Djawaka — also Jawaka, Djawa-ka — is the term De Roo de la Faille uses for the Hindu-Javanese population of Sumatra’s east coast, the people whose ancestral land of Taroema at the bay of Aroe was, in his reading, the original “Java” of the chronicle tradition — the source from which the Kalang’s of Java were brought as war-booty, and the cultural complex that the Atjehnese conquest of Aroe of 1539 overwrote but did not erase. The Djawaka are the principal ethnonym of the bedekte taal reading of Sumatran-Javanese historical geography.
Origin and the lang-ka etymology
The term Djawaka De Roo de la Faille decodes as djawa-ka lang-ka — “Javanese of lang-ka”, i.e. of the lang-ka country on the Sumatran Overwal. The same ethnonym, in his reading, underlies the Jaoa of the Portuguese (i.e. of Pinto), the Djaouah of Ibn Battuta, the Jaoa of Pigafetta — all references, De Roo de la Faille argues, not to the great island of Java but to the Sumatran east-coast Hindu-Javanese complex that produced the Javanese fortification at Deli, the Madjapahit of Langsar, and the Djawa of Batu-Bara on Sumatra.
The Kalang connection
The Kalang’s of Java — the people whom the Sadjarah Banten and the Babad Tanah Djawi record as Javanese but not “real” Javanese — De Roo de la Faille identifies as Djawaka of lang-ka, brought to Java as war-booty from the Sumatran Overwal. The Rembang region of Java’s north coast, in this reading, takes its name from the Ari-ke-mbang of the Sumatran Overwal — the same place-world that the Soenan Kalidjaga legend encodes as the pasar at which Soenan Bonang converted Raden Sahid.
The Astina of Sumatra
De Roo de la Faille further identifies the Djawaka with the Astina of the Javanese legend in Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles’s History — the realm of praboe Djaja-Baja, whose name (h-asti-na-ma, “elephant”) changed on the dynasty’s extinction to Enj°- or Guj’rat — a bedekte taal form for the dead elephant-land of Bali-Atjé on the Sumatran Overwal. The “elephants of war” that Vasco da Gama’s Roteiro records for Xarnauz — “the king has 400 elephants of war” — De Roo de la Faille reads as confirmation of this identification.
Decadence and the Atjehnese age
After the Atjehnese conquest of Aroe in 1539, the Djawaka complex was reduced to “poverty and piracy”, so much so that in the colonial period only a “soekoe Aroe” — an Aroe clan — was remembered. The Putri Hijau legend of Deli — the fairy-tale queen whose rejection of the Sultan of Atjeh’s marriage suit ended in her death and the loss of her glass coffin at sea — is, in De Roo de la Faille’s reading, the folk record of the Djawaka’s absorption by the Atjehnese age.
Significance
For AcehWiki, the Djawaka is the principal ethnonym of the bedekte taal reading of Sumatran-Javanese historical geography — the people whose ancestral land of Taroema at the bay of Aroe underlies the chronicle tradition’s “Java”, and whose absorption by the Atjehnese conquest of Aroe of 1539 marks the close of the Hindu-Javanese east-coast age and the beginning of the Atjehnese maritime age.
See Also
- Taroema
- Aroe
- Aroe-baai
- Kalang
- Astina
- Kota Djawa
- Madjapahit in Langsar
- Puteri Idjo
- Atjeh-Aroe War (1539)
- Batu Bara
- 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), chapters “Mendez Pinto op Sumatra” (pp. 10-12), “Over Sjahroe’n Noewi” (pp. 29-31), and “Over Soenan Kalidjaga” (pp. 49-58).