of the afternoon, the tamarind- and waringen-shaded streets leading to
bowery suburbs, that gave wider views out over the fertile plain with the
winding Oepak River, or toward the beautiful blue mountain cones that
slumbered to northward. There were always the most decorative palm-trees
in the right place to outline themselves against the rosy sunset sky,
and the drives back to the hotel through the quick twilight and sudden
darkness gave many views into lamp-lighted huts and houses—genre pictures
of native life, Dutch-Indies interiors, where candle-light or firelight
illuminated family groups and women at their homely occupations, that
should inspire a new, a tropical school of Dutch painters. The graves of
the old Hindu princes of Mataram crown a beautiful wooded hill south of
the city near the sea-shore, and are still worshiped and garlanded by
their people.
Through our now near friend, august patron, and protector, the kindly
assistant resident, we received word at sunrise that the independent
Prince Pakoe Alam V (“Axis of the Universe”) and his family would
graciously receive us the next morning at nine o’clock; and that
meanwhile our patronage was invited for a topeng, or lyric dance, to
be given by Prince Pakoe Alam’s palace troupe on that evening for the
benefit of the widows and orphans of the soldiers killed in the Lombok
war. This Lombok war had been brought to a close that week by the
capture of the treacherous Balinese sultan who had so tyrannized over
the Sassaks, and was then on his way to be paraded with the victorious
soldiers before the governor-general in a grand triumph or review at
Batavia.
[Illustration: TYING THE TURBAN.]
I had a long, quiet afternoon at the Hotel Toegoe to give again to the
enormous folios of Wilsen’s drawings of Boro Boedor, while my companions
napped, the palm-branches hung motionless in the garden, and only a few
barefooted servants moved without sound—that deathly silence of tropic
afternoon life that is sometimes a boon, and sometimes an exasperation
and irritation to one accustomed to doing his sleeping by dark and not
turning day into night. Finally the pale skeleton of an invalid, who
was my next neighbor on the long porch, lifted his pitiful voice, and
was helped out to his chair, and then our imperturbable Amat stirred
from his leisured sleep on the flags beyond, meditated for a while,
twisted his kerchief turban anew, disappeared, and returned with the
tea-tray, silent, impassive, and automatic, as if under some spell.
A graceful little woman peddler came to the porch’s edge—a pretty,
gentle creature with dark, starry Hindu eyes, clear-cut features, even
little white teeth, and crinkly hair. It was delight enough to watch
this pretty creature’s flash of eyes and teeth, and her manners were
most beguiling as she proffered her sarongs—intricately figured batteks
from Cheribon and Solo, silk plaided ones from Singapore, and those of
Borneo shot through with glittering threads. Nothing could have been
more graceful and charming than the naïve appeals of the little peddler
woman, and nothing could have presented more extreme and unfortunate
contrast than to have the sockless and waistless young Dutch matron of
the opposite portico step down and run to the garden gate at sound of
a military band. Few women since Atalanta’s time have been able to run
gracefully; and this thick-ankled young matron, with her flapping mule
slippers, scant sarong, and shapeless jacket, outdid all descriptions
and caricatures of “the woman who runs.” A friendly cavalier in gaudy
battek pajamas, who had been talking to the lady, and blowing clouds of
pipe-smoke into her face the while, gaily danced an elephantine fandango
as the band went sounding down the street to give its sunset concert in
the park.
When tea was taken to the lady’s porch after this divertisement, she took
a banana to the edge, and called, “Peter! Peter!” There was a rustle and
crash of boughs overhead, and a great ape, nearly the size of a man,
swung from one tree-branch to another, snatched the banana, and bounded
back into the tree, where it peered cunningly at us while he ate. After
that every rustle in the shrubbery made us jump; we kept umbrellas at
hand for defense, and made solemn compact that no one of us should be
left asleep unguarded while doors and windows were open to this dreadful
reminder of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”
XXI
PAKOE ALAM: THE “AXIS OF THE UNIVERSE”
As the lines of the topeng-players are always delivered in the ancient
Kawi, or classic language of Java, one has need to brush up beforehand,
and to wish for a libretto, a book of the opera, to keep in hand as
the lyric drama progresses. Sir Stamford Raffles’s “History of Java”
furnishes one a general glimpse of the ancient literature of the island,
and by many translations acquaints one with the great epics. This old
literature is Hindu in form and origin; and Kawi, the classic or literary
language of the past, in which all the history, early records, epic and
legendary poems, and the books of religion and the law are written, is
closely related to Sanskrit and Pali. The famous myths and legends of
India are included in this literature, and the Ramayan and Mahabharata
appear, incomplete but unaltered, in the Javanese epics known as the
Kandas and the Parvas. Besides these two great works, there is the
“Arjuna Vivaya,” giving an account of the exploits of the Indian Arjuna,
the real hero of the Mahabharata; and there is still another romantic
legendary poem, the “Bharata Yuddha,” in which many of the incidents
and the heroes of the Mahabharata are presented in Javanese settings
with Javanese names. All these Kawi books are known to the people by
translations in modern Javanese, and by their frequent presentation in
the common dramatic entertainments, the wayang-wayang, or shadow-plays,
of even the smallest villages.
Many “Books of Wisdom” and of exhortation to pious and righteous living
survive in Kawi literature; but with all that Hindu civilization
brought, it bequeathed nothing that could be called Buddhist literature,
and the bulk of ancient Javanese literature is decidedly secular and
profane—sentimental and romantic poems, love-tales in verse, that
continue to extreme lengths. The Arab conquest has left almost no impress
upon the language. Although schools were established, and a considerable
body of Arabic literature came with the Mohammedan conquerors, but little
save _bababs_, romantic chronicles of the loves of imaginary princes and
heroes, have been added to Javanese literature in the four centuries
since Islam’s conquest. The spoken language of the Javanese shows few
traces of Arabic, and the written language is also unchanged—a neater,
more beautiful and graceful system of ornamental characters than either
Arabic or Persian.
[Illustration: WAYANG-WAYANG.]
The old Kawi epics are popularized by the theater, the topeng, and
the common wayang-wayang, or shadow-dance of puppets, where a manager
delivers the well-known lines. Of these three dramatic forms the topeng
is the highest, the most classic and refined presentation, a lyric drama
very like the No dance of Japan, and doubtless, like the No dance, had
a religious origin. A topeng troupe has its _dalang_, or manager, who
prompts, sometimes explains, and often delivers all the lines for the
masked actors; and there is a gamelan, or orchestra, of four or more
musicians, and a chorus which chants accompanying and explanatory verses
as the action proceeds. Great princes maintain their own private topeng
troupes, and in their palace presentations, and always in the presence
of native royalties, the actors go without masks. The topeng’s gamelan
consists of two sets of the circles of tiny gongs (_gong_ or _agong_,
a pure Javanese word and instrument), that are struck with wooden
sticks, and two wood and two metal gambang kayu (wood and metal bars of
different length and thickness mounted on a boat-shaped frame), or native
xylophones, to which single instrument the name “gamelan” is so often
given in the West.
The common wayang-wayang of the people is a modification of the same
masked or puppet drama that was in vogue long before the Mohammedan
conquest. As the religion of Islam forbade the representation of the
human figure, the susunhan ordered the puppets to be so distorted that
the priests could not call them images of human beings, and that even
then only their shadows, thrown on a curtain, should be seen. Hence the
exaggerated heads, the beaks and noses, of the cardboard jumping-jacks
which, pulled by unseen strings, serve to maintain an interest in the
national history and legends, and by preludes and lines, chanted in
classic Kawi, preserve acquaintance with the literary language among
the common people. There is a form of wayang-wayang half-way between
this puppet-show and the real drama, in which the actors themselves are
visible, wearing distorted masks; but the plays are of modern times,
in the common dialect, and the manager often improvises his lines and
scenes as the play progresses. With these popular dramas there rank the
performances of the graceful _bedaya_, or dancing-girl, whose tightly
folded sarong, floating scarf-ends, measured steps, outward sweep
of the hand, and charming play of arm and wrist recall the Japanese
_maiko_. Although the winsome bedaya is sculptured on Boro Boedor’s
recording walls, there is nothing there to indicate the puppet-play, nor
anything from which it might have evolved, although from other records
ethnologists claim that the Javanese possessed this dramatic art when
the Hindus came. A love of the drama in the form of the topeng and the
wayang-wayang was so ingrained in the tastes and fixed in the customs
of the people that the Mohammedan conquerors could not suppress those
popular amusements, and were finally content to modify them in trifling
points. The Dutch were also wise enough never to interfere with these
harmless pleasures of the people, the greatest distraction and delight of
these sensitive, emotional, innately esthetic and refined Javanese, who
will sit through shadow-plays for half the night, and are moved to frenzy
and tears by the martial and romantic exploits of their national heroes.
All of society,—the two hundred of Djokja’s superior circle,—European and
native together, gathered at the Societeit’s marble hall on the night
of the topeng. That exalted being, the resident, entered in his modestly
gilded uniform; and all the company rose, and stood until he and Prince
Pakoe Alam had advanced and seated themselves in the two arm-chairs
placed in front of the chairs of the rest of the audience. “Our best
people are all here to-night,” said our amiable table d’hôte acquaintance
of the Hotel Toegoe; and we looked around the lofty white hall, where row
upon row of robust, prosperous-looking Europeans sat in state attire. All
the men wore heavy cloth coats, either richly frogged military jackets
or the civilian’s frock or cutaway, only a few wearing conventional
black dress-coats, and none the rational white duck clothes of the
tropics. The Dutch ladies were dressed in rich silks, brocades, and even
velvets, and fanned vigorously as a natural consequence, while more of
mildew fumes than of sachet odors came from these heavy cloth and silk
garments, whose care and preservation are so difficult in the tropics.
One was reminded of those tropical burghers in crimson velvet coats who
received Lord Macartney and Staunton in a red velvet council-room at
Batavia just one century before. The native officers and their families
were naturally more interesting to a stranger—splendid-looking Javanese
men, who stood and walked like kings, all wearing the battek kerchief or
turban folded in myriad fine plaitings, richly patterned sarongs, and
the boat-handled kris showing at the back of the short black military
jacket. Many of these native officials had constellations of stars and
decorations pinned to their breasts, and their finely cut features,
noble mien, and graceful manners declared them aristocrats and the fine
flower of an old race. Their wives, shy, slender, graceful women in
clinging sarongs and the disfiguring Dutch jacket, wore many clasps and
buckles and jeweled knobs of ear-rings. They seemed to have inherited all
the Hindu love of glittering, glowing jewels, and the Buddhist love of
flowers and perfumes, each little starry-eyed, flower-like woman redolent
of rose or jasmine attar, and wearing some brilliant blossom in the knot
of satin-black hair. The women had thrust their pretty brown feet into
gold-heeled mule slippers, that clicked musically on the tiles as they
walked, while the children comfortably rubbed their bare feet on the cool
white floor.
A few Chinese families, nearly all of them Paranaks, or half-castes,
to the island born, were there; the women in gay embroidered satins,
jeweled and diamonded out of all reason, and the children gay as
cockatoos and parrakeets in their bright little coats and caps and
talismanic ornaments. Rows of shadowy, silent natives, opas, lantern- and
pajong-bearers, and attendants of every kind, crouched in rows among the
great columns of the portico—gallery gods who squatted spellbound, rapt,
and freely tearful in their enjoyment of the splendid topeng produced
that night.
[Illustration: TOPENG TROUPE WITH MASKS.]
Prince Pakoe Alam’s artists rendered for the sake of military charities
a four-act lyric drama, dealing with the adventures of mythical Panji,
a hero of Hindu times, who is said to have introduced the kris to Java.
The gamelan’s music was all soft harmonies, tender, weird, sad melodies
in plaintive minor key, that accompanied the action throughout. The
high-pitched nasal recitatives, the squeaks and squawks and stamps of
fencing warriors, the slow posing, the stilted and automatic movements
of all the actors, were enough like the No dance of Japan to confuse one
greatly. All the actors were magnificently costumed and accoutred, their
dresses, armor, and weapons being historic properties of the Pakoe Alam
family, that had figured on festal occasions in the topengs of a century
and more. In the first act four women in silk sarongs and velvet jackets
did a regular Delsarte dance, with all those theatrical poses, sweeps,
and gestures with the devitalized arm and wrist that the trainers of
the would-be beautiful are teaching in America. Dark-robed attendants,
identical with the mutes and invisible supers of the Japanese stage,
crawled around behind the principals, arranging costumes, handing and
carrying away weapons, as needed. Then deliberate mortal combat raged to
slow music; and after it the harmless automatic dance was resumed. There
was one tedious act where warriors in modern military jackets, worn with
sarongs, indulged in long-drawn recitatives in Kawi; there were prolonged
fan, spear, and bow drills; and one fine final act, where heroes,
stripped to the waist in old style, with bodies powdered yellow, and half
protected by gorgeously gilded breast-plates, fenced with fury and some
earnest.
At the end of the first act nearly every man in the audience rose and
went out, each mopping his brows and whewing great breaths of air from
his lungs. Some few returned with cups of coffee, glasses of pink
lemonade, and tall beakers of soda-water for the perspiring ladies wedged
in their chairs. These men stayed outside after that act, declaring
themselves only during intermissions, when they rushed cooling drinks to
their partners at the front. At the end of three hours Panji triumphed
over all his enemies, the performance ended, chairs scraped loudly as the
audience stirred, the applause was long, and the sighs of relief profound.
After the resident had made the tour of the room and honored the most
distinguished ones, and the European dancing was about to begin, the
native ladies withdrew; and as we saw these most interesting figures
leaving, we, who had risen at five o’clock that morning, and expected to
repeat the act the next morning, followed the beauties in golden slippers
out to the picturesque confusion of lantern- and pajong-bearers at the
carriage entrance. Dancing as it is done in Djokja could not keep us
longer awake that night, though we have regretted ever since that we did
not wait to see how many of the broadcloth-coated men and their partners
in winter gowns survived one vigorous continental waltz on a marble
floor, or if an anteroom was converted into an emergency hospital for
treating heat prostrations.
With the exemplary early rising the tropics enjoin, we had been up
for hours—had enjoyed the dash of a dipper-bath, breakfasted, written
letters, visited the passer, the pawnshops, and the photographer—before
it was time to join the assistant resident’s party and drive to the
palace of Prince Pakoe Alam. The carriages went through several gateways,
past a guard house and sentries, before they drew up in an inner court
before an open pringitan, or audience-hall, eighty feet square, whose
great, low-spreading roof, resting only on heavy teak columns, was all
open to the air. The prince, his crown prince, and his second son, who
is the father’s aide-de-camp, were waiting to receive us as we alighted,
all three dressed in conventional European military uniforms, with many
medals and orders illuminating their coat fronts, and only the native
turban on the old prince’s head suggesting anything Javanese in attire.
The prince spoke Dutch, his sous English and French as well as Dutch; and
each gave us cordial welcome and courteous greetings before they offered
an arm to conduct us back to the cool inner part of the pringitan, where
the young princesses were waiting. We went far in over the shining marble
floor, away from all glare and reflection of the vast sanded court, to
a region of tempered shadow, where the wife, a daughter-in-law, and a
granddaughter of the prince stood beside a formal semicircle of chairs.
The ladies spoke only Dutch and Malay, but they did the honors most
gracefully, and with the two princes to interpret, conversation moved
along smoothly. These princesses wore sarongs and jackets and gilded
mule slippers, but their simple costumes were brightened by many jeweled
clasps and brooches and great, glittering knobs of ear-rings, and both
had coronals of pale-yellow flowers around the knot of black hair drawn
low at the back of the head, in foreign style. Their complexions were the
pure pale yellow of the true Javanese aristocracy, not the pasty greenish
yellow of the higher-class women of China. They had very pretty manners,
combining gentleness and dignity, and they put the conventional questions
as to our homes and journeys with great earnestness and seeming interest.
The old prince, whose high military rank makes him an offset and check
upon the Sultan of Djokja, and who, by his lineage and connections with
the imperial house of Solo, almost ranks the sultan, is very literally
a serene highness, a most gracious and courtly host, whose dignity and
charming address befit his rank and exalted name. His lands and mills and
highly improved estates bring him a large private income; and progressive
as he may be, I am sure his people speak of him admiringly as a gentleman
of the old school—and that old school must have been an admirable one
in Java, where the native manners are as fine as in Japan. Prince Pakoe
Alam received a foreign military education in his youth, and his sons
have enjoyed still greater advantages to fit them for the still newer
order. They are the most charming, natural, and unaffected young men,
unspoiled and with truly princely mien and manners. To be told hereafter
that a young man has the manners of a prince will mean a great deal in
simple courtesy, fine finish, and perfection, to those who remember these
Javanese princes, the handsome young Pakoe Alams. The natural refinement
and charm that one is sensible of in even the lowliest Javanese have
their fullest and finest flowering in these princely ones; and that
delightful hour spent in the vast shady white pringitan offset many
misadventures in Java.
Rows of red-coated and -cowled servitors sat around the edges of the
pringitan’s shining floor, holding the state pajongs and hooded spears
of ceremony; and a full gamelan and a group of singers, in the same
bright court livery, squatted in rows facing us at the far front of the
hall, awaiting the signal to begin. The artists of the previous night,
all the singers and musicians of the full topeng troupe, lifted up their
voices to the tinkling, softly booming, sonorous airs of the gamelan
and delighted us with a succession of chants throughout our stay. The
young princes led us “down front,”—for the whole strange scene in which
we found ourselves was very like a theater,—and, in the strong glare of
the footlights of daylight, explained the several instruments of the
native orchestra. Then in from the wings—“enter right,” as the play-books
would say—came a procession of servants, swinging racks of decanters and
glasses, and bearing bowls of ice, trays of fruits, wafers, and sweets.
Abject minions sidled over the floor, and mutely offered us iced wines or
aërated waters, moving awkwardly about in the ignominious attitude of the
dodok, like so many land-crabs. “Light-boys” crouched and crawled behind
each smoker, handing cigars, holding burning punk-sticks, or extending
trays to receive the ashes, maintaining their abject position during all
our stay. One never gets used to this abasement of the dodok, often as
he may see it; and after the first absurdity and humor of it wears off,
it is irritating and humiliating to see one human being thus belittle
himself before another. One suspects that there was more of fear than
reverence in its first observance, and that it comes from centuries of
tyranny and oppression rather than from any spontaneous expressions of
humility and admiration. This group of household retainers, sidling and
jerking over the floor with something between the gait of a toad and a
crab, seemed to mar the perfect dignity and decorum of the occasion.
These same attendants strode into the sunlit court with the free,
splendid tread of Javanese men, only to crouch to their heels at the
pringitan’s edge, make the simbah’s imploring obeisance with clasped
hands to the forehead, repeating the simbah if they caught a princely
eye, while they sidled grotesquely over the pringitan floor and crouched
like dogs at the master’s feet.
There was a carved screen behind us, closing off an inner space, where
broad divans invited to informal ease, and many beautiful objects
were disposed. We were taken there by the old prince to see the great
gold-bound “Menac,” or family record of the Pakoe Alams—an immense volume
with jeweled covers, resting on a yellow satin cushion. This family
history was put in this splendid form a hundred years ago by Prince Pakoe
Alam II, a literary highness who possessed considerable artistic talent,
and maintained a staff of artists and writers in his palace, who were
busied for years in tracing and illuminating, under his instructions,
this one precious manuscript. Javanese calligraphy, which is even more
decorative and ornamental than Arabic or Persian, makes beautiful pages;
and each page, gracefully written in black, gold, or colors, is also
bordered and illuminated more lavishly than any old Flemish missal. The
beautiful ornamental letters, medallions, and miniatures, the tangle of
graceful arabesques, and the glow of soft colors and gold, relieved with
touches and dashes of black, make the Pakoe Alam’s “Menac” a treasure
of delight for a whole morning’s inspection; but we had only time to
turn its leaves, see the more remarkable pages, and obtain a general
dazzling idea of its quality. The “Axis of the Universe” is a bibliophile
and collector by inheritance, and there were many precious manuscript
books, unique éditions de luxe in jeweled bindings, that we could have
given hours to inspecting. There is one particular book of Arabian
tales, rivaling the family “Menac” in the beautiful lettering and rich
illumination, that was sent to the Amsterdam Colonial Exposition some
years ago, and naturally excited surprise and admiration among European
book-collectors.