While predictions of the kind may be laughed at, the native belief in them and the foundations on which that belief rests, are no laughable matter by any means. Stories of mythical beings like Kiahi Satomo and Niahi Satomi, transformed into pieces of ordnance connected with the legendary lore of Trunajaya on one side and Moslim fanaticism personified in the cannon of Karang Antu on the other, prove that the native mind is still strongly imbued with pre-Muhammadan and even pre-Hindu ideas and modes of thought. Its imagination is fed by the fortunes (and misfortunes!) of an island which may be compared in the heterogeneous factors of its culture with Sicily, where Greek colonists built their temples in the high places of aboriginal idolatry; and the Saracens constructed their qubbehs overtopping the churches and cloisters into which the Christians had transformed the cellae and colonnades consecrated to Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Pallas Athene, Artemis, the Dioscuri; and the Normans added their arched doorways and massive masonry to perplex posterity entirely. In Java the Hindu element, with a strong Buddhist admixture, predominates; it prevails wholly in ancient architectural activity, not to speak of Soondanese and Javanese folklore and literature, while later Christian influence is negligible if not negative. Everywhere in the island we find under the Muhammadan coating the old conceptions of life from which the Loro Jonggrang group and the Boro Budoor sprang: scratch the orang slam and the Saiva or Buddhist will immediately appear. As the Padang Highlands, which preserve the traditions of Menangkabau, still ring with the fame of the Buddhist King Adityawarman, and scrupulously Moslim Palembang still cherishes the memory of Buddhist San-bo-tsaï, while South Sumatra clings to Hindu customs and habits for all its submission to Islām, so Java reveres whatever has been handed down from her pantheistic tempo dahulu (time of yore), however attached to the law of the Prophet. Sivaïsm and Buddhism were deeply rooted in the island; if the political power of its old creeds was broken in 1767 with the taking of Balambangan, Hinduïsm nevertheless lingering among the Tenggerese and in Bali, their spirit goes on leavening the new doctrine and we meet with their symbolism at every turn. Not to mention Central Java, where especially in Surakarta and Jogjakarta their tenacious sway strikes the most casual observer, the great staircase of the Muhammadan sanctum at Giri is adorned with a huge naga, the worshipful rain-cloud descending in the likeness of a serpent, despite the Qorānic injunction to abstain from the representation of animate creation. The pillars of reception-halls and audience-chambers in the houses of the high and mighty, East and West, bear a remarkable resemblance to the linga, witness, e.g., the kedaton[7] built by the Sooltan Sepooh Martawijaya of Cheribon, a Moslim prince who ought to have evinced the strongest repugnance to Siva’s prime attribute.
Under the circumstances we need not wonder that the Islām did so little to stimulate art in Java. Christianity did still less, rather clogged it in its application to native industries, which suffered from the country being flooded with stuff as cheap as possible in every respect, but sold at the highest possible prices to benefit manufacturers in Europe. This is not the place to expatiate on this subject nor to discuss present efforts (in which alas! personal ambitions play first fiddle and jeopardise results) to revive what lies at the point of death after centuries of culpable discouragement, the professional secrets and peculiar devices of native arts and crafts, requiring hereditary skill and the delicate touch of experienced fingers to attain former perfection, being now already half forgotten or altogether lost. Concerning the ancient monuments of Java, it is to the British Interregnum, to Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles that we owe the first measures for their preservation and the first systematic survey of specimens of Hindu workmanship as beautiful as any in the world, more in particular of the Prambanan temples, and also of the Boro Budoor, by common consent the masterpiece of Buddhist architecture. Marshalling his assistants in the archaeological field, especially Cornelius and Wardenaar (whose fruitful explorations and excavations deserved fuller acknowledgment than they received from him), a diligent student besides of the history and literature of the island, doing for Java in that respect what Marsden had done for Sumatra, he inspired Dr. Leyden, Colonel Mackenzie and his rival John Crawfurd among his contemporaries, and of younger generations now equally gone, Wilsen, Leemans, Brumund, Friederich, Junghuhn, Cohen Stuart, Holle,—j’en passe et des meilleurs! The value of their labours must be recognised and it is the fault of the Dutch Government’s apathetic attitude that with such forces at its disposal, so little has been achieved. Each of them, with few exceptions, worked independently of the other and blazed his own personal path in the wilderness of Dutch East Indian antiquities. There was, as Fergusson complained, no system, no leading spirit to give unity to the whole. Disconnected, sometimes misdirected investigation did not result in more than an accumulation of fragmentary material for possible future use, rudis indigestaque moles. And meanwhile the glorious remains of a lost civilisation went more and more to ruin. They were drawn upon for purposes of public and private building; statues and ornament disappeared, not only in consequence of the unchecked, persistent nibbling of the tooth of time, and it seemed almost so much gained if Doorga or Ganesa reappeared occasionally in the function of domestic goddess or god to some Resident or Assistant Resident who demonstrated his devotion to ancient art and care for the preservation of its masterpieces by a periodical process of whitewashing or tarring. Worse than that: dilettantism began to tamper with the finest temples and the miserable bungling of mischievous, quasi-scientific enthusiasts reached its climax in the sorry spectacle prepared for the visitors of the last international exhibition in Paris (1900). There was to be seen in the Dutch East Indian section, a mean, ridiculous imitation of one of the Buddhist jewels of Central Java, a caricature of the chandi[8] Sari, the exterior in nondescript confectioner’s style, daubed dirty white, the interior made hideous by a purple awning, abomination heaped on abomination. And that piteous botch, in fact an unconscious avowal of Dutch colonial shortcomings, did service as a sample of la magnificence d’une religion prodigue en ornaments, en feuillages et en voluptés!
After an era of dabbling by pseudo-Winckelmanns and Schliemanns, spicing their pretences with mutual admiration, the Government decided finally to appoint a permanent Archaeological Commission. Things, indeed, had come to such a pass that there was danger in delay: the island is becoming more and more accessible to globe-trotters of all nationalities, not a few of whom publish their impressions, and if erring authority wields a vigorous Press Law to silence criticism at home, against foreign criticism it has no weapon of the kind, however touchy it may be. So it began to move and the Archaeological Commission (short for Commission for Archaeological Research in Java and Madura), though without a single trained archaeologist among its members, displayed at once a good deal of activity under its first President, Dr. J. L. A. Brandes, exploring in East Java, restoring the chandi Toompang, attending to the Mendoot and Boro Budoor in Central Java, in order that, acting upon King Pururava’s injunction, at last understood and accepted, after a fashion, by Batavia and the Hague, no monument shall be lost which has been wrought in the right spirit. It can be imagined that subordinate officials, eager to follow their superiors’ lead, now revel daily in numberless finds, reported not only from districts, near and remote, in the star island, but from the exterior possessions, from Soombawa, from Jambi in Sumatra, from Kutei in East, from Sanggau and Sakadan in West Borneo, etc. etc. Like the encouraging of native art applied to weaving, wood-carving, the manufacture of pottery, of household utensils of copper and bronze, and so on, the ferreting out of sculptural and architectural ties with the past is quite the latest craze, a stepping-stone to preferment or at least a means of ingratiation with those who set the pace. There would be no harm in this if obsequious ambition did not burgeon here and there into an excess of zeal which makes one tremble, pregnant as it proves to be with dangers well defined by Ruskin: Of all destructive manias that of restoration is the frightfullest and foolishest.
Curiosity being excited, there is the impulse to satisfy vulgar demands, to cater to coarse appetites when admitting every one who knocks at the door of the treasure-house however unworthy. Trippers from the trading centres on the coast swarm round as their fancies guide; tourists from distant climes scour the land, either single spies or driven in noisy battalions of “conducted parties”. Travel in Java is already assuming the character of holiday excursions pressed upon the public in bombastic handbills and posters of transportation companies. Revenue being the principal objective of Dutch colonial solicitude, the opportunity they create is gladly seized to levy gate-money from visitors to the chandi Mendoot.[9] And since the Philistines, who do not appreciate the beauties of a building they cannot comprehend, expect something in exchange for their contribution to the upkeep, visible tokens of their really having been there, we shall soon hear of photographers established in the temple to perpetuate the memory of spoony couples, giggling and offensive, magnesium flashed at the feet of the Most Venerable, or of the Boro Budoor in a blaze of Bengal fire to please mediocrity, which wants barbarous stimulants. And apart from such concessions to the exigencies of inane modern travel, how distressing the plain tokens of neglect and spoliation! As Psyche began to mourn Love after she had come to grasp his excellence, so the discerning one, advancing to the apprehension of eternal truth there enshrined in beauty, a call to heaven in stone, laments less what is gone of material substance by the ravages of time, than what is taken from the spiritual essence by willful mutilation; by methods of repair embodied in iron scrapers to remove moss and weeds, incidentally spoiling the delicate lines of reliefs and decoration; by filling gaps with any rubbish lying about, mending and patching à la grosse morbleu; by additions for the convenience of sightseers, like the unsightly staircase askew near one of the original, dilapidated approaches. It is devoutly to be hoped that the overhauling now in progress will, at least, remove such incongruities and avoid new horrors of so-called restoration.[10]
Dr. Brandes, whose learning and good sense led the Archaeological Commission in a track of sound activity, died, unfortunately, in 1905. Though the theft of antiquities has been discontinued on paper, impudent souvenir hunting is still winked at by authorities fawning on distinguished guests. Untitled and unofficial collectors will have some trouble perhaps, at any rate incur a good deal more expense than formerly, in filling their private art galleries, but for officials of the type of Nicolaus Engelhard[11] no difficulties seem to exist and even the Boro Budoor was very recently despoiled to please a royal personage. So much for Java; as to the exterior possessions, the Minahassa was plundered, even more recently, for the benefit of foreign explorers of name and fame. Since the respective Government edicts[12] multiplied, fixing responsibility at random, cases of strange disappearance multiplied too, on the principle, it seems, of making hay while the sun shines; the pen-driving departments, issuing circulars on everything, for everything, against everything, about everything, effect absolutely nothing unless their insistence be taken, often rightly by him who reads between the lines, for a covert invitation to do precisely the contrary, considering friendships, family relations, party obligations, etc. etc., of powers and dominions. The force of regulations and rescripts in the Dutch East Indies is notoriously short-lived in the best of circumstances, and we have it on the authority of Hans Sachs, Je mehr Hürten, je übler Hut. The very scrupulous and wise, moreover, drag off whatever is loose or can be detached, separating details of ornament, reliefs and statues from their surroundings, which are indispensable to their proper understanding, to hide and forget them in cellars and lofts of museums until, the stars being favourable, accidentally rediscovered after years and years, and ticketed and huddled together with other ticketed objects in long, dreary rows of forbidding, bewildering aspect. That is, if they are rescued and classified and ticketed tant bien que mal: the colonial section in the Museum of Antiquities at Leyden, a byword among the lovers of Dutch East Indian architecture, shows clearly the obstruction caused by hopeless negligence in the past and lack of backbone in the present zeal, energy, ardour, nay, frenzy of investigation. Everything in Dutch colonial affairs goes by fits and starts with long blanks of indifference between. To give but one instance: the Corpus Inscriptionum Javanarum, planned with flourish of trumpets in 1843, still awaits the preliminaries of a beginning of execution. Concerning the fever of restoration which has broken out, one feels inclined, in support of Ruskin’s opinion quoted above, to sound the note of warning engraved on the signet ring of Prosper Mérimée, Inspector of the Historical Monuments of France almost a century ago: μέμνασ' ἀπιστεῖν, lest the last state become worse than the first, and excess of zeal deface what time and the hand of man, even the Department of Public Works itself, quarrying its material for bridges, dams, embankments and the shapeless Government buildings of which it possesses the monopoly, have left standing. Without, however, insisting on the dark aspect of the situation, let us trust that a sense of shame, if not of duty, will sustain the interest in the old monuments of Java now in vogue, and may then the faddish, pompous display, turned into channels of quiet, responsible, persistent endeavour, herald a brighter day!
CHAPTER II
WEST JAVA
Quedaron mudos los cuerpos,
Solas las almas se hablan,
Que en las luces de los ojos
Iban y venian las almas.[13]