CHAPTER VI
EAST JAVA
cosi da l’ossa dei sepolti cantano
i germi de la vita e degli spiriti.[87]
Giosuè Carducci, Odi Barbare (Canto di marzo).
When, suddenly, for reasons still unknown, the classic period of art in Central Java closed, about 850 Saka (A.D. 928), East Java awakened and entered on an era of artistic activity in every direction, which lasted until the fall of Mojopahit six centuries and a half later. In architecture it offers nothing so grand and imposing as the ancient temples of the Middle Empire, but much more diversity, and numerous inscriptions, resembling, after 900 Saka (A.D. 978), in form and contents, what we possess of old Javanese literature, enable us in many cases to determine the dates and also the character of the chandis, found principally along the course of the Brantas in the residencies Pasuruan, Kediri and Surabaya. Moving eastward, it was there that Hindu civilisation made greatest progress, no more in the vigorous enthusiasm of a young faith eager to proselyte, but modified by and finally succumbing to the influences of the soil, the climate, the idiosyncrasies of the aborigines. The oldest dates (Madioon, Kediri, Surabaya and Pasuruan) fall between 890 and 1140; then we have a good many again from Kediri (1120-1240 and 1270-1460) and from Surabaya (1270-1490); also from Pasuruan, Probolinggo and Besuki (1340-1470), Madura (1290-1440) and Rembang (1370-1390); finally, the constructive energy returning to Central Java, from Samarang and Surakarta (1420-1460), Suku and Cheto bringing up the rear. In the palmy days of Daha and Tumapel a sort of transition style was elaborated; under Ken Angrok and his descendants on the throne of Mojopahit, East Java reached its architectural zenith, never equal in the grandeur of its conceptions to the Boro Budoor or even the Prambanan temples, to the symmetrical richness of the Mendoot, but making up in fantastic decoration what it had lost in sobriety of outline. The builders pandered to the unwholesome demand for that perfection at any cost which Ruskin censures as the main mistake of the Renaissance in its early stages, the workman losing his soul in exchange for consummate finish. But, though they bear the impress of decadence, the products of eastern Javanese constructive efforts are not wholly degenerate, never coarse or vulgar and well worth looking at from more than one point of view. The evolution of the ornament alone is exceedingly suggestive: the “recalcitrant spiral” which in Central Java ascends, decking the supports, topples, as it were, in East Java, losing its character and becoming a meaningless adornment of the casements of, e.g., the chandi Panataran; the kala-heads remain but the makaras change into a flame-like embellishment; where they are altogether dissolved, as in the chandi Jago or Toompang, it is safe to conclude with Dr. Brandes to late eastern Javanese influences.[88]
It has been conjectured that the migration of Hinduïsm to East Java was the effect of Buddhism gaining ground in the central part of the island; that the pronounced Sivaïte tendencies of Mojopahit were a reaction against Buddhist innovations. But it remains still to be proved that Mojopahit, though worshipping Siva as the supreme god of the Trimoorti, adhered to his overlordship in all its orthodox purity. There are, on the contrary, indications of Vishnuïte leanings, of Buddhist heresy, of a syncretism no less pronounced than that of Prambanan and the Mendoot. In the time of Old Mataram’s hegemony, Buddhism must have ingratiated itself to some extent with her eastern vassals and, though not one of the temples in East Java is Buddhist after the fashion of the chandis Boro Budoor, Mendoot and Sewu, vestiges of the Bhagavat’s doctrine are undeniable in Kediri, Southern Surabaya and Northern Pasuruan. A fusion of Sivaïsm and Buddhism has continuously controlled the construction of the larger temples of the later eastern Javanese period, says Rouffaer. Statues found in many places, e.g. in the chandi Toompang, are distinctly Buddhist and, what is most remarkable, though of later workmanship than those of Central Java and of a different style, tainted by decadent methods, they possess high merits as works of art. In their Sivaïtic surroundings they confirm the statements of the Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsiang who, perambulating India between 629 and 645, before the persecution of the Buddhists commenced, remarked upon the tolerance of the brahmins and vice versa, a virtue the Hindus carried with them to Java as already observed in the chapter on Prambanan. The kings of Mojopahit followed the example set in those regions: they were Saivas, Vaishnavas, Buddhists or followers of no one creed in particular, ready to protect and prefer each of them according to circumstances. In codes of law and poetry, Sivaïte priests and sugatas, pious brethren on the Buddhist road to perfection, are mentioned in one breath as conductors of the religious exercises on festive occasions, invoking the blessings of heaven on harvests and enterprises of peace and war; the poet Tantular calls the Buddha one with the Trimoorti.[89]
The Muhammadans were not so indulgent when the Pangerans of Giri increased in authority as spiritual leaders of their faith, successors of Maulana Ibrahim, its first apostle in East Java. The hillock of Giri became a centre of incitement to the holy war, particularly so under Raden Ratu Paku or Sunan Prabu Satmoto, whose tomb is still an object of Moslim pilgrimage.[90] With his approval, if not on his instigation, the Muhammadan states on the north coast combined under Raden Patah of Demak to compass the extermination of heathenism and he lived to see the overthrow of Mojopahit, though dying shortly afterwards. If the Moslemin yearned to gain Paradise, sword in hand, martyrs for their Prophet’s dispensation, those of the old creed remembered the power of their gods, blowing the sanka, the war-shell of Vishnu, who proved to Sugriva and Hanoman his superiority over Wali by shooting his arrow through seven palm-trunks; who, in his fourth avatar, as narasinha, the man-lion, ripped open the belly of the sacrilegious demon Hiranya Kasipu. But Raden Patah, marching with his allies, marvellously helped in the way of the Lord against the idolaters of Mojopahit, the swollen with pride, proved to be the giant in the shape of a dwarf, Vamana, known from their god’s fifth avatar, conqueror of the three worlds. And Mojopahit, so great that the claims to the honour of her foundation, forwarded by as many princely houses as existed in those days, were fused in the tradition of her divine origin, her capital with its hundred gates and shining streets and palaces, the like of which had never been seen, having sprung from the earth in one night as a flower at the call of the fragrant dawn,—Mojopahit was overthrown and, laments the Javanese chronicle, the prosperity of the island disappeared. Not the last but the strongest bulwark of Hinduïsm had ceased to exist, bearing bitter fruit[91] of presumptuous pride indeed; the later Hindu empires, even Balambangan, which gave so much trouble to New Mataram and submitted only to the arms of the East India Company, leaving the ancient creed to die of slow exhaustion in the Tengger mountains, were nothing compared to her.
Like the remains, near the dessa Galang, of the kraton of the kings of the older empire of Daha, what has escaped total destruction of the capital of Mojopahit is constructed of brick. The ruins are situated about eight miles to the southwest of Mojokerto[92] in the valley of the Brantas; near Ngoomplak was the site of a royal residence in the building of which stone seems also to have been used. Raffles, visiting those heaps of debris scattered over quite a large area, found but scanty evidence of the fact that he trod the spot where great rulers had employed great architects, raising great structures for posterity to remember their great deeds by; Wardenaar, whom he had taken with him as a draughtsman, might have stayed at Batavia, though in his History of Java he gives an illustration of “one of the gateways” and says that the marks of former grandeur there are more manifest than at Pajajaran, which, well considered, is saying very little. Now, a century later, a century of continued neglect, the general impression is still less calculated to prompt a vision of heroes subjecting thrones and dominions in the short space left them by their ancestor Ken Angrok’s murderous kris, defying the grave, unmindful of Mpu Gandring’s curse. Walking round in an effort to fit the scenery to historical dramas of love, hate and ambition, extreme care is necessary to avoid stepping on snakes coiled in dangerous repose or crawling among the brickbats which represent the foundations of princely mansions, digesting their last meal or hungry after the lizards that move restlessly in and out of chinks and crannies, lively beasties, enjoying the sunshine until snapped up, far more interesting really than the piles of rubbish bearing meaningless names. The natives one meets, will spin yarns ad libitum anent the numerous graves and crumbling substructures, but few have an intelligible tale to tell. Here are portions of the city-wall; there the remnant of the gate Bajang Ratu; half a mile farther the aloon aloon, the taman or pleasance, the tanks for bathing. A road, in great need of repair, leads through the Trowulan, the interior; exterior roads may be taken through ricefields and teak-plantations to the tomb of Ratu Champa, distinguished by curtains which once may have been white. Before a small building, enclosed by a fence, lies a stone supposed to cover the entrance to a subterranean apartment, the hiding-place, it is said, of the last king of Mojopahit when his capital was taken by the Moslim enemy. More graves surround that cache, graves without and, to intimate the pre-eminent importance of the elect thus honoured, graves with dirty curtains, narrow strips of soiled cloth, sad offerings to the dead sovereigns of an empire of celestial fame. One feels almost inclined to refuse credence to the grand past this ragged display tries to commemorate and, from sheer disappointment, to join the ranks of the sceptics who doubt of the capital of Mojopahit ever having amounted to much, and maintain that, in any case, it had come down and was of no consequence compared with Tuban and Gresik, already in 1416, a century before its falling into the hands of the Muhammadans.
At Mojopahit it is the same old story of quarrying for building material: several sugar-mills in the neighbourhood with the dwellings of managers and employees, have been wholly or partly constructed of Mojopahit bricks. In 1887 I saw them used for the abutments of bridges, foremen of the Department of Public Works superintending. A short time before, twelve copper plates had been found with inscriptions in ancient characters, which disappeared in a mysterious way. The rechos of Mojopahit were mostly left alone, a respectful treatment they owed to their general clumsiness. Some two or three miles from the ruins of the capital, a goodly number stand or lie together fair samples of statuary of the first eastern Javanese period, in its extravagance and exaggeration a travesty of the classic art of Central Java, crudity of conception floundering in a redundancy of form also observable at the chandis Suku and Cheto; after the fall of Mojopahit, in the second period, the sculptor reverted to a close study of nature as manifested at the chandis Toompang and Panataran; in the third, Hindu methods getting crowded within ever narrower limits, his fancy betrayed him again into lavish detail as exemplified in old Balinese imagery. At the gradual extinction of Hindu ideals of beauty, realised in decaying stone and brick, in statues defaced and vanishing like dwindling phantoms, a growing sensation of emptiness, emphasised by vague reminiscences of the artistic fullness of the jaman buda, claiming amends from succeeding creeds, received little from Islām and absolutely nothing from Christianity. Under Dutch rule very few attempts at style in Java and the other islands of the Malay Archipelago have been made at all, and of these few only one has resulted in an achievement not altogether ridiculous, namely the old town-hall, begun in 1707 and finished in 1710, of old Batavia, where the Resident has his office, by the natives very appropriately called rumah bichara, i.e. “house of talk”. With one or two utterly tasteless exceptions, the rest of the Government and private buildings, including the palaces of the Governor-General at Weltevreden and Buitenzorg, descend in their architecture to the lowest grade of the commonplace. To his Excellency’s ill-kept country-seat in the Preanger subverted Mojopahit seems almost preferable, notwithstanding the squalor of its threadbare kaïn klambu decoration; the meanness of the viceregal reception- and living-rooms at Chipanas is not even picturesque and surely some of the public money regularly paid out for the maintenance of the “Government hotels” might be profitably expended on the improvement of the surroundings of Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands’ representative in the Dutch East Indies, including the rickety furniture, shabby napery, etc., which has a pitiful tale of unseemly parsimony to tell: the superiority of high rank needs decorum and nowhere more than in oriental countries, a truth lately too much lost sight of by officials, high and low, who, following the example set at Buitenzorg, hoarding against the hour of their demission, presume on their “prestige” without anything to back it.
Mojopahit had ceased to exist and the Muhammadans with the Christians in their wake overran Java, despoiling the land in which toleration and art could no more flourish, but dissension throve as the tree prophetically imaged at the Boro Budoor, whose branches bear swords and daggers instead of wholesome, luscious fruit. The old quarrels over political supremacy were surpassed in violence by religious strife, and fanaticism is still held responsible in our day for disturbances conveniently ascribed to Moslim cussedness when the acknowledgment of the real cause, discontent born from over-taxation, would be tantamount to a confession of administrative impotence. It was not Hanoman, the deliverer of Sita, who troubled the repose of Ravana’s garden, but the raksasas and raksasis who kept her in bonds, and there are two solutions of the Dutch East Indian problem, independent of the issue celebrated in the Ramayana and both suggested in the ornament of Java’s temples: the devourer Time destroying all with his sharp teeth, and the lion, or tiger, to preserve the local colour, master of the fleeting moment, with a garland of flowers in his mouth, image of the clouded present holding out the promise of a brighter future. The two auguries, dark yet hopeful, belong to one old order of ideas, prefiguring things to come in dubious language, after the wont of oracles, ancient and modern, and we can choose the forecast which likes us best. So did the princes of Daha, Tumapel and Mojopahit, not to mention the lesser fry, creatures of a breath as we deem them now, doughty warriors and far-seeing statesmen to their contemporaries, who consulted their soothsayers before treading the fields of fame and blood whence they were carried to their graves, admiring nations rearing the mausoleums which now constitute the greater part of the historic monuments of East Java. The Pararaton mentions no fewer than seventy-three structures of that description. Such as have been left are, for various reasons, hard to classify, the greatest difficulty arising from their bad state of preservation, though deciphered dates furnish important clues, for instance regarding some chandis in Kediri: Papoh (1301), Tagal Sari (1309), Kali Chilik (1349), Panataran (1319-1375),[93] the last named being probably the principal tomb of the dynasty of Mojopahit. Springing from the soil in amazing dissimilitude, their architects seeking new modes of expression in new forms and never hesitating at any oddity, at any audacity to proclaim the message of artistic freedom from convention, they struggled free from the sober lines and harmonious distribution of spaces always maintained in Central Java, to run riot in fantastic innovations. Yet, they held communion with nature and neither shirked their responsibility nor sinned against the proper relations between their purpose and the visible consummation of their task as those of our modern master-builders do who contrive churches like barns or cattle-sheds, stables like gothic chapels, prisons like halls of fame and cottages like mediaeval donjons. From such architectural absurdities it is pleasant to turn, e.g., to the chandi Papoh, a temple whose corner-shrines might pass for daintily wrought golden reliquaries inlaid with jewels, when the minute detail of their exquisite decoration is shone upon by the setting sun; or to the chandi Sangrahan, when warmed to life from death and fearful decay, by the blue of a measureless sky, again budding from the earth, lovely as the lotus in the bliss bestowing hand of one of the five finely chiselled but headless statues near by.
