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A Sweet Voice Calling: Myths from the Indonesian and Melanesian Pacific
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19969 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1992 |
3,182 Words |
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Retold By Jan Knappert
Jan Knappert is a retired London University professor of
African and Asian languages; he now devotes his time to
writing. A thorough explanation of the origin of Basotho tales
and one folktale used to educate young chieflings appeared in
our last issue. |
Although Ferdinand Magellan is credited with being the first European captain to sail the Pacific Ocean (he did so in 1519), the Portuguese captain Antonio de Abreu had skirted that ocean's western edge eight years earlier while exploring the Spice Islands, now part of Indonesia. If only briefly, Abreu had entered an ocean that no European had seen before. Seven years before Magellan named it Oceano Pacifico, for its peaceful appearance, Vasco Nunez de Balboa had viewed the ocean from the Isthmus of Panama.
From Singapore to Panama, the Pacific stretches eight thousand miles. East of Singapore, where it is called the South China Sea, lies the vast island of Borneo. The southern two-thirds of this island of rain forests and rivers is part of Indonesia and is called Kalimantan. Little is known of the early history of Borneo, the third-largest island on earth. Some of the oldest peoples have been discovered here--among them, the Penan, who marry their own mothers and sisters. One of the earliest transcriptions of the Indian language Sanskrit was found, surprisingly, on Borneo; it dates from about A.D. 400. The chronicles of Kutai describe an early sultanate that stretched from the center of the island to its eastern shores. Other writings tell of the mythical city of Kauripan on Java, one of the most glorious cities in all of Nusantara (the Sanskrit name for the Indonesian archipelago).
The lands of the Dyak peoples lay between the Mendawai and Kapuas rivers in south-central Borneo. The Dyaks were forged from a cluster of tribes including the maritime Sea Dyaks and the Ngaju Dyaks.
Alexander in Kalimantan. It is written in the ancient chronicles of the kings of Kutai that Alexander the Great, to whom God had promised the whole earth as his kingdom, was on his way to China to claim that empire as his by divine right. While sailing through the islands of Insulinde, the archipelago now known as Indonesia, he was told that on the large island of Burunai (Borneo) there lived a maiden so beautiful that she was worthy of marrying a king. Alexander (known in Indonesia as Nabi Iskander) was convinced that he had to investigate the truth of these stories himself, so he ordered his captain to call at the port of Bandjarmasin.
Alexander was accompanied by his counselor al-Khidir, who was an expert in all the magic arts, and by his daughter Sekar Gading (Ivory Flower). They traveled upriver to the city of Negara, where King Jantam ruled in those days. There, in the king's residence of Kotawaringin (Figtree Town), the visitors were royally
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