'Munggahan' tradition ushers in Ramadhan

Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Bandung

Fifty-year-old Sumiyati, of Sindanglaya, Ujungberung here, went to the market two days in a row ahead of the fasting month of Ramadhan. She purchased chicken, beef, rice and vegetables, as well as bananas.

Skyrocketing food prices have followed the Oct. 1 fuel price increases. But Sumiyati had her mind set on following tradition.

"No matter how high the prices are, it wouldn't be right to usher in Ramadhan without something special. We'll cook food to share among our parents, siblings and also neighbors," said the mother of five who was born and grew up in the eastern part of Bandung.

Cooking dishes and sending them to parents and relatives before Ramadhan is a tradition called munggahan, and is still adhered to by some Sundanese people.

Sumiyati carries out the munggahan by cooking plenty of food from dawn, a day prior to fasting begins. The menu consists of standard dishes: gepuk (beef cooked in dark gravy), stir-fried stringbeans, fried rice noodles, prawn crackers and bananas.

She sends some of the food to her parents and parents-in-law, as well as her siblings. Some of the food will be eaten together with neighbors on the front porch of the house, called botram (eating outside the house). The leftover food will be eaten during sahur (pre-dawn meal) before fasting.

Munggahan is practiced for various reasons: to greet the month of Ramadhan, to strengthen friendship, and to provide an opportunity to ask for forgiveness before commencing with the fasting month.

The peak of the ritual is a lunch the day before fasting starts, because Muslims cannot eat during the day until the next month.

In Sukabumi regency, a similar tradition also takes place. On the southern coast of West Java, the tradition is called papajar, or eating together outdoors (usually at tourist destinations like the Pelabuhanratu beach).

The mandi bersih ritual, part of the munggahan, and performed a day before the Ramadhan month arrives, is aimed at purifying oneself before embarking on religious duties.

Another ritual is visiting relatives' graves the week before Ramadhan. Graveyards will be full of visitors cleaning the graves of relatives, scattering flowers and reciting prayers for the peaceful souls of the deceased.

Dr. Nina Herlina Lubis, a Sundanese historian from Padjadjaran University, said that the munggahan tradition had existed since the spread of Islam in West Java around the 19th century. She said the Sundanese word munggah meant "getting up from a lower place to a higher one."

"The deeper meaning of the word is that Muslims will enter the holy month of Ramadhan, ranked highest among other months in the Islamic calendar. As is stated in the Koran, God will multiply the rewards for every good deed during the fasting month," she said.

When Nina was still in elementary school in Cibuntu, Bandung, around the 1960s, the tradition was still actively practiced. She had to cleanse herself a day before fasting and she followed her mother around bringing food to relatives, and later visited the graves of predecessors to recite prayers and clean the graves.

However, she said that the tradition had faded, as most people now regarded it as impractical and costly.