Abstract
This paper looks at the movement and transformations of Indic art and religion in the history of Indonesia. It is informative to trace the changes undergone by religion and art as they move from one cultural context to another. Memetics is a fairly recent approach to the analysis of religion, art, popular culture and politics, which draws on Darwinian natural selection to explain the spread of ideas and practices. It is important to stress that Memetics is not sociobiology. It does not reduce phenomena to their role in genetic fitness; instead, it posits a new replicator, the meme. I focus on (a) the adoption of religious art, ideas and practices in Indonesia and (b) the transformations of these arts, ideas and practices as they move from India to Indonesia. I examine the bas reliefs depicting stories from the Ramayana at the Prambanan temple complex to show what changes, additions and transformations are revealed in the art and how they reflect changes in religious ideas. Because Hindu religion and art did not come to Indonesia via military conquest, the representations of the Ramayana at Prambanan provide a good test case for a memetic approach to cultural analysis, one that focuses on the memetic power of ideas-their ability to replicate. Memetics, however, need not be employed reductionistically. It can co-exist with a wide range of hermeneutic approaches. I argue that the analysis of the Prambanan Ramayana representations shows that memetics is a useful new addition to comparative cultural analysis.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Memetics, Ramayana, Indian Ocean, Comparative Civilization, Cultural Change, Hermeneutics
