Cyama-Tara — also Syama Tara, Sijama Tara — is the Buddhist goddess Tara, the “Redster out of all woe” (Redster uit alle Ellende), whom De Roo de la Faille identifies as the patroness of Sumatra itself, and whose worship centred on the islet of Kampi in the bay of Aroe. She is the principal deity of the bedekte taal reading of Sumatran-Javanese historical geography, and the figure under whom the Putri Hijau legend of Deli is, in De Roo de la Faille’s reading, an earthly likeness.
Tara of the Cailendras
The goddess Tara was, De Roo de la Faille records, the patroness of the Cailendras — the “Berg-Heeren” (Mountain-Lords) whose dynasty ruled the great Buddhist polity of Mataram on Java in the eighth century, and whose temple to Tara at Tjandi Kalasan in Djokjakarta is the oldest surviving Buddhist temple of central Java. Brandes had noted (TBG 31, p. 252 n.) that “Cyama Tara” is also one of the many names of Durga, Shiva’s çakti — a syncretism that, in De Roo de la Faille’s reading, marks the survival of the Tara-cult into the Hindu-Javanese Doerga-worship of the later chronicle tradition.
Decoding: sijama and idjo
In the Putri Hijau legend of Deli and Asahan, the fairy-tale queen’s name idjo (“green”) is, De Roo de la Faille decodes, a bedekte taal form of the Kawi word sijama — i.e. of Cyama-Tara. Her realm is “the sijam-Awak of the Djawaka”; she herself is the earthly likeness of the Heavenly Queen, the Buddhist goddess Cyama-Tara, “Redster out of all Woe, patroness of the island of Sumatra”. Her original seat was the islet in the bay of Aroe — Kampi — the Noesa-n-ta-ra of the Pararaton under the protection of the goddess Tara.
The Tanjore inscription and the Atjehscher avonturier
The Tanjore inscription of 1030 — the great Chola record of the Malayur country — records “l’ancien Malayur situé sur une haute colline”, “the ancient Malayur situated on a high hill”. De Roo de la Faille identifies this hill with the hill of Kampi in the bay of Aroe, and the same hill with the benteng of the Atjehscher avonturier of 1862 who flew the Atjehsche flag from it. The continuity of the hill’s sacred character — from the Cailendra age to the Atjehnese — is, in De Roo de la Faille’s reading, the principal token of the survival of the Tara-cult into the Atjehnese age.
The Baringin sonsang and the inverted Taroema
The *Baringin sonsang|inverted waringin]] of Malay, Minangkabau and Javanese folk tradition — “whose roots stand in the air, while the leaves hang downwards” — is, in De Roo de la Faille’s reading, an allegory of the inverted Taroema, the ancestral land “turned upside down” by the Atjehnese conquest of Aroe. The “Heavenly Queen Doerga of Taroema” who sits beneath the inverted waringin is, in De Roo de la Faille’s decoding, the same Cyama-Tara — the patroness of Sumatra whose worship the Atjehnese age overwrote but did not erase.
Significance
For AcehWiki, Cyama-Tara is the principal deity of the bedekte taal reading of Sumatran-Javanese historical geography — the patroness of Sumatra whose worship centred on Kampi in the bay of Aroe, and whose earthly likeness in the Putri Hijau legend of Deli is the central Acehnese legend of the east-coast polities. Her survival, in folk form, into the Atjehnese age — attested by the Atjehscher avonturier of 1862 and by the baringin sonsang allegory — is the principal token of the continuity of the east-coast sacred geography across the Atjehnese conquest of Aroe of 1539.
See Also
- Puteri Idjo
- Poelo Kampi
- Aroe-baai
- Taroema
- Baringin sonsang
- Doerga
- Cailendra
- Candi Kalasan
- Atjehsche avonturier at Aroe-baai (1862)
- Atjeh-Aroe War (1539)
- 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 “Over Sjahroe’n Noewi”, pp. 29-30, and chapter “Melasaké pampang”, pp. 38-42.