Transcript
44
Pierre-Yves
Manguin
owns. He discovers
Indian
merchants
(Ceti
and
Hindu)
are already established there after
their
ship got
stranded.
They had attracted many foreigners
(prang
dart lain tempat dan
segala
bangsa)
and the settlement had therefore become a
prosperous
settlement
(negeri).
Guru
Marsakot decides to stay and rule over the land named Pansur. After he
becomes
the
raja,
the
land
grows
even more
prosperous
and attracts trade from many overseas places.
10
The
same motifs are found again in Kutei. After the setting is prepared and the founding
hero
Aji Batara
Agung
Dewa
Sakti
and other characters are introduced, a Chinese prince
sails
into the harbor. He lures Aji Batara
Agung
into
betting
on a cockfight, which he loses.
He
thus has to surrender
his
ship,
together
with
her
cargo
and
crew.
Aji Batara
Agung
builds
a new
settlement
(pindah
bernegeri),
following which he
sails
to various places in
Kalimantan
and keeps
acquiring
riches
(haήa agung).
n
Up
in the Philippines, on the Island of Palawan, a tale recalls
that
there was once a con-
flict between the King of Brunei and a local hero as to who would rule over the island. After
winning
a bet
against his Brunei rival, the Palawan contender gained
five
ships
with
their
cargoes
and consequently
ruled
over Palawan.
12
One
could go on narrating such tales, for there is quite a repertoire originating from the
multitude
of harbor-cities
that
have sprung up, at one time or another, along the coasts of
the
Java Sea, from Palembang to Buleleng, through Lampung, Banjarmasin, and the Java-
nese
pesisir,
as
well
as, seemingly, in other areas of Maritime Southeast
Asia.
13
At times, the stories appear only
vaguely
related and, as is often the case in a predomi-
nantly
oral context, the characters or events undergo permutations
that
may obscure the
contents
of the tale, at least at first sight. However, a careful breakdown of their formative
elements can bring to light the underlying and recurrent motifs: in other words, the struc-
ture
of the tales. The tales above may easily be trimmed to the parts
that
interest us, i.e. into
the
seven following motifs (not all of these necessarily being
always
present in a single tale):
1. a local character has exceptional powers/
sakti;
2.
then
comes an overseas ship
fully
laden/sarat
with rich merchandise,
1
^
J. Drakard, ed.,
Sejarah
Raja-raja
Barus:
dua
naskah
daή
Barus
(Jakarta: έcole Franςais d'Extreme-Orient, Collec-
tion
de texts et documents nousantariens, no. 7,1988), pp. 81,133.
11
C. A. Mees, ed
v
De
Kroniek
van
Koetai
(Santpoort: np, 1935), pp. 72-73,140-53.
^
R. B. Fox,
Religion
and
Society
among
the
Tagbanua
of
Palawan Island,
Philippines
(Manila: National Museum
Monograph No. 9,1982), p. 18.
13
Th. G. Th. Pigeaud,
Javaanse
volksvertoningen,
bijdrage
tot de
beschrijving
van
land
en
volk
(Jakarta, 1938), pp. 81,
91,192-95; and Pigeaud,
Literature
of
Java,
2: 61, 495,516, 850, 853,
gives
brief summaries of Javanese
lakon
and
local legends of Dampu
Awang. R.T.A.A.
Probenegoro, "Djoeragan Dampoehawang,"
Djawa
21,1 (1941): 1-11,
also has various references to this theme, including some from the
ketoprak
repertoire. I have
myself
heard such
stories told by fishermen in the Tuban area in 1983. On a different tales for Dampu
Awang's
occurrence: in
Palembang, see L. C. Westenenk, "Boekit Segoentang en Goenoeng Mahameroe uit de Sedjarah Melajoe,"
TBG
68,1 (1923): 222 (but he also is associated there with the Putri Cina and Chinese customs in local lore); in Lam-
pung, see J. A. Du Bois, "De Lampongsche districten op het eiland Sumatra,"
Tijdschrift
voor
Nederlandsch-Indie
14
(1852): 245-75,309-33; in Banjarmasin, J. J. Ras, ed.,
Hikayat
Banjar,
A Study in Malay
Historiography
(The Hague:
Bibliotheca Indonesica
1,1968),
where Dampu
Awang
is the name of a
sea-going
merchant who is associated
with a story different from that in our tales. H. O. Beyer, 'The Philippines before Magellan,"
Asia
Magazine
(Oct.-
Nov., 1921), states that "the most reliable of the pre-Mahommedan traditional histories of Sulu states that the
first civilized
foreigners to establish a settlement in that island were the Orang Dampuan"; this appears to be
some corrupt quotation from a comparable tale. In association with most of these tales, one finds explanations for
local toponyms that carry names of boats
(banka,
jong,
etc., or even the name Dampu
Awang
itself,
as in Lam-
pung) resulting from the events described in the tales.
The Merchant and the
King
45
(3.
usually under the captainship of shipmaster Dampu
Awang,
alias Sampo);
(4.
the ship may get stranded/fczndfls
14
and)
5. a competition takes place, either a fight or a bet, the prize of which is the ship
cargo;
6. the local character, thanks to his
saktί,
wins over the riches in the ship and thus
acquires considerable wealth, after which
7. he rules over his now prosperous country.
Before we start trying to understand the underlying meaning of such tales, some further
motifs which appear to have been blended into the rich symbolism of Indonesian textile
decoration
and are clearly associated with the above tales should be investigated. These tex-
tiles have been found within the area where the tales were collected. These are not narrative
motifs, but the statements they make can be read as "texts" in the
very
same way.
The
first
motif is the so-called
jong sarat.
The meaning of the phrase
itself
poses no prob-
lem: what we have here is a
"fully
laden ship," the same motif we encountered in the above
tales. It
always
seems to be mentioned in relation with various rites of
passage
and—this is
essential—with high-ranking or royal-blooded heroes. In Perak (Malaysia) we find mentions
of a mat embroidered with the
jong
sarat
motif,
in an East Javanese
Babad Blambangan
it is a
songket
jong
sarat,
in the Malay
Hίkayat Όewa Mandu
we get a
kafan
jong
sarat
and in Lampung
there
is a
tampan
jong
sarat.
15
Despite the fact that, in Lampung, depictions of
sailing
vessels
are a common feature of textiles, the name
jong
sarat
has no connection with such
graphically obvious textiles: it is actually associated with a cloth that does not carry a ship
design and is worn by the bride at marriage ceremonies. It is, however, richly decorated
with gold thread and has valuable
silver
coins hanging from its lower side.
1
^ What we have
here,
therefore, are
"fully
laden" pieces of cloth that were associated, in rituals, with wealth
deriving from maritime trade.
The
other textile motif I shall mention is still a popular pattern among
pesisir
people
(mostly Cirebon and Indramayu): this is the
pola
kapal kandas,
which translates as "stranded
ship pattern." The story associated with it relates that this ship, which was not set afloat
again, was that of the Putri Cina—therefore, as we have seen, it was a
"fully
laden" one. No
wonder, then, batiks bearing the
kapal kandas
motif are still worn in special circumstances,
where wealth and prosperity are asked for. The design of the motif is purely abstract (no
kapal
is represented) and were it not for the tale of the Putri Cina quoted above, it would be
difficult to
figure
out its actual meaning.
17
14
The acquisition by a ruler of the cargo of a stranded ship reminds one of the shipwreck
laws
current in South-
east
Asian
seas: the rulers automatically inherited the contents of the lost ship. But such
laws
are also common in
the
Indian Ocean, not to say universally, and I therefore do not
believe
that this coincidence is relevant. In any
case, the stranding of the ship is not an essential motif in our tales.
15
On the
jong
sarat
expression and an analysis of the broader meaning of ship motifs in textiles from Lampung
and elsewhere, see P.-Y. Manguin, "Shipshape Societies: Boat Symbolism and Political Systems in Insular South-
east
Asia/'
in
Southeast
Asia
in the 9th to 14th
Centuries,
ed. D. G. Man* and A. C. Milner (Singapore: Institute of
Southeast
Asian
Studies, 1986), pp. 187-213, and the references quoted therein.
16
1
owe many thanks to the late Paramita Abdurachman for having taken the trouble to carry out her own per-
sonal inquiry on these textiles.
17
On the
pola
kapal
kandas
in Cirebon and Indramayu, see Abdurachman,
Cerbon,
p. 153. W. Warming and M.
Gaworski,
The
World
of
Indonesian
Textiles
(Tokyo/New
York:
Kodansha International, 1981), p. 178, are mistaken
when they say this motif is only found in Lasem; when they explain it by stating that "it was customary for vil-
lagers
who helped push a beached ship back to sea to share in some of the wealth on board," they seem to have
noted
down and
possibly
misunderstood a local interpretation of the motif akin to the stranded ship theme. The
46
Piene-Yves
Manguin
An odd occurrence of the
"fully
laden boat" motif appears in the Javanese
Kidung
Angling
Όarma,
as
well
as in other texts. These carry references to
banawa
sarat,
the literal
meaning of which is the same
as
jong
sαrαt.
Drewes discusses the use of the phrase but does
not
understand its appearance in the
kidung
to designate a house in a forest which is
full
of
riches, a wealth that
will
be acquired by the hero of the tale.
18
It is only in the comparison
with other appearances of the
sαrαt
/"fully
laden" motif that sense can be made of the
bαnαwα
sαrαt
phrase in this particular context. Except for the fact that the riches are referred to as a
"ship
(bαnαwα)
cargo," there is no reference here to sea-going trade. This raises questions
about
both Javanese perceptions of the forest and remanent maritime motifs in an essen-
tially inland and agrarian context.
Answers
to such questions are beyond the scope of this
essay.
One other aspect of these tales should be investigated. This is the name of the character
who most often appears in them, though he is not the actual hero (a role reserved for the
founder of the polity), i.e. Dampu
Awang
(and his aliases Sampo, Sampo Kong, Sampo Tua
Lang,
etc.).
It is used in the examples above as a proper name, but its origin is in the Java-
nese title
dαng
mpu
hαwαng
(or
possibly
in cognate forms in other related languages).
Dαng
is
an
honorific prefix denoting persons of distinction, or high rank;
(m)pu
has a similar usage;
the
title
(h)αwαng
conveyed among various Malay World people (Minang, Malays, etc.) the
idea of a non-noble official of high rank, at times associated with shipmasters
(nάkhodα).
This
last meaning is precisely that of the title
puhαwαng
when it
first
appears in the Old Malay
Sriwijayan inscription of Telaga Batu, dated from the last quarter of the seventh century C.E.
It
is often found again with the same meaning in late
first
millennium Malay and Javanese
epigraphs, as
well
as in Old Javanese literature (in twelfth-century texts such as the
Bhαrαtαyudhα,
the
Smαrαdαhαnα,
or the
Hαriwαngsα).
So what we have in our tales is a charac-
ter
clearly bearing the title
Dαng
Puhαwαng
(turned into the proper name Dampu
Awang
by
folk
tradition) who has from early times been associated with shipping and trading at the
highest
level.
He is not a petty trader: in the tales, he owns the ship and the rich cargo with
which she is laden. Inscriptions make it clear the
puhαwαng
were part of the ruler's chosen
retinue.
In Central Java, they make offerings to royal sanctuaries (Dang Puhawang Gelis
inscription of 827 C.E.). In East Java, enough revenue was derived from transactions with
puhαwαng
and merchants
(bαnyαgα)
from other islands
(dwipαntαrα)
to prompt the ruler into
launching hydraulic works, so as to facilitate their mooring in Ujung Galuh (Kamalagyan
inscription
of 1037 C.E.).
19
The
other names Dang Puhawang is
given
in some of the tales, and never as obviously
as in the Semarang tradition, are Sampo Kong or Sampo Tua Lang, etc.
20
These are the
National
Museum in Jakarta holds in its collections a
dodot
with the
kαpαl
kαndαs
pattern said to come from Yog-
yakarta.
*° G. W. J.
Drewes,
ed.,
The
Romance
of King Angling
Darma
in
Javanese Literature
(The
Hague:
Bibliotheca
Indo-
nesica 11,1975), pp. 87 & n
9,329.1
am grateful to Henri Chambert-Loir for having attracted my attention to this
unusual example of the
motif.
^
The best philological analysis of the term so far
will
be found in L.-Ch. Damais, "Quelques titres javanais de
l'epoque des Song,"
Bulletin
de
I'tcole
Franςaise
d
r
Extreme-Orient
50,1 (1960):25-29. See also Manguin, "Shipshape
Societies," pp. 197-99, to which one may refer for more references to
existing
literature on the subject.
20
On the Dampu Awang/Sampo tradition in Semarang, there is an abundant literature. One may refer to I. W.
Young, "Sam Po Tong, La grotte de Sam Po,"
Toung Poo
9 (1899):93-102; D. E. Willmott,
The
Chinese
of
Semarang:
A
Changing
Minoήty
Community
in
Indonesia
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1960); Oen Boeng Ing, "Het een en
ander
over Sam Poo Toa Lang of Kjiahi Dampoe
Awang,"
in
Supplement
op Het
Triwindoe-Gedenboek
Mangkoe
Nagoro
VII
(Soerakarta, 1940), pp. 221-23; Liem Thian Joe,
Riwajat Semarang,
pp. 1-10; Th. G. Th. Pigeaud and H.
J.
de
Graaf,
Chinese
Muslims
in
Java
in the 15th and 16th Centuries:
The
Malay
Annals
of
Semarang
and Cerbon
The Merchant and the King
47
clearly recognizable aliases of the famous Chinese historical character Admiral Zheng He, a
Muslim who conducted seven great Ming fleets across Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean
between 1405 and
1433.
21
Why this other great historical Chinese "shipmaster" became
associated with our legendary Dang Puhawang (who carries an Austronesian name) can
only be answered later in this paper, after the riddle of the tales is solved.
We therefore are presented with a set of folk-tales that were commonly popular among
coastal societies of the western part of Insular Southeast Asia. These societies are relatively
well known to historians, at least during the post-fifteenth century stages of their develop-
ment.
22
The social context of such tales may therefore be examined to investigate the "king
and merchant" relationship, which appears so prominently in them.
A first step in this process will be to check what we presently know about trade—partic-
ularly with overseas merchants—and acquisition of wealth in Malay World political sys-
tems. We are fortunate to be able to refer to recent historians who have conducted their
research by studying Malay texts, thus providing us with a referential relationship with the
folk-tales under consideration.
What first comes to mind is that political power and wealth cannot be dissociated in a
Malay World context. The symbolic value of the ruler's "treasure" is essential in this regard.
Wealth is an attribute of the ruler, one of the requisite sources of his power (wealth, how-
ever, is not an accumulative process: it should flow towards the ruler as well as from him
23
).
Now, in coastal polities or harbor-cities, where trade was the foremost economic activity, in
societies where not only luxuries but above all the basic daily necessities were obtained
through overseas trade, it would be normal to find among the requisite attributes and duties
of a good ruler an ability to convene a sufficient number of traders into his harbor. In doing
so,
he would reinforce his sovereignty over potentially rival neighboring harbor-cities.
Through this initiative, in proportion to the success of the trade, he would also generate
income for his followers, and he would therefore accumulate prestige as the dispenser of
material wealth. Milner, in fact, writes about the "excessive partiality for trade" among
Malay rulers whose "kingdom was, in the final analysis, a commercial venture." Thomaz,
basing himself on early sixteenth century Portuguese sources, portrays pre-Portuguese
(Monash: Monash University Papers on Southeast Asia No. 12,1984); P. Pelliot, "Les grands voyages maritimes
chinois au debut du XVe siecle,"
T'oung
Pao
30 (1933): 257-58; P. Pelliot, "Notes additionnelles sur Tcheng Houo
et sur ses voyages,"
Toung
Pao
31 (1935):280,311; C. Salmon, "A propos de quelques cultes chinois particuliers a
Java,"
Arts
Asiaticjues
26 (1973): 243-64; Amen Budiman,
Semarang Riwayatmu
Dulu,
vol. 1 (Semarang, 1978): 8-35.
21
J.J.L. Duyvendak,
"Ma
Huan re-examined,"
Verhandelingen
der
Koninklijke Academie
van
Wetenschappen,
afd.
Letterkunde
32,2
(1933); Pelliot,
"Les
grands voyages"
and
"Notes additionnelles."
22
As
mentioned
in
note
2,
many studies have been devoted
to
trade, state formation,
and
statecraft.
The
follow-
ing paragraphs were mostly inspired
by A. C.
Milner's study
of
Malay perceptions
of
their
kerajaan
in
nineteenth-
century Deli
and
Pahang; Milner,
Kerajaan,
particularly chapter
2,
which deals with economic aspects.
See
also
A.
Reid, 'Trade
and
State Power
in 16th and 17th
Century Southeast Asia,"
in
Proceedings, Seventh
I
AH A Conference,
Bangkok, August
1977
(Bangkok, 1979),
1:
391-419. Wolters,
History, Culture,
and
Region,
pp.
34ff discusses
the
importance
of the
notion
of
"treasure"
for
Southeast Asian rulers.
^ It is
always when
the
flow
of
wealth
is
unidirectional, when there seems
to be
accumulation without redistri-
bution, that
the
rich merchants
of
Java
are
accused
of
being helped
by the
malevolent genii named
tuyul.
48
Pierre-Yves
Manguin
Melaka in
very
similar terms: "everything in Malacca points to a market economy.... The
State
existed there because of trade, not trade because of the State/'
24
The
various conditions a potentially successful ruler would need to perfect the founda-
tion
of a coastal state could therefore be summarized as
follows
(this is done with a consid-
erable measure of simplification: because of the theme of this
essay,
the economic aspects of
kingship are artificially over-emphasized,
leaving
aside other crucial attributes such as
ritual,
kinship,
etc.):
—being imparted with some measure of legitimacy and/or endowed with enough
charisma (derived from "prowess/' "divine radiance,"
"soul-stuff,"
or
sakti)
to build up local
networks of alliance and exchange;
25
—assuming authority over a potential harbor-centered polity;
—luring in, retaining, and regulating overseas exchange at this site to provide external
income
(a variety of technical possibilities are offered: tap the economic resources of the
hinterland,
conduct entrepot trade,
etc.);
—mobilizing, manipulating, and redistributing the subsequent wealth as a political
weapon, to extend his secular authority and attract a larger clientele, thus achieving the
desired state of
ramai.
26
A comparison of the
list
of structural motifs extracted from the Dang Puhawang tales
with that of conditions set up in Malay literature for a ruler to be able to proceed with the
foundation
of a
viable
coastal polity
will
at once reveal striking similarities. The statement in
the
tales uses the language of a society, that of the
pesisίr
harbor-cities of Southeast
Asia
or
rather
of two of their literary genres—"histories" and folk-tales—which this society uses to
express and explain concepts that are critical to her. In this particular case, the statement is
made
to explain in symbolic or metaphoric terms the economic mechanism leading to the
foundation
of a state: the message carried by this particular episode, encountered in a wide
variety of (more complex) texts, is that overseas merchants and trade are a prerequisite for
the
kind of prosperity
(keramaian)
considered befitting a successful polity. In the
Hikayat
Hang
Tuah,
it is said that the founder of the Melaka dynasty, shortly after descending from
Heaven
to Bukit Seguntang, became
widely
known as a king bestowed with many qualities,
among which loomed large the fact that "he was
very
fond of all merchants"; Bukit Segun-
tang/Palembang is later said to have become a large country, "many merchants came and
went to trade there. And all the people from countries without a
raja
congregated there."
27
Curiously, Marco Polo's description of Java in the late thirteenth century rings a bell by now
familiar: "This island is
full
of great wealth.... And unto this land come
very
great numbers
24
Milner,
Kerajaan,
p. 16; L.F.F.R. Thomaz, "Malaca's Society on the Eve of the Portuguese Conquest: A Tentative
Interpretation
based on the Extant Portuguese Documents/' Paper presented at the
Persidangan Λntarabangsa
mengenai
Tamadun Melayu,
Kuala Lumpur (1986), p. 5.
2
^
For a discussion of these various attributes of power in Southeast
Asia,
see Wolters,
History, Culture,
and
Region,
particularly pp. 101—4.
2
^
The term
ramai
(or the form
keramaian
describing the state of being
ramai)
is the most common attribute of a
successful kingdom. A Bengkulu folk-tale
expresses
this in a nutshell:
Lama-kelamaan kampung
menjadi ramai,
dan
hampir menjadi
sebuah
kerajaan
("As time passed the settlement became
ramai
and came short of becoming a king-
dom.");
Anonymous,
Cerita
Rakyat
Daerah Bengkulu
(Jakarta: Proyek Penerbitan Buku Sastra Indonesia dan
Daerah,
1981), p. 113.
27
Hikayat
Hang
Tuah
(Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1961), pp. 6,9. The expression this text uses in
many similar examples is
dagang
santeri,
in a context where
sea-going
or "foreign" merchants are called for (as in
kasantrian,
the name of foreign quarters in harbor-cities such as Banten). See also note 38 below.
The
Merchant
and the
King
49
of ships and of merchants who come there to trade and buy many goods there and make
very
great profit there and
very
great gain. There is so great treasure in this island that there
is not a man in the world who could
believe
or tell or say it/'
28
It is admitted by now that
Polo
never actually sailed to Java and he may
well
have heard this description from the
mouth
of Southeast Asian merchants in
North
Sumatra, where he spent some time. This
would explain the striking similitude with local statements. The same could be said about
Tome Pires' hearsay remark on Demak in the mid-1510s: "because... [Demak's ruler] has
not
done any trade for three or four years he is greatly exhausted ... and the people are
already
leaving
his land for other places because there is no trade in merchandise/'
29
One
element of the tales still needs elaboration: why has Dang Puhawang, a character
with an Austronesian name (or title), been
given
the name of, or been assimilated with a
well-known Chinese historical character? Dang Puhawang is, by trade, a ship-master who
arrives from "overseas/' literally from across a sea. Depending on the context of the tale, this
notion
of "overseas" may be
left
with its
vague
definition (as in
sunantara),
or it may be
given
a more precise connotation: the overseas merchant may come from other harbor-cities
within the Malay World (Banjarmasin, Aceh, etc.) or from countries across the China Sea or
the
Indian Ocean (generally China or Keling). In a word, he is a
sabrangan,
somebody who
has crossed over the
seas
(though I have not found in the above tales this particular term,
common
in Javanese
lakon
for overseas characters). The emphasis in the tales is therefore on
"overseas," not on a determined place of origin: the shipmaster in the tales may stand for
inter-regional (i.e. essentially Malay World) as
well
as "international" traders (including
Chinese),
both of which would be part of a suitable trade network. Early epigraphy—par-
ticularly that of East Java—appears not to distinguish among merchants from
"international"
and inter-regional backgrounds: the classification of traders is functional,
not
based on place of origin. In later Malay literature the presence of numerous foreign mer-
chants
is conventionally seen as a desirable feature in a polity.
30
Maritime trade is the main
source of income of harbor-centered polities and, by nature, this can only be "overseas"
trade.
The answer to the Sampo riddle therefore
lies
in the economic role played by China and
the
Chinese market in Southeast Asian history. No factor in the international environment of
harbor polities in the region would have been more significant than overseas trade with
China,
whether it was conducted by Southeast
Asians
themselves or by Chinese.
31
Yet
another
tale relates that the ruler of Kan-to-li, a trading kingdom somewhere on the shores
of the Malay Peninsula or South Sumatra, had a dream in 502 C.E.: if he would send tribute
(i.e.
trading) missions to China, his land "would become rich and happy and merchants and
travelers would multiply a hundredfold." Though recorded by a Chinese chronicler, this
dream of a southern king bears a striking resemblance to the statements we have come
across in local tales and provides a
vivid
illustration of the osmosis between the two mar-
kets at the northern and southern ends of the South China Sea. In the eleventh century, in a
28
A. C.
Moule
and P. Pelliot, eds.,
Marco Polo. The Descήption of the
World,
2
vols.
(London,
1938), 1:368.
29
A.
CortesSo,
ed.,
The Suma Oriental of
Tome
Pires, 2
vols.
(London:
Hakluyt Society, 1944),
1:186.
30
Christie,
"Markets and
Trade,"
pp. 204-9;
Milner,
Kerajaan,
p. 23 and n. 82.
31
The ups and downs of
pesisir
states (including such
prominent
polities as Sriwijaya and
Melaka),
and
their
close relationship with the fluctuations of the Chinese overseas
trade
have been studied in detail by Wolters in
his
two books on the rise and fall of Sriwijaya:
Early Indonesian
Commerce,
already cited, and
The Fall of Srivijaya in
Malay
History
(Kuala
Lumpur:
Oxford University Press, 1970); also Wang Gungwu, "Early Ming Relations with
Southeast
Asia: A Background Essay," in
The Chinese World
Order,
ed. J. K.
Fairbank
(Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1968), pp. 34r-62.
50
PieπeΎves Manguin
pragmatic but nonetheless evocative statement about
Sriwijaya,
a Chinese chronicler writes:
"Merchants
from distant places congregate there. This country is therefore considered to be
very
prosperous/' Closer to us, we know that Chinese overseas activity and patronage—at
the
precise time of the great naval expeditions of the Ming under Zheng He—were crucial in
the
launching of the early kingdoms of Pasai and Melaka.
32
It
is no wonder, then, that a character such as Zheng He (alias Sampo, i.e.
Sam bao,
the
'Three Jewels" eunuch) would be remembered in local lore by those who stood to gain from
the
increased economic activity as an expeditor of trade, hence a promoter of wealth and
political power, hence a replication of Dang Puhawang. The fact that the Ming expeditions
were carried out with such considerable pomp, with fleets of dozens of enormous ships
loaded with merchandise, could only have further stamped the imagination of
pesisir
popu-
lations in Southeast
Asia.
By coincidence (?), the Ming Chinese called their huge junks
"treasure-ships"
(bao-chuan),
a striking rejoinder to the ships
"fully
laden" with riches of the
Dang
Puhawang tales. Moreover, these memories were further cultivated among an eco-
nomically active and
well
integrated Chinese merchant community: in Melaka, in Semarang,
in
Jakarta, they kept the Sampo cult alive, blending local and Chinese statements into one
single
story. The appropriation by the Chinese community of the local Dang Puhawang
theme
parallels that of the recuperation in the temples they dedicated to Sampo of indige-
nous cults rendered to local
kramat
33
In a sense, therefore, this
very
appropriation confirms
the
interpretation of the Dang Puhawang tales.
In
a second step, one may find another transformation of the above motifs in some texts,
at times in combination with the "real" Dang Puhawang
motif.
In the
Hikayat
Raja-raja Pasai,
for instance, ships loaded with regalia coming from Mecca are found among the various
elements that consolidate Malik al-Saleh's power over the harbor-state. During this Islamic
moment
of the Archipelago, when a new "age of commerce" and the expanding Islamic
consciousness were indiscernible, it would appear that the political statements made in
"historical" literature had their emphasis shifted towards religion: legitimization had now
to
come from the Caliph. Transformation of the myth to accommodate Islam was facilitated
by the fact that the trader and the preacher of the Islamic faith were, by then, more often
than
not one
single
person. But the "treasure-bearing merchant" motif—in a debased
form—still appears in the
Hikayat
Raja-raja Pasai
immediately after lip-service has been paid
to
the new "mentalite": a trading ship from the land of Kalinga carries a man who has the
power to detect reefs of gold and, sure enough, gold is then found in great quantities, and
Malik al-Saleh's polity is accordingly bolstered.
34
A similar variation on the theme—with a
humorous twist—can be found in a folk-tale from Kalimantan Selatan: Datu Baduk is a
learned
jin
who
sails
from Mecca on board the ship of Haji Muhhammad
Arsyad,
returning
from studying Islam in the Holy Land to spread the new religion and to become an adviser
at the Banjar court. The ship
gets
stranded
(kandas);
it turns out that the
jin ulama
is respon-
sible
for holding the ship immobile. He only releases her after it is agreed that he shall be
32
Wolters,
Early Indonesian
Commerce,
p. 165; O. W. Wolters, "A Few and Miscellaneous
pi-chi
Jottings on Early
Indonesia/'
Indonesia
36 (1983): 55; Wolters,
Fall
ofSήvijaya,
especially chapter 11 and appendix C.
33
Salmon, "Quelques cultes"; C. Salmon and D. Lombard,
Les
Chinois
de Jakarta:
temples
et vie
collective
(Paris:
Etudes insulindiennes-Archipel No.
1,1980),
pp.
86ff.;
C. Salmon and D. Lombard, "Islam et sinite,"
Archipel
30
(1985): 73-94.
34
A. H. Hill, ed., "Hikajat Raja-raja Pasai,"
Journal
of the Malaysian Branch, Royal
Asiatic Society
33,2 (1960): 123.
The Merchant and the
King
51
authorized
to settle in Banjar, where he
will
be revered and
will
teach the Religion to non-
Islamic
jin.
35
One
should also elaborate on a recurrent motif of these tales, that of the competition
between king and merchant. Its outcome is positive (the founding of the polity), but it is
clearly a conflictive rapport. Does the historical context in which these tales were produced
provide elements that would allow us to decipher this motif? As discussed earlier, the title
associated with our merchant,
hawang,
is that of a non-noble but high-ranking class in Malay
World societies often associated with ship-masters
(nakhoda/puhawang/juragan),
trade and
wealth. One social class in such societies—as known from post-fifteenth century sources—
that
immediately comes to mind is that of the ubiquitous and often all-powerful
orangkaya.
A lot has been written on their role and position, and this is not the place to elaborate again
on
the subject. Suffice it to say that, in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, the
orangkaya
merchant
class was the mainstay of many societies of Insular Southeast
Asia.
But it has also
been a constant threat to the power of the ruler. Exactly like the folk hero Dampu Hawang,
the
orangkaya
could both do and undo a king. Too much wealth on their part was usually
felt as a threat to the ruler's own power, challenged as it was by the rise and parallel devel-
opment
of commercial elites. Beaulieu, who visited Aceh in the early seventeenth century,
puts
this in concise but appropriate terms: the
orangkaya
usually lost their
life
when the king
became suspicious of two circumstances, "their good reputation among the people and their
wealth/'
36
Earlier in time, in fact in the first ever written mention of a
puhawang
in a late
seventh century C.E. Sriwijayan inscription, the ship-master class appears among those who
threaten
the "treasure" of the ruler (and, interestingly enough, they are among the few that
bear an Austronesian, non-imported, title). No doubt, if merchants stopped patronizing a
harbor-city, the ruler's "treasure" would rapidly fade
away.
Similarly, in an inscription from
Champa
dated 797 C.E., merchants are mentioned, together with warriors, brahmins, and
ministers, among those prone to steal the riches of the polity.
37
This ambivalence of mer-
chants
is possibly what prompted the author of a
ninth
century Javanese inscription to
classify
them among migratory birds: they were unattached, liable to transfer their trade
activities to a rival harbor-city, hence dangerous.
38
Again, a similar notion could have been
conveyed by the 1079 C.E. Sriwijayan inscription at Canton which describes merchants as
"flying."
39
It
therefore appears that the competition motif can itself be explained when the context
of the tales is examined and reference made to the dialectical relationship between ruler and
3
^
Anonymous,
Ceήta
Rakyat Kalimantan Selatan
(Jakarta: Proyek Penerbitan Buku Sastra Indonesia dan Daerah,
1981), pp. 92-95.
36
A. Reid, 'Trade and the Problem of Royal Power in Aceh, c. 1500-1700," in
Pre-Colonial
State Systems in South-
east Asia,
ed. A. Reid and L. Castles (Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1975), pp. 45-
55;
Reid, 'Trade and State Power"; J. Kathirithamby-Wells, "Royal Authority and the Orang Kaya in the Western
Archipelago, circa 1500-1800,"
Journal of Southeast
Asian
Studies
17, 2 (1986): 256-67; Beaulieu's quotation is from
his
Memoires,
as published in M. Thevenot's
Relations de
divers
voyages
... (Paris 1696)
1:109ff.
3
^
L.
Finot,
"Notes d'epigraphie VII: Inscriptions du Quang Nam (i: Premiere stele de Dong-duong),"
Bulletin
de
I'Ecole
Franςaise
d'Extreme-Orient
4 (1904): 91,95.
38
J. G. de Casparis,
Prasasti
Indonesia II
(Bandung: Masa Baru, 1956), pp. 2 n. 12, 326. One should note here that
Casparis' clarification on the obscure
verse
that regroups birds (of the migratory sort) and merchants is only
tentative. Could the term
santeri
used in classical Malay literature with a possible connotation of "wandering" be
a reminiscence of this "migratory" trait of sea-going merchants (see above note 27)?
39
Tan
Yeok
Song, 'The Sri
Vijayan
inscription of Canton (AD 1079),"
Journal of Southeast
Asian History
5,2 (1964):
17-24.
52
Pierre-Yves
Manguin
merchants in harbor-centered polities. This in turn further confirms the analysis offered
here.
The exact nature of these stories that I have, for convenience sake, called the Dang
Puhawang tales should at this
stage
be examined in more detail. As told in available litera-
ture (oral as
well
as written), they appear to belong to two genres: chronicles of the
babad,
sejarah,
or
hϊkayat
type (therefore a local "historical" genre) and plain folk-tales (the latter
closer to an oral, more popular tradition, but having nevertheless been transformed while
passing into a written form). In whichever literary genre they have been transmitted to us,
the
underlying motifs
always
relate to that event of momentous importance for the narrator,
i.e. the foundation of the polity he is telling us about. This is an event which can only
happen
once in his story, which is a "history" of that particular polity. I therefore
believe
that
such tales should be interpreted as desacralized, transformed political myths of trade-
oriented
pesίsir
states. Their function would have been to elicit the legitimacy of the ruler's
power and, as far as the Dang Puhawang motif is concerned, to clarify the position of a spe-
cific social group, that of the merchants, within the society.
40
The episode of the
Babad
Bule-
leng,
possibly
the most elaborate and eloquent of those we found, no doubt points in that
direction.
41
The court rituals that may have been associated with such myths appear to have
long disappeared in the societies under consideration. But the association of the
"fully
laden" or "stranded ship" motifs with textiles that remained until recently
very
much part
of state or rank-related rituals is another indication of the origins of such tales.
Ceramics are often mentioned among the goods obtained after the competition
described in the tales (where they usually appear as
piring
or
piring
panjang).
The use of
imported ceramic dishes in a variety of court rituals, as
well
as in the decoration of buildings
found in harbors along the Javanese
pesisir,
has been routinely but loosely associated with
past overseas trade. However, when attention is paid to the constant reference to such
ceramics in
jong
sarat
cargoes, a close correlation with the popular tales quoted above is
inescapable. Gifts of ceramics loom large in foreign relations of Southeast Asian polities
with overseas powers, mainly China. To quote
just
one example, the
Hikayat Banjar
lists
among other
gifts
brought back by an embassy to China, "a thousand large
bowls,
a thou-
sand small
bowls,
a thousand plates of various colours." It is remarkable in this context that
ceramics still used in rituals at various courts in Central or
pesisir
Java, as
well
as in other
islands (Sulawesi, Kalimantan, Maluku, Mindanao, etc.) are consistently said to be ancient
40
On the historical origins of tales and the transformation of myths into profane tales or "histories," see C. Levi-
Strauss,
Anthropologie
structurale
deux
(Paris: Plon, 1973), particularly chapters 8 (an analysis of Propp's
Morpholo-
gie du conte)
and 14 ("Comment meurent les mythes?"); VJ.A.
Propp,
Les
racines historiaues
du
conte
merveilleux
(Paris:
Gallimard, 1983); G. Condominas, "Le souverain epoux de son peuple: variations madecasses sur un
theme
malais," in
Variant
Views: Five
Lectures
from
the
Perspective
of the "Leiden Tradition" in
Cultural
Anthropology,
ed.
HJ.M. Claessen (Leiden: ICA Publicatie No. 84,1989), pp.
39ff
("La triade mythe, ethnologie, histoire"); P. E.
Josselin De Jong,
Ruler and Realm:
Political
Myths in Western
Indonesia
(Amsterdam and Oxford: Mededelingen der
Koninklijke Nerderlandse Akademie van Wetenschapen, afd. Letterkunde, Deel 43/1,1980); P. E. Josselin De
Jong,
"Myth and non-Myth," in
Man, Meaning and History,
ed. R. Schefold, J. W. Scholl, and J. Tennekes (The
Hague:
VKI89,
1980), pp. 109-28.
41
Worsley, when editing the text, understood it as such
(Babad
Buleleng,
p. 25); Guermonprez ("Rois divins," pp.
44-45, 50-51) concurs in his study of Balinese perceptions of kingship: he writes about a "prosperity contract"
between the ruler and his people.
The
Merchant
and the
King
53
imported
pieces, and, in places (Imogiri), more precisely
gifts
from foreign rulers.
42
Having
some of these ceramics inlaid into the
walls
of important buildings must have been
tanta-
mount
to making a statement akin to
that
conveyed by the Dang Puhawang tales, or better
to
"illustrate" such a statement.
43
Foreign textiles also appear prominently in
lists
of goods
traded
or received from overseas and we also know how important they were in rank-
related and other rituals. Goods acquired in shipments from overseas were thus naturally
incorporated
into the
sign
system of the society
that
produced the
"fully
laden junk" tales.
The
existence of such trade-biased political myths underscores the fact
that
commerce
played a prominent role in the early formative
stages
of coastal, harbor-centered political
systems. Since what myths describe is a process—not an event—we are
left
with the prob-
lem of chronology. Is it possible, from the evidence at hand, to provide these myths with
some sort of chronological depth, i.e. with a measure of referentiality to historical events? Is
the
process explained by the myth a recent one,
that
would for instance have taken place
only during the fifteenth-seventeenth century economic boom of Southeast
Asia?
If so, this
would substantiate the emergence of a new mercantile ethos in association with—as often
claimed—this modern "age of commerce."
44
Or has this process been central to local socie-
ties from much earlier times?
The
fact
that
practically no referential readings are available for pre-modern times may
be only a reflection of the extreme scarcity—both quantitative and qualitative—of pre-
fifteenth century sources
that
may be of use in textual interpretations. In no way does this
paucity of sources allow us to conclude
that
the emergence of the Dang Puhawang motif is
contemporary
with the
first
texts
that
include the above tales. Indeed, I have quoted earlier
in
this paper a few
first
and early second millennium C.E. references
that
fit in closely with
the
motifs in the tales. That of the Kan-to-li ruler's "dream" about trade and associated
wealth is particularly relevant in this context. This in
turn
points to the earliness of the
process explained in such myths. I also identified two specific clusters of transformations
undergone by the motifs
that
can be traced down to the fifteenth-sixteenth century period
(which corresponds to trade expansion and to the rise of Islamic consciousness): the Sam
Po/Zheng
He variation and the shift of the legitimization process towards Mecca and
Islamic values. Such transformations can only have been initiated when the producing soci-
eties further elaborated on their myths, generating a new set of referents within a pre-coded
narrative. The myth must therefore have antedated this elaboration and cannot merely be a
by-product of this recent "age of commerce."
45
However, for such a conclusion to be
given
a firmer recognition, one would need to
investigate the relationship of the above motifs with seemingly comparable ones
that
appear
42
S. Adhyatman,
Antique
ceramics
found
in
Indonesia,
various uses
and
origins
(Jakarta: The Ceramic Society of
Indonesia, 1981), pp.
142ff.,
describes in detail the traditional use of ceramics in a
variety
of rituals as
well
as in
decoration. For the
Hikayat
Banjar
passage,
see Ras,
Hikayat
Banjar,
pp. 258-59.
^
Surviving
buildings that bear testimony to this practice are mainly religious—the burial complex of Sunan
Bonang at Tuban, that of Sunan Gunung Jati at Cirebon, etc.—but texts point to a much broader
usage
of this
type of decor in court builclings: in the
Serat
Arok,
Vietnamese ceramics
(piring
Koci)
are
said
to have decorated
the
palace of the
adipati
of Surabaya; S. Robson, 'The Serat
Arok,"
Archipel
20 (1980): 293.
44
D. Lombard, "Le sultanat malais comme modele socio-economique," in
Marchands
et
hommes
d'affaires asiaticfues
dans
VOcean
Indien et la Mer de
Chine, 13e-20e
siέcles,
ed. J. Aubin and D. Lombard (Paris: Editions de ΓEHESS,
1987), pp. 117-28; A. Reid,
Southeast
Asia
in the Age of
Commerce,
1450-1680, Volume
One:
The Lands
below
the Winds
(New Haven and London:
Yale
University Press, 1988); A. Reid, "An 'Age of Commerce' in Southeast
Asian
History,"
Modern
Asian
Studies
24,1 (1990): 1-30.
54
Pierre-Yves Manguin
to be found in other, mainly Eastern Indonesian perceptions of similar or less elaborate
exchange systems.
46
1 would submit as a working hypothesis that these myths could possi-
bly be generated when the economy of a society crosses over the border between simple
forms of exchange—restricted to kin-ordered, alliance, or tributary modes—and wider
ranging networks in closer connection with market forces and, ultimately, with world
economies. Jan Wisseman Christie convincingly argued that an active participation in inter-
regional and later international trade networks would have been at the origin of state forma-
tion process in the Melaka Straits and Northern Javanese
pesisir
as early as the turn of the
first millennium CE.
47
The dramatic broadening of the
espace social
brought about by such a
direct involvement in far-ranging trade networks would then naturally have given birth to
myths that established an explicit relationship between sea-going merchants, trade, and the
founding of a viable polity.
45
These variations on the older Dang Puhawang theme may well have been conscious manipulations for politi-
cal use by social participants; on such manipulations, see Josselin de Jong, "Myth and non-Myth/' p. 115.
46
Comments on an earlier version of this paper suggested a relationship between the "cargo" in the
jong sarat
motif and cargo cults of Melanesia. I believe this is only a superficial resemblance. Nowhere in the Puhawang
myth is there a messianic connotation (despite the fact that messianic or millenarian movements are common in
Indonesia). The acquisition of the "cargo" is only one among many other prerequisites for state formation and
development in Southeast Asia. This acquisition is not thought of as a means to obtain "wealth" comparable to
that of a dominant force (the intruding "whites" in the Melanesian cargo cult). Finally, the Puhawang myth is in
no way central to the formation of a full-fledged cult. A reverse proposition may, however, be conceivable: the
modern cargo cult may actually have evolved on a favorable terrain where myths comparable to those of South-
east Asia would have been present.
47
Christie, 'Trade and State Formation."