In Syair Perahu (Poem on the Ship), written toward the end of the sixteenth century, Hamzah Fansuri compares life in this world to making a sea crossing:

Ah, young man, know your true self!

This ship represents your body,

Your time on this earth will be fleeting,

You will only know peace on the other side…

There is no God but Allah, and you are following him.

The wind is roaring, the seas are tempestuous,

Whales and sharks are pursuing you…

Make sure you hold tight to the tiller, don’t falter!

If you can always be vigilant

All these tempests will die down,

There will be calm after the storm,

You will land safely on the island…

Hamzah ushers in a new concept of the past and a new historiography related to human progress, giving rise to the idea of time as a movement, oriented toward a goal.  This is also found elsewhere in other prophetic traditions. There is a strong sense about the fleeting nature of material things. Similarly in a short Muslim moral tract probably originating in one of the ports on the north coast of Java in the sixteenth century:

Nothing is eternal in this world (ora kekel ing dunya).  Be aware that on Judgment  Day (ari kiyamat) only a rare few faithful ones be recognized among the true Muslims.

French Asianist Denys Lombard, delving into the history of maritime Southeast Asia remarks that the corpus from Islam indicates changes in the mentality of time, and the emergence of a new concept of time and space in the Malay world. Treatises like Hamzah Fansuri (and that of Nurudin ar-Raniri) was inspired by the maritime environment. Precise terms can be found in those texts configured by the trading sultanates in the west of the archipelago, namely Aceh, Banten, Demak, Johor, Melaka, and Makassar. These were enriched by a wealth of literature influenced by Arab and Persian models; as well as Javanese, Bugis and Makassarese.

In “The Concepts of Space and Time in the Southeast Asian Archipelago” (2012), Lombard reveals that precise terms can be found (in the texts) to express ‘time’ (waktu), ‘the era’ (zaman), ‘the century’ (abad) and the ‘hour’ (jam).  The most striking novelty however, is the widespread use of the Muslim calender. 

Compare this to the epigraphic text of ancient Java. The year was lunar-solar, as it is in India and Cambodia. This was calculated as part of an era called  shaka (saka) which began in 78 CE. The beginning of the shaka era has traditionally been associated with the arrival in Java of a mythical person, Aji Saka. This person was said to have enriched the culture notably by introducing writing to the island.

Islam, embraced by the coastal sultanates comprises 12 synodical months, each 29 days long, counted from the Hijra. Lombard describes this as an adherence to a widespread reckoning system in establishing a relationship between all events that took place in the Islamic community (ummah).

Hence we are configured by the rhythm of the day, marked by the  succession of the five obligatory prayers (subuh, zuhur, asar, maghrib and isya). These serve as a means of ordering the day’s activities among the Malays in the Archipelago (as well as the Muslim community elsewhere). Traditionally, the beduk, large drums made of buffalo or cattle hide, would sound the appropriate hours for prayers (and other important events) in the Malay community throughout the Archipelago.

The Muslim calendar is simple, imposing  a regular system of time. It produces a homogenous system for calculating time, of a beginning and an end to the world. The Javanese system of telling time, on the other hand, is more suitable to seasonal changes in equatorial climes. Reference to the almanacs (primbon) are still used in Java (and Bali).  The primbon shows that pre-Islamic time was fragmentary and heterogenous, comprising positive and negative moments and days that were lucky or unlucky. The process of calculation is difficult.

According to Lombard, in order to evaluate the quality of a given moment, one needs to take into account the specific tonality of the 30 wuku, or combination of seven days each, which together constituted a cycle. There is a complex interplay arising when days of different cycles coincided. For example,, when kliwon, the most important day in the five-day week, fell at the same time as kajeng (a day in the three-day week), making offerings to spirits was necessary. But if kliwon fell at the same time as sanescara (a strong day in the seven-day week) – which Lombard says, happened every 35 days – the circumstances were considered particularly auspicious.

Lombard explains that a whole literature on the subject of time developed in the Javanese tradition beginning in the eleventh century with the Sang Hyang Kamahayanikan, followed by the Korawasrama (sixteenth century) and the Manikmaya (eighteenth century). These continue to appear. The literature, is intended to provide the keys for ‘reading’ or deciphering the world.   The same word baca is used in Javanese for interpreting a phenomenon in space and time.

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