Monumental JavaScheltema, J. F. (Johann Friedrich )
History
Monumental Java
Scheltema, J. F. (Johann Friedrich )
Indonesia -- Antiquities; Java (Indonesia) -- Antiquities; Monuments -- Indonesia -- Java
ranks of the sceptics who doubt of the capital of Mojopahit ever having
amounted to much, and maintain that, in any case, it had come down and
was of no consequence compared with Tuban and Gresik, already in 1416, a
century before its falling into the hands of the Muhammadans.
At Mojopahit it is the same old story of quarrying for building
material: several sugar-mills in the neighbourhood with the dwellings
of managers and employees, have been wholly or partly constructed of
Mojopahit bricks. In 1887 I saw them used for the abutments of bridges,
foremen of the Department of Public Works superintending. A short
time before, twelve copper plates had been found with inscriptions in
ancient characters, which disappeared in a mysterious way. The _rechos_
of Mojopahit were mostly left alone, a respectful treatment they owed
to their general clumsiness. Some two or three miles from the ruins
of the capital, a goodly number stand or lie together fair samples of
statuary of the first eastern Javanese period, in its extravagance and
exaggeration a travesty of the classic art of Central Java, crudity of
conception floundering in a redundancy of form also observable at the
_chandis_ Suku and Cheto; after the fall of Mojopahit, in the second
period, the sculptor reverted to a close study of nature as manifested
at the _chandis_ Toompang and Panataran; in the third, Hindu methods
getting crowded within ever narrower limits, his fancy betrayed him
again into lavish detail as exemplified in old Balinese imagery. At the
gradual extinction of Hindu ideals of beauty, realised in decaying stone
and brick, in statues defaced and vanishing like dwindling phantoms,
a growing sensation of emptiness, emphasised by vague reminiscences
of the artistic fullness of the _jaman buda_, claiming amends from
succeeding creeds, received little from Islām and absolutely nothing
from Christianity. Under Dutch rule very few attempts at style in Java
and the other islands of the Malay Archipelago have been made at all,
and of these few only one has resulted in an achievement not altogether
ridiculous, namely the old town-hall, begun in 1707 and finished in
1710, of old Batavia, where the Resident has his office, by the natives
very appropriately called _rumah bichara_, _i.e._ “house of talk”. With
one or two utterly tasteless exceptions, the rest of the Government and
private buildings, including the palaces of the Governor-General at
Weltevreden and Buitenzorg, descend in their architecture to the lowest
grade of the commonplace. To his Excellency’s ill-kept country-seat
in the Preanger subverted Mojopahit seems almost preferable,
notwithstanding the squalor of its threadbare _kaïn klambu_ decoration;
the meanness of the viceregal reception- and living-rooms at Chipanas is
not even picturesque and surely some of the public money regularly paid
out for the maintenance of the “Government hotels” might be profitably
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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