[Seminar] Kramat and the “Hindu-Buddhist” hauntings in the gravesite of Sunan Sendang

Readers may be interested in this seminar by Panggah Ardiyansyah happening on 15 February 2024 – it is available both online on Facebook (link below) or at the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden.

This lecture cultivates decoloniality in the field of Indonesian art history and archaeology by deconstructing the colonial and then nationalist categorisation opposing ‘classical’ Hindu-Buddhist and Islamic antiquities, and by reconstructing in turn the long history of the ancient Hindu-Buddhist materials across times and cultures in probing appropriations, transactions and reconfigurations.
It focuses on a transitional period between the 16th and 18th centuries, when pre-modern ‘Indonesian’ communities first embraced Islam. It does so by exploring the concept of kramat, often used in the Malay Islamic world to designate the gravesites of venerated figures. It examines kramat through a wider lens, as a locus of supernatural power where the mundane and the divine unite, thus applying not only to graves but also to other loci of power. Kramat is site-specific, with a strong connection to the landscape and not transferable or movable. One such site is considered in depth: Sendang Duwur in Lamongan, East Java, in which the grave of Sunan Sendang is located. Using kramat as an operative framework, the lecture puts forward alternative art historical examinations of Sendang Duwur beyond artistic assessment by looking closely at ideation and visualisation in and around sacred topography. Presumed to have been erected in the second half of the 16th century atop an ancient Hindu site, the Sendang Duwur mosque and its gravesite are shown to embody varied mechanisms operating the changing meanings and values of Hindu-Buddhist sites in the Islamicisation of Indonesia.

Source: (1) Seminar | Kramat and the “Hindu-Buddhist” hauntings in the gravesite of Sunan Sendang | Facebook