Kutai sacred ceremony shows how to serve

Pandaya, The Jakarta Post, Tenggarong, East Kalimantan

The clock struck 8 p.m. The last guests briskly filed into the Old Palace verandah, where about 100 people were seated on carpets.

In the eastern section of the long verandah was a gamelan orchestra. Three rows of palace relatives in colorful traditional court dress were seated nearby. In the western section were aristocrats solemnly seated among the younger members of the royal family.

In the center was a beautifully decorated chamber with two empty thrones facing a mat on which an array of offerings were laid. In the middle of everything stood Tiang Ayu, a tall wooden stick with a yellow ribbon and a cord tied around its neck.

About a dozen Dayak tribeswomen in yellow (the court's official color) traditional dress and bare-chested men in tribal attire were seated around mat. The women were dancers and one of the men was a mantra-chanting shaman.

The gamelan orchestra began playing, filling the spacious room with an ancient melody that transported the audience back to the 13th century. That was when the Kutai Kartanegara Hindu kingdom sent a delegation to learn gamelan from the Majapahit kingdom in Java, according to folklore.

So began the Pelas, a sacred ritual held as part of Erau, a cultural festival as old as the Kutai Kartanegara sultanate. Originally, Erau was held to coronate a king but over the course of time it has been transformed into a folk festival.

The Dayak dancers, all relatives, perform the Gambuh -- a sacred court dance performed only at special ceremonies. The dance basically consists of scenes that symbolize the cleansing the palace of evil spirits, inviting in the spirit of Sri Gambuh Pengeran Ganjur for spiritual protection and entertaining the sultan.

One of the more dynamic movements, which symbolizes the cleansing of the palace of evil spirit, is performed by a woman who dances in circles around the mat, occasionally shooting a burning arrow into the air.

Then a pengeran, the most senior official in the court's administrative hierarchy, appears and dances with the female dancers. This is done to attract the spirit of Sri Gambuh Pengeran Ganjur.

The ritual culminates with Sultan Aji Muhammad Salehuddin II, 77, reaffirming in the name of God his vow to shepherd his subjects to prosperity.

He then stands up, steps onto the mat, holds the ribbon and the cord tied around the Tiang Ayu in both his hands and steps on a gong. At the same moment the bang of a gun in the palace yard shatters the silence, indicating the sultan's pledge has been accepted by God and the masses.

Then the sultan slowly turns his back and returns to his seat under the throne, holding loosely in his right hand the yellow ribbon and in his left the cord. As he sits, the shaman begins to chant and the sultan stands up and repeats the ritual two more times.

The frail sultan and his wife prefer to sit on the carpet with other palace members rather than on the thrones, as a symbol of their commitment to building a more egalitarian society.

Tiang Ayu, in the Kutai cosmology, links God and mankind, with the sultan, who is committed to serving both, acting as the mediator.

"When Tiang Ayu is erected to mark the start of Erau, the sultan is being reminded that he is a servant of his subjects," said Aji Pengeran Hario Atmo Kesumo, a senior court official in charge of cultural affairs. "Then the sultan must treat the voice of the people as the voice of God."

The Ganjur dance is associated with Tiang Ayu and the court ritual, and therefore the sacred dance cannot be performed outside the palace.

"The dance is essentially to entertain the king and Sang Yang Wisnu, guardian of the universe," Atmo Kesumo said.

The two-hour ceremony ends with male and female Dayak shamans escorting the sultan back to his room.

The ritual, like many others that the court is striving to preserve, is a showcase of Kutai's highly tolerant culture, which blends elements of Hinduism, Islam and animism. Hinduism, the religion of the early Kutai kingdoms, is a minority religion now embraced by 1,200 people in Kutai Kartanegara, according to official statistics.

The majority of Kutai Kartanegara's 471,300 population is Muslim (386,985), followed by Protestant (21,821), Catholic (6,688) and Buddhist (1,947). The regency is a mixture of the indigenous (Kutai, Benuaq, Tunjung, Bahau, Modang, Kenyah, Punan and Kayan) and migrants (mostly from Java and Sulawesi).

"Even though the majority of Kutai Kartanegara's population has embraced Islam, we maintain the Hindu and animist flares in rituals as an integral part of Kutai's indigenous tradition," said Atmo Kesumo.

"We need to preserve our culture to allow the younger generation to learn history without any distortions," he told The Jakarta Post.