A Visit to Java / With an Account of the Founding of Singapore

by W. Basil Worsfold

CHAPTER I.
HISTORICAL ACCOUNT UP TO THE PRESENT DAY.

Hindus—​Mohammedans—​Portuguese—​English—​Dutch—​ Legal basis of Dutch possession—​British occupation—​ Return of Dutch—​Culture system—​Eruption of Mount Krakatoa.

In the centre of that region of countless islands termed not inaptly the "Summer of the World," midmost of the Sunda group of which Sumatra lies to the west, and Flores to the east, with the fury of the tropical sun tempered by a physical formation which especially exposes it to the cooling influence of the ocean, lies the island of Java. Rich in historic remains of a bygone Hindu supremacy, when the mild countenance of Buddha gazed upon obedient multitudes, in memorials of Mohammedan, Portuguese, and Dutch seafaring enterprises, it is a country singularly alluring to the student and antiquarian. Nor is its present life less interesting. Densely populated by a simple and refined native race, who live for the most part in the midst of mountain glories and tropical verdure, itself the best example of a rival and successful system of colonization, modern Java is no mere tourist's country, but one which possesses, and always has possessed, special attractions for the man of science and the political student.

From an immense mass of native tradition the main outlines of the history of the island can be disentangled with sufficient certainty.

Javanese tradition universally speaks of a personage called Saka, variously termed warrior, priest, and god, to whom is attributed the introduction of the arts of civilization, and whose advent marks the opening year of the native chronology. The first year of Saka corresponds to the seventy-eighth of the Christian era. There can be no doubt as to the region from which this extraneous civilization came. Native tradition and the vast religious monuments of the eastern and central districts alike point to an Indian colonization and supremacy; for the temples of Java bear the stamp of a culture and of an artistic and architectural genius superior to that possessed by a race, the sole record of whose national existence is contained in the meagre tradition of an immigration from the western lands about the Red Sea.

Sir Stamford Raffles, in his exhaustive history of Java, gives the names and dates of the Hindu monarchs, with an account of their conquests and administrations. But the native chronicles require to be carefully sifted, and to be supported by the record of the antiquarian remains, which supply an unfailing basis for, at any rate, the main outlines of the period. The oldest inscriptions are found on the west side of Buitenzorg, on river stones, and at Bekasi, on the east side of Batavia; they are written in Sanskrit characters of the oldest period, and, by comparison with the inscriptions of British India, indicate the existence of Hindu civilization in Java during the fourth and fifth centuries after Christ. The oldest dated inscription in Java (and in the Archipelago) is one bearing date 654 of Saka (A.D. 732). This is now in the museum at Batavia. It contains twelve verses in the Sanskrit tongue, and is about four feet in length by two in width, and about ten inches in depth.

The magnificent temple of Boro-Boedoer, of which Mr. Wallace[1] says, "The amount of human labour and skill expended on the Great Pyramid of Egypt sinks into insignificance when compared with that required to complete this sculptured hill temple in the interior of Java," and which will be separately described with the other religious monuments, was probably erected in the eighth or ninth century. It marks the highest point in the Hindu supremacy, and the time when the influence of Buddhism was supreme. At any rate, we have the witness of Fa Hian, a Chinese traveller, who visited the island in the fifteenth century, to the effect that at this later period "the Brahmins were still very numerous, but the law of Buddha was no longer respected."

The earliest European visitors tell us nothing of the two Hindu kingdoms, Pajajaran and Majapahit, so celebrated in the chronicles. They speak only of Sunda and its port Bantam; and they mention a certain prince, Fateléhan, as completing the Mohammedan conquest in 1524. Raffles, however, following the chronicles, focusses the overthrow of the Hindu supremacy in the capture of the city of Majapahit in 1478 A.D. In spite of the traditions which speak of a long period of fighting, it is probable that the conversion of the Javanese to the new religion was gradual and peaceable, being in the main the result of commerce. The temples, the head-quarters of the old religion, show no traces of violence. They were destroyed, says Dr. Leemans,[2] simply by "carelessness, disuse, and nature," not by a sanguinary war. Long before the Prince Fateléhan conquered the western kingdom of Sunda in 1524, Arab merchants had spread the principles of Islamism among the Javanese. It was just at the time of the establishment of the Mohammedan power that the first Europeans made their way to the island. Portuguese writers say that their people, after the conquest of Malacca in 1511, entered into relations with the inhabitants of Bantam, through Samian, a prince of Sunda, who had formerly lived at Malacca. Lemé, a Portuguese sent by Albuquerque, Captain of Malacca, made a treaty with this Samian, and obtained permission to build a fortress at Bantam on condition that the prince and his subjects were protected from the Moors. In the realization of this object, an expedition was sent by the Portuguese king under command of Francesco de Sa; but before it reached the prince Bantam had been taken by treason, and the Mohammedan power established under Fateléhan. Henceforward the native rulers were Mohammedans, and the list of these sovereigns given by Raffles extends from A.D. 1477 to A.D. 1815.