A. Djajadiningrat — published in the volume as “the Heer A. Djajadiningrat” — was an Indonesian author whose description of a pesantrén (Islamic boarding school) on Java is cited by Prof. Dr. Kernkamp in the chapter De invloed van den Islam in Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk (1946). His name appears at the end of Kernkamp’s discussion of the higher Islamic education (the pesantrén on Java, the soera on middle Sumatra, the rangkang in Atjeh), in a passage that describes the reverential attitude of pesantrén students toward their goeroe (teacher): “according to a description of life in a pesantrén of the Heer A. Djajadiningrat, in this Sittenseff-Mollisee milieu, the old folk religion still peeps round the corner!” — Kernkamp’s Sittenseff-Mollisee being a mangled OCR of what was probably Sittenstief-mütterchen or similar, a pointed Dutch phrase for the persistence of pre-Islamic elements inside the pious boarding-school.
Distinction from Hoesein Djajadiningrat
A. Djajadiningrat is to be distinguished from his better-known relative Hoesein Djajadiningrat (1886–1960), the Acehnese-born Bantenese scholar who earned the first doctorate awarded to an Indonesian at Leiden University (1913) and who is the author of the critical edition of the Sajarah Banten. The two share a surname and an Islamic-scholarly milieu, but Kernkamp’s text does not specify the relationship.
Significance
For the Atjeh-focused reader, A. Djajadiningrat’s significance is comparative: his description of Javanese pesantrén life supplies the contrast against which Kernkamp reads the Atjeh rangkang (the Atjeh equivalent of the pesantrén). Where the pesantrén on Java is concentrated especially in Madioen and the Soerabaya region, the rangkang of Atjeh is found “especially on the North and East Coast.” The passage in which Djajadiningrat is cited is the same passage that describes the goeroe as “holy” to his students and the goeroe’s breath and saliva as salutary — the latter an observation that Kernkamp explicitly labels a survival of “the old folk religion.”
Dutch terms used in this article
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk — What the Indies Received and Gave
- Wereldbibliotheek N.V. — World Library Ltd.
- invloed van den Islam — influence of Islam
- goeroe — teacher
- pesantrén — boarding school
- soera — boarding school (middle-Sumatra form)
- rangkang — boarding school (Atjeh form)
- Atjeh — Aceh
- Acheh — Aceh
- Java — Java
- Sumatra — Sumatra
- Madioen — Madiun
- Prof. Dr. — Professor Doctor
- Dr. — Doctor
- Heer — Mr.
See Also
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk
- W. J. A. Kernkamp
- Hoesein Djajadiningrat
- Rangkang
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- J. Kreemer
Source
Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk, onder leiding van Dr. C. W. Wormser (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek N.V., 1946), p. 95 (chapter De invloed van den Islam door Prof. Dr. W. J. A. Kernkamp, citing “een beschrijving van het leven … in een Pasantrén van den Heer A. Djajadiningrat”).