Taroema — also Taruma, in bedekte taal form Taroe-na-ma — is the ancestral land of the Djawaka of Sumatra’s east coast that, in De Roo de la Faille’s reading, underlies the chronicle tradition’s “Java” and the European travellers’ “Jaoa”. Its location is the bay of Aroe, and its sacred islet is Kampi — the Noesa-n-ta-ra of the Pararaton under the protection of the goddess Tara. The name is the principal bedekte taal form of the bedekte taal reading of Sumatran-Javanese historical geography.
Etymology and the “name-tree”
The name Taroema De Roo de la Faille decodes as taroe-na-ma — “the name-tree”, i.e. the tree whose name is its own sign. In the Adiparwa’s Churning of the Ocean of Milk — the tasik soesoe from which the gods drew the amrta — the churning-stick was the mountain Mandara; De Roo de la Faille reads the Mandara as a bedekte taal form for man-dara, “the like of Dara” (i.e. of the goddess Tara). The “tree” of Taroema is thus the taroe (Kawi “tree”, “wood”) whose name na-ma encodes the goddess herself — the patroness of Sumatra whose worship centred on the islet of Kampi in the bay of Aroe.
Decoding the European travel record
The same Taroema, De Roo de la Faille argues, underlies the European travel record of the Sumatran east coast: the Cernovem of De Conti (~1430), the Xarnauz of the Roteiro of Vasco da Gama (“the king has 400 elephants of war; in the land is much benzoin and there is aloës won”), the Sornau of Pinto (the name given to the Malay rajas under Siamese sovereignty). All three, in De Roo de la Faille’s reading, are bedekte taal forms for Sjahroe’n Noewi/Tandjoengpoera-Aroe — the Persian “New City” of the Sadjarah Malajoe’s Awi Ditjoe episode.
The Baringin sonsang
The bedekte taal sign of Taroema is the baringin sonsang — the inverted waringin tree, “whose roots stand in the air, while the leaves hang downwards”. The South-Sumatran *Melasaké pampang|wonder-tree of Belalau]], the Minangkabau baringin songrang, and the Perak beringin sonsang are all, in De Roo de la Faille’s reading, allegorical forms of the inverted Taroema — the ancestral land “turned upside down” by the Atjehnese conquest of Aroe and the dispersal of the Djawaka.
The “tree” of Pigafetta
Pigafetta’s account of the great garuda tree — “below Java Major towards the gulf of China, in which live birds called garuda” — De Roo de la Faille decodes as a bedekte taal form for Taroema: the “tree” is taroe maha (“the great tree”), the garuda is the bird of god Wisnu (ka-wis-noe-sa, “king of the birds”), and the whole episode encodes the Kampi-Aroe sacred complex that the Atjehnese conquest of Aroe overwrote.
Significance
For AcehWiki, Taroema is the principal bedekte taal form of the De Roo de la Faille reading of Sumatran-Javanese historical geography — the ancestral land of the Djawaka at the bay of Aroe whose name encodes the goddess Tara, and whose “inversion” by the Atjehnese conquest of Aroe of 1539 marks the close of the Hindu-Javanese east-coast age.
See Also
- Djawaka
- Aroe
- Aroe-baai
- Poelo Kampi
- Cyama-Tara
- Baringin sonsang
- Noesa-n-ta-ra
- Sjahroe’n Noewi
- Tandjoengpoera
- 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), Inleiding and chapters “Mendez Pinto op Sumatra”, “Over Sjahroe’n Noewi”, “Melasaké pampang”.