International Journal of Indonesian Studies Volume 1, Issue 3 | Page 157

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES
SPRING 2016
disseminated among the noble-ranks and those who converted and studied Islam. Arabic
was assimilated and it transformed the Malay language. 21,000 Arabic, Persian and Hebrew
words were loaned into Bahasa Indonesia and a greater number into the Malay language
(with its variant Malaysian languages). The teaching of Arabic transformed the previous
Padepokan system. Islamic teaching has its own tradition which remains today. The
Pesantren system separated the school for the boys and for the girls. The different marker
between those two educational systems was that access to the previous school was only for
the noble rank; access to the Pesantren was not only for the noble rank but particularly
available to the natives who had converted to Islam. This intention, however, in the first
phase of its application, only addressed the noble rank. Until the arrival of the European
merchants, only the middle rank had been able to access classes in the traditional Pesantren
system. The teaching of Sanskrit and Arabic among the natives was not an alien system as it
used the Malay language as the instruction language in both traditional systems. The
interstices between Malay language and its foreign influences such as Sanskrit and Arabic
moulded the assimilation among those three languages. The choice of the transliteration of
Bahasa Indonesia, however, was not as in the present Latin form (the influence of Latin
teaching by Portuguese), but in an Arabic transliteration called Jawi, meaning Arabic
transliteration read by Malayans.
The previous sketch of the history of foreign languages prior to the era of European
colonialism offers a perspective of hybridity in the formulation of East Indies’ identity. The
first economic quest for spice trade among the Indian traders had led them to introduce and
then conquer the archipelago with Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam which produced a
syncretized and hybriditized identity of the previous three religions and the languages they
brought into Bahasa Indonesia. Despite the three religions, the most notable and primary
melting pot was the formation of the Malay language before the arrival of European
colonialists. Several historians on Indonesia opted to write that the pre-European
colonization was a peaceful one as the apparent arrival of Indian traders had not been
accompanied by fleets of soldiers. The establishment of previous kingdoms under Hindu,
Buddha, and Islam influences, however, could become an alternative critical approach to
the colonization reality within the frame of religious-based missions to be spread to the socalled “pagan” East Indies Archipelago. Indonesia had become a contested field of values
where many foreign influences gained footholds. Despite its peaceful approach, the spice
trade, in its broader sense, facilitating the economic trade of foreign influences, had
consecutively colonized Indonesia. The different and varied approaches used by those
foreign influences had been written into the history of Indonesia. Most of the historians’
approaches signalled the sole colonizer’s stamp on the European economic pursuits. I argue
that the former foreign influences of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam reinforced the same
economic pursuits together with religious and cultural influences.

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