The Batu Tulis, lit. “the inscribed stone”, near Bogor, commemorates the feats of a certain prince, Parabu Raja Purana, otherwise Ratu Dewata, and calls him the founder of Pakuan, ruler, maharajah ratu aji, of Pakuan Pajajaran. That kingdom is the centre of everything tradition has transmitted regarding the Hindus in West Java. Its origin, according to native belief, goes back to a settlement of princely adventurers from Tumapel in East Java, and when Mojopahit flourished after the fall of that mighty empire, it rose to equal eminence at the other end of the island, only to be destroyed by the same agency, the growing power of Islam. The subjection of the mountain tribes of the Priangan by the settlers from the East proceeded in the beginning but slowly and the children of the land, even after they had yielded to the inevitable, must have retained a share in the management of their affairs, for Soondanese pantoons[14] mention separately, as two factors of government, the ratu, king of Pakuan, and the menak, nobility of Pajajaran. However this may be, from about 1100 until the beginning of the sixteenth century, Pajajaran was a political unity that counted. She could send an army of a hundred thousand warriors into the field. Her kings disposed at will of large territories, gained by conquest; one of them conferred upon his brother Kalayalang the dominion of Jayakarta, in later years better known under the name of Yacatra, and on his brother Barudin the dominion of Bantam, principalities destined to play an important part in the overthrow of the sovereign state. Nothing, save the meagre accounts of the babads and the scanty remains to be referred to at the end of this chapter, reminds now of Pajajaran, except the Badooy in South Bantam, who constitute a community apart, entirely isolated from the rest of the population and whose peculiar customs and religious observances so far as known, make it probable that they are the descendants of fugitives before the Muhammadan inroad.

When Noor ad-Din Ibrahim bin Maulana IsraÏl had established in Cheribon not only his religion but also his political power, he began, under the name and title of Sunan Gunoong Jati, to propagate the faith by force of arms in the whole of West Java. First he cast his eyes on Bantam, then a mighty realm, the possession or at least the control of which, leaving spiritual motives alone, would materially benefit Moslim trade by securing a free passage through the Straits of Soonda whenever trouble with the Portuguese made the Straits of Malacca unsafe. The SivaÏte Prince of Bantam, trying to preserve his independence by fostering the commercial rivalry between his Muhammadan and Christian friends, received the latter with open arms and besought their assistance against Cheribon and Demak, but Maulana Hasan ad-Din, a son of Sunan Gunoong Jati, defeated him none the less and introduced the Islam among his people both in Bantam proper and in the Lampongs. Another son of Sunan Gunoong Jati founded the Muhammadan principality of Soonda Kalapa, notwithstanding the fortifications erected there by the Portuguese, at the instance of their Bantamese ally, to stem the tide of Muhammadan conquest. After subjugating the vassal state, Maulana Hasan ad-Din attacked, about 1526, the troops of Pajajaran under the King’s son Sili Wangi, and routed them, taking the capital and proselytising by the sword wherever he went, following the example set by Raden Patah of Demak in East Java. It is probable that Bantam, once islamised and consequently turning against the Portuguese, took the side of Cheribon in these wars. At any rate, we find Bantam and Cheribon together acknowledging the suzerainty of Demak, like the more eastern principalities of the north coast, and when that central Muhammadan state of Java lost the hegemony in consequence of its breaking up after the death of Pangeran Tranggana, and at last the Sooltan of Pajang,[15] into which it dissolved, had to humble himself with his allies, the Adipati of Surabaya and the Sunan of Giri, before the Senapati of Mataram, his former regent in that territory, this valiant and clever potentate claimed the lordship over the island. These were the beginnings of a glorious new Mataram, perhaps identical with Mendang Kamulan.

Cheribon, which had conquered Bantam and Pajajaran, lost gradually her strength, became tributary to Mataram in 1625 and wholly dependent in 1632. She declined still more after the death of Panambahan Girilaya, who divided his succession between his sons Pangeran Martawijaya (later Sooltan Sepooh) and Pangeran Kartawijaya (later Sooltan Anom), on condition of their providing for a third son, Pangeran Wangsakarta of Godong (later Panambahan). Embroiled in the rebellion of Trunajaya against the authority of Mataram and captured, Martawijaya and Kartawijaya were kept as hostages at its capital, Karta. Released through the intervention of Sooltan Tirtayasa of Bantam, more commonly known as Abu’l-Fatah, they returned home only to get again mixed up in hostilities against Mataram and the Dutch East India Company, which overran Cheribon with its soldiers and improved the opportunity by regulating the affairs of Girilaya’s three sons to its own best advantage. The foundation of Batavia on the site of old Yacatra, taken by Jan Pietersz Coen, May 30, 1619, had meant, among other things, an always keener competition in trade with Bantam or, rather, the “establishment of a free rendezvous”, i.e. free of bickerings with native princes and princelings, for the fleets of the Company on their long voyage to the Moluccos. Bantam having outstripped Cheribon by the importance she derived from English and Dutch shipping, resented the blow which threatened to relegate her to a second or third place, and this resulted in frequent conflicts with the intruders, though the boundary line of their settlement and their mutual relationship had been carefully defined in the treaty of 1659. On the other side in occasional difficulties with Mataram, the Company, acting on the divide et impera principle, encouraged the rivalry between the middle and western empires, which both strove for supremacy in the Priangan. How the Company accomplished its purpose and triumphed, needs here no detailed examination. Its objects and the considerations which moved it, are wittily discussed in a Javanese mock-epic, the Serat Baron Sakendher, a satire on the rise of Dutch power at Batavia, the foundation of Moor Yang Koong (Jan Pietersz Coen). If that pattern of regents outre mer, the first Dutch Governor-General in Java, whose motto was “never despair”, whose grip like the grip of the tiger, has invited comparison with Ganesa (firstborn of Siva and Parvati) for wisdom and cautious statecraft, with Skanda (also sprung from the Mahadeva’s loins but without the Devi’s collaboration) for resolution and mettle, here we find him as the son of Baron Sookmool, Baron Sakendher’s brother, and Tanaruga,[16] daughter of the Pajajaranese Princess Retna Sakar Mandhapa, and the poet makes the personification of the Company say to his twelve hopefuls, the earliest Tuan Tuan Edeleer, or honourable members of the Governor-General’s Council: Good measures you will enforce, without quarrelling amongst yourselves, and, even if it were larceny, the moment you have decided upon it by common consent, I give my permission,—a speech delightfully in keeping with the tactics of his father, whose artillery prevailed, not with iron cannon-balls, but with golden grapeshot of ducats and doubloons.

The ruins of the Fort Speelwijck and the minaret of Pangeran Muhammad’s mesdjid at Old Bantam are very illustrative of the insinuating way in which the pioneers of the Company planted their factories; once admitted on the strength of their promises, they gained a firm footing by military superiority, driving hard bargains and ousting the Islam from what it had come to regard as its own. Near by is the neglected, overgrown Dutch cemetery, where many of those pioneers were laid to rest, far from home, family and friends, killed in the Company’s battles or by strenuous obedience to exacting orders, bartering their health in a murderous climate for a handful of silver, wasting body and soul to swell the Company’s dividends. A tangle of weeds and briars closes over their remains; thick moss, covering their broken gravestones, effaces their forgotten names; even the mausoleums dedicated to the memory of the leaders among them, commanders and commercial agents-in-chief, are crumbling away, harbouring hungry guests which leave safe lairs in the forests, when deer and wild pigs become scarce, to raid at night the village sheepfolds, while snakes may dart forth from the cracks and fissures at any moment and mosquitoes swarm round in myriads, the worst plague of all to him who seeks communion with the dead in that jungle. The burial-ground of the Sooltans of Bantam, gathered round Hasan ad-Din, the first preacher of the true faith in this region, is in better condition. Though Shafei, to whose madsheb or school the Moslemin of the Dutch East Indies belong, disapproved of elaborate tombs and prescribed that sepulchral cavities, after the deposition of the bodies, should be filled up and made level with the ground, memorial tokens to mark the graves of Muhammadan saints, famous princes and heroes, often venerated as kramats, are a familiar sight in Java; they consist generally of pieces of wood or stone, tengger, standing upright at both ends, at the head and at the feet, differently shaped for men and for women. Many such are found where Pangeran Muhammad raised his mesdjid with the minaret detached like the campanile of some mediaeval Italian church. Tombs all round, tombs of Sooltans, their brothers and sons and cousins, their great councillors and generals, a Bantamese Aliscamps with Hasan ad-Din occupying the place of honour under a canopy, prayer-mats and prayer-books lying around, a benign breeze stirring the muslin hangings and filling the air with the fragrance of the kambojas.[17] Whoever wants to know of the excellent deeds of the Sooltans of Bantam, their acts of devotion in peace and their prowess in war, can receive information from Pangeran Muhammad Ali in kampong Kanari, one of their descendants, keeper of the archives of the mesdjid and the surrounding garden of the departed. He will tell furthermore of the well near the north wall of the new building, which is fed from the well Zemzem at Mecca and, thanks to the child IshmaÏl, beneath whose feet its water bubbled forth, possesses the property of curing disease. It is also connected with the miraculous source at Luar Batang, whose water possesses the property of detecting perverters of the truth: the man who tries there to slake his thirst with a falsehood on his conscience, from a downright lie to a terminological inexactitude, or even a little fib for the sake of domestic tranquillity, will not be able to swallow a drop, his throat refusing liquid comfort until expiation of guilt; and so the devotees who flock to the shrine of the saint of Hadramaut at Pasar Ikan, Batavia, leave that source prudently alone—one may have sinned unwittingly or under strong provocation. Such holy places are thickly strewn and the last habitation of Hasan ad-Din is one of the holiest, being overshadowed by the venerable minaret of Pangeran Muhammad’s mesdjid, which signified to Bantam what the mesdjid of Ngampel did to the eastern and the mesdjid of Demak to the middle states of Moslim Java. The intact preservation of the latter as the oldest existing edifice erected[18] for Muhammadan worship in the island, is of high importance superstitionis causa, and exceeding care was taken in 1845, when the danger of its tumbling down became imminent, to rebuild it not all at once, but one part after the other, round the four principal supports of the original structure, and to restore the beautifully carved lintels and posts exactly to their accustomed position. Nothing is left at Demak of Raden Patah’s princely dwelling, but the graves are shown of Panambahan Jimboon, Pangeran Sabrang Lor and Pangeran Tranggana, who was killed by one of his servants on an expedition to still SivaÏtic Pasuruan.

Pangeran Tranggana had auxiliaries from Bantam among his troops and this leads us back to West Java after our slight digression in favour of Demak, the energetic central state which, at the time here spoken of, ruled the roast in matters of conquest for the propagation of the faith. The Bantamese, more than their converters, have conserved a reputation for fanaticism and it is not yet a quarter of a century since a certain Abool Karim of the district Tanara preached the holy war, the brotherhood of the Naqshibendyah fanning the flame of sedition he kindled. His murids (disciples) Tubagoos IsmaÏl, Marduki and Wasid having spread the movement, a mob, led by a certain Haji Iskak, massacred several Europeans at Chilegon (1888). But for the Government’s bayonets, rather than a course of conciliation based on a thorough knowledge of the agrarian causes at the bottom of the unrest among the population, the whole of Bantam might have blazed up and Cheribon might have followed. Seeing that they could not prevail, the dissatisfied betook themselves again to prayer, there at the grave of Hasan ad-Din, here at the grave of Sheik Noor ad-Din Ibrahim, situated not far from the capital he founded, on a hill near the sea, the Gunoong Jati, whence his title. The terraces of the astana so called, first home of the Islam in this region, much venerated however much defaced, savour of more ancient heathen monuments in all their odour of Muhammadan sacredness, not otherwise than the Kitab Papakam, the Cheribon code of laws, savours of Indian maxims and even at this date betrays its birth from the legislation introduced by the Hindu immigrants, though in 1768 (and not before that year, more than three centuries after the introduction of the law of the Prophet!), the Kutara Manawa has officially been abrogated in the Sooltanate. The lowest three terraces of the astana serve as a burial-ground for the descendants of Sunan Gunoong Jati and the men of mark in the annals of his empire; a road, winding upward, a Moslim Via delle Tombe, conducts the pilgrim to a mesdjid on the fourth, not to be desecrated by the feet of unbelievers;[19] above the mesdjid, on the fifth, the sanctum sanctorum, rest the mortal remains of the saint himself. Speaking of Cheribon in its relations to HinduÏsm and the Islam, a reference to Chinese influences on Javanese architecture cannot be omitted. They are most evident, of course, where the sons of the Flowery Empire have settled earliest and in greatest numbers. In several localities Chinese temples are found for the building and decorating of which renowned architects, wood-carvers and painters have expressly been summoned to Java at great expense. Reputedly the finest is the klenteng, situated at a stone’s throw from the shed wherein Sunan Gunoong Jati’s grobak is kept, the vehicle in which he descended from heaven to proclaim the Word. Transplanting their curved roof-trees and gaudy ornament, the Chinese brought also a taste for grotto-work, once notably conspicuous in the kraton of Sooltan Anom. On the road to Tagal, near the dessa (village) Sunyaragi, lies a rocky labyrinth belonging to the pleasure-grounds of Sooltan Sepooh’s famous country-seat. Among other clever devices it contains an artificial cave so constructed that the kanjeng goosti, retiring thither on a hot afternoon for dalliance with his favourite of the hour, might shut himself completely off from the world by a discreet artificial waterfall, securing privacy behind its liquid screen and a refreshing atmosphere stimulative to amorous exercise. The Chinaman who elaborated the idea, had his eyes gouged out to prevent his creating another such wonder of architecture adapted to the diversions of oriental potentates.

It seems fitting that in Java, the sweet island whose air is balm and where always the delicious sound of running water is heard, where the cult of bathing is perfected by inclination as well as necessity of climate, some of the oldest signs of civilisation are found in sheltered nooks and corners still frequented by those who appreciate an invigorating plunge. Kota Batu, near Bogor, the supposed site of the capital of Pajajaran, is an instance in point. Destroyed, says the Soondanese tradition, because the illustrious King Noro Pati had lifted up his heart to boast against the message of the Prophet, his sons completed the calamity by their wrangling for the lordship over outlying, as yet unsubjugated and unconverted dependencies, and righteousness left the country. The same reasons which made Pajajaran slow to accept the Islam, had hindered her acceptance of HinduÏsm. The mountainous Priangan was sparsely populated and, even if we accept the statements of native historians who give Hindu civilisation in West Java a long life by dating the colonisation from India back to the first century of the Christian era,[20] confined to a limited area, as the antiquities discovered make clear, it remained far behind that which reared the superb temples of Central Java. To the best of our knowledge there were never any Hindu temples at all in West Java, where the people seem to have contented themselves with prayer and sacrifice in the open. While Central Java attained to the loftiest and noblest in art, West Java vegetated until improved communication, stimulated by war and trade, brought about a dissemination of more eastern artistic notions, discernible in raised levels and terraces as those of Gunoong Jati, which remind one faintly of the Boro Budoor; in earthen walls as those on the Bukit Tronggool, which are arranged after a plan somewhat like that of the squares enclosing the principal temple and the surrounding smaller ones of the chandi Sewu. Even then Polynesian clumsiness was not shaken off. At Batu Tulis, a kampong in the outskirts of Bogor, where the hosts of two religions fought the battle which decided the fate of Pajajaran, are several ungainly images and impressions of the feet of Poorwakali, the spouse of one of that realm’s petrified kings, who mourned him with such copious tears that she softened the very rock she stood upon, according to one legend; and, according to another legend, of the feet of a certain Raja Mantri who tarried so long in contemplation of the inscribed stone already mentioned, pondering over the meaning of its strange characters, that he sank gradually into the hard ground. There are more impressions of more feet and a coarsely carved linga, Siva’s fecundating attribute, transformed by Muhammadan piety into the miracle working staff of a Moslim santon. Hardly greater interest is awakened by the primitive statues Kota Batu derives its appellation from, “city of stones”, which form a sort of Ruhmes Allee, lining the path from the main road to the bath-house, with many of the same pattern scattered to right and left. All of them are petrified worthies of Pajajaran, which their own mothers would not recognise, though the natives know each of them by praenomen, nomen, cognomen and title. King Moonding Wangi, i.e. the nice-smelling buffalo, looking perhaps a trifle more human than the rest. Of a similar nature are the archadomas, a collection of about eight hundred blocks of stone on the estate Pondok Gedeh, which need a vivid imagination in the beholder to pass for the figures of men and animals. A good specimen of the Pajajaran type of sculpture, if it deserves that name, is the lachrymose Poorwakali already referred to as standing, petrified herself, at a little distance from the Batu Tulis where she solaces her widowhood by keeping company with Kidangpenanjong, forgetting her royal husband, after her paroxysm of grief, in a plebeian flirtation. Such is woman!

From these crude attempts at a representation of animate creation, sprang nevertheless an art which, in the hands of the master-builders and sculptors of Central Java, who sought the beauty of truth that is verily without a rival, flowered out in prayers of stone, visible tokens of their yearning for heavenly reward, born of communion with the divine in deep reflection, only to descend again to lower planes, to the seeking of the praise of man, in the decadent conventionality of the later eastern Hindu empires. The story of the development of architecture and sculpture in the island from the immaturity identified with Pajajaran to the luxurious grandeur of the temples of Prambanan, the Mendoot and the Boro Budoor, hides a riddle no less strange than that of the bursting forth of Arabic poetry, full-blown in all its subtleness of thought, exuberance of imagination, perfection of language. The story of decline is written in the evolution of decorative design: the significance of motives based on the observation of the earth and her precious gifts, evaporates gradually in nicely waving lines, elaborate scrolls, insipid fineries. The kala-head changes into the roots of a tree, figurative of the forest; the trunk of Ganapati into its bole; at last the tree, roots, trunk, branches, foliage and all, with the sun rising over the forest, with mountains touching the sky, with rivers flowing to the sea, into conventional ornament. Islamic ideals were not conducive to a revival of artistic conceptions fading into nothingness; neither was, to repeat that too, the painful contact with Christian civilisation. When the natives were made to toil and moil for alien masters, their virtues and energies blighted into the defects and failings of apathy. How could it be otherwise where an inefficient, venal police and a slow, defective administration of justice did (and does) not protect property against depredation; where exertion beyond what is strictly necessary for bare subsistence, meant (and means) not prosperity but increased taxation. With all its pretensions to superiority and display of ethical sentiment, the Dutch Government can scarcely be said to differ much from Baron Sookmool, the personified East India Company of more than three centuries ago. Holland’s wards in her rich colonies may be moulded into men, angels or devils, like the Triloka, the triple people of the Hindus, according to the treatment meted out to them and the education they receive. As far as Java is concerned, hoping in heaven’s mercy, they live in their old traditions, the light of the past and the shadow of the present. What will the future bring in advance of the day on which mankind shall be scattered abroad like moths? There is no knowledge of it but with God and the secret lies behind the Banaspati,[21] in the hand of him of the budding lotus-flower, the Deliverer from Evil.