In the true wayang the figures themselves are not seen, but only their shadows. The dalang places a transparent curtain, stretched over a frame ten feet long by five high, between himself and the audience. He then fixes his figures in the bamboo bar immediately in front of him, and throws their shadows on to the curtain by placing a lamp behind them. At the same time he moves the arms with wires in order to produce the effect of action. The wayang dolls are singularly grotesque. There is an interesting tradition which ascribes this distortion to a deliberate purpose. According to this account, after the Mohammedan conquest and the subsequent conversion of the Javanese to Islamism, it became necessary to reconcile the continued enjoyment of the national pastime with the precept of the new religion which forbade the dramatic representation of the human form. A means of escaping from the dilemma was discovered by the susunan of that day, who ordered the wayang figures to be distorted to their present grotesque shapes. His line of argument was ingenious. The world, he said, would now no longer recognize the figures of the wayang as representations of humanity. The Javanese, however, would recognize the persons whom the figures were intended to reproduce from their knowledge of the national traditions. Even if they should eventually come to forget the nature of the originals good would arise, for they would then believe that it was only since their conversion to the faith of the prophet that their ancestors had assumed a human shape.
There are two forms of the shadow wayang, the purva and the gedog. The subjects of the first are taken from the various mythological works of the Hindu period, and from the Bharata Yuddha. In presenting this wayang, the dalang first recites a few verses in Kavi, and then continues the narrative in a modern Javanese version. This wayang is especially useful as serving to keep alive some knowledge of the literary dialect among the common people. The wayang gedog differs from the former in so far as its subjects belong to a later period, and no Kavi verses are recited. The gamelan also which accompanies the dalang is somewhat different. Pangi is the favourite hero of the wayang gedog, though he is not represented so exclusively as in the theatre. In both of these wayangs the dalang often improvises the dialogue with which the narrative is interspersed.
I have described the wayang klitik in my account of my visit to Tji Wangi. The performance is given without the intervention of a curtain, and the figures in the wayang are slightly smaller and not nearly so skilfully constructed as in the two former. The wayang klitik takes its subjects from the period of the Mohammedan invasion.
The dalangs are held in great respect by the common people, and many of them possess their own sets of wayang puppets. It is customary for the native princes to keep a dalang at their palaces; in this case, of course, the figures and gamelan do not belong to the dalang, but to the prince.
A WAYANG FIGURE.
Footnotes:
[28] Journal of the R. A. S. xx. 1863.
[29] In [Chapter III].