GWJ Drewes, AH Johns, the Gift Addressed to the Spirit of The

Book Reviews - G.W.J. Drewes, A.H. Johns, The gift addressed to the spirit of the prophet. Oriental Monograph Series No. 1. Centre of Oriental Studies. The Australian National University, Canberra 1965. 224 pp. - , In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 122 (1966), no: 2, Leiden, 290-300 This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 03:50:30PM via free access BOEKBESPREKINGEN The Gift addressed to the Spirit of the Prophet by Dr. A. H. JOHNS, Professor of Indonesian Languages and Literatures. Oriental Monograph Series No. 1. Centre of Oriental Studies. The Australian National University, Canberra 1965. 224 pp. 8°. The title of this book is that of the Arabic text and its versified Javanese adaptation which are both published here together with an English translation. The Arabic text has been prepared by Dr P. Voorhoeve from the manuscripts of the work and the commentaries on it preserved in the Oriental Department of the University library at Leiden. The Javanese text is based on two MSS., British Museum Add 12305 and Cod. or. 5594 Leiden. The author of the Arabic work was an Indian Muslim, Muhammad ibn Fadlallah al-Burhanpürï, who died in 1620. As to the age of the Javanese adaptation the conclusion arrived at by Professor Johns is that the nucleus of the text was in existence in the second half of the 18th century, although the original work must have been known in Java at least one hundred year earlier. I am inclined to disagree with Professor Johns' opinion that the Javanese poet did his work in Tegal arurn at the behest of the Javanese governor of that region. This is not what he says in the opening strophes. According to his own words the Javanese adaptation of the Tuhfa (the Gift) was made by order of the "Prince who resides at Pakungwati" (str. 5). Now Pakungwati is another name for the town of Cherbon, so that his royal principal was one of the Sultans of this petty kingdom. This does not go counter to what precedes in the same strophe, to wit that the author began to compose his didactic poem when staying at the martapura (=: necropolis), obviously the well-known cemetery, at Tegal arum in the neighbourhood of Tegal, where Mang- kurat I of Mataram lies buried. Or, perhaps, at Pasaréan (= grave; cemetery), the hamlet in close vicinity of this cemetery.1 Professor Johns' translation of martapura by 'coastal town' and his supposition that this word is a pseudonym for the 'coastal town of Tegal arum' are equally untenable. Tegal arum is the name of an elevation of the ground (siti muntuk), a hill near Tegal, not of the town itself (vide Babad Tanah Djawi ed. Olthof p. 171), and though 1 This hamlet is also mentioned in the beginning of the Djaka Saléwah, MS. Ned. Bijbelgenootschap no. 152 as the place where the copy of this story was made. (Vide: Juynboll, Suppl. Cat. Jav. Hss. Leiden II: 80; Poerbatja- raka, Voorhoeve and Hooykaas, Indonesische Handschriften, p. 96.) Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 03:50:30PM via free access BOEKBESPREKINGEN. 291 marta is a poetic word for water (deriving from Skr. amrta, nectar), there is also another word marta which means 'dead' (Skr. mrta). It is difficult to see what else but cemetery could be meant in the given context: martapura ing Tegal arum enggèné, the martapura at Tegal arum. Nor is it improbable that a prince of Cherbon ordered this adaptation to be made. Cherbon was an important religious centre of the Pasisir and in many respects may be considered a link between Sumatran and Javanese Islam. It is quite possible that in Javanese religious circles in Western Java the need was feit to possess an easily accessible version of the work of Muhammad b. Fadlallah, so well-known in North Sumatra, and also that a Sultan of Cherbon charged a Javanese religious scholar with the task of providing such a version. The editor is of the opinion that the Arabic Tuhfa "represents an attempt on the part of the orthodox Sufi tradition to restrain the extremist tendencies of certain groups of mystics in India, and else- where, and ensure the grasp and practice of the essential elements of Islam" (p. 5). It seems a fair question to ask what exactly is meant by "the orthodox Sufi tradition", which is represented here as some kind of active Corporation; similarly one would be glad to hear more about these extremist groups our author is supposed to combat, since the text contains no specific reference to thetn. And secondly, on examining the contents of the Tuhfa one cannot fail to observe that, apart from a number of exhortations to keep to the Law, there is very little of the essential elements of Islam in this tract. Therefore, I cannot share the editor's conviction that the author was prompted by the desire to combat extremist tendencies. His book is a short treatise on Sufi ontology, completely in the vein of thinking of Ibn al-'Arabï and the author of the Insan al-k&mil, and one gets the impression that the first and foremost incentive for composing it was the author's desire to lay claim to a recognized place for this ontological doctrine within the body Islamic. The doctrine was not modified but by stressing the need for keeping within the bounds of the Law the author apparently aimed at making it acceptable {muwajiqa; cf. the title of his own commentary on the text) to people of the orthodox persuasion. So for instance we are told that the direct vision of God in creation is the prerogative of those ahl al-haqïqa who have attained the third stage of the mystic's progress without swerving from the Law and the Path. But this vision is explained in the terminology and spirit of Ibn al-'Arabï and 'Abd al-Karim al-Jïlï, both of them exponents of Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 03:50:30PM via free access 292 BOEKBESPREKINGEN. extremist conceptions: God is the substance or the substrate of the Universe, or, in the words of our text (§ 17): "From the standpoint of being all existents are God, but from that of determination are other than He. The otherness is relative, for from the standpoint of reality all is God". The crucial point of this doctrine is the relationship between the (pre-existent) a'ySn thabita or Archetypal Ideas and their embodiment, the a'ySn kharija or External Essences, because the createdness and multiplicity of the latter would seem to imply the createdness of the a'yOn thabita, or at least plurality in God, should their createdness have been convincingly explained away. The accusation of detracting from God's unity is obviated by the assertion that in contradistinction to the Exterior Essences which are distinct entities the Archetypal Ideas are general concepts existing in God's knowledge and as such without any exterior existence. Further the reasoning is this: that God's knowledge being one of His eternal attributes and knowledge without known being absurd, they partake in the priority {qidam) of these attributes, though logically they are originated (muhdath, Jav. anjar) as deriving from God's Being, murakkab 'ala wujüd al-Haqq, as the Insan al-Kdmil says. In this work the paragraph on qidam is partly devoted to this question, the starting-point being an explanation of the twofold meaning of muhdath: 1°. called into being by an agent; 2°. logically posterior. Therefore, Professor Zoetmulder (thesis p. 123) was quite right when he suggested tentatively that the Javanese word anjar beside createdness might also denote posterioritas logica; his translation of the pertinent strophe, however, is not in conformity with this suggestion. When one keeps in mind the twofold meaning of anjar the difficulty ostensibly offered by C. I str. 42, 43, where the author of the Insan al-KSmil is said to attribute hudüth to the a'yan thQbita, is no difficulty at all, for this is what he teaches, or at least part of his doctrine. He even finds fault with those spiritual guides who declare that the a'yan thSbita are merely qadïm, while ignoring the other aspect. In view of this Prof. Johns' note on C. I str. 41 (p. 115) is not to the point, because the Javanese translater drew on the Insan al-Kamil, not on Ash'arite dogmatics (though later commentators may have done so), while his note on strophe 43 is erroneous, because so far from being a misrepresentation of al-Jïlï's teaching this strophe contains exactly the point stressed by this author, though only as part of his doctrine. Therefore the original reading jekti in C. 1:43 1.2, which Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 03:50:30PM via free access BOEKBESPREKINGEN. 293 both MSS. and Zoetmulder's text have in commori, is correct, whereas the conjecture mohal has to be rejected as a misrepresentation of al-Jilï's teaching. As is well-known from Indonesian literature the issue of the a'yan thabita was time and again a favourite subject of theological contro- versies in Indonesia. No wonder the Javanese translater thought fit to expatiate on it, though it is only touched on in the Arabic original. On the translation of the Arabic text and the Arabic quotations in the notes I wish to offer the following remarks. Introduction. al-'dqiba li 'l-muttaqln (thus; neither mutakkïn nor muttakkïn as given in the Errata on p. 138 is correct) is a quotation from the Qur'an (7:128; 28: 83; cf.

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