Worawari is the Sumatran-Overwal place-name that De Roo de la Faille identifies as the bedekte taal original of the desa Bonang in Rembang south of Lasem on Java — the place whose name the Babad Tanah Djawi attaches to the pangeran Bonang who converts Raden Sahid at the pasar of Djatisaripa. It is the Sumatran ancestral counterpart of the Javanese Rembang — the Ari-ke-mbang of the Sumatran Overwal — and the place-world whose name encodes the wora-wari flower of the Taroema allegory.
Identification with the Javanese Bonang
The Babad Tanah Djawi gives the name Bonang to the pangeran who converts Raden Sahid at the pasar of Djatisaripa. The name is that of a desa Bonang in Rembang south of Lasem on Java. De Roo de la Faille demurs: “meant was Worawari on Sumatra”. Rembang itself is, in De Roo de la Faille’s reading, the Javanese remembrance of the Ari-ke-mbang of the Sumatran Overwal — the land of the Kalang’s, Javanese people who were not “real” Javanese but djawa-ka of lang-ka, the Sumatran country from which they had been brought as war-booty. The pangeran Bonang of the Javanese chronicle is, in this reading, the Javanese rememberer of the Sumatran Worawari.
Decoding: mala-wora-wari
The wora-wari flower behind Pangeran Bonang’s ear — the sign by which Raden Sahid was to recognise the man he should plunder — is, in De Roo de la Faille’s reading, the wora-wari of mala-wora-wari, i.e. Mala-joe-wa-wor-a — “Malajoer-ora” — Malajoer. The same flower is the tjempaka gonda of the Taroema allegory — the “fragrant” (aroem) flower whose gonda (“fragrance”) encodes the ancestral land of Taroema. The Worawari of the Sumatran Overwal is, in this reading, the place-world whose name encodes both the wora-wari flower and the Malajoer of the Aru complex.
The Siamese record
Worawari is also recorded in the Siamese code Kot Monthiera ban of c. 1360 as one of the four polities — with Udjong-tanah, Malaka, and Malayu — that were tributary to Siam. The same record fixes Worawari as a Malay polity of the east-coast Sumatran-Overwal complex — i.e. as part of the Tandjoengpoera-Aroe-Pasej triangle that the Atjehnese conquest of Aroe of 1539 would close.
Significance
For AcehWiki, Worawari is the principal Sumatran-Overwal place-name that De Roo de la Faille identifies as the bedekte taal original of the Javanese Bonang of Rembang — the place-world whose name encodes both the wora-wari flower of the Taroema allegory and the Malajoer of the Aru complex. Its record in the Siamese code Kot Monthiera ban also fixes it as a Malay polity of the east-coast Sumatran-Overwal complex tributary to Siam in the fourteenth century.
See Also
- Djatisaripa
- Soenan Bonang
- Soenan Kalidjaga
- Rembang
- Kalang
- Taroema
- Malajoer
- Aroe
- Siam
- 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 Soenan Kalidjaga”, pp. 43-46, and chapter “Over Sjahroe’n Noewi”, pp. 27-28.