Hindu Javanese : Tengger tradition and Islam /

The most important study of Javanese religion since Clifford Geertz's Religion of Java (1960). An ethnographically rich and historically detailed portrait of the last Hindu enclave in Muslim Java, Hefner's work is also a compelling account of the symbolic processes involved in religious conversion. Tengger priests preserve Hindu-Javanese texts, while ritual invokes both Hindu gods and deified ancestors. Complex myths describe the complementarity of Javanese Islam and Tengger tradition, distinguishing Tenggerese from Balinese Hinduism. Hefner shows how Tenggerese and Muslims employ distinct bodies of symbolic knowledge to interpret shared religious vocabulary and modes of ritual action. Conversion is based more on shifting patterns of interpretation than on the acquisition of rite and doctrine. Deeper knowledge of the Muslim roots of Javanese ritual would only strengthen Hefner's argument, for Hefner challenges the basic assumptions of ``interpretive anthropology'' by calling attention to the variety of ways in which objects of cultural knowledge may be interpreted. The book includes numerous photographs of Tengger ritual and an appendix contrasting Tenggerese and Balinese Hinduism. A brilliant study certain to appeal to readers concerned with poststructuralist theory as well as to specialists in Asian Studies, Hinduism, and Islam. College, university, and public libraries.-M.R. Woodward, Arizona State University