evidence of the wealth and prosperity of these Paranaks as one sees
them driving past in handsome victorias, wearing immaculate duck suits,
patent-leather shoes, and silk hose, with only the ignoble pigtail,
trailing away from the derby hat and disappearing shamefully inside the
collar, to betray them. These rich Paranaks sit rigid and imperturbable,
with folded arms, the very model of good form, smoking long black
cheroots, and viewing all people afoot with undisguised scorn. One need
not possess a Californian’s bitter anti-Chinese sentiments to have
this spectacle irritate him, and to almost wish to see the plutocrats
pitched out of their “milords” and the Javanese Jehu drive over them.
One easily understands the hatred that Dutch and natives alike entertain
for these small traders, middlemen, and usurers, who have driven out all
competitors, and fatten on the necessities of the people. Although these
island-born Chinese have adopted so many European fashions in dress and
luxurious living, they are still Celestials, never cutting the queue nor
renouncing the tinseled household altars.
Solo’s Chinatown, or Tjina kampong, is a little China complete, barring
its amazing cleanliness and order without odors other than those of the
cook-shops, where sesame-oil sizzles and smells quite as at home in “big
China.” There were three great weddings in progress on one “lucky day” in
Solo, and each house-front was trimmed with flags, lanterns, garlands,
and tinsel flowers; orchestras tinkled and thumped, and great feasts
were spread in honor of the brides’ coming to the new homes. Every one
was bidden to enter and partake; and we were hospitably urged to enter
at each gorgeous door, and rice-wine, champagne, painted cakes, and all
the fruits of two zones were generously pressed upon us. The thumps of an
approaching band drew us from one sarong-shop, and we saw a procession
advancing, with banners and huge lanterns borne aloft. One felt sure the
remarkable train must have issued from the palace gates until the faces
were in range, and there followed the gorgeous red Chinese wedding-chair,
and all the bride’s jewels and gowns and gilded slippers, carried about
on cushions like sovereign regalia. Men in uniform bore palanquins full
of varnished pig, and mountains of the pies and cakes and nameless things
of Chinese high-holiday appetites, that roused the gaping envy of the
street crowds. Urchins cheered and danced and ran with the band much as
they do elsewhere; and the strangers, captivated with the sights, drove
beside the gaudy procession until sated with the Oriental splendors and
Celestial opulence of a Solo marriage feast.
The street life of Solo could well entertain one for many days. Native
life is but the least affected by foreign ways, and the local color is
all one could wish. There are drives of great beauty about the town, with
far views of those two lovely symmetrical peaks, Merapi and Merbaboe, on
one side, and of the massive Mount Lawu on the other. The temple ruins
at Suku, at the foot of Mount Lawu, twenty-six miles southeast of Solo,
are the most puzzling to archæologists, least known and visited of all
such remains in Java. They are of severe form and massive construction,
without traces of any carved ornament, and the solid pylons, truncated
pyramids, and great obelisks, standing on successive platforms or
terraces, bear such surprising resemblance to the monuments of ancient
Egypt and Central America that speculation is offered a wide range and
free field. The images found there are ruder than any other island
sculptures, and everything points to these strange temples having been
the shrines of an earlier, simpler faith than any now observed or of
which there is any record. These Suku temples were discovered in 1814 by
Major Johnson, the British officer residing at the native court of Solo.
They were then unknown to the natives; there were no inscriptions found,
nothing in native records or traditions to lead to any solution of their
mysteries; and no further attempts have been made toward discovering the
origin of these vast constructions since Sir Stamford Raffles’s day.
When M. Désiré de Charnay came to Java, in 1878, to study the temple
ruins whose puzzling resemblance to Central American structures had
puzzled archæologists, all of government assistance was lent him. He had
driven only eight leagues from Solo toward Mount Lawu, when his carriage
broke down; he spent the night at a village, and returned the next
morning to Solo, “sufficiently humiliated with” his “failure,” he wrote.
He did not repeat the attempt, as there was a great fête occurring at the
emperor’s palace which occupied his remaining days. He says that every
one at Solo consoled him for his failure to reach the Suku temples by
saying that the visible ruins there were only the attempted restorations
of an epoch of decadence, and dated only from the fourteenth century. M.
de Charnay quotes all that Sir Stamford Raffles and Fergusson urge as to
the striking and extraordinary resemblance of these particular temples to
those of Mexico and Yucatan; and as ethnologists admit that the Malays
occupied the archipelagos from Easter Island to Madagascar, he thinks it
easy to believe that they or a parent race extended their migrations to
the American continent, and that if this architectural resemblance be an
accident, it is the only one of its kind in the universe.[6]
The three-domed summit of the mountain is visited now by Siva worshipers,
who make offerings and burn incense to the destroying god who manifests
himself there, and the region is one to tempt a scientist across the seas
to exploit it, and should soon invite the attention of the exploring
parties which Mr. Morris K. Jesup has enlisted in the search for proofs
of early Asiatic and American contact.
XX
DJOKJAKARTA
As the heat of Solo was but little less than that of Batavia, and we
had only worse accounts and solemn warnings given of the sickening,
unendurable heat of Soerabaya, where fever and cholera most often abide,
it seemed wisest to give up the visit to that east end of the island,
to forego that torrid shore where first the Arabs landed and conquered
the Hindu rulers of Majapahit, to be succeeded in their turn by the
Portuguese, and then the Dutch. The ruins of Majapahit, and the tombs of
its princes, and the graves of the Arab priests who were the first rulers
of the conquered empire are attractions in Soerabaya’s neighborhood; but
the great object was the Mount Bromo of the Tengger plateau, where the
exhausted residents may take refuge from the steaming plain and breathe
again. Tosari, the great sanatorium, on one of the sharp spurs of the
Tengger, is over five thousand feet in air, and commands one of the most
famous views in Java, with the plains, the sea, and groups of islands
in one direction, and the great Bromo, smoking splendidly, in another.
The great crater of the Bromo, with several smoking cones rising from a
level of rippling, wind-swept “sandy sea,” is three miles in diameter,
and is claimed, despite Kilauea, as the largest crater in the world, as
it is certainly the largest in Java. A colony of Siva worshipers, who
fled to the Tengger that they might pursue their religion unmolested by
Arab rulers, live there in long communal houses, tend the sacred fire
once brought from India, and sacrifice regularly to Brama, the “God of
Fire,” at his smoking temple. In this modern day living sacrifices are
not offered, save of fowl; and priests and people content themselves with
offerings of fruit and foods, and make other great ceremonies of burning
lumps of fragrant benzoin, the “Java frankincense,” at the crater’s edge.
The most serious sacrifices in the Bromo’s neighborhood are of those
unfortunate natives who are seized by tigers as they work in clearings or
walk mountain paths alone. The briefest stay at Tosari equips a visitor
with tiger stories fit for tropical regions; and my envy was roused when
some Tosari tourists told of having seen a child who had been seized
and slightly mangled by a tiger, but a day before, on a road near the
village, over which they themselves had passed.
The short railway ride back from Solo to Djokja, past the familiar ground
of Brambanam, was a morning’s delight. We could see from the train that
the railway did run close past the temple courts; and with the brief
glimpse of the ruined pyramids, we viewed our exploit of walking to Loro
Jonggran’s fane at midday, and clambering over the temples through the
long afternoon, with great complacency—a feat that nothing could induce
us to repeat, however.
[Illustration: THE BRAMBANAM BABY.]
It is all historic and sacred soil in the region around Djokja, and we
returned with the greater interest for our real visit to the city, where
one touches the age of fable in even the geographic names of the place
and its environs, since the modern Dutch rendering of Djokjakarta, and
the older Yugya-Karta of Sir Stamford Raffles, are only variants of the
native Ayogya-Karta, the Ayudya mentioned in the Javanese Parvas, or
Ramayan, as the capital established by Rama. The exploits of Na-yud-ya,
the earliest ruler of Djokja, are described in the same sacred Parvas,
and this was the center of the early Hindu empire, whose princes were
great builders and for ten centuries were busy erecting temples, palaces,
and towers in the region around this their city of Mataram.
Na-yud-ya’s descendants resisted the Arab invaders to the last, and the
Hindu princes of Middle Java retained their independence long after
Islam’s susunhan had declared himself supreme over the eastern empire
of Majapahit[7] and the western empire of Pajajaran.[8] These Hindu or
native princes, as they were considered, resisted susunhan and Dutch
alike, and the Java war of the last century against the two usurpers was
a long and bitter struggle, lasting from 1745 to 1758. The susunhan’s
brother, the second prince, who had joined the native or Hindu princes,
was won back to family allegiance by Dutch intrigue and influence;
and the susunhan, dividing his eastern or Majapahit empire with his
troublesome brother, made the latter a ruler, under the title of Sultan
of Djokjakarta. The Dutch had been given the site of Samarang for their
aid in such wars, and soon after the division of the eastern empire, the
susunhan made that remarkable will of 1749, deeding his empire to the
Dutch East India Company after his decease. The region between Djokja and
Solo remained a seat of war for the rest of the century, the old princes,
different heirs, claimants, and factions, always resorting to arms, and
the Dutch always having an interest in the struggles. Marshal Daendels
had his campaigns against and his sieges of Djokja, and the British had
to besiege and bombard it before it admitted Sepoy occupation. After the
restoration of Java to the Dutch there was a thirteen years’ war with
this eastern empire,—the Mataram or Majapahit war,—and then, by treaty,
the Dutch gained final control of the whole island and became absolute
masters of Java; susunhan and sultan accepted annuities; each paid a
revenue in products of the soil, and admitted Dutch residents to “make
recommendations.” The Sultan of Djokja is only another of the puppet
rulers. He maintains the outward show and trappings of his ancestors’
estate, and, with fine irony, is termed one of the “independent princes.”
The city of Djokja, fifth in size of the cities of the island, and
reputed as more Javanese than Solo, less influenced by Chinese and
European example, is in the center of the residency, and but twelve miles
from the shores of the Indian Ocean. It is approached by railway from
either side over a plain planted chiefly with indigo and tapioca, whose
low, uninteresting plants in myriad rows, and the frequent roofs and
tall chimneys of fabriks, speak of abundant prosperity for all classes.
The broad streets of the provincial capital are beautifully shaded, and
the residency, a great, low, white building with a classical portico,
is set in a luxuriant garden, where Madagascar palms and splendid trees
make halos and shadow for the grim stone images, the pensive Buddhas and
fine bas-reliefs, brought from neighboring ruins. The government offices
adjoin, and on any court day one may see the crowds of litigants and
witnesses sitting around on their heels beneath a shadowing waringen-tree
that would be fit bench for Druids’ justice. The majority of the cases
tried before the assistant resident, who there balances the scales, are
of petty thieving; for notwithstanding the severity of the penalties for
such offenses, the inherent bias of the Malay mind is toward acquiring
something for nothing—transmuting _tuum_ into _meum_. The death sentence
is pronounced upon the burglar caught with a weapon on his person, and
twenty years in chains is prescribed for the unarmed burglar; for in this
eternal summer, where people must live and sleep with open doors and
windows, or at most with flimsy lattices, some protection must be assured
to those who own portable properties and valuables. But with the great
advances made in the security of property, the innate propensities of
the race are not to be eradicated by even three centuries of stern Dutch
justice; and there is the same mass-meeting of witnesses and lookers-on
squatting under the big waringen-tree at Djokja, when the scales are to
be balanced by the blind lady, as before every petty court-room on the
island. An ingenious little firefly lamp, taken from a Djokja burglar,
was given me as a souvenir of one such a court day. It was a veritable
fairy’s dark lantern—a half of a nutshell, with a flat cover sliding on
a pivot and concealing at will the light of two fireflies struggling in
a dab of pitch. The burglar carried a reserve supply of fireflies in a
bit of hollow bamboo stoppered at the ends, and added a fresh illuminator
whenever the dark lantern’s living glow diminished.
The Djokja passer is a large and important daily gathering, but
corrugated-iron and tiled sheds in formal rows have pretty nearly robbed
it of all a passer’s picturesqueness. Model municipal government,
Dutch system and order, are too pronounced to please one whose eye has
seen what a few palm-thatched booths and umbrellas, and a few tons of
scattered fruits and peppers, can produce in that picnic encampment by
Boro Boedor’s groves or in the open common at Tissak Malaya.
We had been promised great finds in the way of old silver and krises in
a street of Chinese pawnshops opening from one corner of the passer; but
the promises were not realized. The betel-boxes, buckles, and clasps in
charge of these wily “uncles” of Djokja were plain and commonplace, and
not a jeweled nor a fancy kris of any kind was to be seen, after all the
repute of Djokja’s riches in these lines of native metal-work. Hundreds
of sarongs, each with a dangling ribbon of a ticket, were stowed away on
the shelves of these pawnshops, proofs of the improvidence and small
necessities of these easy-going, chance-inviting people; and while we
were haggling over a veined kris-blade with the most obdurate Chinese
that ever kept a pawn-shop, a timid little woman stole in and offered her
sarong to the arrogant, blustering old rascal. He scowled and scolded
and stormed at the frightened little creature, shook out and snapped the
finely patterned battek as if it were a dust-cloth, and still muttering
as if making threats of blood and vengeance, made out a ticket, and threw
it at her with a few silver cents. We wanted nothing more from that shop,
save the head of the “uncle” on a trencher or impaled on a kris’s point.
With a shameless eye to revenue only, the government has long continued
to sell pawnbrokers’ licenses at auction to the highest bidder, after a
brief relapse from the year 1869 to 1880, when the experiment was tried
of selling licenses to any one at a moderate rate. The great income from
such licenses fell away so amazingly that the auctions were resumed,
and the improvident natives handed over again to the merciless Chinese
pawnbrokers, who charge interest even up to ninety per cent., and usually
retain everything that crosses their counters. M. Emile Metzger, in a
communication to the “Scottish Geographic Magazine” (vol. iv., 1888),
gives fifty thousand florins a year as the annual revenue during the
eleven years when the other system prevailed, which soon increased to as
much as one million, sixty-five thousand florins a year when licenses
were again auctioned to the highest bidder.
The Sultan of Djokja has a kraton, or palace inclosure, a mile square in
the very heart of the city, the great entrance-gates fronting on a vast
_plein_ or _platz_, where waringen-trees have been clipped and trained
to the shape of colossal state umbrellas, great green pajongs planted in
permanence in the outer court or approach to the throne, as a badge of
royalty. The huge Burmese elephants, that play an important part in state
processions, trumpet in one corner; and strangely costumed retainers
are coming and going, some of them as gaily uniformed as parrakeets,
and others reminding one of the picadors and matadors in the chorus of
“Carmen.” Surrounded by this indoor army of gorgeous musicians, singers,
dancers, bearers of fan and pajong, pipe and betel-boxes, the sultan’s
court is as splendidly staged as in the last century; and when this
“regent of the world” and “vicegerent of the Almighty,” as his titles
translate, goes abroad in state procession, the spectacle is worth going
far to see, the Djokjans assure one. Twenty different kinds of pajongs
belong to this court—those flat umbrellas that are the oldest insignia
of royalty in all the East, and are sculptured on Boro Boedor’s walls
through all the centuries pictured there. From the sultan’s own golden
pajong with orange border, the gold-bordered pajong of the crown prince,
the white pajongs of sultanas and their children and of concubines’
children, down to the green, red, pink, blue, and black pajongs of the
lesser officials and nobles, all pajongs are exactly ordered by court
heraldry—the pajong the definite symbol of rank, a visiting-card that
announces its owner’s consequence from afar. Strange accompaniments
these, however, for a sultan who plays billiards at the club and a
sultana who takes a hand at whist.
The old Taman Sarie, or Water Kastel, in the suburbs, built by a
Portuguese architect in the middle of the last century for the great
sultan Manko Boeni, is an Oriental Trianon, a paradise garden of the
tropics, where former greatness spent its hours of ease in cool,
half-underground chambers and galleries such as Hindu princes have made
for themselves in every part of India. The Taman Sarie is sadly deserted
now. The most important buildings were shaken to formless mounds by
earthquakes—the last great Djokja earthquake of 1867, when so many lives
were lost, making the complete ruins that are covered with vines and
weeds. The ornamental waters are choked with weeds and rubbish; the
carved stonework is black with mold and lichens; the caves, grottoes,
tunnels, staircases, and galleries around the wells are dripping and
slippery with green mosses; and the rose-gardens and shrubberies are fast
going to jungle. A few pavilions remain, whose roof gables are as deeply
recurved as those of Burmese temples, but for the most part all the once
splendid carved and gilded constructions are but wrecks and refuges for
bats and lizards. The Water Kastel in its better days stood in the midst
of a lake, reached only by boat or a secret tunnel; and here the old
sultan Hamanku Bewono IV and his harem whiled away their leisure hours,
even when an army thundered at the gates.
On one unfortunate day he kept Marshal Daendels waiting in the outer
court for an hour beyond the time appointed for an interview, while the
sultan and his women made merry, and the gamelan sounded gaily from
the Water Kastel’s galleries. Daendels, growing weary, suddenly pushed
through the retainers to the mouth of the tunnel, and appeared to the
dallying sultan in the Water Kastel without announcement or further
ceremony, and with still less ceremony seized the sultan by the arm and
led him back to Dutch headquarters, where the interview took place.
Another version of this Water Kastel tradition describes the mad marshal
as making a dash down terraces and staircases to a water-pavilion
sunk deep in foliage at the edge of a tank, where, in a shady cellar
of a sleeping-room, shielded and cooled by a water curtain falling in
front of it, he dragged the sultan from his bed, and carried him off
to headquarters. The _opas_ and the chattering old guardian, who led
us about the Kastel’s labyrinths, plunged into the green gloom of a
long, mossy staircase that led to the platform on which the sultan’s
sleeping-room opened, to show us the “unlucky bed” and prove by it their
particular or favored version of the irruption of Marshal Daendels. The
bedstead or couch is an elaborately carved affair, and must once have
been the chief ornament of this cool cave-like retreat; but in the reek
and gloom of the late afternoon this water boudoir seemed too suggestive
of rheumatism, malaria, and snakes by wholesale to invite one to linger,
or to suggest repose on the “unlucky bed,” which insures an early death
to the one who touches it.
Another water-chamber was provided in the Sumoor Gamelan (“Musical
Spring”), a deep circular well or tank near the ruined banquet-hall,
with vaulted chambers opening around it—just such echoing places of
green twilight, where it must be cool on the hottest noonday, as one may
see in the old palaces at Lucknow, Futtehpore Sikri, and Ahmedabad, in
the fatherland whence the ruling princes of Java came. There is, too,
a great oval tank with beautiful walls, parapets, and pavilions, well
worthy of a Hindu palace; and in this secluded place there lived for many
decades a sacred white or dingy yellow turtle with red eyes, an albino
to whom the people made offerings and paid homage. The Taman Sarie has
great fascination for one, and at sunset something of romance seems to
linger in the old gardens and grottoes, the picturesque courtyards and
galleries; and one could imagine scores of legends and harem’s mysteries
belonging there—that anything and everything had happened there by that
lake that burns a rose-red when the palms are silhouetted against the
high sunset sky. A group of children played hide-and-seek about the once
august court, supple, nimble little bronze fauns, with the carefully
folded kerchiefs on their heads their only garments—kerchiefs that they
arrange with the greatest care and deliberation many times a day, holding
the ends of the cloth with agile toes while they pat and crease and coax
the fine folds into the prescribed order of good form. These children
dashed through the shrubberies, leaped balusters and walls as lightly and
easily as wild creatures, and ran up tall trees like squirrels, to gather
tasseled orchids and some strange blue flowers that we pointed to with
suggestive coppers, and they hailed us as old friends when we came again.