CHAPTER III
THE DIËNG
Where Silence undisturbed might watch alone,
So cold, so bright, so still.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab.
Where five residencies—Samarang, Pekalongan, Banyumas, the Bagelen and the Kadu—meet between two seas, the wonderland of the Diëng links the eastern and western chain of volcanoes which are the vertebrae of Java’s spine. The Diëng plateau, the first part created, as tradition goes, and destined to remain longest above water in the island’s final destruction and submersion, is nothing but a huge crater. Nature, in her most mysterious mood, exercises here a charm of a peculiar character, well expressed by the name, according to the Javanese derivation from adi aëng, i.e. marvellously beautiful.[22] The temples in this region belong to the oldest and finest if by no means the largest of Java. The discovery of a stone with a Venggi inscription has led to the conjecture that the Hindu settlement to which we owe them, originated from the Priangan; other indications point to immigration directly from Southern India. However this may be, the dates ascertained (one in an inscription reproduced by me in 1885 for further examination at Batavia, leaving the stone in the place where I had found it) from 731 Saka (A.D. 809) on, witness to the lost civilisation of the Diëng having reached its apogee at the time the Abbassides flourished in Baghdad and the Omayyads in Cordova. How it rose, declined and fell, we do not know. For four centuries its memory lived only as a fantastic tale, the Diëng remaining utterly deserted, a wilderness of mountain and forest, inhabited by devils and demons of the Khara and Dushana type.
Resettled since about 1800, its villages increase in number and size, and its wild animals, big and small, disappear gradually, though the tigers are still troublesome, evincing a growing disposition to vary their accustomed fare with domestic kine and sheep. The sombre woods are gone and efforts at reafforestation gave so far no perceptible results. The ground yields abundant crops of cabbage, onions and tobacco, in which a lively trade is done with Chinese middlemen, who buy for the merchants at Pekalongan, whence the product is shipped to larger centres of trade. These middlemen congregate principally at Batoor, a prosperous village, where travellers to the Diëng, arriving from that side, will appreciate the hospitable disposition of the wedono, the native chief of the district. Many a one has been entertained under his roof, looked down upon from the palupooh (split bambu) walls by the Royal Family of Great Britain and Kaiser Wilhelm in chromolithographic splendour, while discussing a substantial lunch or arranging for sleeping accommodation if too tired to push on, or desirous of visiting the Pakaraman, the valley of death, at break of day when the uncanny manifestations of that place of horror are strongest. Another source of income for some of the Chinamen of Batoor and their henchmen of the Diëng is opium smuggling. The geographical position, commanding access to five administrative divisions of the island at once, lends itself admirably to that lucrative business. And if the smugglers cater to a low vice, they can advance an excuse logically unanswerable by those in authority who punish them when caught: they satisfy but a demand, in competition with the Government that created it, introduced the drug and encourages its use, artificially whetting a depraved appetite and demoralising the children of the land for the sake of more revenue.
Often though I went up to forget the cares of exacting duties in happy holidays on the Diëng, trying the different approaches, the impressions of my first ascent in October 1885 are freshest in my memory. Starting from Wonosobo, I preferred to a more direct route the roundabout way via Temanggoong, spending a day on the road between the twin volcanoes Soombing and Sindoro, enjoying the views to right and left, every new turn disclosing new wonders: mountain slopes basking in the warmth which radiated triumphantly from a sky of dazzling brightness, valleys of perfect loveliness losing their brilliant hues in the shades of evening as if a curtain fell between the world left and the world entered. The following morning early I rode from Temanggoong in a thick mist which, rolling away before the sun, uncovered a landscape more and more rugged as I passed Parakan and Ngadirejo, but always more charming, a feast to the eye. Near Ngadirejo the chandis Perot and Pringapoos claimed my attention. Built for the worship of Siva, his sakti Doorga and their eldest son, they offered a sad spectacle of decay, the former crumbling away in the baneful embrace of a gigantic tamarind, one of whose branches rose from the midst of the ruin straight up to heaven, overshadowing Ganesa, the conqueror of obstacles, in his meditations; the latter holding an image of Siva’s vahana or nandi, the bull, symbol of his creative power, still an object of veneration as the boreh indicated, the walls of the temple being decorated with splendid bas-reliefs representing a scene from Javanese history or mythology, analogous to the rape of the Sabine women.[23] Farther on, surprise succeeding surprise, lies Joomprit, another delicious spot, sanctified by a holy grave, at the source of the Progo. The water, gushing forth from the mouth of a cavern and trickling down its sides, is immediately lost to sight in a declivity among the ferns. Curious monkeys herd round, led by their brawny chief, imperious like Hanoman, born from the wind, swinging through space, commanding the simian army of Sugriva: they constitute one of the few colonies of sacred apes which form a living link with the Hindu epoch; that of Gaja Moongkoor on the Diëng has ceased to exist.
II. CHANDI PRINGAPOOS
(Archaeological Service through Charls and van Es.)
From Joomprit on, it was pretty steep climbing to a point where, at a sudden turn, I beheld the lowlands, far beneath the clouds gathering round me, fair plains resting under their hazy veil of midday repose, calm and undisturbed. Drinking deep of the invigorating mountain air, I noticed the red cheeks of the women and girls who returned from market in little groups. After descending to the tea-plantations of Tambi, the clambering up began again, pretty hard for my pony, to which I gave an occasional rest, looking back over hills and valleys as they dissolved in soft-melting tints, impressing the beholder with a sense of eternal light in limitless space. Wonder akin to awe seized me when, panorama-like, a landscape of silent grandeur, quite different from the graceful majesty of the rose-gardens of Wonosobo and the palm-groves of Temanggoong, unfolded itself. I was on the Diëng plateau. Notwithstanding the late hour, my admiration of the scenery having made my progress slow, I could not resist the temptation to dismount and follow the trail which led me down to the source of the Serayu beside the road, and pay my compliments to the shade of stalwart Bimo by way of introduction to the regions resounding in its temples with his exploits and those of other worthies sung in the Brata Yuda.[24] Nor indeed only in its temples: this same delightful retreat commemorates Bimo’s prowess according to a legend which in its astonishing account of his supernatural virility cannot be repeated. Enough to say that Arjuno, making him dig up the toog Bimo, on the advice of Samār, the wily, was the first, by determining the course of the Serayu, to direct the water from the mountains of Central Java to the sea, therewith obtaining the realm of Ngastino. And whoever takes a bath, alone and at night, in the water springing from mother earth under the pohoon chemeti, the weeping willow of Bimo’s fountain, will have no occasion for certain elixirs largely advertised in daily and weekly papers, will retain youthful vigour into hoariest age.