Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 156.4 million people, Java is the world's most populous island, home to approximately 56% of the Indonesian population. Indonesia's capital city, Jakarta, is on Java's northwestern coast.
Javanese is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by the Javanese people from the central and eastern parts of the island of Java, Indonesia. There are also pockets of Javanese speakers on the northern coast of western Java. It is the native language of more than 68 million people.
Old Javanese or Kawi is the oldest attested phase of the Javanese language. It was spoken in the eastern part of what is now Central Java and the whole of East Java, Indonesia. As a literary language, Kawi was used across Java and on the islands of Madura, Bali, and Lombok. It had a sizable vocabulary of Sanskrit loanwords but had not yet developed the formal krama language register, to be used with one's social superiors that is characteristic of modern Javanese.
The Javanese are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the central and eastern part of the Indonesian island of Java. With more than 100 million people, Javanese people are the largest ethnic group in both Indonesia and in Southeast Asia as a whole. Their native language is Javanese, it is the largest of the Austronesian languages in number of native speakers and also the largest regional language in Southeast Asia. As the largest ethnic group in the region, the Javanese have historically dominated the social, political, and cultural landscape of both Indonesia and Southeast Asia.
The kris or keris is a Javanese asymmetrical dagger with a distinctive blade-patterning achieved through alternating laminations of iron and nickelous iron (pamor). The kris is famous for its distinctive wavy blade, although many have straight blades as well, and is one of the weapons commonly used in the pencak silat martial art native to Indonesia. Kris have been produced in many regions of Indonesia for centuries, but nowhere—although the island of Bali comes close—is the kris so embedded in a mutually-connected whole of ritual prescriptions and acts, ceremonies, mythical backgrounds and epic poetry as in Central Java. Within Indonesia the kris is commonly associated with Javanese culture, although other ethnicities in it and surrounding regions are familiar with the weapon as part of their cultures, such as the Balinese, Sundanese, Malay, Madurese, Banjar, Buginese, and Makassar people. The kris itself is considered as a cultural symbol of Indonesia and also neighbouring countries like Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.
Wayang is a traditional form of puppet theatre play originating from the Indonesian island of Java. Wayang refers to the entire dramatic show. Sometimes the leather puppet itself is referred to as wayang. Performances of wayang puppet theatre are accompanied by a gamelan orchestra in Java, and by gender wayang in Bali. The dramatic stories depict mythologies, such as episodes from the Hindu epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, as well as local adaptations of cultural legends. Traditionally, a wayang is played out in a ritualized midnight-to-dawn show by a dalang, an artist and spiritual leader; people watch the show from both sides of the screen.
The Tenggerese people are a sub-ethnic group of Javanese in eastern Java who claim to be the descendants of the Majapahit princes. Their population of roughly 100,000 is centered in 30 villages in the isolated Tengger mountains in the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park in eastern Java. Majority of Tenggerese population profess Java Hinduism as their religion. The Tenggerese people are the only Javanese ethnic group who have remained Hindu since the Majapahit era after the Osing people which has been Islamized.
The Kawi script, or Old Javanese script, is a Brahmic script found primarily in Java and used across much of Maritime Southeast Asia between the 8th century and the 16th century. The script is an abugida, meaning that characters are read with an inherent vowel. Diacritics are used, either to suppress the vowel and represent a pure consonant, or to represent other vowels.
Priyayi was the Dutch-era class of the nobles of the robe, as opposed to royal nobility or ningrat (Javanese), in Java, Indonesia. Priyayi is a Javanese word originally denoting the descendants of the adipati or governors, the first of whom were appointed in the 17th century by the Sultan Agung of Mataram to administer the principalities he had conquered. Initially court officials in pre-colonial kingdoms, the priyayi moved into the colonial civil service and then on to administrators of the modern Indonesian Republic.
A kendang or gendang is a two-headed drum used by people from the Indonesian Archipelago. The kendang is one of the primary instruments used in the gamelan ensembles of Javanese, Sundanese, and Balinese music. It is also used in various Kulintang ensembles in Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines. It is constructed in a variety of ways by different ethnic groups. It is related to the Indian double-headed mridangam drum.
Indramayu Regency is a regency (kabupaten) of the West Java province of Indonesia. It covers an area of 2,099.42 km2 and had a population of 1,663,737 at the 2010 census and 1,834,434 at the 2020 census; the official estimate as of mid 2023 was 1,894,325. The town of Indramayu is its capital.
The Javanese calendar is the calendar of the Javanese people. It is used concurrently with two other calendars, the Gregorian calendar and the Islamic calendar. The Gregorian calendar is the official calendar of the Republic of Indonesia and civil society, while the Islamic calendar is used by Muslims and the Indonesian government for religious worship and deciding relevant Islamic holidays.
Sulukan normally refers to mood setting songs by a puppeteer (dhalang) in Javanese wayang ("puppet") performances in Indonesia. The term can also refer to the pathetan pieces played before and after gamelan pieces in a non-wayang context, and to mystical poetry relating to the doctrinal meaning of the term sulook.
Javanese literature is, generally speaking, literature from Java and, more specifically, from areas where Javanese is spoken. However, similar with other literary traditions, Javanese language works were and not necessarily produced only in Java, but also in Sunda, Madura, Bali, Lombok, Southern Sumatra and Suriname. This article only deals with Javanese written literature and not with oral literature and Javanese theatre such as wayang.
In linguistics, an honorific is a grammatical or morphosyntactic form that encodes the relative social status of the participants of the conversation. Distinct from honorific titles, linguistic honorifics convey formality FORM, social distance, politeness POL, humility HBL, deference, or respect through the choice of an alternate form such as an affix, clitic, grammatical case, change in person or number, or an entirely different lexical item. A key feature of an honorific system is that one can convey the same message in both honorific and familiar forms—i.e., it is possible to say something like "The soup is hot" in a way that confers honor or deference on one of the participants of the conversation.
Banyumasan, also known as the autoglottonymNgapak, is a dialect of Javanese spoken mainly in three areas of Java that is the Banyumasan, located in westernmost Central Java province and surrounding the Slamet mountain and Serayu River; a neighboring area inside West Java province; and northern region of Banten province. This area includes Cilacap, Kebumen, Banjarnegara, Purbalingga, Banyumas, Pemalang, Tegal, and Brebes regencies, together with independent cities within that region. Banyumasan is considered as one of the most conservative Javanese dialects, retaining the phonology and some aspects of Old Javanese grammar in the modern language.
Javanese numerals are a set of numerals traditionally used in the Javanese language, although Arabic numerals are also used. Javanese numerals follow the Hindu–Arabic numeral system commonly used in the rest of the world.
Banyumasan or Banyumasan Javanese is a collective term for a Javanese subgroup native to the Indonesia's westernmost part of Central Java. At approximately ±9 million people, they are concentrated in Banyumas, Cilacap, Kebumen, Purworejo, Purbalingga, and Banjarnegara regencies. The Banyumasan-Javanese speak Banyumasan dialect of Javanese language, a dialect which is often called "basa ngapak-ngapak".
Tenggerese is a language used by the Tenggerese people in the mountain region of the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park which includes Pasuruan Regency, Probolinggo Regency, Malang Regency and Lumajang Regency of East Java, Indonesia.
Kramanisation is a term introduced by Benedict Anderson to describe the process of language stratification in Indonesian. The Indonesian language, which believed as an egalitarian and democratic language, has been developing the division of registers into the low-level speech and high-level speech as found in Javanese. This kind of language leveling is said to be the effect of the Javanisation of the Indonesian language.
