Indian poet impressed by Javanese dance
By Jai Singh Yadav
JAKARTA (JP): Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the great Indian poet and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1913, was the first intellectual freedom fighter from India to visit the islands of Indonesia. Tagore, the composer of India's national anthem, is the most fascinating personality in India- Indonesia cultural relations because it was his visit to Indonesia in 1927 which revived the age-old relationship between the two nations.
Tagore's visit to the islands of Sumatra, Java and Bali, which included visits to the palaces of Yogyakarta and Mangkunegaran, the Borobudur temple and the temples of Bali, carried a deep impression, particularly when he was received by Sultan Hamengku Buwana VIII and presented with some royal Javanese dances.
"...The dance was performed by four girls from the Sultan's own family, two of them his daughters. This was the best of all dances I have yet seen here. It is impossible to describe in words the impression I received. I have never beheld such perfect creations of charming forms. One aspect of these dances is the natural elegance of outward form; the other of technical significance of different attitudes and movements."
This was his expression --later published in The Viswa-Bharati Quarterly, October 1928 -- of his admiration for the Javanese dance which was so famous, fine, complex and advanced.
So advanced that Tagore wrote: "...only those who know this language can allow satisfaction to be derived from the graceful combination of attitude and idea."
Having enjoyed the dances in the sultan's company, Tagore also visited the dance training center in Ngayogjakarta Hadiningrat Palace. Perhaps he was tempted by the mysteries of the dancers language.
Rabindranath Tagore was also invited to attend the ceremony of the 24th anniversary of the 7th Mangkunegara's coronation. According to Hilmiyah Darmawan, a grandchild of the 7th Mangkunegara, -- in an exclusive interview with me -- Tagore made some notes on his impression of the ceremony. These were later published in Dutch in 1939/1940. In Surakarta, he was warmly welcomed and a street was named after him.
His impressions and feelings on the relationship between Indian and Javanese cultures which he gained during his visit were described in his poem To Java. The journey had profoundly influenced him.
The poem, originally written in Bengali, reads:
When we tied golden threads of kinship
Round each other's wrist
That ancient token, grown pale,
has not yet slipped off thy right arm,
And our wayfaring path of old
lies strewn with the remnants of my speech
They help me to retrace my way to the inner chamber of thy
life
where still the light is burning that we kindled together
on the forgotten evening of our union.
Remember me, even as I remember thy face,
and recognize me as thine own,
The old that has been lost, to be regained and made new
After returning from Java, he urged one of his pupils in Santiniketan, H.B. Sarkar, to study and research the relationship between Indian and Southeast Asian cultures, especially Javanese (Indonesian) culture.
This suggestion encouraged people to write valuable books on cultural links between Indonesia and India. The books were the results of the research of Indian scholars, especially the students of Tagore in Santiniketan. It is a pity that this positive creativity only lasted for H.B. Sarkar's generation. It stopped partly because of the political conditions of both countries during their struggle for freedom.
Santiniketan, which means Abode of Peace, later became the Viswa Bharati University; an ideal and idyllic place for learning, away from the hustle of noisy cities, where education meant more than books and crass technology.
At Santiniketan, Tagore directed that there should be a great educational movement to teach the highest expressions of human spirit, especially the practice and recognition of universal brotherhood. The center really supported a humanist and universalist movement.
It was these movements which impressed the great Indonesian educationalist, Ki Hadjar Dewantara, who founded an educational experiment using Tagore's systems. He established the Taman Siswa movement and its institutions throughout Indonesia.
Recently, the 17th congress of Taman Siswa was held in Yogyakarta from July 15 to July 21. It was opened by Minister of Education and Culture Wardiman Djojonegoro. It is worth saying that the new generation of Indonesians and Indians should ponder over Tagore's word: "Remember me, even as I remember you", and to emphasize the words, "The old that has been lost, to be regained and made new".
I must say without a doubt that Rabindranath Tagore showed all the signs of an historical literary genius.
The writer is a visiting associate professor at the School of Letters, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta.