Sundanese Cosmology Of Tritangtu And People's Livelihood

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9.1.1. Introduction Subang is one of the districts in West Java Province of Indonesia, where people’s livelihood at the community level was influenced by Sundanese culture. The Sundanese Cosmology of Tritangtu influences people’s livelihood, from socio-cultural activities to economic transactions. One of the tradition which is representing an integration of economic activity and socio-cultural events is an institution named Gintingan. Gintingan can be defined as a traditional economic system or community-managed institution, which is based on mutual help (gotong royong), using mutual rotation systems (arisan) where the ceremony (wedding, etc) is used as a medium of the socio-economic transaction. Those who are having ceremony act as debtor …show more content…

In Sukamelang Village for instance, the community can contribute more than one gantang, or even in other form of contribution such as money or any goods that are needed by the household. As the consequences, if the household receives in money, then they have to repay back in terms of money as well in the future. The usage of collecting money is also not merely used for ceremony. In many cases, the household will allocate some money to buy a land for farming, to support the cost of schooling, etc. In Cimanglid Village, the mechanism is not implemented for wedding purposes but for building a …show more content…

According to Irawan (1999), the Sundanese philosophy of livelihood that influence Gintingan tradition is : Äkur jeung dulur sakasur ( …..should live in harmony with our blood) akur jeung dulur sasumur ( ……with our neighbour ) akur jeung dulur salembur ( ........ with our community ) This concept of harmony: harmony with our blood, harmony with our neighbour, harmony with our community, reflect the implementation the Sundanese Cosmovision of Tritangtu. Triangtu is three (triadic) structure of existence according to the worldview/cosmology of Sundanese sagacity. Tri means three and tangtu means realms. Therefore, Tritangtu means three realms. Realms also named as Buana in Sundanese language. The term buana is similar to Balinese’s term of Bhuwana means world/realms. The three realms in the Sundanese Cosmology of Tritangtu are: • Upper realms/ Sacred-spirirual realms/God (Buana Nyungcung/mayapadha) • Middle realms / The human (Buana Panca Tengah/madyapadha) • Lower realms / The earth and the environment (Buana

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