BY THE GLOW OF THE FOREST IN THE NIGHT
Kings die. In the Minangkabau matrilineal culture, the queen would decide which of her daughters would be her heir. The man who married her became king.†
Koreh decided to disrupt that process. It was an act of treason for which he would have to die if subdued. He took the crown of Iskandar Zulkarnain. To make it a job well done he took the queen’s daughter as well. She was the sole heir of the Bunda Kandung. If all had gone well, the Bunda Kandung would be the Queen’s Mother and would be called Permaisuri Iskandar Shah, a legendary recall of Roxana (Roxane), the daughter of Oxyartes, or Kida Hindi in the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals). According to legend she was spirited to Andalas (Sumatra) soon after the struggle for power ensued following Alexander’s death.
Koreh had taken Puti Reno Sari. That meant war. The path he had chosen led him and Kenaton into the forests of the night, into a stretch of darkness they could find neither sun nor moon to illumine, only fire. In the Parsi-Malay legend Iskandar had fought to conquer the world for the love of God and for peace, ‘to protect your life and your wife.’ [Khalid Husain, 1967, p.81] The duo had grown with the same good intentions. It was their culture, their inheritance from Iskandar Zulkarnain.
Iskandar had sent a letter to the ruler of Andalas (Sumatra) when he was poised to conquer the island. The ruler, Raja Ni’mat the son of Raja Basrah, quickly replied to tell him they belonged to the same religion, the monotheism of Abraham. An alliance was struck and Raja Ni’mat in his travels with Iskandar to the East and the West, saw for himself the fantastic scientific and technological achievements of the community of Yafat (Japeth), son of Noah. The community, it seemed, had already invented at that time precision robots capable of hundreds of movements. One of these could fly as a bird and as it flew it sprayed perfume on the king as he conferred in council. [see Khalid Husain, 1967, pp. 140-142]. That was neat!
The choice of civilization for Andalas was easy to make. Dutchmen in the colonies of Minangkabau were to report the use of machines to tap gold veins in the shafts dug in Limun, Batang Asai and Pengkalan Jambi. “Every man,” wrote William Marsden, “carries a small scale about him, and purchases are made with it [as low] as the weight of a grain or two of padi.” [Marsden, W. History of Sumatra, p. 171, quoted by Andaya, Barbara Watson, 1993, p. 152]
The rule of the game for that route of modernization and development was to maintain a stable centrality that would secure life and property against internal indiscipline and external enemies. But democratic and minority rights must be meticulously observed. Pagar Ruyung was about a democratic federation, not an authoritarian power resting on its haunches to feudally debauch itself with surplus wealth, on women or on boys, and on gigantic palaces and mausoleums.
The trouble now was Islam. It had come when it already had two faces, a Janus with one face cruelly distorted. That moral excellence of the prophetic period had long been moribund, issuing a contradiction that some found it hard to reconcile even till today. Fact is, the period from the Abbasid decline from the 10th century was characterized by lewd indulgences in the harem. One Caliph, al-Muqtadir (908-32), kept 11,000 Greek and Sudanese eunuchs. The Caliph al-Mutawakkil, was reported to have 4,000 concubines. [See Hitti, Philip K., 1970, p. 342]
But the references in Abbasid and Persian poetry to “beardless youths” Philip Hitti had taken to mean solely a wholesale inclination for pederasty† ought to be read as a popular Sufi metaphor too:
‘O thou who doth advise me, deny me not
Comely youths! The ‘metaphor” is the splendor
Of the sunlight of Truth! [Fuzuli, 1970, p. 25]
The idealism of the prophetic period of Islam in Arabia was no more than a popular romance by the time the religion had become a fashion with the Malay rulers. Ibn Khaldun made it clear we are not to expect anyone to compare with the prophets who were of a very special quality. By God’s Grace they conversed with the Angels and had special influences over the creatures of the Almighty. [see Ibn Khaldun, 1993, p.693] Solomon could harness the forces of the Jinn and he subjugated them. He could talk to birds and ants. [Qur’an: 27: 16-18]
After the onset of Islam in Sumatra both Palembang and Jambi soon became the lair of extraordinary opulence and greed about whom a Banjar ruler wrote,
‘The people in this country should not grow pepper as is done in Jambi and Palembang. They grow pepper for the money, to become wealthy. No doubt that in the end these countries will go to ruin. There will be rivalries and food will become expensive. The vapor of pepper is hot. The government will be thrown into disorder because the rural population (orang sakai) will not think highly of the townsfolk (orang kota). The functionaries from the capital will not be respected by the people in the rural areas who grow pepper. Let [the rural people] plant some ten or twenty plants only, just enough for private consumption.† [Hikayat Banjar, 1968, p. 264; see also Andaya, Barbara Watson, 1993, p. 91]
The richer they became the higher were the exactions they made on the Sakais. Rebellion was the natural reaction against the greed and the injustice.
Koreh and Kenaton absconded from the centrality of Minangkabau and must now contest for power. They had fled into the mountains with the crown, lugging a rich harvest of gold they took for the war-chest. The weight of that gold slowed them down. ‘The gold would fill seven perahu (boats) to the brim,’ said Batin Talib.
Equatorial mountains are predators. Under the canopy of the rainforest is a sublime wilderness, a scripted quiet enclosing defeat and death of unlicensed intruders. Jungle-clad mountains have such a variety of means and ways to defeat intruders it is indeed a marvel to observe, and ruthlessly insane to defy. They were ill-equipped to enter the rainforest over the mountains with the luggage. It was gold, no doubt, but it was glitteringly mad.
Taking that much of gold raised the risks to such a dimension and immensity the venture must bring in a high cost on resources they could ill-afford to deplete. They had with them only 200 able-bodied warriors, including Saheena and Puti Reno Sari who were accomplished archers.
The elephants would be too slow going uphill with that weight. Soon Pagar Ruyung would cut off all the rivers to Palembang, to Jambi or to the west coast. ‘Bury the gold,’ Saheena insisted. ‘Bury the gold and let Mira retrieve it.’ Mira was Kenaton’s cousin, the ruler of Palembang. He would later become the Father of the Semai, an Asli clan in Malaysia.
Koreh
The gold was buried, but the lost time could not be redeemed. It was Koreh who robbed the treasury of the gold. He took all, an act of the dreadful brashness of youth, the total confidence of a self-discovering sensuality which dismissed the environment as ineffectual simply and purely because of the feeling of becoming completely a man. He must have all that he could possibly take. Koreh had taken Puti Reno Sari, but she was willing, and desired him as much. That led him into the wondrous self-possessed conviction that the world of Minangkabau was his birth-right. He was cock-sure.
Now, deep in the rainforest of Bukit Barisan with most of the gold buried in the pattern of a Buddhist yantra, he dismissed the fear that he saw etched on the faces of his compatriots and retainers. The Pawang knew the terrain. He would have the Pawang draw a map for Mira. The gold would easily be recovered. Koreh was in the capture of a splendorous nuptial in the depth of the rainforest. After that rapture everything became to him surmountable.
The dreadful struck the youth in his waking dreams. In the encounters that ensued Saheena was to be darted in the neck as she stood with 20 men to secure the route for the others to escape.
The arm of Pagar Ruyung had reached them. The throne had to secure itself at any cost. The objective was to rescue Puti Reno Sari and recover the crown. The others were dispensable. They had chosen to war against the State. Without the Puti Reno, the queen could not become Bunda Kandung and continue her rule as the dowager.
Batin Talib raised his voice in the excitement. ‘Get to the river! Get to the river!’ he called out, gesticulating like he was there in the forest on Bukit Barisan in the midst of battle. In the cold of the night at Sungei Kiol the Batin’s excitement was infectious. Young or old the others would perk up, eyes bright, the sleepiness banished by the simple gesture of their Batin. ‘The river was their only chance. They were outnumbered more than a hundred to one,’ he declared.
A small pilot group had been sent to prepare for them the perahu (boats) they needed to get to the confluence with the Musi, and thence to Palembang. The distance wasn’t a couple of breaths away. Palembang was more than 180 kilometers downriver. Hope lay in Mira sensing the danger and reaching upstream into the hills with a force large enough to deter the troopers of Pagar Ruyung.
Primary rainforests have thick canopies beneath which only the hardy saplings grow. But as they approached the river the undergrowth became thicker. The perahus were there. Once they were by the river they set the bushes (belukar) ablaze, the smoke becoming their best defense. It gave them the space they needed to move downstream. But they waited for nightfall while two teams set aflame the belukar on both banks downriver.
Shadows of the forest hide the poisonous dart of the sumpit (blowpipe). Even the trained can hardly see it in its flight before it plunged into Saheena’s neck while she stayed behind to secure the passage to the river. The poison swiftly paralyzed her nerves. She fell, wildly convulsing like she was demented. The antidote the Pawang applied was of little use. The dart hit her jugular. The poison seized her heart and soon she was still. The jungle warfare was ready for the miraculous passion of the oppressed, burnished by the will for vengeance.
Kenaton kissed his beloved wife and gently placed her on the ground. As the dusk began to settle inside the forest, deadly shadows moved swiftly and silently to deal in the thirst of Malay vengeance. The forest was aglow with the burning bushes. The war had become an earnest surrealism of red fluids flashing in the hues reflected by the crackling fires. One by one they stalked the enemy and mercilessly killed them by patent passion of youths driven into a final detestation of oppression. When the night finally fell sullen Kenaton, Koreh and Puti Reno Sari were drenched in blood.
‘More than a thousand of the enemy lay dead. They were all our relatives,’ said Batin Talib.
The forest of Minangkabau shall dine. She had been served a banquet of blood and bodies. She could expect more. It was a war caused by a tradition of power that had willed to lease itself to a superior geopolitical force for continued survival, at the expense of its sons and daughters. The Bunda Kandung had said she would rather kill her children than let the tradition die (Biar mati anak, jangan mati Adat). But what was the will to conserve about? What was the tradition for?
The time for metaphysical rebellion had come. Retaining the freedom of conscience was imperative. ---© a. ghani ismail – 4 march 2008
Notes †
† Legend said the matrilineal tradition was derived from Alexander’s daughter by Roxana (Roxane) of Bactria. She was heir to her mother and became the ruler of Bactria and her dependencies. History does not have a record of that. This was a legendary account.
† Hitti had written, “Poets like abu-Nuwas did not disdain to give public expression to their perverted passions and to address the amorous pieces of their composition to “beardless young boys.” The prevalence of the sexual abuses in the palaces and among the ruling elite are not contested, but in Sufi poetry it is the metaphor of the youth that is here impressed. Abu Nuwas was an esteemed philosopher, mathematician and a Sufi as well.
† Dan djangan nagri kita ini bertanam sahang dagangan nagri, mantjari harta, saparti nagri Palembang dan nagri Djambi itu. Manakala nagri itu mendjadikan sahang, barang huabnja sahang itu panas. Maka adalah datang itu pitanah nagri itu dan parentrah pun huru-hara. Orang sakai pun banjak barani pada orang kota lamun s ahang didjadikan akan dagang mantjari harta. Adapun bertanam sahang itu kira-kira ampat lima rapun saorang-saorang itu, maka ada tjagar dimakan sadja…[Hikajat Banjar, 1968, p. 264]
References:
1. Andaya, Barbara Watson, To Live As Brothers, South Sumatra in the Seventeenth And Eighteenth Centuries. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1993
2. Fuzuli, Leyla And Majnun, trs Sofi Nuri, George & Unwin, London, 1970
3. Hitti, Philip K., A. History of the Arabs, 10th ed., Macmilan, London,1970
4. Ibn Khaldun, Mukadimah, trs. Dewan Bahasa Dan Pustaka, Kuala Lumpur, 1993
5. J.J. Ras, Hikajat Banjar, Bibliotheca Indonesia, Koninklijk Instituut, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1968.
0 comments:
Post a Comment