A Visit to Java Part 12

"It is a disgrace to a prime minister for any hostile attack to be made in the country entrusted to his charge without his knowledge, or that he should be careless or inattentive to the same, rather thinking how to obtain the favour of his prince than to secure the safety of the country."

An amba.s.sador is directed to use all means within his power for obtaining information concerning the country to which he is sent. Then follow some directions which are specially characteristic of Eastern life.

"The letter must be carried on the shoulder, and in his gait and speech he must conduct himself with propriety. In delivering the letter he must present himself with dignity, approach first, and then retire from the person to whom the letter is directed, speak with him at a distance, and not too familiarly."

The "Surya Ngalam" is the most important of a group of legal treatises.

Its author, or rather compiler, from whom it takes its t.i.tle, was a Sultan of Demak, the first of the Mohammedan states founded in Java. It is a compendium of Mohammedan law.

The modern version of the "Surya Ngalam" commences, "There was a certain raja of the West, named Sang Probu Suria Alem, who, being duly qualified, did, in the establishment of divine justice, frame a code of judicial regulations, consisting of one thousand five hundred and seven articles, which being afterwards digested and reduced to the number of one hundred and forty-four, were by him made known and explained to all the people of the countries under his authority, thereby diffusing knowledge and righteousness where ignorance and wickedness before prevailed."

I have already mentioned the jaksa,[29] as receiving information of offences, and sitting in the courts as a.s.sessor to the European judge-president. There are some very drastic punishments provided for this official in the section of the "Surya Ngalam" which treats of his duties.

"In the first place, he must possess a sufficient knowledge of the law, to know how to act in regard to cases which may come before him.... If the jaksa be found ignorant of these matters, he shall have his tongue cut out.... In the third place, any incorrect statement in writing shall be punished by the loss of both hands."

[Footnote 29: In Chapter III.]

Among the modern Javanese works there appear a number of romances, of which the "Johar Manikam," which is taken from the Arabic, is an example. She was a sort of Javan Una, and the poem tells of her various deliverances from dangers, moral and physical. It commences with a sentence which is subtle enough for the nineteenth-century era. I quote this and the two following lines:--

"That is true love which makes the heart uneasy.

There was a woman who shone like a gem in the world, for she was distinguished by her conduct, and her name was Jowar Manikam.

Pure was her conduct like that of a saint, and she never forgot her devotions to the deity: all evil desires were strangers to her heart."

The dramatic works fall naturally into two divisions. The circle of poems, partly historical, which recount the adventures of Panji, the "knight" or national hero of Java, and which are called, after his name, "the Panjis;" and the wayang plays. The Panjis are important as alone supplying the Javan theatre with subjects for its representations. Among the t.i.tles of the various works included in the group are such as these: "The marriage of Panji and Angreni," "The History of the Lady Kurana, Princess of Bali," and "Panji and his Amours." There appears to be great uncertainty as to the origin and date of these poems. Vreede, after giving Raffles' account of the "Angrene"--the t.i.tle under which the Panjis appear to have been then (1819) known--says that he has quoted the account of Raffles _verbatim_ "because, notwithstanding the palpable inaccuracies of his conclusions, seeing our faulty information about the origin, the date, the authors, and the compilation of the Panji narratives, his indications may have, for all we know, great value."

As to the works directly due to the introduction of the Arabic language and literature simultaneously with the establishment of the Mohammedan power in the island, it is certainly remarkable, considering the completeness of the Mohammedan conquest and its long duration, that the Javanese language should show such few signs of Arabic influences as it does at the present time. The Koran was rendered into Javan verse a century and a half ago. Beside the various adaptations from the Arabic, there are a large number of Arabic treatises current in Java. Long ago Arabic schools were established in the island, and of these schools that in the district of Pranaraga at one time boasted of having as many as fifteen hundred scholars.

I shall conclude this account of the Javanese literature with a short description of the native theatre, and of the wayang.

As I have already mentioned, the subjects of the _topeng_, or Javan drama, are invariably taken from the group of Panji poems. The actors are dressed in the costumes of ancient times, and are gaudily decked with cheap jewellery, velvet, leather, and gold-embroidered cloths. A special characteristic of the native theatre is the fact that the actors wear masks and do not themselves speak, but the words of the play are recited by the dalang, or manager. The only occasion on which they depart from this practice is when the performance is given before one of the native princes, and in this case they also appear without their masks. In the performance of their somewhat limited functions they display considerable skill and histrionic capacity, but the piece resembles a ballet rather than a drama.[30] The recitations of the dalang are accompanied by the music of the gamelan, which, as in the case of the wayang, forms the orchestra. A topeng company numbers eleven persons--the dalang, six actors, and four gamelan musicians.

[Footnote 30: See p. 56.]

The subjects of the wayang plays are taken from the Kavi poems, from the Panjis, and especially from the chronicles. Some of these plays, or _lampahans_, are in metre, others are in prose. Both alike consist of summaries of the original poems on which they are based, and are intended for the use of the dalang. It is noticeable, however, that the wayang commands a far wider range of subjects than the theatre.

In the true wayang the figures themselves are not seen, but only their shadows. The dalang places a transparent curtain, stretched over a frame ten feet long by five high, between himself and the audience. He then fixes his figures in the bamboo bar immediately in front of him, and throws their shadows on to the curtain by placing a lamp behind them. At the same time he moves the arms with wires in order to produce the effect of action. The wayang dolls are singularly grotesque. There is an interesting tradition which ascribes this distortion to a deliberate purpose. According to this account, after the Mohammedan conquest and the subsequent conversion of the Javanese to Islamism, it became necessary to reconcile the continued enjoyment of the national pastime with the precept of the new religion which forbade the dramatic representation of the human form. A means of escaping from the dilemma was discovered by the susunan of that day, who ordered the wayang figures to be distorted to their present grotesque shapes. His line of argument was ingenious. The world, he said, would now no longer recognize the figures of the wayang as representations of humanity. The Javanese, however, would recognize the persons whom the figures were intended to reproduce from their knowledge of the national traditions.

Even if _they_ should eventually come to forget the nature of the originals good would arise, for they would then believe that it was only since their conversion to the faith of the prophet that their ancestors had a.s.sumed a human shape.

There are two forms of the shadow wayang, the _purva_ and the _gedog_.

The subjects of the first are taken from the various mythological works of the Hindu period, and from the Bharata Yuddha. In presenting this wayang, the dalang first recites a few verses in Kavi, and then continues the narrative in a modern Javanese version. This wayang is especially useful as serving to keep alive some knowledge of the literary dialect among the common people. The wayang gedog differs from the former in so far as its subjects belong to a later period, and no Kavi verses are recited. The gamelan also which accompanies the dalang is somewhat different. Pangi is the favourite hero of the wayang gedog, though he is not represented so exclusively as in the theatre. In both of these wayangs the dalang often improvises the dialogue with which the narrative is interspersed.

I have described the wayang klitik in my account of my visit to Tji w.a.n.gi. The performance is given without the intervention of a curtain, and the figures in the wayang are slightly smaller and not nearly so skilfully constructed as in the two former. The wayang klitik takes its subjects from the period of the Mohammedan invasion.

The dalangs are held in great respect by the common people, and many of them possess their own sets of wayang puppets. It is customary for the native princes to keep a dalang at their palaces; in this case, of course, the figures and gamelan do not belong to the dalang, but to the prince.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A WAYANG FIGURE.]

CHAPTER XV.

SINGAPORE.

Batavia and Singapore--Raffles' arrival in the East-- Determines to oppose the Dutch supremacy in the Archipelago--Occupation of Java--Is knighted--Returns from England--Foundation of Singapore--Uncertainty whether the settlement would be maintained--His death--Description of Singapore--Epilogue.

A fortnight after my visit to Tji w.a.n.gi I left Java. As the train took us from Batavia to the port, I caught a glimpse of the sea over the palm-trees, and I felt something of the exultation which prompted the remnant of the ten thousand Greeks to exclaim, "The sea! the sea!" I had tired of the steamy atmosphere of Batavia, and that line of blue seemed full of revivifying power. Three days later we reached Singapore. Here everything was bright and new and English--miles of wharfs crowded with s.h.i.+pping, broad streets, the cathedral spire _en evidence_, tall warehouses, and handsome Government buildings. Watering-carts replaced the bamboo buckets in the streets, and English iron and stone work the quaint lamps and antiquated masonry. There the Dutch lived by themselves; the wide streets, education, Christianity, were for them exclusively. Here it was otherwise. Even the native streets were well drained and lighted; for the Englishman shares his civilization with the native races. The glory of the place is its splendidly turfed and tree-clad esplanade; and in the centre of the broad carriage-road there stands the statue of Sir Stamford Raffles, for five years Lieutenant-Governor of Java and the founder of Singapore.

The British occupation of Singapore arose so directly out of the cession of Java, that a description of the circ.u.mstances which led to this event will suitably complete my account of that country.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ESPLANADE, SINGAPORE. _Page_ 264.]

After some years' service as a clerk in the East India house in London, Raffles was despatched in 1805, when only twenty-three years of age, to the East, as a.s.sistant-secretary to the Government of Penang, where a settlement was then being formed by the company. In this capacity he so distinguished himself as to attract the notice of Lord Minto, then Governor-General of India. In particular Raffles made himself acquainted, as no other European had done before, with the circ.u.mstances and character of the Malay races. Subsequently, in view of the annexation of Holland by Napoleon, it became desirable for the Indian Government to take some measures to prevent the establishment of the French in the Dutch possessions in the East. When, as a means to this end, it was determined to occupy Java, it was to Raffles that Lord Minto applied for the necessary information upon which the operations of the expedition could be based. The capture of Java was considered of such importance that the Governor-General himself accompanied the expedition.

Raffles' information was found to be so accurate, and his suggestions so valuable, that after the capitulation of General Jansens on September 18, 1811, Lord Minto entrusted the island to his charge. Up to the present, Raffles had been acting first as agent and afterwards as chief secretary to the Governor-General; he was now appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Java and its dependencies.

I have already written of the principles upon which Raffles based his measures during the five years of his administration, and of the criticism which was directed against them. The whole of Raffles' public acts as a servant of the company were reviewed by the Court of Directors in 1826. The verdict of this very competent authority, with reference to the financial expedients and the general reforms which he adopted in his administration of the island, was entirely favourable, if we except what refers to the sale of lands, which it characterized as a "questionable proceeding." It is worthy of note, however, that this "questionable proceeding" had been p.r.o.nounced by the Governor-General to be "an able expedient in a moment of great emergency." Raffles was bitterly disappointed when the news reached him that, under the settlement effected by the Treaty of London, the British Government had consented to restore Java to the Dutch. For a moment the announcement of Napoleon's escape from Elba seemed to bring a chance of a reprieve. But this transient gleam of hope was soon dispelled, and in March, 1816, Raffles relinquished the government to the imperial officer appointed to carry out the transference of the island. Lord Minto had secured for him the residency of Bencoolen, a settlement on the western coast of Sumatra; but his state of health was so unsatisfactory that it became necessary for him to proceed to England without delay.

After a stay of only fifteen months' duration, during which he received the honour of knighthood from the king, Raffles again set sail for India in October, 1817. He was appointed to the government of Bencoolen, with the t.i.tle of Lieutenant-Governor of Fort Marlborough, and it is in this capacity that he signed his Singapore proclamations. It appears, however, that he was in some way commissioned by the Home Government to exercise a general supervision over British interests in the further East. In a letter written in 1820 he says that he "had separate instructions from the Court to watch the motions of foreign nations, and particularly the Dutch, in the Archipelago generally, and to write to the Court and the Secret Committee."[31] On his arrival at Bencoolen in March, 1819, he set himself once more to achieve that object for which he had incessantly worked ever since his first appearance in the East--the establishment of British influence in Malaya and the Eastern Archipelago. With this object in view Raffles resolved to proceed to Calcutta, in order that he might personally confer with Lord Hastings, who had succeeded Lord Minto as Governor-General, and secure the co-operation of the Bengal Government in his plans. He arrived at Calcutta early in July of the same year. Lord Hastings expressed a high appreciation of the value of Raffles' services in Java, and gave him general a.s.surances of his further support. Although the Bengal Government were not prepared to endorse the extension of the British authority in Sumatra, they and the British merchants at Calcutta were at least rendered sensible by Raffles' arguments of the importance of endeavouring to check the progress of the Dutch in the Malay Peninsula.

Of the two channels which alone gave access to the Archipelago, one was already in the hands of the Dutch, and the other soon would be. In short, unless some immediate and energetic measures were taken, the trade of the whole Eastern Archipelago would be closed against the English merchants. In his own words, Raffles asked for neither territory nor people; all he wanted was "permission to anchor a line-of-battle s.h.i.+p and hoist the English flag."

[Footnote 31: "Memoir of Sir Stamford Raffles, by his widow."

1830.]

In short, the result of Raffles' visit to Calcutta was that the Bengal Government resolved, if possible, to keep the command of the Straits of Malacca, and he was despatched as their agent to effect this purpose.

It appears that the Bengal Government hoped to sufficiently command the straits by an establishment at Achin, in the extreme north of Sumatra, and by taking possession of Rhio, a small island south of Singapore.

Raffles, however, foresaw--what indeed happened--that the Dutch would antic.i.p.ate him in the occupation of Rhio, while Achin seemed scarcely suitable for the purpose. When he left Calcutta he had another plan in view. On December 12, 1818, he writes from on board the _Nearchus_, at the mouth of the Ganges, to his frequent correspondent Marsden, the Sumatran traveller--

"We are now on our way to the eastward, in the hope of doing something, but I much fear the Dutch have hardly left us an inch of ground to stand upon. My attention is princ.i.p.ally turned to Joh.o.r.e, and you must not be surprised if my next letter to you is dated from the site of the ancient city of Singapura."

In carrying out the difficult task which had been entrusted to him, Raffles encountered not only the opposition of the Dutch, which he naturally expected, but that of the Government of Penang. The authorities at Penang had a double reason for their opposition. In the first place, they regarded the establishment of a station further east as detrimental to the interests of their own settlement; and, in the next, they had themselves unsuccessfully endeavoured to acquire a similar position, and now maintained that the time had gone by for such measures. Fortunately, however, Raffles had already secured the services of Colonel Farquhar and a military force. This officer was in command of the troops at Bencoolen, which, at the time Raffles left Calcutta, were on the point of being relieved. Raffles had written from Calcutta, instructing him to proceed to Europe by the Straits of Sunda, where he would receive further instructions.

Singapore, the spot which Raffles' knowledge of the Malay states enabled him to secure for his settlement, is a small island, twenty-seven miles long by fourteen broad, immediately south of the Malay Peninsula, from which it is separated by a channel of less than a mile in width. No situation could be imagined better calculated to secure the objects which the new settlement was intended to effect. Not only does the island completely command the Straits of Malacca, the gate of the ocean highway to China and the Eastern Archipelago, but, lying at a convenient distance from the Chinese, the Indian, and the Javanese ports, it was admirably adapted to serve as an _entrepot_ and centre of English trade.

The island at this time formed part of the territory of the Sultan of Joh.o.r.e, and it contained the remains of the original maritime capital of the Malays. It was within the circuit of these Malay fortifications, raised more than six centuries ago, that, on the 29th of February, 1819, Raffles planted the British flag at Singapore.

From the very first Raffles fully realized the value of the acquisition.

On the 19th of February, 1819, he writes that he has found "at Singapore advantages far superior to what Rhio afforded." And in the same letter he says, "In short, Singapore is everything we could desire, and I may consider myself most fortunate in the selection; it will soon rise into importance, and with this single station alone, I would undertake to counteract all the plans of Mynheer."

Raffles was not able to remain for more than a few days at Singapore. He hurried on to Achin, and, after completing the object of his mission there, returned to his residency at Bencoolen. But the new settlement rapidly progressed under Colonel Farquhar's able administration. A year afterwards, this officer writes to Raffles that "nothing can possibly exceed the rising trade and general prosperity of this infant colony."

He adds, "Merchants of all descriptions are collecting here so fast that nothing is heard in the shape of complaint but the want of more ground to build on."

In spite of this immediate a.s.surance of prosperity, it remained for a long time uncertain whether the British Government would maintain the settlement.

The right of possession was from the first disputed by the Dutch.

Raffles himself succinctly states in a letter to Marsden the basis upon which this rested. It appears, from his letter, that the Dutch had secured the cession of Rhio from the Sultan of Lingen, whom they recognized as the Sultan of Joh.o.r.e. On his arrival at Singapore, Raffles was visited by one of the two chief hereditary officials of Joh.o.r.e, who represented to him that an elder brother of the Sultan of Lingen was the legal successor to that throne, adding, that as the Dutch had negotiated with an incompetent authority, it was still open to the English to effect a settlement on the territory of Joh.o.r.e. This elder brother was subsequently recognized by the n.o.bles at the court of Joh.o.r.e, and it was with this personage, in his capacity of Sultan of Joh.o.r.e, that Raffles concluded his treaty, and obtained permission to establish his settlement. The Dutch, on the other hand, maintained that the Sultan of Lingen had been legally invested with the sovereignty of Joh.o.r.e at the time of the occupation; and, therefore, that the permission accorded to Raffles was worthless. In a letter bearing date July 19, 1820, a correspondent writes to him from London--

"You are probably aware of the obstacles which have been opposed to the adoption of your measures, and even threatened your position in the service. Your zeal considerably out-stepped your prudence, and the first operations of it became known at an unfavourable juncture. It was thought that the state of affairs in Europe required that they should be discountenanced.