Astina — in De Roo de la Faille’s decoding h-asti-na-ma, “elephant” — is the mythical elephant-land of the Sumatran east coast that, in the Javanese legend recorded by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (History II, p. 87), was the realm of praboe Djaja-Baja of Jaya’s oldest princely house, and which on the dynasty’s extinction changed its name to Enj°- or Guj’rat — a bedekte taal form for the dead elephant-land of Bali-Atjé on the Sumatran Overwal. It is the principal bedekte taal form by which De Roo de la Faille ties the Javanese legend of praboe Djaja-Baja to the Aru-Atjeh sphere.
The legend in Raffles
Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles’s History (vol. II, p. 87) records the Javanese legend of praboe Djaja-Baja of Astina, whose name — h-asti-na-ma, “elephant” — was changed on the dynasty’s extinction to Enj°- or Guj’rat. A Dutch babad-translation (Not. Bat. Gen. vol. 42) speaks of this king as a “Moorschen” prince of kodjrat-Bali-Atjé — where the mor, De Roo de la Faille notes, is plainly used in the sense of kahilangan (“vanished, deceased”), and the Kodj or Guj-rat conceals Koen- of Goendjara-ma-t-i, “the dead land of elephants”.
The Sumatran elephant-land
There was, De Roo de la Faille notes, an elephant-land on the Sumatran east coast — a land rich in war- and working-elephants, which the Xarnauz of the Roteiro of Vasco da Gama (“the king has 400 elephants of war”) also records. This Sumatran Astina is, in De Roo de la Faille’s reading, the Koendjara of the Woekir Tjanggal inscription of 732 — the Koendjara-koendja from which the lingga of Sandjaya was brought “as it were for the salvation of the world” — and the same Koendjara whose name survives, in reversal, in the *Djakoen|Djakoen]] aborigines of the Malay peninsula.
The Koendjara-ma-ti Bali-Atjé
The Astina of praboe Djaja-Baja, on the Sumatran east coast, was replaced by Koendjara-koendja — the name that, in De Roo de la Faille’s reading, took the place of Astina on the dynasty’s extinction, and which is the bedekte taal form of the dead elephant-land (Koendjara-ma-ti) of Bali-Atjé — i.e. of Tandjoengpoera-Aru-Deli-Asahan on the Sumatran Overwal. The same identification, De Roo de la Faille argues, fits the Xarnauz of Vasco da Gama’s Roteiro — k-s-ir arnaw-a dj-a-wa, “the island in the sea of Sumatra, where the Fountain was that flowed only balsam” (i.e. the minjak tanah of Pangkalan Soesoe).
Significance
For AcehWiki, Astina is the principal bedekte taal form by which De Roo de la Faille ties the Javanese legend of praboe Djaja-Baja to the Aru-Atjeh sphere — the mythical elephant-land of the Sumatran east coast whose dead form Koendjara-ma-ti Bali-Atjé underlies the Javanese Gujrat/Kodjrat name-change. Its identification with the Xarnauz of Vasco da Gama’s Roteiro also fixes it as the principal east-coast landmark of pre-Atjehnese Sumatra in European travel record.
See Also
- Taroema
- Djawaka
- Bali-Atjé
- Koendjara
- Djaja Baja
- Sanjaya
- Woekir Tjanggal
- Vasco da Gama
- Xarnauz
- Minjak tanah
- Pangkalan Soesoe
- Bedekte taal
- Historische Curiositeiten uit Malajoe en Java
Source
Historische Curiositeiten uit Malajoe en Java, by P. de Roo de la Faille (Den Haag: Maart 1954), chapter “Djempol Soekoe”, pp. 18-21.