WEST JAVA
Quedaron mudos los cuerpos,
Solas las almas se hablan,
Que en las luces de los ojos
Iban y venian las almas.[13]
_Romancero Morisco (Celin de Escariche)._
The Batu Tulis, lit. “the inscribed stone”, near Bogor, commemorates the
feats of a certain prince, Parabu Raja Purana, otherwise Ratu Dewata,
and calls him the founder of Pakuan, ruler, _maharajah ratu aji_, of
Pakuan Pajajaran. That kingdom is the centre of everything tradition has
transmitted regarding the Hindus in West Java. Its origin, according to
native belief, goes back to a settlement of princely adventurers from
Tumapel in East Java, and when Mojopahit flourished after the fall of
that mighty empire, it rose to equal eminence at the other end of the
island, only to be destroyed by the same agency, the growing power of
Islām. The subjection of the mountain tribes of the Priangan by the
settlers from the East proceeded in the beginning but slowly and the
children of the land, even after they had yielded to the inevitable,
must have retained a share in the management of their affairs, for
Soondanese _pantoons_[14] mention separately, as two factors of
government, the _ratu_, king of Pakuan, and the _menak_, nobility of
Pajajaran. However this may be, from about 1100 until the beginning of
the sixteenth century, Pajajaran was a political unity that counted. She
could send an army of a hundred thousand warriors into the field. Her
kings disposed at will of large territories, gained by conquest; one of
them conferred upon his brother Kalayalang the dominion of Jayakarta,
in later years better known under the name of Yacatra, and on his
brother Barudin the dominion of Bantam, principalities destined to play
an important part in the overthrow of the sovereign state. Nothing,
save the meagre accounts of the _babads_ and the scanty remains to be
referred to at the end of this chapter, reminds now of Pajajaran, except
the Badooy in South Bantam, who constitute a community apart, entirely
isolated from the rest of the population and whose peculiar customs and
religious observances so far as known, make it probable that they are
the descendants of fugitives before the Muhammadan inroad.
When Noor ad-Din Ibrahim bin Maulana Israïl had established in Cheribon
not only his religion but also his political power, he began, under
the name and title of Sunan Gunoong Jati, to propagate the faith by
force of arms in the whole of West Java. First he cast his eyes on
Bantam, then a mighty realm, the possession or at least the control
of which, leaving spiritual motives alone, would materially benefit
Moslim trade by securing a free passage through the Straits of Soonda
whenever trouble with the Portuguese made the Straits of Malacca unsafe.
The Sivaïte Prince of Bantam, trying to preserve his independence by
fostering the commercial rivalry between his Muhammadan and Christian
friends, received the latter with open arms and besought their
assistance against Cheribon and Demak, but Maulana Hasan ad-Din, a
son of Sunan Gunoong Jati, defeated him none the less and introduced
the Islām among his people both in Bantam proper and in the Lampongs.
Another son of Sunan Gunoong Jati founded the Muhammadan principality
of Soonda Kalapa, notwithstanding the fortifications erected there
by the Portuguese, at the instance of their Bantamese ally, to stem
the tide of Muhammadan conquest. After subjugating the vassal state,
Maulana Hasan ad-Din attacked, about 1526, the troops of Pajajaran
under the King’s son Sili Wangi, and routed them, taking the capital
and proselytising by the sword wherever he went, following the example
set by Raden Patah of Demak in East Java. It is probable that Bantam,
once islāmised and consequently turning against the Portuguese, took the
side of Cheribon in these wars. At any rate, we find Bantam and Cheribon
together acknowledging the suzerainty of Demak, like the more eastern
principalities of the north coast, and when that central Muhammadan
state of Java lost the hegemony in consequence of its breaking up
after the death of Pangeran Tranggana, and at last the Sooltan of
Pajang,[15] into which it dissolved, had to humble himself with his
allies, the Adipati of Surabaya and the Sunan of Giri, before the
Senapati of Mataram, his former regent in that territory, this valiant
and clever potentate claimed the lordship over the island. These were
the beginnings of a glorious new Mataram, perhaps identical with Mendang
Kamulan.
Cheribon, which had conquered Bantam and Pajajaran, lost gradually her
strength, became tributary to Mataram in 1625 and wholly dependent in
1632. She declined still more after the death of Panambahan Girilaya,
who divided his succession between his sons Pangeran Martawijaya (later
Sooltan Sepooh) and Pangeran Kartawijaya (later Sooltan Anom), on
condition of their providing for a third son, Pangeran Wangsakarta
of Godong (later Panambahan). Embroiled in the rebellion of Trunajaya
against the authority of Mataram and captured, Martawijaya and
Kartawijaya were kept as hostages at its capital, Karta. Released
through the intervention of Sooltan Tirtayasa of Bantam, more commonly
known as Abu’l-Fatah, they returned home only to get again mixed up
in hostilities against Mataram and the Dutch East India Company,
which overran Cheribon with its soldiers and improved the opportunity
by regulating the affairs of Girilaya’s three sons to its own best
advantage. The foundation of Batavia on the site of old Yacatra, taken
by Jan Pietersz Coen, May 30, 1619, had meant, among other things,
an always keener competition in trade with Bantam or, rather, the
“establishment of a free rendezvous”, _i.e._ free of bickerings with
native princes and princelings, for the fleets of the Company on their
long voyage to the Moluccos. Bantam having outstripped Cheribon by the
importance she derived from English and Dutch shipping, resented the
blow which threatened to relegate her to a second or third place, and
this resulted in frequent conflicts with the intruders, though the
boundary line of their settlement and their mutual relationship had been
carefully defined in the treaty of 1659. On the other side in occasional
difficulties with Mataram, the Company, acting on the _divide et impera_
principle, encouraged the rivalry between the middle and western
empires, which both strove for supremacy in the Priangan. How the
Company accomplished its purpose and triumphed, needs here no detailed
examination. Its objects and the considerations which moved it, are
wittily discussed in a Javanese mock-epic, the _Serat Baron Sakendher_,
a satire on the rise of Dutch power at Batavia, the foundation of Moor
Yang Koong (Jan Pietersz Coen). If that pattern of regents _outre
mer_, the first Dutch Governor-General in Java, whose motto was “never
despair”, whose grip like the grip of the tiger, has invited comparison
with Ganesa (firstborn of Siva and Parvati) for wisdom and cautious
statecraft, with Skanda (also sprung from the Mahadeva’s loins but
without the Devi’s collaboration) for resolution and mettle, here we
find him as the son of Baron Sookmool, Baron Sakendher’s brother,
and Tanaruga,[16] daughter of the Pajajaranese Princess Retna Sakar
Mandhapa, and the poet makes the personification of the Company say
to his twelve hopefuls, the earliest Tuan Tuan Edeleer, or honourable
members of the Governor-General’s Council: Good measures you will
enforce, without quarrelling amongst yourselves, and, even if it were
larceny, the moment you have decided upon it by common consent, I give
my permission,--a speech delightfully in keeping with the tactics of his
father, whose artillery prevailed, not with iron cannon-balls, but with
golden grapeshot of ducats and doubloons.
The ruins of the Fort Speelwijck and the minaret of Pangeran Muhammad’s
_mesdjid_ at Old Bantam are very illustrative of the insinuating way
in which the pioneers of the Company planted their factories; once
admitted on the strength of their promises, they gained a firm footing
by military superiority, driving hard bargains and ousting the Islām
from what it had come to regard as its own. Near by is the neglected,
overgrown Dutch cemetery, where many of those pioneers were laid to
rest, far from home, family and friends, killed in the Company’s battles
or by strenuous obedience to exacting orders, bartering their health in
a murderous climate for a handful of silver, wasting body and soul to
swell the Company’s dividends. A tangle of weeds and briars closes over
their remains; thick moss, covering their broken gravestones, effaces
their forgotten names; even the mausoleums dedicated to the memory of
the leaders among them, commanders and commercial agents-in-chief, are
crumbling away, harbouring hungry guests which leave safe lairs in
the forests, when deer and wild pigs become scarce, to raid at night
the village sheepfolds, while snakes may dart forth from the cracks
and fissures at any moment and mosquitoes swarm round in myriads, the
worst plague of all to him who seeks communion with the dead in that
jungle. The burial-ground of the Sooltans of Bantam, gathered round
Hasan ad-Din, the first preacher of the true faith in this region, is
in better condition. Though Shafei, to whose _madsheb_ or school the
Moslemin of the Dutch East Indies belong, disapproved of elaborate tombs
and prescribed that sepulchral cavities, after the deposition of the
bodies, should be filled up and made level with the ground, memorial
tokens to mark the graves of Muhammadan saints, famous princes and
heroes, often venerated as _kramats_, are a familiar sight in Java;
they consist generally of pieces of wood or stone, _tengger_, standing
upright at both ends, at the head and at the feet, differently shaped
for men and for women. Many such are found where Pangeran Muhammad
raised his _mesdjid_ with the minaret detached like the campanile of
some mediaeval Italian church. Tombs all round, tombs of Sooltans,
their brothers and sons and cousins, their great councillors and
generals, a Bantamese Aliscamps with Hasan ad-Din occupying the place
of honour under a canopy, prayer-mats and prayer-books lying around,
a benign breeze stirring the muslin hangings and filling the air with
the fragrance of the _kambojas_.[17] Whoever wants to know of the
excellent deeds of the Sooltans of Bantam, their acts of devotion in
peace and their prowess in war, can receive information from Pangeran
Muhammad Ali in _kampong_ Kanari, one of their descendants, keeper
of the archives of the _mesdjid_ and the surrounding garden of the
departed. He will tell furthermore of the well near the north wall
of the new building, which is fed from the well Zemzem at Mecca and,
thanks to the child Ishmaïl, beneath whose feet its water bubbled
forth, possesses the property of curing disease. It is also connected
with the miraculous source at Luar Batang, whose water possesses the
property of detecting perverters of the truth: the man who tries there
to slake his thirst with a falsehood on his conscience, from a downright
lie to a terminological inexactitude, or even a little fib for the
sake of domestic tranquillity, will not be able to swallow a drop, his
throat refusing liquid comfort until expiation of guilt; and so the
devotees who flock to the shrine of the saint of Hadramaut at Pasar
Ikan, Batavia, leave that source prudently alone--one may have sinned
unwittingly or under strong provocation. Such holy places are thickly
strewn and the last habitation of Hasan ad-Din is one of the holiest,
being overshadowed by the venerable minaret of Pangeran Muhammad’s
_mesdjid_, which signified to Bantam what the _mesdjid_ of Ngampel did
to the eastern and the _mesdjid_ of Demak to the middle states of Moslim
Java. The intact preservation of the latter as the oldest existing
edifice erected[18] for Muhammadan worship in the island, is of high
importance _superstitionis causa_, and exceeding care was taken in 1845,
when the danger of its tumbling down became imminent, to rebuild it not
all at once, but one part after the other, round the four principal
supports of the original structure, and to restore the beautifully
carved lintels and posts exactly to their accustomed position. Nothing
is left at Demak of Raden Patah’s princely dwelling, but the graves
are shown of Panambahan Jimboon, Pangeran Sabrang Lor and Pangeran
Tranggana, who was killed by one of his servants on an expedition to
still Sivaïtic Pasuruan.
Pangeran Tranggana had auxiliaries from Bantam among his troops and
this leads us back to West Java after our slight digression in favour
of Demak, the energetic central state which, at the time here spoken
of, ruled the roast in matters of conquest for the propagation of the
faith. The Bantamese, more than their converters, have conserved a
reputation for fanaticism and it is not yet a quarter of a century
since a certain Abool Karim of the district Tanara preached the
holy war, the brotherhood of the Naqshibendyah fanning the flame of
sedition he kindled. His _murids_ (disciples) Tubagoos Ismaïl, Marduki
and Wasid having spread the movement, a mob, led by a certain Haji
Iskak, massacred several Europeans at Chilegon (1888). But for the
Government’s bayonets, rather than a course of conciliation based on a
thorough knowledge of the agrarian causes at the bottom of the unrest
among the population, the whole of Bantam might have blazed up and
Cheribon might have followed. Seeing that they could not prevail, the
dissatisfied betook themselves again to prayer, there at the grave of
Hasan ad-Din, here at the grave of Sheik Noor ad-Din Ibrahim, situated
not far from the capital he founded, on a hill near the sea, the
Gunoong Jati, whence his title. The terraces of the _astana_ so called,
first home of the Islām in this region, much venerated however much
defaced, savour of more ancient heathen monuments in all their odour
of Muhammadan sacredness, not otherwise than the _Kitab Papakam_,
the Cheribon code of laws, savours of Indian maxims and even at this
date betrays its birth from the legislation introduced by the Hindu
immigrants, though in 1768 (and not before that year, more than three
centuries after the introduction of the law of the Prophet!), the
_Kutara Manawa_ has officially been abrogated in the Sooltanate. The
lowest three terraces of the _astana_ serve as a burial-ground for the
descendants of Sunan Gunoong Jati and the men of mark in the annals of
his empire; a road, winding upward, a Moslim Via delle Tombe, conducts
the pilgrim to a _mesdjid_ on the fourth, not to be desecrated by the
feet of unbelievers;[19] above the _mesdjid_, on the fifth, the _sanctum
sanctorum_, rest the mortal remains of the saint himself. Speaking of
Cheribon in its relations to Hinduïsm and the Islām, a reference to
Chinese influences on Javanese architecture cannot be omitted. They
are most evident, of course, where the sons of the Flowery Empire have
settled earliest and in greatest numbers. In several localities Chinese
temples are found for the building and decorating of which renowned
architects, wood-carvers and painters have expressly been summoned to
Java at great expense. Reputedly the finest is the _klenteng_, situated
at a stone’s throw from the shed wherein Sunan Gunoong Jati’s _grobak_
is kept, the vehicle in which he descended from heaven to proclaim the
Word. Transplanting their curved roof-trees and gaudy ornament, the
Chinese brought also a taste for grotto-work, once notably conspicuous
in the _kraton_ of Sooltan Anom. On the road to Tagal, near the
_dessa_ (village) Sunyaragi, lies a rocky labyrinth belonging to the
pleasure-grounds of Sooltan Sepooh’s famous country-seat. Among other
clever devices it contains an artificial cave so constructed that the
_kanjeng goosti_, retiring thither on a hot afternoon for dalliance
with his favourite of the hour, might shut himself completely off from
the world by a discreet artificial waterfall, securing privacy behind
its liquid screen and a refreshing atmosphere stimulative to amorous
exercise. The Chinaman who elaborated the idea, had his eyes gouged out
to prevent his creating another such wonder of architecture adapted to
the diversions of oriental potentates.
It seems fitting that in Java, the sweet island whose air is balm and
where always the delicious sound of running water is heard, where
the cult of bathing is perfected by inclination as well as necessity
of climate, some of the oldest signs of civilisation are found in
sheltered nooks and corners still frequented by those who appreciate
an invigorating plunge. Kota Batu, near Bogor, the supposed site of
the capital of Pajajaran, is an instance in point. Destroyed, says
the Soondanese tradition, because the illustrious King Noro Pati had
lifted up his heart to boast against the message of the Prophet,
his sons completed the calamity by their wrangling for the lordship
over outlying, as yet unsubjugated and unconverted dependencies, and
righteousness left the country. The same reasons which made Pajajaran
slow to accept the Islām, had hindered her acceptance of Hinduïsm. The
mountainous Priangan was sparsely populated and, even if we accept the
statements of native historians who give Hindu civilisation in West Java
a long life by dating the colonisation from India back to the first
century of the Christian era,[20] confined to a limited area, as the
antiquities discovered make clear, it remained far behind that which
reared the superb temples of Central Java. To the best of our knowledge
there were never any Hindu temples at all in West Java, where the people
seem to have contented themselves with prayer and sacrifice in the
open. While Central Java attained to the loftiest and noblest in art,
West Java vegetated until improved communication, stimulated by war and
trade, brought about a dissemination of more eastern artistic notions,
discernible in raised levels and terraces as those of Gunoong Jati,
which remind one faintly of the Boro Budoor; in earthen walls as those
on the Bukit Tronggool, which are arranged after a plan somewhat like
that of the squares enclosing the principal temple and the surrounding
smaller ones of the _chandi_ Sewu. Even then Polynesian clumsiness was
not shaken off. At Batu Tulis, a _kampong_ in the outskirts of Bogor,
where the hosts of two religions fought the battle which decided the
fate of Pajajaran, are several ungainly images and impressions of the
feet of Poorwakali, the spouse of one of that realm’s petrified kings,
who mourned him with such copious tears that she softened the very rock
she stood upon, according to one legend; and, according to another
legend, of the feet of a certain Raja Mantri who tarried so long in
contemplation of the inscribed stone already mentioned, pondering over
the meaning of its strange characters, that he sank gradually into the
hard ground. There are more impressions of more feet and a coarsely
carved _linga_, Siva’s fecundating attribute, transformed by Muhammadan
piety into the miracle working staff of a Moslim santon. Hardly greater
interest is awakened by the primitive statues Kota Batu derives its
appellation from, “city of stones”, which form a sort of _Ruhmes Allee_,
lining the path from the main road to the bath-house, with many of the
same pattern scattered to right and left. All of them are petrified
worthies of Pajajaran, which their own mothers would not recognise,
though the natives know each of them by praenomen, nomen, cognomen and
title. King Moonding Wangi, _i.e._ the nice-smelling buffalo, looking
perhaps a trifle more human than the rest. Of a similar nature are the
_archadomas_, a collection of about eight hundred blocks of stone on
the estate Pondok Gedeh, which need a vivid imagination in the beholder
to pass for the figures of men and animals. A good specimen of the
Pajajaran type of sculpture, if it deserves that name, is the lachrymose
Poorwakali already referred to as standing, petrified herself, at a
little distance from the Batu Tulis where she solaces her widowhood by
keeping company with Kidangpenanjong, forgetting her royal husband,
after her paroxysm of grief, in a plebeian flirtation. Such is woman!
From these crude attempts at a representation of animate creation,
sprang nevertheless an art which, in the hands of the master-builders
and sculptors of Central Java, who sought the beauty of truth that
is verily without a rival, flowered out in prayers of stone, visible
tokens of their yearning for heavenly reward, born of communion with
the divine in deep reflection, only to descend again to lower planes,
to the seeking of the praise of man, in the decadent conventionality
of the later eastern Hindu empires. The story of the development of
architecture and sculpture in the island from the immaturity identified
with Pajajaran to the luxurious grandeur of the temples of Prambanan,
the Mendoot and the Boro Budoor, hides a riddle no less strange
than that of the bursting forth of Arabic poetry, full-blown in all
its subtleness of thought, exuberance of imagination, perfection
of language. The story of decline is written in the evolution of
decorative design: the significance of motives based on the observation
of the earth and her precious gifts, evaporates gradually in nicely
waving lines, elaborate scrolls, insipid fineries. The _kala_-head
changes into the roots of a tree, figurative of the forest; the trunk
of Ganapati into its bole; at last the tree, roots, trunk, branches,
foliage and all, with the sun rising over the forest, with mountains
touching the sky, with rivers flowing to the sea, into conventional
ornament. Islāmic ideals were not conducive to a revival of artistic
conceptions fading into nothingness; neither was, to repeat that too,
the painful contact with Christian civilisation. When the natives were
made to toil and moil for alien masters, their virtues and energies
blighted into the defects and failings of apathy. How could it be
otherwise where an inefficient, venal police and a slow, defective
administration of justice did (and does) not protect property against
depredation; where exertion beyond what is strictly necessary for
bare subsistence, meant (and means) not prosperity but increased
taxation. With all its pretensions to superiority and display of
ethical sentiment, the Dutch Government can scarcely be said to differ
much from Baron Sookmool, the personified East India Company of more
than three centuries ago. Holland’s wards in her rich colonies may be
moulded into men, angels or devils, like the Triloka, the triple people
of the Hindus, according to the treatment meted out to them and the
education they receive. As far as Java is concerned, hoping in heaven’s
mercy, they live in their old traditions, the light of the past and
the shadow of the present. What will the future bring in advance of
the day on which mankind shall be scattered abroad like moths? There
is no knowledge of it but with God and the secret lies behind the
Banaspati,[21] in the hand of him of the budding lotus-flower, the
Deliverer from Evil.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[13]
The bodies remained silent,
Only the souls did commune,
For in the light of the eyes
Came and departed the souls.
[14] The oldest, perhaps the only original form of native poetry,
happily compared, by Professor R. BRANDSTETTER, with the Italian
_stornelli_. In contradistinction to the _sha’ir_, the charm of the
_pantoon_ lies, or should lie, in its being improvised. It consists of
four lines, of which the third rimes with the first and the fourth with
the second; the first two contain some statement generally but loosely
connected with the meaning of the last couplet, except, to quote Dr. J.
J. DE HOLLANDER, that they determine the correspondence of sound. Here
is one in translation:
Whence come the leeches?
From the watered ricefield they go straight to the river.
Whence comes love?
From the eyes it goes straight to the heart.
[15] The title of Sooltan was assumed, probably for the first time in
the history of Java, by the ruler of Pajang when, in 1568, he added
Jipang to his domains.
[16] This lady was a prisoner of the Pangeran of Jakarta (Yacatra) from
whom Baron Sookmool, charmed by her beauty when he arrived in Java to
trade for his father, the wealthy merchant Kawit Paru, bought her for
three big guns, whose history, in the legendary lore of the island, is
inextricably mixed up with the _mariage à trois_ of Kiahi Satomo (for
the nonce taking domicile at Cheribon), Niahi Satomi and the _maryam_ of
Karang Antu referred to in the preceding chapter.
[17] _Plumeria acutifolia Poir._, fam. _Apocynaceae_, planted
extensively in cemeteries; its flowers, for this reason called _boonga
kuboor_ (grave-flowers), have a very pleasant odour and are used to
scent clothes, etc.
[18] About 1468, by Raden Patah.
[19] It is told that the intrepid Governor-General Daendels once tried
to invade the sanctity of this house of prayer, but even he had hastily
to retire.
[20] Venggi inscriptions, brought to light in West Java, go back to the
sixth and fifth centuries of the Christian era and name Kalinga in India
as the region from which the Hindu colonists emigrated.
[21] Banaspati or Wanaspati is the conventional lion’s (or tiger’s)
head, a frequent motive in the ornament of Javanese temples, especially
of common use over their porches and gateways.