still manufactured in Java, and form an article of exportation, as, indeed, they are
described as having done, on the first arrival of the Portuguese. _
The only textile material of native produce woven by the Javanese is cotton, ratner
a coarse article, and the only kind of cloth made from it is a stout durable calico,
the muslins and other fine textures of continental India being unknown to the
Javanese looms. The processes of cleaning and preparing the cotton, ot spinning,
weaving and dyeing are all carried on by women, and are purely domestic manufactures,
as is the case with all the other nations of the Archipelago, and with the
Burmese, Peguans, Siamese, and Kambojans, evidence with all of them of rudene s
and semi-barbarism. The usual mode of giving variety of colours to the web is the
simplest possible, consisting in weaving the previously coloured yarn, and always 1
stripes, chequered or tartan patterns, so frequent with the other tribes, being against
the taste of the Javanese. Another mode of effecting the same object is peculiar to
this people. I t consists in covering with melted wax the part of the cloth not
intended to be dyed before putting it in the vat, the process necessarily requiring
repetition in proportion to the number of colours intended to be gpven. Cloths of
this pattern go under the name of batik, which means painting or delineating, from
the pattern being first delineated on the cloth with a pencil, and filled in with a
painting tube having a bowl for the melted wax. The process is operose and expensive,
and it may be adduced as proof how little beyond religion, the Javanese gamed
from their intercourse with the Hindu, since they did not instruct them m the art
of calico-printing, immemorially practised by themselves. - ! ■
To iudge from its name, kapas, a corruption of the Sanscrit karpasa, the cotton
plant was, most probably, introduced into Java by the Hindus. All the terms, however,
connected with the art of converting the raw material mto a textile fabric, are
native words, such as, spinning, antik; yam, bânang or lawé; weaving, tânun, warp,
lungsen; and woof, pakan. So also are words connected with the decoration of the
wrought fabric, as dom, needle ; sewing, jait or jaib ; embroidering, sulam. All thes
terms, including the foreign name of the plant itself, and always in its corrupted form,
have been very widely diffused among the other languages of the Archipelago, a fact
from which we are led to infer that the manufacture of cotton was spread from Java
to the other islands. The same fact, may, however, lead us to conjecture that the
Javanese, before the introduction of the cotton plant, may have possessed the art ot
weaving a cloth from some native material, m the same manner that the natives ot
the Philippines did from the fibre of the textile Banana.
The only material, besides cotton, from which cloth is made by the Javanese is
silk, and as the art of rearing the silk-wonn has never been introduced into Java,
with any effectual result, the raw material has always been imported. The nameby
which it is universally known in the Asiatic Archipelago, the Philippines excepted
" r a , which is the Sanscrit word for « thread,” in which form it was ^ m n o r t e d
first introduced by the Hindu traders. At present the raw matenal is imported
from China, an inferior silk, from which a coarse cloth is wrought with the same
^P a p e ^ 11known^by °the^vemacular name dâluwang, is, as stated in another place, a
manufacture peculiar to the Javanese. I t is of the nature Europe
ancients, and not of the beautiful and ingenious fabric ^ i c h the nations of Europe
acquired from the Arabs of Spain, and so long known to the ^ 2 “ ? *
however, of such a paper as that made by the Javanese, evincesi a
arts over the other nations of the Archipelago, many of whom still continue to
scratch their writings on palm-leaves. , . ¿-l
The manufacture of glass is now, and has at all times been, unknown to the.
Javanese, to whom this article is known only by the Sanscrit n a m e k a c b a . Tbe
mirror is known by a native name, chârmm,_ and most probably, as in Europe,
consisted of polished metallic plates, before thé introduction of glass coated with tin.
In higher branches of knowledge, the little that is known to the Javanese is
told. The Hindu system of noting numbers seems to h a v e beon introduced from
India, and not by the Arabs, for we find it in ancient inscriptions, bothonstoneand
brass. The Javanese, however, have little knowledge of arithmetic, and it can hardly
be said to exist among them as an art. As connected with as r ^ 0f
rural vear, of 360 days, divided into twelve seasons of unequal length, two being o
23 days, two of 24, two of 26, and four of 41. The first ten of these seasonstake
their names from the ordinal numbers of the vernacular language. The meaning ol
the word, which is the name of the eleventh season, has escaped my e n q u i r i e s , but
the twelfth signifies, “ certain,” or “ established, and corresponds with the diy
season, when the rice harvest is completed, that is, with the height of winter, or
June and July for the southern hemisphere. Prom the native names of the seasons
in this rural calendar and their conformity with the climate and latitude of Java,
there can be no question of this division of the year being of indigenous invention.
The Javanese have also a native week of five days. By this, the market days are still
designated. Each day has a native name, and these names are of such antiquity that
their literal signification cannot be determined. The names for a day, a month or
moon, and for a year, although they have each Sanscrit synonyms are all Javanese,
and have had a wide dissemination over the other languages of the Archipelago.
To the native calendar, the Hindus superadded their own. They introduced the
week of seven days with its Sanscrit names, and in the same sequence in which it is
so general throughout central Asia and Europe. This, however, has been long
obsolete, and is found only in old writings. They introduced, also, one of their eras,
that of Salivana or Saka, known to the Javanese by the Sanscrit name of Saka-warsa,
literally, the year of Saka. This era, which commences 78 years after the birth of
Christ, still nominally prevails in Java, and did so in reality down to the year of our
time 1633, or for 155 years after the overthrow of the Hindu religion. At that time,
through the caprice of a reigning sovereign, solar time, with its intercalations, was
changed for lunar, without adopting the year of the Hegira, so that the era of
Salivana and that of Java no longer correspond. In all other respects, the Arabian
calendar, with the names of the days of the week and of the months prevail in Java
as in all Mahommedan countries. The native and the Hindu calendar of Java existed
in no other country of the Archipelago, except the neighbouring islands of Bali and
Lomboc, in which they are still found, and into which there is no question but that
they were introduced from Java.
Music is, probably, of all others, the art in which the Javanese, compared with
most other Asiatic people, have made the greatest progress. In common with all the
other nations of the Archipelago, they have generally fine musical ears, and are
passionate lovers of music. Javanese melodies are wild, plaintive, and beyond all
other Asiatic music, not, perhaps, excepting that of the Persians, pleasing to the
European ear. Most of their musical instruments, too, are superior to those of other
Asiatic nations. They have wind and stringed instruments, both of them rude
and imperfect however. Their best and most frequent are those of percussion. Some
of these consist of a single gong, a Javanese word, or of a series of them representing
different notes, and others of bars of brass or sonorous wood placed over troughs and
representing so many keys, after the fashion of the harmonicon, called in Javanese,
gándang. The late Dr. Crotch, a most competent j'udge, after inspecting the fine
collection of instruments brought to England by Sir Stamford Raffles, favoured me
with his opinion of them as well as of the general character of Javanese music. With
respect to the single gongs, he thus expressed himself. “ A pair Of gongs was suspended
from the centre of a most superb wooden stand, richly carved, painted, and
gilt. The tone of those instruments exceeded in depth and in quality anything I
had ever heard.” Of the instrument consisting of a double series of small gongs,
he thus spoke. “ The tone of this instrument is at once powerful and sweet, and its
intonation clear and perfect,” and of the instruments of percussion, generally, he
observed that he “ was astonished and delighted with their ingenious fabrication,
splendour, beauty, and accurate intonation.” With respect to the character of
Javanese music, generally, he made the following observations. “ The instruments
are all in the same kind of scale as that produced by the black keys of the pianoforte,
in which scale, so many of the Scots and Irish, all the Chinese, and some of
the best Indian and North-American airs were composed. The result of my
examination is a pretty strong conviction that all the real native music of Java is
composed in a common enharmonic scale. Some of the cadences remind us of Scotch
music for the bag-pipe. Others in the minor key have the flat seventh, instead of
the leading note or sharp seventh, one of the indications of antiquity. In many of
the airs, the recurrence of the same passages is artful and ingenious. The irregularity
of the rhythm or measure, and the reiteration of the same sound, are characteristic
of oriental music. The melodies are, in general, wild, plaintive, and interesting.” I
may add, that a full band of Javanese musical instruments, which consists of flutes,
drums, gongs and staccatas, will cost from 1001. up to 4001.
Two languages are spoken in Java, of the same general structure, belonging to the
same class of tongues, and having many words in common, yet essentially differing
from each other. These are, the Javanese, spoken in the central and eastern part of
the island, and the Sunda spoken in the western part. A small river called the
u 2