The grave that became a shrine : the lives of keramat graves in Singapore

Abstract

Keramat graves may be found in many parts of the Malay world. The Malay word keramat signifies venerated objects. Some of these include Malay or Muslim graves of significant and holy persons, which have become sites of worship or shrines. By focusing on the objectness and lives of these sacred sites, this paper will look at the keramat graves through the lens of art history. It aims to build upon and contribute to earlier studies on keramat graves—which have been mainly focused on ethnographic aspects of keramat grave worship or the lives of the individuals buried at these sites —by providing an art historical perspective on the topic. Just like humans, keramat graves, like any objects, have lives. Borrowing from Richard Davis’ and Igor Kopytoff’s approaches to examining lives of objects, this thesis will study the lives of keramat graves in Singapore by looking at the different aspects of their lives. It will first show how their forms inform their identity-making, and vice versa. It will then examine the relationships between keramat graves and their locations; focusing on the trees surrounding them, the height on which they were built upon, and their proximity to water. Lastly, it will examine how they change and grow in form, through the accumulation of offerings. In doing so, this research hopes to demonstrate how the form, materiality and objectness of the keramat graves grant them some agency upon their lives and how they are approached by worshippers from numerous religious and cultural background. This thesis hopes to show that keramat grave worship in Singapore, while part of a larger tradition of Islamic grave worship, still sets itself apart from the latter tradition through its localisation. It also hopes to provide one possible approach to studying religious spaces that are shared and worshipped by numerous different communities.