Due to the huge resources behind it, Javascript seems to rapidly becoming the scripting language of choice for applications, particularly those with a web front end. I have
JavaScript compilers have shipped in the MS CLI implementation from the beginning, and in the Sun Java implementation since 1.6.0.
MS's is efficient, current, and uses DLR, so it interoperates with other implementaitons of dynamic languages, such as IronPython.
Sun's is based on the otherwise-abandoned 1998 Mozilla "Rhino". If you must have consistency or must have open source, you can run Rhino on MS .net via IKVM.
For more details, see:
Is there a port of the Rhino JavaScript engine for .NET
The web browser wars have led to their JS implementations (in C++) being radically faster & more up-to-date than all others. Mozilla's TraceMonkey has no Java bindings. But Google's V8 (Chrome, Android; faster anyway) does.
If you're prepared for some pain:
http://code.google.com/p/jav8/
http://rbackhouse.blogspot.com/2011/03/using-google-v8-javascript-engine-in.html
Or you can use MessagePack RPC to call into node.js (Google V8).