You know how it is with stories about old things. The really
old things. The kind that have been touched by so many hands that you can
almost feel the weight of time itself pressing down on them, like the air
before a summer storm in a backwoods town off Route 66. This is that kind of
tale.
In the belly of the 19th century, when America was tearing
itself apart in a Civil War and most folks around here still thought the world
was flat as a pancake on Sunday morning, there lived a farmer on the outskirts
of a place called Bekasi. Kebantenan, they called it. Sounds exotic, doesn’t
it? Like something you’d find scrawled in one of those leather-bound journals
hidden in some professor’s attic at Yale University.
(I shit you not, this actually happened.)
This farmer—nobody bothered to write down his name, poor
bastard—kept something in his ramshackle house that would’ve made any museum
curator cream their khakis: four metal plates inscribed with ancient Sundanese
script. The kind of thing Indiana Jones would kill for. The kind of thing that,
in the wrong hands, might just kill you.
The farmer didn’t have a goddamn clue what those metal
plates said. Not a single blessed word. In the Notulen van de Algemeene en
Directie-vergaderingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en
Wetenschappen (try saying that three times fast after a few shots of Jack),
they wrote that he just hung those plates up in his house. Like you might hang
a picture of Jesus or a faded photograph of your dead grandma. A talisman to
ward off evil—which, if you’ve lived as long as I have, you know never quite
works the way you hope.
Word travels, even in places where people still shit in
holes and die of things we cure with a pill nowadays. Eventually, this little
curiosity reached the ears of Raden Saleh, a hotshot Indonesian artist. You
probably never heard of him, but he painted this famous piece called The
Arrest of Pangeran Diponegoro—think of him as the Norman Rockwell of
Indonesia, only with a hell of a lot more tragedy in his brush strokes.
Saleh wasn’t stupid. He knew treasure when he heard about
it. So he hauled ass straight to that farmer’s door, wallet fat and ready. But
here’s where it gets interesting—the farmer wouldn’t sell. Not for any price.
In that way country folk have about things that belonged to their
great-granddaddy, he said it was taboo to sell items from his ancestors.
(Taboo. Remember that word. It’s important in stories like
this one.)
Two years crawled by, slow as cancer, and then Saleh got
wind that the plates had somehow fallen into the hands of a man with a name
like something out of a Charles Dickens novel: E.R.J. de Kuyper, the Assistant
Resident of Meester-Cornelis (now called Jatinegara, but that’s neither here
nor there). According to the records—and ain’t it funny how records can lie
without saying a single untrue thing—de Kuyper bought those plates because some
smooth-talking son of a bitch convinced him they were proof of land ownership
for a place called Cipamingkis.
(They weren’t. They were something else entirely. Something
older. Something darker.)
Eventually, Saleh got his hands on those plates. Kept them
until he died, when they found their way to the Bataviaasch Genootschap, which
is now the National Museum. Museums are funny places, aren’t they? Filled with
dead things that aren’t quite dead. Things that watch you from behind glass
cases when the lights go down and the night watchman is nodding off in his
chair.
Those four copper plates became known as the Kebantenan
Inscriptions. Each one covered with four to eight lines of script that looked
like chicken scratch to most folks but contained secrets older than the hills.
The kind of secrets that sleep, but never die.
A fella named K.F. Holle was the first poor bastard to read
them. I bet he had nightmares afterward, the kind that wake you up at three in
the morning with your heart trying to punch its way out of your chest. The
problem was, by the time Holle got his scholarly mitts on them, the engravings
were faint as whispers, the surface weathered by time and God knows what else.
Fast forward to 2021—Christ, doesn’t time fly when you’re
not paying attention?—and two more scholars, Aditia Gunawan and Arlo Griffiths,
took another crack at deciphering these metal mysteries. According to them (and
who am I to argue?), those inscriptions dated back to the 15th century. A
missing link between other ancient writings found in places with names like
Kawali and Batu Tulis. Names that sound like incantations if you say them
right.
Here’s where the hair on the back of your neck should start
to rise, just a little.
The inscriptions mentioned a king: Sri Baduga Maharaja Ratu
Haji di Pakwan Pajajaran. Quite a mouthful, ain’t it? According to another
scholar, Saleh Danasasmita (no relation to our art collector friend), this king
was none other than the legendary King Siliwangi, revered by the Sundanese
people like Arthur is by the Brits or Elvis by Americans. A figure somewhere
between history and myth, ruling somewhere between the 14th and 15th centuries.
And what did these inscriptions say? What message echoed
across six hundred goddamn years to reach us?
Two royal decrees—piteket, they called them. First,
that Sri Baduga’s grandfather, a man with the imposing name of Niskala Wastu
Kancana, had passed down an edict through the generations: the sacred areas of
Sundasembawa and Jayagiri were exempt from taxes. Holy ground, you might say.
The kind of place where the veil between worlds grows thin at certain times of
the year.
The second decree, maybe issued later, gave detailed
boundaries for these sacred areas. Places with names that sound like secrets
whispered in the dark: Munjul, Cibakengkeng, Cihonje, Cimuncang. Can you feel
the weight of those names on your tongue? Try saying them aloud, I dare you.
And why did the king grant these special privileges?
Because—and I want you to pay attention to this part—he loved the wiku.
The hermit priests who studied religious knowledge. Kenaiṁ heman ḍi viku pun, the
inscription said. He loved the holy men who knew things ordinary folks weren’t
supposed to know.
(Always be wary of holy men who know too much, that’s what
my daddy used to say.)
The inscriptions also contained a genealogy of Sundanese
kings, proving the validity of an old manuscript called Carita Parahyangan.
According to this family tree, Sri Baduga was the son of the king of Galuh, a
man called Dewa Niskala—or Ningrat Kancana in the inscriptions—who made the
grave mistake of marrying a forbidden woman. A betrothed girl. The kind of sin
that echoes through generations.
But the most fascinating bits were about the taxes
themselves. Like peering through a keyhole into the daily life of ancient
Sunda. There was the calagara tax on marriages—because governments have
always found a way to make you pay for falling in love. The dongdang tax
on rice production—dongdang being a container for carrying food or gifts
during special events, something that evolved from necessity to tradition, the
way most traditions do.
And a tax on cotton. Think about that. Cloth production so
important that the state kept its thumb firmly on the scale. The tax collectors
came from the estuary areas, suggesting a system adapted to the geography of
the land. As if the river itself dictated how power flowed, from upstream to
downstream, an economic-political system that mirrored the very water they
depended on.
It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? About the things we build
our lives around. The systems we create. The powers we bow to. And what those
copper plates might really say, in the dead of night, when there’s no one
around to hear them whisper their ancient secrets.
I’ve told you this story as true as I know how. But here’s
the thing about old stories, about artifacts that survive when everything
around them has crumbled to dust: they’re patient. They wait. And sometimes,
just sometimes, they find ways to make themselves heard again.
Sleep tight, Constant Reader. And maybe check under your bed
before you turn out the light.
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