And the Sun Pursued the Moon

Symbolic Knowledge and Traditional Authority among the Makassar

Bibliographic Data

ID19933192
AuthorsT Gibson (0000-0002-7147-8672, corresponding author)
Year2017
Pages278
Publication date2017-12-31
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueAnd the Sun Pursued the Moon (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherUniversity of Hawaii Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1515/9780824874575
OpenAlexW4248477747
Open LibraryOL29375002M
ISBN9780824874575
LanguageEN
Citations received17

Over the course of a thousand years, from 600 to 1600 CE, the Java Sea was dominated by a ring of maritime kingdoms whose rulers engaged in long-distance raiding, trading, and marriage alliances with one another. And the Sun Pursued the Moon explores the economic, political, and symbolic processes by which early Makassar communities were incorporated into this regional system. As successive empires like Srivijaya, Kediri, Majapahit, and Melaka gained hegemony over the region; they introduced different models of kingship in peripheral areas like the Makassar coast of South Sulawesi. As each successive model of royal power gained currency, it became embedded in local myth and ritual. To better understand the relationship between symbolic knowledge and traditional royal authority in Makassar society, Thomas Gibson draws on a wide range of sources and academic disciplines. He shows how myth and ritual link practical forms of knowledge (boat-building, navigation, agriculture, warfare) to basic social categories such as gender and hereditary rank, as well as to environmental, celestial, and cosmological phenomena. He also shows how concrete historical agents have used this symbolic infrastructure to advance their own political and ideological purposes. Gibson concludes by situating this material in relation to Islam and to life-cycle rituals

Astrobiology · Geography · Physics · Asian Studies and History · Cultural and Religious Practices in Indonesia · Geology · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies · Ethnoscience · Folklore · History · Indonesia · Indonesian Mythology · Indonesian Philosophy · Kings and rulers · Makasar (Indonesian people) · Science · Social life and customs

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