MORE OF CENTRAL JAVA
Le bon sens nous dit que les choses de la terre n’existent que
bien peu et que la vraie réalité est dans les rêves. CHARLES
BAUDELAIRE, _Les Paradis Artificiels (Dédication)_.
Except during a period of some four centuries and a half, from about 940
till the palmy days of Mojopahit, when declining Hindu civilisation, for
reasons as yet unexplained, sought a refuge farther east, Central Java
and especially that part of it known in our time as the Principalities,
_i.e._ Surakarta and Jogjakarta, has always been the heart of the
island. There lived and live the true Javanese, the people of heaven’s
mercy, cherishing their old traditions; these and the beautiful scenery
of their fire-mountains and fertile valleys are still theirs, whatever
else may fail: glory, power and freedom. They lived and live in their
world of custom and formality a life unintelligible in its inner
workings to the western brain, impenetrable to the western eye. There
are forces hidden in the Javanese mind, the resultant of a strangely
moved past, which we can never understand, though we may admire their
creative energy, revealed in the now conventional designs guiding the
hand of the potter, the wood-carver, the goldsmith, the armourer, the
_batikker_,[49] hereditary practisers of dying arts and crafts; in the
remains of a marvellous architecture long since altogether dead. No
chapter in the whole history of eastern art, says Fergusson, is so full
of apparent anomalies or upsets so completely our preconceived ideas of
things as they ought to be, as that which treats of the architectural
history of the island of Java ...; the one country to which they (the
Hindus) overflowed, was Java, and there they colonised to such an
extent as for nearly a thousand years to obliterate the native arts
and civilisation and supplant it by their own ...; what is still more
singular is, that it was not from the nearest shores of India that
these emigrants departed but from the western coast.... A _linga_,
erected in the Kadu in the year 654 Saka (A.D. 732), a Sivaïte symbol
of generation, marks the origin of an artistic activity whose most
brilliant period, the classical one of central Javanese architecture,
as G. P. Rouffaer styles it rightly, begins with the construction of
such buildings as the Buddhist _chandi_ Kalasan or Kali Bening. The
inscription of King Sanjaya in Venggi characters, and vestiges of
Vaishnav tendencies in the Suku and Cheto temples of a much later date,
point to the worship of Vishnu, while Brahma’s four sublime conditions
and more subtle transcendentalism do not seem to have attracted the
Javanese converts to Hinduïsm. They could grasp the unity of Siva’s
threefold functions much better and accepted him as Mahadeva at the
head of the Trimoorti. The advent of Buddhism in its _mahayanistic_
form, the creed of the northern church so called, served to emphasise
native tolerance. Sivaïsm and whatever there was of Vishnuïsm,
harmonised with Buddhism to the extent of borrowing and lending symbols,
emblems and divine attributes; Hindu gods played puss in the corner
with Bodhisatvas, as already remarked upon in the preceding chapter;
the _chandi_ Chupuwatu surprises us with a _stupa-linga_;[50] a
Javanese prince of the thirteenth century bears the expressive name of
Siva-Buddha; the old Javanese _Sang Hiang Kamahayanikan_ contains the
dictum: Siva is identical with Buddha.[51] If more inscriptions had been
found, more light might have been thrown on the anomalous ornamentation
of, for instance, the Prambanan temples and the Mendoot; but Sivaïte
records of the kind leaving the matter unexplained, Buddhist information
is still scantier, perhaps a consequence of Baghavat’s followers not
excelling in epigraphy or literary labours of any description.
If the backwash of great political events or religious discussion when
the Islām superseded older creeds, may have aided Kala, the Destroyer,
in demolishing a good many buildings of the classical period, whose
sites even are sought in vain, it is certain that the pioneers of
western civilisation, proud of their superiority, willfully and wantonly
undid in many places work that had been spared by time and earthquakes
and volcanic eruptions and enemies born of the soil, devastating with
fire and sword their brethren’s hearths and houses. Christian zealots
regarded the ancient monuments as assembly-rooms of the Devil where the
benighted heathen used to foregather in idolatry, lodges of abomination
the sooner razed the better, a pious feeling often translated into
action on grounds of utility: the stones offered excellent building
material. Officials and _particulieren_[52] of broader views, besides
acknowledging the serviceableness of _chandis_ in this respect, went
_recho_-hunting[53] for the adornment of their houses and gardens. Quite
a collection has been formed in the residency grounds at Jogjakarta, the
nucleus of which was moved thither from the estate Tanjong Tirta, whose
former occupants, like most of the landed gentry, made exceedingly free
with the temples and monasteries in that neighbourhood. As neither they
nor the others bothered about noting where they got this or that piece
of sculpture, we are entirely at sea concerning the meaning of several
beautiful statues. This is the case, _e.g._, with one of remarkably fine
execution, a crowned goddess, sitting on a lotus cushion and encircled
by a flaming aureole, pressing her hands to her bosom. She has been
fortunate enough to escape the fate of some deities who shared her
sequestration and were left to the care of the convicts detailed to keep
the Resident’s compound in trim, a duty performed by whitewashing or
daubing them with a grayish substance, excepting the hair of the head,
the eyebrows, the eyeballs and the _prabha_, which the gentlemen-artists
of the chain-gang are in the habit of painting black, enhancing the
general effect by “restoring” lost hands and feet and damaged faces
after methods nothing short of barbarous, but therefore the better in
keeping with the traditional attitude of those in authority. For this
infamous disfiguration and desecration, which makes any one unaccustomed
to Dutch East Indian processes shudder with horror, never disturbed the
aesthetic sense or equanimity of the several occupants of the residency
who, during the last thirty-five years, saw it going on under their
very eyes, the eyes of the representatives of a Government lavish in
circulars[54] recommending the country’s antiquities to their care.
Neither are those eyes shocked by the “museum” adjoining the residency,
a jumble of plunder from _chandis_ far and near; nor by the chaotic mass
of torsos, arms and legs, fragmentary evidence of wholesale spoliation
behind that pitiful exhibition of archaeology turned topsyturvy.
So much for the statuary removed from the _chandis_, as far as it can
be traced. Concerning the _chandis_ themselves, it should be remembered
that the greater part has wholly disappeared. Hillocks, overspread
with brushwood, sometimes awaken hopes that by digging foundations
and portions of walls may be discovered; heaps of debris, tenanted
by lizards and snakes, point to structures of which nothing that is
left, indicates the former use; shattered ornamental stones speak of
magnificent buildings fallen or pulled down--glimmerings of splendour
that was. The temples still standing are reduced to ruins and diminish
almost visibly in attractiveness and size. Rouffaer[55] gave an
interesting example of their fate in the story of the spiriting away
of the _chandi_ Darawati: in 1889 tolerably well preserved, though two
large statues of the Buddha had been dragged off to the dwelling of a
European in the _dessa_ Gedaren, it was gone in 1894--vanished into air!
The temples constructed of brick, like the _chandi_ Abang, have suffered
even more, of course, than those of stone, the memory of whose grandeur
is retained in a few ghastly wrecks. Reserving the Buddhist remains
for later treatment and passing by the Sivaïte caves with rectangular
porches in the Bagelen, mentioned by Fergusson, I shall deal here with
the _chandis_ Suku and Cheto, and the most noteworthy ruins in the
southern mountains. The latter comprise the _kraton_ of Ratu Boko, Mboq
Loro Jonggrang’s father, as the natives call it, and the temple group of
the Gunoong Ijo. Of the legendary kingly residence little more is left
than a square terrace with portions of a wall and the sill of a gate.
The _chandi_ Ijo consists of a large temple of the usual polygonal form
with ten smaller ones and a pit which contained two stone receptacles
and strips of gold-leaf with the image of a deity and an inscription;
the buildings are in a sad condition, but decay has not impaired their
beauteous dignity and the landscape alone repays a visit to Soro Gedoog,
an estate whose gradual reclamation of the jungle led to their discovery
in 1886 when ground was cleared for an extension of the plantations.
The _chandis_ Suku and Cheto are situated respectively on the western
and northern slope of the Gunoong Lawu, a volcano on the boundary
between Surakarta and Madioon, not less expressive in its scenery of
what heaven has done for this delicious island. Shortly after the
mysterious pyramids of Suku had drawn the attention of Resident Johnson,
in the British Interregnum, Thomas Horsfield visited them and made some
drawings. The inscriptions and the sculptured ornament of Cheto were
reported upon by C. J. van der Vlis, in 1842. The groups belong to the
latest, most decadent period of Hindu architecture in Java and their
foundation, Suku being a few years older than Cheto, must have coincided
with the introduction of the Islām. Bondowoso, the son of the recluse
Damar Moyo, who assisted the King of Pengging against Ratu Boko and took
such signal revenge upon the latter’s daughter, Loro Jonggrang, for
rejecting him, the uncouth slayer of her father, is supposed to have
erected the buildings at Suku. Those at Cheto owe their origin to a
prince of Mojopahit, who quarrelled with his brother, the ruler of that
empire, or, according to another legend, to a certain Kiahi Patiro, who
refused to become a convert to the new faith and repaired to the Lawu,
where he lived as a hermit and was killed by Pragiwongso, an emissary
of the Moslim King of Demak. _Linga_-worship returned in the temple
groups of the Lawu to its crudest modes of expression, and Fergusson,
who mentions the dates 1435 and 1440, speaks of a degraded form of the
Vishnuïte religion, the _garuda_,[56] the boar, the tortoise, etc.,
being of frequent occurrence in the ornamentation. Junghuhn described
the staircases he found, which connected the terraces, and the statues,
which hardly came up to the artistic standard of Prambanan and the Boro
Budoor, one of them distinguishing itself by a colossal head whose
measurement from chin to crown was three feet, half of the whole height.
Comparing his description with the actual state of things, much must
have been removed, heaven knows whither! Notwithstanding the obvious
truth of Fergusson’s remark that a proper illustration of Suku and
Cheto, and, I may be permitted to add, of the remains on the summit
of the mountain, whether originally tree-temples or consecrated to
devotional exercises in the open, _à l’instar_ of West Java, promises
to be of great importance to the history of architecture in the island,
very little has been done in that direction or even for the conservation
of the ruins where _recho_-hunters and a luxurious vegetation vie in
obliterating the traces of most interesting antiquities. Junghuhn
sounded a note of warning apropos of the falling in of the peculiarly
constructed pyramidal temple, May 1838, but this and the other monuments
have been suffered since, as before, to crumble quietly away and the
easily removable sculpture to be carried off. Ganesa, in his manifold
reproductions, seconds on the Lawu his father Siva, head of the
Trimoorti, continuing the lead obtained seven centuries earlier in the
plain of Prambanan, and a systematic study of the reliefs, now covered
with moss and lichens, might shed a good deal of light on several
unsettled questions. One of those reliefs, blending the human and the
divine in the manner of the allusions to the _Brata Yuda_ on the Diëng
plateau and the Rama legend on the walls of the _chandi_ Loro Jonggrang,
represents a complete armoury, with Ganesa, protector of arts and
crafts, between the armourer himself and his assistant who works the
bellows. If, with Rouffaer, we divide the long era during which the
Hindus, first as immigrants and then as rulers, merged gradually in the
aboriginal population, into a Hindu-Javanese period of Central Java and
a Javanese-Hindu period of East Java, the monuments of Suku and Cheto
belong evidently to the epoch of Javanese-Hindu decline, decadent art
flowing back to its classical source, tarnishing original Hindu-Javanese
conceptions. Leaving Buddhist architecture to be dealt with in the
last chapters, and before turning to the _chandis_ of East Java, a
short historical review may aid in the appreciation of this decline and
subsequent paralysis of the creative faculty. Kartikeya, the god of
war, a younger son of Siva and Parvati, had his strong hand in this,
and how he invested and divested mighty princes, who conquered or were
defeated and finally passed away, causing the rise and fall of glorious
kingdoms, is written in the _babads_, the Javanese chronicles, by no
means such old wives’ tales as Dominee Valentijn tried to make them out,
but containing in their extravagance a kernel of stern reality, not the
less explanatory of the condition of the fairy island Java because the
_magnanimes mensonges_ of a vivid imagination animate the dull facts.
Of the Hindu empire Mataram in Central Java nothing tangible is left
except the ruins referred to, a few objects in metal and stone,
accidentally unearthed or dug up by treasure-seekers, and some
inscriptions, title-deeds, etc., the scanty “genuine charters of Java”
as van Limburg Brouwer defined them. The name Mataram has been preserved
on a copper plate, dating from about 900, which agrees in this respect
with four other records, discovered in East Java; the capital of the
_Maharaja i Mataram_ is called Medang. For two centuries, from the
beginning of the eighth until the beginning of the tenth, Mataram seems
to have flourished as the most powerful state in the island, especially
aggressive towards the east. Native tradition, in fond exaggeration
of her importance, makes her sway the destinies of the world. Her
star waned suddenly; by what cause is unknown; but whether it was the
invasion of a mightier enemy or a natural catastrophe, the same as that
which overtook the builders of the Diëng and the plain of Prambanan,
forcing them to leave their work unfinished, ancient Mataram sank into
insignificance. From the middle of the tenth until the beginning of
the sixteenth century, the successors of her former eastern vassals,
that is whichever of them happened to be on top in the continual
struggle for supremacy, did in East and Central Java as they pleased,
warring, intermarrying, annexing their neighbours’ domains, only to
lose them again and their own kingdoms to boot, to usurpers, ambitious
ministers, popular governors of provinces, enterprising _condottieri_
or mere adventurers favoured by Dame Fortune. In that overflowing
arena of high rivalry, dynasties succeeding one another with amazing
rapidity, Daha, situated in what is now Kediri, secured paramount
influence after Kahuripan, situated in what is now Southern Surabaya;
then Tumapel, situated in what is now Pasuruan, became ascendant; then
Daha once more and, last of the great Hindu empires, Mojopahit, about
1300, to be overthrown, after two centuries of preponderance, by the
sword of Islām. Jayabaya, King of Daha, from about 1130 till about
1160, has been called[57] the Charlemagne of Java, in whose reign
learning and letters were encouraged; or the Javanese King Arthur, whose
life among his heroes, in peace and war, is reflected in the idylls
of the _Panji_-cycle, at whose Court the famous poet Mpu Sedah began
his version of the _Mahabharata_, the _Brata Yuda_, finished by Mpu
Panulooh, author of the _Gatotkachasraya_, while Tanakoong wrote the
_Wretta-Sansaya_, a sort of _Epistola de Arte Poetica_. When Tumapel
expanded, especially under Ken Angrok, troublous times arrived for
Daha, which could hardly hold her own against the encroachments of that
unscrupulous monarch. Ken Angrok or Arok, born in 1182 at Singosari,
had seized the royal power after assassinating the old King in 1222 or
1223. The kris he used, had been ordered expressly for that deed from
the famous armourer Mpu Gandring, who was its first victim because he
tarried in delivering it, the tempering of the steel having taken more
time than suited the usurper’s patience. Dying under the murderous
stroke, Mpu Gandring uttered a prophetic curse: This kris will kill
Ken Angrok; it will kill his children and grandchildren; it will
kill seven kings. The prophecy came true with wonderful exactness.
Ken Angrok having married Dedes, the widow of the old King he had
despatched, was himself killed as the third victim of Mpu Gandring’s
kris in the hand of a bravo commissioned by their son Anusapati, the
Hamlet of Javanese history. And how blood followed blood during the
hundred years of Tumapel’s hegemony, how Ken Angrok’s descendants
harassed their neighbours before the curse took effect upon each of
them, appearing like luminous stars in the sky of politics and war, and
then disappearing behind the shadowy cloud of untimely death, is it not
written in the _Pararaton_ or Book of the Kings of Tumapel and
Mojopahit?
The foundation of Mojopahit has been attributed to scions of several
royal families, among them to Raden Tanduran, a prince of Pajajaran
in West Java which, it will be remembered, owed its origin to princes
of Tumapel. The most widely accepted reading is, however, that a
certain Raden Wijaya, commander of the army of King Kertanegara,
great-grandson of Ken Angrok, profiting from his master’s quarrels with
Jaya Katong, ruler of Daha in those days, carved out a kingdom for
himself, reclaiming, always with that end in view, a large area of wild
land, Mojo Lengko or Mojo Lengu, near Tarik in Wirosobo, the present
Mojokerto. King Kertanegara who, by branding the Chinese envoy Meng Ki,
had stirred up trouble with the Flowery Empire, was unable to punish
this act of arrogance, and his violent death in a battle won by the
legions of Daha, meant the inglorious end of Tumapel. This happened in
1292 and the expeditionary force sent from China to chastise him for his
ungracious treatment of ambassadors to his Court, consequently found
their object accomplished or, more correctly speaking, unaccomplishable
when landing in 1293. But its leader indemnified his martial ardour
by entering the service of Raden Wijaya who, with his assistance,
subjugated Daha, which had tried to reassume her former precedence.
Firmly established on the throne of the realm he had fashioned out of
Daha, Tumapel and his own territory near Tarik, he refused, however,
to pay the price stipulated by his Chinese ally and when the auxiliary
troops asked the fulfilment of his promises, arms in hand, he proved to
them that superior strength is the ultimate arbiter of right and sent
them home much diminished in numbers and pride. The Emperor of China,
wroth that the beautiful princesses of Tumapel, daughters of the late
King Kertanegara, whom he had deigned to accept as concubines, were not
forthcoming, but stayed behind to adorn the harem of the self-made King
of Mojopahit, ordered his unsuccessful generalissimo to be flogged by
way of example to other commanding officers. Raden Wijaya who, with the
kingly title, had assumed the name of Kertarajasa, enjoyed his royal
dignity only until 1295 and his ashes were entombed in two places not
yet located: in the _dalem_ (the inner, private part) of his palace
conformably to the Buddhist, and at Simping conformably to the Sivaïte
ritual, not otherwise than King Kertanegara received last honours in the
guise of Siva-Buddha at Singosari and in the guise of a Dhyani Buddha at
Sakala, and the remains of King Kertarajasa’s successor were interred in
three places according to the Vishnuïte ritual, circumstances from which
we may conclude that in East as in Central Java the different creeds
lived together in most amiable harmony.
The kris of Mpu Gandring might limit the earthly term of the descendants
of Ken Angrok, it could not check their prowess while they were still
up and doing. Overlords of East and Central Java, extending their rule
to Pajajaran, they even looked for conquest to the other islands of
the Malay Archipelago. Under Hayam Wurook or Rajasa Nagara, in the
latter half of the fourteenth century, Mojopahit reached her zenith; a
record of 1389 mentions Bali as being tributary since about 1340; Aru,
Palembang and Menangkabau in Sumatra, Pahang with Tumanik in Malacca,
Tanjong Pura in Borneo, Dompo in Soombawa, Ceram and the Goram islands
acknowledged Nayam Wurook’s suzerainty too. Seeing no more worlds to
subdue, he died and, as in the case of Alexander the Great, his empire
fell to pieces; in East Java itself Balambangan seceded from Mojopahit
proper and the Muhammadan propaganda, fanning discord between the
Hindu princes of old and new dynasties, prepared their common doom.
The beginnings of the Islām in East Java have already been spoken of,
with Gresik as a missionary centre, Maulana Malik Ibrahim as the first
_wali_ in that region and the conversion into Moslim vassal states
of the dependencies of Mojopahit, whose princes, combining under the
auspices of Demak against their liege lord, sealed his fate. Raden
Patah of Demak was a man of war and destiny. The fire of the new faith
burning fiercely within him, he hurled his defiance at the stronghold
of the heathen, speaking to the last King of Mojopahit, his father or
grandfather according to tradition, as Amaziah, King of Juda, spoke
to Joash, the son of Jehoahaz, the son of Jehu, King of Israël: Come,
let us see one another in the face,--but with a different result: the
challenger from Demak came out victorious and Mojopahit ceased to exist,
an issue fraught with grave consequences. This occurred about the year
1500[58] and Raden Patah, pursuing the royal family on their flight,
defeated the King or one of his sons again at Malang, where a last stand
was made. But Gajah Mada, the Prime Minister of Mojopahit, founded a
new empire, Supit Urang, which comprised much of the territory once
belonging to Singosari. The Saivas also held out at Pasuruan, which
was invested by Pangeran Tranggana, a successor of Raden Patah, but
after his assassination by one of his servants, the troops of Demak
returned home. Pasuruan and Surabaya reverted, later on, to the Regent
of Madura, a son-in-law of Pangeran Tranggana. Yet, Hinduïsm lingered on
in the island; its political power was only broken with the conquest of
Balambangan by the East India Company in 1767, and the population of the
Tengger mountain region did not commence to accept the Islām until very
recently.
In the confusion which resulted after the death of Pangeran Tranggana
from the disruption of his domains into Cheribon, Jayakarta and Bantam
in the western, Gresik and Kediri in the eastern, and Demak proper and
Pajang in the central part of the island, the latter territory absorbed
Jipang and its Prince Tingkir, a scion of the royal family of Mojopahit,
was proclaimed Sooltan by the spiritual authority of Gresik, the first
time we find that title mentioned in the history of Java. Sooltan
Tingkir appointed one of his trusted servants, Kiahi Ageng Pamanahan,
governor of the tract of land which had preserved the name of Mataram.
Kiahi Ageng Pamanahan improved the condition of the people and his son
Suta Wijaya, who had married a daughter of the Sooltan, making himself
independent by rebelling, by poisoning his father-in-law after his
having been captured and pardoned, finally by taking possession of
the regalia in the subsequent war of succession, became master of the
situation and laid in New Mataram the foundation of another state which,
in the reign of his successor Ageng, 1613-1646, gained the ascendency
over the rest of Java with Madura, subjugating even Sukadana in West
Borneo. Not, however, without strenuous exertion for Balambangan gave
a good deal of trouble in the East and the conquest of Sumedang in the
West, in 1626, taxed the military strength of the rising empire to
its utmost. When the East India Company began to make its influence
felt, Moslim solidarity proved a valuable asset as, for instance, in
the relations with Bantam and Cheribon, whose Pangeran proposed the
title of Susuhunan for Ageng (1625) before Mecca promoted him to the
Sooltanate (1630). In 1628 and 1629 he ventured to attack Batavia, the
new settlement of the Dutch, but had to retire and, what was even worse,
by provoking those upstart strangers, he damaged his trade: they closed
the channels of export to Malacca and other foreign ports of rice, the
principal produce of the land. “Mataram must now become our friend,”
wrote the Governor-General to his masters, the Honourable Seventeen,
and, indeed, Mangku Rat I., Ageng’s son, found himself obliged to
sign a treaty of friendship with the Company--a dangerous friendship!
Differences between their “friend” and Bantam with Cheribon were
sedulously fostered by the authorities at Batavia; the Company took a
hand in the putting down of disturbances created in East Java by Taruna
Jaya of Madura and Kraëng Galesoong of Macassar; the Company patronised
and protected the reigning Sooltans, who moved their residence from
Karta to Kartasura, against pretenders and exacted payment in land,
privileges, concessions, monopolies, etc., shamelessly in excess of the
real or pretended assistance afforded in quelling purposely manufactured
anarchy--precisely as we see it happen nowadays wherever western
civilisation offers her “disinterested” services to eastern countries of
promising complexion for exploitation by western greed.
Mataram, trying to escape from the extortionate friendship of the
honey-tongued strangers at Batavia, whose thirst for gold seemed
unquenchable, has its counterparts in benighted regions now being
“civilised” after the time-honoured recipe: interference which upsets
peace and order, more interference to restore peace and order with
the naturally opposite result, occupation until peace and order will
be restored, gradual annexation. The East India Company’s mean spirit
of haggling was held in utter contempt by the native princes, _grands
seigneurs_ in thought and action, too proud to pay the hucksters with
their own coin, though bad forebodings must have filled the mind,
for instance, of Susuhunan Puger, recognised at Batavia as Mataram’s
figurehead under the name of Paku Buwono I.,[59] when near his capital
a Dutch fort was built and garrisoned with Dutch soldiers to back him
in his exactions for the benefit of alien usurers and sharpers. Like
the rat of Ganesa, they penetrated everywhere and the tale of their
relations to the lords of the land is one of tortuous insinuation until
they had firmly established themselves and could give the rein to their
sordid commercialism in always more exorbitant claims. Paku Buwono II.,
feeling his end approach, was prevailed upon, in 1749, to bequeath his
realm to the Company, but one of the most influential members of the
imperial family decided that this was carrying it a little too far:
Mangku Bumi,[60] brother of Paku Buwono II., supported by Mas Saïd, son
of the exiled Mangku Negara,[61] and other _pangerans_ (princes of the
blood), stood up in arms to defend their country’s rights and inflicted
severe losses on the Dutch troops in stubborn guerrilla warfare. This
led to the partition of Mataram between Paku Buwono III. and his uncle
Mangku Bumi, both acknowledging the supremacy of the Company, the latter
settling at Jogjakarta, the old capital Karta, under the title and
name of Sooltan Mangku Buwono,[62] while Mas Saïd, who did not cease
hostilities before 1757, gained also a quasi-independent position as
Pangeran Adipati Mangku Negara, which in 1796 became hereditary. With
three reigning princes for one, the power of Mataram was definitely
broken and Batavia assumed the direction of her affairs quite openly,
the “thundering field-marshal” Daendels emphasising her state of
decline and the British Interregnum bringing no change.
In 1825 the divided remnant of Mataram, viz. Surakarta with the Mangku
Negaran and Jogjakarta with the Paku Alaman,[63] was deeply stirred by
Pangeran Anta Wiria calling upon his compatriots to chase the oppressors
away. Born from a woman of low descent among the wives of Mangku Buwono
III., Sooltan of Jogjakarta, it seems that, nevertheless, hopes of his
succession to the throne had been held out to him when he assisted his
father against the machinations of his grandfather, Sooltan Sepooh
(Mangku Buwono II.), banished by Raffles in 1812. However this may be,
he resented the settlement of the Sooltanate on the death of Mangku
Buwono III. upon Jarot, an infant son, and other circumstances adding
to his dislike of Dutch control, he raised the standard of revolt. The
Javanese responded with alacrity to an appeal which bore good tidings
of delivery as the wind, ridden by the Maroots who make the mountains
to tremble and tear the forest into pieces, bears good tidings of
coming rain to a parched earth. Anta Wiria, under his more popular
name of Dipo Negoro, and his lieutenants Ali Bassa Prawira Dirja, or
Sentot, and Kiahi Maja, gave the Dutch troops plenty of bloody work in
the five years during which the Java war lasted, 1825-1830. It was the
last eruption on a large scale of the fire imprisoned in the native’s
heart, the last sustained effort at regaining his independence, crushed
by the white man’s superiority in military appliances, but occasional
throbbings, ruffling the surface as in Bantam (1888), the Preanger
Regencies (1902), Kediri (1910), etc., show that the volcano is by no
means an extinguished one. Though “kingdoms are shrunk to provinces and
chains clank over sceptred cities,” the love of liberty, laid by as a
sword which eats into itself, does not own foreign dominion, and the
native princes, especially the Susuhunan of Surakarta and the Sooltan
of Jogjakarta, remain objects of worshipful homage. Their genealogy
remounts to the gods whose essence took substance in the illustrious
prophet Adam who begat Abil and Kabil on the goddess Kawa; the history
of their house begins with the arrival in the island, in the Javanese
year 1, of Aji Soko; they are the _panatagama_ and _sayidin_ (_shah
ad-din_), directors and leaders of religion; their Courts set the
fashion in high native society, Solo[64] being more gay and extravagant,
Jogja[64] more sedate and solid, as a writer at the end of the
eighteenth century already remarked.
The Dutch Government recognises the imperial or royal dignity of
Susuhunan and Sooltan by the superior position of its Residents in the
capitals of their Principalities, who, directly responsible to the
Governor-General, correspond in rank to the general officers of the
army, while the administrative heads of the other residencies have
to content themselves with the honours due to a colonel; also by the
institution of dragoon body-guards whose ostensibly ornamental presence
can be and has been turned to good account when the mental intoxication
arising from meditation on gilded disgrace, charged with the lightning
of passion, produces effects irreconcilable with the fiction that all
is for the best in this best of worlds. With the Government steadily
encroaching on the native princes’ ancient rights, bitterness grows
apace and irritation at the recoiling weight of bondage lives on, though
colonial reports represent it as dead. Truly, in the three centuries
during which it pleased Kuwera, the fat god of wealth, to inspire the
strangers from the West, rich in promise but slow in performance,
exacting and pitiless, to deeds of unprincipled rapacity, the people
have learned to hide their thoughts that worse may not follow, hoping
that time will set things right. But as everything points more clearly
to the fixed purpose of the Dutch Government to avail themselves of
every pretext for swallowing the Principalities as all the rest has been
gobbled up, there are those who cherish the memory of Dipo Negoro and
consider the necessity of new man-offerings: the greater the need, the
greater must be the propitiation. On the whole, however, better counsel
prevails, deliverance being sought on planes of mystic exercise, silent
submission being practised in expectation of the consummation of a
higher will, and this is the native’s secret as he repeats the lessons
inculcated in the _Wulang Reh_, the treatise on ethics written by one
of the eminent of the past, Sunan Paku Buwono IV.: May ye imitate our
ancestors, who were endowed with supernatural strength, and may ye
qualify for penitence, heeding closely the perfection of life; this is
my prayer for my children; be it granted! Meanwhile taxation increases,
but who can object to that when in days of old the good people had to
pay for the privilege of looking at the public dancers, whether they
cared to look at them or not; when compulsory contributions to the
exchequer were levied upon one-eyed persons for their being so much
better off than the totally blind; etc.... Fancy a Minister of Finance
in Holland defending a vexatious new assessment on the ground of
arbitrary cesses in the Middle Ages!
Hindu art had lost its vitality when the second empire of Mataram arose
in Central Java and the cult of the ideal was effected by modernising
currents from the eastern part of the island. Sanskrit, as the vehicle
of thought in Venggi and Nagari characters, made place for Kawi which,
related in its oldest forms to Pali and in its symbols to the Indian
alphabets, evolved soon afterward into a specific Javanese type.
Sivaïte literature paved the way for the _Manik Maya_, the _Bandoong_,
the _Aji Saka_, the _Panji_- and the _Menak_- or _Hamza_-cycles, the
_Damar Wulan_; as to Buddhist literature, Burnouf’s comment upon its
inferiority holds also good for Java: no trace exists even of a life of
the Buddha, of _jataka_-tales, except such as have originated in the
eastern kingdoms at a comparatively late date. Literary culture in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a continuation of and throve on
the efforts of the great authors hospitably entertained at the Courts of
Mojopahit and Kediri. The Javanese language with the wealth of words it
acquired and the diversity of expression it developed,[65] exercised and
still exercises in its four dialects[66] a vivifying influence upon the
Soondanese speech in the west and the Madurese in the east. Its script,
like the people who speak and write it, and cling to their _hadat_,
the manners and customs of the _jaman buda_, which, notwithstanding
their Islāmitic veneer, they prefer to the law of the Prophet,--its
script rejects Moslim interference and refuses to employ the Arabic
characters, sticking to its equally beautiful _aksaras_ and _pasangans_.
Religions succeeding one another, generally without discourteous haste,
Muhammadanism penetrated Central Java but slowly from the north, first
by the conversion of the great and mighty who profited by the example
of Mojopahit, then by grafting the idea of the one righteous god upon
the godless Buddhist or pantheistic Hindu creed of the _orang kechil_,
the man of slight importance who, up to this day, though fervent in
his outward duties as a Moslim, shows in every act that his individual
and national temperament is rooted in pre-Islāmic idiosyncrasies. The
heroes of the _Brata Yuda_ and _Ramayana_ are just as dear to him as
the pre-Islāmic saints whose legends are gathered in the story of _Raja
Pirangon_ and the _Kitab Ambia_, as the forerunners, companions and
helpers of the Apostle of God.
The sacred _waringin_, never wanting in the _aloon aloon_, the open
places before the dwellings of the rulers of the land and their
deputies, what is it but the bo-tree, the tree of enlightenment?
One of venerable age in the imperial burial-ground of Pasar Gedeh,
planted, according to tradition, by Kiahi Ageng Pamanahan or his son
Suta Wijaya, announces without fail the demise of a member of one of
the reigning families either at Solo or at Jogja, by shedding one of
its branches. Pasar Gedeh, Selo and Imogiri are silent spots, peopled
with the dead whose lives’ strength made history and is mourned as the
strength of a glorious past. Selo, an enclave belonging to Surakarta, in
Grobogan, residency Samarang, contains the ancestral tombs of the rulers
of Mataram; Imogiri and Pasar Gedeh in Jogjakarta, which latter marks
the site of the original seat of empire and was comparatively recently
put to its present use, are the cemeteries common to the royalty of both
Principalities, and guarded by officials, _amat dalam_ with the title
of Raden Tumenggoong, appointed by mutual consent. A Polynesian bias
to ancestor-worship, unabated by Hinduïsm, Buddhism and Muhammadanism,
accounts for the almost idolatrous adoration[67] of the graves of the
Susuhunans and Sooltans, their ancestors and also their progeny that
did not attain to thrones, receptacles of once imperial dust, feeding
the four elements from which it proceeded and to which it returns like
meaner human clay. Look, says Kumala in the Buddhist parable, all in the
world must perish! The religious brethren of his faith used to repair at
night to the sepulchres of those taken to bliss and spend the lone hours
in pondering on the instability of conscious existence, desiring to gain
the Nirvana by their undisturbed meditations, but Sivaïte associations
people the old graveyards of Java with _raksasas_, monstrous giants,
eaters of living and dead men and women, and santons, bent on prayer
amid the last abodes of the departed, have been terrified, especially at
Pasar Gedeh, by weird noises and apparitions signalling their approach,
commending hasty retreat to the wise. It is advisable to distrust
darkness there and rather to choose the day for acts of devotion, even
if annoyed by worldlings who come to consult the big white tortoise in
the tank, ancient Kiahi Duda, widower of Mboq Loro Kuning, presaging
the better luck the farther he paddles forth from his subaqueous
habitation. At a little distance is the _sela gilang_, a bluish stone
with a more than half effaced inscription, only the lettering of the
border being legible. Tradition calls it the _dampar_ (throne) of Suta
Wijaya, sitting on which he killed Kiahi Ageng Mangir, his rival and
owner of the miraculous lance Kiahi Baru, who had been lured into his
presence by one of his daughters to do homage by means of the _ujoong_,
the kissing[68] of the knee; near by are a stone mortar and large stone
cannon-balls, the largest possessing the faculty of granting untold
wealth to those strong enough to carry it three times without stopping
round the _sela gilang_, whose legend, carved by a prisoner of war,
either a spirit of the air or a magician, reveals in its marginal
commentary a philosophic mind coupled with linguistic talents: _zoo gaat
de wereld--così va il mondo--ita movet tuus mundus--ainsi va le monde_.
Selo, Imogiri and Pasar Gedeh: so goes the world indeed, and the
nameless prisoner of war’s motto, preserved near the _pasarahan dalam_,
the imperial garden of rest, would be hardly less appropriate over the
gates leading to the _kratons_, the residences[69] of the Susuhunan of
Surakarta and the Sooltan of Jogjakarta, where they do the grand in
the grand old way, cherishing the memories of a power gone by. A visit
to the Principalities without an invitation to attend some function
at Court cannot be called complete and it is a treat to watch the
ceremonial exercises connected with one of the three _garebegs_[70] or
with the salutations on imperial birthdays and coronation-days in the
roomy _pendopos_, the open halls whose general style betrays its Hindu
origin no less than the aspect, the dresses, the movements of the native
nobility, officials and retainers, an assemblage of a fairy tale, betray
their Hindu parentage. The _bangsal kenchono_, the audience-chamber
of the Sooltan at Jogja, is a masterpiece of construction in wood, the
carved beams and joists, richly gilt and painted in bright colours,
forming a ceiling of wonderful airiness and elegance; in the _bangsal
witono_ the Sooltan shows himself to the people on days of great gala;
in the _bangsal kemandoongan_, a hall in one of the many open squares
of the palace grounds, seated on his _dampar_ or throne, he used to
witness the execution of his subjects sentenced to death, who were
krissed[71] against the opposite wall; another of these open squares
was dedicated to pleasures which remind of the _munera gladiatoria_,
more especially of the _ludi funebres_, and kindred amusements with a
good deal of local colour: we find it chronicled of Sunan Mangku Rat I.,
Java’s Nero, that once he beguiled a tedious afternoon in his _kraton_
at Kartasura by stripping a hundred young women and letting a few tigers
loose among them. The dining-hall (_gedong manis_: room of sweets) in
the _kraton_ at Jogja, to the south of the audience-chamber, can easily
hold three hundred guests with the host of servants they require; at
Solo the imperial stables and coach-houses[72] are scarcely inferior in
interest to the friend of horses, riding, driving and coaching, than the
Kaiserlich-Königliche Marstall at Vienna or the Caballerizas Reales at
Aranjuez. But of all the sights at the Courts of the Principalities of
Central Java it is the human element that fascinates most, a waving mass
of silent figures in the magnificent setting which reflects centuries
of _Sturm und Drang_, the new to the visitor’s eye being nothing but
the very, very old; men taught by fate to treasure their thoughts up in
their hearts, as their mountains do the hidden fire, worshipping _tempu
dahulu_, sustained by _l’amour du bon vieulx tems_, _l’amour antique_,
even the rising generation remaining apparently unaffected by the
example of western fickleness, an inconstancy ever more pronounced since
the illustrious citizen of Florence, of the Porta San Piera, commented
on it:
_Che l’uso de’ mortali è come fronda
In ramo, che sen va, ed altra viene._[73]
The country-seats of Susuhunans and Sooltans, where they sought repose
from cares of state, often contained temples erected, if not in the
name then in the spirit of their kind of sacrifice, to Kama, the god
of love, smuggled into the practice of a later creed. They had no
wish to become the victims of their virtue like the excellent King
Suvarnavarna; they did not aspire to the fame accruing to Rama in
his relations to the female demon Shoorpanakha, personification of
sublunar temptations. And the manifold functions assigned to water in
their pleasances, to the limpid, running water of the cool mountain
rills, are characteristic of an island where a bath, at least twice a
day, preferably in the open, is both a necessity and a luxury which the
poorest does not dream of denying himself. Observe the crowds of men,
women and children, always chaste and decent, disporting themselves
in lakes and rivers, every morning and every evening; note the names
of Pikataän, Kali Bening, Banyu Biru, idyllic spots and equal to the
classic _chandi_ Pengilon, Sidamookti and Wanasari to the lover of a
plunge and a swim, screened by flowers and foliage, with the blue heaven
smiling on his joy. Passing by Ambar Winangoon and Ambar Rookma, the
remains of the so-called water-castle at Jogjakarta convey some notion
of the manner in which royal personages sought recreation, amusing
themselves in their parks of delight, fragrant and tranquil like the
restful Loombini, where Maya gave birth to the Buddha; toying with their
women in and round the crystalline fluid. An abundant spring within the
boundaries of the palace grounds led to the conception of this retreat
or, rather, these retreats, for there were two, connected by a system of
canals which speaks highly for native hydraulics, though the buildings
erected to obey a capricious will, show in their present ruinous state
how architecture had degraded since the Hindu period, its flimsy
productions being unable to withstand the first serious earthquake. Of
Pulu Gedong, to the northeast of the _aloon aloon kidool_, nothing
is left but crumbling portions of the walls which jealously guarded the
privacy of the Sooltan’s watersports. Of Taman Sari and Taman Ledok,
situated in the western part of the _kraton_, a good deal is still
recognisable, especially the structures on Pulu Kenanga in the largest
of the artificial lakes which are now dry ground, the one here meant
being incorporated into a _kampong_, one of the several groups of native
dwellings inhabited by the Sooltan’s numerous retainers. The whilom
islands convey in quite a picturesque way the lesson that human works
must die like the hands that fashioned them.
[Illustration: XIII. WATER-CASTLE AT JOGJAKARTA
(Centrum.)]
The building of the “water-castle”, whose pavilions, artificial lakes,
tanks and gardens spread over an area of about twenty-five acres,
was begun in 1758 by a Buginese architect under the orders of Mangku
Buwono I., a great raiser of edifices, as Nicolaas Hartingh[74] wrote
in 1761, and maker of “fountains, grotto-work and conduits which,
though completed, he orders immediately to be pulled down, not finding
them to his taste, thus squandering some little money.” We possess a
description[75] of the _kraton_ at Jogjakarta, dated September 1791,
from the hand of Carl Friedrich Reimer,[76] who speaks of “a collection
of gardens, fish-ponds and pleasure-pools.” He probably visited Pulu
Gedong before proceeding to Taman Sari[77] and expatiates on the
spaciousness of the dwelling room in Pulu Kananga, where it seems that
the Court could find plenty of accommodation. But what made the greatest
impression on the expert in hydraulics was the arrangement of passages
and an apartment for prayer and meditation under water, as if the
Sooltan deemed it an advantage to worship surrounded by the babbling
stream, light and fresh air being provided through turrets rising above
the surface. In the place called Oombool Winangoon, situated on a low
level, with three tanks, fed from the great lake of Taman Sari, was a
cool retreat where the Sooltan used to rest a while after his bath,
refreshing himself with a cup of tea. Alluding to the Sumoor Gumuling,
Reimer remarks that the architect must have chosen a round form for
his structure to make it the better resist the pressure of the water
all round. The strange building which went by that name and consisted
of two concentric walls with a flat roof,[78] taken for a subaqueous
house of prayer by the visitor of 1791, has also been very differently
explained: some see in its remains a dancing-school, awakening visions
of the Sooltan’s _corps de ballet_ practising in the first storey to
the dulcet tones of the _gamelan_, the native orchestra, that ascended
from the basement and aided them in going through their paces; others
connect it with functions never referred to in polite society and which
have nothing in common with praying, either with the heart or with
the feet, more correctly speaking: with the arms, hands and hips, for
Javanese dancing is no loose skipping and hopping about, but a graceful
and expressive play of the body and more particularly of the upper limbs
in rhythmic, undulating motion. Passing from one lake to the next, the
Sooltan’s means of conveyance was the _prahu_ Niahi Kuning, a gorgeously
decorated barge, given to him by the East India Company; other boats,
plying between Taman Sari and Taman Ledok, were at the disposal of the
ladies of the royal household desirous of an outing with their babies;
two small skiffs left their moorings every night alternately, at a
signal given on a _bendeh_, to feed the fishes, which knew the sound and
assembled in shoals. The guard-rooms near the northern watergate, of
which the remaining one, _i.e._ the one not altogether fallen into ruin,
shelters in the morning a motley crowd of sellers of fruit, vegetables,
sweetmeats, etc., witnesses to the Company’s dragoons, protecting and
shadowing their Highnesses of Surakarta and Jogjakarta with the princes
of their blood, already having been entrusted with that task in the days
of Mangku Buwono I.
Of the delicately carved woodwork hardly a trace remains, but some
foliage and birds among flowers, executed in stucco, give evidence
of a good taste which knew how to make old motives subservient to new
requirements. Though a Muhammadan pleasance, designed by a Muhammadan
architect for a Muhammadan prince, the _garuda_ over one of the
entrances, the Banaspatis on gables and fronts in Taman Sari and Taman
Ledok, the _nagas_ coping the balustrades of the staircases, show that
Hindu conceptions continued to leaven Javanese art. The relations with
China and the consequent influx of Chinamen have also borne their fruit
in Central Java as in Cheribon and the eastern kingdoms: Reimer informs
us that the galleries and tops (now gone) of the several buildings
were constructed like pointed vaults, and were wrought “in the manner
of Chinese roofs”; Pulu Gedong was famous for the lofty Chinese tower
erected near the spring which furnished the water for the “castle”,
its lakes, ponds, tanks and canals, and for the irrigation of its
grounds. The orchards, renowned for their mangoes and pine-apples, the
vegetable-, sirih- and flower-gardens had a great reputation in the
land; assiduous attention was paid to horticulture on the principle,
well understood by oriental gardeners, that flower-beds, ornamental
groves and bowers are like women; that however much art and pains
are bestowed on their make-up, the art of arts is the concealment
thereof.... Writing this it occurs to me how properly a western version
of that universally approved maxim has been put in the mouth of
_Gärtnerinnen_, _niedlich_ and _galant_:
[Illustration: XIV. WATER-CASTLE AT JOGJAKARTA
(Centrum.)]
_Denn das Naturell der Frauen
Ist so nah mit Kunst verwandt._[79]
Though Mangku Buwono I. was a contemporary of Goethe, his knowledge of
_Faust_ is extremely doubtful, but being an artist in his own way, he
took care that the natural scenery, assisted by art, should contribute
to a pleasant general impression in the distribution of the dwellings
for his retinue: native princes (and of his rank too!) do not move an
inch inside or outside their _kratons_ without numberless attendants at
their heels. In the “water-castle” were apartments, not only for the
Sooltan, for the Ratu, his first legitimate spouse, for his other wives
and concubines, for the little family they had presented him with, but
for the dignitaries of his Court, officials of all degrees, secretaries,
servants of every description, various artificers from the armourers
down to the _kebon kumukoos_, the makers of _tali api_ (fire-rope),
necessary for lighting his Highness’ cigars. There were reception-,
dining-, living- and sleeping-rooms for the Sooltan, his Ratu and
female relatives, each apart; common rooms for the _selir_ (wives of
lower degree); rooms for the instruction of their children; rooms where
his Highness’ daughters spent a few hours every day in _batikking_;
guard-rooms for the _prajurits_, the male guards; guard-rooms for
the female guards under command of the Niahi Tumanggoong, a lady of
consequence, who kept and keeps the _dalam_, the interior of the
_kraton_, under constant observation so that no illicit _amourettes_
shall occur in the women’s quarters, and yet--! There were store-rooms,
kitchens, workshops, prisons, halls set apart for the dancers, male
and female; the cream of the female dancers, the _srimpis_ and girl
_bedoyos_, were probably housed in or near the principal pavilion on
Pulu Kananga, of which the Sooltan occupied the eastern and the Ratu the
western portion. Above all there were the bath-rooms, dedicated to Kama
and his wife Rati of Hindu memory; and since the parrot is the _vahana_
of that frivolous god, many are the unspeakable tales of revived rites
of his luxurious worship.
The etiquette at Court is fitly illustrated by the two tea-houses of
Taman Sari, the eastern one for the Grand Pourer-out-of-Tea of the
Right, who presided over the preparation of the delectable beverage
for the Sooltan, and the western ditto for the Grand Pourer-out-of-Tea
of the Left, who provided for the Ratu. A scrupulous punctilio is
ingrained in Javanese habits and customs, from high to low, on great
and small occasions, the native’s mentality always reverting to
things which were, but never more can be. The homage done to sacred
objects, arms, _gamelans_, etc., by giving them a human name and a
title,[80] venerating them as if endowed with supernatural faculties,
recalls Polynesian fetishism, Hinduïsm being blended with it in Siva’s
_trishula_, Vishnu’s _chakra_, etc., which are still carried behind the
native princes among their _ampilan_.[81] The _upacharas_ or imperial
and royal _pusakas_[82] are treated with the utmost reverence when
shown at the appearance in public of Susuhunan or Sooltan, and their
bearers, the _koncho ngampil_, who hold an honoured position at the
Courts of Solo and Jogja, may be considered direct successors of the
envoys of King Dasharatha on the reliefs of the _chandi_ Loro Jonggrang,
who bore his regalia when meeting Rama and Lakshama. The strange
ceremonial, preserved from the time when gods walked amongst men, seems
hardly antiquated, on the contrary very germane to _siti-inggil_[83]
surroundings. One need not visit the _kratons_ though, to notice how
the spirit of the past permeates all things Javanese; any well-dressed
native getting out of his _sado_[84] at the railway station or repairing
thither on foot for a journey with the fire-carriage, will do. Even if
he cannot afford the few _doits_[85] necessary and must impair his
dignity by going afoot, he has his retainers to look after his box
and, stuck behind, he has his magnificent kris in a sheath of gold,
with a beautifully carved ivory handle, in nine cases out of ten a
_pusaka_, cherished like the kris Kolo Munyang of the Prince of Kudoos
or, as others allege, of a Susuhunan of Surakarta, who sent the weapon,
which killed its master’s enemies without human direction, to the
assistance of Pangeran Bintoro, then oppressed by a king of Mojopahit.
The chronology of this legend is evidently a little faulty, but, O! the
wonders of Java’s golden age, and, O! the superstitious honour in which
their memory is held by these lovable people, whose actual existence is
a dream of days gone by. And that happy dream, they ween, is a presage
of the future, prophesying the restoration of their fathers’ heritage.
If, nevertheless, the hour draws near of unconditional surrender, the
Dutch Government steadily and surely arrogating to itself the externals
with the substance of power in the Principalities, they will silently
submit to the _nivarana_ of their ancient faith, the hindrance arising
from torpor of mind appointed to them in the _sansara_, the rotary
sequence of the world, and seek consolation in the promise of their new
faith that the Lord will not deal wrongly with his servants. The life of
nations, like the life of men, starts running as the mountain torrent
and meets many an obstacle before it swells to a broad river in the
plains and flows tranquilly and mightily to the sea; also for Java it is
written:
... Non anche,
l’opra del secol non anche è piena.[86]
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[49] _Batikking_ is the art of dyeing woven goods by immersing them in
successive baths of the required colour, protecting the parts to be left
undyed by applying a mixture of beeswax and resin.
[50] A _stupa_, lit. a mound, a tumulus, is a memorial structure,
sometimes raised over a relic of the Buddha, one of the eight thousand
portions into which his ashes were divided, or a tooth, or any other
fragment of his remains. The combination of such a memento of the Most
Chaste with the emblem of supreme virility is syncretism indeed!
[51] Professor Dr. H. H. JUYNBOLL in the _Bijdragen tot de
Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch Indië_, Ser. vii., vol.
vi., nr. 1.
[52] Those not in the Government service: planters, industrials, etc.,
always of lower caste in general, especially official esteem, than
the select who draw their salaries from Batavia. Hence the native
designation of such an inferior individual as a _particulier saja_,
“only” a private person.
[53] _Recho_ or _rejo_ is the name given to any sort of statue.
[54] From _circulus_, circle, something round, which rolls easily away
into oblivion as it is intended to; but, if nothing else, _la folie
circulaire_ keeps the fiction of governmental guidance and control
alive.
[55] Speaking at a meeting of the _Royal Geographical Society of the
Netherlands_, December 27, 1902.
[56] Vishnu’s _vahana_ or bearer, the monster-bird.
[57] By G. P. ROUFFAER, _Indische Gids_, February 1903.
[58] The fall of Mojopahit has been put at 1478 (Javanese chronicles),
1488 (VETH’S _Java_, 2nd ed.) and between 1515 and 1521
(ROUFFAER).
[59] Paku Buwono, like Paku Alam, means “nail which fastens the
universe.”
[60] Lit. “the one who has the world in his lap,” _i.e._ the supporter
(ruler) of the world.
[61] Lit. “the one who has the empire in his lap,” _i.e._ the supporter
(ruler) of the empire.
[62] Lit. “the one who has the universe in his lap,” _i.e._ the
supporter (ruler) of the universe.
[63] A fourth semi-independent domain, created at the expense of
Jogjakarta for the benefit of Pangeran Nata Kusuma, ally of the British
during the troubles of 1811 and 1812.
[64] Common abbreviations, in speaking and writing, of Surakarta and
Jogjakarta; Solo is, to put it correctly, the name of the place where
Paku Buwono II., after his old _kraton_ had been destroyed by fire in
the civil war diligently fostered by the Company, built the present one,
_Surakarta Hadiningrat_, _i.e._ the most excellent city of heroes.
[65] _Ngoko_ is spoken among the common people, among children, by
adults to children and by those of superior to those of inferior rank;
_kromo_ by those of inferior to those of superior rank and by people
of high rank amongst themselves unless differences in social degree or
grades of relationship require another mode of address; _dagellan_ or
_gendaloongan_ (in Surakarta) and _madya_ (in Jogjakarta), a mixture of
_ngoko_ and _kromo_, by people of equal rank conversing in an unofficial
capacity, politely but without constraint, by those of superior to those
of inferior rank, their seniors in years whom they wish to honour,
by merchants of equal rank and the higher servants of the nobility
to one another; _kromo-inggil_ comprises a group of words used when
referring to whatever is divine or very exalted on earth; _basa kedaton_
is the language of the Court, spoken by all males in the presence of
the reigning prince or in his _kraton_ whether he be present or not,
but in addressing him or his heir presumptive, _kromo_ is used; the
reigning prince employs _ngoko_ interspersed with _kromo-inggil_ words
when referring to himself; the women in the _kraton_ speak _kromo_ or
_kromo-madya_ among themselves, _basa kedaton_ to such men-folk as
they are allowed to see and _kromo_ to the reigning prince or his heir
presumptive; _ngoko andap_ is a coarse sort of speech which descends
to the use of words, in relation to man, ordinarily applied only to
animals; _kromo-dessa_ means rustic speech in general.
[66] The central and most refined Javanese of Mataram or Surakarta,
spoken in the Principalities, the Kadu, the Bagelen, Madioon and Kediri;
the western Javanese, spoken in Cheribon and Banyumas; the _basa_ or
_temboong pasasir_ (speech of the coast), spoken in Tagal, Pekalongan,
Samarang, Yapara and Rembang; the eastern Javanese, spoken in Surabaya,
Pasuruan, Probolinggo and Besuki.
[67] A cult with a ritual handed down from the past and scrupulously
observed. Cf. the account of a visit to Selo in 1849, published from
papers left by Dr. M. W. SCHELTEMA, in _De Gids_, December,
1909.
[68] The Javanese do not kiss in the disgusting, unwholesome, western
fashion; they smell or sniff, using the olfactory instead of the
osculatory organs, as sufficiently indicated by the words of the native
vocabulary describing the operation referred to. In this matter again,
the Hindu immigrants may have made their influence felt. Cf. Professor
E. WASHBURN HOPKINS’ interesting paper on _The Sniff-Kiss in
Ancient India_, in the _Journal of the American Oriental Society_, vol.
xxviii., first half, 1907.
[69] Including, besides the palaces and palace grounds, thickly
inhabited little towns. The _kraton_ of Surakarta contains, _e.g._,
more than ten thousand people, all belonging to the imperial family and
household, from the princes to their dependents, servants and hangers
on: court dignitaries, court functionaries, gold- and silversmiths,
wood-carvers, carpenters, masons, musicians, etc. Within its walls
is also the imperial _mesdjid_, a fine, large building with a widely
visible gilt roof.
[70] The _garebeg mulood_, _garebeg puasa_ and _garebeg besar_,
corresponding with the _maulid_ (feast of the Prophet’s birth), _id
al-fitr_ (feast of breaking the fast) and _id al-qorban_ (feast of the
sacrifice).
[71] _Krissing_, a form of capital punishment until recently still in
use in the island of Bali, consisted in driving a kris to the heart of
the condemned man, sometimes under circumstances of refined cruelty,
the executioner not being permitted to put an end to his victim’s agony
before the prince, presiding in person or by deputy, had given the
signal for the _coup de grâce_.
[72] A story is told of a Susuhunan of Surakarta having ordered a
magnificent landau from one of the first _carrossiers_ in Paris, that
the favoured industrial was advised to send some cooking-pans with it
on delivery. Asking: What for? he got the answer: To poach the eggs his
Highness’ chickens will lay in your carriage. Splendour and squalor live
near together in the households of thriftless oriental potentates.
[73]
For usage with mortal man is like the leaf
On the bough, which goes and another comes.
[74] Governor and Director of Java’s northeast coast, afterwards member
of the Governor-General’s Council at Batavia.
[75] Published by H. D. H. BOSBOOM from papers in the Dutch
National Archives.
[76] Titular Major, afterwards Lieutenant-Colonel of the Corps of
Engineers, Director of Fortifications and Inspector of Canals, Dams,
Dikes and Waterways.
[77] REIMER’S description leaves Taman Ledok _in dubio_ and
a reason for his probable non-admittance there, may be found in the
circumstance that it appears to have been the part of the pleasance
reserved for the recreation of the Sooltan’s concubines.
[78] Whence the name: _oombool_, like _sumoor_, means “well” or
“spring”, and _gumuling_, derived from _guling_, means “rolled up”,
“lying flat.”
[79]
For nature in woman
Is so near akin to art.
[80] Kiahi is a very common one. Dr. J. GRONEMAN, whose
description of the water-castle at Jogjakarta contains a good many
interesting particulars, mentions the name of the barge of state,
presented to Paku Buwono I. by the East India Company, Niahi Kuning, as,
to his knowledge, the only instance of a female appellation being given
to royal paraphernalia--perhaps on the same principle as that which
makes us, too, speak of a ship as of a “she”.
[81] Emblems of royalty; more strictly: objects of virtu belonging to
the reigning family.
[82] A _pusaka_ is an heirloom, generally with luck bringing properties
either to the rightful owner or to any one who secures possession of it.
[83] Lit. “the high place” of the _kraton_.
[84] Short for _dos-à-dos_, a kind of vehicle naturalised in Java;
offering only problematic comfort at its very best, the ramshackle
specimens plying for hire in the streets of the capital towns of the
island, beat everything ever invented anywhere else in the world for
inflicting torture on the pretext of conveyance.
[85] _Doits_ are copper coins of endless variety, demonetised
more than half a century ago but still used by the natives almost
exclusively and to the prejudice of the legal “cent”, the hundredth
part of the “guilder” or legal unit of the Dutch East Indian currency,
notwithstanding the Government’s efforts (on paper) through the medium
of financial geniuses, whose name is Legion and whose practical
performance is Nihil, to put the monetary system and colonial finance in
general on a firm, workable basis.
[86] ... Not yet, the work of (our) time has not yet reached its
fullness.
[Illustration]