Poerbatjaraka
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Raden Mas Ngabehi Poerbatjaraka |
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A portrait of Poerbatjaraka on the cover of a 2006 book commemorating him.
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| Born |
Lesya 1 January 1884 Surakarta, Surakarta Sunanate, Dutch East Indies |
| Died | 25 July 1964 (aged 80) Jakarta, Indonesia |
| Occupation | Philologist, professor |
| Known for | works on the Javanese literature |
| Awards | Honorary Member, Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Leiden University |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | |
Poerbatjaraka (1 January 1884 – 25 July 1964) was a Javanese/Indonesian self-taught philologist and professor, specialising in Javanese literature. The son of a Surakarta courtier in the Dutch East Indies, he showed interest in Javanese literature at an early age, reading from books in the court's collection. Despite attending only primary school, his knowledge of Dutch and Javanese literature allowed him to take a position at the colony's Archaeology Service, and then at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He was allowed to obtain a doctor's degree at Leiden. He then returned to the colony to work at a Batavia (today Jakarta) museum, cataloguing Javanese texts and writing scholarly works. After Indonesia's independence, he became a professor at the universities of Indonesia, Gajah Mada, and Udayana.
It was common for a Javanese gentleman of Poerbatjaraka's time to change names and be given new titles throughout his life. His birth name was Lesya (also spelled Lesja and Lesyo, meaning "funny"). When he served at the court he became known as Lesya Atmopradonggo. After his first move to Jakarta, he became known as Poerbatjaraka and later granted the titles Raden and Ngabehi. Subsequently, he was raised to the title of Raden Mas.
The spelling of his adult name, "Poerbatjaraka", was Dutch and the one he always used. In later Indonesian texts his name may be spelled "Purbacaraka" (using the latest spelling system), or "Purbatjaraka" (using the Republican Spelling System). The first part of the name, Purba or Poerba, was from Sanskrit purwa ("first"), and his father's name prefix. The second part, tjaraka or caraka was from hanacaraka, the name of the Javanese script, and was a literary allusion.
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