Murti Bunanta

Indonesian Folktales is a collection of information about Indonesia and stories from across the archipelago. It comes in hardcover with a colourful cover including two young Indonesian's decorated in traditional garb. The binding of the book is a little stiff so the pages seem somewhat fragile. Indonesian Folktales comes in three parts - introduction to Indonesia, food, games, and crafts, and folktales. The tales themselves are the bulk of the book, it does not pretend to be comprehensive so is more a flavour of the kinds of stories collected from Indonesia.

The stories themselves are ok. They tend to follow similar patterns and so are categorised into groups such as jealous siblings or stories about rice for instance. The stories span the length of Indonesia, with tales from Aceh to Papua. Some of the best known tales are not included so this is presumably an attempt to capture stories otherwise lesser known. Well-known tales such as the one surrounding Tangkuban Perahu for instance are not included. Those listed have generally been taken from source and so represent a brief snapshot of stories.

The tales are not exactly mesmerising. They tend to lack much in the way of origin. Stories such as how Lake Toba came to be pale into nothing compared to the real story of that place and the cataclysm it was involved in. This is not the place to find stories explaining how Indonesia really came to be - the only interesting parts of that section are around obscure rock features rather than this being an explanation of the peopling of Indonesia.

The collection has something of a modernist spin to it. There is a section about independent princesses - definitely a minority yet gathered here presumably because they are more interesting to a modern ear than the family-based morality so prevalent in many other stories. It is that family culture that is to the fore in many stories. Respect for elders and traditions loom large throughout, something of an insight into the way the Javanese-dominated Indonesian culture has developed.

In most of the stories there are gods or human-animal transposition. Fascinating that these older forms of understanding the world have survived centuries under the burden of Islam and before that Hindusim.

The other sections to the book are pretty much filler. The introduction to Indonesia itself is cursory. At most a couple of paragraphs mean it is only intended to be a window to the place rather than a meaningful description.

Indonesian Folktales is an introduction. It introduces some of the peoples and places. The differences between some of the peoples come out in the names - Papuan ones being very different. It is neither an encyclopedia nor a populist work but it does offer a view into Indonesia if only a brief on.… (más)