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.