The sacred _waringin_, never wanting in the _aloon aloon_, the open places before the dwellings of the rulers of the land and their deputies, what is it but the bo-tree, the tree of enlightenment? One of venerable age in the imperial burial-ground of Pasar Gedeh, planted, according to tradition, by Kiahi Ageng Pamanahan or his son Suta Wijaya, announces without fail the demise of a member of one of the reigning families either at Solo or at Jogja, by shedding one of its branches. Pasar Gedeh, Selo and Imogiri are silent spots, peopled with the dead whose lives’ strength made history and is mourned as the strength of a glorious past. Selo, an enclave belonging to Surakarta, in Grobogan, residency Samarang, contains the ancestral tombs of the rulers of Mataram; Imogiri and Pasar Gedeh in Jogjakarta, which latter marks the site of the original seat of empire and was comparatively recently put to its present use, are the cemeteries common to the royalty of both Principalities, and guarded by officials, _amat dalam_ with the title of Raden Tumenggoong, appointed by mutual consent. A Polynesian bias to ancestor-worship, unabated by Hinduïsm, Buddhism and Muhammadanism, accounts for the almost idolatrous adoration[67] of the graves of the Susuhunans and Sooltans, their ancestors and also their progeny that did not attain to thrones, receptacles of once imperial dust, feeding the four elements from which it proceeded and to which it returns like meaner human clay. Look, says Kumala in the Buddhist parable, all in the world must perish! The religious brethren of his faith used to repair at night to the sepulchres of those taken to bliss and spend the lone hours in pondering on the instability of conscious existence, desiring to gain the Nirvana by their undisturbed meditations, but Sivaïte associations people the old graveyards of Java with _raksasas_, monstrous giants, eaters of living and dead men and women, and santons, bent on prayer amid the last abodes of the departed, have been terrified, especially at Pasar Gedeh, by weird noises and apparitions signalling their approach, commending hasty retreat to the wise. It is advisable to distrust darkness there and rather to choose the day for acts of devotion, even if annoyed by worldlings who come to consult the big white tortoise in the tank, ancient Kiahi Duda, widower of Mboq Loro Kuning, presaging the better luck the farther he paddles forth from his subaqueous habitation. At a little distance is the _sela gilang_, a bluish stone with a more than half effaced inscription, only the lettering of the border being legible. Tradition calls it the _dampar_ (throne) of Suta Wijaya, sitting on which he killed Kiahi Ageng Mangir, his rival and owner of the miraculous lance Kiahi Baru, who had been lured into his presence by one of his daughters to do homage by means of the _ujoong_, the kissing[68] of the knee; near by are a stone mortar and large stone