A wayang poorwa performance knows nothing of the showy accessories devised by and for our histrions to hide poverty of mentality and poorness of acting, futile attempts to make up in settings, properties, costumes and trappings, tailoring, millinery and disproportionate finery what they lack in essentials. The performer sits under his lamp behind a white, generally red-bordered piece of cloth stretched over a wooden frame on which he projects the figures. He speaks for them and intersperses explanations and descriptions, directing the musicians with his gavel of wood or horn, striking disks of copper or brass to intimate alarums, excursions, etc. Formerly all the spectators were seated before the screen, as they still are in West Java, Bali and Lombok, but gradually the men, separating from the women and children, moved behind, so that in Central and East Java they see both the puppets and their shadows. The wayang gedog, much less popular than the wayang poorwa, evolved from it in the days of Mojopahit as Dr. L. Serrurier informs us; while the latter draws its repertory principally from Indian epics, the former with Raden Panji, Prince of Jenggala, for leading hero, is more exclusively Javanese and prefers the low metallic music of the gamelan pelog[102] to that of the gamelan salendro[102] with its high notes as of ringing glass. In the wayang kelitik or karucil, of later invention and never of a religious character, the puppets themselves are shown: since wayang means “shadow”, the use of that word is here, for that reason, less correct, and the same applies to the wayang golek in which the marionettes lose their spare dimensions and become stout and podgy; to the wayang topeng[103] and wong[104] in which living actors perform, an innovation not countenanced by the orthodox, who are afraid that such deviations from the hadat may result in dread calamities; and to the wayang bèbèr which consists in displaying the scenes otherwise enacted, in the form of pictures. Every one finds in the wayang, of whatever description, an echo of his innermost self: the high-born, smarting under a foreign yoke, in the penantang (challenge and defiance), the lowly in the banolan (farce), the fair ones of all classes in the prenesan (sentimental, gushing, spoony speech). It is a treat to look at the natives, squatted motionless for hours and hours together, their eyes riveted on the screen, listening to the voice of the invisible performer, marvelling at the adventures of the men and women who peopled the negri jawa before them and faded into nothingness, even the mightiest among them, whose mausolea at Prambanan, Toompang, Panataran, bear witness to the truth of those amazing deeds of derring-do, love and hate, which will remain the wonder of the world. To them the phantom-shadows are reality of happiness in a dull, vexatious life which is but the veil of death.
From Java, says Dr. Juynboll, the wayang poorwa was transplanted to Bali, where it is still called wayang parwa and the puppets present a more human appearance. Beside it thrives, especially in Karang Asam, the wayang sasak, introduced from Lombok and more Muhammadan in character, whose puppets have longer necks after the later Javanese fashion. Apart from such influences, Balinese art, however, does not disown its Hindu-Javanese origin. The inhabitants of the island, with the exception of the Bali aga, the aborigines in the mountains, different in many respects, pride themselves on the name of wong (men of) Mojopahit and adhere to the Brahman religion, though here and there a few Buddhists may be encountered. They are divided into castes and Sivaïte rites play an important part in the religious ceremonial of the upper classes. The common people have adopted a sort of pantheism which makes them sacrifice in the family circle to benevolent and malevolent spirits of land and water, domiciled in the sea, rivers, hills, valleys, cemeteries, etc. The village temples are more specifically resorted to for propitiation of the jero taktu, a superior being entrusted with the guidance of commercial affairs and best approached through the guardian of his shrine, who is held in greater respect than the real priests. Every village has also a house of the dead, consecrated to Doorga, a goddess in high repute with those desirous to dispel illness, to secure a favourable issue of some enterprise, to learn the trend of coming events; the heavenly lady enjoys in Bali a far wider renommée than her lord and master Siva, who is honoured in six comparatively little-frequented temples. As to the decadent architecture and excessive ornamentation[105] of the Balinese houses of worship, Dr. Brandes considers both the one and the other a direct outcome of the decay of the eastern Javanese style, exemplified in the chandis Kedaton (1292), Machan Puti,[106] Surawana and Tegawangi. The leading ideas of the chandi bentar or entrance gate, and of the paduraksa or middle gate, adduces Rouffaer, are related respectively to those of the gate Wringin Lawang at Mojopahit and of what the present day Javanese call gapura in sacred edifices as old kratons, old burial-grounds, etc.; and to those of the gate Bajang Ratu, also at Mojopahit. These gates Wringin Lawang and Bajang Ratu, states the same authority further, can teach us moreover a few things anent the architecture of the puris (palaces). The temples and princely dwellings of Mataram in Lombok were completely destroyed during the inglorious war of 1894; the country-seat of Narmada, however, a fine specimen of an eastern pleasance, has escaped demolition. For how long?
In this respect it seems relevant to point to the circumstance that the monuments of the smaller Soonda islands, much more conveniently placed for the unscrupulous spoiler because under less constant observation of the general public, are exposed to even greater danger than those in Java, Government supervision counting for worse than nothing. A Batavia paper denounced quite recently a traveller who had been visiting the Dutch East Indies and, armed with letters of recommendation from personages of the highest rank and title in the Netherlands, had been collecting curiosa and antiquities on a vast scale only to advertise his collection for sale as soon as unpacked after his return to Europe. It contained carved ornament from temples, sacrificial vessels and statuary from Bali, besides woven goods, implements used in batikking, musical instruments, wayang-puppets, etc. The profit attached to this sort of globe-trotting is enormous, since the coveted objects can be acquired for a mere song by taking advantage of the influential assistance secured through letters of recommendation over high-sounding names. A hint from those in authority goes a very long way with the docile native, in fact goes the whole way of appropriation at a nominal value, and the big official who left his post in the exterior possessions, bound for home, also quite recently, with fifty boxes of antique ware of a different kind, collected in his residency, made certainly as good a haul as the distinguished, brilliantly recommended tourist.
CHAPTER VII
BUDDHIST JAVA
Was ist das Heiligste? Das was heut’ und ewig die Geister
Tief und tiefer gefühlt, immer nur einiger macht.[107]
Wolfgang von Goethe, Vier Jahreszeiten (Herbst).
Although the theory of Gautama the Sugata’s life-story being only a repolished solar myth has broken down, its vital element of emancipation from Brahmanic bonds is certainly much older than Buddhism and the traditional Buddha but an incarnation of ideas long germinating and attaining fruition in his teachings, precisely as happened with other religious reformers who came and went before and after. The thirty-three gods of the three worlds, “eleven in heaven, eleven on earth and eleven dwelling in glory in mid-air,” with their three supreme shining ones, Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, creating, maintaining, destroying and creating anew, began to pall on the human trimoorti of brain, heart and bodily wants; the moral dispensation on which the social edifice was founded, began to need revision. Neither did the orthodox, at first, refuse admittance to the spirit of emendation. At the sangharama[108] of Nalanda the Vedas were taught together with the Buddhist doctrine according to the tenets of the Greater and the Lesser Vehicle à choix. The Buddha had to be accepted and was accepted equally by eastern tolerance and western necessity; while ranking as a divine teacher among his followers in the legendary development of his precepts, he received honour as an incarnation of Vishnu among the Hindus, says Sir William W. Hunter,[109] and as a Saint of the Christian Church, with a day assigned to him in both the Greek and Roman calendars. Truly, the Hindus regarded him as the ninth and hitherto last incarnation of Vishnu, the Lying Spirit let loose to deceive man until the tenth and final descent of the god, on the white horse, with a flaming sword like a comet in his hand, for the destruction of the wicked and the renovation of the world, but he was reckoned with and acknowledged in their mythology, and the remarkable conformity between Prince Sarvarthasiddha’s lineage, adventures and achievements, and those of the seventh avatar of the Hindu deity in the Ramayana are certainly more than accidental. The law of mercy to all, preached by the blissful Bhagavat, the Buddha, the Saviour, affected the Brahman creed profoundly; so profoundly in its deductions, that apprehensive priests resolved to extirpate Buddhist heresy. But since religious persecution always defeats its purpose, Buddhism throve with oppression and holds fully its own against the two other great religions of the present day, al-Islām and Christianity.