Tracing the history of Javanese traditional art

By Tri Budhi Sastrio

DENPASAR (JP): Culture derives from the accumulated habits of many lifetimes. Moreover, it is the way people see themselves and organize their lives according to those perceptions.

The most widely known forms of Javanese art, theater and literature manifest the issues and preoccupations considered most important during the time they were created.

These artistic manifestations can help us understand the experiences and perceptions of times past.

Java's most important cultural and political period occurred from about the 4th to the 15th centuries, known as its Hindu- Buddhist era. For the greater part of this period, Java was not the political center of the archipelago but was included in the Sumatra-based Sriwijaya empire.

Borobudur, one of the world's great religious monuments, and the Prambanan temple complex were built in Central Java during this period.

The reliefs carved on these temples were adopted from the Mahabharata and Ramayana, two great Hindu epics almost known by heart by many Javanese. Stories from these epics are often depicted in various types of wayang (traditional play) performances.

By the 13th century, the Sriwijaya empire had declined, giving rise to the Majapahit kingdom founded in East Java.

In the 14th century, with the rise of Islam and the arrival of the Europeans, Majapahit disintegrated and was replaced by the last great Javanese state, Mataram.

By the mid-18th century, Mataram had disintegrated into the Dutch vassal states of Yogyakarta and Surakarta.

Throughout the colonial period, whether under the East India Company (1618-1709) or the Dutch colonial government (1799-1945), Java was the most intensely developed and closely ruled section of the Dutch East Indies.

Despite many changes over time, there are modern day Javanese who still refer to the philosophy of the wayang in the course of their daily lives.

Origins

The origins of the wayang are still in dispute. Scholars have concluded that wayang had been developed by the 11th century.

Wayang performances, often in the form of leather puppets, have held a great fascination for many Javanese. The puppets and the shadows they cast on a lighted, transparent screen each have a role to play and many of their actions and behavior are seen to be good models.

Wayang performances are seen by many as being able to satisfy a deep emotional need, providing a stimulus to, and a medium for, mystical meditation. For many Javanese, the wayang are not just shows but represent an abstract world in which ideas become figures and imagination becomes reality.

Sukarno, Indonesia's first president, supported the idea of developing a modern, truly Indonesian culture, which would synthesize the country's regional cultures, from Javanese traditions and the urban cultures of major cities to elements of Chinese culture and ideas from the modern West.

Stories of the wayang were referred to in many of Sukarno's speeches as a way of calling upon a well-known but nevertheless profound set of images and ideas. Sukarno often cited stories from the Mahabharata and Ramayana to motivate the country's younger generations to work hard.

The president oversaw the construction of the gigantic National Monument in Jakarta. Given Sukarno's socialist ideas and his tendency to use Hindu-Javanese wayang symbols, the monument has been strangely dubbed as one of his "socialist-realist" works and is believed to manifest several wayang symbols.

The historian Supomo, author of the 1979 work The Idea of Majapahit in Later Javanese and Indonesian Writing, stated that Sukarno and many Indonesian nationalists drew on the idea of the great historical empires of Sriwijaya and Majapahit, combined with the famed wayang stories, to provide the early ideas of the modern Indonesian state.

For Sukarno, details such as location were irrelevant compared with the broad plan of creating an Indonesian national culture with pan-Indonesian cultural underpinnings.

In carrying out this plan, all aspects of Indonesian culture, including the wayang stories, were considered compatible with each other.

Romantics

Literally, wayang means shadow. This term indicates all the dramatic plays common in Java and in Bali. In its earliest forms, the puppets were made of parchment and were multicolored. The shadows in such puppet performances are projected upon a large transparent canvas.

Myths pertaining to the Mahabharata, Ramayana, and some old Javanese kakawin (poems) are the most frequent sources for wayang stories, for they deal with issues ranging from political intrigue and spiritual and moral striving to love.

The characters and basic elements in wayang performances can be divided into six categories.

They are (1) the celestial beings, whose higher morality cannot be understood; (2) the high castes, the brahmana, satria, and wesia; (3) the sudra servants; (4) the ogres or the giants, who represent the 'wild', and are greedy, coarse and impure; (5) scenic figures, the most important being the Tree of Life or Cosmic Tree; and (6) others, including animals, weapons and chariots.

Of the high castes, the satria are by far the largest group. In the Mahabharata, the Pandawa and the Kurawa clans and their respective followers are the warriors and administrators. Members of the Pandawa are shown as relatively virtuous and refined, while the Kurawa are coarse and rough.

A wayang performance itself is actually seen as a mystical event in which the invisible becomes visible, and something that cannot be adequately expressed in words becomes comprehensible.

Despite the changes that took place in religion and culture during the past several centuries, the wayang were maintained as a unique medium for conveying the eternal, a medium through which the interplay between man and the metaphysical world could be expressed.

All of these facts were expressed most impressively by the Javanese poet Noto Suroto (1920) in his famous poem Wayang, translated in 1959 from the Dutch version by Frits A. Wagner in his book Arts of the World:

O Lord, let me be a wayang in Thy hands.

Whether I be hero or demon, king or commoner, animal, plant or tree, let me be a wayang in Thy hands.

Then shall I speak your tongue, whether I be valiant in the turmoil of battle or small as a child at play amongst the waringins (banyan tree).

This life of mine on earth is filled with toil and strife, and my enemies, who are many, mock me.

Their ridicule flies to its target swifter than plumed arrows; their words strike deeper than krises.

My struggle is not yet at an end.

And soon Thou wilst take me, and I shall lie amongst the thousands in darkness.

And my struggle is not yet at an end; still my enemies dance.

Lord, let me be a wayang in Thy hands.

Then after a hundred or a thousand years,

Thy hand will bestow upon my life movement once more.

Then, one day when my time has come for Thy eternity,

Thou wilst call me to Thee again and I shall speak and contend anew.

And one day my enemies will be silenced, and the demon will lie prostrate on the ground.

O Lord, let me be a wayang in Thy hands.

The writer teaches in the department of letters at Dr. Sutomo University and is studying at Denpasar's Udayana University.