Tenaga Dalam - Pukulan Cimande Pusaka

DJAKARTA
EX ‘PEARL OF THE EAST’
The following is a passage from the wonderful
book Magic and Mystics of Java by Nina Epton,
Octagon Press, ISBN 0-900860-39-1. The book is
a “must have” and is about one woman and her
search to find the “old ways”. It also contains rare
information on the Badui tribe who live in West
Java. There are only three sources that I have ever
seen on this elusive tribe, i.e. the 1817 book History
of Java by Thomas Ruffles, this book and a video
tape sold by Herman Suwanda - Survey 1 of Silat
in Java.
As we approached a larger island than the rest,
half-hidden by mist and dotted with smoky blue
pyramids-smoky and smoking, for Java’s
volcanoes are very much alive - I looked down a
little apprehensively, wondering whether I would
succeed in the quests I had set myself.
I had flown halfway round the world to wrest three
secrets from this lovely, little-known island. I
wished to see the ‘Invisible People’ - a remote
jungle tribe in West Java; I wished to probe into
ancient court ceremonial at the palace of the Sultan
of Jogjakarta, near the south coast, and I wished to
meet Javanese mystics and magicians. My friends
in Indonesia had already warned me that these
would be very difficult tasks to achieve.
Djakarta lies on the northern coast of Java; this is
the flattest and least interesting of her coasts and
unfortunately it is this side that confronts visitors
arriving from the West. All they see from the
aeroplane is a lead-coloured line of sand beaten by
waves seeping into a land as flat as Holland. The
Dutch settlers who came here in 1618 and founded
Batavia must have thought it strangely like their
homeland. Scattered clumps of coconut palms like
abandoned umbrellas are the only proof that this is
no northern territory.
The capital of Indonesia sprawled beneath the
aircraft-dirty white, almost treeless and
criss-crossed by Dutch-built canals. As we circled
lower I saw the lean form of a sedate Dutch
Reformed church set beside a park surrounded by
villas and bungalows. This used to be the Dutch
residential area in the old colonial days when
Batavia was still known as ‘the Pearl of the East’.
It is difficult to think of Batavia, and still less of
Djakarta, as a pearl -at least not from a scenic or
an architectural point of view. This name must have
been bestowed upon the capital as a symbol of the
wealth amassed there from the products of the
Indonesian archipelago: tea, coffee, tin, palm oil,
spices. Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and English
fought each other bitterly to get this lucrative trade,
so much so that even a saint like Francis Xavier,
who came here to save -heathen souls, could not
fail to remark how very rapacious we Christians
were.
The moment you land at Djakarta the hot, humid
atmosphere seizes you and strips away all energy.
None has described it with more admirable effect
than Lt. Stockdale, who traveled through Java in
1811:
‘Most of the people who live here and even many
of the rich who might be supposed to have attained
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