19 June 2019, Ballroom 1, 1330-1500 hours

Convener: Arsenio Nicolas
sennicolas@gmail.com

This session will highlight recent research work on the music archaeology of Southeast Asia. Papers may include on excavated sites with musical artefact, studies on mural paintings and bas reliefs with musical images, and relations with the music histories of Asia.

Music and the Performing Arts in Myanmar from the Pyu Period, 1st to 3rd Century CE

Khin Saw Nwe
Professor and Head, Yangon University of Distance Education
dr.khinsawnwe123@gmail.com

This paper deals with the historical evidence and archeological perspective on the music and the performing arts in Myanmar – mainly from the Pyu urban cities (1st century to 3rd century CE) like Beithano (Vishnu), Sriksetra (Thayekhittaya) and Hanlin. Some examples will be highlighted from the objects and artefacts excavated in these regions such as wall paintings inside the building and stupas, stone inscriptions, ink inscriptions on stucco, palm-leaf inscriptions, and literary evidences from epics, poems and verses. Historical evidence shows that the culture of a country and its people reflect the conditions of the era: the way people wear the dress: such fine arts as painting, sculpture, crafts and performing arts like singing, music and dancing, literature, beliefs and thought, religion and ideology. The Republic of the Union of Myanmar is a country which is in possession of a firm cultural grounding. While sharing common boundaries which its neighboring countries, Myanmar has been standing on its own, in its own style, with its own fine arts, literature and culture.

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Ritual background of the frog decorations on ancient bronze drums in Indonesia

Gretel Schwörer-Kohl
Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
gretel.schwoerer@musikwiss.uni-halle.de

Bronze drums in the Hornbostel/Sachs system (1914) are classified as flat kettlegongs (111.241.1). However, because of their form and the way they are beaten, they are not called gongs but drums. Besides many local names are described as frog-, rain-, thunder-, or Dong Son-drum (according to the famous excavation site in Vietnam). The earliest piece so far has been found in 1975 in Yunnan in Wanjieba (diameter 38 cm) and dated ca. 700 BCE. The bronze drums spread from Southern China to Mainland Southeast Asia and through the maritime trade route farther on to the islands of Indonesia. Many of these drums show frogs on the tympanum in the four cardinal directions. For many years I have been puzzled by these frogs. Several of the Heger III drums [classification of 165 drums into 4 types by Franz Heger] Leipzig, 1902) show even 3 frogs sitting on top of each other, whereas the earliest drums have no frogs.

This paper will analyze when the first frogs appeared on bronze drums and in which areas. It will also suggest a possible explanation for the frog decoration found during my field work among the Zhuang people in the provinces of Guizhou and Guangxi during spring time in 2012, 2013, and 2014. In the upper valley of the Hongshui He, the bronze drums are beaten during a ritual for a frog mother goddess of fertility, with the onomatopoetic name Ma GUAE. Often we find sets of 4 bronze drums accompanying the ritual with specific percussion patterns. There also festivities with up to 50 frog drums.

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Shell-trumpets and other types of wind instruments in pre-Islamic Java: textual, visual, and material evidence

Jiri Jakl
jiri.jakl@uni-heidelberg.de

In my contribution I will discuss relatively abundant evidence pertaining to the shell-trumpet and other types of wind instruments documented from Java before 1500 CE. A little studied topic, trumpets had a number of interesting uses in pre-Islamic Java, many of them pertaining to ritual, and the shell-trumpet is still used in Hindu Bali. Several types of trumpets figure prominently in Old Javanese court poetry, where they are depicted in the context of state pomp, temple ritual and funeral ritual, such as at the śrādha posthumous feast, and in the martial signalling. Old and Middle Javanese terminology of trumpets and other wind instruments is ridden with problems, and in the first part of my contribution I will discuss in detail eight terms used for trumpets, trying to link these names with the surviving artefacts and visual evidence. No doubt, the most well-known literary imagery associated with trumpets pertains to the shell-trumpet (śaṅka), a prominent Vaiśnava symbol that has been traditionally associated with Kṛṣṇa. Among the several actual specimens of this type of trumpet that have survived from pre-Islamic Java, one rare inscribed shell-trumpet will be analysed in more detail. In the second part of my contribution, I will discuss an enigmatic Old Javanese term śangkhapāņi, demonstrating that it denoted a class of ritual specialists engaged in war-rituals.

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Ancient Javanese Musical Instruments Of Majapahit Period (13th – 16th Century Ce) From The Archaeological Sources

Timbul Haryono
Gajah Mada University, Jogyakarta
timbulharyono@yahoo.com

FThe Majapahit period has yielded many archaeological records on musical instruments in inscriptions, literary works and temple reliefs. The names of the musical instruments mentioned in written records show that these are local names in Javanese. The inscription of Tuhañjaru (1323 AD) mentions curing, kangsi, gênding as musical instruments. The famous 14th century kakawin Nāgarakertāgama noted other musical instruments: mrdangga, padaha, trutika, tarayan, and also kamanak. Curing (cymbal) is mentioned in literary works such as Arjunawiwāha, Krêsnayana, Sumanasāntaka, Hariwangsa, Smaradahana, Kuñjarakarna; rojeh (another type of cymbal) mentioned in Sumanasāntaka, Krêsnayana, Siwaratrikalpa and Kidung Harsawijaya. The term suling was mentioned in Smaradahana, Bhomakāwya, Sri Tañjung; tudung in Bhāratayuddha, Wrêttasañcaya. The terms gong and padaha are most popular in use. Still many others like tabêh-tabêhan (musical instruments) is mentioned in ancient literature from the Majapahit period. Jaap Kunst noted that various musical instruments were mentioned in many ancient literatures dating back to the 13th – 16th century CE. Amongst them are garantung, salukat, salunding, kamanak, sundari, tabang-tabang, tarayan. Noteworthy is the fact that pictorial data supports the written sources. Many temples (candi) of the period, especially in East Java, illustrate reliefs of musical instruments in Jago temple, Tigawangi, Kedaton, Jawi, and Panataran.

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Musical Terms in Old Javanese and Old Balinese Inscriptions, Ninth to the Fourteenth Centuries, CE

Arsenio Nicolas
College of Music, Mahasarakham University
sennicolas@gmail.com

Twenty-four musical terms in Old Javanese and Old Balinese inscriptions from the ninth to the fourteenth century, covering the Central and East Javanese periods, are presented in this paper. Sixteen Old Javanese and Old Balinese musical terms and eight Sanskrit loan words are identified from this corpus. Musical data gathered from inscriptions, based on studies by Kunst, Zoetmulder, Casparis, Damais, Boechari, Sukarto K. Atmodjo, Sedyawati and others, --- as well as literary works in Old Javanese and Old Balinese, not discussed in this paper --- comprise a unique set of musical data unique to this period. Inscriptions describe musical scenes, rituals, especially during the installation of a sima, and the general cultural setting of the period. It is significant to note that all Sanskrit loan words referring to musical instruments in the paleographical literature of Java and Bali appeared during the Central Javanese Period, and have since then slowly fell out of use in the inscriptions during the East Javanese Period, the period when literary and architectural/monumental styles of temples in East Java depart from the Central Javanese models. Unlike literary works which are copied over time, inscriptions, singly inscribed on stone or metal, provide the only reliable dated evidence for musical data in Java and Bali for this period.