Fearsome Game, Popular Meat, Symbolic Wealth: Human-Pig Relations in Pre-Islamic Java

Abstract The Indonesian island of Java has been at the center of the world’s oldest interactions between humans and pigs. This article scrutinizes the complexities of human-pig relations through premodern texts. Philology remains uncommon in studying the past of nonhuman animals, yet its insights are highly relevant. Old Javanese poems and inscriptions differentiate two species: the Javan warty pig and the Eurasian wild pig. Both influenced human societies, including in the realm of religion, class, and gender. The textual record further reveals that pigs were regularly hunted and consumed by elites and commoners alike, and also played a role in rituals. Full domestication can be dated to the eleventh century and apparently coincided with urbanization and growing population density. By that time, pigs had come to symbolize wealth, as seen from Java’s unique piggybanks. Yet wild populations of pigs persisted and their aggression and fighting skills were both feared and respected.