Madjapahit in Langsar — also Majapahit of Langsar — is the Sumatran counterpart of the great Majapahit of East Java, located in Langsar (in modern Langkat) on the east coast of Sumatra, and the principal token of De Roo de la Faille’s claim that the “Madjapahit” of the chronicle tradition had a Sumatran original — a bedekte taal form of which the Javanese Madjapahit was the “wedergade” (counterpart). It is, in De Roo de la Faille’s reading, the same place-world as the Taroema of the Aru complex, and the Astina of the Javanese legend of praboe Djaja-Baja.
The “double” Madjapahit
The east-coast Sumatran polities, De Roo de la Faille argues, were the gade and wedergade of the Javanese ones — the same names attached to two places, one in the ancestral land of Dja-g-oe-wa and one in its Javanese copy. Tandjoengpoera on west Java was the wedergade of Tandjoengpoera in Langkat; Aroe in the west had its counterpart in the east; and Madjapahit in East Java had its Madjapahit in Langsar. Toemapel in Pasoeroewan De Roo de la Faille reads as T-ar-oe-ma-tapel — i.e. as the Taroema of Toemapel’s counterpart.
The bedekte taal of Pigafetta
Pigafetta, in his account of the Victoria’s voyage, was told by Moorish merchants on Timor that the largest cities of Java Major were Madjapait (which Pigafetta’s manuscripts spell Magepaher / Magepahor), Sunda, Daha, Demak, Gadjahmada, Mataraman, Djapara, Sidajoe, Toeban, Gresik, Soerabaja, and Bali. Rouffaer read Magepaher/Magepahor as Madjapahit of East Java. De Roo de la Faille demurs: Magepaher/Magepahor is Madjapah-it-l-èr or Madjapah-it-l-or — the Madjapahit “in the north” (i.e. on Sumatra’s east coast, at Langsar), not the Madjapahit of East Java. The king whose name Pigafetta recorded as Raia Pati Unus was, on this reading, raja (not radja) Pati Unus — “the glorious Pati Unus” of the 1546 attack on Pasoeroewan.
The Atjeh-Aru war and the close of the Sumatran Madjapahit
After the Atjehnese conquest of Aroe of 1539, the Sumatran Madjapahit of Langsar — like the rest of the east-coast Hindu-Javanese complex — was reduced to “poverty and piracy”, and its function as the gade of the Javanese Madjapahit lapsed. The Putri Hijau legend of Deli — the fairy-tale queen whose rejection of the Sultan of Atjeh’s marriage suit ended in the loss of her glass coffin at sea — is, in De Roo de la Faille’s reading, the folk record of the close of the Sumatran Madjapahit age.
Significance
For AcehWiki, Madjapahit in Langsar is the principal token of De Roo de la Faille’s claim that the chronicle tradition’s “Madjapahit” had a Sumatran original — a bedekte taal form whose Javanese counterpart is the great Majapahit of East Java, and whose reduction by the Atjehnese conquest of Aroe of 1539 marks the close of the Hindu-Javanese east-coast age.
See Also
- Djawaka
- Taroema
- Astina
- Langsar
- Langkat
- Kota Djawa
- Puteri Idjo
- Majapahit
- Pigafetta
- G. P. Rouffaer
- 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), chapters “Over Soenan Kalidjaga” (pp. 47-49) and “Over Sjahroe’n Noewi” (pp. 29-31).