JAVANESE RELIGION. The Javanese occupy the central and eastern parts of Java, a moderately sized island over twelve hundred kilometers long and five hundred kilometers wide. The island constitutes only about 7 percent of the total land area of the Indonesian archipelago, which now constitutes the Republic of Indonesia. Javanese peasants have migrated to other islands in Indonesia and, because Dutch colonialists had for two centuries prior to Indonesia's independence moved Javanese unskilled laborers overseas, there are also Javanese communities in Cape Town, South Africa; in Surinam, Latin America; and in New Caledonia, Melanesia. They have in general retained the original Javanese culture and language.

Nearly all Javanese (i.e., about 97.3 percent) are Muslim, with the remainder either Roman Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, or, in South Central Java, recent converts to Hinduism. The Javanese themselves recognize two variants of Javanese Islam: The one with the greatest number of...