The
first research on the chinese temple in modern era was done by Denis Lombart
and Claudine Salmon (Lombart and Salmon, 1985). They study around 70 temples in
Jakarta from
the side of Chinese social life. However, among 70 temples only less than 10
could be included old temples with unique architecture. Most of them are new
temples built less than a century. They published their research in French with
a summary in English. The summary was translated into Indonesian by Yayasan
Cipta Loka caraka. Although the
research is in Jakarta,
it represents almost all temple in Java. Since the work was concentrated in the
social science, it lack of architectural analysis that was not the purpose of
the book. Lombart and Salmon systematically divided the temple of Jakarta into
historical periodization from17th century to after 1945. They describe a glance
of the architecture. Most of the discussion is focusing on the iconographic that
is part of the architecture. From the historical analysis, the study faced
difficulty to define the temple built in the 17th century or
previously. Many Chinese temple of Jakarta built in that era had gone because
of the political turbulence that burn the whole building and left no trace.
Hence to define the temple in 17th century we have to see the area
along the northern coast Java where Chinese has settled before 17th
century. This research cannot depend on the manuscript that normally not as old
as 17th century, but it should be studied through comparative
architecture. The oldest temple
of Jakarta is located at
the end of Gang Petak Sembilan in Glodok area. The temple was built in 1650
outside of the city wall and gradually became very important temple (Lombart
and Salmon , 1985: 16).
Besides
explaining the general spatial hierarchy of the temple in Jakarta as the front
yard, main room where the main god or goddess located, side rooms and other
additional rooms, Lombart and Salmon mentioned architectural form of temple.
However, they explained the form without meaning behind it that is important in
architecture. Although it is clear that the Chinese Jakarta are several dialect
groups, their temple can not be classified into their dialect group. Only the
family temple would probably have specific gods such as the Chen temple where
god Chen Yuan Guang is venerated. Temple
of the Lin family is Tian Hou who is the family patron. Both are included the
oldest family temples in Java (Lombart and Salmon, 1985: 22). From the
historical periodization the writers explained that each period temples were
built under influence of political situation. In the beginning of 20th
century when the Qing dynasty was declined followed by Chinese nationalist
under Sun Yat Sen, the Chinese of Jakarta, and also in other part of Java
prefered to build school rather than temple. There are more-and more people
having western education and avoid any superstitious veneration. Instead of the
superstitious veneration the Chinese tended to embrace Buddhism rather than
Taoism (Lombard and Salmon, 1985: 30). In the independent Indonesia, the
Chinese face very difficult political problem. However there were 20 temples
were built since 1950 (Lombard and Salmon, 1985: 37). From their analysis, the writers
classified kelenteng into public temples, temples for group of people, private
temple, ancestral temple, and temple of the market and trading. The last description
is interesting to be compare to other temples in Java that are located at the
market or the end of market such as Kelenteng Kanoman of Cirebon, Kelenteng
Kranggan of Yogyakarta, and many other temples.
Lombart
and Salmon interestingly explain the influence of god and goddess from Fujian
and Guang Dong to gods and goddess venerated in Jakarta. At the iconographic
section they explained the history of gods and goddesses in the temples of Jakarta
related to their origin in China. There are also local gods such as Sampo, Kwe
Lak Kwa and Mbah Jugo. The writers referred that there are different gods and
goddesses between the Hakka and the Hokkien. Will there be difference form in
their temple?
Salmon’s
writing in 2001 is on the relation between Indonesian Chinese temple and social
history (Salmon 2001). Her analysis by comparing between temples in Java and Bali
is really an important work in constructing the history of the Chinese. She use
the temple to uncover the history. The historical material such as epigraphic
in the temple is the research object to assemble the history. She placed the
architecture of the temple as object of the history. Salmon’s work is trying to
uncover local history of the Chinese in Indonesia, she relates people, as
historical subject, with the place where they live. It is an important writing
on the social history of the Chinese but not the Chinese temples themselves as
source of incription she used.
