Mpu Dusun

Mpu Dusun was a Javanese Buddhist guru and writer who lived in the later Majapahit period, in the late 14th to early 15th century period.[1]

Personal life

The name Mpu Dusun is a pen name, his birth name is unknown. He is identified as Mpu Dusun in his work Kakawin Kunjarakarna in the final stanza when he states "kīrti sira mpu Dusun" - this is a work of mpu Dusun. He is theorized to have come from a rural background, and did not spend much of his life in a court, unlike other poets of the time. He was a Buddhist monk or a priest, but much of his work was syncretic with the dominant Hinduism of the time.[2]

Works
  • Kakawin Kunjarakarna

References
  1. Teeuw, Robsson, A, S.O. Kunjarakarna Dharmakathana, Liberation through the Law of the Buddha.
  2. Teeuw, Robsson, A, S.O. Kunjarakarna Dharmakathana, Liberation through the Law of the Buddha. If this is more than an unusual form of self-depreciation, and should be accepted as the poet's nom de plume, we might perhaps conclude that the author was not a man belonging to court circles, but rather one with a rural religious background; for he is mpu and therefore we might trace his background to religious circles, and identify him as a monk or priest living in a patapan or mandala, etc., of the type which he describes in his poem and which we know from many other kakawins as well


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