ABSTRACT
When Islamic prayer entered Java, it was subject to Javanese influence. The Javanese are noted for the ease with which they adapt and incorporate foreign beliefs and practices from outside the archipelago. It is not the final phase of consolidation of Islamisation, the late twentieth century, but rather the ebb and flow of Javanisation of worship between sembah and salat from the sixteenth down till the second half of the nineteenth century. The Kidung Candhini, early forerunner of the major 1814 Kadipaten Centhini, reflects an indigenous Javanese Islamic world. At opposite ends of the spectrum one finds Javanese agama luri with its ‘peasant’ cosmic pantheism and radical monism of the Indian non-dualistic sort. On a literary level and in everyday life the Javanese continue to turn towards corporeal ascetical practices to control the physical world around them.
