'Blood' flows in Yogyakarta 'Bekakak' tradition

By Bambang M and M. Perreira Mesquita

AMBARKETAWANG, Yogyakarta (JP): All the crowd wanted was blood. They milled restlessly on a sultry day in early May in Ambarketawang Limestone Preserve, which is deserted and quiet most of the time except for the chirping of birds.

Then the time came for the sacrifice.

As the onlookers cheered with every cut, a bride and groom dressed in traditional Javanese wedding attire had their throats slit beneath the disinterested gaze of police officers nearby.

Yet more carnage in this forlorn country? Not quite -- the traditional Bekakak ceremony, held every year at the preserve on the second month of the Javanese calendar, Sapar, involves the symbolic sacrifice of figures made from glutinous rice and "blood" of brown sugar syrup.

The origin of the ceremony is tied to the exploitation of the limestone preserve by locals and the sacrifice of Ki Wirosuto, a servant of the first Mataram king, Sri Sultan Hamengku Buwono I, hundreds of years ago.

He was entrusted as the keeper of the sultan's rest house near the site, which today lies in ruins. One day, when he and his family were in a cave under a limestone hill, the walls collapsed. One version of the tale says they were praying at the request of locals after the death of quarriers who disturbed the cave spirit, Nyai Poleng.

It is said that the sad sultan ordered the local people to conduct the Bekakak sacrifice, using traditional Javanese figures, to commemorate the service and unfortunate death of Ki Wirosuto. Today, the ceremony continues every year, even though quarrying at the site stopped more than 50 years ago.

Before they are sacrificed, the figures are paraded through the nearby village, along with effigies of Nyai Poleng and her followers. Children hide behind the skirts of their mothers at the scary visages of the spirit (bekakak is Javanese for a frightful sight).

After cutting the figures, pieces of the cake of rice and syrup are distributed to the people, who believe it will bring them blessings.

Preserve

Following the ceremony, the limestone preserve in Ambarketawang, five kilometers from Yogyakarta, was quiet once again.

It covers only 370 square meters and few tourists travel to the area, which is not listed in any guidebook. It has no beautiful panoramas and is merely a great slab of rock fringed by banyan trees.

"The limestone is protected for scientific purposes," said Djoko Wintolo, head of the Department of Geological Engineering at Gadjah Mada University.

Djoko Wintolo said that Ambarketawang, with its high calcium content, is among the four most important limestone areas in Java.

The remaining slab of limestone is all that is left of the days when the area was a center for limestone excavation, with eight hectares of the mineral deposits.

"My father used to say that from the top of the limestone hill he could see the banyan trees in the north square in Yogyakarta," said Frans Haryono, vice chief of Ambarketawang village.

The limestone was used to make cement and for the processing of sugar at local mills.

"After exploiting the limestone, people around Ambarketawang were quite well off," recalled Caroko Pawoko Hardjono, 77, who was the first village chief in Ambarketawang after Indonesia declared its independence from the Dutch in 1945.

At the time, limestone trade was controlled by a Yogyakarta palace official called a penewu gamping, who also profited during its heyday. Caroko remembered that the penewu gamping was able to receive 1000 guilders as a bonus, a handsome sum in the late 1940s.

"At that time, one guilder could buy 20 kgs of rice. So the bonus was equivalent to having 20 tons of rice," he said in awe.

Caroko said that, when he was a teenager, 60 percent of the limestone remained, but it was quickly depleted, both by locals and the Dutch colonial government.

"The Dutch took the most limestone," Caroko said. "While our people used hoes to quarry, they used dynamite."

The limestone exploitation stopped in 1950, Caroko said, because of a request from the Yogyakarta local government and geological office in Bandung. All that was left was the 15-meter- high slab of limestone.