Javanese language

“ We are collecting Javanese fairy tales for Nellie and sister R. is making drawings for them. Oh, I hear so much wisdom and truth from the mouths of the people, and it is expressed in such sweet, melodious words. If I only had your language well under my thumb, I should like to translate the beautiful inspired music, so that it could be understood and appreciated. We are not so deep by nature that it will break any one's head to understand our wisdom. There is no word for selfishness in our language. Happy language where that word has never penetrated. ”

“ If I could learn the Dutch language thoroughly, my future would be assured. A rich field of labour would then lie open to me, and I should be a true child of humanity. For, you see I, as a born Javanese, know all about the Indian world. A European, no matter how long he may have lived in Java and studied existing conditions, can still know nothing of the inner native life. ”

“ The whole conversation was carried on in the Malay language, as it is the Dutch policy not to teach any native their own tongue.
The Javanese, like the natives of India, are fond of dancing spectacles, or notches; and when a "company" assembles in the street, or in any compound or yard of a house, it arrests the steps of every passer-by. Hearing one day the sound of the drum and other instruments outside the gate, our friends at our request kindly sent a servant to invite the players in. ”

“ It is a sentient language; often the words seem to be conscious, they express so much. We are astonished sometimes, own children as we are of the country, at the cleverness of our fellow countrymen. Things of which one could never imagine anything could be made, they express charmingly. Name something in the dark, give out a subject at random, and a simple Javanese will immediately make a rhyme that astonishes by its aptness and clearness. This facility belongs peculiarly to our Eastern people. It is a pity that when the precious gifts were meted out, your sisters should have been neglected. ”

“ The influence of the Hindoo colonists on this part of Java has been very limited: hence both the people and their language are less civilised than those of middle Java. The language, though equally belonging to the Malayan family, differs considerably from the Javanese, and seems to be more nearly akin to the Batta and Malay of Sumatra. There is some difference between the high and low language as in Javanese—the former being called Basa-Menak, the latter Basa-Kuring. The number, however, of distinct Menak words is not considerable, and most of them are derived from Javanese. ”

“ In the present chapter we are concerned only with those Hindu Javanese works which are properly entitled to be classed as "literature." They are written in the Kavi or literary language. The term "Kavi" means the language of poetry, and this dialect is composed, to a great extent, of words of Sanscrit origin. Although the knowledge of Kavi was gradually lost after the Hindu supremacy was overthrown by the Mohammedans, modern Javanese contains but few Arabic words, especially differing in this respect from Malay. Two forms of modern Javanese are employed in everyday speech. ”

“ They are more robust in build, their language is distinct from Javanese though belonging to the same group, and even the alphabet presents idiosyncrasies. Their laws, social institutions, customs and calendar show many peculiarities, explicable on the supposition that they have preserved the ancient usages of pre-Mohammedan Java. At present the population is divided into the Bali-Agas or aborigines and the Wong Madjapahit who profess to have immigrated from that kingdom. ”

“ What do we speak at home? What a question, Stella, dear. Naturally, our language is Javanese. We speak Malayish with strange people who are Easterners, either Malays, Moors, Arabs, or Chinese, and Dutch with Europeans.
O Stella, how I laughed when I read your question: "Would your parents disapprove if you should embrace them heartily?" Why, I have yet to give my parents, or my brothers and sisters, the first kiss! [5] Kissing is not customary among the Javanese. Only children of from one to three, four, five, or six are kissed. We never kiss one another. ”

“ Many of them are among our best friends, but there are also others who dislike us, for no other reason than we are bold enough to emulate them in education and culture.
In many subtle ways they make us feel their dislike. "I am a European, you are a Javanese," they seem to say, or "I am the master, you the governed." Not once, but many times, they speak to us in broken Malay; although they know very well that we understand the Dutch language. ”

“ Children who learn the soft, musical Malay first have difficulty with the harsh Dutch sounds, while the Dutch who learn Malay after their youth never pronounce it as well or as easily as they pronounce French. The few Javanese, even those of highest rank, who acquired the Dutch language and attempted to use it in conversation with officials, used to be bruskly answered in Malay, an implication that the superior language was reserved for Europeans only. ”

“ Malay and usually very much broken Malay at that, is the language which the doctors use towards the people. Hardly a single doctor speaks Javanese, and so very few of the Javanese people understand and speak Malay. The difficulties would fall away if some one with a thorough knowledge of the native language would undertake the task of training. Roekmini's birth will be of great help to her in this, for the natives are very loyal to their nobles. ”

“ People often do such foolish things. Do not imagine that I do not see that many of those who now talk about native art, only do it to make themselves agreeable to me, and not because they have any real appreciation of it. Before me every one is enthusiastic. Is it from conviction? But that does not matter, the result will be good, and through such people the real friends of Java and the Javanese may be reached. ”

“ It is not in the least our intention to try to make European-Javanese of the Javanese by giving them liberal educations; our idea is to develop the fine qualities that are peculiar to their race; to help them to gain by contact with another civilization, not to the detraction of their own, but to its enoblement. ”

“ So much that seems to us today to be absolutely impossible, appears tomorrow as an accomplished fact. The Javanese are a nation filled with memories and fairy tales, in dreams and fairy tales the most wonderful things happen, and my heart which is Javanese through and through, holds fast to the illusion that there can still be miracles, even as there were in the far distant past. ”

“ We do not wish to make of our pupils half Europeans or European Javanese. We want a free education, to make of the Javanese, above everything, a strong Javanese. One who will be blessed with love and enthusiasm for his own land and people, with a heart open to their good qualities and to their needs. ”

“ If my brothers and sisters speak to other people about me, they must always use high Javanese in every sentence concerning me, my clothes, my seat at the table, my hands and my feet, and everything that is mine.They are forbidden to touch my honourable head without my high permission, and they may not do it even then without first making a sembah. ”

“ We Javanese cannot live without flowers and sweet odours. The native flowers in their splendour awaken in me a world of thought and feeling whenever I breathe in their perfume. Days afterwards it lives in my memory, and I feel the strong Javanese blood coursing through my veins. Oh soul of my people, that used to be too beautiful, that was full of kindness, poetry, gentleness and modesty—what has become of you? What have time and slothfulness not made of you? ”

“ The Javanese people are just like other children of nature: they are children of the sun, worshippers of splendour and brilliancy. Very well, gratify that wish, give them what their hearts desire, but at the same time give them something that is true, that is of real worth. ”

“ It is so often said that we are more European than Javanese in our hearts. Sad thought! We know that we are impregnated with European ideas and feelings—but the blood, the Javanese blood that flows live and warm through our veins, can never die. We feel it in the smell of incense and in the perfume of flowers, in the tones of the gamelan, in the sighing of the wind through the tops of the cocoa-nut trees, the cooing of the turtle doves, the whistling of the fields of ripened rice, in the pounding of the haddi-blokken [2] at the time of the rice harvest. ”

“ Oh, now I understand why they are opposed to the education of the Javanese. When the Javanese becomes educated then he will no longer say amen to everything that is suggested to him by his superiors.
In the last few days, articles written by natives have been published in the "Locomotief," the foremost paper of India. In these articles they lay bare the opinions, which have secretly been held for years about, not all, but by far the greater number of Indian officials. Not only the highest in the land, but also the most humble are allowing their voices to be heard. ”

“ It is that loveliest hour when the Javanese, tired from the hard day's work, seeks rest in song, dreaming all his cares away, wholly lost in the shining far-away past, whither his song leads him. "The Javanese are a people who live in the past," a young friend of ours says rightly. "They are lost in the blissful dreams of their eternal sleep." That is true, but we are alive, we must live; and life always goes forward. ”

“ A friend of ours says rightly that the Javanese are a people who are filled with legends and superstitions. Who shall lead the people out of the dusky realm of fairy tales into the light of work and reality? ”

“ But, whereas I freely confess that the inner life of the Javanese has remained hidden from me, their outward existence has become familiar enough. The Javanese practically live out-of-doors. They take their bath in the river; perform their toilet under some spreading warigin tree, hanging a mirror as big as the hand on the rugged stem; and squat down to their meal by the roadside. After nightfall, dark figures may be discerned around the stalls of fruit-vendors, fantastically lit up by the uncertain flame of an oil-wick. ”

“ The Javanese are the finer flowers of the Malay race—a people possessed of a civilization, arts, and literature in that golden period before the Mohammedan and European conquests. They have gentle voices, gentle manners, fine and expressive features, and are the one people of Asia besides the Japanese who have real charm and attraction for the alien. They are more winning, too, by contrast, after one has met the harsh, unlovely, and unwashed people of China, or the equally unwashed, cringing Hindu. ”

“ IHAVE read your last letter over many times; in it you write so sympathetically about the Javanese people. It is very pleasant that you should have such friendly thoughts towards the brown race. If I could only have you here with us there are so many things about my people which I should be glad to show you. Where can one study and learn to understand a people better than in the heart of that people? and here we have a true Javanese environment. ”

“ It is strongly combated by the inherent love which the Javanese has for the ancient "laws." There will be a hard fight before these hoary ideas and customs shall be deeply buried in the ground, never again to rise. ”

“ Throughout this essay he employs as data for determining the ancient institutions of Java, regulations which appear in various lawbooks compiled under Hindu influence. To appreciate the folly of such a method we have only to imagine for a moment that the present civilization of the Javanese was by a revolution exchanged for one totally different. Then when the new order of things had been firmly established we should find in Java, not merely here and there, but everywhere, complete codes of Mohammedan law, some in Arabic, others translated into Javanese or with Javanese notes. ”

“ On the point of etiquette, the Javanese, moreover, are infinitely more punctilious than any western people of our period. I believe they might even be said to surpass the Spaniards of the time of Philip II, in the elaborateness of their code of manners and in their strict adherence to its requirements. Every possible circumstance and occurrence in life have been foreseen, and the appropriate conduct noted down in the unwritten law of the "adat" ”

“ And it was the misery that I saw, even in my childish years, that first awakened in me the desire to fight against these time-honoured customs, and substitute justice for old tradition.
Our work will have a two-fold aim, first to help to enlighten all our people, and secondly to raise up our sisters, so that they may live and be treated as human beings. To all of you who have sympathy for Java, and the Javanese, we send an urgent prayer—help us to realize our ideals; they mean so much to our people and to our sex. ”

“ Not for nothing have we passed our whole lives amid surroundings where everything depends upon form; we have learned the emptiness of those forms, their lack of meaning and of substance; there is much good in the Javanese people. We are so anxious for you to admire our people. When I see something fine, some trait of character, that is peculiarly Javanese, then I think "How glad I should be if Mevrouw A. were with us. ”