geertz's paradigm from a different angle. Their basic premise is that the abangan-santri dichotomy is not relevant to an understanding of the religious orientation of the Javanese. In this respect, their criticism is directed not only at Geertz but at the majority of scholars who have argued for the presence of division among Javanese Muslims in terms of their attitude toward and commitment to Islam. Interestingly enough, the precursor of this group of critics was not a scholar of religion in Java per se, but an Islamologist who probably came to know Islam in Java by way of Geertz. According to Hodgson, many of the ethnographic data interpreted by Geertz as proofs of syncretic tradition are actually Islamic. He attributes this shortcoming to Geertz's prejudicial view in identifying 'Islam' with what the school of modernists (reformists) happens to approve of and in ascribing everything else to an aboriginal or Hindu-Buddhist background. Hodgson suggests that the data presented by Geertz show how little has survived from the Hindu past even in inner Java and raises the question as to why the triumph of Islam has been so complete (1974 vol.2:551). Although his argument is persuasive, Hodgson is not generous enough to share his understanding with others. He proposes that his conclusion can be appreciated by 'one who knows Islam' (ibid.), and does not clarify, for example, how the invocation of such beings as dhanyang (a local guardian spirit), the spirits living in the rafters of the house, the animals that crawl along like snails, 'mother earth', guardian of the land and the water, and the as yet unborn child alongside Allah, the Prophet Adam, Eve and Muhammad (Geertz,1976:40-41) in order to ask all of them not to bother people, not to make people feel ill, unhappy, or confused (ibid.:14) can be an evidence of the triumph of Islam over the local religious tradition rather than that of syncretism.

Recently, Woodward claims that he is the 'one who knows Islam'. He argues that Islam is the dominant force in the religious beliefs and rites of the Javanese, shaping the character of social interaction and daily life in all segments of Javanese society (1989:3). Although his effort to incorporate the Sufi tradition of Islam as a framework with which to examine religious practices and ideas may be considered as a contribution to the study of Islam in Java, Woodward's argument suffers from several shortcomings. ^[4] The first of these is his method of interpreting historical and ethnographic data. In order to show that certain religious practices or ideas in Java are Islamic or fully Islamised, Woodward does not present any direct evidence that these have textual references in the Quran and Hadith or have an Islamic origin. What he uses instead is corresponding examples, namely, the presence of similar ideas and practices in the Quran and Hadith, and sometimes in the lives of people in other parts of the Islamic world. For example, in order to argue that slametan (communal feast), which has been considered by many as a typical example of Javanese syncretism, is based on the textual tradition of Islam, he does not show that the Prophet Muhammad actually celebrated slametan nor that Allah commanded human beings to celebrate slametan. Instead, he selects a few features arbitrarily from slametan such as inviting neighbours for a communal feast and giving the left-over food, and then shows these features are in the Islamic scriptures. Seen within this framework, the fact that the Prophet Muhammad accepted the invitation to a meal from his follower, ate together with his companions and asked the latter to give the left-overs to people is already enough evidence to prove that slametan is based on the textual tradition of Islam (1988:62-3). As Geertz notes (1976:11), the communal feast is the world's most common religious ritual. This implies that, if I apply Woodward's method and argument, all parts of the world where the communal feast is practised and the left-over food is distributed are areas whose religious practices may be Islamic. Woodward, who is bold enough to say that 'Roman legal principles or Neoplatonism becomes Islamic if interpreted in terms of a system of symbolic knowledge derived from Quranic or other Islamic principles' (1979:63), may not object to my application of his idea, if I add a phrase, 'as long as the actors who participate in the communal feast consider it Islamic'.

At this point, we encounter a second weakness in Woodward's argument. He relies heavily on the interpretation of actors to examine religious practices in Java. This method itself does not seem to be wrong. What is problematic, however, is his acceptance of actors' interpretation as an absolute criterion on which to judge whether certain practices or ideas are Islamic or not. In the paradigm of Woodward, therefore, interpretation and judgement merge. It may be beyond the capacity of an outside researcher to argue that informants' interpretation of certain practices is factually or historically wrong on the basis of written materials to which he or she has access but informants do not. However, it may be a mistake to use actors' interpretation as an absolute basis to judge the 'Islamic' or 'non-Islamic' nature of certain practices and ideas. An outside researcher may say that 'such and such practices are interpreted as being Islamic' but cannot argue, from this interpretation, that 'such and such practices are Islamic'. On the other hand, this method of Woodward can easily be proved to be wrong, if one uses his method in attacking his argument: if there are Javanese who have a different interpretation of certain practices from that of Woodward's informants - for example, if some interpret slametan to be Hindu-Buddhist - this, according to Woodward's method, shows that slametan is Hindu-Buddhist, not Islamic. Woodward tries to avoid this issue by using the phrase, 'many people'. For example, he writes 'many people believe that if he chose to, the sultan [in Yogyakarta] could rule the world, and that Yogyakarta is the center of the universe' (ibid.:21) and 'the prince's personal opinion, which is shared by many modern Javanese, is that because books are written by men ... they are less reliable sources of historical knowledge than meditation' (ibid:35). In one sense, this form of argument cannot be falsified, since no one will be able to seek after the opinions of people in Java whose number reaches more than a hundred million and to say confidently that many people do not share the same opinion with those called 'many people' by Woodward. However, it is legitimate to ask from which segment of the Javanese society do Woodward's 'many people' come. Do 'many people' refer to many of the informants whom Woodward questioned during his fieldwork, many people in Yogyakarta or many people in Java? This question is essential since many people in Kolojonggo and Sumber may not agree with the interpretation of the 'many people' in Woodward's book.^[5]

Whatever the pros and cons concerning Geertz's ideas, it cannot be denied that his conceptual framework in The Religion of Java, namely, that the Javanese can be divided into two groups in terms of their religious orientation and of their attitude toward and commitment to Islam, has been an axis with which the scholarly discussions of religion in Java have been developed. Throughout this process, two contrasting views have emerged: the first argues that Islam has been gaining influence over a much wider circle of the Javanese, while the second puts much more emphasis on the maintenance of the syncretic tradition or 'Javanism' and its continuing popularity with the Javanese. The studies of Mulder, Stange and Nakamura give us good examples of both positions in the study of Islam in Java. The comparison of these studies is all the more interesting since these scholars carried out their research in the early 1970s and in places sharing a similar historical background, Mulder in Yogyakarta city, Stange in Yogyakarta and Surakarta regions, and Nakamura in a town not far from Yogyakarta city.

The starting point of Mulder and Stange is quite similar. They note the popularity of kebatinan mysticism and try to understand its contents and implications. According to Mulder, the kebatinan or mystical world view in Java is characterised by its emphasis on the oneness of the order of existence, on the superiority of the inner (batin) over the outer (lahir), on the superiority of the intuitive feeling (rasa) over the rational, and on the harmonious order of society. These characteristics have persisted to guide and interpret action in spite of structural change and modern developments (1978:xv), constituting the generic type of Javaneseness (ibid.:100) and providing tools to understand significant social change (ibid.:103). Mulder admits that Islamic doctrines have influenced Javanese mystical thinking and terminology. However, these influences have not been strong enough to replace the Javanese world view, are felt to be foreign to Java (ibid.:10-11) and have reached only a small segment of the Javanese who are isolated from the mainstream (ibid.:105). Accordingly, for virtually all the Javanese, mysticism and magical-mystical practices have always been a most powerful undercurrent of their culture (ibid.:1).

Stange shares much of Mulder's understanding of kebatinan mysticism, but he takes a slightly different position to locate mysticism in the present life of the Javanese. He argues that the syncretic and traditional factors within each religious community have lost ground to modern scripturalism (1980:48) and that Javanese mysticism is no longer a fundamental element within the polity of ethnic Javanese (ibid.:43). This does not mean that Stange argues for the dominance of Islam in the religious life of the Javanese. He suggests Islam is integral to, but not at the heart of, local culture, noting that mosques are often little more than gateways to the graveyard in the rural religious pattern of contemporary Java (ibid.:33). In evaluating the position of Islam and Javanese mysticism, what Stange has in mind seems to be a religious polarity (ibid.:47). The syncretic and mystical religious tradition has gradually lost ground to the surge of (scriptural) Islam but the latter has not been successful in replacing the former.

Nakamura gives a contrasting picture of religious life in Yogyakarta to that of Mulder. He finds that an increasingly large number of individuals in the abangan category have moved and are still moving towards the category of santri, becoming more orthodox in their thought and deed as Muslims (1993:13). To Nakamura, this development is not a recent phenomenon but a part of the ongoing process of Islamisation. One of the interesting findings of Nakamura is that, in contrast to the conventional view of reformist Islam in Java, Javanese reformism is not severed from Javanese traditions nor is it anti-Javanese, but it actually embodies Javanese traditions (ibid.:183). He shows how such basic concepts as 'lahir' (outer self) and 'batin' (inner self), and 'kasar' (literally, coarse) and 'halus' (literally, refined), which have been employed to analyse 'Javanism' or 'Javanese religion' (Geertz,1976:232-234; Moulder,1978), are used by reformist Muslims to interpret Islamic doctrines and to introduce Islamic virtues to the mass (1993:159-167). ^[6] In this respect, Nakamura's study gives us a chance to appraise the dichotomy supported by Geertz and others from a different angle. The division between santri and abangan variants may not be as neat as Geertz unconsciously portrays ^[7] and the elements constituting each variant may be understood and interpreted by the Javanese in a different fashion from the ways these are interpreted by Geertz and others (see also Dhofier,1978:71-2).

From the 1970s on, observers of Islam at the national level have shown that a remarkable change has been going on in Java. Increasing numbers of Javanese show their strong commitment to Islam; the participants in Friday prayers and in the fast have increased and more Indonesians have made the pilgrimage to Mecca (Johns,1987:224); Islamic activities such as prayers and studies take place everywhere and nominal Muslims participate in these activities (Adnan,1990:444); publication and public discussion about Islam have flourished (Tamara,1986:5-8); the number of students in Islamic boarding schools (pesantren) has increased dramatically (Dhofier,1978:68); and the appeal of Islam among modern people has increased (Tamney,1987:62). In spite of these forms of change, the argument for Islam's increasing influence in Java has not been shared by everyone. Many consider that Islam has not been successful in taking a strong grip over the population even after the 1970s (Koentjaraningrat,1985a; McVey,1983; Ricklefs,1979; Slamet,1977:35), while Johns, who reports the increasing popularity of Islam, suggests that, in observing Islam in the rural areas, their (Javanese peasantry) cultural traditions through which they perceive Islam are strongly animist with an Indic religious overlay (1987:226). Some of these scholars use the key symbols of traditional Javanese culture to explain the position of Islam in Java: 'given the depth and comprehensive character of traditional Javanese culture, in any struggle for allegiance which may develop ... between the wayang (shadow play) and the Quran, the wayang is likely to win' (Ricklefs,1979:126); and 'Javanese society still cannot dispense with the dhukun (traditional medical and magical practitioners) (Koentjaraningrat,1985a:426).

The continuing importance of traditional religious ideas in the life of Muslim Javanese is also noted by Keeler who did field research in Central Javanese villages. Keeler argues that people's actions, their speech, their fortunes and their interaction within the family, in village life and among those of different status are thought to be affected by the spiritual potency they wield and by the potency others wield (1987:19). Accordingly, Javanese are preoccupied with asceticism which is considered to be an ideal way to accumulate spiritual potency (ibid.:112), and traditional belief in spiritual beings maintains its popularity as a way to accumulate spiritual strength (ibid.:44). Keeler mentions the existence of villagers who disregard spiritual potency and asceticism, but he suggests these villagers, who are identified as some of the most highly educated reformist Muslims (ibid.:114), are exceptions and most villagers are more syncretic than orthodox in their attitude toward Islam (ibid.:23). Keeler's view is also echoed in Bråton's study of a Central Javanese village. Differing from Keeler, Bråton gives us a more balanced view by incorporating Islamic development in rural Java into his discussion: he notes the mushrooming of mosques and villagers' incorporation of Islam as one of the frameworks to interpret traditional rituals (1989). In spite of this, however, he interprets the villagers' commitment to Islam and their acceptance of an Islamic paradigm more as a strategy to present their actual identity actively in a distorted or even opposite way rather than as a genuine sign of the growing importance of Islam in their life (ibid.:72). Accordingly, Islamisation leads primarily to changes in ritual forms while the traditional interpretations, meanings and beliefs still pertain (ibid.:93). Bråton's view can be summarised in the comment of his informant concerning the use of Arabic verses from the Quran in casting spells: '[when you verbally recite Arabic prayers], you can utter a Javanese phrase in your thoughts' (ibid.:76).

Recently, the argument emphasising the continuing importance of 'Javanism' has been challenged by several scholars who argue that Islamic development in rural Java has been accelerated since the 1970s and that Islam has become a much more important factor in determining the religious life of rural villagers. Noting the institutional advantage of the orthodox community, the unprecedented scale of Islamic missionary activities and the continuing and increasing effectiveness of Muslim organisation in the countryside (1978a & 1978b), Hefner maintains that the social forces unleashed under the New Order contribute to the partial realisation of one of the Muslim community's primary religious goals: the Islamisation of Java (1987a:551). The children of many 'abangan' are becoming good Muslims and Javanese culture is giving way to Islam (ibid.:547). Hefner's view is paralleled in the works of two Indonesian scholars. Pranowo, who studied Islamic development in a Central Javanese village, finds that a genuine resurgence of Islam has taken place in the New Order period and that the villagers show strong affiliation and commitment to Islam (1991:152-179), while Mansurnoor shows that the influence of the kiyai (religious leaders) over the rural Madurese populace has not been weakened with the advent of modernisation, indirectly implying that Islam's strong grip over the villagers in rural areas has been maintained in the face of rapid changes (1990).