5 - Conceptualizing the Ocean: Insularity, Separation, and Islam

In February 1815, Mas Ngabehi Ronggasasmita, a poet from the central Javanese court of Surakarta, found himself stranded in Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra. Due to a poorly timed illness, he had missed the favorable monsoon winds that had transported travelers bound for this year’s hajj to the Middle East. Ronggasasmita’s fate was not an exception. The literary writers of Islamic Java were often acutely aware not only of their homeland’s insularity, but also of the physical distance that separated them from the Middle East and especially Mecca, the historical and ritual heartland of Islam. In this paper, I examine narrative moments in Javanese and Malay literature where literary figures become aware of their insularity and the ocean as either a separator or a facilitator of connections between themselves and the Middle East. One such narrative is the Seh Malaya which tells the story of Sunan Kalijaga, who tries and fails to reach Mecca, but in his failure achieves a mystical realization that makes him realize that what he sought for in Mecca is already present inside him. By analyzing how writers portrayed their literary figures as they failed or succeeded in traversing the ocean, and imbuing these failures and successes with theological meaning, I ask what these moments can teach us about indigenous conceptualizations of insularity and separation, and how these conceptualizations shaped Islamic spiritualities in the Southeast Asian island world.