Now, friend, let me tell you about the dying of things.
Not the quick, merciful kind of dying—the heart attack at the kitchen table,
the semi that runs the red light—but the slow, grinding death that comes like
cancer, eating away at the good tissue until there’s nothing left but the
memory of what used to be whole.
The fifteenth century, they say. The scholars with their
wire-rimmed glasses and their tenure-track certainties will tell you that’s
when the Majapahit Kingdom began its long, agonizing slide into the dark. But
dying—real dying—doesn’t start with a date on some dusty calendar. It starts
with betrayal. It starts with the kind of hate that gets passed down like a
family recipe, one bitter generation feeding it to the next.
Picture this: Hayam Wuruk is dead. The great king, gone to
whatever place great kings go when the last breath rattles out of their lungs.
And what do his people do? Do they mourn? Do they come together like decent
folks might, maybe light a candle and say a prayer?
Hell, no.
They go to war. The Paregreg War, they called it, though I
doubt many of the poor bastards bleeding out in the mud knew the fancy name
historians would give to their suffering. Brother against brother, cousin
against cousin—the kind of family feud that makes the Hatfields and McCoys look
like a Sunday school picnic.
Now, there’s this fellow, Hasan Djafar—probably a good man,
probably loves his wife and feeds his dog—and he’s written a book about all
this. The End of Majapahit, he calls it, and friend, isn’t that just the
most cheerful goddamn title you ever did hear? Djafar, he’s got theories. He
says it wasn’t the Islamic folks from Demak who brought down the kingdom. No
sir. It was the hate eating away from the inside, like termites in the
foundation of an old house. You don’t notice them until the whole place comes
crashing down around your ears.
But here’s where it gets interesting—and by interesting, I
mean the kind of creepy-crawly fascinating that makes your skin prickle like
you’re being watched from the woods. Because kingdoms, real kingdoms, they don’t
just disappear. Oh, the scholars and the Dutch fellows with their neat
little theories, they wanted to believe in clean endings. Pack up the refugees,
ship them off to Bali, close the book, and call it a day.
But the thing about the dead, friend, is they don’t always
stay buried.
You want proof? Drive yourself up to Mount Lawu—if you’re
the adventurous type, if you don’t mind the feeling that something’s watching
you from between the trees. There’s temples up there. Sukuh Temple, Cetho
Temple, and a whole string of stepped pyramids climbing up that mountain like
broken teeth in a skull. The local folks, they’ll tell you stories about ruwat—purification
rituals, cleansing ceremonies. The kind of thing people do when they’re trying
to wash away sins that won’t wash clean.
And the script on those old stones? It matches the writing
they used in East Java, back when Majapahit was still breathing. Same
handwriting, you might say. Same spirit, maybe. Like the kingdom didn’t die at
all—just changed its clothes and moved to a different neighborhood.
There’s this priest, see. Danghyang Nirartha, they called
him. Now, every good story needs a mysterious stranger, and this fellow fits
the bill like a custom-made coffin. Came from Majapahit, they say, studied at
Penataran Temple until something went wrong. Way wrong. The kind of wrong that
involves a king’s wife and accusations that follow a man like smoke.
So what does he do? He runs. Crosses the water to Bali,
where King Waturenggong takes him in like a stray cat. And this priest, this
refugee from a dying kingdom, he becomes something special. Spiritual teacher
to the king. Power behind the throne. The kind of influence that lasts long
after the man himself is nothing but bones and whispers.
But here’s the kicker—and friend, this is where it gets
downright spooky. The remnants of Majapahit didn’t all flee east to Bali like
good little refugees. Some of them went west, into Central Java. They set up
shop right under the noses of the Islamic kingdoms, in places like Mount
Ungaran, where there’s this old pool called Promasan. The locals used it for
centuries, from the old Mataram days right through to when Majapahit was
gasping its last.
These weren’t people running from change, you understand.
These were people who looked change in the eye and said, “We were here first.”
They kept their old ways, their old gods, their old stories. Lived practically
next door to Demak, the Islamic kingdom that was supposed to have wiped them
out.
Bujangga Manik, they called one of their manuscripts.
Written in the 1400s by some wandering scholar who climbed Mount Merbabu and
found it crawling with wise men from the fallen kingdom. Studying, teaching,
keeping the old knowledge alive like a fire in a cave.
So tell me, friend—when does a kingdom really die? When the
last king breathes his last? When the capital burns? When the history books
close the chapter and file it away under “Ancient Civilizations, Defunct”?
Or does it die only when the last person stops believing in
what it used to be?
Because if that’s the case, then Majapahit might not be dead
at all. It might just be sleeping, like the kingdom in those old fairy tales.
Waiting for the right prince, the right kiss, the right moment to open its eyes
and remember what it used to be.
And sometimes, friend, late at night when the wind blows
through those old temples on Mount Lawu, the locals swear they can still hear
it breathing.
That’s the thing about the dead. They’re not always as
dead as we’d like them to be.
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