The Shadow Kingdom: Sunda’s Dark Emergence

 

There’s a place in western Java where history went to die, or maybe just to hide. The Kingdom of Sunda—or Pajajaran as the locals whisper—it’s like one of those old photographs you find in your grandma’s attic, the edges all burned away, the faces faded into something that might be memory or might be nightmare.

Nobody knows the whole truth. That’s what keeps me up at night.

Compared to the tidy little historical trail left by those kingdoms in Central and East Java—Jesus, those places have breadcrumbs a blind man could follow—Sunda’s story is busted up like an old mirror. You get fragments, sharp little shards that’ll cut you if you’re not careful, and most of those fragments are from after the damn thing was already gone. Try making sense of that, why don’t ya?

Hasan Djafar—poor bastard’s spent his life chasing ghosts—says there are maybe fifteen inscriptions left. Fifteen. And some of those? Can’t even read them anymore. The writing’s worn away like tire tracks after a hard Maine rain.

Worse, the written history of Sunda is tangled up with stories passed down from grandpa to grandson, father to son. Stories change. They stretch and twist. They grow teeth.

The oldest thing we’ve got that mentions “Sunda” as an honest-to-God kingdom is something called the Kebon Kopi II inscription. Found in Bogor. Carved in 932 AD. That’s about when things in Europe were going to hell, when the Dark Ages had everyone by the throat. The inscription talks about power changing hands, from someone called Rakryan Juru Pangambat to the “King of Sunda.” But here’s the kicker—it’s written in Old Malay. Some folks, Djafar included, figure that means it came from the Srivijaya empire.

You gotta wonder: what kind of king needs someone else to announce their coronation?

Then, a hundred years later, another breadcrumb appears—the Sanghyang Tapak inscription, discovered in Sukabumi Regency. Four stone fragments with writing that might as well be hieroglyphics to most of us. This one was issued by someone calling himself King Sri Jayabhupati in 1030 AD. “King of Sunda,” he claimed. Bold words from a man no one seems to remember.

The inscription marks off a sacred area called Sanghyang Tapak—a river and two big stones. Jayabhupati declared that nobody, and I mean nobody, was allowed to fish in that river. Makes you wonder what was in there, doesn’t it? What swam beneath those dark waters that a king needed to protect… or contain?

This Jayabhupati character—he’s about as substantial as morning mist. Saleh Danasasmita thinks he might not have even existed. The only place his name appears is on that one inscription. Nowhere else. Not a single Sundanese source mentions him. It’s like finding a photograph of a stranger in your family album.

Danasasmita points out something else that’ll make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up: the inscription is all wrong. The language, the script, the format—pure Javanese. Like someone pretending to be something they’re not. And that title—Jayabhupati—it’s straight out of the Hindu Vaishnava playbook that was all the rage in eastern Java back then.

God knows what was really happening. Maybe this Jayabhupati had connections to the Ishana dynasty over in eastern Java, under the protection of King Airlangga. Maybe he was just a pretender. Or maybe something darker.

Now comes the weird part. We jump ahead almost five centuries—that’s longer than America has existed, folks—to a manuscript called the Carita Parahyangan. And suddenly, the fog begins to clear. A little.

According to this manuscript, the Kingdom of Sunda stood alongside the Kingdom of Galuh since before the 8th century AD. There’s this figure, Sanjaya, who’s supposedly descended from the founder of Galuh and married the daughter of Tarusbawa from Sunda. Some researchers, like Agus Aris Munandar, believe this Sanjaya is the same Maharaja Sanjaya mentioned in the Canggal inscription from 732 AD, the King of Ancient Mataram.

Imagine that—the founder of Ancient Mataram might have been the one who brought Sunda and Galuh together. Like a marriage that binds warring families. We all know how those usually end.

Here’s where it gets really interesting. Djafar suggests that Sunda and Galuh were originally just vassals of Tarumanagara. They existed in the interior, away from the coast where Tarumanagara held power. But when Srivijaya attacked Tarumanagara, weakening it like a wounded animal, Sunda and Galuh rose up from the shadows.

And when Srivijaya couldn’t hold onto western Java anymore? The power went back to Sunda and Galuh. The empire strikes back, you might say.

There’s one more twist in this dark tale. Danasasmita thinks the mysterious Jayabhupati from the Sanghyang Tapak inscription might actually be the same person as Rakeyan Dharmasiksa, mentioned in the Carita Parahyangan.

Dharmasiksa is the only King of Sunda directly tied to Vishnu in the manuscript. And he’s known for building sacred areas—just like the one mentioned in Jayabhupati’s inscription.

If Danasasmita is right, then what Jayabhupati or Dharmasiksa was doing wasn’t just religious observation. No, it was something more primal, more desperate. It was an attempt to reclaim power after foreign occupation—to rebuild what was broken.

And in the dark places of history, in the shadows between what we know and what we fear, sometimes the things we build become monsters of their own.

Sometimes, they’re waiting for us still.