Puteri Idjo — also known as Putri Hijau, “the Green Princess” — is the fairy-tale queen of Deli and Asahan whose legend, as preserved by P. de Roo de la Faille, is the central Acehnese legend of the east-coast polities: a sultan of Atjeh pressed a marriage suit upon her; she refused, sickened, and died; her body was sent in a “glass coffin” (glazen kist) to Atjeh by sea, but the ship and its cargo were swallowed up en route. The legend is bound, in De Roo de la Faille’s account, to the Javanese fortification at Deli and to the Buddhist goddess Cyama-Tara, the “Redster out of all woe” whom De Roo de la Faille identifies as the patroness of Sumatra itself.
The legend
The story, as De Roo de la Faille records it, survives in both Deli and Asahan tradition. Puteri Idjo was a queen on whose name the building of the Kota Djawa is laid; its remains — recorded by Anderson in his Mission to the East Coast of Sumatra (1825) as “remains of a Javanese fortification” along the road from Medan to Belawan, at Deli-Toewa — De Roo de la Faille would rather read as “of Djawaka”, i.e. of the Sumatran-origin Javanese. She is “the fairy-tale queen who was troubled by the Sultan of Atjeh with a marriage proposal; but she refused, became ill, died, whereupon her corpse was conveyed in a ‘glass coffin’ to Atjeh; on the way ship and all were swallowed up”.
Decoding: idjo and sijama
For De Roo de la Faille the name idjo — “green” — is a bedekte taal form of the Kawi word sijama. 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 — Poelo Kampi — and in later times the negorij of the radja at the mouth of the river of Tandjoengpoera, at Koewala Boeboen. The Atjehnese sultan’s pursuit of her, on this reading, encodes the Atjehnese sultanate’s design upon the east-coast polities — a design whose outcome, the legend insists, was frustrated not by war but by the queen’s death and the loss of her body to the sea.
The glass coffin
The detail of the “glass coffin” (glazen kist) in which the queen’s body was sent to Atjeh, and its disappearance at sea, has no parallel in the standard chronicles but is, in De Roo de la Faille’s reading, a bedekte taal marker: the “glass” coffin is the sea itself, the tasik of the Taroema allegory, and the loss of the ship is the swallowing-up of the old east-coast sacred complex by the Atjehnese maritime advance. The episode thus closes, in symbolic form, the same historical process — the absorption of the east-coast kingdoms by Atjeh — that the Atjeh-Aroe War (1539) records in military form.
Significance
For AcehWiki, Puteri Idjo is the most resonant single legend tying the Sultan of Atjeh to the Deli-Asahan-Aroe cultural zone, and the only one that frames the Atjeh-east-coast relationship in dynastic-marital rather than military terms. Her identification with the goddess Cyama-Tara also makes her the principal instance of De Roo de la Faille’s broader claim that the Buddhist goddess-cult of pre-Islamic Sumatra survived, in folk form, into the chronicle and romance tradition of the Atjehnese age.
See Also
- Sultan of Atjeh (16th century)
- Deli
- Asahan
- Kota Djawa
- Aroe
- Poelo Kampi
- Tandjoengpoera
- Kwala Boeboen
- Djawaka
- Bedekte taal
- Historische Curiositeiten uit Malajoe en Java
- Anderson’s Mission to the East Coast of Sumatra (1825)
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.
Puteri Idjo — also known as Putri Hijau, “the Green Princess” — is the fairy-tale queen of Deli and Asahan whose legend, as preserved by P. de Roo de la Faille, is the central Acehnese legend of the east-coast polities: a sultan of Atjeh pressed a marriage suit upon her; she refused, sickened, and died; her body was sent in a “glass coffin” (glazen kist) to Atjeh by sea, but the ship and its cargo were swallowed up en route. The legend is bound, in De Roo de la Faille’s account, to the Javanese fortification at Deli and to the Buddhist goddess Cyama-Tara, the “Redster out of all woe” whom De Roo de la Faille identifies as the patroness of Sumatra itself.
The legend
The story, as De Roo de la Faille records it, survives in both Deli and Asahan tradition. Puteri Idjo was a queen on whose name the building of the Kota Djawa is laid; its remains — recorded by Anderson in his Mission to the East Coast of Sumatra (1825) as “remains of a Javanese fortification” along the road from Medan to Belawan, at Deli-Toewa — De Roo de la Faille would rather read as “of Djawaka”, i.e. of the Sumatran-origin Javanese. She is “the fairy-tale queen who was troubled by the Sultan of Atjeh with a marriage proposal; but she refused, became ill, died, whereupon her corpse was conveyed in a ‘glass coffin’ to Atjeh; on the way ship and all were swallowed up”.
Decoding: idjo and sijama
For De Roo de la Faille the name idjo — “green” — is a bedekte taal form of the Kawi word sijama. 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 — Poelo Kampi — and in later times the negorij of the radja at the mouth of the river of Tandjoengpoera, at Koewala Boeboen. The Atjehnese sultan’s pursuit of her, on this reading, encodes the Atjehnese sultanate’s design upon the east-coast polities — a design whose outcome, the legend insists, was frustrated not by war but by the queen’s death and the loss of her body to the sea.
The glass coffin
The detail of the “glass coffin” (glazen kist) in which the queen’s body was sent to Atjeh, and its disappearance at sea, has no parallel in the standard chronicles but is, in De Roo de la Faille’s reading, a bedekte taal marker: the “glass” coffin is the sea itself, the tasik of the Taroema allegory, and the loss of the ship is the swallowing-up of the old east-coast sacred complex by the Atjehnese maritime advance. The episode thus closes, in symbolic form, the same historical process — the absorption of the east-coast kingdoms by Atjeh — that the Atjeh-Aroe War (1539) records in military form.
Significance
For AcehWiki, Puteri Idjo is the most resonant single legend tying the Sultan of Atjeh to the Deli-Asahan-Aroe cultural zone, and the only one that frames the Atjeh-east-coast relationship in dynastic-marital rather than military terms. Her identification with the goddess Cyama-Tara also makes her the principal instance of De Roo de la Faille’s broader claim that the Buddhist goddess-cult of pre-Islamic Sumatra survived, in folk form, into the chronicle and romance tradition of the Atjehnese age.
See Also
- Sultan of Atjeh (16th century)
- Deli
- Asahan
- Kota Djawa
- Aroe
- Poelo Kampi
- Tandjoengpoera
- Kwala Boeboen
- Djawaka
- Bedekte taal
- Historische Curiositeiten uit Malajoe en Java
- Anderson’s Mission to the East Coast of Sumatra (1825)
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.