Balinese dance
Balinese dance is an ancient dance tradition, part of the religious and artistic expression among the Balinese people of Bali island, Indonesia. Balinese dance is dynamic and intensely expressive. Balinese dancers express the stories of dance-drama through the bodily gestures including gestures of fingers, hands and eyes. There is a great richness of dance styles in Bali. Most of dances in Bali are connected to Hindu rituals, such as the Sanghyang Dedari sacred dance than invoked hyang spirits that believed to possess the dancers in trance state during the performance. Other Balinese dances are not linked to religious rituals and created for certain purposes, such as Pendet welcoming dance and Joged dance, social dance for entertainment purpose. During the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage convention in 29 November to 4 December 2015 in Windhoek, Namibia, UNESCO recognizes three genres of traditional dance in Bali, Indonesia, as Intangible cultural heritage.
The three genres includes Wali and Balih-balihan. The Balinese dance has been proposed since 2011, recognized in 2015; the three genres are represented by nine dances, which describes its function and living tradition in Balinese community, they are: Wali Sacred DancesRejang. Sacred ceremonial dance by a young women in traditional ceremonial dress, Sanghyang Dedari. Sacred trance dance to counteract negative supernatural forces. Performed by two young girls. Baris Upacara religious dances conveying heroic spirit danced by numbers of male dancers. Bebali Semi sacred DancesTopeng Sidhakarya/Topeng Pajegan. Performed by masked dancers to neutralize the evil spirits. Gambuh dance drama. Royal theatrical performance, now accompaniment to ceremonies, by 25-40 dancers. Wayang Wong dance drama. Combines dance, epic drama and music. Balih-balihan Entertainment DancesLegong Kraton. Exquisitely beautiful dance by 2 or 3 girls. Developed from Sanghyang Dedari, Gambuh. Joged Bumbung. A popular social dance by couples, during harvest season or on important days.
Barong Ket "Kuntisraya". Represents a fight between two mythological characters, Barong in the form of a lion symbolizing goodness and Rangda, an evil witch. In Hinduism, dance is an accompaniment to the perpetual reforming of the world; the creative and reproductive balance is personified as Shiva's wife, sometimes called Uma, Parvati, or Kali. This has significance in Balinese Hinduism, since the common figure of Rangda is similar in many ways to Durga. In Bali there are various categories of dance, including epic performances such as the omnipresent Mahabharata and Ramayana. Certain ceremonies at village temples feature a special performance of a dance-drama, a battle between the mythical characters Rangda, the witch representing the evil, Barong, the lion or dragon, representing the good; this type of performances was traditionally featured during outbreaks of epidemic diseases which were believed by the people to be a result of disturbance in the balance of the'good and bad forces', which were represented by the Rangda and the Barong.
The battle reconciles in harmony or balance of the Rangda and the Barong, instead of a defeat of the evil. Among the dance traditions in Bali are: Barong, king of the spirits Baris war dances Cendrawasih, the bird of paradise Condong, a basic dance, preface to Legong Legong, a refined dance Kecak, the Ramayana monkey chant dance Jangar, a sitting dance with swaying movements Pendet, a simple dance performed before making an offering at a temple Topeng, a mask danceTraditionally, sacred dances can only be performed in temples. However, new choreographies have been created due to the demand from the tourists. One example, Tari Sekar Jagat, is a new choreography that has become popular. In the newer creations, choreographers have more freedom over the moves, they use new moves. For example, in Tari Sekar Jagat, there is a move when the dancer put the Dulang below their shoulders. Bali dancers learn the craft as children, they are played Balinese music, they are taught to dance with their hands. Official training as a Bali dancer starts as young as 7.
In Balinese dance the movement is associated with the rhythms produced by the gamelan, a musical ensemble specific to Java and Bali. Multiple levels of articulations in the face, hands, arms and feet are coordinated to reflect layers of percussive sounds; the number of codified hand positions and gestures, the mudras, is higher in India than in Java or Bali. It has been speculated that they have been forgotten as the dance was transmitted from India to Java. Hand positions and gestures are nonetheless as important in Balinese dance as in India. Whether in India, Indonesia or Cambodia, hands have a ornamental role and emphasize the dance's delicate intricacy. Theatre in Bali Hinduism in Bali Dance in mythology and religion List of basic dance topics List of dance style categories List of dances Javanese dance Sundanese dance Dance in Indonesia Dance of Cambodia
Balinese Hinduism
Balinese Hinduism is the form of Hinduism practiced by the majority of the population of Bali. This is associated with the Balinese people residing on the island, represents a distinct form of Hindu worship incorporating local animism, ancestor worship or Pitru Paksha, reverence for Buddhist saints or Bodhisattava; the population of Indonesian islands is predominantly Muslim. The island of Bali is an exception. Upon independence from the Dutch colonial rule, the 1945 Constitution of Indonesia guaranteed the freedom of religion to all its citizens. In 1952, states Michel Picard – an anthropologist and scholar of Balinese history and religion, the Indonesian Ministry of Religion came under the control of Islamists who constrained an acceptable definition of a "religion". To be acceptable as an official Indonesian religion, the ministry defined "religion" as one, monotheistic, has codified religious law and added a number of requirements. Further, Indonesia denied the rights of citizenship such as the right to vote to anyone not belonging to an recognized monotheistic religion.
The minority Balinese Hindus adapted and declared their form of Hinduism to be monotheistic, presented it in a form to be politically eligible for the status of "agama". Balinese Hinduism has been formally recognized by the Indonesian government as one of the official religions practiced in Bali. Hindu influences reached the Indonesian Archipelago as early as the first century. Historical evidence is unclear about the diffusion process of cultural and spiritual ideas from India. Java legends refer to Saka-era, traced to 78 AD. Stories from the Mahabharata Epic have been traced in Indonesian islands to the 1st century; the Javanese prose work Tantu Pagelaran of the 14th century, a collection of ancient tales and crafts of Indonesia, extensively uses Sanskrit words, Indian deity names and religious concepts. Ancient Chandis excavated in Java and western Indonesian islands, as well as ancient inscriptions such as the 8th century Canggal inscription discovered in Indonesia, confirm widespread adoption of Shiva lingam iconography, his companion goddess Parvati, Vishnu, Brahma and other Hindu deities by about the middle to late 1st millennium AD.
Ancient Chinese records of Fa Hien on his return voyage from Ceylon to China in 414 AD mention two schools of Hinduism in Java, while Chinese documents from 8th century refer to the Hindu kingdom of King Sanjaya as Holing, calling it "exceedingly wealthy," and that it coexisted peacefully with Buddhist people and Sailendra ruler in Kedu Plain of the Java island. About 1400 CE, the kingdoms on the Indonesian islands were attacked from coast-based Muslim armies. Over the 15th and 16th centuries, this Muslim campaign led by Sultans targeted Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms and various communities in the Indonesian archipelago, with each Sultan trying to carve out a region or island for control. Four diverse and contentious Islamic Sultanates emerged in north Sumatra, south Sumatra and central Java, in southern Borneo; the violence ended the Hindu-Buddhist communities in many of the islands of Indonesia. In other cases and Buddhists left and concentrated as communities in islands that they could defend.
Hindus of western Java moved east and to the island of Bali and the neighboring small islands, thus starting Balinese Hinduism. While this era of religious conflict and inter-Sultanate warfare was unfolding, new power centers were attempting to consolidate regions under their control, European colonialism arrived; the Indonesian archipelago was soon dominated by the Dutch colonial empire. The Dutch colonial empire helped prevent inter-religious conflict, it began the process of excavating and preserving Indonesia's ancient Hindu-Buddhist cultural foundations in Java and western islands of Indonesia. Upon independence from the Dutch colonial rule, Article 29 of the 1945 Constitution of Indonesia guaranteed the freedom of religion to all its citizens. In 1952, states Michel Picard, the Indonesian Ministry of Religion came under the control of Islamists who constrained an acceptable definition of a "religion". To be acceptable as an official Indonesian religion, the ministry defined "religion" as one, monotheistic, has codified religious law, possess a prophet and a Holy Book amongst other requirements.
Balinese Hindus were declared as "people without a religion", available to be converted. Balinese Hindus disagreed, debated and declared their form of Hinduism to be monotheistic, presented it in a form to be eligible for the status of "agama" under the 1952 amended articles. To accomplish this, the Balinese Hindus initiated a series of student and cultural exchange initiatives between Bali and India helped formulate the core principles behind Balinese Hinduism. In particular, the political self-determination movement in Bali in mid 1950s led to the joint petition of 1958 which demanded Indonesian government recognize Hindu Dharma; this joint petition quoted the following Sanskrit mantra from the Hindu scriptures, Om tat sat ekam eva advitiyamTranslation: Om, thus is the essence of the all prevading, undivided one. The petition's focus on the "undivided one" was to satisfy the constitutional requirement that Indonesian citizens have a monotheistic belief in one God; the petitioners identified Ida Sanghyang Widhi Wasa a
West Nusa Tenggara
West Nusa Tenggara is a province of Indonesia. It comprises the western portion of the Lesser Sunda Islands, with the exception of Bali, its own province. Mataram, on Lombok, is the capital and largest city of the province; the 2010 census recorded the population at 4,496,855. The province's area is 19,708.79 km2. The two largest islands in the province are Lombok in the west and the larger Sumbawa island in the east; the islands of Flores and Sumba are part of East Nusa Tenggara. Based on analysis of prehistoric objects found, West Nusa Tenggara had been inhabited by people who come from Southeast Asia; the natives in this region are called the Sasak people. Meanwhile, on the island of Sumbawa are natives consisting of two groups, namely ethnic Sumbawa and Bima. However, with the wave of migrants from Bali, Java, Nusa Tenggara and East Nusa Tenggara, the indigenous people entered the farm and stay in the interior; the existence of this region can not be separated from the heyday of Majapahit Empire in the 14th century who conquered all the kingdoms located on the islands of both Lombok and Sumbawa.
In the book Negarakertagama by Empu Prapanca in 1365, it was written that West Lombok was named Lombok Mirah and East Lombok was named Sasak Adi, Dompo, Sanghyang Fire, Bhima and Hutan Kedali. In the early reign of the kings in West Nusa Tenggara, the influence of Hinduism was strong, it can not be separated from the influence of the Majapahit empire expansion into the region. But with the collapse of the Majapahit kingdom, the influence of Hinduism began to decrease with the onset of the influence of Islam in the coastal communities; the advent of the Demak Sultanate in Central Java had a huge impact on the spread of the teachings of Islam in West Nusa Tenggara. The influence of Islam in West Nusa Tenggara was brought by the Malays; the influence of Islam in Bima can not be separated from the support of King I Maliingkaang Daeng-Mannyonriq of Makassar, known as Karaeng Matoaya who played an important role in the spread of Islam in the region. The influence of Islam in the Bima Sultanate emerged in the reign of King Manuru Salehi around 1605 and began to grow during the reign of King Abdul Kahir.
King Abdul Kahir is known as the Sultan of Bima I, because he was the king who first embraced Islam in Bima, so it is considered a new era, separate from the previous Bima king who embraced Hinduism. Islam became the official religion of the kings in West Nusa Tenggara; the Europeans who first came to the land of Nusa Tenggara were the Portuguese who landed on the island of Solor and Timor in 1605. At the same time the Dutch came to the island of Hitu and Ambon, in the Malukus; the first Dutch ship that entered the area was the Ter Ver which docked in Kupang in 1611. The arrival of the Dutch led to a long dispute between the Portuguese and the Dutch in Nusa Tenggara; the Dutch provided assistance to the local kings. The Netherlands expanded its influence in Nusa Tenggara, to make a variety of agreements with small kings around the island of Sumbawa; the penetration of the Dutch colonial administration, so strong in Indonesia was bringing real impact to the survival of Indonesian society in general.
One result was broad: in the eastern part of Indonesia, the Sultanate of Gowa began to decline in its supremacy in the 17th century. Gowa nobility who did not submit to the colonial government fled from Makassar and built pockets of resistance in West Nusa Tenggara. To face such resistance, the colonial government began to concentrate power in West Nusa Tenggara; this was reinforced by the emergence of Lombok for international trade traffic, so the desire of the Dutch to rule West Nusa Tenggara directly become apparent. Faced with such a situation, the Dutch colonial government sent Stephen van Hegen for a close look at the Bima situation in 1660; the arrival of the Dutch influenced the economic situation in this area. In 1669, the Government of the Kingdom of Bima led by Sultan Ambela Abdul Khair Sirajuddin, made peace and friendship ties with the colonial government with the contents of the agreement as follows: The Sultanate of Bima and Dompu will not attack Makassar To keep the peace, only members of the Dutch East India Company may visit the Bima area Bima and Makassar will not make any contact at all.
Foreign traders from Europe, Java, Arab lands and Champa must not engage in trade with Bima, except by special permit from the Dutch East India Company. The agreement with the Sultan of Bima and Dompu recognized the existence of the Dutch colonial power. Since the Netherlands sought to consolidate its control by blocking the Bima port to prevent the arrival of aid from Makassar or other foreign countries; the effort was done so that the existing ports in Bima and Lombok Island were considered to be strategic, not fall into British hands. The Dutch supremacy in the region was strong, so the king and the people in the region could not move freely; this condition became worse with the eruption of Mount Tambora on April 5, 1815, which shook the entire region, the consequences could be felt throughout the Moluccas, Sulawesi and Kalimantan. Mount Tambora's eruption resulted in the disappearance of the two kingdoms of Papekat. More than 10,000 people were killed; the existence of the status of the province West Nusa Tenggara did not come by itself.
The struggle demanded that the formation of West Nusa Ten
Ethnic group
An ethnic group or an ethnicity, is a category of people who identify with each other based on similarities such as common ancestry, history, culture or nation. Ethnicity is an inherited status based on the society in which one lives. Membership of an ethnic group tends to be defined by a shared cultural heritage, origin myth, homeland, language or dialect, symbolic systems such as religion and ritual, dressing style, art or physical appearance. Ethnic groups, derived from the same historical founder population continue to speak related languages and share a similar gene pool. By way of language shift, acculturation and religious conversion, it is sometimes possible for individuals or groups to leave one ethnic group and become part of another. Ethnicity is used synonymously with terms such as nation or people. In English, it can have the connotation of something exotic related to cultures of more recent immigrants, who arrived after the dominant population of an area was established; the largest ethnic groups in modern times comprise hundreds of millions of individuals, while the smallest are limited to a few dozen individuals.
Larger ethnic groups may be subdivided into smaller sub-groups known variously as tribes or clans, which over time may become separate ethnic groups themselves due to endogamy or physical isolation from the parent group. Conversely separate ethnicities can merge to form a pan-ethnicity and may merge into one single ethnicity. Whether through division or amalgamation, the formation of a separate ethnic identity is referred to as ethnogenesis; the term ethnic is derived from the Greek word ἔθνος ethnos. The inherited English language term for this concept is folk, used alongside the latinate people since the late Middle English period. In Early Modern English and until the mid-19th century, ethnic was used to mean heathen or pagan, as the Septuagint used ta ethne to translate the Hebrew goyim "the nations, non-Hebrews, non-Jews"; the Greek term in early antiquity could refer to any large group, a host of men, a band of comrades as well as a swarm or flock of animals. In Classical Greek, the term took on a meaning comparable to the concept now expressed by "ethnic group" translated as "nation, people".
In the 19th century, the term came to be used in the sense of "peculiar to a race, people or nation", in a return to the original Greek meaning. The sense of "different cultural groups", in American English "racial, cultural or national minority group" arises in the 1930s to 1940s, serving as a replacement of the term race which had earlier taken this sense but was now becoming deprecated due to its association with ideological racism; the abstract ethnicity had been used for "paganism" in the 18th century, but now came to express the meaning of an "ethnic character". The term ethnic group was first recorded in 1935 and entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1972. Depending on the context, used, the term nationality may either be used synonymously with ethnicity, or synonymously with citizenship; the process that results in the emergence of an ethnicity is called ethnogenesis, a term in use in ethnological literature since about 1950. Depending on which source of group identity is emphasized to define membership, the following types of groups can be identified: Ethno-linguistic, emphasizing shared language, dialect – example: French Canadians Ethno-national, emphasizing a shared polity or sense of national identity – example: Armenians Ethno-racial, emphasizing shared physical appearance based on genetic origins – example: African Americans Ethno-regional, emphasizing a distinct local sense of belonging stemming from relative geographic isolation – example: South Islanders Ethno-religious, emphasizing shared affiliation with a particular religion, denomination or sect – example: JewsIn many cases – for instance, the sense of Jewish peoplehood – more than one aspect determines membership.
Ethnography begins in classical antiquity. The Greeks at this time did not describe foreign nations but had developed a concept of their own "ethnicity", which they grouped under the name of Hellenes. Herodotus gave a famous account of what defined Greek ethnic identity in his day, enumerating shared descent, shared language shared sanctuaries and sacrifices shared customs. Whether ethnicity qualifies as a cultural universal is to some extent dependent on the exact definition used. According to "Challenges of Measuring an Ethnic World: Science and reality", in Challenges of Measuring an Ethnic World: Science and Reality: Proceedings of the Joint Canada-United States Conference on the Measurement of Ethni
Bali
Bali is a province of Indonesia and the westernmost of the Lesser Sunda Islands. Located east of Java and west of Lombok, the province includes the island of Bali and a few smaller neighbouring islands, notably Nusa Penida, Nusa Lembongan, Nusa Ceningan; the provincial capital, Denpasar, is the most populous city in the Lesser Sunda Islands and the second largest, after Makassar, in Eastern Indonesia. Bali is the only Hindu-majority province in Indonesia, with 83.5% of the population adhering to Balinese Hinduism. Bali is Indonesia's main tourist destination, which has seen a significant rise in tourists since the 1980s. Tourism-related business makes up 80% of its economy, it is renowned for its developed arts, including traditional and modern dance, painting, leather and music. The Indonesian International Film Festival is held every year in Bali. In March 2017, TripAdvisor named Bali as the world's top destination in its Traveller's Choice award. Bali is part of the area with the highest biodiversity of marine species.
In this area alone, over 500 reef-building coral species can be found. For comparison, this is about seven times as many as in the entire Caribbean. Most Bali was the host of the Miss World 2013 and 2018 Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group. Bali is the home of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is home to a unified confederation of kingdoms composed of 10 traditional royal Balinese houses, each house ruling a specific geographic area. The confederation is the successor of the Bali Kingdom; the royal houses are not recognised by the government of Indonesia. Bali was inhabited around 2000 BCE by Austronesian people who migrated from Southeast Asia and Oceania through Maritime Southeast Asia. Culturally and linguistically, the Balinese are related to the people of the Indonesian archipelago, the Philippines and Oceania. Stone tools dating from this time have been found near the village of Cekik in the island's west. In ancient Bali, nine Hindu sects existed, namely Pasupata, Siwa Shidanta, Bodha, Resi and Ganapatya.
Each sect revered a specific deity as its personal Godhead. Inscriptions from 896 and 911 do not mention a king, until 914, they reveal an independent Bali, with a distinct dialect, where Buddhism and Sivaism were practiced simultaneously. Mpu Sindok's great-granddaughter, married the Bali king Udayana Warmadewa around 989, giving birth to Airlangga around 1001; this marriage brought more Hinduism and Javanese culture to Bali. Princess Sakalendukirana appeared in 1098. Suradhipa reigned from 1115 to 1119, Jayasakti from 1146 until 1150. Jayapangus appears on inscriptions between 1178 and 1181, while Adikuntiketana and his son Paramesvara in 1204. Balinese culture was influenced by Indian and Hindu culture, beginning around the 1st century AD; the name Bali dwipa has been discovered from various inscriptions, including the Blanjong pillar inscription written by Sri Kesari Warmadewa in 914 AD and mentioning Walidwipa. It was during this time that the people developed their complex irrigation system subak to grow rice in wet-field cultivation.
Some religious and cultural traditions still practiced. The Hindu Majapahit Empire on eastern Java founded a Balinese colony in 1343; the uncle of Hayam Wuruk is mentioned in the charters of 1384–86. A mass Javanese immigration to Bali occurred in the next century when the Majapahit Empire fell in 1520. Bali's government became an independent collection of Hindu kingdoms which led to a Balinese national identity and major enhancements in culture and economy; the nation with various kingdoms became independent for up to 386 years until 1906, when the Dutch subjugated and repulsed the natives for economic control and took it over. The first known European contact with Bali is thought to have been made in 1512, when a Portuguese expedition led by Antonio Abreu and Francisco Serrão sighted its northern shores, it was the first expedition of a series of bi-annual fleets to the Moluccas, that throughout the 16th century traveled along the coasts of the Sunda Islands. Bali was mapped in 1512, in the chart of Francisco Rodrigues, aboard the expedition.
In 1585, a ship foundered off the Bukit Peninsula and left a few Portuguese in the service of Dewa Agung. In 1597, the Dutch explorer Cornelis de Houtman arrived at Bali, the Dutch East India Company was established in 1602; the Dutch government expanded its control across the Indonesian archipelago during the second half of the 19th century. Dutch political and economic control over Bali began in the 1840s on the island's north coast, when the Dutch pitted various competing Balinese realms against each other. In the late 1890s, struggles between Balinese kingdoms in the island's south were exploited by the Dutch to increase their control. In June 1860, the famous Welsh naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, travelled to Bali from Singapore, landing at Buleleng on the north coast of the island. Wallace's trip to Bali was instrumental in helping him devise his Wallace Line theory; the Wallace Line is a faunal boundary that runs through the strait between Lombok. It has been found to be a boundary between species.
In his travel memoir The Malay Archipelago, Wallace wrote of his experience in Bali, of which has strong mention of the unique Balinese irrigation methods: I was both astonished and delighted.
Austronesian peoples
The Austronesian peoples or more Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a group of various peoples in Southeast Asia and East Africa that speak Austronesian languages. The nations and territories predominantly populated by Austronesian-speaking peoples are known collectively as Austronesia, they include Taiwanese aborigines, the majority of ethnic groups in Brunei, East Timor, Madagascar, Micronesia, the Philippines and Polynesia, as well as the Malays of Singapore. They are found in the regions of Southern Thailand, the Cham areas in Vietnam and Cambodia, parts of Myanmar, the Hainan island province of China, parts of Sri Lanka and some of the Andaman Islands. Additionally, modern-era migration brought Austronesian-speaking people to the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, mainland Europe, Cocos Islands, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Hainan, Hong Kong and West Asian countries. Ethnic Maldivians possess a genetic connection to the Austronesian-speaking groups of maritime Southeast Asia via gene flow from the Malay Archipelago.
Another term used by Wilhelm G. Solheim II to refer to Austronesian-speakers with a maritime-oriented culture is Nusantao, as part of his Nusantao Maritime Trading and Communication Network hypothesis; the linguistic connections between Madagascar and Southeast Asia were recognized early in the Colonial Era by European authors the remarkable similarities between Malagasy and Polynesian numerals. The first formal publications on these relationships was in 1708 by the Dutch Orientalist Adriaan Reland, who recognized a "common language" from Madagascar to western Polynesia; the Spanish philologist Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro devoted a large part of his Idea dell' Universo to the establishment of a language family linking the Malaysian Peninsula, the Maldives, the Sunda Islands, the Philippines, the Pacific Islands eastward to Easter Island. Multiple other authors corroborated this classification, the language family came to be known as "Malayo-Polynesian," first coined by the German linguist Franz Bopp in 1841.
The term "Malayo-Polynesian" was first used in English by the British ethnologist James Cowles Prichard in 1842 to refer to a historical racial category equivalent to the Austronesian peoples today, not to the language family. However, the Malayo-Polynesian language family excluded Melanesia and Micronesia, due to what they perceived were marked physical differences between the inhabitants of these regions from the Malayo-Polynesian speakers. However, there was growing evidence of their linguistic relationship to Malayo-Polynesian languages, notably from studies on the Melanesian languages by Georg von der Gabelentz, Robert Henry Codrington and Sidney Herbert Ray. Codrington coined and used the term "Ocean" language family rather than "Malayo-Polynesian" in 1891, in opposition to the exclusion of Melanesian and Micronesian languages; this was adopted by Ray who defined the "Oceanic" language family as encompassing the languages of Southeast Asia and Madagascar, Micronesia and Polynesia. In 1899, the Austrian linguist and ethnologist Wilhelm Schmidt coined the term "Austronesian" to refer to the language family.
Schmidt had the same motivations as Cordington. He proposed the term as a replacement to "Malayo-Polynesian", because he opposed the implied exclusion of the languages of Melanesia and Micronesia in the latter name, it became the accepted name for the language family, with Oceanic and Malayo-Polynesian languages being retained as names for subgroups. The term "Austronesian", or more "Austronesian-speaking peoples", came to refer the people who speak the languages of the Austronesian language family; some authors, object to the use of the term to refer to people, as they question whether there is any biological or cultural shared ancestry between all Austronesian-speaking groups. This is true for authors who reject the prevailing "Out of Taiwan" hypothesis and instead offer scenarios where the Austronesian languages spread among preexisting static populations through borrowing or convergence, with little or no population movements. Despite these objections, the general consensus is that the archeological, cultural and linguistic evidence all separately indicate varying degrees of shared ancestry among Austronesian-speaking peoples that justifies their treatment as a "phylogenetic unit."
This has led to the use of the term "Austronesian" in academic literature to refer not only to the Austronesian languages, but the Austronesian-speaking peoples, their societies, the geographic area of Austronesia. Serious research into the Austronesian languages and its speakers has been ongoing since the 19th century. Modern scholarship on Austronesian dispersion models is credited to two influential papers in the late 20th century: The Colonisation of the Pacific: A Genetic Trail, The Austronesian Dispersal and the Oigin of Languages; the topic is interesting to scientists for the remarkably unique characteristics of the Austronesian speakers: their extent and rapid dispersal. Regardless certain d
Shadow play
Shadow play known as shadow puppetry, is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment which uses flat articulated cut-out figures which are held between a source of light and a translucent screen or scrim. The cut-out shapes of the puppets sometimes include translucent color or other types of detailing. Various effects can be achieved by moving the light source. A talented puppeteer can make the figures appear to walk, fight and laugh. Shadow play is popular in various cultures, among both children and adults in many countries around the world. More than 20 countries are known to have shadow show troupes. Shadow play is an old tradition and it has a long history in Southeast Asia in Indonesia, Malaysia and Cambodia, it has been an ancient art and a living folk tradition in China and Nepal. It is known in Egypt, Greece, Germany and the United States. Shadow play developed from "par" shows with narrative scenes painted on a large cloth and the story further related through song; as the shows were performed at night the par was illuminated with an oil lamp.
Shadow puppet theatre originated in Central Asia-China or in India in the 1st millennium BCE. By at least around 200 BCE the figures on cloth seem to have been replaced with puppetry in Indian "tholu bomalatta" shows; these are performed behind a thin screen with flat, jointed puppets made of colorfully painted transparent leather. The puppets are held close to the screen and lit from behind, while hands and arms are manipulated with attached canes and lower legs swinging from the knee; the evidence of shadow puppet theatre is found in both ancient Indian texts. The most significant historical centers of shadow play theatre have been China, Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. According to Martin Banham, there is little mention of indigenous theatrical activity in the Middle East between the 3rd century CE and the 13th-century, including the centuries that followed the Islamic conquest of the region; the shadow puppet play, states Banham came into vogue in the Middle East after the Mongol invasions and thereafter it incorporated local innovations by the 16th-century.
Little mention of shadow play is found in Islamic literature of Iran, but much is found in Turkish and 19th-century Ottoman Empire influenced territories. While shadow play theatre is an Asian invention, hand puppets have a long history in Europe; as European merchant ships sailed in the search of sea routes to India and China, they helped diffuse popular entertainment arts and cultural practices into Europe. Shadow theatre became popular in France, Italy and Germany by the 17th-century. In France, shadow play was advertised as Ombres Chinoises, while elsewhere they were called "Magic Lantern". Goethe helped build a shadow play theatre in Tiefurt in 1781. According to Stephen Herbert, the popular shadow theatre evolved nonlinearly into projected slides and into cinematography; the common principle in these innovations were the creative use of light, images and a projection screen. According to Olive Cook, there are many parallels in the development of shadow play and modern cinema, such as their use of music, attempts to introduce colors and mass popularity.
Shadow puppets have been a part of ancient Indian culture regionally as the Keelu Bomme and Tholu Bommalata of Andhra Pradesh, the Togalu Gombeyaata in Karnataka, the Charma Bahuli Natya in Maharashtra, the Ravanachhaya in Odisha, the Tholpava Koothu in Kerala and the Thol Bommalatta in Tamil Nadu. Shadow puppet play is found in pictorial traditions in India, such as temple mural painting, loose-leaf folio paintings, the narrative paintings. Dance forms such as the Chhau of Odisha mean shadow; the shadow theatre dance drama theatre are performed on platform stages attached to Hindu temples, in some regions these are called Koothu Madams or Koothambalams. In many regions, the puppet drama play is performed by itinerant artist families on temporary stages during major temple festivals. Legends from the Hindu epics Ramayana and the Mahabharata dominate their repertoire. However, the details and the stories vary regionally. During the 19th-century and early parts of the 20th-century of the colonial era, Indologists believed that shadow puppet plays had become extinct in India, though mentioned in its ancient Sanskrit texts.
In the 1930s and thereafter, states Stuart Blackburn, these fears of its extinction were found to be false as evidence emerged that shadow puppetry had remained a vigorous rural tradition in central Kerala mountains, most of Karnataka, northern Andhra Pradesh, parts of Tamil Nadu and southern Maharashtra. The Marathi people of low caste, had preserved and vigorously performed the legends of Hindu epics as a folk tradition; the importance of Marathi artists is evidenced, states Blackburn, from the puppeteers speaking Marathi as their mother tongue, in many non-Marathi speaking states of India. According to Beth Osnes, the Tholu Bommalata shadow puppet theatre dates back to 3rd-century BCE, has attracted patronage since; the puppets used in a Tholu Bommalata performance, states Phyllis Dircks, are "translucent, lusciously multicolored leather figures four to five feet tall, feature one or two articulated arms". The process of making the puppets is an elaborate ritual, where the artist families in India pray, go into seclusion, produce the craved and incised art work celebrate the "metaphorical birth of a puppet" with flowers and incense.
The Tholu Pava Koothu performance of Kerala uses leather puppets whose images are projected on backlit screen. The shadows are used to creatively express stories in the Ramayana. A com
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