Letters of a Javanese Princess Part 23

The bridal pair went in a procession, followed by the native chiefs on foot, to the house where the father of the bridegroom lodged.

Days and weeks after the wedding the newly married pair are still called bride and bridegroom. The bride is a bride until she becomes a mother.

There are women, mothers, who all their lives are called nganten, short for penganten, which means bride and also bridegroom.

The day after the ceremony was spent in receiving visits from both Europeans and natives.

Five days later there was again a feast in the kaboepaten; the first return of the holy day which had opened the wedding ceremonies was celebrated.

The young couple left a week after the wedding; they were feted everywhere by various family connections with whom they stopped on their journey home. At Tegal the marriage was celebrated all over again; they remained there a week, and finally they reached their own home at Pemalang.

There, you have a description of a Javanese wedding in high circles.

Sister's marriage was called only a quiet affair, and yet it entailed all that ceremony. What must a wedding be that is celebrated in a gala way?

We were dead tired after the wedding.

The Javanese give presents at a marriage; things to wear, such as kains, stomachers, headdresses, silk for kabajas, cloth for jackets; and also things to eat, such as rice, eggs, chickens, or a buffalo. These are merely meant as marks of good-will.

Kardinah also received a splendid bull from an uncle. This had to be placed on exhibition with the other presents!

When a buffalo is killed at the time of a wedding--and usually more than one is needed for the feast meals--a bamboo vessel filled with sirrih, little cakes, pinang nuts, and pieces of meat must be mixed with the running blood of the slaughtered buffalo. These vessels, covered with flowers, are laid at all of the cross-roads, bridges, and wells on the estate, as an offering to the spirits who dwell there. If these bridge, road, and water spirits, are not propitiated, they will be offended at the festivities, and misfortune will come of it. That is the belief of the people. Its origin I do not know.

A friend of ours says rightly that the Javanese are a people who are filled with legends and superst.i.tions. Who shall lead the people out of the dusky realm of fairy tales into the light of work and reality? And then, when superst.i.tion is cast off, we do not want the poetry to be trampled under foot.

But of what good is my prattling? Let me rather ask you if you have been interested in this epistle, and if you will now forgive me for my long silence?

There is so much that is lovable in my people, such charm in their simple nave beliefs. It may sound strange, but it is, nevertheless, a fact, that you Europeans have taught me to love my own land and people.

Instead of estranging us from our native land, our European education has brought us nearer to it; has opened our hearts to its beauties, and also to the needs of our people and to their weaknesses.

Do not let me tire you any longer with the scribbling of a silly Javanese girl; I have written enough.

(Postscript)

In some places it is the custom when the bridal pair meet for the first time for the bride to wash the groom's feet as a token of submission before she gives him the knee-kiss. Whenever a widower marries a young girl, or a widow a young man, the giving of the sirrih at the wedding is omitted. The one who has already been married hands the other, who carries a watering-can, a piece of burning wood, the contents of the can are poured upon the fire, which naturally goes out; whereupon the charred wood is thrown away and the watering-can broken into pieces.

The symbolism of this I do not have to explain. It is plain enough. You should have seen sister as she sat there before the kwade. She ought to have been photographed, or, better still, painted, because that would have shown the colouring.

She stepped so calmly and sedately down the carpet of flowers; everywhere there were flowers and the perfume of incense; yes, truly, she was much like a Bodhisatwa! (incarnation of Buddha).

I cannot hear the gamelan or smell the perfume of flowers and incense, without seeing her image before my eyes.

The people picked up the flowers over which sister had walked and kept them; they bring good luck, it is said, and to young daughters, a husband!

[1] To Mevrouw de Booij-Boissevain.

[2] Pieces of cotton and silk.

[3] A scarf or shawl draped to form part of the costume.

[4 The box to hold the sirrih paste.

[5] A spitting-box; for it is necessary to spit after chewing sirrih.

These boxes are often of gold or tortoisesh.e.l.l, and beautifully ornamented. They are placed by a Javanese lady on all formal as well as informal occasions.

[6] "heildronk" in the orig. Dutch--"toast" would be appropriate here.

(M.D.)

x.x.xVI

_March 27, 1902._[1]

It is always said of the girls here that, "they are well provided for, and comfortably taken care of." Have they a right to complain? Well means, well-being, happiness, the opposite of misery; and misery is what the women feel, and yet they have no right to complain--they are said to act always of their own free will. But how about their children? What is more wretched than a sad childhood, than children who too early have learned to read the shadow side of life?

I once copied something from a speech by Prof. Max Muller, the great German scholar who was so learned in Eastern tongues. It was almost as follows: "Polygamy, as it is practiced by the Eastern people is of benefit to women and girls, who could not live in their environment without a man to take care of them and to protect them."

Max Muller is dead; we cannot call him here to show him the benefits of that custom.

[1] To Mevrouw Abendanon.

x.x.xVII

_May 17th, 1902._[1]

I cannot tell you how great was my joy when at last I was able to begin my studies. So far it has been but a review of what I once learned at school more than ten full years ago. But there is one advantage in this late study. I can understand now much more quickly and readily than I could in my childhood, still it is a deep grief to me that I am now twenty-three years old instead of thirteen. I could then look forward so far. I could have carried on my studies indefinitely, but now time is limited on account of my age.

First, I am working at Dutch so that I shall have it thoroughly in my head, and then later I must study one or two of the native languages.

There, I have struck so hard with my pen that my pen-holder is broken through the middle, but even that does not make me give up. Poor pen! I have depended so much upon it and we have worked together happily for so long, I must be a strange creature to lament over a broken pen-holder!

In April, we went on a journey; we paid our sister a visit. We left our home without the least idea of seeing her again; we went to see another sister, our eldest, who was ill. While we were there, we received an urgent letter from little sister, begging us to come to Pemalang, to see her. We set out early the next morning. How can I describe that meeting to you? It was simply blissful! We did nothing the first few moments but look at one another and hold one another tight. And I was so thankful to see her well. She had never looked so fresh and blooming before. She had roses in her cheeks. And beyond everything, it delighted me to see how her husband valued and honoured her.

It is with great pleasure that I have learned to know my new brother-in-law. He is a good, sincere man, with many fine traits. He is very upright, just and true, and has a sympathetic heart. She is his comrade, his advisor, his friend, and a mother as well to his three children, who are as fond of her as if she were their own mother.

The children follow her footsteps everywhere, like little faithful dogs.

The oldest child, a boy of seven, had lived with his grandparents.

Sister took him in charge and the child is devoted to her now and loves to be with her; though his grandparents did not keep him at arm's length you may be sure. The two others are girls of six and four, she gives them lessons at home: so I might almost call them little pupils, Stella.

He leaves the education of his children entirely to her, and naturally sister will bring up her little daughters in our spirit. Sister has not been able to realize her early dream, as she had dreamed it, but is the task which she has undertaken less beautiful for that reason?