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.
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: