Three Religions
First Buddhism, then Hinduism, then Islam came to Java, and each profoundly affected its sacred and secular life as well as the development of its batik. Both Buddhism and Hinduism emphasized the "liberation of the soul from mortal ties as the ultimate purpose of life." But typically, the Javanese would adopt particular aspects of each religion that they found appealing and would mingle them with the others. Buddha and the Hindu god Siva (Shiva), for example, were both looked upon as manifestations of the same being, and powerful rulers built monuments to each. The Sailendra family, of the princely courts in central Java, erected Borobudur in the ninth century. Its galleries and terraces and images of Buddha celebrated the spirit of Buddhism and the kinship between the secular leader and his god. Fifty miles away and about one hundred years later at Prambanan, another sacred monument called Lara Jonggrang was built; there the kings were united after death with the Hindu god Siva. Design elements used in batik are found in both Buddhist and Hindu temples—the lotus, for example, in the reliefs of Borobudur; and the interlocking and intersecting circular designs—known in batik work as kawung—in the later Hindu temples of east Java.
With the spread of Hindu influence, a caste system was introduced: "No one dares stand in the presence of a superior . . . from the common laborer upward." The Javanese language developed different vocabularies and forms of salutation, depending on the age and position of the person being addressed. In the economic realm, the Hindus introduced such powerful innovations as wet-rice cultivation, wheeled vehicles, and draft animals, each in its own way contributing to the trading strength of the Indies. But for every grain of rice grown, tribute was extracted in a feudal system that was to endure for more than twelve hundred years.
By the thirteenth century, the Hindu-oriented kingdom of Majapahit claimed most of Java. It was a golden age, with Majapahit rulers spreading the idea of the divine right of kings, secure in the knowledge that royal divinity would flood the world and thereby cleanse it. On the political front, Majapahit rulers succeeded in defeating Kublai Khan's invading envoy on the northern coast of Java. But internal feuding and lack of access to overseas trade eventually eroded Majapahit power, and within two hundred fifty years the mighty kingdom had been reduced to the royal courts of Yogyakarta and Surakarta.
In the meantime, Java's north coast was becoming commercially active. Small harbor states, usually founded by rulers of obscure ethnic origin, began to appear. These states—Cirebon, Gresik, Japara, Demak, and Tuban among them—prospered because of their strategic location on the coast. They were on the sea route to the spice-producing Banda and Molucca islands farther east.
For thousands of years spices were valued by faraway people as medicines, aphrodisiacs, preservatives, and flavorings. Roman, Chinese, Indian, Arab, and European traders fought for centuries for the highly lucrative spice monopoly. Spices were light and compact and far easier to transport than bulky goods such as timber, porcelain, or even cloth. Great quantities of spices could be packed into the hold of a single small ship.
Malacca, about two hundred miles north of Singapore on the southwestern coast of Malaysia, is a sleepy town today, and it is hard to realize that it was once the greatest commercial center in Southeast Asia. Geographic position accounted for Malacca's importance: at a time when deep-water ports were not necessary, it dominated the Strait of Malacca through which nearly all shipping passed, east and west. Malacca was also a trading post for religious ideas, and it was in this realm of the mind and the spirit, as much as in the marketplace, that Malacca's influence on Javanese batik would make itself felt.
Although Muslim communities had existed in Java as early as the twelfth century, it was from Malacca and Sumatra that the major drive for Javanese conversion came. The port became the meeting place for Chinese merchants from the east and for Muslims—Arabs and Indians—from the west. Traders from Java carried rice from Demak and Japara, nutmeg and cloves from Gresik and Tuban. If Javanese merchants were to win Arab support, they would have to open their doors to Islam.
The commercial and political advantages that attended religious conversion gave merchants real incentives to adopt Islam. Commercially, the Muslims were the world's leading traders, with connections throughout Asia, Europe, and Africa: association with them meant new routes and more riches. Politically, a community benefited when a former Hindu kingdom became Muslim because to some degree the caste system was eroded. A Muslim was judged by his fervor, not his rank. All believers were equal. By the end of the fifteenth century, there were twenty Muslim kingdoms on the north coast of Java, and Javanese traders from the north became the most influential people in Malacca. By 1523 Gresik's Muslim population totaled more than thirty thousand.
Like Hinduism and Buddhism, Islam also worked its way into the designs and uses of batik. The textile was "encouraged by the Muslim rulers as a major element of social expression in garments and hangings." Not only did Muslim traders expand the batik market but because of the Muslim prohibition against depicting human forms, design motifs also changed. New shapes—flat arabesques and calligraphy—were introduced and became integral in the evolution of batik.
Near Borobudur, the temple complex of Prambanan (also known as Lara Jonggrang) rises majestically. This sacred monument was built in the tenth century to honor the Hindu trinity of Siva, Visnu, and Brahma.
A seventeenth-century Malay and his wife selling their goods in Batavia.
It is difficult to imagine that today's sleepy Strait of Malacca was once the main commercial thorough fare of Southeast Asia.
The Urban Chinese
The influence of the Chinese on Javanese batik was as profound as that of the Muslims, the Buddhists, and the Hindus. Trading such prestigious commodities as silk and porcelain for Java's textiles—not to mention its birds' nests—the Chinese had long been doing business in the area. From the ninth to the twelfth centuries, the princes of Java sent colored cotton cloth as tribute to Chinese leaders; indeed, they even sent silk to China. Now the Chinese brought mythical lions and lyrical flowers to batik designs along with a bright new palette of colors.
The city of Tuban, near the eastern end of Java's north coast, was known to the Chinese as early as the eleventh century, and by the fifteenth century it had become Java's greatest trading center, with many immigrants from southern China:
In this city dwell very many noblemen who do great trade in the buying and selling of silk . . . cotton cloth, and also pieces of cloth which they wear on their bodies, some of which are made there. They have ships that they call junks, which . . . are laden with pepper and taken to Bali, and they exchange it for pieces of simple cotton cloth, for they are made there in quantity, and when they have exchanged their pepper there for that cloth, they carry the same . . . to other surrounding islands . . . and exchange the cloth in turn for mace, nutmeg, and cloves, and being laden . . . they sail home once more.
Whether the king of Tuban, pictured in the sixteenth-century book illustration (opposite), was Chinese we do not know. We do know from the vivid description that there was considerable pomp and ceremony as he sat on an elephant and received his Dutch visitors.
This king, in addition to treating the Dutch men in a humane manner, had his keris presented to Prince Mauritius . . . . The king's dress was a black silk tunic with wide sleeves. The elephant . . . was as high as two men one on top of the other . . . . History says that this king was able to gather several thousand armed men ready for war within 24 hours . . . . After the Dutch men had rendered to him the proper honor . . . [he] showed them his magnificence and majesty.
Nearby Gresik rivaled Tuban, and in the fourteenth century it boasted a Chinese-born ruler. Fair Winds for Escort, a navigation guide, gave instructions for sailing to Lasem, Tuban, Jaratan, Demak, and Banten. Farther west along Java's north coast, Cirebon had been visited by Chinese traders hundreds of years earlier.