Becoming a Bhairava in 19th-century Java

ABSTRACT This article is a preliminary exploration of suluk texts aiming at advancing P.J. Zoetmulder’s ideas with respect to the Indic origins of some characters and doctrinal elements in Javanese mystical texts. It will identify possible continuities between Indic and Islamic paradigms, thereby revisiting and rebalancing scholarly perspectives that have stressed the Sufi origins of Javanese Islam – or uncritically posited its inherent, yet nebulous, ‘Javaneseness’ – at the expense of its being situated in, and indebted to, a context of religious discourses and practices rooted in the Indic paradigm. Having introduced and evaluated Zoetmulder’s hypotheses about the figures of the santri birahi and Lĕbe Lonthang, it will analyse some passages of suluk that show indebtedness to ideas stemming from a pre-Islamic tantric fund. It will then link the figure of heterodox Muslim mystic Siti Jĕnar to other antinomian characters described in Javanese literature, and contextualise them against the background of the wider issue of the synthesis between Hindu-Buddhist (tantric) and Islamic (Sufi) identities in Java.