The Missing Punakawan

 

There’s something wrong with the Bambangan play behind the glass case at the Radya Pustaka Museum in Surakarta, and if you’re paying attention—really paying attention, the way you should when something whispers that the world has gone slightly cockeyed—you’ll notice it right away.

Three figures. Three punakawan—Semar, Gareng, and Petruk—standing in a row like soldiers at inspection, facing Raden Wijanarka, who was Arjuna’s boy. The story’s simple enough: young prince on a journey, gets stopped by these three in the middle of a forest. Nothing special. Nothing to write home about.

Except.

Except there should be four of them, you see. Four. Always four. The punakawan traveled together like the fingers on a hand, inseparable as breath from lung. So where the hell was Bagong?

Now, if you know anything about Javanese shadow puppetry—and most folks don’t, which is fine, there’s plenty of darkness in this world without borrowing from Java’s collection—you know the punakawan show up during the goro-goro segment. That’s the funny part, the comic relief that the dalang (that’s the puppet master, friend) uses to slip in all the moral lessons parents used to teach before television raised their kids for them. These characters served the Pandawa brothers, those legendary heroes from the Mahabharata, and they weren’t just servants. No sir.

They were philosophers dressed in motley. Guyon parikena, the Javanese called it—“humor that hits home.” The kind of truth that sneaks up on you while you’re laughing, then sinks its teeth into your conscience when you’re not looking.

Sam Abede Pareno wrote about it in 2013, and Paulus Heru Wibowo Kurniawan laid it out plain in his journal article: “Although the punakawan characters—Semar, Gareng, Petruk, and Bagong—are portrayed as servants and traveling companions of the Pandawa, they are often known as effective communicators for conveying messages, teachings, and social criticism.”

Translation: they told the truth when no one else had the stones to do it.

Bagong was Semar’s third adopted son—came after Gareng and Petruk. Born from Semar’s own shadow, which is the kind of origin story that should make the hairs on your neck stand up if you have any imagination at all. The incarnation of Batara Ismaya, commanded into being by Sage Manumanasa. His name came from Baghaa, which means “to rebel.”

And brother, that name fit him like a glove fits a hand.

Depending on where you were in Java, Bagong went by different names: Bawor in Banyumas, Carub or Astrajingga out in West Java, Mangundiwangsa in Pacitan, Besut over in East Java. A man—well, a puppet—with that many names is either very popular or very dangerous. Sometimes both.

Febri Muttamakin Billah described him this way: “chubby and short, with large round eyes, a wide mouth, childish and humorous behavior, a loud raspy voice, an annoying and stubborn attitude, and a tendency to insist on his own way—yet he possesses logical and argumentative intelligence.”

Picture him if you can: a fat little troublemaker with eyes like saucers and a mouth that wouldn’t quit. The kind of character who’d get under your skin like a splinter and stay there, irritating and impossible to ignore. But smart. Dangerously smart.

The dalang knew what they had in Bagong. Ki Seno Nugroho especially—he used that little rabble-rouser like a loaded gun pointed at the establishment. You can still find the evidence on YouTube if you care to look: Bagong Mbrantas Korupsi (Bagong Eradicates Corruption), Bagong Mbangun Padepokan (Bagong Builds a Monastery), Wahyu Katentraman (The Revelation of Peace), Suara Bagong, Suara Rakyat Kecil (Bagong’s Voice, the Voice of the Common People).

That last title tells you everything you need to know.

Fajar worked as a caretaker at the Radya Pustaka Museum, and he’d heard the story from his grandfather, the way dark knowledge always gets passed down—whispered at twilight, shared like contraband. Bagong’s absence from that Bambangan play wasn’t an accident or an oversight. It was deliberate. Calculated. A censorship written in wood and shadow.

See, Bagong had made himself dangerous. Not because he wasn’t popular—hell, he was maybe too popular—but because his role as a vessel for social criticism had painted a target on his back. The Dutch colonial authorities saw him for what he was: a weapon. And you don’t let your enemies keep their weapons, do you?

The story really starts in 1645, when Raden Mas Sayidin—who took the title Amangkurat I—climbed onto the throne after Sultan Agung’s death. And right from the jump, things went sideways. Controversies stuck to Amangkurat I like flies to rotting meat.

Sultan Agung had kept the Dutch at arm’s length, but Amangkurat I? He invited them in for tea. Collaborated with them. And if that wasn’t bad enough, there was the woman.

There’s always a woman, isn’t there? And there’s always a man who wants her even though she belongs to someone else.

According to the Babad Tanah Jawi—that’s the chronicle of Java, written in blood and ink—Amangkurat I went hunting for a beautiful woman to add to his collection of concubines. Someone told him about Ki Wayah, a puppeteer in Mataram who had a lovely daughter. She was already married to another dalang named Ki Panjang Mas. Two months pregnant, carrying another man’s child in her belly.

Didn’t matter to Amangkurat I. He wanted her, so he took her.

Forced Nyai Panjang Mas to the palace, enchanted by her beauty the way a snake’s enchanted by the mongoose right before it dies.

Ngabehi Kertapradja wrote it down in the Serat Babad Tanah Jawi: “It is said that the king became so infatuated with the woman that he forgot his other wives. He even gave her the title Ratu Wetan, though people called her Ratu Malang.”

Ki Panjang Mas refused to hand over his wife. You can’t blame him for that—a man’s got to have some pride, doesn’t he? But Amangkurat I was a king, and kings don’t take no for an answer. He married Ratu Malang without the husband’s consent, then—and here’s where it gets really ugly—ordered his guards to kill Ki Panjang Mas. They smeared the body with chicken feces and put it on display to make him look like a common criminal.

Public humiliation even in death. That’s a special kind of evil, friends.

When Ratu Malang heard her husband had been murdered, she wept. Wept until her tears dried up and her body gave out. Contracted dysentery—which is a miserable way to go, let me tell you—and died. Followed her husband into the dark, leaving Amangkurat I with exactly what he deserved: nothing but guilt and an empty bed.

That moment cracked Amangkurat I’s rule right down the middle—not just politically, though there was that, but in the world of art too. The wayang world split into two schools, two lineages, two competing versions of the truth.

The first school called itself “Nyai Panjang Mas.” They opposed Amangkurat I, kept the flame of resistance burning.

The second school, “Ki Panjang Mas,” supported the king. Maybe they were pragmatists. Maybe they were cowards. Maybe they just wanted to survive. History doesn’t always tell us these things.

The Dutch were backing Amangkurat I, propping him up like a puppet themselves—which has a certain dark irony to it, doesn’t it?—and that meant Bagong had to go. The puppeteers who used Bagong as a symbol of criticism got their orders: remove him from all wayang plays in Mataram. Erase him like he’d never existed.

See, Bagong was the most dangerous of the punakawan because he was the most rebellious, the most uncooperative, the most fearless. He’d confront anyone who was wrong, whether they were mortal or divine. That’s the kind of character who keeps tyrants awake at night.

Ngatmin Abbas and his colleagues wrote about it: “In a crucial scene, the temperamental Bagong wants to launch a radical protest against the gods’ policies, while Petruk seeks a middle ground through diplomacy.”

They also described a play called Punakawan Maneges, where all four punakawan work together to resolve conflicts: “Semar provides philosophical grounding, Gareng offers practical solutions, Petruk mediates the disputing parties, and Bagong critiques the inconsistencies of all sides.”

That’s what made Bagong essential. That’s what made him dangerous.

After Mataram fractured—sliding from Kartasura to Surakarta in 1745, then splitting again through the Treaty of Giyanti in 1755—Bagong’s fate hung in the balance. The fall of the Mataram Sultanate sealed it.

The Surakarta style—gagrak Surakarta, they called it—preserved the Ki Panjang Mas lineage. Three punakawan only: Semar, Gareng, and Petruk. No Bagong. The rebel was written out of the story, erased from the official record like a disgraced politician.

But the Yogyakarta style—gagrak Yogyakarta—followed the Nyai Panjang Mas lineage. They kept all four punakawan. They kept Bagong alive in wood and shadow and memory.

Now here’s the thing, and pay attention because this is important: these traditions aren’t set in stone. Never were. By the time the revolutionary era rolled around, both Surakarta and Yogyakarta had loosened up, become more flexible. Times change, stories adapt, and even the dead sometimes come back.

But in that glass case at the Radya Pustaka Museum, three punakawan still stand in a row, and the space where Bagong should be remains empty. A ghost’s absence. A rebel silenced by a king who couldn’t keep his hands off another man’s wife.

That’s the thing about censorship, friends. It leaves holes. Empty spaces where something vital used to be. And if you know where to look—if you pay attention—you can still see the shape of what’s missing.

You can still feel Bagong’s absence like a cold draft in a warm room.

Like something watching from the shadows, waiting for its moment to step back into the light.