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KRATON RATU BOKO A JAVANESE SITE OF ENIGMATIC BEAUTY 2 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Published Under the Auspices of THE GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA Many institutions and people were involved in the making of this book. First of all we would like to express our appreciation to: MINISTRY OF STATE OWNED ENTERPRISES (BUMN), REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA THE GOVERNOR OF SPECIAL REGION OF YOGYAKARTA SRI SULTAN HAMENGKUBOWONO X DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF CULTURE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND CULTURE, REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA Our very special gratitude goes to the following institutions and associated individuals for their permission to use reproductions of paintings, drawings, archives and artefacts from their collections and to photographs the monuments: Dwijanti Tjahjaningsih Deputy Energy Business Logistics and Transportation Ministry of State Owned Enterprises (BUMN), Republic of Indonesia Mr. Kacung Marijan Director-General for Culture, Ministry of Education and Culture, Republic of Indonesia Mr. Harry Widianto, Director of Cultural Heritage Preservation and Museums, Directorate General of Culture, Ministry of Education and Culture, Republic of Indonesia Mr. Tri Hartono, Head of Cultural Heritage Preservation Centre - BPCB, Yogyakarta Mr. Ign. Eka Hadiyanta, Kelompok kerja registrasi penetapan dan informasi, Cultural Heritage Preservation Centre - BPCB, Yogyakarta Mr. Roger Tol of Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, (KITLV) - Jakarta Leiden University Library, KITLV Digital Image Library Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information in this book at the time of going to press. The Publisher cannot be held responsible for any inaccuracies or omissions. Readers are advised to call the various institutions, if appropriate, to verify details. A great many other skilled and able people were involved in the making of this book, too many to be listed here, but their contributions are highly valued, nonetheless. To all above, as well as to those who are not mentioned, the publisher would like to take this opportunity to express sincere gratitude. 4 5 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CAVES HISTORY AND REDISCOVERY THE NORTHEASTERN QUARRY AND HERMITAGE. 10 96 GAPURA RATU BOKO THE GREAT WESTERN GATEWAY AND COURTYARD AND NEIGHBORING TEMPLES 52 108 PENDOPO APPENDICES THE SOUTHERN MONASTERY AND POOLS BIBLIOGRAPHY 70 INDEX 142 8 9 INTRODUCTION HISTORY AND REDISCOVERY 10 11 THE LEGEND OF THE KING WHO VANISHED The Opak River flows down from Mt. Merapi to the Indian Ocean. In the middle of its course it runs through a valley which it has carved into the loose volcanic ash which the mountain has been erupting for a million years. The Unesco World Heritage site of Prambanan with the temple complexes of Loro Jonggrang, Sewu, and Plaosan lies beside the river’s eastern bank. One kilometer south of the village of Prambanan rises a steep cliff over 100 meters high. This is the northern edge of a plateau named after the Hindu god Śiva; this plateau is the tip of a range of limestone hills which stretches to the south coast, and far to the east. The northwest tip of this plateau has a separate name: Ratu Boko Plateau. Page 10-11: Views from the plateau, north toward Prambanan, Mount Merapi; west toward Borobudur, Yogyakarta, Opak River. Opposite: View of the Gunung Kidul (Southern Mountains) and the hill on which Ratu Boko's Palace stands, with Candi Prambanan in the foreground. Although the largest and most impressive temples lie a kilometer north of the plateau, a large number of other temples once stood on the plateau itself, as well as in the lowland between the plateau and the Opak River; this is called the Sorogedug Plain. Many of these monuments, such as Candi (the Javanese word for pre-Islamic site; the letter c in Indonesia is pronounced like the ch in English "catch") Ngaglik, Candi Geblak, Bubrah (another temple with the same name still stands between Prambanan and Sewu), Singa, Tinjong, Polengan, Sawuk, and Krapyak, have disappeared during the last 100 years. Remains of other still can be found. Remains of temples which can be seen in the plain today include Watugudig, Banyunibo, Payak, and Abang. More survive on the Śiva Plateau: Dawangsari, Ijo, Gupolo, Gembirawati, and Barong are the best preserved. The most important site south of Prambanan is known as Kraton Ratu Boko. Literally translated from Javanese, this means “The Palace of the King Who Vanished”. The legend of this king and his palace is directly connected with the building of the Loro Jonggrang temple complex at Prambanan. Loro Jonggrang (“Slender Maiden”) was the name of a daughter of King Boko who lived at Prambanan. He was a fearsome ogre, very powerful, but he was defeated and killed by Raja Boko of Pengging. Raja Boko owed his victory to a supernaturally powerful man named Bondowoso, who had a powerful weapon called Bandung, so he was often called Bandung Bondowoso. The king of Pengging unwisely allowed Bandung Bondowoso to live in the palace of Prambanan; soon 12 13 to their rice pounders and start pounding rice as they normally would at dawn, to prepare food for the day. He also ordered them to put flowers in their rice mortars. The elves heard the sound of the rice pounders and immediately stopped work, thinking dawn was about to break, and they smelled the flowers, which was a sign that they were being summoned to return to the earth. They vanished, leaving one temple and a little bit of one well incomplete. Bandung Bondowoso awoke at dawn and went to count the temples. To his surprise one was incomplete. He became very angry when he found out what Loro Jonggrang had done. He then cursed all the young women around Prambanan so that they would not find husbands until they were old. As for Loro Jonggrang herself, he turned her into a stone statue in the biggest temple. According to this legend, she became the statue of Durgā in the north chamber of the Śiva temple of Prambanan, and the 999 temples were the complex of Candi Sewu (1,000 temples) just north of it (Widyamantana 1975). This mythical story of the war between two kings, one who lived in the Prambanan area and one who lived on the plateau, and a princess, may have some connection with history. The ruins on the Śiva Plateau include fragments of places of worship for both Śiva and Buddha, but there are also many remains of structures which are not religious in nature. This has led many to speculate that the area known as the Palace of the King Who Vanished may really have been a royal residence. No palace site from the Mataram kingdom which built Prambanan and Borobudur has ever been discovered. Could this be it? The great Dutch archaeologist N.J. Krom was willing to consider the Above: Ratu Boko relief in Yogya airport, which is has been demolished due to airport expansion. At left, Loro Jonggrang is rejected Bandung Bondowoso's advances. Below left, he is meditating with his teacher. At centre, the elves are gathering stones to build the 1,000 temples. At upper right, a completed temple and guardian statue are visible. At lower right, the women are pounding rice and the roosters crow; at far right, Bandung Bondowoso is turning Loro Jonggrang into a statue. 14 Bandung Bondowoso fell in love with his former enemy’s daughter, Loro Jonggrang, and demanded that he be allowed to marry her. She could not refuse, but the wise minister of Prambanan advised her to set conditions which Bandung Bondowoso could not possibly fulfill. possibility that the legend of Ratu Boko was inspired by a real palace (Krom 1923: 244). Krom noted that an inscription in the script known as Nagari used by the Śailendra family was found at the “palace” site. He also noted that the ruins were found in the same area as two Thus she asked Bandung Bondowoso to build her a thousand temples and two very deep very large quarries from which stone used for some of late temples in the lowlands was probably wells. The task had to be finished in one night. Bandung Bondowoso then called upon the king of acquired, and he doubted that a king would have shared his palace area with a stone quarry. Pengging and his father, Damarmaja. Damarmaja controlled an army of elves who had superhuman Thus the palace, if there had been one, would have dated from the early Central Javanese powers. Bandung Bondowoso began to meditate, and the elves came out of the ground and set to period (the 8th and early 9th centuries). The palace, at least in the later period, must therefore work. By midnight they had finished 500 temples. By 4 a.m. they had finished 995 temples; both have stood elsewhere. wells were almost finished. Some people doubt that a palace ever stood on the plateau, or that the legend preserves any One of Loro Jonggrang’s maids saw what was happening and ran to tell her mistress that vestige of historical reality. One major objection to the idea that a palace stood on the hill is that Bandung Bondowoso was going to achieve what she had thought was impossible. Everyone in the the limestone bedrock is very porous, and water does not stay long in the pools there. The water palace was confused and at a loss what to do. The chief minister however had an idea. He went storage system on the plateau is indeed reminiscent of the Loro Jonggrang story, but the wells are to all the nearby villages and roused the sleeping women from their mats. He ordered them to go on the plateau, not near Prambanan. A palace for a kingdom as important as Mataram would have 15 Opposite: The Loro Jonggrang statue in Prambanan. Left: Map of the area, showing sites now vanished (source: Lulius Van Goor, 1922) had many hundreds of people living in it, both officials and servants of the nobility. In the 1950s, before the site was acquired by the government of the Republic of Indonesia, only a few families of farmers lived on the hill. The main problem they faced in daily life was a lack of water. It would have been impossible for a palace to survive on the Ratu Boko site unless water were carried up the hill, and this would not have been practical, since the plateau is almost 100 meters above the level of the Opak River. As we shall see, it is likely that the palace itself lay somewhere in the area between the plateau and the river, perhaps near the site known today as Watu Gudik. On the other hand, there is another enticing possibility: that the Ratu Boko site formed part of a vast palace complex. The majority of the palace staff and activities could have lived and worked on the lowlands, while the plateau was reserved for special people and rituals. The legend may not be incorrect, just incomplete. This theory will be explored in this book. 16 17 EARLY RESEARCH ON RATU BOKO A few Dutch observers noted the existence of antiquities in the Prambanan area in the 18th century. Van Boeckholtz in 1790 made the first sketches of Ratu Boko (Krom 1923: I, 241; Teguh Asmar and Bronson 1973: 3). During the British occupation of Java between 1811 and 1816, antiquarian research received Opposite: Triple gateway at the northwest corner of the Gapura area after the first restoration (Leiden University Library, KITLV Digital Image Library, No. 168398). considerable attention from Lieutenant Governor Thomas Stamford Raffles. He was eager to collect evidence that Java had once been a centre of early civilization. At the time, few Europeans had seriously considered this possibility. The Netherlands had however sent some investigators to the Yogyakarta area to record antiquities. In 1802 a Dutch engineer who was in charge of constructing a fort at Klaten, between Yogyakarta and Surakarta, made the first drawings of the ruins at Prambanan. In 1811 Colonel Colin MacKenzie, of the Madras Engineers had surveyed the Mysore kingdom in India. In 1811 he was the engineer in charge of planning the English landing on Java to fight the troops loyal to Napoleon Bonaparte. After the battle, Raffles sent him to survey Javanese antiquities, together with Dutch engineers H.C. Cornelius and H.W.B. Wardenaar and their trained draftsmen. Mackenzie wrote a report entitled “Narrative of a journey to examine the remains of an ancient city and temples at Prambanan in Java” on his visit to Prambanan in January 1812. He saw the statue which the local guides called Loro Jonggrang and correctly identified it as Parvati or Durgā. He was aware of the legend connecting Prambanan with the King Who Vanished. He climbed the hill south of Prambanan looking for the “krattan” or palace of an ancient raja. He found the ancient staircase which leads to the plateau from Prambanan (which is still in use by tourists today) and the meditation caves in which, the Javanese told him, the susuhunans or “exalted ones” (the title still used by the rulers of Surakarta today, in preference to “sultan”) when “embarrassed or melancholy” would seclude themselves for eight days during which they would fast and meditate. In front of the first artificial cave, or cell, they found a statue which they called a “Jain Saniassi” 18 19 in posture of meditation, facing the cave. The British at this time understood Jainism, since it was still an active religion in India, but knew little of Buddhism, since that religions had practically died out there centuries earlier. We now can be sure that Jainism never reached Indonesia; the statue must have been that of Buddha. Mackenzie and his party also found the ruins which they thought was the Royal Krattan/palace, but they had no chance to explore it because it was covered with overgrowth, it was raining, and darkness was approaching. They still had to make their way down the steep stairs cut into the rock and return to the house of a Chinese man where they were being accommodated. John Crawfurd, another of the British administrators who lived in Java during the British interregnum, visited the Prambanan area in 1816 and wrote about his observations in the journal Asiatick Researches (1820). Bernet Kempers quoted extensively from them in an article in 1949. Crawfurd mentioned the Loro Jonggrang complex, Sewu, Asu, Lumbung, Plaosan, Gupolo, Sojiwan, the Ratu Boko plateau, Barong, as well as the temples further west such as Kalasan, and Sari. He noted that the Plaosan Kidul complex was then called “Chandi Caputren, or the Seraglio by the modern Javanese from its containing female images only” (quoted in Bernet Kempers 1949: 181). This no doubt also explains why the remains at the southeastern extremity of the Ratu Boko complex today has the same name, though no female statues are found there now. His Candi Gupala was not the one by the same name south of the Ratu Boko complex; rather it lay about 2 miles (3.2 km) east of the village of Prambanan. All that remained of it then were some scattered bricks and four statues of door guardians (two large and two small ones). By the 20th century no remains at all were left on this site. Crawfurd described a dense group of ruins at the northern foot of the Śiva Plateau. “In a westerly direction from the village of Cabon Dalam [Kebon Dalam, now called Sojiwan], and just behind that of Prambanan we discover very extensive ruins, but no temples standing. These ruins extend to the west as far as the banks of the Umpah [Opak River], a clear and rapid stream which runs in a south west course, till it empties itself into the sea nearly opposite to Yogyacarta. To the south the ruins extend nearly to the bottom of the range of hills. This ground is alledged [sic.] by the natives to have been the site of a town or city and certainly has that appearance. Here the walls of a great square enclosure are still to be traced, particularly to the north and west A B C (A) Bronze bowl unearthed found in the ruins of the complex Ratu Boko (Leiden University Library, KITLV Digital Image Library, No. 165411). (B) Gold objects found in the peripih (consecration deposit) buried at the time part of Ratu Boko was constructed (Leiden University Library, KITLV Digital Image Library, No. 166629). (C) Ancient Javanese ewer for containing sacred water (kendi) found in early excavations at Ratu Boko (Leiden University Library, KITLV Digital Image Library, No. 165559). sides. By measuring these, they are discovered to have been 900 feet [275 meters] to a side. The appearance of the square, is that of a modern Craton, and tradition relates, that it contained the King’s palace, but of this there is no vestige. Towards the eastern site of the enclosure, 20 21 The Five-Fold and Three-Fold Gateways with Mt. Merapi (right) and Mt. Sumbing (left) in the background before reconstruction of the wall. 68 69 PENDOPO: THE SOUTHERN MONASTERY AND POOLS 70 71 PENDOPO, KRATON, AND VIHĀRA: THE SOUTHERN MONASTERY AND POOLS. The centerpiece of the area known colloquially as King Boko’s Palace (Kraton Ratu Boko) is a compound surrounded by a high stone wall which lies about 150 meters southeast of the grand entrance gateways of the Gapura. To get to the southeastern sector one follows a winding path which was laid out by villagers who settled the area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The P. 70-71: Vihāra pendopo from the northwest. Opposite: Partially restored gateway and staircase leading to the vihāra from the west. two sectors were no doubt linked by a path in the eighth century, which followed a different course than the modern one. South of the modern pathway, remains of walls, gateways, and ramparts are being unearthed and restored on the west slope of the promontory on which the Kraton stands. It seems likely that the original access route to the Kraton led south from the Gapura area, then east through gateways and up staircases until one reached the western side of the hilltop. Excavations have uncovered lotus bud-shaped stone carvings in this area. The probably decorated the tops of walls in this area, giving it a different image from the walls around the Gateway sector. Upon reaching the top of the stairs, which lead up the ramparts to the southeast part of the plateau, one sees a broad flat field about 130 meters from north to south and 70 meters from east to west, in the midst of which stands an impressive stone wall with a gate in the middle. The top of the wall is decorated with stones in the shape of keben fruit, a common motif in ancient Javanese temples. This is actually one wall of a rectangular structure 34 meters from east to west and 40 meters north to south. Inside the enclosure thus formed are two stone platforms 1.25 meters high. The north platform is 20 meters square and has bases for 20 pillars for a square roof. There is also a groove running around the perimeter of the platform's upper surface which may have been meant to stabilize timber beams. The southern platform is 20 meters long but only 5 meters from north to south. On it are two rows of six pillar bases. One can obtain an idea of the condition of these ruins as they appeared 100 years ago from N.J. Krom’s description (1923: 245): The earliest writers did not see much more of the “kraton” than the foundations; now they too are largely gone. A flat paved area of about 60 feet square, surrounded by a broad moat, now dry, 72 73