Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T19:51:15.428Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sky Calendars of the Indo-Malay Archipelago

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

Gene Ammarell
Gene Ammarell*
Affiliation:
Fiske Planetarium, University of Colorado, U.S.A.

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Research conducted over the past several years has revealed a richly diverse astronomical tradition in the Indo-Malay cultural area. I wish, in this paper, to share some of this richness by describing several of the many and diverse observational techniques used by the Indo-Malay peoples to help regulate their agricultural cycles.

Inhabiting mountain sides, river valleys, and coastal plains, the Indo-Malay peoples are faced with a rather unpredictable tropical monsoon climate. In response to this geography and climate they have adopted two distinct types of rice farming: swidden and padi, or dry and wet.

Padi farming is sedentary and relies upon heavy monsoon rains and/or irrigation for the rather large and dependable supply of water required: rice plants must be submerged from the time that they are planted in the nursery through transplanting and until seed is set. From thereon, dry weather is essential for the seed to properly ripen. Padi fanning is widely practiced on coastal plains and terraced hillsides by people such as the Javanese, the Sasak of Lombok, and the Malays of Kedah and Perak.

Type
Mediaeval Astronomy
Information
International Astronomical Union Colloquium , Volume 91: History of Oriental Astronomy , 1987 , pp. 241 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

References

Ammarell, G. (in press). The Planetarium and the Plough: Interpreting Star Calendars of Rural Java.Google Scholar
Annonymous. (1963). In The Sea Dyaks and Other Races of Sarawak, ed. Richards, A., p.82. Kuching: Borneo Literature Bureau.Google Scholar
Aveni, A. (1981). Tropical Archaeoastronomy. Science, 213, no. 4504, 169.Google Scholar
Covarrubias, M. (1937). Island of Bali. New York: Knopf, pp.313ff.Google Scholar
Dove, M. (1981). Subsistence Strategies in Rain Forest Swidden Agriculture: The Kantu at Tikul Batu. Stanford University: Doctoral Dissertation, pp.421ff.Google Scholar
Ecklund, J. (1977). Marriage, Seaworms, and Songs: Ritualized Responses to Cultural Change in Sasak Life. Cornell University: Doctoral Dissertation, pp.11113.Google Scholar
Fox, J. (1979). The Ceremonial Systems of Savu. In The Imagination of Reality, ed. Becker, A.L. & Yengoyan, A., pp.1526. New Jersey: Ablex.Google Scholar
Freeman, D. (1970). Report on the Iban. London: Athlone Press, pp.171-2.Google Scholar
Geertz, C. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, pp.392ff.Google Scholar
Hose, C. (1905). Various Methods of Computing the Time for Planting among the Races of Borneo. J. of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, no. 42, 45, 20910.Google Scholar
Hose, C. & McDougall, W. (1912). The Pagan Tribes of Borneo. London: Macmillan, pp.1069.Google Scholar
Howell, W. (1963). In The Sea Dyaks and Other Races of Sarawak, ed. Richards, A., p.967. Kuching: Borneo Literature Bureau.Google Scholar
Jensen, E. (1974). The Iban and Their Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp.1556 & 1723.Google Scholar
King, V.T. (1985). The Maloh of West Kalimantan. New Jersey: Foris Publications, p.156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lebar, F.M. (1972). Ethnic Groups of Insular Southeast Asia. New Haven: Human Relations Area Files.Google Scholar
Van den Bosch, F. (1980). Der javanische Mangsakalender. Bijdragen tot de taal, land en volkenkinde, 136, no.2/3, 25161.Google Scholar