I'm aware that I've not written this blog regularly, mainly due to laziness. Now I'm in Jakarta, Indonesia. It's rainy season here, and today it's half sunny as usual. The city is OK, a lot less chaotic than Bangkok, with wide roads which get congested only during busy hours. And there are a few good malls & markets. The small one near our hotel is Sarinah (& Lotus opposite), while the bigger ones like Ambassador have a supermarket. The prices of some things here are quite cheap (though not as cheap as in House of Fashion/ Cotton Collection/Odel in Colombo, Sri Lanka), for instance clothing, toys (mostly chinese), electronic applicances (including cameras) and DVDs. But my colleague tells me that many branded goods (though they may be made in this region) are found cheaper in the States.
For my field visit last week, I went to Kupang, which is just the western part of the island where East Timor is situated (where I went in August this year). The town is like any other small town in Asia, and the countryside is also nothing to write home about. Our hotel, though, had good rooms even as the food options (especially vegetarian) were rather limited.
The Bhasa Indonesia language (which is spoken or at least understood in most parts) and the old languages (Balinese/Javanese) have a lot of Indian sounding words, a sample of which is as below:
manushya (human) Siva (name of a god)
raja (king) Vishnu (name of a god)
kursi (chair) Brahma (name of a god)
kamara (room) Rabi (prophet)
jawab (answer) Salam (hello: greeting)
maaf (sorry) selamat (good)
guru (teacher) mesjid (mosque)
hukum (order/law) bandar (port)
naga (serpent) nama (name)
kunji (key) sabun (soap)
Bhupati (regent) girja (church)
istana (place: 'sthana') umar (age)
surat (identity/face) wah (wow)
swami (husband) isteri (wife: 'stree')
putra (son) putri (daughter)
roti (bread) topi (hat)
kapala (head) kapas (cotton)
dua (prayer) rahib (monk)
prathama (first)
eka, dwi, tri...(1,2,3,... Sanskrit) (OLD BALINESE)
And some words refer to the Indian meaning, though they don't have identical meaning:
mahal (expensive) 'palace' in Hindi
daerah (regional) 'region' in Hindi
dada (chest) could mean a 'ruffian' (with big chest!) in Hindi
leher (neck) means 'wave' in Hindi (referring to a wavy neck!)
pura (temple) 'gopura' in Hindi means a part of a temple
The epic Ramanaya is enacted on stage in many part of Bali, while Mahabharata is a revered scripture just like in India.
Sunday I went to the National Museum - just opposite the National Monument. The visit confirmed that Indonesia has had very close cultural relations with India historically. The museum is littered with old 7th/8th/9th Century and later stone sculptures and other representations of all sorts of Indian gods and mythical creatures - Brahma, Vishnu (and his incarnations like Makara & Narasimha) and his mount Garuda, different forms of Siva (e.g. Ardhanarishwara) and his mount Nandi the bull, Lakshmi (also called Devi Sri here), Ganesha, the Mahabharata charaters (Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula, Krsna, Kunti, Duryodhana, Shakuni), Ramayana characters (e.g. Hanumana, Angada), Mahishasurmardini, Durga/Uma/Kali, et al. And side by side there is also Budha in many poses - Bhairava Budha (with skulls at his feet), Bodhisattva... In addition to this, the museum has many other artefacts (e.g. ceramics from different eras), models of Java/Bali houses, woodwork, urns, etc. Though small, it's well worth a visit.
No comments:
Post a Comment