J. Avé Indonesia, Insulinde and Nusantara; Dotting the Is and Crossing the T

J. Avé Indonesia, Insulinde and Nusantara; Dotting the is and crossing the t

In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 145 (1989), no: 2/3, Leiden, 220-234

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'INDONESIA', 'INSULINDE' AND 'NUSANTARA': DOTTING THE /$ AND CROSSING THE T*

To the memory of Professor Akira Nagazumi, a passionate and devoted observer of things Indonesian.

It was only recently that I came across G.C. Molewijk's article entitled 'Oude en nieuwe naamgeving van de Oostindische Archipel'. It was first published in Jambatan in 1987, and subsequently reprinted, with minor changes, in the fortnightly publication Moesson in 1988. It is this last version which I happened to read first. In the article the author, who is a historian, discusses a number of terms and geographical names which have a bearing on the Indies, amongst others the names 'Indonesia' (Indonesie), 'Insulinde' and 'Nusantara'. Ac- tually, there has been much already written on the word 'Indonesia' in particular, but as these writings have not been used or cited by Molewijk, I shall attempt to bridge these gaps in my examination of the origins and chequered histories of the three terms referred to above. As the subtitle of my paper suggests, I shall merely present a more comprehensive and accurate account of these terms.

Indonesia As Molewijk has stated, the term 'Indonesia' was first coined by G.W. Earl and J.R. Logan in 1850, in two long articles in the ethnological Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia. The inventors of the term were at that time - the second half of the nineteenth century - well-known scholars, and as such were frequently cited by their contemporaries. Thus the ethnological handbook by H. Blink, vol. 1, 1905, states that 'Door Logan en Hamy [1877] is de naam Indonesiers ingevoerd' (The term 'Indonesians' was introduced by Logan and Hamy [1877]). Twenty years later, the physical anthropologist J.P. Kleiweg de Zwaan, writing on the origin of the name 'Indonesia', also mentions Logan as its inventor.

* 1 wish to thank first and foremost my friend and colleague, Victor T. King, for his English translation of this article, Harry A. Poeze for his comments on the manuscript, and Marek Ave for checking documentary references.

JAN B. AVE, a Borneo specialist and former curator of the S.E. Asian collection at the Leiden Museum of Ethnography, studied at Leiden and is the co-author of West-Kalimantan; A bibliography, 1983, and People of the weeping forest; Tradition and change in Borneo, 1986. He may be reached at Commeyras, 34360 Prades-sur-Vernazobre, France.

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In 1927 two articles were published on the origin of 'Indonesia'. The first, by J. Kreemer, entitled 'Waar komt de naam "Indonesie" vandaan?', appeared in the Koloniaal Weekblad. The second one, by an anonymous author, was published in Indonesia Merdeka, the journal of the 'Perhim- poenan Indonesia', the association of Indonesians in the Netherlands. It was entitled 'lets over de naam "Indonesia"'. Both these authors point to Logan as the originator of the term. In the following year, M. Hatta, later to become Vice-President of the Republic, published two articles on the name1 in the Dutch political journal De Socialist. Also in 1928, C. van Vollenhoven discussed the terms 'Indonesie' and 'Indonesiers' in his De Ontdekking van het Adatrecht, yet again mentioning Logan as the source. Three years later, G. Nijpels, chief editor of Delndische Gids, published two articles on Tndonesier', providing accurate documentation on the origin and the political implications of the term. Later on, in 1941, an article by H.Th. Fischer entitled 'Indonesie en Indonesiers' appeared in the magazine Cultured Indie. This author, too, refers to J. R. Logan as the first person to have used the term. Since the Second World War several other articles which concern them- selves with the term 'Indonesia' have been published. This name aroused the interest of among others a Chinese scholar, Lin Hui-hsiang, as can be seen from his Chinese-language article published in the Journal of the South Seas Society in March 1947. In the United States, the social scientist J.H. van der Kroef contributed to the explanation and use of the term 'Indonesia' in the Journal of 'the American Oriental Society (1951). In 1963, J.B. Ave provided some data on the same subject in an Indonesian- language article in the cultural weekly Bintang Timur Minggu. Ten years later, Russell Jones gave a detailed account of how the term came into being in the French journal Archipel (1973). In his view, it was Earl who was the progenitor of the name. Ave subsequently filled in some gaps in Jones' discussion in Archipel in 1976. Also in 1973, an outstanding paper by the Japanese scholar Akira Nagazumi on the political dimensions of the term 'Indonesia' appeared in the Hongkong publication Asian Profile. This is a subject in itself, and Nagazumi elaborated on it in a subsequent lucid analysis of the political connotations and associations of the term 'Indonesia' which was published in the journal Indonesia Circle (1978) of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.2 Some ten years further on, we come to Molewijk's

Hatta's 'Verspreide Geschriften' contain a third article on the subject, published in Indone- sia Merdeka in 1929, wich was attributed to Hatta, but has not been indicated under Hatta in my own bibliography. Instead, to be on the safe side, I have placed it under 'Anonymous'. Denys Lombard has published an obituary of this eminent Japanese Indonesianist, who died in 1987, in Archipel (35, 1988, pp. 4-5) and Peter Carey in Bijdragen tot de Tad-, Land- en Volkenkunde (144-II/HI, 1988, pp. 201-9).

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article, which has prompted the present response. It should be noted that the majority of the authors writing on the subject are either cultural and physical anthropologists or sociologists. The only exceptions are such writers as Jones, a linguist, at least one of the Indone- sian authors, the Chinese scholar Lin, and, of course, Molewijk. Tracing the origin of a name is an interesting exercise in itself, especially if it has come to play such an important role in political history as undoubtedly the term 'Indonesia' has. But what really matters is the original meaning of the term, how it has evolved since, and in what ways it is used now. It is here that I found a hiatus in Molewijk's paper. I shall try to fill in this gap in my present article. Logan stated clearly what he meant by 'Indonesia' when he described it as a 'purely geographical term ..., which is merely a shorter synonym for the Indian Islands or the Indian Archipelago' (Logan 1850:254n). Logan's 'Indian Archipelago', however, also comprised the Philippines, but it excluded New Guinea, which he considered to form part of Mela- nesia (Logan 1850:277n, 278n). The term certainly did not pass unnoticed in scholarly circles in the 34 years which elapsed between the appearance of Logan's paper and the publication of Adolf Bastian's book in 1884, which uses the term 'Indone- sien' in the title; Bastian, in fact, is often incorrectly referred to as the originator of the term. So the well-known French physical anthropologist E.T. Hamy adopted the name in a treatise entitled 'Les Alfourous de Gilolo' (1877), though assigning to it a quite different meaning from the original. In 1880 a British anthropologist, A.H. Keane, used the term in the specific physical anthropological sense which he had taken from Hamy. In the same year an English linguist, N.B. Dennys, defined the geographical limits of Logan's 'Indonesia' (Dennys 1880:69). This definition seems to have been accepted by other linguists. W.E. Maxwell mentions 'the islands of Indonesia' in the Introduction to his Manual of the Malay Language (1882). In 1884, then, the first part of a five-volume work written by the German ethnologist Bastian and entitled Indonesien oder die Inseln des Malayischen Archipel appeared. Although Bastian himself did not give any indication as to the origin of the term, it is beyond doubt, as Jones has clearly shown, that he had taken the term directly from Logan (Jones 1973:104-5). What Bastian meant by 'Indonesien' in his title is not very clear, because the name does not occur again, at least not in the text of the first volume.3 However, the table of contents for the complete work lists the Moluccas, Timor and surrounding islands, Sumatra, Borneo and Celebes, and Java. 'Indonesien' thus would seem to be a geographical designation, which more or less corresponds with the term as defined by Logan. Though we know that, after Logan, Bastian was not the first author to have used the

According to Jones 1973, the term does occur in two places in vol. 3, 'Sumatra und Nachbarschaft' (1886).

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 11:55:31AM via free access 'Indonesia', 'Insulinde'and'Nusantara' 223 term 'Indonesia', his adoption of this label had a much greater impact on the scholarly community. Bastian was, after all, a major authority in anthropology, the father of the 'Elementargedanken' (universal elemen- tary ideas) - an evolutionist theory which had many adherents at the time. Furthermore, in the Netherlands an equally prominent scholar took note of and subsequently adopted the term. This was G.A. Wilken, the founder of comparative Indonesian ethnology.4 Wilken was acquainted with the Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, in which Earl and Logan had first used the term; he had made reference to the Journal several times in his publications prior to 1884. But it was Bastian's use of the term 'Indonesien' which was decisive for Wilken, as we can see from a note in the first part of his 1884 article' Het animisme bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel', which reads: 'While this article was being printed we received the recently published work by Bastian, "Indonesien oder die Inseln des Malayischen Archipel'" (Wilken 1884:1000n). In his next article, 'De besnijdenis bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel', published in 1885, Wilken was already using the term 'Indonesia'. Along with Wilken, H. Kern, the pioneer of comparative Austronesian linguistics, also adopted the term in an article 'De betrekkingen tussen Achter-Indie en Indonesie, published in 1885. Both Wilken and Kern continued to use the name 'Indonesie' in their subsequent books and articles. A significant detail, which presumably has a bearing on this use, is that Wilken and Kern were friends and colleagues; both were professors at the same university - Leiden - and were prominent scholars in their respective disciplines. Furthermore, both had been born in the then Neth- erlands Indies: Wilken in Tomohon, in Minahasa, North Sulawesi, and Kern in Poerworedjo, Central Java. These two leading figures in the field of Insular Southeast Asian ethnology and Austronesian linguistics respectively introduced the terms 'Indonesie' and Tndonesiers' into the Netherlands scholarly community. Wilken in particular also defined the terms.5 By 'Indonesie' he meant the Indian archipelago including North and Northwest Borneo, East Timor and West New Guinea. This latter region was added because of its important historical relations with the archipelago and the resultant significant mutual cultural influences between New Guinea and the islands to the

I am using 'ethnology' (Dutch etnologie, volkenkunde) and the later more common designation 'cultural anthropology' (culturele antropologie) to refer to one and the same disci- pline. As was already correctly noted by the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant of 7-9-1931, which wrote: 'Also our ethnologist Wilken used the term (already forty years ago)' (cited by Nijpels, 1931b).

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west, especially the Moluccas.6 The term 'Indonesiers' had greater scope for Wilken. It also covered populations speaking related languages and possessing certain cultural characteristics in common. It therefore included not only the peoples of the East Indian archipelago, but also those of the Philippines, a number of ethnic groups in Madagascar and mainland Southeast Asia, and a few aboriginal population groups on the island of Taiwan. As such, the terms have become generally accepted by the Dutch scholarly community of antropologists, linguists and customary law ex- perts specialized on the Indies, such as Brandes, Snouck Hurgronje, Van Vollenhoven and Nieuwenhuis at Leiden, Stutterheim in the Netherlands Indies itself, and Schmeltz, Pleyte and Loeber Jr. in the Dutch museum world. Even well after the end of World War II, for example in the 1970s, the terms were still found in use in Wilken's sense in Dutch and Central European ethnographical museums, as well as in German ethnological literature. It must be noted that these terms rightly reflected an ethnological (anthropological) concept as well as a concrete reality. They clearly drew attention to the existence of a fundamental unity among several related peoples in Southeast Asia and Madagascar. There are indeed peoples who share an Indonesian culture, and who speak languages which belong to one great linguistic family. What is more, the geographical designation 'Indo- nesia' as used for the East Indian archipelago, where the majority of the 'Indonesians' (in the ethnological sense of the word) live and have come to possess a certain unity as a consequence of commonly shared historical experiences, is equally to the point.7 It is hardly surprising, then, that the terms were readily accepted by students of linguistics and anthropology. However, a major role in the spread and popularization of the terms 'Indonesia' and 'Indonesians' was played by the so-called 'Indologen': those students who were trained to become Indisch Bestuursambtenaar (Indian Civil Servants). Their training was concentrated at the University of Lei-

Wilken began his career on the island of Buru as a local official responsible to the Resident of Ambon, who later put him in charge of the Buru division, in 1869. He wrote his first scholarly contribution, 'Bijdrage tot de kennis der Alfoeren van het eiland Boeroe', in 1872; it was included in the thirty-third volume of Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genoot- schap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen in 1875. The frequent use of the terms 'Indonesia', 'Indonesier' and 'Indonesisch' is found in Wilken's lectures, published posthumously and edited by Pleyte (1893). The unity which Wilken had already noted and which led him to call the East Indian archipelago 'Indonesia' was again confirmed and empirically demonstrated by one of his successors at the University of Leiden, J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong, who in his inaugural address in 1935 defined the 'Malay archipelago' or 'Indonesia' as one 'field of ethnological study'.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 11:55:31AM via free access 'Indonesia', 'Insulinde'and'Nusantara' 225 den8, which was destined to put its mark on anything and everything connected with studies of the Indian archipelago for some half a century. So strong an influence did Leiden exercise that J.S. Furnivall, the author of one of the best comparative studies on colonial policy, wrote, 'Nether- lands-India has been stamped indelibly with the mighty influence of Leiden'.? In the meantime, more and more native students came from the East Indian archipelago to study at Leiden State University. Among them the movement for independence appeared and developed, manifesting itself in modern political forms. These students became acquainted with the current ethnological term 'Indonesia', a name which came closest in meaning and association to their ideals of independence: it encapsulated the concept of a people with common cultural roots, related languages and shared historical experiences. It is hardly surprising that they embraced the name 'Indonesia' as the very term to designate their country and their people. Thus, the political concept of 'Indonesia' came into being. The formal political use of the name can be traced to an event in November 1917, which culminated in the formation of an association of students of Indonesian studies in 1918. Towards the end of 1917 the Indologenbond at Leiden accepted a resolution for the foundation of an Indonesisch Verbond van Studeerenden (Indonesian Student Union), a federation of organizations of students studying one or more aspects of the Netherlands Indies (for the detailed history of this Verbond see Poeze et al. 1986). As I have noted above, the term was now current among Tndologen' and other students of the Indies, at least at Leiden University. The Indonesian members of the Indische Vereeniging, one of the member organizations of the Union, interpreted the terms 'Indonesie' and 'Indonesiers' in their contemporary political meaning, i.e., as a name for the territory of the then 'Nederlandsch Oost-Indie' and for the inhabitants of that territory respectively, already in the first volume of the new Hindia Poetra.10

8 The training course for administrative officers in the colonial servcice was begun at the Royal Academy in Delft in 1842. At the closure of the academy in 1864, it was converted into a municipal training-college for East Indian officers, which continued in existence until 1900. From 1864 to 1876 there was a state institution of Indies linguistics, geography and ethnology education (Rijksinstelling van Onderwijs in Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde) in Leiden. This educational institution became a municipal establishment in 1877. It was reorganized in 1881, when Wilken was appointed as Reader in Netherlands Indies Geography and Ethnology. The training was attached to the State University of Leiden in 1892; meanwhile Wilken had been appointed to a Chair there in 1885. From 1902 on, the training of Indian civil servants (Indology) was concentrated wholly at Leiden. In 1925 a second Indology training institution was established, at the University of Utrecht, as a conservative counterweight to the liberal school of Leiden. 9 This reference was taken from Ellen 1976. This article and that by Nagazumi, and the recently published book by Poeze et al. (1986), are essential for a proper understanding of the way in which the shaping of Netherlands East Indies colonial policy developed in the Netherlands, and of the various factors which played a role in this. 10 Hindia Poetra was initially the paper of the Indische Vereeniging, and later, in 1918, became the organ of the Indonesisch Verbond van Studeerenden. See also Poeze et al. 1986.

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Apart from the Verbond and Hindia Poetra, there was, in the years 1918 and 1919, an Indonesisch Persbureau (Indonesian Press Agency) in The Hague, which was run by Suwardi Surjaningrat, one of the three exiled leaders of the Indische Partij. This agency monthly published political and cultural leaflets, Indische Monografieen (Poezeeta.11986:138). Surjaning- rat, an enthusiastic advocate of the name 'Indonesie' at the time, was also editor of Hindia Poetra until 1919. 'Indonesia' in its new meaning now spread hand in hand with certain political developments. In the Nether- lands the Indische Vereeniging subsequently changed its name into Indo- nesische Vereeniging in 1922, then in 1924 to become Perhimpoenan Indonesia, while its journal, Hindia Poetra, was renamed Indonesia Mer- deka already in 1923. Interestingly, there also appear to have been a number of Dutch advo- cates of the new political term in the Indies itself. During the discussions in the (Indische) Volksraad (People's Council) on the government's pro- posals of March 1921 for a new Constitution, an amendment was moved by Van Hinloopen Labberton, Cramer and Vreede to change the term 'Nederlandsch-Indie' in the Constitution into 'Indonesia' (11 April 1921). The proposal was rejected with 5 votes in favour and 18 against (Hande- lingen Volksraad 1921, Onderwerp 2, stuk 3). During the discussions on the constitutional reforms in the Netherlands Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal (Lower House) in November 1921, an amendment of the same kind was proposed by Van Ravesteijn and Wijnkoop, members of the Netherlands Communist Party, which reads: 'Het Rijk der Nederlanden omvat het grondgebied in Europa en dat van Indonesie, Suriname en Curacao' (The Netherlands State comprises the territory in Europe and that of Indonesia, Surinam and Curacao). The proposed amendment was rejected by 80 votes against and 2 (Van Rave- steijn and Wijnkoop) in favour (Handeling der Staten-Generaal 1921-22, B 11:266-80). And yet the term found several supporters among the academic community. In May 1922 there appeared a 'Proeve van eene Staatsregeling voor Nederlandsch-Indie" by Oppenheim which proposed the formal introduction of the name Tndonesier'. This was rejected by the government (Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indie V, 1927:216). In the Netherlands Indies itself the Communist union Perserikatan Komunis India, which was established in 1920, changed its name to Partij Komunis Indonesia on 20 May 1924. On 11 July 1924, Dr. Soetomo set up the Indonesische Studieclub in Soerabaja. In 1925 Tan Malaka's book- let Naar de 'Republiek-Indonesia \ the title of which for the first time clearly indicated the political target of the Indonesian nationalists, appeared (see Poeze 1976). In 1926 the Perhimpoenan Peladjar-Peladjar Indonesia (PPPI) came into being. In the same year the first Youth Congress, Kongres Pemoeda- Pemoeda Indonesia, was held. On 4 July 1927 Ir. Soekarno founded the

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Perserikatan (later Partai) Nasional Indonesia, and a year later the second Youth Congress took place, at which on 28 October 1928 the Sumpah Pemuda (Youth Pledge) was launched, which ran: 'Satu tanahair, satu bangsa, satu bahasa: "Indonesia"' (One homeland, one nation (people), one language: 'Indonesia')- This rallying-cry contributed significantly to the awakening of a national consciousness and to the concept of the unity of the various population groups in the archipelago. In August 1931 the Congress of Native Civil Servants deliberated on the proposal of the patih of Grissee (Gresik), Soetardjo, a member of the Volksraad, to request the government to replace the word 'Inlander' by 'Indonesier' in all its statutes. Some years later, in August 1939, M. H. Thamrin, Soetardjo and Soekawati moved a motion in the Volksraad itself which proposed the use of the terms 'Indonesia', 'Indonesier' and 'Indone- sisch' in place of 'Nederlandsch-Indie', 'Inlander' and 'Inlandsch', at least in official documents (Handelingen Volksraad, session for the year 1939- 1940). This proposal was rejected a year later, in August 1940, by the Netherlands government in exile in London. This ludicrous rejection at any rate was to play no further part in the proceedings. During the Japanese occupation of the colony the terms became common property, culminating in the famous wording of the Proclamation of Independence of 17 August 1945: 'Kami bangsa Indone- sia dengan ini menjatakan Kemerdekaan Indonesia' (With this we, the Indonesian people, declare the Independence of Indonesia).

Indonesiens, Insulinde I have provided an outline of the evolution of the term 'Indonesia'. How- ever, there are also some secondary points which must be re-examined. In Britain, the country of origin of the terms 'Indonesia' and 'Indonesians', these were not forgotten, and were again in use among anthropologists and natural historians in the first half of the twentieth century. The terms were employed in pretty much the same sense as originally intended by Logan. In the German ethnological literature we also come across these names more and more, after Bastian and after their adoption by Wilken, Kern and other Dutch Indies specialists. In France, however, the situation was different. There, the well-known physical anthropologist E. T. Hamy had already taken the term 'Indone- siens' from Logan in 1877; but Hamy used it to refer to a group with certain physical characteristics, existing in prehistoric times, and comprising an important element in the racial composition of present-day Southeast Asia. Vestiges of this 'Indonesian race' in its purest form could now be found among peoples living in isolated regions - such as the Dayaks in Borneo, the Bataks in Sumatra, the Igorot living in northern Luzon, the Philip- pines, the Orang Laut in the archipelago, and the Moi ('Montagnards') in mainland Southeast Asia. This physical anthropological definition of 'Indonesiens' was adopted

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 11:55:31AM via free access 228 Jan B. Ave and further elaborated by French archaeologists, prehistorians, physical anthropologists and geographers who studied 'Indochina'. These include, to name but a few, Deniker, Mansuy, Colani, Fromaget, Patte, Saurin, P. Rivet, Huard, Sion and £oedes." French specialists perceived five prehistoric 'races' (sometimes referred to as 'populations', at other times as 'elements') in the Southeastern part of Asia: Melanesians, Indonesians, Negritos, Australoids and Mongoloids. This different use of the term has obviously generated some problems; in the first place, for Dutch ethnologists and anthropologists. Kleiweg de Zwaan, himself a physical anthropologist, was one such. He suggested that the term 'Indonesians' be used for 'the native population of the Indian Archipelago, without assigning to the term any further anthropological meaning in order to denote some particular racial element or other'. For what the French preferred to call 'Indonesiens', he proposed the term 'Ur-', 'Pre-' or 'Proto-Malays'.12 But also the French ethnologists them- selves had to look for some sort of solution to this problem of nomenclature and definition. They could not very well use the term 'Indonesie' to refer to the East Indian archipelago, and, at the same time, deny the term 'Indonesiens' to the inhabitants of these islands. To avoid confusion, they came to use a different term altogether for the East Indies, that is, 'Insu- linde'. The word 'Insulinde' was the creation of Eduard Douwes Dekker (Mul- tatuli). He had used the name three times in his manuscript of 185913, and 'Insulinde' met with approval, particularly in literary circles. In 1878 Van Rijckevorsel gave his letters from the East the title Brieven uit Insulinde. In 1887 A. Forbes, the wife of the British naturalist and ethnologist H.O. Forbes, wrote a book entitled Insulinde: Experiences of a naturalist's wife in the eastern archipelago (cited in Ellen 1978). In 1889, Elisee Reclus, the prominent French geographer, introduced the term into the academic community. He used 'Insulinde' as an equivalent of the 'Indonesie' of Wilken and others (Reclus 1889:196). In the French scholarly world, then, the term 'Indonesiens' is used to refer to a prehistoric race in Southeast Asia and 'Insulinde' for the East Indian archipelago, while the inhabitants of that region are known there as 'Insulindiens'. One may still come across the effects of this usage in

1' J. Deniker is not a specialist on Southeast Asia. I have referred to him because he explicitly stated in 1900 that the term 'Indonesiens' as used in the sense of a specific racial element/ type originated from Hamy (Deniker 1900:507). 12 Kleiweg de Zwaan 1925:145-6, 150-1, where he says: 'It is clear that in this way the appellation "Indonesiers" must give rise to great confusion. It should therefore certainly be recommended that the name be dispensed with and replaced with Ur-Malays ('Oer- Maleiers') (Pre- or Proto-Malays).' 13 InMultatuli 1949:'About a constitution for the realm "Insulinde"...'(p. 27);'See, oh king, what is happening in your realm, in your beautiful realm of Insulinde!' (p. 179); '... the splendid realm of Insulinde, that winds itself around the equator like an emerald girdle!' (p. 239).

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France today. One finds books in which the French use occurs side by side with the earlier Dutch meaning and the present-day Indonesian use, with the term 'Insulinde' added - which is therefore quite unequivocal.14 In the Netherlands a weekly 'devoted to colonial affairs', which ran for three years (1896-1898), was called Insulinde. In 'Insulinde' itself an Indonesian periodical of that name, published in Padang, West Sumatra, appeared in 1901, and ran until 1905. From that year onwards Insulinde, a 'Netherlands journal for the native', appeared until 1908 (Kolff, Ban- doeng). The term was first used in a political sense in the Netherlands Indies in 1907, namely for an association of Dutch Eurasians and persons staying on (nowadays one would call them 'Indische Nederlanders' or Indies Dutch), which was established as a political reaction against the conservative Indische Bond. Its name was changed to Nationale Indische Partij in 1919, when its membership mainly comprised the supporters of the former Indische Partij, banned in 1913. In 1938, Insulinde was re-established as a political party by J.J.E. Teeuwen, though it was less successful than the former one. Moreover, in Semarang the first number of a journal called Insulinde was produced in 1910; it contained many political articles. Much later an internment camp called Insulinde camp was established for Indo- nesian exiles (1942 -1946) on the other side of the world, in Surinam; here, among others, E.F.E. Douwes Dekker (Setiabuddhi) was interned.15

Nusantara J.R. Logan was not very enthusiastic about the term nesos and its derivative nesias, but felt that 'the term has some claim... to be located in the region, for in the slightly different form of Nusa it is perhaps as ancient in the Indian Archipelago as in Greece' (Logan 1850:254n). Leaving aside the question of whether 'nusa' derives from the Greek nesos, or vice versa, or whether they developed side by side, the word in any case is an old one in the archipelago. In different parts of 'Indonesia', particularly in the eastern parts of the archipelago and in and around Java, one finds islands and villages with nusa as part of their name. So to the west of Ambon there is Nusa Laut; in the bay of Ende, Flores, is Nusa Ende; southeast of Bali, there is Nusa Penida; Nusa is also the name of a place and an island in the

14 For example, in the otherwise excellent book by P. Gourou (1953). 15 E.F.E. Douwes Dekker was the founder of the Indische Partij, on 25 December 1912, of which he comprised the leadership along with Suwardi Surjaningrat and Tjipto Mangun- kusomo. The party was banned in March 1913 and the three leaders were first exiled to Timor (Douwes Dekker), Bangka (S. Surjaningrat) and Banda (T. Mangunkusomo) in August-September, and later all three to the Netherlands. After the banning of the IP a large number of its members joined Insulinde, which was then pushed in a more revolutionary direction. After the return of Douwes Dekker in 1919, Insulinde changed its name to Nationale Indische Partij. It was represented in the Volksraad by Tjipto Mangunkusomo and J.J.E. Teeuwen (1918-1921). See Pringgodigdo 1960: 24-6, and Iwa Kusuma Suman- tri I: 16-22.

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Sangir-Talaud archipelago, north of Sulawesi; in Central Kalimantan there is a village called Nusa Kutau or Nusa Kota on the Samba river; on the south coast of East Java, to the south-west of Jember, is Nusa Barung; and opposite Cilacap, on the south coast of Central Java, one finds the well- known, or rather, notorious, Nusa Kambangan. Nusa also appears in the compound 'Nusantara', which, as far as we are able to trace, was already in use at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The name is found on copper inscriptions dated 1305, as well as in some Javanese manuscripts from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Poer- batjaraka 1936). Its most frequently mentioned, and therefore best- known, occurrence is, however, in the Pararaton passage in which Gajah Mada, chief minister of Majapahit, takes a solemn oath not to enjoy palapa until Nusantara has been subjugated. There has been much debate about the precise meanings of the individ- ual words of this vow. The articles by C.C. Berg, one of the greatest pre- war scholars of Indonesian languages, have excited the most comment. According to Berg's interpretation, Gajah Mada vowed to abstain from participation in certain Tantric rites, in which the participant experiences the pleasures of sexual intercourse with the 'yogini', as long as Nusantara remained unconquered; the words amukti palapa in the vow would then refer to the enjoyment of the 'circle rites'. Nusantara, furthermore, would refer to 'the other islands' (Berg 1950-51 and more particularly 1951-2). This, however, did not square with the view of Sylvain Levi, who twenty years earlier had written an interesting but little-cited article entitled 'Kouen Louen et Dvipantara'. He had argued that 'nusantara' might be a partial Javanization of the older term 'dvipantara', in which 'dvipa' was replaced by the Javanese word 'nusa' (island). Therefore 'Nusantara' al- legedly meant 'archipelago', and more specifically the 'Archipelago par excellence'(Levi 1931:626). It must be said that this latter meaning more closely corresponds with the current use of the term by present-day Indonesians. No speaker of Javanese and Indonesian would use the word 'nusantara' to denote 'the other islands'. 'Nusantara' has been understood and used to refer to the whole, that is, the mosaic of 'nusas' which constitutes an archipelago, specifically the Indonesian archipelago. Berg's interpretation, however, appears to have been generally accepted by the Leiden linguistic school. One could of course reproach present-day Javanese and other Indonesians for using the term unscientifically. I am not a linguist and I wish to keep away from linguistic debates about interpretations of Old Javanese words. But one wonders whether the linguists might not pay more attention to the spirit and every-day usage of ordinary people, rather than immerse them- selves in speculative considerations about a term which was apparently created by court writers in the Javanese middle ages - people with a knowledge of Sanskrit and of Sanskrit writings, who could therefore create Sanskrit-Javanese compounds with specific meanings.

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There is a further point to make about the other part of Gajah Mada's oath, namely his denial of the pleasures of palapa. Apparently this can be interpreted much more straightforwardly. The word is, in fact, still used today in some parts of East Java, where it means 'spices'. This explanation was also given by President Soekarno, himself of East Javanese origin, in one of his speeches.16 If one accepts this meaning, then Gajah Mada could have been vowing not to partake of any spices until Majapahit had re- gained the dominion of Nusantara. This would certainly be an oath which accords with the Javanese philosophical tradition; and I know of no Leiden linguist who has refuted President Soekarno's interpretation. In the 1920s the name 'Nusantara' again came into prominence. It was Suwardi Surjaningrat (who later changed his name to Ki Hadjar Dewan- tara), the founder of the Taman Siswa schools, who had revived the word as found in Old Javanese manuscripts. In 1918, while in exile in the Netherlands, he had been a keen champion of the term 'Indonesie'; but after that he appears to have changed his mind. His aim was now the creation of the modern Indonesian person preserving his/her own national identity. It is fairly obvious that someone who places the preservation of this identity above all else will also become involved in the search for a term which more fittingly expresses this identity. And so Ki Hadjar De- wantara arrived at the term 'Nusantara', which was used in Old Javanese manuscripts. Soekarno, too, as leader of the Partai Nasional Indonesia, employed the term 'Nusantara' in some of his speeches. But that is as far as it went, at least in the political sphere. The term found little general favour. Perhaps it was too poetic, and not as clearly defined and concrete as the name 'Indonesia'; and perhaps the leaders of the Islamic parties were not so happy with the Sanskrit 'antara' and the Sanskritic character of the compound word. 'Nusantara' was more frequently used in colourful descriptions of the Indonesian archipelago, and once even as the title for a history book on Indonesia.17 It appears to be popular, too, as a name for ethnographic museums. Thus Andrzej Wawrzyniak, former cultural attache at the Polish Embassy in Jakarta, established an ethnographic museum in Warsaw in 1973 which he called 'Nusantara'. With the expansion of the museum collection, the name was changed in 1976 to 'Asia and Pacific Museum'.18 A year later the Indonesian ethnographic museum in Delft adopted this name; it is now called Ethnographic Museum Nusantara. This, then, is the end of my account. The term 'Indonesia' - denoting the islands of India - came into being at a time when Europeans had

161 have not been able to trace this speech, although I myself was present at its delivery. 17 According to the author of this book, B.H.M. Vlekke, he gave it the name 'Nusantara' because 'at the time the name "Indonesia" was still anathema' (preface to the Dutch edition, 1947). Apparently it had caused him some worries. 18 A. Wawrzyniak, at present still director of the Asia and Pacific Museum, wrote to me that one of the museum galleries, also in the Polish capital, is in fact still named 'Nusantara'.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 11:55:31AM via free access 232 Jan B. Ave become rather more knowledgeable about India and China. The peoples and cultures of Southeast Asia, as a result of a lack of knowledge about that region, were considered by Europeans as offshoots of the Indian and Chinese races and civilizations. Hence the referents 'Further India', 'Indo- china', and so on, were used for the Southeast Asian region. These desig- nations were unfortunate ones. Though these territories and peoples had indeed been subject to influences from India and China in the distant past - or rather, had been involved in a mutual interchange of ideas and traits - Southeast Asia has in essence evolved largely independent cultures; in short, its various regions have developed their own identities. The name 'Indonesia' has fulfilled its function in the framework of the struggle for the political independence of the territory and peoples coloniz- ed by the Dutch. But will the term continue to be used as a designation for the archipelago? There is no doubt that, in Indonesia itself, the search for a new name will go on, and that this quest will intensify as the sense of Indonesian identity, self-respect and economic independence grows. In the 1950s the then Minister of Education and Culture, Moh. Yamin, renamed the lesser Sunda Islands 'Nusa Tenggara' (Southeastern Islands), which designation was enthusiastically adopted by the Indonesians. 'Nusa' as a basis for a name for the archipelago as a whole would be logical and appropriate. A combination with another common and ancient Indonesian word, ray a, into 'Nusaraya' would express exactly what the archipelago is: a totality of nusas, an entity in itself. This would also be in harmony with the motto of the Republic of Indonesia, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika. Naturally there are other names and combinations of names which one could think up, but these should at least be proper Indonesian terms, and be generally comprehensible and easily pronounceable for the people. Thus a new episode would be ushered in in the age-long history of the peoples of the archipelago, my tanah air.

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