Yajna

“ Old Chinese residents have told us the legend of the golden image, which for them really lives.
Our land is full of mysticism, of fairy tales, and of legends. You have certainly heard many times of the enviable calmness with which the Javanese meets the most frightful blows of destiny. It is Tekdir — foreordained, they say, and are submissive. The fate of every man is determined, even before he sees the light of life. Happiness and misery are meted out to him before his birth. No man may turn away that which God has decreed. ”

“ The ideal Javanese girl is silent and expressionless as a wooden doll, speaking only when it is necessary, and then with a little whispering voice which can hardly be heard by an ant; she must walk foot before foot and slowly like a snail, laugh silently without opening her lips; it is unseemly for the teeth to show, that is to be like a clown.
Ni sinned every second.
A dull, monotonous, slow mode of life began for her. Day after day passed wearily away amid the same occupations, and the same people. Sometimes there would be a bright spot in those first dark days, a visit from Letsy. ”

“ It is that loveliest hour when the Javanese, tired from the hard day's work, seeks rest in song, dreaming all his cares away, wholly lost in the shining far-away past, whither his song leads him. "The Javanese are a people who live in the past," a young friend of ours says rightly. "They are lost in the blissful dreams of their eternal sleep." That is true, but we are alive, we must live; and life always goes forward. ”

“ Stella, I wish that you could read it. You must know that many of the native rulers rejoice at the action of the Government. The Javanese nobles are in favour with the Government here and in the Motherland, and everything possible is done to help them, and to make them blossom to perfection.
The aristocracy sees with sad eyes how sons of the people are educated, and often even elevated to their ranks by the government because of knowledge, ability and industry. Sons of the people go to European schools and compare favourably in every respect, with the high and honourable sons of the noble. ”

“ Towards four o'clock, they reappear, and again repair to the kali or the canal for a plunge into the tepid water. Cigarettes are lit, sirih-leaves cut up and neatly rolled into a quid and some friendly conversation is indulged in. In fine weather games are played.
The behaviour of Javanese at play is one of the things which strike most strongly upon the Northerner's observation. There is nothing here of that vociferous enthusiasm which characterises our young barbarians at play—no shouts of exultation or defiance, no applause, no derision, no cries, no quarrelling or noisy contest. ”

“ He believed in a force deep-hidden in the things of India, in the nature of Java, in the climate of Labuwangi, in the conjuring—as he continued to call it—which sometimes makes the Javanese cleverer than the European and gives him the power, a mysterious power, not to release himself from the yoke, but to cause illness, lingering illness, to plague and harass, to play the ghost most incredibly and hideously: a hidden force, a hidden power, hostile to our temperament, our blood, our bodies, our souls, our civilization, to all that seems to us the right thing to do and be and think. ”

“ So much that seems to us today to be absolutely impossible, appears tomorrow as an accomplished fact. The Javanese are a nation filled with memories and fairy tales, in dreams and fairy tales the most wonderful things happen, and my heart which is Javanese through and through, holds fast to the illusion that there can still be miracles, even as there were in the far distant past. ”

“ An European or a native, therefore, who has been accustomed to the polite and elegant manners of the Javans, or with the general courtesy of the Malayus, is struck with the unceremonious, rude, and uncivilized habits of the people of Báli.
In the arts they are considerably behind the Javans, though they seem capable of advancing rapidly. They are happily not subjected to a frame of government so calculated to repress their energies, or to waste their resources. They are now a rising people. ”

“ We Javanese cannot live without flowers and sweet odours. The native flowers in their splendour awaken in me a world of thought and feeling whenever I breathe in their perfume. Days afterwards it lives in my memory, and I feel the strong Javanese blood coursing through my veins. Oh soul of my people, that used to be too beautiful, that was full of kindness, poetry, gentleness and modesty—what has become of you? What have time and slothfulness not made of you? ”

“ I have now both personal happiness and also my work for my ideal.
I know that you will both be pleased to know that your little Javanese friend of the turbulent spirit is now anchored in a safe haven. I wish that you could see me in my new surroundings. You know how little I cared for luxury and worldly position; they would have no value in my eyes, were it not that it is my husband who gives them to me. But they are means by which I may reach my goal more easily. The Javanese are deeply loyal to their nobles. Everything that their chiefs desire is readily accepted by them. ”

“ The literature of Java is mainly, but not entirely, concerned with the distant past, when the quiet tide of Eastern life had received as yet no disturbing impulse from the stream of Mohammedan and European conquest. This Hindu Javanese literature tells us of a people far advanced in the essentials of civilization, and reveals the existence of a social system which, though undoubtedly primitive, was [224] at the same time complete and homogeneous. From the date of the Mohammedan conquest onwards, that is to say, for the last four centuries, the national life has been directed by alien forces. ”

“ The whole conversation was carried on in the Malay language, as it is the Dutch policy not to teach any native their own tongue.
The Javanese, like the natives of India, are fond of dancing spectacles, or notches; and when a "company" assembles in the street, or in any compound or yard of a house, it arrests the steps of every passer-by. Hearing one day the sound of the drum and other instruments outside the gate, our friends at our request kindly sent a servant to invite the players in. ”

“ It was not Hanoman, the deliverer of Sita, who troubled the repose of Ravana’s garden, but the raksasas and raksasis who kept her in bonds, and there are two solutions of the Dutch East Indian problem, independent of the issue celebrated in the Ramayana and both suggested in the ornament of Java’s temples: the devourer Time destroying all with his sharp teeth, and the lion, or tiger, to preserve the local colour, master of the fleeting moment, with a garland of flowers in his mouth, image of the clouded present holding out the promise of a brighter future. ”

“ And it was the misery that I saw, even in my childish years, that first awakened in me the desire to fight against these time-honoured customs, and substitute justice for old tradition.
Our work will have a two-fold aim, first to help to enlighten all our people, and secondly to raise up our sisters, so that they may live and be treated as human beings. To all of you who have sympathy for Java, and the Javanese, we send an urgent prayer—help us to realize our ideals; they mean so much to our people and to our sex. ”

“ But, whereas I freely confess that the inner life of the Javanese has remained hidden from me, their outward existence has become familiar enough. The Javanese practically live out-of-doors. They take their bath in the river; perform their toilet under some spreading warigin tree, hanging a mirror as big as the hand on the rugged stem; and squat down to their meal by the roadside. After nightfall, dark figures may be discerned around the stalls of fruit-vendors, fantastically lit up by the uncertain flame of an oil-wick. ”

“ It is so often said that we are more European than Javanese in our hearts. Sad thought! We know that we are impregnated with European ideas and feelings—but the blood, the Javanese blood that flows live and warm through our veins, can never die. We feel it in the smell of incense and in the perfume of flowers, in the tones of the gamelan, in the sighing of the wind through the tops of the cocoa-nut trees, the cooing of the turtle doves, the whistling of the fields of ripened rice, in the pounding of the haddi-blokken [2] at the time of the rice harvest. ”

“ Amid the many glories of Javanese landscape, the poetic glamour of these palm-girt levels lingers longest in the memory, for the world-famed picture known as "The Plains of Heaven" might have been inspired by the haunting loveliness of these rolling uplands. Our railway carriage contains a native Regent, his principal wife, and a pretty daughter. Javanese princes are made ostensible rulers of native districts, but associated with Dutch Residents as "Elder Brothers," who may be more accurately termed compulsory advisers. ”

“ Javanese “the stranger people.” The glories of the Hindu empire are declared by the magnificent ruins so lately uncovered, but the splendor of the Mohammedan empire barely survives in name in the strangely interesting city of the susunhan set in the midst of the plain of Solo—a plain which M. Désiré de Charnay described as “a paradise which nothing on earth can equal, and neither pen, brush, nor photography can faithfully reproduce.” ”

“ That army of the Sri Jaya being established, the Ratú formerly considered beneficial to the country, giving firmness to the country of Kedíri. What the Sri Jaya says is certain; all the people are glad; a large and faithful army is established there.
Be cautious but firm; the Sri Maharaja cannot injure the descendants of Prabu; great their wisdom, impatient their sway, extensive their power. Young men fearless and bold; the army followed, and were taken by the enemy, because the Sri Nara Nata so intended. Sri Kerta Najura, when he died, died like a Buda man. ”

“ They speak only of Sunda and its port Bantam; and they mention a certain prince, Fateléhan, as completing the Mohammedan conquest in 1524. Raffles, however, following the chronicles, focusses the overthrow of the Hindu supremacy in the capture of the city of Majapahit in 1478 A.D. In spite of the traditions which speak of a long period of fighting, it is probable that the conversion of the Javanese to the new religion was gradual and peaceable, being in the main the result of commerce. The temples, the head-quarters of the old religion, show no traces of violence. ”

“ My friends here say that we shall act wisely if we do nothing but sleep for a hundred years. When we awakened, Java would be more as we would have her.
"Work among the people of India" I know. Mevrouw Zuylen-Tromp sent Father the book, hoping to arouse his interest. But he would rather interest himself in a book about the native woman; I had thought of that myself. I have much to tell about Javanese women, but I am still too young, and have had so little, so pitifully little, experience with life. The cause for which I would speak is to me too earnest and too sacred to be approached lightly. ”

“ You see that the Javanese are a superstitious people fond of myths and fairy tales. It is said that the children with which the Sultan of Mantangan blesses the childless, will all be girls. Poor childless ones! We shall have to look for a holy tomb that will bless the world with boys, for there are all too many women in the world! ”

“ As long as they are not dying—and one sometimes doubts if Javanese die at all—all is well with them. The race has a special genius for happiness, the free gift of those same inscrutable powers who have inflicted industry, moral sense, and the overpowering desire for clothes upon the unfortunate nations of the North.
Following the left-ward bend of the canal, past the sluice, and the Post Office,—the most hideous structure by the bye that ever disfigured a decent street—one comes to the bridge of Kampong Bahru; and, crossing it, suddenly finds oneself in what seems another quarter of the globe. ”

“ We have great hopes that her husband will support her; at least, he was much in favour of the plans of the Heer Abendanon.
He is devoted to his little wife, has a cheerful, energetic disposition and a sympathetic heart. He maintains a whole multitude of poor families; that is pleasant, do you not think so? But many Javanese do that; they have much consideration for their poor neighbours. There is hardly a single native chief who has not one or more poor families living in his house, or on his support outside. It is not for nothing that India is noted for its hospitality. ”

“ We are astonished sometimes, own children as we are of the country, at the cleverness of our fellow countrymen. Things of which one could never imagine anything could be made, they express charmingly. Name something in the dark, give out a subject at random, and a simple Javanese will immediately make a rhyme that astonishes by its aptness and clearness. This facility belongs peculiarly to our Eastern people. It is a pity that when the precious gifts were meted out, your sisters should have been neglected. ”

“ The Javanese are numerous, and make good servants and sailors. Some of the small merchants and many of the clerks are Portuguese immigrants from Malacca; and traders from Borneo, Sumatra, Celebes, Bali, and other islands of the Malay Archipelago are scattered among the throng. The washermen and grooms are nearly all Bengalees. Jews and Arabs make money and keep it, and are, as everywhere, shrewd and keen, and only meet their equals among the Chinese. ”