Beyond the Western Horizon

Posted by John

If you need a crash course on non-Western religions, there’s no better place to start than Indonesia.

In Surabaya Danielle and I live near several mosques, which offer loud reminders throughout the day of the regular rhythm of Islamic life. Last Friday, the main prayer day in the Muslim tradition, we were at Mesjid Ampel, Surabaya’s oldest and most prominent mosque. Sunan Ampel, the man who brought Islam to Indonesia’s largest island of Java in the 15th century, is buried in the mosque’s courtyard.

In this more pious neighborhood known as “the Arab Quarter,” men in white dishdasha and black fezzes and women in black abaya made their way to prayer past a market selling Korans and prayer rugs. Processions like this one—to and from the mosque five times a day—offer a glimpse of Islam fostering community.

Immediately before our trip to Mesjid Ampel, we were at Kong Co Kong Tik Cun Ong, Surabaya’s preeminent Chinese Buddhist temple with a long and complicated name. Chinese people have lived in Indonesia for centuries, gravitating to trading roles as the “Overseas Chinese” have done throughout Southeast Asia. As the hub of East Java’s maritime commerce, Surabaya has long been a center of Indonesia’s Chinese community.

Relations between the Indonesian majority and Chinese minority have had their share of acrimony, including anti-Chinese riots that killed more than 1,000 people a decade ago. During the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s, some Indonesians resented ethnic Chinese citizens’ financial successes. Indonesian-Chinese relations appear to be mending, however. Celebrations of Chinese New Year, illegal until recently, now have the official sanction of a national holiday, and the government has lifted authoritarian-era restrictions against Chinese-language schools and media.

The main expressions of Chinese culture we’ve seen in Indonesia were at the two-story pagoda-style temple we visited last week. Plumes of incense smoke surrounded numerous altars, including one devoted to Siddhartha Buddha. The temple still draws worshipers, and we saw several people making offerings and saying prayers.

Like Indonesians, Chinese people have a long history of incorporating different religious traditions, and this syncretic approach was on display at the temple. As with other Buddhist places of worship, Surabaya’s temple incorporates Confucianism’s devotion to ancestors. It also apparently contains elements of Taoism if you know where to look, but I’ve yet to advance to the intermediate stage of my non-Western religions crash course. Tao means “the path”—since that’s all I remember, it’s probably safe to assume it’s not a path I’m on.

East Java also once formed Indonesia’s Hindu heartland. The Majapahit kingdom, which became Java’s most powerful realm as Buddhist kingdoms declined in the 13th century, established Hinduism as its official religion. For close to 200 years, the Majapahit dominated East Java, building elaborate temples to worship Hindu deities. Islamic kingdoms ultimately defeated the Majapahit at the end of the 15th century and forced Hindus to flee to Bali, center of Indonesian Hindu life today. But several Hindu temples remain near Surabaya at Trowulan, the seat of Majapahit civilization.

Our visit to Trowulan formed part of a non-Western religions crash course rather than a dissertation, so most aspects of Hindu worship and its seemingly endless pantheon of deities remain a mystery. That said, I’m getting much better at distinguishing between Brahma, Shiva the Destroyer, and Vishnu the Preserver, Hinduism’s three core gods. Trowulan’s museum contained several 14th-century terra cotta sculptures of this Hindu triumvirate.

One of the more arresting sculptures featured the Majapahit King Airlangga depicted as the god Vishnu astride his escort, Garuda. We weren’t allowed to take photographs, so I’ve substituted a photo (left) of a sculpture at the entrance of Surabaya’s Airlangga University depicting the same scene. It’s a sign of Hinduism’s enduring influence in Indonesia that one of the major universities is named after a Hindu king and the national airline is named Garuda.

We also toured five of Trowulan’s remaining Hindu temples. Our guides exhibited the civic pride that obtains when you live among the ruins of an empire immortalized in history books. At the Bajang Ratu Temple, they pointed out a kala (right), the google-eyed gargoyle that wards off evil spirits. One of the current Indonesian presidential candidates is named Jusuf Kalla—maybe his platform should include “warding off evil spirits.”

The guides also took us to Candi Tikus, a temple that had been buried beneath volcanic ash and turned into rice fields, forgotten until a 1970s excavation. The most impressive aspect of the Trowulan complex was Candi Brahu (left), a 25 meter-tall brick temple. As one of the oldest temples from the Majapahit period, it reflected the Buddhist tradition that prevailed here in previous centuries. It has the rounded stupa shape of the Buddhist temple, but the door at its center marks it as a Hindu place of worship.

In addition to serving as an installment in our non-Western religious traditions crash course, the Trowulan Museum also provided an introduction to Java’s prehistory. A fossil purporting to contain remains of a stegodon species elephant from 3 million years ago reposed forlornly in one of the exhibit halls, not even protected behind a pane of glass or velvet rope. It seemed likely such a placement would invite disrespectful treatment from schoolchildren passing through on tours. After traveling such a great distance across the generations, the stegodon seemed to deserve a greater place of honor.

Another exhibit outlined the story of homo erectus, the “Java Man” species from more 1.5 million years ago. Remains of this close ancestor to homo sapiens were first excavated near Trowulan at the end of the 19th century, offering some clues to humans’ evolutionary chain. If nothing else, the Java Man exhibits served as a reminder that all of our contemporary religious traditions, East and West, rest on the foundations of something much older.