Primbon And Petungan

Primbon is a book which is popular among the Javanese. From this book they can find various topics for various affairs and actions concerning their lives. There are elements of fortune telling included in this book, remedies to cure illness, proper times to conduct action, character of person born on particular date, and not least, issues concerning building affairs. Primbon that take its content as what the twentieth century book is, insofar, just appeared in the late eighteenth century.

In the end of the nineteenth and first decade of twentieth century, there were many re-writing of this Primbon done in hand-writing using Javanese alphabets, as can be seen, among others, in the collection of Sonobudoyo Museum, in Yogyakarta. Although those re-writing projects were mainly under the order of the court circle, it still difficult to define that this Primbon was originated from the Palace authorities. The first Primbon access-ible to public in printed form and written in latin alphabets and character, probably is the Boekoe Pasatohan, published by Tan Koen Swie in 1919.

Today, more than one dozen variations of Primbon are available in the book-stores, but only few of them contains topics on building and architecture. Every single topic contained in this Primbon is known as Petungan. But that is just one meaning, because anthropologist Clifford Geertz, in his book Religion of Java (1960) understands it as 'numerological divination.' And still, many Javanese people also call the Primbon book as Petungan book.

To avoid confusion in the meaning of Petungan and Primbon, in this paper Petungan is defined as any topic in the Primbon book that deals with action or affair in the Javanese daily life. The Primbon book is, therefore, a book that contains Petungan-s.