BIODIVERSITAS ISSN: 1412-033X Volume 20, Number 11, November 2019 E-ISSN: 2085-4722 Pages: 3213-3222 DOI: 10.13057/biodiv/d201114 Ethnoornithology: Identification of bird names mentioned in Kakawin Rāmāyana, a 9th-century Javanese poem (Java, Indonesia) DEDE MULYANTO1, JOHAN ISKANDAR2, RIMBO GUNAWAN1, RUHYAT PARTASASMITA2,♥ 1Anthropology Graduate Programs, Faculty of Social and Political Science, Universitas Padjadjaran. Jl. Raya Bandung-Sumedang Km 21, Jatinangor, Sumedang 45363, West Java, Indonesia 2Department of Biology, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Padjadjaran. Jl. Raya Bandung-Sumedang Km 21, Jatinangor, Sumedang 45363, West Java, Indonesia. Tel.: +62-22-7796412 ext. 104, Fax.: +62-22-7794545. email:
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[email protected] Manuscript received: 12 September 2019. Revision accepted: 17 October 2019. Abstract. Mulyanto D, Iskandar J, Gunawan R, Partasasmita R. 2019. Ethnoornithology: Identification of bird names mentioned in Kakawin Rāmāyana, a 9th-century Javanese poem (Java, Indonesia). Biodiversitas 20: 3213-3222. Birds have played an important role in Javanese culture for a long time. For example, birds have been culturally used as sources of folk stories, myths, illustrated old manuscripts, paintings on relief walls of temples, and inspiration of writers to make poems. This article presents the results of an ethnoornithology study that tried to identify all bird names mentioned in Kakawin Rāmāyana (KR), an old Javanese poem, using a qualitative method, mainly interpreting KR text based on an ethnoornithological approach. The results showed that 84 bird names are mentioned in the Kakawin Rāmāyana, belonging to 26 families, and 17 orders. The birds mentioned in KR are predominantly residents, some are regular visitors or vagrant, and only a few are absent.