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Indonesia Seeks More Unesco Honors for Cultural Treasures
Nurfika Osman | January 20, 2011

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enakajah
10:34am Jan 20, 2011

Excellent news. This is what is really needed just now. Good news and news of the preservation of cultural history. Indonesia has some of the finest and most sophisticated cultural heritage on the planet. The more the world gets to know the better it is for us all.

One epic I would suggest submitted is the Serat Centhini..... Excellent work and gives a very good picture of the introduction of Islam into Indonesia.


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Having successful campaigned for three items to be recognized as world cultural heritage, Indonesia is now ramping up efforts to have more of its traditions listed.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has already recognized batik, the kris (Javanese ceremonial dagger) and the angklung musical instrument as world cultural heritage items.

Education Minister Muhammad Nuh said on Wednesday that the government would recommend more of the country’s unique culture to Unesco.

“We have several proposals, including Babad Diponegoro [the Chronicle of Prince Diponegoro], Aceh’s Saman dance and Balinese dance,” he said.

“They should be recognized by the world because of their historical and philosophical context.”

Arief Rachman, the head of the Indonesian National Commission for Unesco, said that the ancient I La Galigo epics of the Buginese ethnic group in South Sulawesi and the Mak Yong theater of the Malays had also been proposed.

They were nominated for inclusion in the Memory of the World Program, Unesco’s initiative to preserve the world’s documentary heritages, he said.

Arief said that in order to demonstrate Indoensia’s commitment to cultural preservation, the country had formed the MOW Committee for Indonesia.

The group will focus on securing the country’s documented heritage, which has value for both Indonesians and the rest of humanity, he said.

Babad Diponegoro is the biography of a 19th-century Javanese prince was written during his nine-month exile in North Sulawesi. Written originally in Javanese, the manuscript consisted of 1,151 pages and was officially rewritten in 1860.

Nuh said that it deserved to be included in the MOW program as the prince lived during the transition to Islamic and industrial eras.

I La Galigo is a 10th-century literary piece written by Ratna Kencana, or Colli Pudjie, and consists of 10,000 pages and 350,000 verses, Arief said.

The Buginese community believes that the final part of I La Galigo was considered for the 31st verse of the Quran.

The first and second parts of the manuscript have been translated into Bahasa Indonesia, and are currently being stored in the Netherlands.

The Mak Yong document is the only recorded manuscript detailing Mak Yong performance.

“The document is a tale of Malay kings and includes several Malay dancing techniques,” Arief said. “It has made a huge contribution to dance and music in three countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.”

The Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has sent a letter to the governments of Thailand and Malaysia asking that the document be shared among the three countries.

The saman dance is known for the complex synchronized movements of dancers sitting in a row. It has been used in Aceh to spread Islamic teachings.

“Once recognized, the preservation of cultural heritage will be the hardest thing — this is our task for the future,” Nuh said.