Thank you for downloading this episode of A History of the World in 100 Objects from BBC Radio 4.
When the young Barack Obama was taken to Java to live with his new Indonesian stepfather,
he was astonished to see, standing astride the road, a giant statue with the body of a man
and the head of an ape.
He was told that it was Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god.
But what was a huge Hindu god doing in the streets of modern Muslim Indonesia?
The answer is, I think, a fascinating story of tolerance and absorption,
a relaxed compromise between religions unlike any of the other multi-faith societies
that we are looking at through the objects of this week.
And it's a story that can almost be summed up by a puppet
and by the ancient Indonesian art of shadow theatre.
Shadow puppets veer dangerously close to idolatry.
It's a very, very interesting mix of how something so seemingly un-Muslim
sits in a community that's very, very Muslim.
A History of the World in 100 Objects.
Shadow puppet of the character Bima.
Made in Java during the 17th or 18th century.
Throughout this week, the objects I'm engaging with take us into the consequences
of the great movements of religion across the world and the coexistence of faiths around 400 years ago.
Today's object is a shadow puppet from Indonesia, where shadow puppetry is still a celebrated living art form