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The Picture Of Tutankamun In 1926
By Harry Burton
The Alexander The great Mosaic Pictures
INDONESIA HISTORY COLLECTIONS IN 1943
Plate 1–Balinese beautyTRANSLATE bY
Dr Iwan Suwandy,MHA
(With 21 Plates)
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Kepulauan terbesar di dunia terletak 13.000 mil dari New York, di belahan dunia. Hindia Timur, atau Indonesia, adalah rantai kepulauan berjumlah ribuan dan memperluas 3.000 mil di sepanjang Khatulistiwa dari ujung barat mereka di ujung utara Sumatra sampai batas timur mereka di New Guinea.
Sebagian besar daerah ini pulau besar dimiliki oleh Belanda, sampai disita oleh Jepang pada bulan-bulan awal 1942. Dua bagian dari pulau-pulau, utara dan timur Kalimantan Timur, berada di bawah kontrol, masing-masing, Raya dan Portugal.
Hindia terletak langsung di Khatulistiwa, yang membagi dua dua pulau terbesar, Sumatera dan Kalimantan. Pulau paling barat, Sumatera, terletak tepat di sebelah selatan Semenanjung Melayu, dari yang dipisahkan oleh Selat Malaka yang sempit. Kalimantan dan Sulawesi, pulau-pulau paling utara, mencapai dekat dengan Filipina, sementara Timor, di perbatasan selatan, hanya 400 mil di Laut Arafura dari Australia. Perbatasan timur wilayah Belanda memotong langsung utara dan selatan melalui pusat Nugini. Di luar itu berbohong bagian Australia dan Inggris pulau terakhir. Dengan demikian seluruh nusantara menempati laut antara Asia Tenggara dan Australia. Dahulu dianggap sebagai “penghalang Melayu” melindungi Australia dari agresi Jepang selatan, Hindia sekarang, sayangnya, merupakan garis musuh defensif terhadap Sekutu penaklukan utara. Dari sudut pandang strategis, karena itu, pulau-pulau yang sangat penting dalam perang Pasifik ini.
Dari timur ke barat Indonesia hampir 1.000 mil lebih luas dari Amerika Serikat; dari utara ke selatan itu meluas untuk jarak setara dengan yang dari perbatasan Kanada untuk Texas pusat. Luas tanah yang sebenarnya adalah kurang lebih sama seperti yang dari Amerika Serikat timur Mississippi – sekitar 750.000 mil persegi. Kalimantan adalah pulau ketiga terbesar di
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dunia, yang meliputi 290.000 mil persegi (setara Texas dan Oklahoma gabungan). Setengah Belanda dari New Guinea, dengan 150.000 nya mil persegi, dan Sumatera, dengan 160.000 mil persegi, California perkiraan dalam ukuran. Sulawesi, berukuran 70.000 mil persegi, adalah sebanding dengan New England ditambah New Jersey, dan Jawa, pulau besar yang tersisa, memiliki luas wilayah 50.000 mil persegi, hampir sama dengan New York State.
Tiga dari empat pulau besar Barat – Sumatera, Kalimantan, dan Jawa – kebohongan di rak tanah Asia dan pernah berhubungan dengan daratan benua. Laut memisahkan mereka dari Asia sangat dangkal, dan sebagian besar pesisir mereka terdiri dari rawa pasang surut memperluas jauh di daratan. New Guinea dan pulau-pulau yang berdekatan istirahat di rak tanah Australia dan sebelumnya merupakan bagian dari Australia sendiri. Pulau-pulau utama Indonesia, bagaimanapun, termasuk Sulawesi, para Kepulauan Sunda Kecil, dan Maluku, naik dari laut dalam, dalam apa yang pernah menjadi selat lebar memisahkan Asia dari Australia.
Topografi Indonesia adalah salah satu kontras yang kuat. Dataran kering yang luas hanya terjadi di Jawa dan sebagian Sumatera. Di tempat lain dataran tingkat jarang dan terbatas di daerah, dan sebagian besar pulau-pulau terdiri dari baik perbukitan dan pegunungan terjal atau rawa basah. Dataran tinggi dan rawa keduanya berpakaian hutan lebat kecuali lereng bukit telah dibuka untuk budidaya dengan usaha manusia. Terutama, oleh karena itu, Hindia adalah wilayah rawa, pegunungan, dan hutan.
Lebih dari seratus gunung Bahasa Indonesia adalah gunung berapi aktif atau baru aktif. Dimanapun vulkanisme terjadi, populasi terpadat, karena abu vulkanik yang membuat tanah subur. Jawa, yang paling vulkanik dari semua pulau, memiliki konsentrasi terbesar penduduk; Kalimantan dan New Guinea, wilayah paling vulkanik, adalah yang paling jarang dihuni.
IKLIM
Berbaring sepanjang khatulistiwa, Hindia memiliki iklim panas dan lembab, tetapi suhu rata-rata menurun sekitar 1 ° Fahrenheit untuk setiap 300 meter dari ketinggian. Akibatnya, kabupaten pegunungan menawarkan bantuan dingin dari dataran rendah yang menindas. Penghuni di pantai Batavia, dimana suhu tahunan rata-rata adalah 80 °, menyambut setiap kesempatan untuk mengunjungi Handung. sebuah kota gunung dengan rata-rata tahunan hanya 73 °, Kelembaban tinggi membuat panas tropis semakin tidak nyaman.Curah hujan lebat di hampir seluruh bagian pulau dan meningkat dengan ketinggian. Beberapa bagian pegunungan diberi minum dengan 12 kaki hujan per tahun. Meskipun suhu bervariasi hanya sedikit sepanjang tahun, angin monsoon menyebabkan perubahan musiman dalam curah hujan. Dalam sebagian
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GEOGRAPHY
The largest archipelago in the world lies 13,000 miles from New York, halfway around the globe. The East Indies, or Indonesia, are a chain of islands numbering in the thousands and extending 3,000 miles along the Equator from their western extremity at the northern tip of Sumatra to their eastern limit in New Guinea.
Most of this enormous insular area was owned by the Netherlands, until seized by the Japanese in the early months of 1942. Two parts of the islands, northern Borneo and eastern Timor, were under the control, respectively, of Great Britain and Portugal.
The Indies lie directly on the Equator, which bisects the two largest islands, Sumatra and Borneo. The westernmost island, Sumatra, is situated just south of the Malay Peninsula, from which it is separated by the narrow Straits of Malacca. Borneo and Celebes, the northernmost islands, reach up close to the Philippines, while Timor, on the southern border, is only 400 miles across the Arafura Sea from Australia. The eastern border of Dutch territory cuts directly north and south through the center of New Guinea. Beyond it lie the Australian and British sections of the latter island. Thus the entire archipelago occupies the seas between southeastern Asia and Australia. Formerly regarded as “the Malay barrier” protecting Australia from Japanese aggression southward, the Indies now, unfortunately, represent an enemy defensive line against Allied reconquest northward. From a strategical viewpoint, therefore, the islands are of crucial importance in the present Pacific war.
From east to west Indonesia is almost 1,000 miles wider than the United States; from north to south it extends for a distance equivalent to that from the Canadian border to central Texas. Its actual land area is approximately the same as that of the United States east of the Mississippi–about 750,000 square miles. Borneo is the third largest island in
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the world, covering 290,000 square miles (equaling Texas and Oklahoma combined). The Dutch half of New Guinea, with its 150,000 square miles, and Sumatra, with 160,000 square miles, approximate California in size. Celebes, measuring 70,000 square miles, is comparable to New England plus New Jersey; and Java, the remaining large island, has an area of 50,000 square miles, almost the same as New York State.
Three of the four large western islands–Sumatra, Borneo, and Java– lie on the Asiatic land shelf and were once connected with the continental mainland. The seas separating them from Asia are very shallow, and much of their coastland consists of tidal swamps extending far inland. New Guinea and adjacent islands rest on the Australian land shelf and formerly constituted a part of Australia itself. The central islands of Indonesia, however, including Celebes, the Lesser Sunda Islands, and the Moluccas, rise out of the deep ocean, in what was once a wide strait separating Asia from Australia.
The topography of Indonesia is one of strong contrasts. The only extensive dry flatlands occur in Java and parts of Sumatra. Elsewhere level plains are infrequent and restricted in area, and most of the islands consist of either rolling hills and steep mountains or soggy marshes. Highlands and swamps both are clothed in dense forest except where hillsides have been cleared for cultivation by human effort. Predominantly, therefore, the Indies are a region of swamps, mountains, and jungles.
Over a hundred of the Indonesian mountains are active or recently active volcanoes. Wherever volcanism occurs, population is densest, for volcanic ash makes fertile soil. Java, the most volcanic of all the islands, has the greatest concentration of population; Borneo and New Guinea, the least volcanic regions, are the most sparsely peopled.
CLIMATE
Lying along the Equator, the Indies have a hot and moist climate; but the average temperature decreases about 1° Fahrenheit for each 300 feet of altitude. Consequently, the mountainous districts offer cool relief from the oppressive lowlands. Dwellers in coastal Batavia, where the mean annual temperature is 80°, welcome every opportunity to visit Handung. a mountain city with a yearly average of only 73°, The high humidity makes the tropical heat even more uncomfortable.
Rainfall is heavy in nearly all parts of the islands and increases with altitude. Some mountainous sections are drenched with 12 feet of rain annually. Although the temperature varies only slightly throughout the year, the monsoonal winds cause a seasonal change in rainfall. In most
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Fig. 1.–The East Indies
of Indonesia, the west is thIndonesia, barat adalah “basah” hujan dan berlaku selama bulan-bulan musim dingin utara kami. Di bagian timur Indonesia, namun, musim dibalik, dan musim timur membawa sebagian besar curah hujan.
PENYAKIT
Sementara panas dan kelembaban menyebabkan ketidaknyamanan, penyakit lokal banyak adalah sumber bahaya konstan. Karena parasit penyakit selalu ada, hati-hati perlu bahwa air minum direbus dan semua sayur dan buah dikupas dan sebaiknya dimasak, untuk menghindari tipus, disentri, dan kolera. Lebih sulit untuk mencegah adalah malaria, kutukan pulau. Kelambu membantu dan sangat diperlukan, tetapi kina adalah yang terbaik pencegahan. Ini tidak perlu digunakan di setiap kabupaten, untuk beberapa bagian pulau-pulau secara alami bebas dari nyamuk pembawa malaria. Penyakit-penyakit tropis lebih menjijikkan seperti kaki gajah dan kusta mengklaim korban asli banyak tapi jarang menyerang kulit putih.Layanan medis Belanda telah membuat kemajuan luar biasa dalam pencegahan dan pengendalian penyakit dengan akibat bahwa banyak bagian Hindia, terutama Jawa dan Sumatera bagian, telah menjadi tempat yang cukup sehat dengan standar tropis. Penderitaan ditakuti tahun sebelumnya, seperti wabah dan demam blackwater, telah dikendalikan, dan wabah yang menghancurkan dari kolera, tifus, dan cacar tidak lagi terjadi. Tapi orang kulit putih masih harus melakukan kewaspadaan konstan pada apa yang dia makan dan minuman, menjalani inokulasi periodik, dan menjaga kina nya berguna untuk menjamin kesehatan yang baik di pulau-pulau. Kecerobohan membawa hukuman berat, sering mati. Hal ini benar terutama di distrik-distrik terpencil, di mana pelayanan kesehatan pemerintah belum diperpanjang kegiatannya, dan di mana perawatan medis tidak tersedia.
HEWAN HIDUP
Mungkin jenis yang paling menjengkelkan dari kehidupan hewan adalah yang terkecil. Semut, rayap, laba-laba, kalajengking, dan sejumlah serangga ajaib di berbagai kawanan mereka di mana-mana, dan lalat dan nyamuk terutama adalah sahabat konstan dan tidak menyenangkan. Yang terakhir ini terutama merupakan hama menyebalkan, dan kebebasan dari serangan bertubi-tubi mereka mungkin adalah salah satu bantuan terbesar tunggal dalam mendapatkan merasa jauh dari Hindia. Perjalanan di kabupaten berhutan membawa pertemuan menyenangkan dengan lintah berlimpah, yang menghisap darah sampai bengkak ke ukuran cigaret.Pulau-pulau barat memiliki jenis Asiatic binatang, seperti harimau, gajah, badak, sapi liar, dan orang utan, tetapi ini tidak hadir
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di bagian timur kepulauan, di mana fauna Australia mendominasi, termasuk berbagai jenis marsupial. Meskipun berbagai macam ular yang ditemukan di Hindia, dan beberapa macam, seperti kobra dan ular air tertentu, beracun, reptil yang paling berbahaya adalah buaya. Adalah bijaksana untuk memata-matai setiap aliran dengan sangat hati sebelum mandi, pencucian, atau mencoba sebuah persimpangan.
POPULASI
Populasi besar Hindia – sekitar 70,0000,000 berdasarkan perkiraan terakhir – terutama terkonsentrasi di satu pulau, Jawa. Di sini, di daerah setara dengan Negara Bagian New York, hidup lebih dari 40.000.000 orang, rata-rata lebih dari 800 per mil persegi. Ini adalah negara dihuni sebagian besar berpenduduk padat di dunia. Sumatera, hampir empat kali luas Jawa hanya memiliki 8.000.000 penduduk, sementara Kalimantan, pulau terbesar dari semua, sangat jarang dihuni oleh 2.500.000. Sulawesi, dengan 4.000.000, memiliki sebagian besar terkonsentrasi di utara ekstrim dan semenanjung barat daya. Bali, sebuah pulau kecil sebelah timur Jawa, mendukung populasi lebih dari satu juta, dan Lombok, berdekatan dengan itu, 600.000, tetapi Indonesia timur, termasuk New Guinea, adalah untuk sebagian besar tipis diselesaikan. Jadi, sementara jumlah penduduk besar, hanya beberapa bagian dari Hindia yang padat dihuni: Jawa, daerah tertentu di Sumatera, dua bagian terbatas dari Sulawesi, Bali, dan Lombok.Jawa, dari sudut pandang penduduk, bukan hanya fenomena, yang merupakan masalah yang membingungkan. Orang Jawa memiliki dua kali lipat jumlah mereka dalam 60 tahun, dan tidak menunjukkan tanda-tanda berkurangnya Kenaikan mereka. Dengan perang asli ditekan dan penyakit tidak lagi menghancurkan memeriksa sebelumnya adalah, pulau ini sangat hampir mencapai titik kejenuhan manusia. Belanda telah mencoba untuk meredakan ketegangan dengan mendorong dan subsidi emigrasi ke bagian lain dari Indonesia, terutama Sumatera. Tapi sementara emigran sedang dikapalkan oleh ratusan, orang Jawa meningkat ribuan. Masalah tetap belum terpecahkan.
Populasi putih Hindia, termasuk orang-orang berdarah campuran, sebelum perang saat ini hanya mencapai sekitar 250.000. Kelompok non-pribumi terbesar adalah Cina, dengan jumlah diperkirakan 1.200.000. Semua lain “Asiatik asing” bersama-sama, sebagian besar Arab dan Hindu, mencapai 115.000. Orang Jepang, kebetulan, yang kurang terwakili, dengan hanya beberapa ribu. Karena hal teknis hukum, mereka yang diklasifikasikan sebagai “orang Eropa.” Secara keseluruhan, kemudian, populasi non-Indonesia dari pulau-pulau relatif kecil, hanya sekitar 2 persen dari total.
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Plat 2Above: Kawah Bromo besar di Jawa Timur. Bromo dan Smeru di latar belakang adalah gunung suci dari dataran tinggi Tengger, yang sebelumnya dilemparkan pengorbanan manusia ke dalam gunung berapi merokok.
Bawah: Pemandangan di Bali.
e “wet” monsoon and prevails during the months of our northern winter. In parts of eastern Indonesia, however, the seasons are reversed, and the east monsoon brings most rainfall.
DISEASE
While heat and dampness cause discomfort, the numerous local diseases are a source of constant danger. Because of the ever present disease parasites, great care is necessary that drinking water be boiled and all vegetables and fruits peeled and preferably cooked, in order to avoid typhoid, dysentery, and cholera. More difficult to prevent is malaria, the curse of the island. Mosquito nets help and are indispensable, but quinine is the best preventative. It need not be used in every district, for several parts of the islands are naturally free of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The more repulsive tropical diseases such as elephantiasis and leprosy claim many native victims but seldom attack whites.
The Dutch medical service has made amazing progress in disease prevention and control with the result that many parts of the Indies, particularly Java and sections of Sumatra, have become fairly healthy places by tropical standards. The dreaded afflictions of former years, such as plague and blackwater fever, have been brought under control, and devastating epidemics of cholera, typhoid, and smallpox no longer occur. But the white man must still exercise constant vigilance on what he eats and drinks, undergo periodic inoculations, and keep his quinine handy in order to insure good health in the islands. Carelessness carries heavy penalties, frequently death. This is especially true in the remoter districts, where the government health service has not yet extended its activities, and where medical care is not available.
ANIMAL LIFE
Probably the most annoying kinds of animal life are the smallest ones. Ants, termites, spiders, scorpions, and a host of insects marvelous in their variety swarm everywhere, and flies and mosquitoes especially are constant and disagreeable companions. The latter particularly are infuriating pests, and freedom from their insistent attacks is perhaps the greatest single relief one feels in getting away from the Indies. Travel in forested districts brings unpleasant encounters with the abundant leeches, which suck blood until swollen to cigaret size.
The western islands have Asiatic types of animals, such as the tiger, elephant, rhinoceros, wild cattle, and orang-utan; but these are absent
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in the eastern part of the archipelago, where Australian fauna predominates, including numerous kinds of marsupials. Although a wide variety of snakes are found in the Indies, and several kinds, such as cobras and certain water snakes, are poisonous, the most dangerous reptiles are the crocodiles. It is wise to reconnoitre every stream with extreme care before bathing, laundering, or attempting a crossing.
POPULATION
The enormous population of the Indies–about 70,0000,000 by the latest estimate–is concentrated mainly in one island, Java. Here, in an area equivalent to that of New York State, live over 40,000,000 people, an average of more than 800 per square mile. It is the mostly densely populated country in the world. Sumatra, almost four times the size of Java, has only 8,000,000 inhabitants; while Borneo, largest island of all, is very sparsely peopled by 2,500,000. Celebes, with 4,000,000, has most of these concentrated in the extreme northern and southwestern peninsulas. Bali, a small island east of Java, support a population of over a million, and Lombok, adjacent to it, 600,000; but eastern Indonesia, including New Guinea, is for the most part thinly settled. Thus, while the total population is large, only a few sections of the Indies are densely inhabited: Java, certain districts of Sumatra, two restricted parts of Celebes, Bali, and Lombok.
Java, from the viewpoint of population, is not only a phenomenon; it is a perplexing problem. The Javanese have doubled their numbers in 60 years, and show no signs of slackening their Increase. With native warfare suppressed and disease no longer the devastating check it formerly was, this island has very nearly reached the point of human saturation. The Dutch have tried to ease the strain by encouraging and subsidizing emigration to other parts of Indonesia, principally Sumatra. But while emigrants were being shipped off by hundreds, the Javanese were increasing by thousands. The problem remains unsolved.
The white population of the Indies, including persons of mixed blood, before the present war totaled only about 250,000. The largest non-native group were the Chinese, numbering approximately 1,200,000. All other “alien Asiatics” together, mostly Arabians and Hindus, totaled 115,000. The Japanese, incidentally, were poorly represented, with only a few thousand. Because of legal technicalities, they were classed as “Europeans.” In all, then, the non-Indonesian population of the islands was relatively small, only about 2 percent of the total.
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Plate 2Above: The enormous Bromo crater in eastern Java. The Bromo and the Smeru in background are sacred mountains of the Tenggerese highlanders, who formerly hurled human sacrifices into the smoking volcano.
Below: Landscape in Bali.
Plate 3Above: Crocodile captured in Sibolga, Sumatra. Length 16 feet, weight 1,100 pounds.
Below: Orang-utan, Borneo. These great apes are found nowhere in the world except Sumatra and Borneo.
Plate 4Above: The Javanese are the champion breeders of the world and love their plentiful children. This photograph symbolizes an apparently insoluble population problem.
Below: Batak women and girls, Sumatra, showing the proto-Malay (Caucasoid) physical type.
Plate 5Above: Javanese girls in working clothes. The physical types show proto-Malay (Caucasoid) and deutero-Malay (Mongoloid) mixture.
Below: Native of Kupang, Timor, showing the Melanesian physical type, with Negroid features, and wooly hair. A half cylinder is used to fashion the pompon coiffure. Courtesy Netherlands Information Bureau.
RAS ETHNIK
Hindia adalah tanah air dari cabang Melayu Mongoloid, atau kuning, ras. Jenis Melayu, secara umum, ditandai dengan perawakan yang sangat pendek (5 kaki 2 atau 3 inci untuk pria), kulit coklat, rambut hitam lurus atau bergelombang, wajah datar dengan hidung lebar dan ketebalan bibir sedang, dan bertubuh ramping. Ada pertumbuhan sedikit rambut di wajah atau tubuh. Sebagian besar wilayah Indonesia, dengan pengecualian dari pulau-pulau timur ekstrim dan bagian terpencil tertentu di tempat lain, dihuni oleh masyarakat dari ras Melayu, yang juga menyebar sampai ke Filipina dan Semenanjung Melayu.Dua subdivisi dari stok Melayu dapat dibedakan dalam pulau. Kabupaten interior, sebagian besar dataran tinggi, dari Jawa, Sumatera, Kalimantan, dan Sulawesi, serta rantai pulau yang membentang dari Bali ke Timor, yang dihuni terutama oleh suku-suku dari jenis yang disebut proto-Melayu. Mereka mewakili imigrasi sebelumnya Melayu ke Indonesia dari Asia tenggara dan memiliki penampilan yang jauh lebih sedikit Mongoloid dari penduduk pesisir., Populasi pesisir pulau-pulau barat besar sebagian besar dari jenis Deutero-Melayu rasial. Mereka adalah keturunan bentuk pemukim kemudian Melayu di Indonesia dan menunjukkan ciri-ciri lebih Mongoloid. Perbedaan utama antara kedua subraces Melayu dapat diringkas sebagai berikut: proto-Melayu yang lebih pendek dan memiliki kulit yang lebih gelap, rambut bergelombang semakin terlihat, dan gempal fisik dari Deutero-Melayu, dan fitur wajahnya tidak memiliki mata Mongoloid karakteristik miring dengan di dalam kali lipat pada kelopak mata atas, serta tulang pipi menonjol dari Deutero-Melayu.
Alasan untuk ini divisi yang menarik adalah bahwa awalnya tenggara Asia, tanah air kuno dari Indonesia, dihuni oleh suku-suku yang outlier gelap dan jauh dari masyarakat Eropa. Proto-Melayu, dengan fitur Caucasoid mereka, menunjukkan bukti tentang hal ini keturunan “putih”. Mereka meninggalkan daratan Asia sebelum gerakan yang semakin meningkat dari masyarakat Mongoloid dari utara menyerbu Asia Tenggara, dan, dicampur dengan penduduk tua di sana, secara bertahap mengubah jenis ras dari Caucasoid gelap didominasi Mongoloid. Kedatangan kemudian di Hindia dari wilayah ini adalah semakin lebih Mongolized, dan keturunan hidup mereka tunjukkan di wajah mereka yang lebih luas, tulang pipi tinggi, tegak rambut, dan mata miring lagi. Orang Melayu kemudian mendorong yang sebelumnya kembali ke kabupaten interior, dimana tipe proto-Melayu masih berlaku, dan menduduki tanah pesisir sendiri.
Jauh sebelum ras Melayu menyebar ke dalam pulau, saham manusia lainnya telah menetap di sana. Yang paling awal dari ras kuno mungkin Australoid itu. Jejak jenis Australoid, dengan fitur kasar nya, alis beetling, dan tubuh berbulu, masih dapat dideteksi di Hindia,
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khususnya di pulau-pulau terdekat Australia, rumah yang sekarang ini ras kuno. Dua cabang dari ras bersifat Negro juga hidup di Indonesia di zaman prasejarah. Satu,, bukan tinggi cadang berbingkai, berambut lebat Melanesia atau Kelautan jenis bersifat Negro, kini telah menghilang dari sebagian besar pulau-pulau, tetapi di Timor-Flores zona suku-suku Indonesia timur tertentu masih relatif murni melestarikan ciri Melanesia. Pusat permukiman bersifat Negro Melanesia telah lama sejak pindah ke timur, di luar New Guinea, untuk Solomon, Hebrides Baru, Fijis, dan Kaledonia Baru. Jenis bersifat Negro lain, yang disebut Negrito atau kerdil Negro, masih bertahan di bagian timur Sumatera, Timor, Alor, dan pegunungan New Guinea. Lain Negrito kelompok ditemukan di Kepulauan Andaman, Malaya, dan Filipina. Salah satu jenis ras lebih kuno Hindia adalah, seperti Negrito, dwarfish dan rapuh. Jenis ini disebut Veddoid memiliki kulit coklat, rambut berombak, dan wajah prognathous dengan dagu surut. Tampaknya menjadi hibrida terhambat bahasa Melayu dan Australoid. Sisa-sisa umat Veddoid menghuni timur Sumatera rawa, sebagian Kalimantan dan Sulawesi, dan pulau-pulau tertentu di Indonesia Timur, terutama Seram. Masyarakat Veddoid lain ditemukan di Ceylon, Malaya, dan Filipina.
Sementara sebagian besar wilayah Indonesia dihuni oleh suku-suku dari ras Melayu, dengan sisa-sisa diselingi dengan sediaan kuno hanya disebutkan, bagian paling timur tidak pernah dicapai oleh migrasi Melayu utama. Di sini, di New Guinea dan pulau-pulau tetangga, saham Papua berlaku. Sepertinya hibrida dari Australoid dan Melanesia bersifat Negro, yang ditandai dengan tubuh kurus dan panjang berkaki, kulit gelap, dan wajah sempit dan sudut, dengan bibir tipis dan hidung yang panjang, yang terakhir sering penuh berdaging dan terhubung pada tip. Tubuh adalah berbulu, wajah sering berjenggot, dan keriting rambut kepala. Memang, papua berarti “berambut keriting” dalam bahasa Melayu. Di Maluku, antara Sulawesi dan Papua Nugini, campuran dari Papua dan proto-Melayu jenis telah menghasilkan hibrida yang disebut Alfur, dengan media untuk perawakan tinggi, fisik ramping, sedang untuk kulit coklat gelap, langsung ke rambut bergelombang, yang relatif berbulu tubuh, dan fitur yang bervariasi dari luas berwajah, norma berhidung pesek proto-Melayu ke konformasi Papua berwajah sempit, “Semit” berhidung.
Temperamental KUALITAS
Perbedaan ras yang jelas antara Indonesia bagian barat, yang hampir kokoh Melayu dalam populasi, dan pulau-pulau timur, dihuni oleh saham Papua, yang disejajarkan dengan kontras dalam temperamen manusia. Orang Melayu sangat tenang dan pendiam, sementara orang Papua yang bersemangat dan gencar. Yang pertama adalah apatis dan pensiun, yang mudah menguap yang terakhir– 6 –
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dan agresif. Voyaging ke arah timur dari Jawa, orang dapat melihat perubahan karakter menjadi semakin lebih nyata, sama seperti ciri-ciri fisik secara bertahap bervariasi dari Melayu menuju Papua itu. Penduduk asli menjadi kurang terkendali, lebih keras, dan lebih banyak bicara, sampai di New Guinea “suasana manusia” mencapai hampir satu ekstrim berlawanan dari negeri orang Melayu tenang dan Jawa. Meskipun perbedaan temperamental menyertai pergeseran ras, itu mungkin tidak biologis, melainkan hasil dari pelatihan yang berbeda dan aturan perilaku.
Bangsa Melayu, secara umum, sangat ramah dan sopan, tidak hanya untuk satu sama lain, tetapi untuk orang asing juga. Orang Papua, di sisi lain, cenderung membuat kesan sebaliknya, dan memang mereka prevailingly kasar dengan cara dan tidak ramah, sering secara terbuka bermusuhan, orang luar. Suku-suku Melayu di pedalaman Kalimantan, Sulawesi, dan Sumatera, juga, masih curiga terhadap kulit putih, dan tidak memiliki kebaikan dari kelompok yang lebih maju. Tapi di antara sekitar 90 persen dari masyarakat Indonesia, salah satu menemukan sebuah keanggunan dan pesona mudah cara tak tertandingi di tempat lain di dunia. Ini berlaku untuk semua lapisan masyarakat, dan yang paling miskin Jawa, menerima orang asing di gubuk yang menyedihkan, bertindak dengan pria sopan alami dan mudah.
Keindahan tubuh berperawakan kecil, berkulit halus Melayu ditingkatkan oleh ketenangan yang paling mengesankan dan martabat. Gerakan yang tenang, tidak terburu-buru, dan anggun, dan bahkan percakapan mudah dan bersuara lembut. Ketenangan dan kedamaian kekal temperamen Melayu tidak menandakan mentalitas kusam, namun. Orang kulit putih cenderung membingungkan sibuk, dengan bisnis, secara kuat dengan pikiran yang tajam. Tapi siapa pun yang telah mengenal masyarakat Indonesia intim, yang berbicara bahasa mereka dan telah bekerja dan tinggal di antara mereka, tidak akan pernah menilai mereka rendah dalam kecerdasan. Semua bukti menunjukkan berisi jelas bahwa mereka, rata-rata, cukup sama dalam kapasitas mental untuk kulit putih atau ras lainnya. Apapun perbedaan yang ada adalah karena kesenjangan dalam pelatihan dan pendidikan.
SEJARAH
Sejarah mencatat di Indonesia dimulai pada prasasti abad kelima Masehi Tersebar di atas batu ditemukan di Jawa dan Kalimantan menunjukkan bahwa saat ini pulau-pulau sedang dijajah oleh pedagang Hindu dan petualang dari India. Catatan-catatan paling awal terdiri dari pendek, referensi terputus untuk para penguasa Hindu negara kolonial di pantai barat dari pulau-pulau besar. Catatan perjalanan dari dua Buddhis Cina peziarah, Fa-Hsien dan I-Tsing, pada abad kelima dan ketujuh, mengatakan negara-negara Hindu mereka kunjungi di Jawa dan Sumatera. Pesisir populasi dari– 7 –
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pulau-pulau sudah sebagian besar dikonversi ke agama Hindu, baik Brahman-isme atau Buddha, atau, lebih umum, kombinasi dari keduanya.
Setelah abad kedelapan, prasasti batu menjadi lebih banyak dan rinci, dan pada abad kesebelas ahli-ahli Taurat dan penyair dari kerajaan Jawa yang menulis sejarah dalam gaya narasi terhubung. Wisatawan India dan Cina sedang rekaman kesan-kesan mereka nusantara, dan komunikasi yang teratur dan perdagangan telah didirikan di seluruh Indonesia bagian barat. Negara-negara Hindu kecil secara bertahap yang bergabung menjadi dua kerajaan kuat: Sriwijaya di selatan Sumatera dan Singosari di Jawa Timur. Sriwijaya diperpanjang dunia yang sampai ke Semenanjung Melayu, dan bahkan terlibat dalam serangkaian perang dengan negara bagian selatan India dan Srilanka pada abad kesebelas dan ketigabelas. Singosari menjadi begitu kuat untuk menantang keunggulan dari Kubilai Khan di Timur selatan, dan pada 1294 tentara yang mengalahkan kekuatan invasi yang besar Cina yang mendarat di pantai Jawa.
Indonesia mencapai “usia emas” dalam abad keempat belas dan kelima belas, ketika setelah perjuangan panjang untuk supremasi kerajaan Jawa Modjopahit, penerus Singosari, Sriwijaya ditundukkan dan diperluas kekuasaannya atas sebagian besar Hindia, Filipina, dan tenggara Asia.
Peradaban Hindu-Jawa abad pertengahan telah meninggalkan kesan yang mendalam pada budaya sekarang Hindia. Reruntuhan kota-kota besar dan kompleks candi masih bisa dilihat di Sumatera dan Jawa, tetapi lebih penting dan abadi telah menjadi pengaruh Hindu pada organisasi sosial, teknologi, agama, dan bahasa. Huruf India Lama masih digunakan di beberapa bagian pulau. Orang-orang Hindu juga meninggalkan jejak mereka pada jenis fisik dari masyarakat Indonesia, tetapi ini benar terutama di distrik-distrik pantai Jawa dan Sumatra, dan terutama di kalangan kelas sosial yang lebih tinggi. Keluarga kerajaan negara-negara asli terutama menunjukkan keturunan India sebagian mereka di bertubuh lebih tinggi, kaki panjang, kepala sempit, dan fitur lebih halus dari jangka umum orang biasa.
Penurunan kekaisaran Modjopahit terjadi kebetulan dengan penyebaran agama Islam di bagian barat Indonesia. Islam, dibawa dari India ke Malaya dan Sumatra pada abad kedua belas dan ketiga belas, cepat diperluas selama pemerintah-pengikut Modjopahit di Sumatera dan Jawa bagian barat. Pemberontakan melawan tuan Hindu di Jawa Timur meningkat dalam tingkat dan kekerasan, sampai, akhir abad kelima belas, benteng terakhir dari rezim lama jatuh sebelum serangan pemberontak Islamisasi.
Agama Islam dengan demikian menggantikan Hindu sebagai agama dominan Hindia. Hanya dalam satu tempat, Pulau Bali, memiliki kultus tua selamat.
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Hari ini Bali adalah jenis barang museum, replika hidup pada abad keempat belas Jawa.
Kejatuhan Modjopahit juga menandai akhir dari apa pun kesatuan politik telah dicapai di pulau-pulau. Di tempat kerajaan tunggal dengan pemerintah-pengikut, sebagian besar kepulauan itu dibagi menjadi sejumlah kecil negara, semua Islam dalam agama, tapi terlibat dalam perang konstan dan satu intrik terhadap yang lain. Akibatnya, ketika orang Eropa pertama kali muncul di Hindia, mereka menemukan tidak ada daya yang kuat tunggal, tetapi hanya fragmen yang rusak dari kerajaan sebelumnya. Itu relatif mudah bagi pendatang baru, oleh karena itu, untuk menundukkan negara-negara lemah satu per satu atau, seperti sering terjadi, bersekutu dengan satu penguasa terhadap yang lain, akhirnya menaklukkan keduanya. Indonesia, terpecah belah, sehingga jatuh korban yang mudah ke desain imperialistik dari kulit putih, yang, memang, menghabiskan lebih banyak upaya dalam memerangi antara mereka sendiri daripada terhadap negara-negara asli.
Orang Portugis datang pertama, membangun diri mereka di Malaka, di Semenanjung Melayu, di 1510. Beroperasi dari basis dan berlayar di bawah arahan pilot Melayu yang mengenal lautan Hindia, mereka digantikan oleh 1521 dalam mendirikan pos perdagangan di Maluku atau di Spice Kepulauan Tidore, Ternate, dan Banda. Pada 1580 Portugal bersatu dengan Spanyol, dan Spanyol mengambil alih kepemilikan Portugis di Maluku, menambahkan mereka ke koloni Filipina.
Kekuatan laut Spanyol ditakdirkan oleh kekalahan Armada Besar di 1588, dan Inggris dan Belanda menjadi saingan untuk menguasai Hindia. Pada tahun 1650, Belanda master virtual dari pulau, dan perdagangan Inggris dibatasi untuk negara asli tertentu di Indonesia bagian barat dengan mana Inggris East India Company memiliki kontrak komersial. Orang Spanyol telah mundur ke Filipina, sedangkan Portugis diadakan hanya sisa wilayah mereka sebelumnya di bagian timur Timor.
Dari 1650-1910 Belanda metodis pergi tentang bisnis memperluas dan memperkuat kontrol mereka atas Hindia, sampai dengan tanggal terakhir semua hambatan asli terorganisir sudah teratasi. Kebijakan Belanda East India Company bukan untuk menggulingkan penguasa pribumi kecuali mereka keras kepala keras, melainkan untuk memerintah melalui mereka. Orang Belanda tertarik untuk hak perdagangan bukan tugas mengatur dan bersedia untuk memungkinkan penguasa apapun untuk tetap berkuasa dengan ketentuan bahwa ia diberi hak istimewa mereka komersial. Sistem pemerintahan tidak langsung melalui pangeran asli, seperti akan kita lihat, tetap menjadi unsur dominan dalam administrasi kolonial Belanda.
Meskipun keengganan mereka, bagaimanapun, orang Belanda terpaksa mengganggu lebih dan lebih dalam pemerintah daerah untuk menjamin monopoli mereka perdagangan. Ini tengkar meningkat dalam politik dan internal
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perang akhirnya merusak stabilitas keuangan Perusahaan India Timur, dan serangkaian kerugian perdagangan melemah lebih jauh. Akhirnya, perang dengan Inggris pada tahun 1780 dan 1795, yang terakhir memblokade perdagangan Jawa, disegel azab Perseroan; dan tahun 1798 itu dibubarkan, bangkrut.
Hampir tidak pernah Belanda mulai menata kembali administrasi kepulauan ketika, pada tahun 1806, Belanda sendiri diduduki oleh Perancis di bawah Napoleon. Untuk memastikan bahwa Hindia juga tidak seharusnya. jatuh ke Perancis, dan dengan persetujuan dan dorongan dari pengasingan Belanda Raja di Inggris, British Far Eastern pasukan merebut seluruh kepulauan pada tahun 1811.
Pendudukan Inggris berakhir tahun 1818, dan perjanjian 1824 didefinisikan wilayah Inggris dan Belanda di Asia selatan dan pulau-pulau. Belanda menyerahkan semua klaim ke Semenanjung Melayu, sedangkan Inggris pada gilirannya melepaskan kepemilikan beberapa mereka yang tersisa di Sumatera. Belanda adalah untuk memiliki tangan yang bebas dalam pulau-pulau, Inggris hak penuh di daratan Asia.
Ketika Belanda kembali ke Hindia pada 1818, mereka mulai segera pada tugas menciptakan ketertiban efisien untuk wilayah pulau mereka. Pekerjaan ini memakan waktu hampir seratus tahun, dan melibatkan mereka dalam rangkaian panjang perang lokal dan ekspedisi ke pelosok nusantara. Sepanjang abad kesembilan belas hampir setahun berlalu tanpa peperangan di beberapa bagian dari Hindia.
Orang Belanda menghadapi dua jenis situasi antara kelompok pribumi dengan siapa mereka harus berurusan. Distrik-distrik pesisir semua atau sebagian besar pulau-pulau didominasi oleh negara-negara asli, sementara daerah pedalaman, terutama di pulau-pulau besar, yang dihuni oleh independen, suku-suku yang terorganisir secara longgar, tanpa kekuatan yang mengatur terpusat. Dalam berurusan dengan para pangeran asli, Pemerintah Belanda mengikuti pola yang ditetapkan oleh Perusahaan India Timur tua. Di setiap negara bagian upaya yang dilakukan untuk menjaga kedaulatan memerintah dalam kekuasaan dan memerintah melalui dia. Hanya ketika seorang sultan atau radja terbukti berbahaya atau tidak kooperatif adalah cara-cara militer digunakan untuk menggulingkan dia dan baik menginstal pengganti cocok atau menempatkan wilayah di bawah pemerintahan langsung. Bahkan dalam hal yang terakhir, bagaimanapun, para kepala lebih rendah dari kabupaten dan desa biasanya dipertahankan dan dibayar gaji oleh Belanda. Di wilayah suku pedalaman, di mana tidak ada organisasi negara ada, pemerintahan langsung diperkenalkan segera setelah penggabungan suatu daerah ke dalam sistem kolonial. Di sini sekali lagi, sejauh mungkin, kepala suku pribumi tetap berkuasa atas umat mereka, yang diperlukan hanya untuk membuktikan kesetiaan mereka kepada pemerintahan baru.
Hingga tahun 1910 tenaga kerja panjang penaklukan dan organisasi itu hampir selesai, dan semua bagian dari Hindia berada di bawah kontrol Belanda. Selama 30 tahun setelah itu, perdamaian memerintah di pulau-pulau, sampai pada tahun 1941 perang di
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skala vaster dari sebelumnya menyapu atas mereka, meninggalkan Jepang berkuasa di seluruh wilayah seluruh dari Sumatra ke New Guinea.
DIVISI UTAMA DAN MASYARAKAT
Dalam membahas daerah primitif di dunia, adalah kebiasaan untuk merujuk pada kelompok sosial yang lebih besar sebagai suku. Secara keseluruhan, sekitar 130 terpisah India Timur suku bisa disebutkan, tapi banyak dari mereka yang begitu besar sehingga mereka lebih baik mungkin akan ditunjuk sebagai bangsa atau masyarakat. Dalam sinopsis berikut satu daerah utama dan masyarakat, angka populasi didasarkan pada sensus 1930 Hindia. Invasi Jepang mengganggu publikasi statistik rinci untuk 1940. Peta-peta terlampir menunjukkan lokasi dari berbagai pulau dan masyarakat yang disebutkan dalam teks.Hindia dibagi secara geografis menjadi empat bagian utama:
Sunda Raya Kepulauan, termasuk Sumatera, Jawa, Kalimantan, dan Sulawesi.
The Lesser Sunda Islands, termasuk yang tersebar di timur dari Bali ke Timor.
Maluku, termasuk pulau-pulau yang tersebar dan kelompok pulau terletak di antara Sulawesi dan Timor di sebelah barat dan New Guinea di sebelah timur.
Belanda Baru Guinea.1
Sumatera -. Pulau, paling barat Hindia, memiliki luas sekitar 180.000 mil persegi, termasuk pulau-pulau yang berdekatan yang lebih kecil di lepas pantai timur dan barat. Sumatra adalah sekitar ukuran California dan kira-kira sama dalam bentuk. Bagian barat terdiri dari rantai pegunungan yang membentang dari satu ujung ke ujung. Satu danau yang besar, Toba, dan beberapa yang lebih kecil terletak pada lipatan pegunungan, dan beberapa lahan pertanian terbaik dari pulau itu ditemukan di lembah-lembah dataran tinggi dan dataran tinggi. Dua puluh lima vulkanik puncak pada berbagai tahapan kenaikan aktivitas sepanjang cordillera Sumatera besar. Gunung-gunung kerumunan para pesisir yang sempit di sisi barat pulau, tapi lereng timur mereka lebih bertahap, dan di sini mereka memberi jalan pertama untuk kaki bukit dan kemudian, khususnya di Sumatera bagian selatan, untuk membentang luas tanah rawa yang tak tertembus. Rawa membuat banyak bagian timur pulau itu hampir dihuni.Jalan yang sangat baik menghubungkan kota-kota utama di Sumatera, dan adalah mungkin untuk melakukan perjalanan dengan Motorcar dari ujung utara ke ujung selatan. Hanya peregangan miskin di jalan raya utara-selatan hanya selatan pusat, di mana jalan baru-baru ini telah dibuka untuk lalu lintas normal. Tiga jalur kereta api tidak berhubungan adalah, atau tidak, dalam operasi. Satu meluas
RACIAL STOCKSThe Indies are the homeland of the Malay branch of the Mongoloid, or yellow, race. The Malay type, in general, is characterized by very short stature (5 feet 2 or 3 inches for males), brown skin, straight or wavy black hair, a flat face with wide nose and lips of medium thickness, and a slender build. There is little growth of hair on face or body. Most of Indonesia, with the exception of the extreme eastern islands and certain isolated sections elsewhere, is inhabited by peoples of the Malay race, which also spreads up into the Philippines and the Malay Peninsula.
Two subdivisions of the Malay stock can be distinguished in the islands. The interior districts, mostly highlands, of Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and Celebes, as well as the chain of island stretching from Bali to Timor, are peopled mainly by tribes of the so-called proto-Malay type. They represent the earlier Malay immigration into Indonesia from southeastern Asia and have a much less Mongoloid appearance than the coastal dwellers., The seacoast population of the large western islands is mostly of the deutero-Malay racial type. They are descended form the later Malay settlers in Indonesia and show more Mongoloid traits. The principal differences between the two Malay subraces may be summarized as follows: the proto-Malay is shorter and has a darker skin, wavier hair, and stockier physique than the deutero-Malay, and his facial features lack the characteristic Mongoloid slanting eye with inside fold on the upper eyelid, as well as the prominent cheekbones of the deutero-Malay.
The reason for this interesting division is that originally southeastern Asia, the ancient homeland of the Indonesians, was inhabited by tribes who were dark and distant outliers of the European peoples. The proto-Malays, with their Caucasoid features, show evidence of this “white” ancestry. They left the Asiatic mainland before an ever increasing movement of Mongoloid peoples from the north invaded southeastern Asia, and, mixing with the old inhabitants there, gradually changed the racial type from dark Caucasoid to predominantly Mongoloid. The later arrivals in the Indies from this region were progressively more Mongolized, and their living descendants show this in their wider faces, higher cheekbones, straighter hair, and more slanting eyes. The later Malays pushed the earlier ones back into the interior districts, where the proto-Malay type still prevails, and occupied the coastal lands themselves.
Long before the Malay race spread down into the islands, other human stocks had settled there. The earliest of these archaic races was probably the Australoid. Traces of the Australoid type, with its coarse features, beetling brows, and hairy body, can still be detected in the Indies,
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particularly in the islands nearest Australia, the present home of this ancient race. Two branches of the Negroid race also lived in Indonesia in prehistoric times. One, the rather tall, spare-framed, bushy-haired Melanesian or Oceanic Negroid type, has now disappeared from most of the islands; but in the Timor-Flores zone of eastern Indonesia certain tribes still preserve relatively pure Melanesian traits. The center of Melanesian Negroid habitation has long since moved eastward, beyond New Guinea, to the Solomons, the New Hebrides, the Fijis, and New Caledonia. The other Negroid type, the so-called Negrito or dwarf Negro, still survives in sections of eastern Sumatra, Timor, Alor, and the mountains of New Guinea. Other Negrito groups are found in the Andaman Islands, Malaya, and the Philippines. One more archaic racial type of the Indies is, like the Negrito, dwarfish and frail. This so-called Veddoid strain has brown skin, wavy hair, and a prognathous face with receding chin. It appears to be a stunted hybrid of Malay and Australoid. Remnants of the Veddoid race inhabit the east Sumatra swamplands, parts of Borneo and Celebes, and certain islands of eastern Indonesia, notably Ceram. Other Veddoid peoples are found in Ceylon, Malaya, and the Philippines.
While most of Indonesia is peopled by tribes of the Malay race, with interspersed remnants of the archaic stocks just mentioned, the most easterly sections were never reached by the main Malay migrations. Here, in New Guinea and neighboring islands, the Papuan stock prevails. It looks like a hybrid of Australoid and Melanesian Negroid, being characterized by a lanky and long-limbed body, dark skin, and a narrow and angular face, with thin lips and a long nose, the latter often full-fleshed and hooked at the tip. The body is hairy, the face frequently bearded, and the head hair frizzy. Indeed, papua means “frizzy-haired” in the Malay language. In the Moluccas, between Celebes and New Guinea, intermixture of the Papuan and proto-Malay types has produced the so-called Alfur hybrid, with medium to tall stature, slender physique, medium to dark brown skin, straight to wavy hair, a relatively hairy body, and features varying from the broad-faced, flat-nosed proto-Malay norm to the narrow-faced, “semitic”-nosed Papuan conformation.
TEMPERAMENTAL QUALITIES
The marked racial difference between western Indonesia, which is almost solidly Malay in population, and the eastern islands, inhabited by the Papuan stock, is paralleled by a contrast in human temperament. The Malays are very sedate and reserved, while the Papuans are excitable and vociferous. The former are phlegmatic and retiring, the latter volatile
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and aggressive. Voyaging eastward from Java, one can see the change in character becoming progressively more marked, just as the physical traits gradually vary from the Malay toward the Papuan. The natives become less restrained, louder, and more loquacious, until in New Guinea the “human atmosphere” reaches almost an opposite extreme from the land of the serene Malays and Javanese. Although the temperamental difference accompanies a shift in race, it is probably not biologically determined, but rather a result of divergent training and rules of behavior.
The Malay peoples are, in general, remarkably friendly and polite, not only to one another, but to strangers as well. The Papuans, on the other hand, are likely to make a contrary impression, and indeed they are prevailingly rough in manner and unfriendly, often openly hostile, to outsiders. The Malay tribes of interior Borneo, Celebes, and Sumatra, also, are still suspicious of whites, and lack the cordiality of the more advanced groups. But among about 90 percent of the Indonesian peoples, one encounters an easy graciousness and charm of manner unsurpassed anywhere else in the world. This applies to all levels of society, and the poorest Javanese, receiving a stranger in his miserable hut, acts the courteous gentleman naturally and effortlessly.
The beauty of the small-boned, smooth-skinned Malay body is enhanced by a most impressive poise and dignity. Movements are calm, unhurried, and graceful, and even conversation is easy and soft-spoken. The quiet and repose of the Malay temperament do not signify a dull mentality, however. The white man is apt to confuse bustle with business, a forceful manner with a sharp mind. But anyone who has come to know the Indonesian people intimately, who speaks their language and has worked and lived among them, would never rate them low in intelligence. All unbiased evidence indicates clearly that they are, on the average, quite equal in mental capacity to whites or any other race. Whatever differences exist are due to inequalities in training and education.
HISTORY
The recorded history of Indonesia begins in the fifth century A.D. Scattered inscriptions on stone discovered in Java and Borneo indicate that at this time the islands were being colonized by Hindu traders and adventurers from India. These earliest records consist of short, disconnected references to the rulers of Hindu colonial states on the coasts of the large western islands. The travel notes of two Chinese Buddhist pilgrims, Fa-Hsien and I-Tsing, in the fifth and seventh centuries, tell of the Hindu states they visited in Java and Sumatra. The coastal populations of these
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islands were already largely converted to Hindu religion, either Brahman-ism or Buddhism, or, more commonly, combinations of both.
After the eighth century, stone inscriptions become more plentiful and detailed, and by the eleventh century the scribes and poets of the Javanese royal courts were writing chronicles in connected narrative style. Indian and Chinese travelers were recording their impressions of the archipelago, and regular communication and trade had been established throughout western Indonesia. The small Hinduized states were gradually being merged into two powerful empires: Shrivijaya in southern Sumatra and Singosari in eastern Java. Shrivijaya extended its realm up into the Malay Peninsula, and even engaged in a series of wars with the states of southern India and Ceylon in the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Singosari became so strong as to challenge the preeminence of Kublai Khan in the southern Orient, and in 1294 its armies defeated a great Chinese invasion force that landed on the coast of Java.
Indonesia reached its “golden age” in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when after a long struggle for supremacy the Javanese empire of Modjopahit, successor to Singosari, subjugated Shrivijaya and extended its rule over most of the Indies, the Philippines, and southeastern Asia.
The medieval Hindu-Javanese civilization has left a deep impress on the present culture of the Indies. The ruins of great cities and temple complexes can still be seen in Sumatra and Java; but more important and lasting have been the Hindu influences on social organization, technology, religion, and language. Old Indian alphabets are still used in several parts of the islands. The Hindus have also left their mark on the physical type of the people of Indonesia, but this is true mainly in the coastal districts of Java and Sumatra, and principally among the higher social classes. The royal families of the native states especially show their partial Indian ancestry in taller stature, longer limbs, narrower heads, and finer features than the general run of common folk.
The decline of the Modjopahit empire occurred coincidentally with the spread of Mohammedanism over western Indonesia. Islam, brought from India to Malaya and Sumatra in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, swiftly expanded over the vassal principalities of Modjopahit in Sumatra and western Java. Rebellions against the Hinduist overlord in eastern Java increased in extent and violence, until, late in the fifteenth century, the last stronghold of the old regime fell before the attacks of the Islamized rebels.
Mohammedanism thus replaced Hinduism as the dominant religion of the Indies. In only one place, the island of Bali, has the old cult survived.
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Today Bali is a kind of museum piece, a living replica of fourteenth-century Java.
The downfall of Modjopahit also marked the end of whatever political unity had been attained in the islands. In place of the single empire with its vassal principalities, most of the archipelago was split up into scores of petty states, all Mohammedan in religion, but engaged in constant war and intrigue one against another. Consequently, when Europeans first appeared in the Indies, they found there no single strong power, but merely the broken fragments of the former empire. It was relatively easy for the newcomers, therefore, to subjugate these weak states one by one or, as frequently happened, ally themselves with one ruler against another, eventually subjugating both. Indonesia, disunited, thus fell easy prey to the imperialistic designs of the whites, who, indeed, spent more effort in fighting among themselves than against the native states.
The Portuguese came in first, establishing themselves in Malacca, on the Malay Peninsula, in 1510. Operating out of this base and sailing under the direction of Malay pilots who knew the seas of the Indies, they succeeded by 1521 in setting up trading posts in the Moluccas or Spice Islands at Tidore, Ternate, and Banda. In 1580 Portugal was united with Spain, and the Spanish took over the Portuguese holdings in the Moluccas, adding them to the Philippine colonies.
Spain’s sea power was doomed by the defeat of the Great Armada in 1588, and the British and Dutch became rivals for control of the Indies. By 1650, the Dutch were virtual masters of the islands, and British trade was restricted to certain native states in western Indonesia with which the English East India Company had commercial contracts. The Spanish had retreated to the Philippines; the Portuguese held only a remnant of their former territory in the eastern half of Timor.
From 1650 to 1910 the Dutch methodically went about the business of extending and solidifying their control over the Indies, until by the latter date all organized native resistance had been overcome. The policy of the Netherlands East India Company was not to depose native rulers unless they were stubbornly intractable, but rather to rule through them. The Hollanders were interested in trading rights rather than governing duties and were willing to allow any potentate to stay in power provided that he granted them commercial privileges. This system of indirect rule through native princes, as we shall see, has remained a dominant element in Dutch colonial administration.
Despite their reluctance, however, the Netherlanders were forced to interfere more and more in local government in order to insure their monopoly of trade. This increasing embroilment in politics and internal
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warfare eventually undermined the financial stability of the East India Company, and a series of trade losses weakened it even further. Finally, wars with England in 1780 and 1795, the latter blockading the Java trade, sealed the doom of the Company; and in 1798 it was dissolved, bankrupt.
Hardly had the Dutch begun to reorganize the administration of the islands when, in 1806, Holland itself was occupied by the French under Napoleon. To ensure that the Indies also should not. fall to France, and with the consent and encouragement of the exiled Dutch King in England, British Far Eastern forces seized the whole archipelago in 1811.
The British occupation ended in 1818, and a treaty of 1824 defined the territories of England and Holland in southern Asia and the islands. The Dutch surrendered all claims to the Malay Peninsula, while the British in turn relinquished their few remaining holdings in Sumatra. Holland was to have a free hand in the islands, Britain full rights on the Asiatic mainland.
When the Dutch returned to the Indies in 1818, they started immediately on the task of bringing efficient order to their island realm. The job took almost a hundred years, and involved them in a long series of local wars and expeditions to the far reaches of the archipelago. All through the nineteenth century hardly a year passed without warfare in some part of the Indies.
The Hollanders faced two types of situation among the native groups with whom they had to deal. The coastal districts of all or most of the islands were dominated by native states, while the interior regions, especially in the larger islands, were inhabited by independent, loosely organized tribes, with no centralized governing power. In its dealings with the native princes, the Netherlands Government followed the pattern set by the old East India Company. In every state an attempt was made to keep the reigning sovereign in power and to rule through him. Only when a sultan or radja proved treacherous or uncooperative were military means employed to depose him and either install a suitable substitute or put the territory under direct administration. Even in the latter event, however, the lesser chiefs of districts and villages were usually retained and paid salaries by the Dutch. In the interior tribal areas, where no state organization existed, direct rule was introduced immediately after incorporation of a region into the colonial system. Here again, as far as possible, the native chieftains were kept in power over their people, being required only to prove their loyalty to the new administration.
By 1910 the long labor of conquest and organization was virtually completed, and all parts of the Indies were under Dutch control. For 30 years thereafter, peace reigned in the islands, until in 1941 war on a
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vaster scale than ever before swept over them, leaving the Japanese in power throughout the entire area from Sumatra to New Guinea.
MAIN DIVISIONS AND PEOPLES
In discussing primitive areas of the world, it is customary to refer to the larger social groupings as tribes. In all, about 130 separate East Indian tribes could be enumerated, but many of them are so large that they might better be designated as nations or peoples. In the following synopsis of the principal areas and peoples, the population figures are based upon the 1930 census of the Indies. The Japanese invasion interfered with the publication of detailed statistics for 1940. The accompanying maps show the locations of the various islands and peoples mentioned in the text.
The Indies are divided geographically into four main sections:
- The Greater Sunda Islands, including Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and Celebes.
- The Lesser Sunda Islands, including those extending east from Bali to Timor.
- The Moluccas, including the scattered islands and island groups lying between Celebes and Timor to the west and New Guinea to the east.
- Dutch New Guinea.1
Sumatra.–This island, westernmost of the Indies, has an area of about 180,000 square miles, including the smaller adjacent islands off the east and west coasts. Sumatra is approximately the size of California and roughly similar in shape. The western half consists of a mountain chain that runs from one end to the other. One great lake, Toba, and several smaller ones lie in the folds of the mountains, and some of the finest agricultural land of the island is found in the highland valleys and plateaus. Twenty-five volcanic peaks in various phases of activity rise along the great Sumatran cordillera. The mountains crowd the narrow coastland on the western side of the island, but their eastern slopes are more gradual, and here they give way first to foothills and then, especially in southern Sumatra, to vast stretches of impenetrable marshland. Swamps make much of the eastern half of the island virtually uninhabitable.
Excellent roads connect the main towns of Sumatra, and it is possible to travel by motorcar from the northern tip to the southern extremity. The only poor stretches on the north-south highway are just south of the center, where the road has only recently been opened to normal traffic. Three unconnected railway lines are, or were, in operation. One extends
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sepanjang pantai timur laut dari ujung utara ke titik sekitar sepertiga dari jalan ke bawah pantai. Garis lain berjalan dari pelabuhan Emmahaven, di pantai barat, pedalaman untuk jarak pendek ke dataran tinggi. Sistem kereta api ketiga menghubungkan Palembang, Sumatra Selatan, dengan interior dan dengan pelabuhan Telokbetong di ujung selatan pulau. Tiga kota utama Sumatera – Medan, Padang, dan Palembang – berada, masing-masing, di pantai timur, pantai barat, dan kereta api selatan.
Populasi Sumatera dan pulau-pulau yang berdekatan total sekitar 8.000.000. Di pulau yang tepat, ada tujuh kelompok suku utama. Yang paling primitif adalah Kubu nomaden suku-suku di rawa timur dan tenggara. Mereka saham Veddoid, dan bersama-sama populasi mereka tidak melebihi 25.000. Pada tingkat “menengah” kebudayaan berdiri tiga proto-Melayu kompleks suku dari dataran tinggi interior. Paling selatan yang satunya adalah Redjang-Lampung kompleks, yang gabungan populasi total sekitar 500.000. Sebagian besar suku ini telah Mohammedanized, tapi budaya umum mereka masih mempertahankan unsur-unsur kuno. Batak dari Sumatera tengah hidup di negara yang tinggi berpusat pada danau besar Toba. Mereka total sepenuhnya 1.000.000. Sebelumnya kanibal, mereka masih terus untuk sebagian besar kebudayaan tradisional mereka, meskipun fakta bahwa ribuan dari mereka telah menjadi Kristen. Mereka tidak pernah menerima Islam, dan kebanyakan dari mereka tetap kafir dalam agama. Yang ketiga dari proto-Melayu masyarakat dataran tinggi Gayo adalah Alas-suku pedalaman Sumatra Utara, yang jumlah sekitar 50.000. Lebih terisolasi dari Batak, namun mereka telah dikonversi ke agama Islam. Dalam hal lain budaya mereka sangat primitif.
Tiga orang yang paling maju dari Sumatera adalah Deutero-Melayu Aceh dan Pesisir Melayu, dan proto-dan dicampur Deutero-Melayu Minangkabau. Orang Aceh fanatik Islam mendiami pantai-tanah utara Sumatera pada kedua sisi timur dan barat. Jumlah mereka sekitar 750.000. Mereka adalah penduduk asli terakhir yang ditundukkan oleh Belanda, setelah pergulatan mati-matian yang berlangsung 1873-1910. Mereka masih membenci orang Belanda dan termasuk di antara orang-orang sangat sedikit di Indonesia dari siapa ketidaksetiaan langsung bisa diharapkan. Orang Melayu Pesisir adalah kelompok pribumi terbesar di Sumatera, sebanyak 3.500.000. Wilayah mereka meliputi pesisir timur seluruh dari perbatasan Aceh ke Kabupaten Lampung di ujung selatan. Orang Melayu British Malaya, di seberang Selat Malaka, termasuk dalam kelompok umum yang sama seperti orang Melayu Sumatera. Jumlah besar yang terakhir telah menetap kesultanan-kesultanan pesisir Kalimantan dan bagian lain banyak dari Hindia. Mereka adalah yang paling luas dari semua rakyat Indonesia, dan bahasa mereka telah menjadi
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umum lingua franca di seluruh nusantara. Seperti Aceh, mereka adalah Islam, meskipun jauh lebih sedikit serius tentang agama mereka daripada fanatik Sumatera utara. Orang Minangkabau, tinggal di pusat dataran tinggi selatan Batak, jumlahnya sekitar 2.000.000. Mereka adalah orang giat, dengan budaya canggih yang tetap mempertahankan elemen-elemen kuno, seperti yang disebut “keluarga ibu,” di mana keturunan, warisan, dan suksesi untuk keadaan kepala suku mengikuti garis perempuan. Mereka adalah orang Islam, dan di antara para penghasut yang paling aktif untuk pemerintahan sendiri di Hindia.
Nias, Kepulauan Mentawei, dan Engano, pulau-pulau terpencil di lepas pantai barat Sumatera, dihuni oleh primitif proto-Melayu dengan jenis yang sangat kuno dari budaya. Kecuali untuk Niassans, yang sebagian dikristenkan, semua suku ini tetap kafir. Populasi Nias adalah sekitar 200.000; Mentawei, 10.000, dan Engano, 300. Para Enganese adalah salah satu suku beberapa Indonesia yang jumlahnya telah menurun sejak kontak pertama dengan kulit putih. Epidemi penyakit sengit impor telah menjadi penyebab utama penurunan tersebut.
Timur Sumatera pesisir dan pantai seberang Malaya adalah zona utama distribusi dari kelompok yang luar biasa dari maritim pengembara yang menghabiskan sebagian besar hidup mereka di perahu mereka. Disebut Laut Orang atau “Laut Gipsi,” mereka juga ditemui di bagian lain Hindia sejauh timur seperti Maluku. Populasi total di seluruh Indonesia mungkin tidak melebihi 10.000.
Java -. Meskipun adalah yang terkecil dari Greater Sunda Islands, Jawa, Madura dengan berdekatan, adalah bagian paling penting dari Hindia. Ini adalah jantung dari pulau-pulau, pusat pemerintahan, perdagangan populasi, dan. Wilayahnya seluas 50.000 mil persegi secara kasar setara dengan yang ada di New York State, tetapi penduduknya mencapai jumlah mengejutkan dari 40.000.000 pada tahun 1930, dan sekarang mungkin telah meningkat menjadi hampir 50.000.000.
Topografi Jawa sama dengan Sumatera. Bagian selatan merupakan rantai pegunungan yang berkelanjutan; bagian utara terdiri dari kaki bukit dan dataran. Tapi lembah-lembah yang lebih luas, dataran yang lebih luas, gunung lereng lebih bertahap, dan ada tanah kosong jauh lebih sedikit dari rawa di Sumatera. Akibatnya proporsi yang jauh lebih besar dari daerah tersebut berguna huni dan budidaya. Memang, Java adalah salah satu daerah yang paling subur dan produktif di seluruh dunia. Tanahnya sebagian besar asal vulkanik, dan 35 puncak gunung adalah gunung api di berbagai tahap kegiatan.
Sebuah jaringan yang sangat baik dari jalan raya dan rel kereta api mencakup pulau, dan hampir setiap bagian mudah diakses. Hanya di sudut barat daya dan ekstremitas timur jauh adalah perjalanan yang sulit, dan bahkan dalam
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Gambar. 3 – Masyarakat Jawa.
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distrik pusat-pusat utama penduduk dihubungkan oleh jalan. Batavia, ibukota dan kota terbesar Hindia, memiliki populasi lebih dari 450.000, dan sebagian besar kota-kota besar lainnya nusantara berlokasi di Jawa, di antaranya Surabaya, Semarang, Cirebon, dan Bandung.
Konsentrasi terbesar kelompok asing terjadi di pulau, di mana 80 persen dari seluruh populasi putih Hindia dan setengah dari Cina tinggal di 1940. Namun jumlah orang luar untuk pales tidak penting dalam menghadapi penduduk asli yang sangat besar. Kelompok pribumi terbesar adalah Jawa benar, yang mendiami hampir semua wilayah timur dan tengah, dan memperpanjang sepanjang pesisir barat laut. Mereka berjumlah hampir 27.000.000. Orang Sunda, yang diam di dataran tinggi barat daya Jawa, nomor 8.500.000. Orang Madura, yang tanah air adalah pulau Madura, telah tersebar di bagian besar pantai timur laut Jawa. Populasi mereka adalah sekitar 4.500.000. Dua suku yang sangat kecil lain hidup terpencil di bagian dataran tinggi terpencil di pulau itu: masyarakat Tengger, sebesar 10.000, di Jawa Timur, dan Baduy, sebuah 1.200 belaka, di bagian barat. Sedangkan tiga kelompok utama adalah Islam, kedua orang yang terisolasi masih mempertahankan sebuah agama kuno yang merupakan gabungan dari Hindu dan animisme primitif. Garis-garis perbedaan ras tidak sesuai dengan divisi suku di Jawa, tetapi di kabupaten pesisir jenis fisik dominan adalah Deutero-Melayu, sementara daerah pedalaman ditunjukkan dengan frekuensi jauh lebih tinggi dari saham proto-Melayu. Dengan demikian orang Jawa dan Madura benar milik terutama untuk jenis kemudian Melayu lebih Mongoloid, sedangkan Sunda, Tengger, dan Baduy memiliki frekuensi tinggi dari Caucasoid gelap ciri fisik sebelumnya Melayu.
Kalimantan -. Salah satu bagian yang paling maju Hindia, pulau yang sangat besar sangat jarang dihuni. Wilayahnya dari 290.000 mil persegi mendukung penduduk hanya 2.500.000. Dalam ukuran ini dapat disamakan dengan Texas dan Oklahoma digabungkan.
Sebagian besar pesisir di semua sisi terdiri dari luas, rawa tak tertembus yang memperpanjang jauh di daratan untuk kaki bukit dataran tinggi tengah. Interior yang berbukit-bukit dan di beberapa bagian pegunungan, tetapi ada beberapa puncak sangat tinggi dan tidak ada gunung api sama sekali. Tidak adanya rekening vulkanisme sebagian besar untuk infertilitas tanah. Spurs dari kisaran pusat memperpanjang hampir ke pantai laut di beberapa tempat, tetapi kontur umum perkiraan Kalimantan penampilan topi rendah dimahkotai dengan pinggiran lebar, yang terakhir mewakili tanah rawa basah yang berdering ketinggian sentral di semua sisi.
Daerah barat laut pesisir meliputi wilayah semi-tergantung negara bagian Sarawak dan Brunei, keduanya di bawah kontrol Inggris sampai invasi Jepang. Sarawak, jauh lebih besar, diperintah oleh Brooke
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Gambar. 4 -. Rakyat Kalimantan
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dinasti radjas Inggris, sedangkan kesultanan sedikit Brunei memiliki penguasa pribumi keturunan Melayu. Ekstremitas utara pulau, yang dikenal sebagai Britania Borneo Utara, adalah wilayah hanya di dunia masih dikelola oleh sebuah perusahaan charter, Utara Inggris Kalimantan Perusahaan. Untuk semua tujuan praktis, ketiga wilayah ini difungsikan sebagai koloni Inggris, di bawah yurisdiksi Komisi Tinggi Malaya. Sisanya tiga perempat pulau itu adalah wilayah Belanda.
Kereta api hanya di Kalimantan, kecuali swasta beberapa sepur sempit garis, berjalan untuk jarak sedikit di atas 100 mil di sepanjang pantai Britania Borneo Utara di sisi barat. Jalan juga hampir tidak ada di pulau ini. Ada beberapa peregangan jalan raya di bagian-bagian tertentu dari kabupaten pesisir, tapi mereka memperpanjang untuk jarak pendek saja, dan secara luas terputus satu dari yang lain. Rute utama dari perjalanan dan transportasi, oleh karena itu, terletak di sepanjang jaringan luas sungai dilayari. Satu-satunya kota ukuran yang cukup di seluruh pulau adalah Banjarmasin, di mulut Barito, “Mississippi Kalimantan,” di pantai tenggara.
Rakyat jatuh Borneo menjadi dua divisi besar: penduduk Deutero-Melayu pesisir, berjumlah sekitar 1.000.000, campuran Melayu, Jawa, Bugis, dan kelompok lainnya mengganggu dari tempat lain di Hindia, dan proto-Melayu pribumi, yang seringkali disatukan dengan nama “Dayak.” Ratusan band dan suku dapat dikelompokkan dalam enam kompleks suku, dalam setiap budaya yang serupa. Pada interior dalam mengembara band nomaden milik kompleks Punan, berjumlah sekitar 50.000 di semua. Mereka adalah pemburu dan pengumpul produk liar, dan beberapa dari mereka pernah menetap cukup lama untuk menanam tanaman atau membangun tempat tinggal permanen. Suku-suku Bahau tengah dan timur Borneo memiliki jumlah penduduk sekitar 300.000, dua suku utama menjadi Kayan dan Kenya. Ini adalah pembangun dari rumah panjang Kalimantan terkenal, ratusan meter panjangnya, satu saja dari yang dapat menampung kelompok subtribal keseluruhan. Kompleks Ngadju suku selatan Kalimantan, berjumlah sekitar 400.000, termasuk suku-suku seperti Danom Ot, Maanyan, Lawangan, dan Biadju. Tanah Dayak kompleks barat daya Kalimantan (Landak, Tayan, dll) memiliki jumlah penduduk sebesar 200.000, sedangkan Klamantan kelompok timur laut Kalimantan (Murut, Dusun, Milanau, dll), 300.000; Iban atau “Laut Dayak” dari Sarawak , 200.000. Semua suku-suku asli, dengan pengecualian dari Punan, diselesaikan petani, hidup terutama oleh penanaman padi kering, dengan anak perusahaan berburu dan memancing. Mereka semua berhala dalam agama, dalam budaya primitif umum, dan sebelumnya peringkat di antara para pemburu kepala yang paling terkenal di dunia.
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Celebes -. Pulau berbentuk aneh di sebelah timur Kalimantan memiliki luas wilayah 70.000 mil persegi dan populasi sekitar 4.000.000. Untuk sebagian besar, Sulawesi hanyalah sebuah massa pegunungan, liar jatuh bersama-sama dalam satu lansekap semua sudut yang curam dan profil bergerigi, di sini bahkan rawa-rawa pesisir yang kurang atau sangat sempit. Semua gunung berapi aktif atau baru aktif di pulau, 16 jumlahnya, terletak di ujung semenanjung utara dan di pulau-pulau yang berdekatan. Kecuali untuk daerah ini, bagian hanya benar-benar subur dan baik penduduk dari Sulawesi adalah semenanjung barat daya, yang tidak memiliki gunung berapi aktif tapi memang memiliki tanah vulkanik.
Tidak ada kereta api di Sulawesi, dan jalan raya sedikit kecuali di barat daya ekstrim dan bagian utara ekstrim, di mana jalan memancar dari dua kota yang layak dari nama, Makassar dan Menado. Di tempat lain peregangan singkat jalan telah dibangun di beberapa distrik, tetapi mereka tidak saling berhubungan. Tanpa sungai dilayari baik baik, perjalanan di pedalaman Sulawesi sangat sulit, dan harus dilakukan baik sedang terjadi atau kuda lebih jalan gunung yang sempit.
Ada tujuh kompleks suku di pulau itu. Para Toala, sebuah suku kecil tunggal, belum diselidiki sejak ditemukan sekitar 40 tahun lalu. Saat itu mereka berjumlah hanya sekitar 100, dan tinggal di gua-gua dan pondok kecil di sebuah lembah pegunungan terpencil di Sulawesi barat daya. Sebuah laporan pemerintah dari 1913 menyatakan bahwa kebanyakan dari mereka memiliki tahun yang bergerak turun dari retret dataran tinggi mereka dan tinggal di dekat sebuah pemukiman Bugis. Mereka Veddoid di saham, dan sangat primitif dalam budaya – “orang-orang gua” hanya benar yang pernah ditemukan di Hindia. Bagian tengah Sulawesi dan bagian bawah semenanjung utara dihuni oleh suku-suku Toraja (Palu, Napu, Poso, dll), penomoran 200.000. Selatan negara Toraja, di bagian atas dari semenanjung barat daya, tinggal masyarakat sadang, kadang-kadang disebut Toraja Selatan (Sadang, Seko, Rongkong, dll). Populasi mereka total 500.000. Semenanjung tenggara, dengan pulau-pulau yang berdekatan, adalah rumah dari Mori-Laki suku (Mori, Laki, Muna, dll), dengan jumlah penduduk 200.000. Semenanjung timur dan pulau-pulau tetangga yang dihuni oleh suku-suku Loinang (Loinang, Wana, Banggai, dll), dengan jumlah penduduk 200.000. Keempat kompleks suku memiliki budaya yang terkait. Tipe ras mereka adalah proto-Melayu, dengan unsur-unsur Veddoid muncul terutama di kalangan Loinang dan Mori-Laki kelompok. Sebuah strain Negrito terendam telah terdeteksi di beberapa suku Toraja Barat. Sebelumnya kepala pemburu, kelompok-kelompok interior primitif Sulawesi telah dikonversi dalam jumlah besar ke Kristen, meskipun sebagian besar masih tetap kafir.
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Gambar. 5 -. Rakyat Sulawesi
Fig. 2.–Peoples of Sumatra
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along the northeast coast from the northern tip to a point about one-third of the way down the coast. Another line runs from the port of Emmahaven, on the west coast, inland for a short distance into the highlands. The third railway system connects Palembang, in south Sumatra, with the interior and with the port of Telokbetong on the southern extremity of the island. The three main cities of Sumatra–Medan, Padang, and Palembang –are located, respectively, on the east coast, west coast, and southern railways.
The population of Sumatra and adjacent islands totals approximately 8,000,000. On the island proper, there are seven main tribal groups. The most primitive are the nomadic Kubu tribes of the eastern and southeastern marshlands. They are of Veddoid stock, and together their population does not exceed 25,000. On an “intermediate” level of culture stand the three proto-Malay tribal complexes of the interior highlands. The southernmost of these is the Redjang-Lampong complex, whose combined population totals about 500,000. Most of these tribes have been Mohammedanized, but their general culture still retains many ancient elements. The Batak of middle Sumatra live in the lofty country centering on the great lake of Toba. They total fully 1,000,000. Formerly cannibals, they still hold to most of their traditional culture, despite the fact that thousands of them have been converted to Christianity. They never accepted Islam, and most of them remain pagan in religion. The third of the proto-Malay highland peoples are the Gayo-Alas tribes of the interior of northern Sumatra, who number about 50,000. More isolated than the Batak, they have nevertheless been converted to Mohammedanism. In other respects their culture is quite primitive.
The three most advanced peoples of Sumatra are the deutero-Malay Atjehnese and Coastal Malays, and the mixed proto- and deutero-Malay Minangkabau. The fanatically Mohammedan Atjehnese inhabit the coast-land of northern Sumatra on both eastern and western sides. They number approximately 750,000. These were the last natives to be subjugated by the Dutch, after a desperate struggle lasting from 1873 to 1910. They still hate the Hollanders and are among the very few peoples in Indonesia from whom outright disloyalty could be expected. The Coastal Malays are the largest native group in Sumatra, totaling 3,500,000. Their territory covers the entire eastern coastland from the border of Atjeh to the Lampong Districts in the extreme south. The Malays of British Malaya, across the Malacca Straits, belong to the same general group as the Sumatra Malays. Great numbers of the latter have settled the coastal sultanates of Borneo and numerous other sections of the Indies. They are the most widespread of all the Indonesian peoples, and their language has become
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the general lingua franca throughout the archipelago. Like the Atjehnese, they are Mohammedan, though much less serious about their religion than the north Sumatra fanatics. The Minangkabau, living in the central highlands south of the Batak, number about 2,000,000. They are an enterprising people, with an advanced culture that nevertheless retains many ancient elements, such as the so-called “mother family,” in which descent, inheritance, and succession to chieftainship follow the female line. They are Mohammedans, and among the most active agitators for self-government in the Indies.
Nias, the Mentawei Islands, and Engano, isolated islands off the west coast of Sumatra, are inhabited by primitive proto-Malays with very archaic types of culture. Except for the Niassans, who are partially Christianized, all these tribes remain pagan. The population of Nias is about 200,000; Mentawei, 10,000; and Engano, 300. The Enganese are among the few tribes of Indonesia whose numbers have declined since first contact with whites. Fierce epidemics of imported diseases have been the principal cause of the decrease.
The east Sumatra coastland and the opposite shore of Malaya are the primary zone of distribution of a remarkable group of maritime nomads who spend most of their lives in their boats. Called the Orang Laut or “Sea Gypsies,” they are also encountered in other parts of the Indies as far east as the Moluccas. Their total population in all of Indonesia probably does not exceed 10,000.
Java.–Although it is the smallest of the Greater Sunda Islands, Java, with adjacent Madura, is the most important part of the Indies. It is the heart of the islands, the center of government, trade, and population. Its area of 50,000 square miles is roughly equivalent to that of New York State; but its population reached the astounding total of 40,000,000 in 1930, and by now has probably increased to nearly 50,000,000.
The topography of Java is similar to that of Sumatra. The southern half is a continuous mountain chain; the northern half consists of foothills and plains. But the valleys are wider, the plains more extensive, the mountain slopes more gradual, and there is much less swampy wasteland than in Sumatra. Consequently a far greater proportion of the area is useful for habitation and cultivation. Indeed, Java is one of the most fertile and productive regions in the entire world. The soil is largely of volcanic origin, and 35 of the mountain peaks are volcanoes in various stages of activity.
An excellent network of highways and railroads covers the island, and virtually every section is easily accessible. Only in the southwestern corner and the far eastern extremity is travel difficult, and even in these
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Fig. 3.–Peoples of Java
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districts the principal centers of population are linked by roads. Batavia, capital and largest city of the Indies, has a population of over 450,000; and most of the other large cities of the archipelago are located in Java, among them Surabaya, Semarang, Cheribon, and Bandung.
The greatest concentration of foreign groups occurs in this island, where 80 percent of all the white population of the Indies and half of the Chinese lived in 1940. But the number of outsiders pales to insignificance in the face of the enormous native population. The largest indigenous group are the true Javanese, who inhabit nearly all of the eastern and central districts, and extend all along the northwestern coastland. They total almost 27,000,000. The Sundanese, who dwell in the highlands of southwestern Java, number 8,500,000. The Madurese, whose homeland is the island of Madura, have spread over large sections of the northeast coast of Java. Their population is approximately 4,500,000. Two other very small tribes live secluded in remote highland sections of the island: the Tenggerese, totaling 10,000, in eastern Java, and the Badui, a mere 1,200, in the western part. Whereas the three main groups are Mohammedan, these two isolated peoples still retain an ancient religion which is a composite of Hinduism and primitive animism. The lines of racial distinction do not coincide with tribal divisions in Java; but in the coastal districts the physical type is predominantly deutero-Malay, while the interior regions show a much higher frequency of the proto-Malay stock. Thus the true Javanese and Madurese belong mainly to the more Mongoloid later Malay type, while the Sundanese, Tenggerese, and Badui have a high frequency of the dark Caucasoid earlier Malay physical traits.
Borneo.–One of the least developed parts of the Indies, this enormous island is very sparsely inhabited. Its area of 290,000 square miles supports a population of only 2,500,000. In size it is comparable to Texas and Oklahoma combined.
Most of the coastland on all sides consists of vast, impenetrable swamps which extend far inland to the foothills of the central highlands. The interior is hilly and in some sections mountainous, but there are few really high peaks and no volcanoes at all. The absence of volcanism accounts in large part for the infertility of the soil. Spurs of the central range extend almost to the seacoast in a few places, but the general contours of Borneo approximate the appearance of a low-crowned hat with a wide brim, the latter representing the soggy marshland that rings the central elevation on all sides.
The northwestern coastal area comprises the territory of the semi-dependent states of Sarawak and Brunei, both under British control until the Japanese invasion. Sarawak, by far the larger, was ruled by the Brooke
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Fig. 4.–Peoples of Borneo
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dynasty of English radjas; while the little sultanate of Brunei had a native ruler of Malay ancestry. The northern extremity of the island, known as British North Borneo, was the only territory in the world still administered by a chartered company, the British North Borneo Company. For all practical purposes, all three of these regions functioned as British colonies, under the jurisdiction of the High Commissioner of Malaya. The remaining three-fourths of the island is Dutch territory.
The only railroad in Borneo, except for a few private narrow-gauge lines, runs for a distance of slightly over 100 miles along the coast of British North Borneo on the western side. Roads also are almost nonexistent in the island. There are a few stretches of highway in certain parts of the coastal districts, but they extend for short distances only, and are widely disconnected one from another. The principal routes of travel and transportation, therefore, lie along the vast network of navigable rivers. The only city of appreciable size in the entire island is Bandjermasin, at the mouth of the Barito, “the Mississippi of Borneo,” on the southeast coast.
The peoples of Borneo fall into two large divisions: the deutero-Malay coastal population, numbering about 1,000,000, a mixture of Malays, Javanese, Buginese, and other intrusive groups from elsewhere in the Indies; and the proto-Malay aborigines, who are often lumped together under the name “Dyak.” The hundreds of bands and tribes may be grouped in six tribal complexes, within each of which the culture is similar. In the deep interior wander bands of nomads belonging to the Punan complex, numbering in all about 50,000. They are hunters and gatherers of wild products, and few of them ever settle down long enough to plant crops or build permanent dwellings. The Bahau tribes of central and eastern Borneo have a total population of approximately 300,000, the two principal tribes being the Kayan and the Kenya. These are the builders of the famed Borneo longhouses, hundreds of feet in length, a single one of which may accommodate a whole subtribal group. The Ngadju tribal complex of south Borneo, numbering about 400,000, includes such tribes as the Ot Danom, Maanyan, Lawangan, and Biadju. The Land Dyak complex of southwestern Borneo (Landak, Tayan, etc.) has a total population of 200,000; the Klamantan group of northeastern Borneo (Murut, Dusun, Milanau, etc.), 300,000; the Iban or “Sea Dyak” of Sarawak, 200,000. All the aboriginal tribes, with exception of the Punan, are settled agriculturists, living mainly by the cultivation of dry rice, with subsidiary hunting and fishing. They are all pagan in religion, primitive in general culture, and formerly ranked among the most notorious head hunters in the world.
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Celebes.–This strangely shaped island to the east of Borneo has an area of 70,000 square miles and a population of about 4,000,000. For the most part, Celebes is simply a mass of mountains, wildly tumbled together in a landscape all steep angles and jagged profiles; here even the coastal swamps are lacking or very narrow. All the active or recently active volcanoes in the island, 16 in number, are located at the tip of the northern peninsula and on the adjacent islands. Except for this area, the only really fertile and well-populated section of Celebes is the southwestern peninsula, which has no active volcanoes but does possess volcanic soil.
There are no railroads in Celebes, and few highways except in the extreme southwestern and extreme northern parts, where roads radiate from the only two cities worthy of the name, Macassar and Menado. Elsewhere short stretches of roadway have been built in a few districts, but they are not interconnected. With no good navigable rivers either, travel in the interior of Celebes is extremely arduous, and must be done either afoot or on horseback over narrow mountain trails.
There are seven tribal complexes in the island. The Toala, a single small tribe, have not been investigated since discovered some 40 years ago. At that time they numbered only about 100, and were living in caves and small huts in a remote mountain valley of southwestern Celebes. A government report of 1913 states that most of them had by that year moved down out of their highland retreat and were dwelling near a Buginese settlement. They are Veddoid in stock, and very primitive in culture–the only true “cave men” ever discovered in the Indies. The central part of Celebes and the lower section of the northern peninsula are inhabited by the Toradja tribes (Palu, Napu, Poso, etc.), numbering 200,000. South of the Toradja country, in the upper part of the southwestern peninsula, dwell the Sadang peoples, sometimes called Southern Toradja (Sadang, Seko, Rongkong, etc.). Their population totals 500,000. The southeastern peninsula, with adjacent islands, is the home of the Mori-Laki tribes (Mori, Laki, Muna, etc.), with a population of 200,000. The eastern peninsula and neighboring islands are inhabited by the Loinang tribes (Loinang, Wana, Banggai, etc.), with a population of 200,000. All four of these tribal complexes have related cultures. Their racial type is proto-Malay, with Veddoid elements appearing especially among the Loinang and Mori-Laki groups. A submerged Negrito strain has been detected in certain western Toradja tribes. Formerly head hunters, these primitive interior groups of Celebes have been converted in great numbers to Christianity, although the majority still remain pagan.
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Fig. 5.–Peoples of Celebes
Plate 6Above: Native of Larantuka, Flores, in festive attire. The physical type shows a mixture of Melanesian Negroid and Papuan racial traits (e.g., the nose, though wide and flat, has a somewhat depressed and fleshy tip). Photograph by J. Kinst.
Below: Karo Batak girls, Sumatra, de-lousing each other’s hair. This is a common sight in the Indies. Photograph by E. E. Muhs.
Plate 7Above: Seti of central Ceram doing a war dance. The physical type is the so-called Alfur, the proto-Malay and Papuan hybrid characteristic of the Moluccas. Courtesy Bataviaasch Genootschap.
Below: Mentawei women fishing, showing leaf clothing. These people cannot weave, but make their garments of either bark cloth or leaves.
Plate 8Above: Dyak group, western Borneo, showing weapons and waist rings of brass and rattan worn by women.
Below: Bahau Dyak group, Borneo, showing distended ear lobes, and, center rear, panther-tooth ear ornaments which may be worn only by successful head hunters.
Plate 9Above: Balinese beauty.
Below: Balinese girls. In the center, an ikat (tie-dyed) sarong; the other sarongs are batik.
Bangsa paling maju di pulau itu adalah proto-Melayu suku kompleks Minahasa-Gorontalo di semenanjung utara dan Deutero-Melayu-Bugis Makassar di barat daya Sulawesi. Minahasa hampir seluruhnya Kristen dalam agama tetapi mempertahankan banyak budaya kuno mereka dalam bentuk lain. Suku-suku lain dari kompleks utara baik Islam (Gorontalo) atau kafir (Bolaang Mongondou, Sangir, Talaut). Jumlah total penduduk Minahasa-orang Gorontalo adalah 500.000. Para Makassar dan Bugis, penomoran 2.500.000, membentuk kelompok populasi terbesar, dan merupakan orang yang dominan dari pulau itu. Sebagian besar kabupaten pesisir dan banyak interior dulunya di bawah kekuasaan radjas mereka. Mereka Islam dalam agama.
The Lesser Sunda Islands – Dengan tanah seluas 35.000 mil persegi dan populasi 3.500.000 gabungan ini rantai kepulauan membentang ke arah timur di sepanjang perbatasan selatan Hindia dari Bali ke Timor.. Medan sepanjang hampir seluruhnya pegunungan, dengan 28 gunung berapi aktif atau baru aktif, 17 dari mereka di pulau Flores saja. Jalan raya baik melintasi bagian dari Bali dan Lombok, tetapi bagian besar hanya bisa diakses lewat jalur gunung. Di sebelah timur kita menemukan beberapa peregangan jalan adil di Sumbawa, Sumba, Flores, dan Timor, tetapi Sawu, Roti, dan Alor-Solor Kepulauan memiliki jalan nyata hampir tidak ada. Memang, Bali timur distrik pedalaman semua pulau masih hampir sepenuhnya berkembang dan telah dikunjungi jarang oleh pihak luar. Kota-kota satunya bahkan ukuran moderat di Sunda Kecil adalah Singaradja dan Den Pasar di Bali, Mataram di Lombok, Ende di Flores, dan Kupang dan Dilly di Timor. Tak satu pun dari mencapai populasi 20.000.
Bali, sebuah pulau vulkanik gunung, adalah bagian yang paling subur dan paling padat diselesaikan dari Sunda Kecil, dengan jumlah penduduk 1.200.000, dan seluas 2.300 mil persegi. Dengan pengecualian beberapa ribu apa yang disebut Bali Aga, yang diam di desa-desa pedalaman terpencil dan masih mempertahankan banyak budaya pagan pra-Hindu pulau, semua orang Bali Hindu dalam agama. Bali, memang, adalah semacam barang museum, kelangsungan hidup hidup pada abad keempat belas Jawa. Banyak keluarga yang mulia dan tinggi kasta adalah keturunan dari pengungsi yang melarikan diri Jawa ketika kerajaan lama Modjopahit runtuh. Selain seperti Deutero-Melayu penambahan-penambahan, orang Bali termasuk dalam saham Caucasoid gelap proto-Melayu rasial.
Lombok, sebuah pulau, tinggi vulkanik dari 2.000 mil persegi dengan populasi 700.000, adalah rumah dari tiga kelompok budaya yang berbeda. Kabupaten pesisir barat ditempati oleh Bali, sedikit berbeda dari kerabat mereka di Selat Lombok. Sisa dari pulau ini dihuni oleh suku Sasak, orang Islam yang sebelumnya subjek
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Gambar. 6 -. Kepulauan dan masyarakat dari Sunda Kecil
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untuk pangeran Bali. Terselip di antara Sasak, namun, beberapa ribu Bodha, sebagian besar masih kafir dalam agama dan cukup primitif dalam budaya umum. Ketiga kelompok ini sebagian besar adalah proto-Melayu dalam huruf fisik, meskipun ciri-ciri Veddoid muncul di antara kedua Sasak dan Bodha.
Sumbawa adalah, sebagian pulau vulkanik pegunungan 5.000 mil persegi di daerah, dengan jumlah penduduk 300.000. Hal ini dibagi menjadi empat kesultanan: Sumbawa, Sanggau, Dompo, dan Bima, semua penduduk, dengan pengecualian Do kafir Donggo di pegunungan Bima, adalah Islam. Saham ras dominan adalah proto-Melayu.
Sumba, pulau non-vulkanik dari gunung yang rendah dan dataran tinggi, memiliki luas 5.500 mil persegi dan populasi proto-Melayu dari 100.000. Penduduk asli sebagian besar kafir.
Sawu dan Roti pulau-pulau kecil dengan dataran rendah pantai dan interior berbukit. Luas Sawu adalah 200 mil persegi, yaitu Roti, 650 mil persegi. Populasinya berjumlah 30.000 dan 60.000 masing-masing. Proto-Melayu penduduk termasuk sejumlah besar mualaf Kristen, meskipun paganisme mempertahankan cengkeramannya atas mayoritas.
Flores, sebuah pulau pegunungan dan sangat berapi, memiliki luas 5.600 mil persegi dan jumlah penduduk 500.000. Hal ini dibagi menjadi lima bagian suku: Manggarai, Ngada, Sika, Ende, dan Larantuka. Penduduk distrik barat terutama proto-Melayu dalam huruf fisik, tetapi bergerak ke arah timur seseorang menemukan campuran membingungkan saham rasial di mana proto-Melayu, Melanesia bersifat Negro, Papua, dan bahkan strain Australoid jelas terlihat. Lebar hidung, kulit gelap, dan mendominasi rambut kabur di kalangan masyarakat timur Flores. Meskipun kekristenan telah membuat beberapa terobosan dan banyak dari penduduk pantai mengaku Islam, sebagian besar Florenese adalah kafir.
Timor, terbesar dari Sunda Kecil, adalah, pegunungan non vulkanik pulau 9.000 mil persegi di daerah. Bagian timur dan daerah kantong kecil di pantai barat laut adalah wilayah Portugis. Tiga kelompok suku mendiami Timor: Kupangese, di ujung barat daya, sedangkan Atoni, di bagian barat dan tengah dari bagian Belanda, dan Belu, membentang dari pusat Belanda Timor timur selama sisa pulau itu, termasuk semua Timor Portugis . Wilayah Portugis adalah satu-satunya tempat di seluruh Indonesia, kecuali untuk beberapa daerah pedalaman terpencil, dimana Melayu tidak digunakan sebagai lingua franca. Berikut dialek bahasa Tetun Belu adalah bahasa perdagangan resmi. Komposisi ras penduduk Timor, yang totalnya mencapai 700.000, adalah yang paling campuran di Hindia. Selain elemen proto-dan Deutero-Melayu, Melanesia bersifat Negro, Papua, Negrito, dan jenis Australoid semua terjadi, di
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berbagai perbandingan di berbagai kabupaten. Hampir setiap saham rasial yang pernah hidup di Indonesia diwakili di pulau satu. Sebagian wajar penduduk asli telah dikristenkan atau mengislamisasi, tetapi sebagian besar orang Timor adalah kafir.
Para Alor-Solor Islands – Solor, Adonara, Lomblem, Pantar, dan Alor – memiliki daerah gabungan 2.000 mil persegi dan jumlah penduduk 150.000. Mereka adalah pegunungan, lima dari puncak gunung berapi yang aktif. Berikutnya ke New Guinea, ini mungkin pulau-pulau paling terkenal di Hindia keseluruhan. Sampai sekarang hampir tidak ada laporan yang tersedia tentang jiwa. Unsur-unsur utama adalah ras Melanesia bersifat Negro dan Papua, tetapi di Pantar tinggal tipe, luar biasa berat berjanggut yang mungkin kelangsungan hidup Australoid, sedangkan di timur Alor ada suku kerdil beberapa saham Negrito tampaknya murni.
Maluku -. Pulau-pulau menempati laut antara Sulawesi dan Timor di sebelah barat dan New Guinea di sebelah timur. Ada ratusan dari mereka, sebagian besar kecil, tapi mereka termasuk dua yang besar – Seram dan Halmahera – dan beberapa ukuran menengah. Luas lahan yang dikombinasikan dari semua Maluku adalah 35.000 mil persegi, dan populasi total adalah 425.000. Meskipun sebagian besar pulau-pulau yang bergunung-gunung, beberapa, seperti Aru kelompok, memiliki elevasi rendah sehingga mereka terutama terdiri dari rawa berkelanjutan. Jalan yang hampir tidak ada di Maluku, dan perjalanan interior dan transportasi sangat sulit. Akibatnya, kecuali di pulau-pulau besar, sebagian besar pemukiman asli terletak di pantai, dan komunikasi terutama dengan perahu. Setiap kelompok pulau utama memiliki minimal satu kota yang merupakan fokus perdagangan dan pelabuhan-of-panggilan untuk kapal uap. Tapi sebagian besar pusat-pusat komersial kecil dan tidak penting kecuali sebagai gateway untuk ekspor dan impor. Masyarakat hanya benar-benar perkotaan di seluruh Maluku Ambon, di Ambon Kepulauan selatan Seram. Ternate, di sebuah pulau dari nama yang sama barat Halmahera, Tidore, tepat di sebelah selatan Ternate di lain pulau kecil, dan Bandaneira, di Kepulauan Banda, tiga pusat sekunder yang penting telah menurun sangat sejak zaman keemasan perdagangan rempah-rempah, ketika Maluku, atau “Kepulauan Rempah-Rempah,” adalah wilayah komersial terkaya di Hindia. Sebagian besar pulau-pulau yang baik dekaden atau masih dalam keadaan primitif pembangunan. Namun demikian, Maluku memiliki signifikansi strategis penting, karena mereka menjaga laut terpendek dan jalur udara dari Australia utara ke Filipina dan Jepang. Belanda memiliki basis terbesar kedua angkatan laut mereka di Hindia di Amboina.
Wetar, di lepas pantai utara Timor Portugis, adalah sebuah pulau kecil terkenal dari 1.200 mil persegi dengan jumlah penduduk hanya 7.500. Medan yang berbukit-bukit dan tanah subur. Saham ras penduduk asli adalah campuran
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Gambar. 7 -. Kepulauan dan rakyat Maluku.
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proto-Melayu dan Papua. Suku-suku tertentu dilaporkan sangat suka berperang, yang diberikan kepada kepala berburu, dan memusuhi orang luar. Jadi terisolasi dan primitif ini pulau itu, kecuali orang Islam dan Kristen beberapa bahkan lebih sedikit, semua penduduk masih kafir.
Kisar, timur Wetar, adalah sebuah pulau kecil dari 50 mil persegi, yang, meskipun tanah yang kurang subur, mendukung populasi 9.000. Medan yang berbukit-bukit, dan hampir telanjang pohon. Penduduk asli adalah proto-Melayu saham, tetapi satu distrik dihuni oleh sekelompok sekitar 200 setengah-keturunan, produk dari kawin tentara dengan Kisarese lebih dari seratus tahun yang lalu, ketika sebuah Perusahaan India Timur benteng dipertahankan di pulau itu. Mereka memiliki nama Belanda dan tidak menikah dengan penduduk asli, tetapi mereka telah melupakan bahasa Belanda sama sekali. Sekitar 10 persen orang dari Kisar adalah orang Kristen.
Kepulauan Leti (Leti, Moa, dan Lakor), timur Kisar, memiliki area gabungan dari 350 mil persegi dan berpenduduk 15.000. Mereka adalah non-vulkanik dan relatif subur. Leti dan Moa yang berbukit, Lakor cukup datar. Proto-Melayu pribumi sekitar 50 persen Kristen.
Kepulauan Luang (Luang dan Sermata), berdekatan dengan kelompok Leti, adalah berbukit dan non-vulkanik, dengan luas 150 mil persegi dan berpenduduk 5.000. Sekitar setengah dari orang Luang mengaku Kristen, yang Sermatans masih kebanyakan kafir. Saham ras dominan adalah proto-Melayu.
Kepulauan Babar, enam jumlahnya, terletak sebelah timur dari Luang. Daerah gabungan mereka adalah 250 mil persegi; bahwa dari 220 mil pulau terbesar persegi. Mereka adalah non-vulkanik, dengan medan yang tinggi dan kasar. Penduduk asli sangat primitif hampir sepenuhnya kafir dan sebelumnya berlatih berburu kepala. Mereka adalah dari jenis yang disebut hibrida Alfur fisik, lintas proto-Melayu dan Papua. Sedangkan Kisar dan Leti dan Kepulauan Luang relatif “beradab,” Babar, seperti Wetar, tetap hampir tak tersentuh oleh pengaruh-pengaruh luar.
Kepulauan Roma (Roma dan Damar) berbohong utara Babar, dan bersama-sama memiliki luas 200 mil persegi. Keduanya pegunungan dan asal vulkanik. Salah satu puncak pada Damar masih aktif. Keadaan penduduk yang tipis dari 3.000 adalah sepenuhnya terisolasi, primitif dalam budaya, dan kafir dalam agama. Saham rasial Alfur hibrida.
Para Nila Islands (Nila, Teun, dan Serua) peregangan timur laut dari Damar ke perairan lepas Laut Banda. Masing-masing dari tiga pulau adalah sebuah gunung berapi aktif, dan di lereng ini tinggal sekitar 3.000 penduduk asli jenis Alfur fisik, hampir sepenuhnya terpisah dari dunia luar dan masih kafir. Luas total adalah sekitar 100 mil persegi.
Kepulauan Tanimbar, dengan luas 2.150 mil persegi, yang 66 jumlahnya, tetapi hanya tujuh yang berpenghuni. Salah satunya, Yamdena, adalah jauh
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yang terbesar, dan di pantai selatan terletak kota utama Saumlaki, reguler port-of-panggilan untuk kapal uap. Semua pulau-pulau non-vulkanik dan dataran rendah, ketinggian jarang melebihi 200 meter; kebanyakan dari wilayah tersebut terdiri dari rawa-rawa tak tertembus. Para 25.000 penduduk asli adalah dari jenis Alfur campuran, dengan dominan karakteristik Papua, termasuk kulit gelap dan rambut keriting. Mereka sangat primitif dan sebelumnya berjuang kejam di antara mereka sendiri, dengan kepala dan makan bagian tubuh musuh dibunuh. Mereka memiliki catatan panjang permusuhan dengan kulit putih juga, tapi karena tahun 1907, ketika Belanda diperkuat kepolisian di pulau-pulau, gangguan sudah diperiksa. Mereka masih mempertahankan budaya tradisional mereka dan sebagian besar kafir.
Kepulauan Kei, timur laut Tanimbar, di bawah pantai Nugini, memiliki luas 575 mil persegi didistribusikan melalui tiga pulau besar dan yang kecil tak terhitung banyaknya. Mereka adalah non-vulkanik. Kei besar, yang terbesar, sangat bergunung-gunung, tapi yang lain jauh lebih rendah, yang terbesar kedua, Nuhuroa, sebagian besar terdiri dari daerah rawa. Mereka semua berhutan lebat. Kota utama adalah Tual, pusat perdagangan dan pengiriman. Populasi adalah 30.000 Alfur dalam jenis fisik. Meski masih primitif dalam budaya umum, hanya sekitar sepertiga dari Keians tetap kafir. Sisanya sama-sama dibagi antara Islam dan Kristen. Sikap yang berlaku terhadap orang luar yang ramah, meskipun perang internal yang berdarah hanya baru-baru ini diperiksa oleh Belanda.
Kepulauan Am, jauh ke timur, terletak dekat dengan New Guinea. Jumlah mereka lebih dari seratus, tetapi hanya lima yang besar. Seluruh kelompok dekat-dikemas, dengan divisi air sempit antara bagian-bagiannya. Daerah ini datar dan rendah, sebagian besar terdiri dari rawa-rawa yang luas rusak oleh perbukitan rendah. Virgin hutan meliputi sebagian besar Aru. Luas 3.350 mil persegi mendukung populasi 20.000 saham Alfur campuran, mirip dengan Tanimbarese tersebut. Dobo, kota utama, dan teratur port-of-panggilan untuk kapal, adalah di pulau barat Wamar. Ini adalah salah satu dari sedikit tempat di Hindia dimana Jepang banyak sebelum 1941. Mereka bergerak terutama dalam bisnis mutiara memancing. Beberapa bagian Aru masih belum diselidiki, dan di pedalaman Wokam hidup suku-suku nomaden yang belum pernah dilihat oleh orang kulit putih dan yang jarang datang dalam kontak dengan penduduk asli lainnya. Para Arunese cukup primitif, dan sebagian besar pagan, tetapi ramah dan patuh. Bahkan di antara mereka sendiri mereka jarang larut dalam peperangan.
Kepulauan Watubela, enam jumlahnya, terletak barat laut dari. Kei. Hanya tiga dihuni, total penduduk menjadi 2.500. Daerah ini sekitar 150 mil persegi, dan medan sebagian besar terdiri dari perbukitan rendah. Kepulauan ini terisolasi dan tidak penting. Beberapa penduduk asli, tipe Alfur, mengaku Islam, tetapi mayoritas adalah kafir.
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Kepulauan Goram, utara Watubela, dengan luas sekitar 200 mil persegi, enam jumlahnya, tetapi hanya tiga yang berpenghuni. Mereka adalah berbukit-bukit dan berhutan lebat. Total populasi saham Alfur campuran adalah 6.000. Meskipun pulau-pulau ini adalah off rute pelayaran reguler, penduduk asli memiliki kontak yang cukup dengan pihak luar, dan Islam kini mengklaim hampir semua dari mereka. Belanda mengalami kesulitan banyak dengan pembajakan dan budak-merampok sini sampai bagian akhir abad kesembilan belas, tetapi dalam beberapa tahun terakhir kondisi sudah damai.
Kepulauan Ceramlaut, dari ujung tenggara Seram, angka 12, 6 di antaranya berpenghuni. Daerah ini adalah sekitar 100 mil persegi, penduduk, 6.000. Mereka adalah rendah, cluster karang subur. Sekitar 1.000 dari penduduk adalah asal asing, termasuk Cina, Arab, dan Indonesia dari bagian lain Hindia. Bajak laut sebelumnya merepotkan, penduduk asli hampir seluruhnya Islam.
Kepulauan Banda, di tengah Laut Banda selatan Seram, memiliki luas 100 mil persegi. Ke-11 pulau telah kehilangan populasi aborigin mereka dan sekarang dihuni oleh campuran Jawa, Bugis, Makassar, dan imigran lainnya, sebesar 6.000. Perbukitan dan gunung berapi, kelompok Banda sebelumnya merupakan pusat makmur budidaya rempah-rempah. Hari-hari kekayaan telah berlalu, dan suasana umum dekadensi melingkupi wilayah ini, meskipun fakta bahwa kota utama, Bandaneira, memiliki salah satu pelabuhan terbaik di Hindia, dan beberapa pulau-pulau memiliki jalan raya yang adil.
Kepulauan Ambon, pusat komersial dan administrasi Maluku, adalah kelompok empat terletak di lepas pantai barat daya Seram. Luas total adalah 500 mil persegi, Ambon, pulau utama, yang terdiri lebih dari 300 ini. Kepulauan ini asal vulkanik, dan meskipun aktivitas lama berakhir, sumber air panas dan tempat tidur belerang yang umum dan gempa bumi sering. Pegunungan melintasi seluruh kelompok. Kota Ambon, dengan 10.000 penduduk, adalah komunitas terbesar di Indonesia timur dan merupakan pangkalan angkatan laut kedua yang paling penting dari Belanda. Para 60.000 penduduk asli, saham Alfur campuran, sebagian besar Kristen, meskipun cukup banyak mengaku Islam, mereka telah di antara yang paling ramah dari seluruh rakyat Indonesia terhadap pemerintah Belanda. Kuat, cerdas, taat, dan berani, mereka dipasok sebagian besar pasukan tentara kolonial dan yang menonjol dalam pelayanan pemerintah ulama, guru, dan sebagai mandor pekerja asli. Perdagangan telah ditangani terutama oleh pihak luar: Eropa, Cina, Arab, dan imigran dari daerah lain di Indonesia, dan penduduk asing sangat besar. Di kota Ambon, misalnya, hidup pada tahun 1940 hampir 1.000 orang Eropa dan beberapa ratus orang Arab dan Cina.
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Seram, Maluku terbesar, memiliki luas 6.700 mil persegi. Pulau ini didominasi pegunungan tetapi non-vulkanik, dengan 3.055 meter puncak tinggi di pusat. Bagian timur, bagaimanapun, adalah baik berbukit atau sangat rendah dan rawa. Sebagian besar tanah tersebut padat berhutan. Sungai-sungai yang hampir tidak berguna untuk navigasi, dan tidak ada jalan, akibatnya perjalanan darat sepenuhnya melalui jalur belaka. Tidak ada kota-kota besar dan pelabuhan saja. Penduduk asli, penomoran 60.000, pada umumnya cukup primitif, meskipun fakta bahwa sekitar 12.000 mengaku Kristen dan 16.000 adalah Islam. Sebagian besar mualaf tinggal di daerah pantai, di mana campuran cukup dengan alien telah terjadi; tetapi interior liar masih hampir tak tersentuh oleh pengaruh budaya dari dunia luar. Orang gunung dari Seram Barat yang tinggi, bersemangat, berkulit gelap rakyat Papua dan Melanesia saham bersifat Negro. Mereka telah di antara para pemburu kepala paling ganas di Hindia, dan kegiatan mereka yang suka perang telah memberikan banyak kesulitan Belanda. Mereka dikenal sebagai Patasiwa Hitam. Wilayah tengah yang dihuni oleh suku-suku Alfur campuran, dari disposisi damai lagi: Putih Patasiwa, Patalima, dan Seti. Bukit-bukit dan rawa-rawa di bagian timur Seram melindungi orang Veddoid, para Bonfia, yang pemalu, unwarlike, dan sangat primitif dalam budaya.
Bum, sebelah barat Seram, adalah sebuah pulau berbentuk oval dengan luas 3.400 mil persegi. Hal ini sebagian besar massa non-vulkanik gunung, tetapi sebagian besar pantai yang datar dan berawa. Hanya satu sungai adalah dinavigasi untuk kapal kecil, dan tidak ada jalan. Populasi 20.000 dibagi antara Gebmelia pagan interior, terutama proto-Melayu saham, dan orang-orang campuran dari pesisir, Gebmasin, yang sebagian telah dikristenkan atau Mohammedanized. Sebagian besar Buru baru-baru ini telah dieksplorasi, tetapi penduduk asli yang damai.
Kepulauan Sula, terletak di antara Buru dan Sulawesi memiliki luas sekitar 5.000 mil persegi. Ada tiga pulau besar dan yang lebih kecil tak terhitung banyaknya. Mereka adalah non-vulkanik, perbukitan di bagian interior, dengan dataran rendah pantai berawa. Populasi 15.000 terutama proto-Melayu saham, dengan Papua terendam dan strain Veddoid. Sula adalah salah satu bagian paling terkenal dari Hindia, dan penduduk asli kafir cukup primitif, banyak dari mereka masih menjalani keberadaan nomaden.
Halmahera utara Maluku, adalah sebuah pulau berbentuk aneh sekali sekitar 200 mil panjang, dengan luas 6.500 mil persegi, termasuk pulau-pulau satelit yang lebih kecil. Keempat semenanjung panjang yang tinggi, rantai pegunungan berhutan lebat yang jatuh bersama-sama di tengah. Semenanjung utara adalah gunung berapi, dengan tiga puncak semiquiescent aktif dan dua; bagian lain non-vulkanik. Tanpa sungai dilayari baik, dan
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tidak adanya total jalan, perjalanan di pedalaman adalah sangat sulit. Sebagian besar Halmahera hampir tak berpenghuni, jumlah penduduk menjadi 50.000 atau rata-rata kurang dari delapan per mil persegi. Penduduk asli, banyak dari mereka nomaden, yaitu dari saham Alfur hibrida, dan sangat primitif dalam budaya. Mereka dikelompokkan di lebih dari 30 suku berbeda, sebagian besar yang telah sangat sedikit diteliti. Peradaban Barat telah hampir menyentuh pulau ini, kecuali untuk tenaga kerja dari beberapa misionaris, yang memperkirakan jumlah mereka bertobat pada hampir 10.000, mungkin berlebihan. Jumlah orang Islam tidak diketahui. Bagaimanapun, sebagian besar dari Halmaherans masih kafir dalam agama.
Ternate, lepas pantai barat Halmahera, adalah sebuah pulau kecil dihuni hampir seluruhnya oleh gunung berapi, tinggi aktif. Luas total adalah 25 mil persegi, sebagian besar padat berhutan. Kota utama, Ternate, merupakan pusat pengiriman, dengan pelabuhan yang baik. Populasi 10.000 pada dasarnya saham Alfur, tetapi campuran begitu banyak dengan pihak luar telah terjadi bahwa jenis asli telah dikaburkan. Ternate, di samping Ambon, adalah kota terbesar di Indonesia timur, dan dulunya adalah ibukota timur kesultanan yang paling kuat dari Makasar. Penduduk asli pulau ini sepenuhnya Islam.
Tidore, selatan Ternate mil, juga merupakan pulau kecil, pegunungan, tetapi gunung berapi yang tidak lagi aktif. Ini memiliki luas 25 mil persegi dan berpenduduk 15.000. Penduduk asli, awalnya saham Alfur, telah bercampur jauh dengan alien. Kota utama, Tidore, memiliki pelabuhan yang baik, dan dulunya adalah kursi dari kesultanan Ternate yang disaingi berkuasa. Tidorese ini adalah semua orang Islam.
Kepulauan Makian – Moti, Makian, Kayoa dan – terletak selatan Tidore. Mereka memiliki luas gabungan sekitar 50 mil persegi, dan populasi sekitar 10.000. Makian dibangun di sekitar gunung berapi aktif; pulau lainnya berasal dari gunung berapi, dan berbukit. Penduduk asli Alfur semuanya telah Mohammedanized.
Kepulauan Batjan, di lepas pantai barat daya Halmahera, jumlah sekitar 80, tapi hanya 3 yang ukuran besar. Luas total adalah 1.000 mil persegi, penduduk, 10.000. Kepulauan ini asal vulkanik, berbukit, dan ditutupi dengan hutan. Kesultanan Batjan sebelumnya agak kuat, tetapi hari ini wilayah ini tidak terlalu penting. Penduduk asli Alfur sebagian besar Islam, tetapi ada beberapa ratus orang Kristen.
Kepulauan Obi, selatan Batjan, adalah kelompok enam, tapi hanya satu yang besar. Luas total adalah 1.000 mil persegi. Kepulauan ini bergunung-gunung, non-vulkanik, dan padat berhutan. Penduduk asli telah hilang, dan sebagian besar penduduk saat ini adalah karakter “mengambang”, masuk ke hutan sementara ikan, menyelam untuk mutiara, potongan sagu, dan mengumpulkan
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produk. Perkiraan wajar jumlah pemukim relatif stabil tidak akan melampaui 2.000.
Bahasa DAN MENULIS
Semua bangsa di Hindia berbicara bahasa milik suatu saham linguistik tunggal, Melayu-Polinesia, dengan pengecualian suku utara Halmahera di Maluku dan Alor di Nusa Tenggara. Kelompok-kelompok ini memiliki bahasa yang umumnya disebut sebagai Papua, kategori di mana lidah-lidah Nugini juga jatuh. Mereka tidak pernah benar belajar atau diklasifikasikan, tetapi mereka jelas berbeda dengan bahasa Melayu-Polinesia. Bentuk yang terakhir salah satu keluarga bahasa yang paling luas di dunia, dengan ratusan cabang memperluas sepanjang jalan dari Madagaskar, di lepas pantai tenggara Afrika, melalui Hindia Timur dan Filipina ke Formosa di sebelah utara, naik melalui Semenanjung Melayu ke perbatasan Burma dan Siam, dan jelas di Pasifik dari Indonesia melalui Melanesia dan Mikronesia ke pos-pos yang jauh dari Hawaii dan Pulau Paskah.Nilai dari bahasa bahasa Indonesia, meskipun hampir semua dari mereka termasuk dalam saham tunggal, saling dimengerti – kisaran variasi yang sebanding dengan yang di dalam bahasa Indo-Eropa dari Eropa. Namun masalah linguistik di Hindia ini disederhanakan oleh fakta bahwa ada semacam “Melayu dasar,” versi sederhana dari Sumatera Melayu, yang dipahami di sebagian besar pulau-pulau. Ini bahasa, yang dapat diperoleh dengan beberapa bulan praktek mantap, sangat diperlukan untuk komunikasi verbal dengan penduduk asli, hampir tidak ada satupun yang bisa berbahasa Inggris, Belanda, atau lidah non-Indonesia lainnya.
Meskipun lebih dari 90 persen penduduk asli buta huruf, menulis, diperkenalkan oleh orang Hindu, telah dikenal di pulau-pulau barat Hindia selama lebih dari seribu tahun. The Hindu yang diturunkan kuno script dengan cepat membagikan penggunaan tetapi masih bertahan di bagian Sumatra dan Sulawesi, di Bali, Flores, dan Sumbawa, dan bahkan sampai batas tertentu di Jawa. Huruf Arab, dan baru-baru Romawi, telah menggantikan jenis kuno menulis di sebagian besar daerah maju. Kertas sekarang digunakan umum, tetapi cara tradisional menulis adalah untuk menggaruk huruf pada permukaan mengkilap dari potongan bambu atau daun kelapa, yang kemudian diikat bersama-sama di buku. Akordeon-seperti buku yang terbuat dari potongan panjang kulit tipis dilipat bersama antara penutup kayu yang digunakan oleh orang Batak Sumatera.
EKONOMI ORGANISASI
Sebagian besar orang Indonesia adalah petani, dan beras adalah dengan segala rintangan andalan subsistensi asli. Metode yang lebih primitif dari budidaya– 31 –
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adalah untuk menghapus dan membakar pertumbuhan alami dan tanaman biji-bijian dengan tongkat menggali tanah abu-dibuahi. Budidaya padi irigasi, baik pada dataran banjir atau di teras lereng bukit artifisial dibangun, terbatas pada daerah yang lebih maju, khususnya Jawa, Sumatera, Bali, dan barat daya Sulawesi. Sawah pertanian diperkenalkan ke Hindia di kemudian hari jauh dari sistem “bakar dan tanaman” dan belum menyebar ke daerah terpencil. Di mana pun diperkenalkan, hasil gabah meningkat dengan sangat hebat, dan populasi. naik dengan kecepatan yang menakjubkan. Sepanjang tahun sawah bertingkat di perbukitan, di dalam tanah vulkanik yang subur, adalah rahasia kemampuan Jawa untuk mendukung populasi yang sangat besar.
Pulau-pulau barat adalah wilayah utama padi nusantara. Beras belum pernah diperkenalkan, atau telah datang hanya baru-baru ini, di sebagian besar Indonesia timur dan di antara suku-suku yang sangat primitif tertentu dari wilayah barat. Ubi jalar dan talas, sayuran berbonggol, dan sagu, makan tapioka seperti yang dipukuli dan dicuci dari empulur sejenis pohon palem, adalah pokok di Nias, Mentawei, dan Engano, terisolasi pulau-pulau lepas pantai barat Sumatra, dan dalam Banggai, dari titik timur Sulawesi. Dua lainnya barat indonesian kelompok, Kubu nomaden Sumatera dan Punan Kalimantan, hidup dengan berburu dan mengumpulkan produk liar dari hutan. Di bagian timur Indonesia, beras diganti sebagai tanaman utama dengan baik jagung (jagung) atau sagu. Yang pertama mendominasi di Nusa Tenggara timur Lombok, sementara makan sagu adalah makanan pokok di sebagian besar Maluku. Jadi, dengan pengecualian kecil, kita dapat memetakan tiga daerah pertanian utama di Nusantara: daerah beras barat, bagian jagung pusat, dan timur sagu zona. f
Makanan nabati menonjol dalam pola makan orang Indonesia. Biasanya, bagaimanapun, mereka melengkapi beras, jagung, sagu atau piring dengan potongan-potongan daging dan ikan, terutama yang kedua. Memancing, memang, adalah sumber yang paling penting kedua makanan dalam perekonomian asli. Nets, garis, berbagai bendungan cerdik dan perangkap, dan obat Stupefying semua digunakan dalam penangkapan ikan.
Berburu memiliki tempat anak dalam kehidupan ekonomi asli kecuali di antara suku-suku nomaden dan semi-nomaden Sumatera, Kalimantan, dan beberapa pulau timur lebih besar. Babi hutan, rusa, monyet, dan unggas liar adalah jenis utama dari permainan. Masyarakat yang lebih maju memiliki senjata, tetapi antara suku-suku terpencil, di mana perburuan masih penting, tombak, busur dan panah, dan sumpitan dengan panah beracun yang digunakan. Juga, berbagai perangkap ikan indonesian cocok dengan yang digunakan untuk permainan. Noose-perangkap dan stasioner musim semi-tombak, yang beroperasi pada prinsip busur dan panah, cocok untuk hewan kecil, sedangkan untuk deadfalls yang lebih besar dan tombak ditangguhkan berat tertimbang bekerja.
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Hewan peliharaan termasuk anjing, kucing, ayam, babi, kerbau, sapi, kuda, kambing, dan domba. Hampir kelompok dapat ditemukan, bahkan primitif hutan pengembara, yang tidak memiliki anjing. Kucing tidak terlalu banyak, yang sangat disayangkan, untuk Hindia yang penuh dengan tikus dan tikus. Semua bangsa Indonesia, kecuali orang-orang liar berkeliaran hutan, menjaga ayam. Sampai 500 tahun yang lalu babi dibesarkan di hampir setiap bagian dari Nusantara. Sejak itu jumlah mereka telah terus menurun, dengan masing-masing untuk kemajuan Islam tabu babi membuat orang-orang menyingkirkan mereka. Sangat mudah untuk membedakan Islam dari desa-desa Kristen atau kafir oleh tidak adanya atau kehadiran babi.
Kerbau raksasa, atau kerbau, adalah pekerjaan pokok dan hewan draft pulau-pulau, dan meskipun impor unit mobil, sebagian besar transportasi berat masih dilakukan dengan gerobak kerbau. Hewan ini kadang-kadang disembelih dan dimakan, tapi ikan biasanya lebih suka daging, kecuali daging babi di non-Islam daerah. Buffalo hanya ditemukan di daerah lebih mudah diakses; mereka tidak pernah diperkenalkan ke pedalaman Kalimantan atau beberapa pulau timur. Sapi, baik berbagai India bongkok atau keturunan Eropa baru-baru ini diimpor, yang tidak terlalu banyak atau luas sebagai kerbau. Kuda-kuda dari pulau-pulau sangat kecil, tidak lebih besar dari kuda poni, dan rupanya pertama diimpor ke Hindia oleh umat Hindu. Mereka digunakan sebagai kemasan atau hewan berkuda dan di kota-kota untuk menarik sedikit roda dua sewa-gerbong di mana pengemudi dan penumpang naik kembali ke belakang. Kambing dibangkitkan di hampir semua pulau, terutama untuk daging dan pada tingkat lebih rendah untuk susu. Indonesia, seperti kebanyakan orang Timur, tidak peduli banyak untuk susu, mentega keju, atau. Domba pertama kali diperkenalkan oleh orang Eropa dan masih kurang penting dalam perekonomian asli.
Apapun cara kehidupan mereka, kebanyakan orang Indonesia adalah pekerja independen. Lebih dari 70 persen bekerja untuk diri mereka sendiri, sementara hanya 30 persen adalah penerima upah, umumnya dalam mempekerjakan perusahaan-perusahaan Eropa. Enam puluh persen adalah petani, pedagang 5 persen, persen ternak 3 pengibar, pemburu, atau nelayan, dan 1 persen pada profesi. Dengan demikian sebagian besar hidup dalam “perekonomian tertutup” dari komunitas asal mereka, yang hampir sepenuhnya mandiri, memproduksi semua yang mereka konsumsi, dengan sedikit tersisa untuk menjual uang tunai.
Orang Indonesia juga miskin, tidak hanya dalam uang, tetapi dalam makanan dan harta benda juga. Rumah mereka kebanyakan hanya bambu dan pondok ilalang, pakaian mereka sederhana dan sedikit. Makanan, terutama dalam kelebihan penduduk Jawa, tidak banyak, tapi untungnya mereka memerlukan sangat sedikit. Dua mangkuk nasi, dengan porsi kecil dari ikan dan sayuran di samping, cukup untuk kebutuhan sehari-hari. Adapun uang, pendapatan pajak statistik menunjukkan bahwa 95 persen dari penduduk asli yang diterima kurang dari $ 50 setahun, dan hanya 0,05 persen
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menerima lebih dari $ 450 setahun. Eropa, yang terdiri hanya 0,4 persen dari populasi, dibayar 50 persen dari penerimaan pajak penghasilan, sedangkan Asiatik asing, terutama Cina, yang merupakan 2 persen dari populasi, dibayar 30 persen.
The most advanced peoples of the island are the proto-Malay tribes of the Minahasa-Gorontalo complex in the northern peninsula and the deutero-Malay Macassarese-Buginese in southwestern Celebes. The Minahasa are almost entirely Christian in religion but retain much of their ancient culture in other respects. The other tribes of the northern complex are either Mohammedan (Gorontalo) or pagan (Bolaang Mongondou, Sangirese, Talaut). The total population of the Minahasa-Gorontalo peoples is 500,000. The Macassarese and Buginese, numbering 2,500,000, form the largest population group, and are the dominant people of the island. Most of the coastal districts and much of the interior were formerly under the rule of their radjas. They are Mohammedan in religion.
The Lesser Sunda Islands.–With a total land area of 35,000 square miles and a combined population of 3,500,000 this chain of islands extends eastward along the southern border of the Indies from Bali to Timor. The terrain throughout is almost entirely mountainous, with 28 active or recently active volcanoes, 17 of them in the island of Flores alone. Good highways traverse parts of Bali and Lombok, but large sections are accessible only by mountain trails. To the east one finds a few stretches of fair road in Sumbawa, Sumba, Flores, and Timor; but Savu, Roti, and the Alor-Solor Islands have almost no real roads. Indeed, east of Bali the interior districts of all the islands are still almost completely undeveloped and have been visited only rarely by outsiders. The only towns of even moderate size in the Lesser Sundas are Singaradja and Den Pasar in Bali, Mataram in Lombok, Ende in Flores, and Kupang and Dilly in Timor. None of these attains a population of 20,000.
Bali, a volcanic, mountainous island, is the most fertile and most densely settled part of the Lesser Sundas, with a population of 1,200,000, and an area of 2,300 square miles. With the exception of a few thousand so-called Bali Aga, who dwell in remote interior villages and still retain much of the pagan pre-Hindu culture of the island, all the Balinese are Hinduist in religion. Bali, indeed, is a kind of museum piece, a living survival of fourteenth-century Java. Many of its noble and high-caste families are descended from refugees who fled Java when the old empire of Modjopahit collapsed. Aside from such deutero-Malay accretions, the Balinese belong to the dark Caucasoid proto-Malay racial stock.
Lombok, a high, volcanic island of 2,000 square miles with a population of 700,000, is the home of three different cultural groups. The western coastal districts are occupied by Balinese, little different from their relatives across the Lombok Straits. The remainder of the island is inhabited by the Sasak, a Mohammedan people who were formerly subject
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Fig. 6.–Islands and peoples of the Lesser Sundas
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to Balinese princes. Tucked in among the Sasak, however, are several thousand Bodha, still largely pagan in religion and quite primitive in general culture. All three of these groups are predominantly proto-Malay in physical type, although Veddoid traits appear among both Sasak and Bodha.
Sumbawa is a partially volcanic, mountainous island 5,000 square miles in area, with a population of 300,000. It is divided into four sultanates: Sumbawa, Sanggau, Dompo, and Bima; all the inhabitants, with the exception of the pagan Do Donggo in the mountains of Bima, are Mohammedan. The predominant racial stock is proto-Malay.
Sumba, a non-volcanic island of low mountains and plateaus, has an area of 5,500 square miles and a proto-Malay population of 100,000. The natives are mostly pagan.
Savu and Roti are small islands with low-lying coasts and hilly interiors. The area of Savu is 200 square miles; that of Roti, 650 square miles. Their populations total 30,000 and 60,000 respectively. The proto-Malay inhabitants include large numbers of Christian converts, although paganism retains its hold over the majority.
Flores, a mountainous and extremely volcanic island, has an area of 5,600 square miles and a population of 500,000. It is divided into five tribal sections: Manggarai, Ngada, Sika, Ende, and Larantuka. The inhabitants of the western districts are mainly proto-Malay in physical type; but moving toward the east one encounters a bewildering mixture of racial stocks in which proto-Malay, Melanesian Negroid, Papuan, and even Australoid strains are clearly apparent. Wide noses, dark skins, and fuzzy hair predominate among the people of eastern Flores. Although Christianity has made some inroads and many of the coastal dwellers profess Islam, the great majority of the Florenese are pagan.
Timor, largest of the Lesser Sundas, is a mountainous, non-volcanic island 9,000 square miles in area. The eastern half and a small enclave on the northwest coast are Portuguese territory. Three tribal groups inhabit Timor: the Kupangese, in the southwestern extremity; the Atoni, in the western and central parts of the Dutch section; and the Belu, extending from central Dutch Timor eastward over the remainder of the island, including all of Portuguese Timor. The Portuguese territory is the only place in the whole of Indonesia, except for a few remote interior regions, where Malay is not used as a lingua franca. Here the Tetum dialect of Belu is the official trade language. The racial composition of the Timorese population, which totals 700,000, is the most mixed in the Indies. In addition to proto- and deutero-Malay elements, Melanesian Negroid, Papuan, Negrito, and Australoid types all occur, in
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varying proportions in different districts. Nearly every racial stock that ever lived in Indonesia is represented in this one island. A fair proportion of the natives have been Christianized or Islamized, but the great bulk of the Timorese are pagan.
The Alor-Solor Islands–Solor, Adonara, Lomblem, Pantar, and Alor– have a combined area of 2,000 square miles and a population of 150,000. They are mountainous, five of the peaks being active volcanoes. Next to New Guinea, these are probably the least-known islands in the entire Indies. Until very recently almost no reports were available concerning the inhabitants. The principal racial elements are Melanesian Negroid and Papuan; but in Pantar lives a remarkable, heavily bearded type that may be an Australoid survival, while in eastern Alor there are some dwarf tribes of apparently pure Negrito stock.
The Moluccas.–These islands occupy the seas between Celebes and Timor on the west and New Guinea on the east. There are hundreds of them, mostly small, but they include two large ones–Ceram and Halmahera–and several of intermediate size. The combined land area of all the Moluccas is 35,000 square miles, and their total population is 425,000. Although most of the islands are mountainous, some, such as the Aru group, have such low elevation that they consist mainly of continuous swampland. Roads are virtually nonexistent in the Moluccas, and interior travel and transportation are very difficult. Consequently, except in the larger islands, most of the native settlements are situated on the coasts, and communication is principally by boat. Each of the major island groups has at least one town which is the focus of trade and the port-of-call for steamships. But most of these commercial centers are small and insignificant except as gateways for export and import. The only truly urban community in the whole of the Moluccas is Amboina, in the Ambon Islands south of Ceram. Ternate, on an island of the same name west of Halmahera; Tidore, just south of Ternate on another small island; and Bandaneira, in the Banda Islands, are three secondary centers whose importance has declined greatly since the golden days of the spice trade, when the Moluccas, or “Spice Islands,” were the richest commercial region in the Indies. Most of the islands are either decadent or still in a primitive state of development. Nevertheless, the Moluccas are of vital strategical significance, for they guard the shortest sea and air lanes north from Australia to the Philippines and Japan. The Dutch had their second largest naval base in the Indies at Amboina.
Wetar, off the northern coast of Portuguese Timor, is a little-known island of 1,200 square miles with a population of only 7,500. The terrain is hilly and the soil infertile. The racial stock of the natives is a mixture
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Fig. 7.–Islands and peoples of the Moluccas.
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of proto-Malay and Papuan. Certain tribes are reported to be extremely warlike, given to head hunting, and hostile to outsiders. So isolated and primitive is this island that, except for a few Mohammedans and even fewer Christians, all the inhabitants are still pagan.
Kisar, east of Wetar, is a small island of 50 square miles, which, despite infertile soil, supports a population of 9,000. The terrain is hilly, and almost bare of trees. The natives are of proto-Malay stock, but one district is inhabited by a group of about 200 half-breeds, products of the mating of soldiers with Kisarese over a hundred years ago, when an East India Company fort was maintained on the island. They have Dutch names and do not intermarry with the natives, but they have forgotten the Dutch language entirely. About 10 percent of the people of Kisar are Christian.
The Leti Islands (Leti, Moa, and Lakor), east of Kisar, have a combined area of 350 square miles and a population of 15,000. They are non-volcanic and relatively infertile. Leti and Moa are hilly, Lakor quite flat. The proto-Malay natives are about 50 percent Christianized.
The Luang Islands (Luang and Sermata), adjacent to the Leti group, are hilly and non-volcanic, with an area of 150 square miles and a population of 5,000. About half of the Luang people profess Christianity; the Sermatans are still mostly pagan. The racial stock is predominantly proto-Malay.
The Babar Islands, six in number, lie east of Luang. Their combined area is 250 square miles; that of the largest island 220 square miles. They are non-volcanic, with a high and rugged terrain. The very primitive natives are almost completely pagan and formerly practiced head hunting. They are of the so-called Alfur hybrid physical type, a cross of proto-Malay and Papuan. Whereas Kisar and the Leti and Luang Islands are relatively “civilized,” Babar, like Wetar, has remained virtually untouched by outside influences.
The Roma Islands (Roma and Damar) lie north of Babar, and together have an area of 200 square miles. Both are mountainous and of volcanic origin. One of the peaks on Damar is still active. The sparse population of 3,000 is thoroughly isolated, primitive in culture, and pagan in religion. The racial stock is Alfur hybrid.
The Nila Islands (Nila, Teun, and Serua) stretch northeast of Damar into the open waters of the Banda Sea. Each of the three islands is an active volcano, and on the slopes of these dwell about 3,000 natives of Alfur physical type, almost completely secluded from the outside world and still pagan. The total area is about 100 square miles.
The Tanimbar Islands, with an area of 2,150 square miles, are 66 in number, but only seven are inhabited. One of them, Yamdena, is by far
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the largest, and on its southern coast is situated the main town of Saumlaki, a regular port-of-call for steamships. All the islands are non-volcanic and low-lying, the elevation rarely exceeding 200 meters; much of the terrain consists of impenetrable swamps. The 25,000 natives are of the mixed Alfur type, with a preponderance of Papuan characteristics, including dark skin and frizzy hair. They are very primitive and formerly fought savagely among themselves, taking heads and eating parts of the bodies of slain enemies. They have a long record of hostility to whites also, but since 1907, when the Dutch strengthened the police force in the islands, disturbances have been checked. They still retain their traditional culture and are mostly pagan.
The Kei Islands, northeast of Tanimbar, under the coast of New Guinea, have an area of 575 square miles distributed over three large islands and innumerable small ones. They are non-volcanic. Great Kei, the largest, is extremely mountainous, but the others are much lower, the second largest one, Nuhuroa, consisting largely of swampland. They are all densely forested. The principal town is Tual, the center of trade and shipping. The population of 30,000 is Alfur in physical type. Although still primitive in general culture, only about one-third of the Keians remain pagan. The remainder are equally divided between Islam and Christianity. The prevailing attitude toward outsiders is friendly, although bloody internal warfare was only recently checked by the Dutch.
The Am Islands, far to the east, lie close to New Guinea. They number over a hundred, but only five are large. The entire group is close-packed, with narrow water divisions between its parts. The terrain is flat and low, consisting largely of extensive marshes broken by low hills. Virgin forest covers most of Aru. The area of 3,350 square miles supports a population of 20,000 of mixed Alfur stock, similar to the Tanimbarese. Dobo, the main town, and a regular port-of-call for ships, is on the western island of Wamar. This is one of the few places in the Indies where Japanese were numerous before 1941. They engaged principally in the pearl-fishing business. Some parts of Aru are still unexplored, and in interior Wokam live nomadic tribes who have never been seen by white men and who seldom come in contact with the other natives. The Arunese are quite primitive, and mostly pagan; but friendly and obedient. Even among themselves they have rarely indulged in warfare.
The Watubela Islands, six in number, lie northwest of. Kei. Only three are inhabited, the total population being 2,500. The area is about 150 square miles, and the terrain consists mostly of low hills. The islands are isolated and unimportant. A few of the natives, of Alfur type, profess Islam, but the majority are pagan.
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The Goram Islands, north of Watubela, with an area of approximately 200 square miles, are six in number, but only three are inhabited. They are hilly and thickly wooded. The total population of mixed Alfur stock is 6,000. Although these islands are off the regular shipping routes, the natives have had considerable contact with outsiders, and Islam now claims nearly all of them. The Dutch had much difficulty with piracy and slave-raiding here until the latter part of the nineteenth century, but in recent years conditions have been peaceful.
The Ceramlaut Islands, off the southeastern tip of Ceram, number 12, 6 of them inhabited. The area is approximately 100 square miles; the population, 6,000. They are low, infertile coral clusters. About 1,000 of the inhabitants are of alien origin, including Chinese, Arabs, and Indonesians from other parts of the Indies. Formerly troublesome pirates, the natives are almost entirely Mohammedan.
The Banda Islands, in the center of the Banda Sea south of Ceram, have an area of 100 square miles. The 11 islands have lost their aboriginal population and are now inhabited by a mixture of Javanese, Buginese, Macassarese, and other immigrants, totaling 6,000. Hilly and volcanic, the Banda group was formerly a prosperous center of spice cultivation. The days of wealth have now passed, and a general atmosphere of decadence pervades the region, despite the fact that the principal town, Bandaneira, has one of the finest harbors in the Indies, and several of the islands have fair roadways.
The Ambon Islands, the commercial and administrative center of the Moluccas, are a group of four located off the southwest coast of Ceram. The total area is 500 square miles, Amboina, the main island, comprising over 300 of these. The islands are of volcanic origin, and although activity long ago ended, hot springs and sulfur beds are common and earthquakes frequent. Mountain ranges traverse the entire group. The city of Amboina, with 10,000 population, is the largest community in eastern Indonesia and was the second most important naval base of the Dutch. The 60,000 natives, of mixed Alfur stock, are mostly Christian, although a fair number profess Islam; they have been among the friendliest of all Indonesians toward the Netherlands Government. Strong, intelligent, obedient, and brave, they supplied a large proportion of the troops of the colonial army and were prominent in government clerical service, as teachers, and as foremen of native workers. Trade has been handled mainly by outsiders: Europeans, Chinese, Arabs, and immigrants from elsewhere in Indonesia; and the alien population is very large. In the city of Amboina, for instance, there lived in 1940 almost 1,000 Europeans and several hundred Arabs and Chinese.
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Ceram, largest of the Moluccas, has an area of 6,700 square miles. The island is predominantly mountainous but non-volcanic, with a peak 3,055 meters high in the very center. The eastern part, however, is either hilly or very low and swampy. Most of the land is densely wooded. The rivers are almost useless for navigation, and there are no roads; consequently land travel is entirely by means of mere trails. There are no large towns and few harbors. The natives, numbering 60,000, are in general quite primitive, despite the fact that about 12,000 profess Christianity and 16,000 are Mohammedan. Most of these converts live in the coastal districts, where considerable intermixture with aliens has occurred; but the wild interior is still almost untouched by cultural influence from the outer world. The mountain people of western Ceram are tall, excitable, dark-skinned folk of Papuan and Melanesian Negroid stock. They have been among the most ferocious head hunters in the Indies, and their warlike activities have given the Dutch much trouble. They are known as Patasiwa Hitam. The central districts are inhabited by mixed Alfur tribes, of a more peaceable disposition: the Patasiwa Putih, Patalima, and Seti. The hills and marshes of eastern Ceram shelter a Veddoid people, the Bonfia, who are shy, unwarlike, and very primitive in culture.
Bum, west of Ceram, is an oval-shaped island with an area of 3,400 square miles. It is mostly a mass of non-volcanic mountains, but large parts of the coast are flat and marshy. Only one river is navigable for small boats, and there are no roads. The population of 20,000 is divided between the pagan Gebmelia of the interior, predominantly of proto-Malay stock, and the mixed folk of the coastland, the Gebmasin, who have been partially Christianized or Mohammedanized. Most of Buru has only recently been explored, but the natives are peaceable.
The Sula Islands, lying between Buru and Celebes have an area of about 5,000 square miles. There are three large islands and innumerable smaller ones. They are non-volcanic, hilly in the interior sections, with low-lying swampy coasts. The population of 15,000 is mainly of proto-Malay stock, with submerged Papuan and Veddoid strains. Sula is one of the least-known parts of the Indies; and the pagan natives are quite primitive, many of them still living a nomadic existence.
Halmahera, northernmost of the Moluccas, is a grotesquely shaped island about 200 miles long, with an area of 6,500 square miles, including smaller satellite islands. The four long peninsulas are high, densely forested mountain chains which tumble together in the center. The northern peninsula is volcanic, with three active and two semiquiescent peaks; the other sections are non-volcanic. With no good navigable rivers, and a
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total absence of roads, travel in the interior is exceedingly arduous. Much of Halmahera is virtually uninhabited, the total population being 50,000 or an average of less than eight per square mile. The natives, many of them nomads, are of the hybrid Alfur stock, and extremely primitive in culture. They are grouped in more than 30 distinct tribes, most of which have been very little investigated. Western civilization has scarcely touched this island, except for the labor of a few missionaries, who estimate the number of their converts at almost 10,000, perhaps an exaggeration. The number of Mohammedans is not known. In any case, the great majority of the Halmaherans are still pagan in religion.
Ternate, off the west coast of Halmahera, is a small island occupied almost entirely by a lofty, active volcano. The total area is 25 square miles, most of it densely wooded. The principal town, Ternate, is a shipping center, with a fine harbor. The population of 10,000 is basically of Alfur stock, but so much intermixture with outsiders has occurred that the original type has been obscured. Ternate, next to Amboina, is the largest town of eastern Indonesia; and was formerly the capital of the most powerful sultanate east of Macassar. The natives of this island are entirely Mohammedan.
Tidore, a mile south of Ternate, is also a small, mountainous island, but its volcano is no longer active. It has an area of 25 square miles and a population of 15,000. The natives, originally of Alfur stock, have intermixed considerably with aliens. The main town, Tidore, has a good harbor, and was formerly the seat of a sultanate that rivaled Ternate in power. The Tidorese are all Mohammedans.
The Makian Islands–Moti, Makian, and Kayoa–lie south of Tidore. They have a combined area of about 50 square miles, and a population of about 10,000. Makian is built around an active volcano; the other islands are of volcanic origin, and hilly. The Alfur natives have all been Mohammedanized.
The Batjan Islands, off the southwest coast of Halmahera, number about 80, but only 3 are of large size. The total area is 1,000 square miles; the population, 10,000. The islands are of volcanic origin, hilly, and covered with forests. The sultanate of Batjan was formerly rather powerful, but today the region is of little importance. The Alfur natives are mostly Mohammedan, but there are a few hundred Christians.
The Obi Islands, south of Batjan, are a group of six, but only one is large. The total area is 1,000 square miles. The islands are mountainous, non-volcanic, and densely wooded. The aboriginal inhabitants have disappeared, and most of the population today is of a “floating” character, coming in temporarily to fish, dive for pearls, cut sago, and collect forest
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products. A fair estimate of the number of relatively stable settlers would not exceed 2,000.
LANGUAGE AND WRITING
All the peoples of the Indies speak languages belonging to a single linguistic stock, the Malayo-Polynesian, with the exception of the tribes of northern Halmahera in the Moluccas and of Alor in the Lesser Sundas. These groups possess languages that are generally referred to as Papuan, a category in which the tongues of New Guinea also fall. They have never been properly studied or classified; but they are clearly different from the Malayo-Polynesian languages. The latter form one of the most widespread linguistic families in the world, with hundreds of branches extending all the way from Madagascar, off the southeast coast of Africa, through the East Indies and the Philippines to Formosa on the north, up through the Malay Peninsula to the borders of Burma and Siam, and clear across the Pacific from Indonesia through Melanesia and Micronesia to the distant outposts of Hawaii and Easter Island.
The scores of Indonesian languages, although nearly all of them belong to this single stock, are mutually incomprehensible–the range of variation being comparable to that within the Indo-European languages of Europe. But the linguistic problem in the Indies is simplified by the fact that there exists a kind of “basic Malay,” a simplified version of Sumatran Malay, which is understood throughout most of the islands. This language, which can be acquired by a few months of steady practice, is indispensable for verbal communication with natives, almost none of whom can speak English, Dutch, or any other non-Indonesian tongue.
Although over 90 percent of the natives are illiterate, writing, introduced by the Hindus, has been known in the western islands of the Indies for over a thousand years. The ancient Hindu-derived scripts are rapidly passing out of use but still survive in parts of Sumatra and Celebes, in Bali, Flores, and Sumbawa, and even to some extent in Java. The Arabic alphabet, and recently the Roman, have displaced this archaic type of writing in most of the advanced areas. Paper is now in general use, but the traditional way of writing is to scratch the letters on the shiny surface of bamboo strips or palm leaves, which are then tied together in books. Accordion-like books made of long strips of thin bark folded together between wooden covers are used by the Batak of Sumatra.
ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION
Most of the Indonesians are agriculturists, and rice is by all odds the mainstay of native subsistence. The more primitive method of cultivation
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is to clear and burn the natural growth and plant the grains with digging sticks in the ash-fertilized soil. Irrigated rice cultivation, either on flooded flatlands or on artificially constructed hillside terraces, is limited to the more advanced areas, notably Java, Sumatra, Bali, and southwestern Celebes. Wet-rice agriculture was introduced into the Indies at a much later date than the “burn and plant” system and has not yet spread to the remoter regions. Wherever it is introduced, the yield of grain increases tremendously, and population. rises with miraculous speed. Year-round wet-rice cultivation on terraced hills, in fertile volcanic soil, is the secret of Java’s ability to support its enormous population.
The western islands are the main rice area of the archipelago. Rice has never been introduced, or has come in only recently, throughout most of eastern Indonesia and among certain very primitive tribes of the western region. Yams and taro, tuberous vegetables, and sago, a tapioca-like meal which is beaten and washed from the pith of a kind of palm tree, are the staples in Nias, Mentawei, and Engano, isolated islands off Sumatra’s west coast, and in Banggai, off the eastern point of Celebes. Two other western Indonesian groups, the nomadic Kubu of Sumatra and Punan of Borneo, subsist by hunting and collecting the wild products of the jungle. In eastern Indonesia, rice is replaced as the main crop by either maize (corn) or sago. The former predominates in the Lesser Sundas east of Lombok, while sago meal is the principal food throughout most of the Moluccas. Thus, with minor exceptions, one can map out three main agricultural regions in the archipelago: the western rice area, the central maize section, and the eastern sago zone. f
Vegetable food predominates in the diet of the Indonesians. Customarily, however, they supplement their rice, corn, or sago dishes with bits of meat and fish, principally the latter. Fishing, indeed, is the second most important source of food in native economy. Nets, lines, a wide variety of ingenious dams and traps, and stupefying drugs are all used in fishing.
Hunting holds a subsidiary place in native economic life except among the nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes of Sumatra, Borneo, and some of the larger eastern islands. Wild pigs, deer, monkeys, and wild fowl are the principal kinds of game. The more advanced peoples have guns; but among the remoter tribes, where hunting is still important, spears, the bow and arrow, and the blowpipe with poisoned darts are used. Also, the wide variety of Indonesian fish traps is matched by those used for game. Noose-traps and stationary spring-spears, operating on the principle of the bow and arrow, are suitable for small animals, while for larger ones deadfalls and heavily weighted suspended spears are employed.
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Domesticated animals include dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, water buffalo, cattle, horses, goats, and sheep. Hardly a group can be found, even the primitive forest nomads, who do not have dogs. Cats are not nearly so numerous, which is unfortunate, for the Indies are infested with rats and mice. All Indonesian peoples, except the wandering savages of the jungle, keep chickens. Until 500 years ago pigs were raised in nearly every part of the archipelago. Since then their numbers have been continually decreasing, for with each advance of Islam the pork taboo makes the people get rid of them. It is easy to distinguish Mohammedan from Christian or pagan villages by the absence or presence of pigs.
The gigantic water buffalo, or carabao, is the principal work and draft animal of the islands, and despite the importation of motorcars, most of the heavy transport is still done by buffalo cart. These animals are sometimes slaughtered and eaten, but fish is generally preferred to meat, except for pork in non-Mohammedan areas. Buffalo are found only in the more accessible regions; they have never been introduced into interior Borneo or some of the eastern islands. Cattle, either the humpbacked Indian variety or recently imported European breeds, are not nearly so numerous or widespread as carabao. The horses of the islands are very small, not much bigger than ponies, and were apparently first imported into the Indies by Hindus. They are used as pack or riding animals and in towns to draw little two-wheeled hire-carriages in which driver and passenger ride back to back. Goats are raised in nearly all the islands, mainly for meat and to a lesser extent for milk. Indonesians, like most Orientals, do not care much for milk, butter, or cheese. Sheep were first introduced by Europeans and are still of minor importance in native economy.
Whatever their means of livelihood, most Indonesians are independent workers. Over 70 percent work for themselves, while only 30 percent are wage earners, generally in the employ of European companies. Sixty percent are farmers, 5 percent merchants, 3 percent cattle raisers, hunters, or fishermen, and 1 percent in the professions. Thus the great majority live in the “closed economy” of their native communities, which are almost entirely self-sufficient, producing all they consume, with little left over to sell for cash.
The Indonesians are also poor, not only in money, but in food and possessions as well. Their houses are mostly mere bamboo and thatch huts, their clothes simple and few. Food, especially in overpopulated Java, is not plentiful, but fortunately they require very little. Two bowls of rice, with small servings of fish and vegetables on the side, are sufficient for daily needs. As for money, income tax statistics show that 95 percent of the natives earned less than $50 a year; and only 0.05 percent
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received over $450 a year. Europeans, comprising only 0.4 percent of the population, paid 50 percent of the income tax receipts; while alien Asiatics, mostly Chinese, constituting 2 percent of the population, paid 30 percent. These figures demonstrate clearly the general economic structure of the Indies: the natives work mostly to produce food for themselves; the foreigners work for money profits.
SETTLEMENTS AND HOUSING
The majority of the Indonesians live in small villages, but there are some exceptions. The Kubu of Sumatra, the Punan of Borneo, and some of the primitive tribes of the eastern islands have no set habitations, but wander constantly in small bands searching for food. Their camps are clusters of simple shelters made of sticks and leaves. The sea nomads, or Orang Laut, spend most of their lives in small boats with rude mat coverings over one section.
The other peoples of the Indies have fixed settlements that are more or less permanent. Where the “burn and plant” method of agriculture prevails, the soil is exhausted after a few years, and the people must move their houses to a fresh location. Also, since this type of cultivation is not very productive, a single settlement can never be large. Where irrigated rice is grown, however, the soil retains its fertility and yields abundantly year after year. In such regions the villages are permanent and often rather large. Inland Borneo and Java exemplify this contrast between wet- and dry-rice sections.
Throughout the archipelago housing is generally very simple. The usual building materials are bamboo and leaf or fiber thatch. In most of Indonesia the ground plan of the dwellings is rectangular; but some groups build their houses directly on the earth, while others raise them up on piles or stone platforms. The pile dwelling is the more ancient type and occurs in the remoter districts. Although most of the Indonesian houses are small, some tribes build enormous structures accommodating scores and even hundreds of people. The extreme development of the longhouse occurs in the interior districts of Borneo, where a single building may shelter an entire village population. Even more archaic house forms than the rectangular pile dwelling are encountered in some islands. These oval-shaped or round structures occur in a part of Nias, in Engano, in the Land Dyak section of western Borneo, in the Lesser Sunda islands of Timor, Flores, Lomblem, and Savu, and in the northern part of Halmahera in the Moluccas. Balinese houses differ from all others in Indonesia. A whole group of closely related families dwell within a walled enclosure, in a cluster of small, clay-sided, thatch-roofed structures.
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Even today in regions where the government’s authority has not penetrated sufficiently to ensure internal peace, the native settlements are protected by ingenious fortifications. Formerly most villages had them. In flat country the clusters of houses are surrounded by earthen walls, sometimes with a dry moat on the outside, the entire breastwork being thickly planted with thorny bamboo very difficult to penetrate. Narrow passageways, easily blocked, are the only means of entrance. In mountain districts a village is preferably located on the top of a high hill and can be reached only by a narrow path, parts of it so steep that ladders must be used. In time of war these ladders can be pulled up. The set defenses are often supplemented by concealed pitfalls, trigger-spears, and hidden bamboo spikes, sometimes poisoned at the tip, which impede the progress of barefoot attackers. Under the peaceful conditions of the recent past, the ancient fortifications have been leveled in most regions, and most of the hilltop people have come down out of their lofty strongholds to lower land. Also, settlements formerly closely clustered for better defense have become more dispersed.
Stone architecture, flourishing in Java and Sumatra during the medieval Hindu period, is now a dead art except in Nias and among the Balinese, whose exquisite temples and shrines are among the wonders of the world. . In Nias, megalithic art of a pre-Hindu type reaches a peak which is truly astounding among a people otherwise so primitive. The massive walls, majestic stone stairways, bathing pools, and huge sculptured monuments of the Nias people, though not nearly so widely publicized as the great stone faces of Easter Island in the Pacific, are actually much more impressive. The Batak of Sumatra, the Minahasa of Celebes, and the Sumbanese of the Lesser Sunda Islands are the only other peoples of Indonesia who do stone sculpturing, principally in the form of mausoleums for dead chieftains.
The village pavilion, used for ceremonials and council meetings, is characteristic of Indonesia. Where no separate buildings are devoted to such purposes, as in parts of Borneo and Celebes, the chief’s home or his section of the longhouse includes a portion which serves as a communal meeting place. In some regions–notably Mentawei, parts of Borneo and Celebes, and most of eastern Indonesia–the council houses also function as the temples of pagan cults; while in other places the villages have separate temple buildings, formerly adorned with the skulls or scalps of slain enemies and human sacrifices. The community pavilion in many tribes is the men’s clubhouse, where they congregate in the daytime and sleep at night. Here guests are accommodated also.
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In Mohammedan regions the mosque takes the place of the ancient pagan temple. Smaller communities have mosques constructed of wood, bamboo, and thatch; but in larger centers the Islamic church is often a large edifice, built in Byzantine style with cement walls and metal roof.
CLOTHING AND ADORNMENT
The daily dress of the Indonesians is as simple as most of their houses. Where weaving is known, or imported cloth available, the usual attire is a cotton blouse and batik sarong for women, and a shirt and sarong or trousers for men. Women drape over one shoulder a long strip of cloth which can be used to carry bundles and babies or as a head shawl. Men wear either cloth turbans or fezzes, a white fez being the mark of one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca. The natives seldom wear shoes. The semi-Europeanized city dwellers are taking more and more to the white man’s style of dress, including shoes; but this occurs seldom among women. Indeed, it is almost literally true that the only native women who dress in European fashion are prostitutes. In rural districts, both men and women remove their blouses when working; in Bali and parts of Borneo women regularly go naked above the waist. While daily dress is simple, the festive garments of the Indonesians are very elaborate, made of the finest batik and specially woven cloth intricately brocaded with silk and gold thread.
A few remote tribes still have no knowledge of weaving and seldom come in contact with traders who sell imported textiles. These primitive groups make their garments of bark cloth, beaten out of the inner bark of certain trees. Even where woven textiles are in use, the natives often make their working clothes–kilts for women and loincloths for men– of this material. The most elaborate development of bark-cloth garments is found among the Toradja mountain tribes of Celebes. The women of a few isolated islands–Mentawei and Engano off the west coast of Sumatra, and Buru, Aru, and Ceram in the Moluccas–still wear leaf and plaited-fiber skirts occasionally.
Body ornaments include a wide variety of earrings and disks, head decorations, necklaces and neck pendants, arm and leg bracelets, belts and corselets, and miscellaneous jewelry such as finger rings, pins and brooches, buckles and buttons. The primitive tribes make their ornaments principally of flowers, feathers, wood, bone, and shell; metal decorations of gold, silver, brass, tin, and copper predominate in the more advanced regions. A general rule is that the most primitive and the most civilized peoples wear fewest ornaments; while those on “intermediate” levels of culture specialize in elaborate adornment.
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Plate 10Above: Batak “hot dog” stand, Sumatra. The vendors are selling pieces of roasted dog meat in a marketplace.
Below: Entrance to a Batak village, Sumatra, showing earthen fortifications.
Photographs by E.E. Muhs.
Plate 11Above: Minangkabau longhouse, Sumatra. All Minangkabau buildings have graceful saddle-shaped roofs. Courtesy Netherlands Information Bureau.
Below: Toba Batak village, Sumatra, showing the sloping gables of the houses of this subtribe. Photograph by E. E. Muhs.
Plate 12Above: Balinese temple gateway with carved wooden doors.
Below: Houses in Nias with massive timbers, carved and painted gables, and hooded roofs. Sculptured stone monuments dedicated to ancestors, in foreground, on paved village plaza. Courtesy Netherlands Information Bureau.
Plate 13Above: Mentawei longhouse.
Below: One of the various types of Borneo longhouses.
The Indonesians also exercise their decorative fancy on the flesh of the body itself. Virtually every people in the islands pierce the ears for the insertion of rings or disks. The custom is declining among men of the more advanced groups, but it is almost universal among women. Generally, the extreme types of ear mutilation–greatly distended lobes and multiple incisions–are found among the more backward tribes. Filing of the front teeth–to points, down in an even line (in many cases to the gums), or with concave grooves on the outer surface–is a very general practice, and was formerly universal in the archipelago. In some places, as in Engano and among the Toradja of Celebes, teeth may be simply broken off or knocked out by the roots. The genital organs are another part of the body subjected to mutilation, including supercision, circumcision, and female incision. The latter two operations are practiced almost exclusively in Mohammedanized areas.
Tattooing, formerly a general custom in most of Indonesia, is still practiced widely in the more backward districts of nearly every island, excepting Java, Sumatra, Bali, and Lombok. Borneo is probably the greatest tattooing center in the world. Perhaps because tattooing is so general, body painting is rather rare. A variation on mere painting is employed by the western Toradja of Celebes, who stipple the face and hands with resin in dot-and-line designs. A substitute for tattooing in a few remote parts of Celebes, in Nias, and in some of the Moluccas is burning or cutting cicatrices in the flesh. Only three tribes–the Klamantan Milanau of Borneo, the Gorontalese of Celebes, and the Redjang of Sumatra–compress the heads of infants to give them an admired flatness of forehead and occiput. The natives of Kei, Babar, and Tanimbar in the Moluccas bleach their hair with lime. Nose mutilation is encountered nowhere in the islands west of New Guinea.
WEAPONS
With the increasing displacement of hunting by agriculture and the decrease in native warfare, the importance of weapons has declined. Most Javanese, for instance, have no weapons except ornamental krisses kept as heirlooms, while in Borneo the old head-chopping ax is disappearing for lack of use. The most important weapons in the Indies are the sword, spear, blowgun, bow, and shield. Swords, spears, and shields are used throughout all the islands; but the blowgun is predominantly a western Indonesian weapon, while the bow is found mainly in the eastern part of the archipelago. Slings and clubs are rare, as are throwing sticks. Poisons made from tree sap are smeared on blowgun darts, and, in some
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tribes, on arrows as well. The blowguns themselves are of wood or bamboo. The latter are easy to make, as bamboo is hollow; but the wooden pipes require careful workmanship. Some are made by lashing two grooved sticks together so that the longitudinal grooves combine to form a circular passage. The other method is to drill a hole down through a long piece of wood in the manner of a gunsmith boring a rifle. Iron tools are needed for making such blowguns.
TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION
The importation of motorcars and the extension of good roads are revolutionizing travel and transportation in Indonesia, but where roads have not been built the ancient methods survive. Buffalo carts and pack horses are used to a considerable extent, but most travel is on foot and most transportation by human porters, women as well as men. In the more remote districts, the principal carrying device is the back basket, with tumpline passing over the forehead or shoulder straps, or, for heavy loads, both. Porters in coastal regions use balance poles, which rest on the shoulders and have the load suspended from both ends.
The coastal peoples are expert seafarers, and before the coming of the steamship most of the water commerce was carried by their big sailing praus, with or without outriggers. The smaller boats are usually dugout canoes hewn from a single log and provided with outriggers. On inland lakes and rivers the boats are generally devoid of external floats. Nearly all the dugouts of the Indies have double outriggers supported by two booms passing across the vessel. Sometimes, to make them more seaworthy, the dugouts have their sides built up with planks attached to the log keel by lashing or wooden pegs.
HANDICRAFTS
Two manufacturing accomplishments are common to all groups in the islands: woodworking and the plaiting of mats and baskets. Pottery making is somewhat more limited in spread, and several groups, notably in the eastern Indies, appear never to have learned the technique. Indonesian pottery is generally poor in quality, scantily decorated, and un-glazed. The potter’s wheel is almost never used, the vessels being made by scooping and patting into shape a lump of clay.
The two arts of handicraft in which Indonesians excel are textile weaving and metal work. The latter is far more widespread than the former and apparently is much more ancient in the archipelago. Many tribes of Celebes and the eastern islands have never advanced beyond the bark-
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cloth level of textile development, but very few peoples lack the knowledge of metal manufacture. Most of the iron is bought from traders in the form of bars, but some tribes mine and smelt local ore. A piston bellows with bamboo cylinders and wadded plungers is used in smelting and forging, and the product is tempered by plunging it red hot into cold water. Copper, brass, gold, and silver artifacts are made by beating or by the * lost-wax” method of molding.
Weavers work with two kinds of looms. The more primitive type has the warp threads tied at one end to a fixed horizontal stick and at the other to a bar which passes behind the small of the back of the weaver. The more complex looms have set frames. Textiles are decorated either by brocading with colored or gold or silver thread, or by dyeing. The locally made coloring materials are disappearing since the importation of aniline dyes. For simple cloths whole-dyed threads may be woven directly, but far more complicated methods are also used. They all come under the general heading of “resist dyeing,” in which certain parts of the cloth or thread are covered with wax, leaves, or fibers, so that when the dye is applied it does not color these places. In this way a design is produced. For multicolor dyeing, the sections already tinted are covered and a different color is applied to the remainder of the cloth. Ikat (“tie”) dyeing is done on the threads before weaving, and when these threads are woven, so carefully have the colors been applied that the desired design appears in the finished fabric. Plangi (“rainbow”) cloths are dyed by covering certain parts of the textile with leaves or other resistant substances, and then tying these sections into small bundles, so that when dipped they do not take the color. By successive tyings and dippings multicolor designs can be produced. Batik cloths are colored by smearing wax over the parts which are not to be tinted and then applying the dye. The wax is later removed by boiling. Here again, several colors can be produced on a single cloth by repeated waxing and dipping.
DRAMA, DANCING, AND MUSIC
The artistic talents of the Indonesians are not confined solely to handicrafts. In the so-called fine arts, their creative abilities appear to special advantage in dancing, music, and drama. The more primitive tribes use gongs and drums principally, although they have some rude wind and stringed instruments. The dancing of the interior tribes, like their music, is also rather simple, running largely to pantomime. The highest development of these arts is found in Java and Bali, where Indian influence has enriched the aboriginal patterns. The music of the great gamelan
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orchestras is related to that of the backward tribes in much the same way that European symphonies are related to peasant folksongs. And the elaborate posturing dances and beautifully synchronized group performances of the Javanese and Balinese troupes offer a similar degree of comparison with the pantomimic animal and war dances of the jungle peoples as, in the Western tradition, the Russian ballet with folkdancing. In both instances, the old rhythms and motifs have contributed to the more sophisticated patterns, which are, indeed, lineal descendants of the ancient forms.
The gamelan orchestras have as their principal instruments copper-bowl xylophones, which carry the burden of the music; while the violins, flutes, clarinets, and trumpets embroider the basic pattern, and the big drums and gongs keep up a running undertone of complicated rhythms. Indonesian dancers move their feet very little, and most of the meaning of their performance is expressed by intricate, highly symbolic posturing with the body, arms, and hands. Similarly, while the face of the dancer remains an immobile and expressionless mask, the movements of the head and eyes are significant.
The dramatic art of the islands, which among the more remote tribes consists mainly of the pantomimic dances just mentioned and some religious pageant-like performances, also attains a peak of development in Java and Bali. The stories are largely derived from the Indian epic poems Mahabharata and Ramayana, but some of the dramas are based upon traditional native tales. Wayang is the generic term for drama, and there are several kinds of plays. One is performed by human actors, usually masked, who speak the lines. Another, and perhaps the most ancient kind, consists in the unrolling of a long scroll on which the scenes of the play are painted. A monologist recites the lines. All the other types of wayang are puppet shows, the figures being made of various kinds of material. Most popular of all is the shadow play with flat leather puppets manipulated from beneath the stage by thin stick attachments.
European and American music apparently has made little appeal to Indonesians; and they are frankly shocked by the Western bisexual, close-contact ballroom dancing. But the cinema has taken hold with them to the extent that it threatens the survival of the traditional drama wherever movie theaters have come in. “Westerns” and animated cartoons are their favorites.
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ORGANIZATION
The social organization of the Indonesian peoples shows three levels of development. The first is represented by the small proportion of natives
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who live in the few modern cities: Batavia, Bandung, and Surabaya in Java; Medan and Palembang in Sumatra; Macassar and Menado in Celebes; and Bandjermasin and Pontianak in Borneo. Among these the traditional social groupings have been largely forgotten, and their type of community life is a product of Western influence.
The second level is that of the native states, still semi-independent, although geared in with the Dutch colonial administration. This type of organization is restricted to Java and the coastal regions of other islands, and came into Indonesia about 1,500 years ago as an imported Hindu element. Before that, the social system of the Indies had never developed beyond the tribal or village community stage. Like the modernized city organization, the native states represent a superimposition on the ancient tribal and village groupings; and even now only a minority of the people are directly concerned with these petty principalities. They are survivals of the Hindu imperialism that preceded the European version of the same thing.
Despite successive conquests, underneath the shifting alien dominations the native communities have gone their traditional ways relatively undisturbed. The third and deepest level of social organization, represented by the masses of the native Indonesians in their countless tribes and settlements, has been left essentially untouched by foreign governmental systems. This is actually and potentially the most important social stratum in the islands, for upon its firm foundation must rise the future democratic state of Indonesia, after the imperialistic superimpositions have been stripped away.
The tribal groupings, many of them so large that they might more appropriately be termed nations, are mostly nongovernmental units. They are cultural areas, within each of which the customs and language are the same and the people remember an ancient bond of relationship. But there are no central tribal governments, and the largest administrative units on the native level are clusters of villages which have combined to form districts, with district chiefs and councils. This is the typical stage of development in the more advanced areas, such as Java and most of Sumatra. In regions of simpler culture, as in the interior parts of Borneo and Celebes, each settlement is virtually independent, and district organization is absent.
Throughout the Indies, even in places where villages are grouped in district federations, the most important functional unit, socially and politically, is the community. The native communities are not only typically democratic; they are also to a high degree communalistic. The
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chief and his assistants are chosen by vote of the villagers, although the offices tend to become hereditary. All or nearly all the adult males in the settlement have a voice in the direction of community affairs. Descendants of slaves, newcomers to the village, and persons of a traditionally inferior class may be either entirely disfranchised or given limited political privileges, but the prevailing tendency is democratic. The officials are subject to control in their decisions by the council, and they must never violate the adat, or traditional rules, of the community. With these checks on them, they have little chance to indulge any, inclinations toward dictatorship. Wherever despotism has developed in the Indies, it has been imported from outside. But even in such cases, the wiser administrators have generally refrained from much interference in the local communities, demanding only peace and taxes, and a limited amount of personal and military service.
The Indonesians lay great emphasis on genealogy and reckon relationships far beyond the immediate family. These extended systems of kinship are important functionally, for upon them are based marriage rules, regulations concerning place of residence, obligations of blood vengeance, and property laws. Some of the tribes stress descent in the female line, while others emphasize male descent. These unilateral schemes of social organization are confined mostly to Sumatra and certain parts of eastern Indonesia. Patrilineal descent is characteristic of most of the mountain peoples of Sumatra and the vast majority of groups in the eastern islands, from Bali to New Guinea. Matrilineal descent occurs only among the Minangkabau and one or two other tribes of Sumatra, and in restricted enclaves in some of the Lesser Sundas and Moluccas. In the whole central part of the archipelago, bilateral kinship systems are the rule–in Borneo, Celebes, and Java particularly–and here relationship is reckoned on both father’s and mother’s sides, as in America.
The rules governing marriage depend upon the manner of tracing descent. Among peoples with bilateral systems, choice of a spouse is restricted only by incest rules, which prohibit marriage with close relatives on either side of the family, usually extending to first cousins only. Where patrilineal kinship prevails, relatives on the father’s side are tabooed, sometimes to very distant degrees of relationship; while maternal kinsmen, even those closely linked by blood, may marry. The reverse rules apply in a matrilineal society.
In certain parts of Sumatra and in some areas of eastern Indonesia the patrilineal and matrilineal systems of reckoning kinship become vastly elaborated by the development of clans. Where this occurs in a patrilineal tribe, a person is forbidden to marry all members of the father’s clan, no
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matter how distant the relationship may be. In groups with matrilineal clans the prohibition is applied to all members of the mother’s clan. The situation is similar to what would happen if we in America were to taboo marriages between all persons with the same surname. The idea behind these rules is that all persons with the same clan name are descended from a common ancestor, who founded the clan. The clan-marriage taboo is just as stringently enforced as incest regulations, and the penalty for transgression, as in the case of real incest, used to be death.
The mode of reckoning kinship influences the place of residence of a couple after marriage. Almost invariably, where descent is matrilineal, residence is matrilocal, that is, with the wife’s people; whereas, where the male blood tie is the test of relationship, residence is patrilocal, with the husband’s kinsmen. In areas where bilateral kinship prevails, usually a man and his wife may reside where they choose, but in many places this is not so. For instance, among the interior tribes of Borneo and Celebes, although relationship on both sides is reckoned equally, a married couple go to live in the village or longhouse of the wife. Some authorities believe that this is a survival of a former system of tracing descent in the female line only.
In certain respects the rules governing sex and marriage in Indonesia appear somewhat lax to Europeans and Americans. Premarital sexual relations, especially in the less civilized tribes, are not regarded as wicked, but rather as quite normal. If an unmarried girl becomes pregnant, however, the boy involved is usually required to marry her. Moreover, the period of freedom is short, as marriages generally occur soon after puberty, at the age of about 16 for girls and a year or two later for boys.
Once married, strict faithfulness is expected of a woman, although extramarital amours on the part of husbands are not considered to be so serious. According to traditional native law in many tribes, the punishment for adultery was death; in others, heavy fines were the rule. The Dutch have long since abolished the death penalty for this offense. Just as a husband’s adultery is more lightly regarded than a wife’s, so also can a man obtain a divorce more easily than a woman among most Indonesian peoples.
In nearly all tribes, a man may marry as many wives as he can support; and although Mohammedan canon law restricts the number of legal wives to four, it sets no limit on the number of concubines a man may have. Many of the native radjas and sultans support whole squads of concubines, in addition to their four status wives, and the offspring of the various women are ranked according to the position of their mothers in the royal household. But the great majority of Indonesians can afford
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only one wife apiece. The factor of expense applies not only to mere support of the woman, but to her “purchase price” as well, for throughout most of the islands a man has to pay for his wife. The bride price usually varies according to the social rank of the girl’s family, which tends to keep the poor from marrying above their station. Although polygyny, possession of multiple wives, is relatively rare, despite its legality, divorce occurs very frequently. It is not uncommon for both men and women to marry and divorce several times in the course of their marital careers. Generally the first marriage is arranged by the parents, with or without consulting the desires of the prospective bride and groom, but subsequent unions are matters of personal choice.
PROPERTY, CLASS, AND CASTE
The democratic political functioning of the native communities in most of Indonesia is complemented by a prevailing communalism of property. Individual property is largely restricted to movable and personal articles, such as clothes and weapons. Houses are generally regarded as collective family property; and land belongs to the whole community. Exclusive private possession of land is an idea strange to most Indonesians. Each individual or family gets a share of the communal land, and such shares may not be sold because they are not the property of their holders. With the consent of the whole community, parcels of land may be leased, even to outsiders; but complete alienation is impossible. The Dutch wisely reinforced traditional law on this point by statutory enactments; and no one may buy land from Indonesians or native communities. The great plantations of the Indies, therefore, occupied leased land, and the companies paid rent to the native owners.
This ancient system of true communalism in land property has been undergoing steady alteration, and the tendency has been toward a kind of “permanent family leasehold.” This change has followed the spread of wet-rice agriculture, and the reason is that irrigated fields represent a capital investment in the form of ditches, sluice gates, dams, and terraces. Such improvements are inseparable from the land itself. But if a family which has obtained virtually permanent tenure of a parcel of land by such investment then moves away from the village, its holding reverts to the community. Absentee ownership is forbidden by the adat, or native traditional law.
In the same way that the primitive communalism of Indonesian villages has been modified in areas where improved methods of cultivation have introduced permanent capital investment in land, so also can a
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correlation be noted between decline in the pure democracy of native society and the spread of “higher” culture. Social stratification tends to develop and become rigid in the more advanced areas. Where Hindu culture, for instance, never penetrated, there complete social democracy prevails; while on the borderline of civilization, so to speak, intermediate grades of stratification have developed, with distinctions of varying rigidity drawn between noble, common, and slave classes. Exclusive hereditary nobilities, linked in most cases with dynastic state governments and despotic systems of feudalism, exist, or did until recently, in all the more advanced regions. Even in areas where social stratification prevails, however, the great mass of natives are still untouched by imported ideas of superior and inferior classes of men. Forms of address and etiquette may vary for different ranks of society, but in daily life and community administration all stand pretty much on the same level. One exception must be made to the statement that Indonesian native society is fundamentally democratic. Slavery prevailed until recent years in nearly all parts of the islands, the slaves being mostly war captives or descendants of conquered peoples. The status was hereditary and usually involved no inhumane treatment; although in certain tribes slaves were occasionally used for human sacrifice.
NATIVE WARFARE
Before the establishment of European rule, intermittent feuds between villages, divisions of tribes, and whole tribal groups kept the islands in a state of continual internal strife. Even today, in remote districts, native wars break out intermittently. Boundary disputes, revenge for injuries inflicted by members of another group, and, in some cases, the pressing need for more land to support increasing population are among the causes of hostilities. But above all, head hunting has been the principal impulse to warfare in the Indies.
In ancient times virtually all the peoples of Indonesia were head hunters, and the practice has not yet died out completely despite the strong efforts of the government to stop it. The reasons for this peculiar custom seem on the surface to be mainly desire for war prestige and revenge for previous raids. Also, in many tribes a youth is not considered a proper man or fully qualified for marriage until he has captured a head. But underlying these superficial reasons are the ideas of the Indonesians concerning the magical power of human heads. A community which has been suffering from epidemics, crop failures, or infertility of women and domestic animals, in trying to fathom the cause of this ill luck, may arrive at the characteristically Indonesian notion that the group is suffering from a
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deficiency of magical power. One of the best direct means of getting the needed spiritual “juice” is to capture a new batch of heads from some other village, for magical energy is most richly concentrated in human heads. Feuds thus started may go on for generations, because a settlement which has lost a number of heads will explain subsequent misfortunes as consequences of this theft of vital energy, and will try to restore the “balance of heads” by making a return raid. Head hunting, therefore, is in one sense a grand and grisly game, with the score kept in heads; while in a deeper sense it is a serious religious duty, performed with pride for the spiritual benefit of a man’s own people.
Being such valuable objects, heads are also obtained for funeral feasts and other sacrificial ceremonies. They are the best of all possible offerings. Moreover, the ancestral ghosts, once head hunters themselves, are likely to withdraw their supernatural favors from their descendants if they do not perform the sacred duty of replenishing the magical stock of the group by capturing heads. The idea that the head is a very holy part of the body is widespread in Indonesia, even in regions where head hunting is a thing of the past. The greatest breach of etiquette is to touch another’s head without good reason. Many a white man has lost his life because he did not know how natives regard their heads.
Head hunting is linked with partial cannibalism in most areas where it occurs. The head snatchers eat bits of the flesh of their trophies, especially the brains, to invigorate themselves spiritually. Aside from this form of cannibalism, which is a kind of magical “communion” service, man eating is not condoned by any Indonesian tribe except, formerly, by the Batak of Sumatra. Even the Batak, however, seldom or never ate human beings except for specifically defined reasons: to inflict the utmost revenge on slain enemies, or to impose the most extreme kind of punishment imaginable upon criminals.
RELIGION
The great majority of Indonesians–about 90 percent–are nominally Mohammedans; approximately 2,500,000 profess Christianity; and the million Balinese are avowedly Hinduist in religion. But the kind of Mohammedanism, Christianity, and Hinduism practiced is hardly of the “pure” sort in any instance; the vital religions of the islands are the old ghost, spirit, and ancestor cults, which have persisted all through the centuries despite surface changes. The Javanese, for instance, are almost 100 percent Mohammedan; but their fundamental beliefs about spirits, life after death, magic, and the like are really pagan. The Javanese or
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Balinese village has at the very basis of its religious system worship of the local spirits and of the ancestral ghosts of the community, for whom ancient altars serve as offering places.
The pagan substratum is the most important element in the whole superimposed system of religious beliefs and practices, and it gives the tone to the later layers. The great masses are heathen at heart, despite their superficial affiliation with the great world religions.
The true type of Indonesian religion, which still survives relatively untouched by outside influence in the interior districts of Sumatra, Borneo, and Celebes, and in many of the isolated smaller islands, rests basically upon beliefs and practices concerned with magic, spirits, and the ghosts of the dead. The magical concepts, as already mentioned, emerge in the headhunting complex. They imbue other aspects of religious life as well; for the people believe that a vast store of magical power permeates the universe, and that it can be “tapped” for human purposes by certain methods. Some persons are adept in getting at supernatural energy, and they can be hired to do this delicate and dangerous work. The purpose is usually a good one–healing the sick, helping the crops, and the like; but black magic may be used against enemies. Every tribe and village has its specialists in this field; but common folk also, by prescribed ritual incantations and actions, can turn magic to their uses. Whole communities may hold ceremonies calculated to get spiritual energy for the entire group, as among the Toradja of central Celebes. Here, at the high point of a week-long ceremony, the women of the village put themselves into a kind of trance, “send their souls” up to the sky, where the great spirits have a vast store of magical power, and draw upon this mighty source for the benefit of the whole community.
The belief in spirits is different from that in generalized magical force, and the activities connected with the spirit cult are more specific in their intention and formalization. This is because in this sphere the people know with what they have to deal, and the rituals can be “aimed” at a certain spirit or spirits. Also, the ideas concerning these supernatural beings are more concrete than in the case of magic. Every Indonesian people believes in the existence of hosts of spirits, widely variable in kind and power. Some are good, others bad; and the main purpose of the spirit cult is to obtain the aid of the former in combating the malevolent influence of the latter. There are earth, air, and water spirits, and a great number of celestial beings who appear as leaders of the lesser ones. The central Borneo tribes try to discover the will of the heavenly deities by observing the flight of birds, who are under the direction of the air spirits, the latter in turn following the orders of their superiors in the
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celestial realm. The Batak of Sumatra believe that they can imprison certain kinds of spirits in little figurines of wood or stone, which are then set outside the village to protect the inhabitants from the hordes of evil creatures who prowl the earth. There are all sorts of sickness spirits; and in eastern Indonesia particularly, when an epidemic is raging the people make a little boat, lure the evil spirits of illness aboard it, and tow the “scapeboat” out to sea, where it is abandoned. Many localities have their own special spirits. Indonesians climbing a mountain may make offerings not only to the deities of the mountain itself, but also to the spirits of rocks and streams on the way up. Passing a headland known to house a supernatural being, Malay sailors will lie flat in their vessel, perfectly quiet, while the helmsman steers a gingerly course by the dread spot.
Powerful though the beliefs in magic and the spirits are, probably the most important cult in Indonesia has to do with the ghosts of the dead and the ancestors. In few other places in the world do funeral ceremonies involve so much time, energy, and sacrifice. In many tribes the dead receive not only one, but two and even three successive funerals, at each of which the bones of the deceased are exhumed or removed from their tombs for cleaning, blessing, and redisposal. The ways of disposing of mortal remains are extremely varied. In the island of Sumatra alone, for instance, the different tribes bury, cremate, entomb, abandon, conceal in caves, and seal in trees the bodies of their dead. Even within the same tribe, diverse methods of disposal may be employed, depending upon the age, rank, sex, and manner of death of the deceased.
This obsession with death and the dead reaches its culmination in the all-important ancestor cult. The ancestors have passed beyond, to the realm of the spirits, and, if kept satisfied, are in an excellent position to aid the living. Therefore they receive endless sacrifices, and the people dread offending them in any way. This, indeed, is a great reason for the conservatism of the Indonesians, as the ancestors are likely to be angered by any alteration in the ways they were used to on earth.
The ancestor cult is universal throughout the Indies, and is the most important single feature of native religion. Linked with it is a widespread use of spiritualistic seances for the purpose of getting in contact with the ghosts of the dead and discovering their will. The shaman, or medium, goes into a state of trance induced by such devices as incantations and wild dancing to the accompaniment of steady drum-beating, and gulping in great clouds of incense. While in the trance, the medium’s body becomes the host of an ancestral ghost, who speaks through the mouth of the shaman.
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Plate 14Above: Man of Nias in ceremonial costume, including the warrior’s neck emblem and elaborate headgear. The poster is printed in the Nias language, which was never written until recently.
Below: Javanese couple, the man in semi-European style clothing.
Plate 15Above: Balinese dancers in performing costumes. The metal headresses are so finely worked that they look like starched lace.
Below: Minangkabau of Sumatra in ceremonial costume. These richly brocaded garments are heirlooms.
Plate 16Above: Mentawei girl with teeth filed to points.
Below: Toradia woman, Celebes, with resin stippling on her face.
Plate 17Above: Bahau Dyak, Borneo, showing distension of the ear lobes.
Below: Mentawei man, with bow and poisoned arrows.
The native Indonesian religions, then, are varying mixtures of paganism with later infusions of Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. “Conversion” merely means taking on new names for old things; and the supernatural beings, beliefs, and practices introduced from outside are simply added on and fitted into the ancient cults. Purely pagan tribes are still found in the islands off the west coast of Sumatra* in certain remote parts of the latter island itself, in central Borneo and Celebes, and in many of the islands between Java and New Guinea. Hinduism, mixed with pre-Hindu elements, survives only in Bali, although 600 years ago it was the universal religion of all Java and most of Sumatra. Mohammedanism, also by no means “pure,” has now spread over nearly all of Sumatra, Java, and the coastal districts of Borneo and Celebes. It is steadily making converts in the eastern islands, some of which–Lombok and Sumbawa, for instance–are almost completely Islamized.
Christianity has never been able to gain headway in Mohammedan areas. In Java, for instance, there are at most 200,000 Christians–probably not more than half of these natives–and this despite centuries of missionary effort. The Christian religion has found its best field among the pagan tribes, notably the Batak of Sumatra, the Toradja and Minahasa of Celebes, and the Ambonese of the Moluccas. The latter two groups are almost entirely “Christian.” Islam, however, seems to harden its followers against conversion, and throughout the history of missionary enterprise in the Indies the zones of Christianity and Mohammedanism have been mutually exclusive.
DUTCH ADMINISTRATION
Unlike the Americans in the Philippines, who after expelling the Spanish immediately started a general reform of government, education, and social life, the Dutch have been extremely cautious about introducing changes in the administration of the Indies. They have retained as far as possible the traditional forms of government, tried scrupulously to avoid interference in native life, and until recently have done little to promote native education.
The old East India Company, a commercial body operating under the aegis of the Netherlands Government, actually was the colonial administration until its dissolution in 1798. It kept the native sultans in power, ruling through them, and demanding only a monopoly of trading rights and exploitation of natural resources. When the Company collapsed, the Government merely stepped into its place and operated in the time-honored manner, becoming in considerable degree a commercial organization itself. Around 1900 the Government gave up its business activities–with the
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exception of a few enterprises and monopolies–and opened the Indies to exploitation by private companies, turning itself completely to the task of colonial administration. It pledged itself to a “liberal” policy of rule: on the one hand to keep native customs and institutions intact as far as possible, and on the other to extend education and participation in government to Indonesians as rapidly as possible. In the former, complete success was achieved, for it has always been the policy of the Dutch to refrain from interference in native life except when absolutely necessary. The latter aim, however, was never achieved, except very partially, with the result that only a very small proportion of the natives ever attended school and even fewer ever voted. Thus the main emphasis has been upon maintaining the status quo and only slowly opening educational and political privileges to the Indonesians. The whole policy is well termed one of extreme gradualism.
By Dutch definition the Indies were not a colony, but rather an integral part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, like Holland itself, Surinam, and Curasao. The islands had their own government, to handle internal affairs, under the ‘guidance” of the mother country, and the latter controlled their relations with foreign states. Legislation concerning matters of broad and fundamental import for the Indies went through the parliament in Holland, while questions having only local application were handled by the governor-general and the organs of government in Batavia.
The governor-general, appointed by the Crown, was directly assisted by an advisory body of five, chosen by the Dutch ruler and cabinet, called the Council of the Indies, and by a cabinet of eight. The governor-general named six of the ministers; the Netherlands Crown and cabinet selected the ministers of war and the navy. The central government at Batavia had one other branch, potentially the most important of all. This was the parliament, or Volksraad, the “People’s Council.” Created in 1916 as a purely advisory body, it slowly gained in power, until, after 1929, it came to function almost as a true legislative assembly. Members could introduce bills on their own initiative, and the Volksraad could amend bills presented to it by the governor-general. The latter had to present every bill he advocated to the Volksraad for a vote. If a budget bill were not approved, the Netherlands parliament decided the issue; in case of disagreement on other ordinances the conflict was resolved by a royal decree. The governor-general, in case of emergency, might proclaim an executive order having the power of law immediately; but if the Volksraad at its next meeting questioned his action the Crown was called upon to arbitrate the dispute.
The partially democratic nature of this near-parliamentary body is further demonstrated by the way its members were chosen. The chairman
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was appointed by the Crown and cabinet of the Netherlands. The remaining 60 members were partly elected and partly appointed by the governor-general in the following manner: of the 30 Indonesian delegates, 20 were elected and 10 appointed; of the 25 Europeans, 15 were elected and 10 appointed; and of the 5 “alien Asiatic” deputies, 3 were elected and 2 appointed. Thus 38 of the members were elected and 22 appointed. The term of office was 4 years. To ensure proportional sectional representation among the native members, the islands were divided into twelve electoral areas. If this had not been done, the Javanese, with two-thirds of the total Indonesian population, would have held nearly all the seats in the Volksraad. The method of election was indirect, only members of the various local councils–provincial, regency, and municipal–voting for delegates. These local councilmen in turn were partly appointed and partly elected by the people of their district, in most places voting by village units. The whole process was complex and cumbersome, but, according to the Dutch, it was designed to give all groups proper representation.
Outside the central government, there were three main systems of administration: the Civil Service, the native rulers, and various kinds of district councils.
The Civil Service consisted of several grades of officials. The highest were the governors of the eight main divisions of the Indies. Then came the residents, assistant residents, and controleurs, in charge of progressively smaller districts. Most of the officers thus far down the list were Dutchmen, although a minority were half-castes who had gone to school in Holland. The lower grades of the Service included thousands of native officials. Indeed, the entire staff had only about 30,000 European members as against 180,000 natives, most of the latter in such relatively minor capacities as clerks and messengers. Also, a large proportion of the “European” employees were half-castes in subordinate positions. Candidates for all posts from controleur upward were selected by an examining committee from graduates of high schools in Holland and the Indies. Successful applicants were sent to either Leiden or Utrecht University, where they were partially supported by government scholarships. The course took 5 years, and when the young “aspirant controleurs” were ready to leave for the Indies they had acquired a thorough knowledge of Indonesian history and law, the ethnology of the native peoples, and the languages of the archipelago. There is no doubt that the Dutch civil officers in the Indies were the best colonial administrators in the world, and the reason for this lay in the rigid standards of selection of candidates and in the admirable course of training they received.
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The second type of regional administration was that of the native rulers, mostly hereditary in the higher ranks. The system of retaining the traditional governmental organization to the greatest possible degree had been characteristic of the Dutch ever since the days of the old East India Company. This method of colonial administration is called “indirect rule,” which is a precise term, for each of the native potentates had at his side a Dutch civil officer who “advised” him–in other words, actually “ruled through” him. Of the total area of Java, 7 percent was under the jurisdiction of 4 sultans, and most of the remainder of the island was divided into 70 “regencies,” each ruled by a hereditary native potentate. Outside Java, 60 percent of the dominions were ruled indirectly through local princes, mostly hereditary. In all the 340 native states and regencies the rulers merely went through the motions of administration, and their powers were entirely subordinated to those of the Indies government. The finances, especially, were strictly controlled, although the monetary allowances made to the princes were very liberal in most instances. Each ruler of a native state had under him district and assistant district chiefs, generally of the lesser nobility of the region. The lowest unit in the hierarchy of native regional government was the village community, ruled by a chief, sometimes hereditary and sometimes elective, who was assisted by certain other officials. Typically also, there were a village assembly, to which all adult males in good civil standing were eligible, and a council of elders, a kind of senate drawn from the assembly. These village communities were the main centers of Indonesian native government. Only a small proportion of the common folk ever had anything to do with either the higher native officials or the Dutch administrators. Their political horizon ended at the borders of their own community. The village governments ran in traditional grooves sanctified by usage extending back beyond memory; and the successive conquerors of the Indies have been satisfied to leave them alone, going on generation after generation in accordance with ancient customs and laws.
The third type of regional administration was a recent development, although the groundwork for it had been laid as far back as 1903, with the first “decentralization” law. The plan was to develop in every section of the Indies a complete local government to handle internal affairs. Each of the major administrative divisions–provinces, regencies, and municipalities–was to have not only its executive Civil Service staff and its native rulers, but also a council, partly appointed and partly elective. Tribal divisions were to be given a controlling voice in their own affairs by setting up tribal or “community” councils. The system, if carried through completely, would have worked out into a scheme similar to the
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American federal type of government, with its State legislatures, county boards, and city councils. By 1941 the new decentralized plan was already in partial operation. Six provincial, 70 regency, 15 municipality, and 2 “community” or tribal councils had been established and were functioning. In most of these, about half of the members–European, native, and “alien Asiatic”–were appointed by the executive of the region; for the elective deputies only taxpayers, in general, were allowed to vote. Thus the franchise extended to only a minute proportion of the natives, but as the plan developed and as economic and educational standards rose, more and more of the Indonesians would have been brought within the voting group. Legislation passed by the various councils was subject to veto by the Dutch governor or other official in charge of the district; but an appeal could be made to the governor-general, who made the final decision.
EDUCATION
The Dutch did little to open the minds of the Indonesian masses to broad world perspectives through education. Only 5 to 10 percent of the government expenditures were for education, as against 25 percent in the Philippines. The underlying philosophy seems to have been that too rapid education among the natives would have produced social disorganization and discontent, along with imposing a heavy drain on the government budget.
The system of schooling was organized on a dual basis, depending upon whether the Dutch or native language was used in teaching. Standard Malay was the language in most of the latter type of schools; but where knowledge of Malay had never penetrated, the local vernacular was the medium of instruction, and Malay was taught as a subject. The great bulk of the native pupils, about 1,700,000 out of 2,000,000, never got beyond the lowest unit, the village school, whose course covered three grades only. Education was neither compulsory nor free, although some scholarships were provided for poor but able students.
Above the primary level, which rose to six grades, Indonesian students had their choice of going on in the native-language school system to trade, agricultural, or normal secondary schools, or passing over into the white secondary school system by attending “link schools” where they learned the Dutch language. This sounds as though the Dutch segregated children by race in primary, though not in secondary, schools. This is not true, however, for the criterion of separation was language, not race, and Indonesian or Chinese children who spoke Dutch could enter the European primary schools along with the whites. For Chinese students, the type of
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primary school attended depended upon what language they knew; although the majority went to special “Dutch-Chinese” schools, where Dutch was taught through the medium of Malay. In addition to public schools, private and missionary institutions were subsidized by the Government, and almost 20 percent of all pupils in the Indies attended these. They included nonsectarian private, Chinese private, Catholic and Protestant missionary, and Mohammedan parochial schools.
The highest education offered was that of the five colleges of Java: the technical institute at Bandung, and the schools of law, medicine, agriculture, and literature at Batavia. The Japanese war interrupted plans for uniting these institutions in a University of the Netherlands East Indies. An infinitesimal proportion of the natives who started in the primary school system ever attained university education; indeed, very few– about 15 percent–even got beyond the third elementary grade.
MISSIONARY ACTIVITY
Every missionary group in the Indies operated under a license in which the area of activity was strictly delimited and the procedure minutely prescribed. These licenses were subject to immediate cancellation if the missionaries overstepped the bounds of their stated privileges, or if the government found that the natives were opposed to their presence. Some districts were virtually closed to missionaries, notably the strongly Mohammedan areas of Atjeh in Sumatra and Bantam in western Java, and the Hinduist island of Bali. Even where missionaries had been active for centuries, however, their efforts to convert the natives were largely unsuccessful. Undoubtedly the neutral attitude of the government was partly responsible for this, but the religious situation in Indonesia would have been unfavorable to Christianity in any case. Since 90 percent of the natives are Mohammedan, and Mohammedans the world over are notoriously hard to convert, the little success of the missionaries would be explainable even though the government had strongly encouraged them.
As mentioned above, largest results have been attained by the missions in previously pagan regions. Of approximately 2,000,000 Christians in the Indies (only 3 percent of the total population), 500,000 were in Sumatra, largely among the pagan Batak, and an equal number in Celebes, mostly in the non-Mohammedanized Toradja and Minahasa districts. Five percent of the Indonesians were still pagan in 1940, and the missionaries were competing with Islam–which spreads automatically, largely by way of intermarriage between Mohammedan traders and pagan women–to
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get control of these virgin fields before they were irretrievably lost to the religion of Allah. Thus, even if it won most of the yet unexploited districts, the best the Christian church could hope for would be conversion of less than 10 percent of the native population of the Indies.
EUROPEANS AND AMERICANS
In 1940 there were almost 250,000 people classed as Europeans living in the Netherlands East Indies. A sizable proportion of these were persons with varying degrees of native blood, but sufficiently white to be included in the general European category. Dutch citizens composed the vast majority, totaling around 220,000. Germans numbered about 7,000; Japanese (for legal reasons classed as Europeans), 7,000; British, 2,500; Swiss, 800; Americans, 650; and Belgians, 625. Fully 200,000, or 80 percent, of the whites lived in Java; and of the 50,000 in the other islands, 30,000 were concentrated in Sumatra. The Europeans have tended to cluster in urban centers, and almost half of them in 1940 were found in seven cities. In Java these were: Batavia (40,000), Surabaya (30,000), Bandung (20,000), and Semarang (15,000); in Sumatra: Medan (4,000) and Padang (3,500); and in Celebes: Macassar (3,500). The number of Europeans and Americans in the Indies was formerly much smaller than in recent years. During East India Company control and throughout most of the nineteenth century, private businesses were not welcomed by the government, which monopolized nearly all the commercial enterprises. In 1870 there were only 35,000 whites in the islands; by 1900, after the government had relaxed its restrictions, the total had risen to 90,000; and the last 40 years increased this figure by almost 300 percent.
The white population fell into three main categories: the plantation operators and employees; the urban business and professional classes; and the government workers, including administrative and military personnel and teachers. The latter two composed about 80 percent of the total, and lived principally in the larger communities. Here living conditions were excellent, with fine houses, elegant clubs, a variety of entertainment facilities, and an abundance of cheap and pleasant native servants. Life in the back country–on plantations, in mission centers, oil fields, and government posts–was generally rather dull, the days running on routine, with little to do but work. The comforts of the cities–electricity, good roads, modern stores, and the rest–were lacking. Nearly all the whites lived in anticipation of the periodic furloughs in Europe, usually triennial;
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and intended, when their days of service were over and their hoped-for fortunes accumulated, to retire on pensions to their home countries.
THE CHINESE
Much more numerous than the Europeans were the Chinese, totaling about 1,200,000, or almost 2 percent of the Indies population. In 1940 approximately one-third of them had been born in China; but among the remainder a large proportion were descendants of immigrants to the islands many generations ago. In every respect the Chinese occupied an intermediate status between Indonesians and whites. They were much more literate than the natives, over 50 percent of the men and about 15 percent of the women being able to read and write. Most of them were middle-class merchants, operating nearly all the retail businesses and a fair number of the small wholesale houses. The others were concentrated principally in the tobacco districts of northeastern Sumatra and the tin-mining islands of Banka and Billiton; in both areas they worked mostly as coolies. Half of the Chinese, 600,000, lived in Java; 500,000 in Sumatra, a little less than 100,000 in Borneo; and around 30,000 scattered over the other islands. Thus they were more evenly distributed than the Europeans.
The Chinese, however long their families may have lived in the islands, have kept themselves a separate group, retaining their own customs and preserving a lively interest in the home country. Since there have never been many Chinese women in the Indies, much intermarriage with natives has occurred. But the families, no matter how much Indonesian blood they may have absorbed, have remained Chinese in customs and sentiments. They have had their own temples, associations, and even schools; and have kept up the family and ancestor cult of China even though many generations separated them from the motherland.
In the past the Chinese were subjected to numerous discriminatory laws, being confined to “ghetto” sections of towns and required to obtain passes to travel outside. Hardly a trace of these legal disabilities survived in 1940. The Chinese had freedom of movement and residence; their legal status was carefully defined, with full consideration for their special requirements; there were Dutch-Chinese schools; and subsidies were granted to Chinese private schools. Where enough Chinese lived, they were given proportional representation in local and provincial councils; and in the Volksraad three to five seats were reserved for them. Since the Netherlands and China have been on the same side in the present world conflict, the loyalty of the Indonesian Chinese has suffered no split. They, with the half-castes, are bound to constitute an important middle-class element in the future reconstruction and reorganization of the Indies.
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THE HALF-CASTES
One of the most striking differences between British and Dutch colonies appeared in the treatment of half-castes. To the British, these people had an inferior status; and they seldom rose high in governmental or business positions, nor were they admitted to white clubs and social circles. In the Indies, however, they were classed as Europeans, met a minimum of discrimination in jobs, and were accepted everywhere as equals. Persons of mixed blood held some of the highest posts in government, and no impediment, social or legal, stood in the way of a Dutchman wishing to marry one of them. Nearly all of them spoke Dutch, for they attended the Dutch language schools. For the most part they occupied a middle-class status, working as minor officials, as school teachers, and in clerical positions. Some discrimination did exist, but their lot in the Dutch islands was better than in any other colonial area in the world.
Temperamentally, the mixed-blood people were much better balanced than their fellow Eurasians elsewhere in the Orient. They did not display the combination of servility and aggressiveness attributed to British half-castes, because their personalities were not warped by galling discriminations. They were a living disproof of the outmoded theory that mixed-bloods inherit the worst traits of both parental groups. On the contrary, they demonstrated clearly the truth that the bad reputation of half-castes in other parts of the world is due to their treatment and not to their biological heredity.
Miscegenation between Europeans and natives was more frequent in earlier times than recently, for it has declined as the number of white women in the islands has increased. Interracial matings were formerly encouraged by the Dutch authorities, for they saw in them a good means of cementing friendly relations between themselves and the Indonesian people through the creation of a mixed-blood intermediary group. The native ideas of sex in this part of the world are quite liberal, and a girl is not condemned, among most groups, for living with a white man. The attitudes of the Dutch and the Indonesians were well suited, therefore, and the production of half-castes went on smoothly generation after generation.
Despite a marked decrease in the frequency of miscegenation during recent decades, it persisted as a regular feature of white colonial life. Its two main centers were the army barracks and the plantations. Although subjected to a constant barrage of criticism, the army continued to allow Dutch soldiers in the islands to have their dusky mistresses, mostly on the ground that this temporary monogamous system reduced venereal infection. Unmarried white overseers on plantations employed native
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housekeepers, and although not all of these became concubines of their masters, a fair proportion of them undoubtedly did. In addition to blood, mixture by way of concubinage, occasionally legal marriages occurred between Europeans and natives, but most of the half-caste population originated from extramarital unions.
The Dutch have done well to treat the children of mixed matings fairly. In them they have had a generally loyal intermediary group, appreciative of the consideration shown them. Except for the Chinese, the half-castes have been the only middle-class element in the whole Indies. In this intermediate position they have possessed an intimate knowledge of both Dutch and native society. When the Indies arise from the desolation of the present war, the intelligent, well-educated, temperamentally sound Eurasians will surely take their place among the leaders of the reconstruction.
EXPORT PRODUCTION AND TRADE
Indonesia has been the most profitable colonial possession of its size in the world. In an average recent year, 1938, British India, long famed for its richness, two and one-half times the size of the Indies and with a population six times as large, had only twice as much export and import trade. The amazing wealth of the archipelago can be attributed to three things: the fertility of the soil, augmented by little seasonal change and a wide range of crop possibilities; the mineral deposits in the subsoil; and the cheapness and tractability of the native labor supply.
The soil of the islands varies, but a large proportion is exceedingly productive, particularly in the volcanic areas. The volcanic ash is an excellent fertilizing agent, provided that it is seeped into the earth by sufficient rain, and Indonesia has plentiful rainfall. Crops can be grown 12 months in the year in most regions, for seasonal variations are slight. The islands are a natural hothouse, continually putting forth plant life in great abundance. Nearly every island includes land varying from steaming coastlands to very high mountains, while in between are hills and valleys of all intermediate elevations. Consequently the variety of crops is phenomenal. The greatest staple is rice, which flourishes at all levels and furnishes the principal food supply. The abundant rain and the numerous streams make irrigation possible in most of the archipelago. Maize, vegetables, and fruits are raised in considerable variety. Thus, despite its large population, Indonesia can feed itself. No greater testimony to the richness of the soil could be presented than the fact that the Javanese, packed more than 800 to the square mile, live almost entirely on the products of their own land.
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In addition to the bountiful and continuous harvest for native consumption, the islands produced a vast store of crops for export. These exports made Holland one of the richest countries in the world.
The leading commercial crop during recent times was rubber, and for many years it was the main export commodity. Until 1940 the Indies were the second largest rubber-producing area in the world, being slightly surpassed by British Malaya; but in that year t}ie islands forged ahead, with 49 percent of the total world yield, as against 41 percent for Malaya. During normal years Indonesia supplied between 35 and 40 percent of all the rubber used in the world. Sumatra was the principal rubber-producing region of the islands; and here, especially on the east coast, vast plantations covered areas as large as many of our States. The trees were lined up with geometrical precision, so that, looking through a rubber plantation from any angle, the rows extended straight out as far as the eye could see, like the pillars of a great cathedral. Each tree had its little metal cup, and every morning a coolie would come and make a fresh diagonal slash in its bark to start the sap running.
Sugar ranked next to rubber among the commercial agricultural commodities of the Indies. Most of it was grown in Java, where it constituted the main export crop. Recently, however, sugar fell upon evil days, for the world markets were glutted and prices dropped close to the cost of production. Tea, in normal years, was almost as important a commercial crop as sugar. Copra, from which coconut oil is made, and palm oil were also supplied by the Indies in considerable quantity. The remaining principal agricultural commodities fell into two classes: those in which the Indies had a virtual world monopoly, and those which other areas produced in large quantities. To the former category belonged quinine, pepper, and kapok fiber, of which Indonesia supplied, respectively, 90, 85, and 75 percent of the world export total. To the latter class belonged coffee, and agave and sisal fiber, used for making twine.
The mineral wealth of the islands has hardly been tapped, and the vast hinterlands of Borneo and New Guinea hold promise of great future development. Even the abundant production of oil for two decades has scarcely begun to draw upon the abundant reserves in the subsoil. Although petroleum with its byproducts ranked next to rubber as the principal export of the Indies during the past 5 years, the archipelago supplied only 3 percent of the world’s total production, standing fifth among the oil-yielding countries. Tin was the second most important mineral export, and, while the amount of production varied from year to year, Indonesia consistently ranked next to Malaya, the world’s main source of this metal. Most of the tin came from government-owned locations in Banka, Billiton,
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and Singkep, islands situated between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula. The government also operated coal and gold mines in western Sumatra, but the amounts produced were never large. Most of the coal was used within the islands for ships and railways. Bauxite, the aluminum ore, was increasing in production in 1940, when 230,000 tons were exported.
In addition to production for export, the Dutch drew profits from handling the trade and transportation of the Indies. A Dutch shipping company, the Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij, had a virtual monopoly of the extremely profitable interisland trade, and the railroads were owned by the government. But the big returns came from investments in plantation agriculture, mining and oil production, and commercial banking. Of the total 2 billion dollars of European and American capital invested in the Indies, the Dutch held three-fourths. The British share was almost 14 percent; Franco-Belgian companies had 5 percent; American investments accounted for 3 percent; and German and Japanese, 1 percent each.
The human stake of the big companies is the third of the reasons given above for the profitable nature of the Indies. The native labor supply was phenomenally cheap and tractable. Whether openly stated or not, the interest of the commercial corporations lay in keeping the working masses both cheap and docile. Lest this be taken as too severe an indictment, it must be stressed that there was no “plot” on the part of the business interests to “enslave the masses.” They pointed to the obvious fact that the majority of the Indonesians were quite contented with their way of life, and raised the question whether it might have been unwise, even cruel, to infect them with the devastating germ of ambition.
Certainly the system worked for many centuries, and was working when the islands fell to the invaders in 1942. Fully 70 percent of the Indonesians worked for themselves, mostly on little rice plots, from which they drew enough sustenance to keep themselves alive. The other 30 percent represented a good proportion of the profit-making capital of the Indies. They were the wage earners, laboring on the plantations and in the mines and oil fields for exceedingly low pay. Ten dollars a month was an excellent wage for a native worker; and on it he was able to keep well and even happy, because his wants were so modest. The great majority of them had a per capita income of less than $50 a year. By contrast, the bulk of European salaries fell between $2,000 and $80,000 a year; while the alien Asiatics, mostly Chinese, had incomes clustering in the range from $160 to $2,000.
Despite the fact that Indonesians received so small a share of the income, in the past 40 years they made marked progress as independent producers of agricultural commodities for export. In 1898 their share in this market
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Plate 18Above: Balinese dancers, with gamelan orchestra.
Below: Mentawei dancers doing an animal pantomime.
Plate 19Above: Sadang burial caves, Celebes, chiseled in the face of a cliff. They have wooden doors and carved guardian images.
Below: Stone tombs, Sumba.
Courtesy Netherlands Information Bureau.
Plate 20Above: Palace of the Sultan if Siak, eastern Sumatra. Siak is one of the scores of native states which the Dutch ruled “indirectly,” retaining the hereditary princes in office.
Below: Catholic missionaries in the plaza of a central Flores village. The conical structures are fetish houses of the pagan ancestor cult. Photograph by Rev. R.N. Geldens.
Plate 21Above: Workers in a Javanese batik shop. Their skilled labor brings them a wage of about 20 cents a day.
Below: Street scene in Batavia, capital of the Indies, showing unique steam tramcars. Photographs by E.E. Muhs.
was only 10 percent of the total; in 1913, 24 percent; in 1930, 31 percent; and in 1937, 46 percent. Their principal product was rubber, of which they supplied 50 percent. As in all other types of commercial agriculture, however, most of the native plantations were small, and there were few Indonesian big businessmen. Some crops for export were grown almost exclusively by natives, such as pepper (100 percent), copra (98 percent), kapok (90 percent), tapioca (80 percent), and coffee (70 percent). Their share of the tea market was 15 percent; and of the tobacco sales, 8 percent. They had no part, except as laborers, in the production of sugar, palm oil, and quinine; and also no petroleum or tin investments. Much of the profits from native-grown products went to the export companies, mostly Dutch, for the Indonesians had no way of selling their goods on the world market and had to dispose of them through middlemen. Still, the striking rise in native commercial agriculture from nearly nothing 40 years ago to almost half of the total in 1937 is a good augury for the future of the Indonesians in this type of independent enterprise.
Industrialism was virtually nonexistent in the Indies. Probably the main reason was that the islands were so eminently suited to agricultural enterprise, and paid such handsome profits on this alone, that no strong stimulus to industrialization was ever felt. Statistics on occupations for 1938 show that 1,670,000 Indonesians were classified as industrial workers. But 670,000, or over 40 percent, were home producers, mostly women occupied in such handicrafts as spinning, weaving, sewing, and batik-printing. Another 840,000, or slightly more than 50 percent, were employed in very small plants, such as the sarong workshops of central Java. Only 120,000, or less than 10 percent, worked in large factories, including textile mills, oil refineries, sugar mills, armories, and automobile assembly plants. In 1939 the Dutch, foreseeing the strong probability of a German invasion of Holland, started an intensive program of industrial expansion in the Indies. Plans were drawn up for rapid construction of more oil refineries, textile mills, iron smelters, chemical plants, and armament works. The scheme was barely under way when the Japanese invaded the islands.
The Indies are a rich prize for any conqueror. Particularly is this so for Japan, with a dense population, an insufficient food supply, a high degree of industrialization, and a shortage of domestic minerals and other raw materials. Such a country needs a hinterland where there are no factories, but only fertile soil, abundant mineral deposits, and cheap labor inured to subservience. Indonesia is made to order on all these points. With the islands completely under her control, Japan would gain what she has lacked during the 50 years of her rise to power–namely, a balanced and
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self-sufficient economy. Here are oil, coal, and metals; here are food and other agricultural products, such as rubber; and the lack of precisely these things has constituted Japan’s greatest weakness. Looking back from the vantage point of 1943, it now seems almost inevitable that the Japanese would pursue the course they have. The reason for the prevalent belief that they would not go after the Indies was that the archipelago lay at such a great distance that, despite its rich store of needed supplies, the difficulties of transportation to Japan over an enemy-threatened sea route would make the conquest unprofitable. This, indeed, is one of the most vulnerable points of Japan at present. On the 4,000 miles distance between Batavia and Tokyo may rest the fate of the Pacific war.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Most of the sources of information on the East Indies are in the Dutch language. Since few persons outside the Netherlands can read this language, and since only four or five of the largest American libraries possess adequate collections of Indonesian literature in Dutch, the following list of references is restricted to books in English. The present volume is based largely upon, and is in part an adaptation of, the author’s recent book The Ageless Indies (The John Day Co., New York, 1942).
Alder, W. F. 1923. Men of the inner jungle. London.
Banner, H. S. 1927. Romantic Java. London.
Baum, V. 1937. A tale of Bali. Garden City.
Beaufort, L. F. de. 1929. Science in the Netherlands East Indies. Amsterdam.
Bickmore, A. S. 1868. Travels in the East Indian Archipelago. London.
Bijlmer, H. T. 1929. Outlines of the anthropology of the Timor Archipelago. Weltevreden.
Bock, C. A. 1881. The head-hunters of Borneo. London.
Boeke, J. H. 1942. The structure of Netherlands Indian economy. New York.
Bousquet, G. H. 1940. A French view of the Netherlands Indies. New York.
Boyle, F. 1865. Adventures among the Dyaks of Borneo. London.
Broek, J. O. M. 1942. Economic development of the Netherlands East Indies. New York.
Brown, J. M. 1914. The Dutch East. London.
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Campbell, D. M. 1915. Java: past and present. London.
Carpenter, F. G. 1943. Java and the East Indies. New York.
Cator, D. 1905. Everyday life among the head-hunters. London.
Cator, W. J. 1936. The economic position of the Chinese in the Netherlands Indies. Chicago.
Clune, F. 1942. Isles of Spice. New York.
Coenen Torchiana, H. A. van. 1921. Tropical Holland. Chicago.
Collins, G. E. P. 1937. East monsoon. London.
1937. Makassar sailing. London.Coomaraswami, A. K. 1927. History of Indian and Indonesian art. London.
Couperus, L. 1924. Eastward. London.
Covarrubias, M. 1938. The Island of Bali. New York.
Day, C. 1904. The policy and administration of the Dutch in Java. New York.
Embree, E. R., Simon, M. S., and Mumford, W. B. 1934. Island India goes to school. Chicago.
Emerson, R. 1937. Malaysia: a study in direct and indirect rule. New York.
1942. The Netherlands Indies and the United States. New York.Emerson, R., Mills, L. A., and Thompson, V. 1942. Government and nationalism in Southeast Asia. New York.
Evans, I. H. N. 1922. Among primitive peoples in Borneo. London.
1923. Studies in religion, folklore and custom in British North Borneo and the Malay Peninsula. Cambridge.Forbes, H. O. 1885. A naturalist’s wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago. London.
Furness, W. H. 1902. The home-life of Borneo head-hunters. Philadelphia.
Furnivall, J. S. 1939. Netherlands India: A study of plural economy. Cambridge.
Gelderen, J. van. 1939. The recent development of economic foreign policy in the Netherlands East Indies. New York.
Gomes, E. H. 1911. Seventeen years among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo. London.
Great Britain, Admiralty, Naval Intelligence Division, Geographical Section. 1920. A manual of Netherlands India. London.
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Handbook of the Netherlands East Indies. 1930. Buitenzorg.
Hart, G. H. C. 1943. Towards economic democracy in the Netherlands Indies. New York.
Hiss, P. H. 1941. Bali. New York.
Holt, C. 1939. Dance quest in Celebes. London.
Hoop, A. N. J. T. A T. van der. 1932. Megalithic remains in South Sumatra. Zutphen.
Hose, C. 1900. In the heart of Borneo. London.
1926. Natural man, a record from Borneo. London.
1927. Fifty years of romance and research. London.Hose, C. and McDougall, W. 1912. The pagan tribes of Borneo. London.
Hyma, A. 1942. The Dutch in the Far East. Ann Arbor.
Institute of Pacific Relations. 1943. War and peace in the Pacific. New York.
Josselin de Jong, J. P. B. de. 1937. Oirata, a Timorese settlement on Kisar. Amsterdam.
Kat Angelino, A. D. A. de. 1931. Colonial policy. The Hague.
Kaudern, W. 1925-1938. Ethnographical studies in Celebes. Goteborg.
Keith, A. M. 1940. Land below the wind. New York.
Kleen, T. A. 1936. The temple dances in Bali. Stockholm.
1937. Wayang (Javanese theatre). Stockholm.Kleiweg de Zwaan, J. P. 1923. Physical anthropology in the Indian Archipelago and adjacent regions. Amsterdam.
Klerck, E. S. de. 1938. History of the Netherlands East Indies. Rotterdam.
Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardri jkskundig Genootschap. 1938. Atlas van Tropisch Nederland. Batavia.
Krom, N. J. 1927. Barabudur: archaeological description. The Hague.
KUNST, J. 1937. The music of Java. Amsterdam.
Loeb, E. M., and Heine-Geldern, R. 1935. Sumatra. Vienna.
Low, H. 1848. Sarawak. London.
Lumholtz, C. 1920. Through Central Borneo. New York.
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McGuire, P. 1942. Westward the course! New York.
Marsden, W. 1783. The history of Sumatra. London.
Mjoberg, E. G. 1930. Forest life and adventures in the Malay Archipelago. London.
Moss, R. L. B. 1925. The life after death in Oceania and the Malay Archipelago. Oxford.
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Ponder, H. W. 1934. Java pageant. London.
Powell, H. 1930. The last paradise. New York.
Raffles, T. S. 1817. The history of Java. London.
Roth, H. L. 1896. The natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo. London.
Rutter, O. 1922. British North Borneo. London.
1929. The pagans of North Borneo. London.St. John, H. 1883. The Indian Archipelago. London.
St. John, S. 1862. Life in the forests of the Far East. London.
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Schrieke, B. 1929. The effect of Western influence on native civilizations in the Malay Archipelago. Batavia.
Snouck Hurgronje, C. 1906. The Achehnese. Leiden.
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Wallace, A. R. 1872. The Malay Archipelago. London.
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1923. Island-India. New Haven.Zoete, B. de, and Spies, W. 1939. Dance and drama in Bali. New York.
–66–
SOURCE:
ALYSSA MILANO
VINTAGE PICTURE COLLECTIONS
THIS THE SAMPLE OF COLLECTIONS IN cd-rom,THE COMPLETE cd WITH FULL ILLUSTRATIONS EXIST BUT ONLY FOR PREMIUM MEMBER ,TO LOOK THE ILLSUTRATION SUBSCRIBED VIA COMMENT PLEASE
Alyssa Milano has some Italian roots which is probably where this sexy naked body comes from. I think in the meantime, she’s undergone lots of plastic surgery to fix her face and now she’s pretty gross. But back in 1993, she had hot, fuckable body.
If you happen to not know, Alyssa Milano is an actress mostly known from TV sitcom series, such as “Charmed” or “Who The Boss?”. Nothing I’d be interested in watching, but she’s one hot ass biootch. I think she had breast implants done when she was 20, which would mean these pictures already have fake tits in them. If those are silicones, then plastic surgeon did some fucking good job on them.
IF THE COLLECTORS WANT TO LOOK ALYSSA MILANO VINTAGE ARTPHOTOGRAPHY PLASE SUBSCRIBED VIA COMMENT AND I WILL UPLOAD HER VINTAGE ARTPHOTO PICTURES
Alyssa Milano at the “2 B Free’s Spring 2006 Collection” event on October 15th 2005 in Hollywood.
Moving closer to the present Alyssa could be wigging it for the day. Either way, her hair has layers about two inches from the bottom. The sides are smoothly angled to frame her face. The most important tip for this smooth look is not to forget that smoothing lotion for your ends.
Actress Alyssa Milano was born on December 19th 1972 in Brooklyn, New York. She is well known for her role as Phoebe Halliwell in the series Charmed and Samantha Micelli in the sitcom Who’s the Boss?.
(Click to enlarge)
The brunette beauty with deep brown eyes and a light to tanned complexion can wear extreme short haircuts or feminine long hairstyles with luscious waves. Her style includes it all and she can play with looks to her hearts content. Since her face is heart shaped with expressive cheekbones and a wide forehead she should avoid styles that have their volume around the crown and upper face area. In her clothing she prefers a casual to elegant style and looks best in natural, earthy colors, greens, yellows and the palette of a tropical sunset.
You are here:
Try on Alyssa Milano hairstyles. We provide easy “How to style” tips as well as letting you know which hairstyles will match your face shape, hair texture and hair density.
This fantastic upstyle is curled and pinned to the back of the head to form this spectacular ‘do which is great for any special occasion and can be easily re-created with the right tools and products. This look is best suited for those with round face shapes.
Styling Time: 30+ minutes
This stunning bob is cut to sit under the jaw-line with wispy layers cut through the front to frame front of the face. This simple yet sexy bob is great for those with round face shapes and easy to maintain with regular trims. Highlights are added all over for contrast and completes this style perfectly.
Styling Time: 30 minutes
This classic look sit perfectly on the shoulders showing the blunt cut length with long subtle layers cut through the front for a brilliant finish to a simple style. This look is best suited for those with round face shapes and will need regular trims to maintain style.
Styling Time: 30 minutes
This splendid ‘do falls over the shoulder to show off the gorgeous length and long layers which creates soft movement through the mid-lengths to ends. The middle part in this long hairstyle makes it perfect for those with round face shapes.
Styling Time: 30 minutes
We love this pixie look; it’s fresh and cute and looks a treat on Alyssa. The hair has been cut with lots of wispy short layers to frame the face and accentuate Alyssa’s striking features. This style is a super option for oval face shapes and will flatter smaller features.
Alyssa Milano is wearing her hair in a simple sleek straight hairstyle, with her front strands tucked behind her ears while attending the world premiere of Walt Disney’s ‘Beverly Hills Chihuahua’ held at The El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California.
This fantastic upstyle is curled and pinned to the back of the head to form this spectacular ‘do which is great for any special occasion and can be easily re-created with the right tools and products. This look is best suited for those with round face shapes.
Premiere Of Warner Bros. “Yes Man” – Arrivals
Chicago Cubs v Los Angeles Dodgers, Game 3
Entertainment Weekly’s 6th Annual Pre-Emmy Celebration – Arrivals
33 Club Party Presented By MLB.com
NBA All-Star Pre-Game and Halftime Performances
NBA All-Star Saturday Night Celebrities & Performances
In Style Magazine And Warner Bros. Studios Golden Globe After Party
MAGIC Convention in Las Vegas – Day Two
Universal Pictures Premiere Of “The Break Up” – Arrivals
Maxim Magazine Hosts The 7th Annual Hot 100 Party
Alyssa Milano (37) let her hair grow out for several years since her popular pixie (2003). Did it take seven years to grow this long? She hasn’t been tempted yet to return to that cut–despite its renewed popularity in 2010.
A medium hair style is the best when it accentuates facial features, lays just right and has lots of shine. All three of the medium hair styles below have these features. Sandra Bullock is the first styls. She has very long layers combined with long side swept bangs for a very shiny healthy hair style.
This style is a big favorite among women looking for a versatile medium length hair style. The ‘in your eyes’ bangs add a soft sexy look to this polished style.
The next 2 styles are worn by celebrities Scarlett Johansson and Alyssa Milano. These are not their current styles, rather they are styles from several years ago.
Charlize Theron has changed her hair style many times for various movie roles. This style features a medium length cut with very long, somewhat choppy layers. You can create the piecey look with this hair style by applying a small amount of pomade or wax to the ends of the layers. Use your fingertips to apply the pomade and be careful not to apply too much.
Alyssa Milano probably hasn’t worn this medium length hair style in forever. It is a simple, yet classy take on the bob hair style. The style features a deep side part with all one length blunt ends. Extra shine and highlights can make this style a big hit.
VINTAGE PICTURE
Original Vintage Photo~Alyssa Milano 8×10
Alyssa Milano Is All Grown Up—and in a Lather Over Fiancé Scott Wolf
Celebrity Bride Alyssa Milano
Alissa Milano – Charmed
Alyssa Milano, From Tomboy Child
Alyssa Milano as Jenny Matrix in Commando (1985)
Check out the awesome ’80s hair and duds Milano sported in the Arnold Schwarzenegger action vehicle Commando. Milano (natch) played Arnold’s kidnapped daughter Jenny.
Alysson Milano before Famous
ALYSSA MILANO Portrait WHOS THE BOSS VINTAGE PHOTO
Alyssa Milano Tape
Alyssa Milano video
Alyssa Milano Is A Cheap Tweep!
Alyssa Milano Do Something Awards 2010
Celebrity Alyssa Milano Latest Hairstyle Picture Alyssa Milano Celebrity Alyssa Milano Latest Shoulder Length Hairstyle Picture Alyssa Milano Celebrity…
Alyssa Milano has getting hitch
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Showing off her growing bump, Alyssa Milano made her arrival on the set of the new tv show, “Breaking In” on Tuesday, March 1st, 2011 in Los Angeles, California. She was seen making trips from her trailer to the nearby hair and make up stations.
Milano looked comfy in her bathrobe before changing into an all black ensemble, puffy jacket, and Uggs. Gotta be a stylish momma to be right?
The photo agency is claiming the girl in the blue coat is actress Mandy Moore but I’ve looked over the pictures over and over and it looks more like a Milano/Moore hybrid. My guess is that Milano’s character is not meant to be pregnant and this is her stand in. Though I could be totally wrong!
The Happy Madison production follows a high tech security firm that takes extreme, and often questionable, measures to sell their protection services. It stars Bret Harrison, Odette Yustman, and Christian Slater. Milano will star as the character Oz’s (Slater) ex wife.
Breaking In is set to air on the Fox Network on April 6th, 2011.
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Alyssa Milano |
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| Actor Information | |
| Name | Alyssa Jayne Milano |
| Birthplace | Brooklyn, New York, USA |
| Birth date | December 19th, 1972 |
| Portrayed | Phoebe Halliwell |
| Season | Season 1 to 8 |
| Episode(s) | 178 Episodes |
| . | |
Alyssa Milano (born December 19, 1972 in Brooklyn, New York) portrayed Phoebe Halliwell throughout the entire television series, except in the unaired Season 1 premiere.
She also portrayed Pearl Russell in Season 2 as well as the characters that also had her appearance at one time, including Marshall, Paige Matthews, Cole Turner, Kaia, Mitzy Stillman, Imara and Phoenix
Biography
Alyssa Milano and the Book of Shadows.
Alyssa Milano is the daughter of Italian-American parents Lin, a fashion designer, and Tom M. Milano, a film music editor and boating enthusiast. She has a younger brother, Cory (born in 1982), who is also an actor. Alyssa was born in a working class neighborhood in Brooklyn and grew up in a modest house on Staten Island. One day, her babysitter, who was an aspiring dancer, dragged Alyssa along to a an open audition for the first national tour of Annie. But it was Alyssa, not the sitter, who beat out 1,500 other wanna be stage actresses to snag a role. So at the tender age of seven, with her mother in tow, Alyssa joined the tour as July, one of the orphans. After 18 months on the road, Alyssa, who had begun to garner a reputation as an energetic and charismatic young actress, left Annie to be featured in off-Broadway productions and television commercials. Then, in 1983 at age 10, she landed her breakthrough role on the new sitcom “Who’s the Boss?” (1984) as Tony Danza’s saccharine sweet daughter, Samantha Micelli, a kid whose native Brooklyn accent rivaled her TV dad’s. In order for Alyssa to accept the gig, the Milano family had to uproot and move 3,000 miles to Hollywood
Career
Film
Television
Regular
Guest
Music
Studio albums
Compilations
Singles
Personal Life
Alyssa and her husband David
Alyssa Milano has had a Dyslexia Disorder ever since she was in elementary school.
In 2004 Milano came out and explained in a interview how she had learned to deal and work with her disorder:
“I’ve stumbled over words while reading from teleprompters. Sir John Gielgud, whom I worked with on The Canterville Ghost years ago, gave me great advice. When I asked how he memorized his monologues, he said, ‘I write them down.’ I use that method to this day. It not only familiarizes me with the words, it makes them my own.”
Milano has always been a huge fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 2007 she created her own signature “Touch” line of team apparel for female baseball fans, currently available on Major League Baseball’s website, along with her own baseball blog, which began selling in 2009, through a boutique store located in Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets. She has an interest in the Los Angeles Kings, a National Hockey League team and is involved with a related clothing line. In 2008, she expanded that to NFL football, as a New York Giants fan. Since Milano is in the same hometown as NFL Network’s Rich Eisen (Staten Island), she revealed some of her family’s connections with the New York Giants while she picked the winners of NFL games for week 7 of 2008.
Milano has a collection of 8 tattoos on her body:
Milano is a vegetarian and appears in numerous PETA advertising campaigns for vegetarianism. Outside of acting, her hobbies include photography, humanitarian work, and spending time with her three dogs and eight horses.
In 2005, she was ranked #5 in the “50 Cutest Child Stars — All Grown Up”.
Milano starded dating with the lead singer of Remy Zero, Cinjun Tate in August 1998. They were briefly married from 1 January 1999, but seperated in November 1999; they were divorced later in 2000.
She briefly dated Justin Timberlake in 2002. She has dated a number of professional athletes, including Brad Penny, Carl Pavano, Barry Zito and Russell Martin. She is currently married to CAA agent David Bugliari; the couple started dating in December 2007 and became engaged on December 18, 2008, after more than a year of dating. The couple were married on August 15, 2009 in an Italian, garden-themed ceremony at her parents’ New Jersey estate. On February 22, 2011, it was announced Milano and Bugliari are expecting their first child. Alyssa has tweeted three times about this, both from Alyssa_Milano and AlyssaDotCom:
On March 14, Milano announced that she is expecting a baby boy. http://alyssa.com/ She is due around mid September 2011.
On August 31, 2011 at 9:27 a.m., Milano gave birth to her son Milo Thomas Bugliari. He weighed 7 lbs., and was 19 inches long. On his names she stated:
“Milo was named after his two grandfathers, Miller and Thomas,” she said. Milano considers the two to be “very important” in her life.
Trivia
Alyssa at one of her Touch stores
Alyssa as Snooki
The end@copyright 2012
THE END @ COPYRIGHT 2012
THIS THE SAMPLE OF CD-ROM,THE COMPLETE CD WITH FULL ILLSUTRATION EXIST BUT ONLY FOR PREMIUM MEMEBR.PLEASE SUBSCRIBED VIA COMMENT
The Rare Antique Picture CD
Created by Dr iwan suwandy,MHA
Copyright@ 2012
Introductions
Paul fraser have sent me the information about rare art photography collections
About Us
5 unique items not to be missed…
Photography is perhaps the most important art form of the 20th century.
Like no other, it transformed the way we see the world around us and captured the immediacy of modern life.
Today photography is growing quickly into what Christie’s has described as a “highly competitive” market.
Now recognised by galleries and major auction houses around the world, photography prices are increasing as both traditional art collectors and dedicated photography collectors battle it out for the most important and iconic works.
This effect can be clearly seen in auction results from the past 12 months:
In June 2011,
the only known photograph of the infamous outlaw Billy the Kid smashed its estimate of $300,000 to sell for an amazing $2.3 million.
Read more info
William Koch buys portrait of Billy the Kid for $2.3
A member of the infamous modern gangster Koch family, William Koch, has purchased the only known photograph of wild west gangster Billy the Kid.
I would say there’s a certain symmetry here but that would be redundant.
In November 2011,
Andreas Gursky’s image ‘Rhein II’ became the world’s most expensive photograph when it sold for a World record price of $4.33 million. It was the second time the record had been broken in the space of just six months.
Read more info
Earlier this week, art history was made when an anonymous buyer paid a record-breaking $4.34 million for Andreas Gursky’s photograph of the Rhine River, called Rhein II. Sold at Christie’s impressionist and modern art auction in New York, it became the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction. It beat Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #96, which sold for a whopping $3.89 million this May. Gursky’s print, made in 1999, and depicts a stunning panorama of Germany’s most famous river.
Here are some of the most expensive photographs ever sold
Why This Photograph is Worth $578,500
via PetaPixel
Last week, a collection of 36 prints by William Eggleston was sold for $5.9 million at auction. The top ten list of most expensive photographs ever sold doesn’t contain a single work worth less than a cool million. Just a few months ago, Andreas Gursky’s ‘Rhine II’ became the world’s most expensive photograph, selling for $4.3 million. Every time news like this reaches the Internet, the comments sections of photography blogs explode with righteous indignation.
And just last month, in March 2012,
a single New York photography auction set an impressive eight new World Record prices – with images selling for up to 344% above their initial estimates.
As a recent article in the British Telegraph newspaper commented;
“There’s good reason to believe that photography prices will continue to rise, with more people willing to invest large sums in it…the National Gallery announced their first ever major blockbuster exhibition of photography next year, cementing the art form as a medium of major historic and cultural significance that now even the naysayers can’t deny.”
There’s no doubt that the market for iconic photography is booming – and here at Paul Fraser Collectibles we’re witnessing it first-hand.
In recent months we’ve sold more photographs than ever, as our clients take advantage of this rapidly rising market.
In the past few weeks we’ve sold items including:
SOLD FOR £9,500
SOLD FOR £8,955
The demand for original, iconic photographs far outstrips the supply, and after years of building up our catalogue we now have just a few examples remaining:
A rare signed photograph of JFK and his children at the White House
This beautiful silver gelatine print depicts President John F. Kennedy, along with his children Caroline and John Kennedy Jr., on the White House terrace with their pony Macaroni.
It perfectly captures a peaceful moment in the young President’s home life, and is uniquely signed by all four members of the family including his wife Jackie Kennedy. Price: £19,950
An original Charlie Chaplin photograph signed by the man himself
Charlie Chaplin is one of the most in
fluential and important figures in movie history.
His character ‘The Tramp’ is perhaps the best-loved and most iconic character from the Golden Age of Hollywood – timeless, and instantly recognisable.
This superb vintage sepia-toned photograph shows Chaplin as ‘The Tramp’, and is signed “To my friend Frank, from Charlie Chaplin”. Price: £4,500
One of the best signed James Dean photographs we’ve ever seen
This iconic signed photograph of James Dean is one of the finest we’ve ever seen.
Featuring the actor sat in a thoughtful pose, the striking black and white image bears Dean’s signature and an inscription in which he describes himself as “the Thinker” in reference to the famous sculpture by Rodin. Price: £18,500
MORE INFO
Cultural icon James Dean starred in many films such as Rebel Without a Cause, Giant and East of Eden.
The combination of his talent, good looks and tragic death at the tender age of 24 has cemented his legendary status.
This vintage, glossy, black and white photo shows James Dean sitting on a stool with one hand on his temple. Dean has autographed the photo, which measures 6.5″ x 8.25″, in blue fountain pen ink, adding the note “To Hana, my very best from (the thinker), James Dean”.
“The thinker” appears to be a reference to Auguste Rodin’s sculpture of the same name which depicts a man sitting in a thoughtful pose, with his hand resting on his chin.
This autographed photograph has some slight creasing and mounting remnants to the reverse but is otherwise in very good condition. It is professionally mounted, framed and glazed using UV glass.
The PFC40 Autograph Index shows that signed photographs of Dean have increased in value by 681.3% since 2000 and by 4.17% in the last year alone.
A rare opportunity to own a beautiful signed photograph of the Hollywood legend.
A unique, candid signed photograph of Elvis taken in Germany
This unique, candid photo of Elvis Presley was taken in Germany during his military service. It was during this period he met Priscilla Beaulieu, who would later become Priscilla Presley.
The moment captures Presley smiling in his U.S Army uniform, and bears his signature in blue ink on the reverse. Previously unseen, this image was acquired by the Aunt of one of Priscilla’s classmates in Wiesbaden. Price: £3,500
READ MORE INFO
Rock-and-roll star Elvis Presley drafted today in 1957 while spending Christmas at Graceland, shipped to Germany
By WcP.Story.Teller – Posted on 20 December 2008
By December of 1957, Elvis Presley was twenty-three years old, healthy, rich, and more famous than he could ever dreamed. Everything he touched turned to gold. It was as if nothing could get in his way. That is, until December 10, 1957, when Elvis received a letter from the Memphis Draft Board notifying him that he was up for the next military draft. Army, Navy, and Air Force recruiters immediately called to offer him special enlistment opportunities if he signed up before being drafted. The Navy even offered to form an “Elvis Presley Company” that would include soldiers from the Memphis area. Elvis declined all the enlistment offers and decided to take his changes with the draft. On December 19, nine days after he received his initial draft notification, Elvis got final word from the Memphis Draft Board; he was to report for induction into the Army on January 20, 1958, the very same day he was scheduled to start filming King Creole.
Things suddenly got very quiet around Graceland. Elvis was sure that after two years in the Army and being out of the public eye his career would be over. Hal Wallis and Paramount were equally distressed about Elvis being drafted. They had already invested $350,000 in King Creole and were now faced with the possibility of shelving the project, if not canceling it entirely. Wallis and Colonel Parker contracted the Memphis Draft Board, requesting a deferment until March 20, when shooting of the film would be complete. The Draft Board had already been deluged by letters from angry fans who saw the conscription as a government attempt to sabotage Elvis’s career. They argued that Elvis Presley was a national treasure and therefore should be exempt from the draft. The president himself even received letters regarding the “Elvis Presley draft situation.”
In order to ebb the tide of criticism, the draft board agreed to grant Elvis a sixty-day deferment. Elvis went to Hollywood in January to film King Creole as planned. On March 24, 1958, Elvis reported to Local draft Board 86 to begin his service in the United States Army. The enlistment process turned into a media circus, instigated no doubt by Colonel Parker. Dozens of reporters and photographers as well as a film crew were there to document the historic event. Flash bulbs popped constantly as Elvis went from station to station. He was asked questions, examined, tested, issued his equipment, and designated his serial number-53310761. He then boarded a bus for Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, to continue the processing.
Newspapers immediately announced the downfall of Elvis Presley. They predicted that two years out of the limelight was too much for even Elvis to overcome. Suddenly, his income was cut from $400,000 to $78 a month. Although Elvis tried to take everything in stride, deep down he was afraid for his career. Elvis knew his fans were dedicated, but two years seemed like an awfully long time to wait. Colonel Parker, however, knew better. Elvis had plenty of recorded material that had not yet been re-released, as well a lot of material recorded at Sun that was still to be re-released. If RCA spaced out the releases properly, there would be more than enough to keep Elvis on charts while he was in the Army. Colonel Parker quickly put his promotional machine in motion. If anything, Elvis joining the Army was a public-relations boon. He could now be seen as a patriotic young man who would willingly serve his country with great pride. Nearly everybody thought that Elvis would request the Special Services Branch of the Army. Indeed, the Army hierarchy was hoping that that would be the case. In the Special Services, Elvis could sing his way through his service as well as appear on print and television commercials to help the Army boost enlistment.
At Parker’s insistence, however, Elvis turned down Special Services and announced that he did not want any special treatment. Parker knew that if Elvis went through basic training, carried his own gear and rifle, marched, and went on guard duty, all just like a normal soldier, that it would help his public image.
Instead of Special Services, Elvis was assigned to a Company, Second Medium Tank Battalion, Second Armored Division. After four days of processing at Fort Chaffee, Elvis was shipped to Fort Hood, Texas, to begin basic training. According to Elvis, he was kidded and chided quite a bit by his fellow soldiers at the beginning of boot camp; however, once they saw that he didn’t expect to be treated any differently and that he was just another grunt, they soon grew to like him.
While he was stationed at Fort Hood, the Army allowed Elvis to live off base with his parents and his grandmother, Such as practice was not unusual for a soldier with a dependent family. The Presleys originally lived in a trailer, but later moved into a four-bedroom house at 605 Oak Hill Drive in Killeen, Texas. While Elvis was in the middle of basic training, Gladys grew increasingly ill. She tried to hide her illness from her family until Vernon came home one day and found her collapsed on the kitchen floor. After seeing a doctor, it was agreed that Gladys would go back to Memphis and check into a hospital for tests. Gladys had not been very healthy for some time now. She had always dreamed of the best for Elvis and wanted his singing career to take off. However, as his popularity grew, he was home less and less, and Gladys sank into depression. To deal with her loneliness and fears, Gladys drank heavily while Elvis was away, and even began taking diet pills in order to lose weight.
Gladys Love Smith Presley died at 3:00 a.m. on August 14, 1958 of a heart attack. She was forty-six years old. In September 1958, Elvis Presley and the 1,400 other members of his company boarded a train to New York, where they were to have a brief layover before being shipped off to West Germany, where Elvis would finish the final year and a half of his service. As had become commonplace, the train was greeted by throngs of fans, reporters, and photographers. An Army band played “Hound Dog” and a press conference was held.
On September 22, Elvis and his fellow soldiers were shipped out of the Brooklyn Navy Yards aboard the USS General Randall, bound for Bremerhaven, West Germany. On the eve of their departure, Elvis was promoted to Private First Class. Unbeknownst to Elvis, he was nearly as popular in West Germany as in the United States. In fact, he had looked forward to his foreign service to provide a break from the media scrutiny and fan obsession. Peace and quiet were not to be found, however. Nearly 2,000 screaming German fans greeted the USS General Randall when it docked in Bremerhaven on October 1st.
As in Texas, Elvis was permitted to live off base with his family. He rented a modest four- bedroom, two-story house in Bad Nauheim where he lived with Vernon, his grandmother Minnie Mae, as well as a few members of the Memphis Mafia.
Elvis was assigned duty as a jeep driver-the perfect assignment for a man who loved cars as much as he did. On June 14, he was rewarded for his diligence by being promoted to Corporal.
Elvis behaved just like any other soldier, he carried a gun, and he pulled KP and guard duty. At night, however, he returned to his home in Bad Nauheim, where he invited a vast array of family, friends, and fellow soldiers over practically every night. The parties consisted mostly of a number of people just hanging out, talking, with the occasional jam session taking place. On one such night late in 1959, one of Elvis’s army buddies, U.S. Airman Currie Grant, brought over a young girl named Priscilla Beaulieu. For Priscilla, meeting Elvis Presley was a dream come true. Like millions of other teenagers, she had bought all of Elvis’s records and followed his career closely in the fan magazines. Just as she became used to the idea that she was dating Elvis Presley, however, it seemed as if the whole romance would come to an abrupt end. Only a few months after they met, Elvis’s tour of duty with the Army was over.
One night some military genius decided to post Elvis on guard duty. That was completely fair, of course, but also seriously dumb. Because Elvis was huge in Europe and the fans must have had some kind of radar, because whenever Elvis was exposed where the public could get him, they appeared in droves. And this night a huge crowd gathered , with Elvis doing guard duty at some gate. There he was standing like he was supposed to, but surrounded, absolutely surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of fans. It took platoons to rescue him. That was the last guard duty Elvis pulled.
Elvis’ army MOS was tank gunner. Which I guess, looking back, was a pretty appropriate assignment. Elvis loved guns, and these were big guns. But there was a problem, because those guns were loud. And one day Elvis came home and I asked him how it went that day and he walked right on past me. I followed him into the bedroom and said, “Hey, didn’t you hear me?” “What are you talking about?” Elvis answered, and I realized he hadn’t heard a word I’d said. I asked him if he was all right and he said, “My ears are ringing so loud I can’t even hear.” I immediately got Colonel Parker on the phone in the states and told him we had a problem. A big problem. Colonel Tom knew a guy at the Pentagon, and he just wore this man’s butt out until they reassigned Elvis out of that damned tank.
With the exception of an impromptu jam session with Charlie Hodge on the troop ship to Europe, Elvis did no public performances while he was in the army. At home, in his apartment in Gruenwald, West Germany, however, music was a big part of his life and over the years several tapes of sessions in his apartment have surfaced and been released, mostly, as bootlegs.
Priscilla waved a tearful goodbye to Elvis as he boarded the plane leaving Germany for the United States. Elvis searched her out of the large crowd before he got on the plane and waved to her. In the press, she became known as “the girl he left behind.” When questioned at a press conference back in the States, Elvis denied that any type of romance was going on between him and Priscilla. He simply described her as a young girl he met and befriended, that it was nothing special. Well before he came home, America had already begun preparing for the return of Elvis Presley. Even though he had spent two years without making a record or a public appearance, Elvis Presley still ruled the record charts on the radio. Elvis Presley was coming home to the United States as an even bigger star than when he had left.
Photos courtesy of AP Photo, Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc., Getty Image, Hollywood Yesterday, and morethings.com
Original Source: Elvis Collector’s Gold and BBC News
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Princess Soraya (Iran)
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Khalil Esfandiari
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Eva Karl in Berlin
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Esfandiar Khan, paternal grandfather
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Bibi Maryam, paternal grandmother
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Soraya
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Soraya’s German Grandparents, Mr. & Mrs. Karl
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Soraya age 5
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The stay in Berlin was uneventful and Khalil khan was constantly thinking of returning to Iran and waiting for the political climate for the Bakhtiaris to become tolerable. Nineteen thirty-six and thirty-seven were tough years for the young Esfandiary family. Hitler had announced general conscription and from him and Marshall Goring the talk was now of war.
Soraya and friend in Berlin Zoo
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The house in Isfahan
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Soraya, Eva, Bijan in Isfahan 1940
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Soraya and Bijan at Esfandiar Khan’s Fort in Ghahfe-Rokh 1942
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Isfahan 1947
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In Switzerland
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Forough Zafar
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Princess Shams had told Soraya that her brother was not particularly handsome in order not to raise her expectations. At last someone announced the arrival of His Majesty the Shah. They all got to their feet and the Shah appeared in the dress uniform of a general of the Iranian Air Force which was evidently his favourite uniform. He embraced his mother and then Soraya was presented to him. The two were drawn to one another instantly and sparks began to fly. At the dinner table, Soraya sat next to the Shah and talked about Switzerland and the country around Montreux and Lausanne and her likes and dislikes. After dinner they played games and the family became more relaxed. Late that evening Soraya left to get some sleep but at 2 in the morning the Shah telephoned and asked to speak to Khalil Khan. When Khalil Khan came to the phone, the Shah told him that he is asking for Soraya’s hand and he wants to know how she felt about it. Soraya’s answer was of course yes as she too was smitten by the young handsome Shah. Next morning, the imperial Court informed the news media and Soraya’s photographs were distributed amongst the newspapers.5 The next day the Shah came to visit Soraya who was staying at Amir Hossein Khan Zafar’s villa, and began courting her. It was towards the end of that year on the 11th of October 1950, that they were officially engaged.
In the ensuing weeks, the Shah and his fiancée saw one another almost daily and with each meeting, they grew more intimate. They went riding in the foothills of Shemiran, played tennis, and went flying with the Shah at the controls. In the evenings the Shah’s sisters and brothers gave small parties for the couple that were lots of fun. They also inspected several of the Royal palaces in and around Tehran for their future residence. Soraya eventually chose one modest and small palace on Pasteur Ave as their future residence and decorators were hired to do the necessary work. The couple also set a date of December 26th as their wedding day. At this time, Soraya suddenly fell ill with typhoid and as her fever did not abate, the wedding was postponed.
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In exile in Rome
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Meanwhile, the Shah had appointed Soraya’s father ambassador to Germany, a post he cherished even though he did not involve himself with the duties of an ambassador. He left that to the Minister and other Foreign Office professionals posted to the embassy.
She moved from Rome to Cologne, to Munich, to Paris, to Rome to Monaco and eventually ended up in Rome again. She was allured by the movie industry as it had always been her dream to one day become a movie star. She met Dino de Laurentis at a party one evening in Rome. Dino offered her a role in a movie he was making. Soraya readily accepted. The movie’s title was “Three faces of a woman” and Mauro Bolognini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Franco Indovina directed it. The movie was a disaster. The rumor has it that when the Shah heard that Soraya was to appear in a movie, he was so infuriated that the whole world would now his ex-wife in romantic scenes that he ordered all the copies be bought and destroyed. Soraya kept one copy, which was eventually sold at the auction of her estate in Paris in May of 2002 together with all her personal effects.
Movie Poster
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Auction of Soraya’s belongings
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With Indovina at the movie set
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With her brother Bijan in later years
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As a young girl, Soraya had pictures of some movie stars framed, in addition to a photo of the young Shah. She would tell all her friends and cousins that one day she will either become an actress or marry the king. Both aspirations became realities but none brought her lasting happiness.
indonesia version
Soraya Esfandiari Bakhtiari
Orangtua
Soraya dan Bijan Esfandiari Bakhtiari adalah anak-anak Khalil Khan Esfandiari-Bakhtiari, dan Eva Karl dari Jerman. Soraya lahir di Isfahan pada tanggal 22 Juni 1932 dan Bijan lahir 5 tahun kemudian pada 15 Oktober 1937 juga di Isfahan.
Setelah kematian kakek mereka, Esfandiar Khan (Sardar Asad) 1, Bibi Maryam (nenek Soraya) telah mengirimkan Khalil ke Berlin dan anaknya yang lain, Soltan Morad (kemudian Montazem-Dolleh) ke London untuk belajar. Tampaknya keputusan untuk mengirim anak ke negara-negara Eropa yang berbeda untuk belajar adalah untuk alasan politik. Para pemimpin keluarga yang dibutuhkan untuk menjadi dekat dengan lingkungan yang berpengaruh terlepas dari yang super-kuasa yang di atas dalam periode tertentu.
Khalil Esfandiari
Eva Karl di Berlin
Esfandiar Khan, kakek dari pihak ayah
Bibi Maryam, nenek dari pihak ayah
Di perjalanan ke Jerman, saudara tiri, Hormoz Khan, disertai Khalil. Mereka tiba di Berlin pada musim gugur 1924 dan segera tertarik untuk itu. Sebagian besar waktu Khalil Khan di Berlin dihabiskan namun dalam mengejar blonds indah dengan siapa ia telah sukses besar karena penampilannya dan latar belakang aristokrat Timur itu.
Dia hanya 21 dan seorang mahasiswa ilmu politik ketika ia bertemu dan jatuh cinta dengan 16 tahun Karl Eva, putri dari Franz Karl yang telah tinggal di Tsar Rusia selama beberapa tahun mewakili produsen Jerman dan telah kembali ke Jerman pada hampir sama waktu sebagai awal Perang Dunia Pertama. Franz Karl memiliki tiga anak; Eva, Barbara, dan Franz. Setelah satu tahun pacaran, Khalil dan Eva menikah pada 22 Juni 1926 dan pindah ke Isfahan 2 tahun kemudian.
Pindah ke Isfahan
Isfahan adalah tempat kelahiran Khalil khan dan sebagian besar keluarganya masih tinggal di sana sehingga ia tidak asing dengan kota. Isfahan memiliki komunitas besar dan Jerman juga dikenal sebagai pusat pengaruh agen Jerman seperti Meyr dan Wassmuss yang telah mencari dan dijamin perlindungan dari beberapa Bakhtiaris dan telah diplot tindakan subversif terhadap kepentingan Inggris khususnya dalam dan di sekitar minyak instalasi. Dalam lingkungan seperti itu, Khalil dan Eva sama-sama nyaman dan merasa aman dan jauh dari masalah Eropa. Mereka mulai membangun rumah indah dirancang lengkap dengan kebun buah-buahan.
Soraya
Pada 22 Juni 1932 Soraya lahir di Rumah Sakit Misionaris Inggris di Isfahan. Seorang gadis cantik dengan biru / hijau mata. Dalam tradisi Persia, biasanya percaya bahwa sulung harus laki-laki. Ini akan memenangkan kekaguman kepada ibu dan melakukan kehormatan untuk ayah. Namun dalam rumah tangga Esfandiary kebiasaan seperti itu tidak penting dan kelahiran anak yang sehat selalu pertanda baik untuk pasangan yang tercerahkan terutama ketika anak lahir pada ulang tahun pernikahan 6 orang tuanya.
Kembali ke Jerman
Segera setelah Soraya lahir, Khalil Khan dan Eva memutuskan bahwa anak dan Eva harus kembali ke Jerman untuk memastikan bahwa bayi akan memiliki kesehatan yang baik dan kembali ketika dia masih kuat. Khalil mengatakan kepada istrinya bahwa ia tidak bisa meninggalkan Iran pada waktu itu tetapi Eva harus membawa anak bersamanya ke Jerman dan bahwa ia akan mengikuti sesegera mungkin. Jadi ibu dan anak meninggalkan Isfahan untuk Jerman saat Soraya hanya 8 bulan dan dianggap cocok untuk dibawa pada suatu perjalanan panjang. Perjalanan membawa mereka ke Laut Kaspia ke pelabuhan Enzeli, dengan perahu ke Baku, dan kemudian melatih ke Berlin di mana mereka tinggal dengan orang tua Eva.
Kakek-nenek Jerman Soraya, Mr & Mrs Karl
Soraya usia 5
Sementara itu situasi di Iran menjadi sangat tidak sehat bagi Bakhtiaris sebagai Shah baru mulai menganiaya, memenjarakan, dan mengeksekusi para pemimpin mereka. Shah telah memutuskan bahwa Bakhtiaris harus dihancurkan karena beberapa alasan. Semi-otonomi mereka mengganggu kepada pemerintah pusat dan perjanjian mereka dengan Inggris atas perlindungan jaringan pipa minyak dan saham dalam keuntungan minyak tidak sejalan dengan kebijakan baru Shah dalam hal konsolidasi kepemilikan saham dari Iran Anglo minyak. Bakhtiaris diperintahkan untuk menyerah Senjata kepada perwakilan Pemerintah dan para Khan dipaksa untuk menjual atau melepaskan saham mereka di perusahaan minyak. Bakhtiaris juga ditangkap karena tugas wajib militer jauh dari wilayah mereka. Tempat tidur persekutuan-aneh dari Inggris dan Bakhtiaris itu terutama mengganggu ke Reza Syah saat ia telah menjadi pengagum besar dari Jerman dan telah menutup matanya untuk kegiatan agen Jerman di negara ini. Dia yakin dalam hatinya bahwa kekuatan Poros akan menang dalam perang. Sebuah keyakinan yang akhirnya akan membuatnya kehilangan tahtanya. Pemberontakan oleh sebuah faksi kecil di wilayah Bakhtiari memberi Shah alasan untuk menangkap para Khan dan kalimat beberapa mati dan orang lain untuk berbagai penjara.
Khalil khan merasa sudah waktunya untuk pergi dari Iran untuk sementara waktu dan memutuskan untuk bergabung dengan istri dan anak perempuannya di Berlin; jadi setelah pemisahan 6 bulan bahwa keluarga muda itu bersatu lagi. Keluarga itu menyewa sebuah apartemen 4 kamar di Nestorstrasse dan Khalil khan terdaftar dengan polisi, banyak bertentangan dengan keinginannya, sebagai “petani” karena keluarganya memiliki tanah dan peternakan di Persia. Klaim-Nya sendiri untuk didaftarkan sebagai Khan menepis karena tidak ada “profesi” seperti di Jerman!
Hidup di Berlin
Selama tinggal keluarga di Berlin, Soraya atau ‘Raya sebagai ia dipanggil, menjadi tak terpisahkan dari kakek-nya Franz Karl. Dia akan datang dan menjemputnya setiap hari Minggu untuk membawanya ke kebun binatang dan pergi untuk berjalan. Franz Karl ingat bahwa dia adalah pemilih dan tidak akan bermain dengan semua orang. Dia akan meneliti terutama anak laki-laki yang paling hati-hati dan tidak lama sebelum ia memesan bahkan yang terbesar dan tertua tentang. Dia ingat bahwa Soraya cukup kenal takut pada usia muda dan memberi contoh “Saya ingat berjalan melalui Grunwald, ketika seekor anjing hitam besar mengejar kami terlihat liar Nya dan menggonggong kekerasan cukup menakutkan aku,. Tapi Soraya berlari ke arahnya dan menempatkannya lengan mengelilingi leher, aku takut.. Tidak perlu untuk menjadi. Anjing dan gadis kecil menjadi teman segera “.2 Dari masa kecilnya Soraya memiliki cinta yang besar untuk hewan. Di rumahnya di Berlin setelah dia melihat burung kenari kuning dan terrier hitam-putih nakal rubah.
Sebuah dunia baru telah dibuka untuk Soraya di Berlin. Ia selalu ingat dan ingat pesta anak pertamanya di luar Berlin di dekat salah satu dari banyak danau. Ada lotere, galeri tembak, balap karung dan telur-dan-sendok balap. Ada juga teater terbuka kecil di mana ia memainkan bagian dari Sleeping Beauty. Bagiannya terdiri semata-mata terbangun dari seratus tahun tidur oleh ciuman pangeran muda, pengalaman yang bahkan pada usia itu dia menemukan sangat menyenangkan!
Tinggal di Berlin adalah lancar dan Khalil khan terus-menerus berpikir untuk kembali ke Iran dan menunggu iklim politik untuk Bakhtiaris menjadi lumayan. Sembilan belas tiga puluh enam dan tiga puluh tujuh adalah tahun berat bagi keluarga Esfandiary muda. Hitler mengumumkan wajib militer umum dan dari dia dan Marshall Goring bicara itu sekarang perang.
Soraya dan teman di Berlin Zoo
Kembali ke Isfahan
Khalil khan mulai menjadi sadar akan situasi politik di Eropa, yang telah selama ini diabaikan. Sekarang tiba-tiba terpengaruh secara pribadi. Itu menjadi lebih sulit untuk mendapatkan semua uang yang dibutuhkan dari Persia dan keluarga itu menuju krisis keuangan untuk pertama kalinya dan kemungkinan dia sedang disusun ke dalam Angkatan Bersenjata itu menjadi nyata. Jadi, pada musim gugur 1937 dengan hamil Eva bahwa mereka memutuskan sekali lagi untuk meninggalkan Berlin dan kembali ke Isfahan. Sambil menangis, sedikit Soraya mengatakan selamat tinggal pada kakeknya dan teman-teman dan mainannya yang diberikan kepada church.3
Setelah perjalanan panjang susah payah, mereka mencapai Isfahan. Namun kali ini, mereka tidak terlalu disambut dan orang tua itu segera diletakkan di bawah pengawasan oleh otoritas dan tidak bisa meninggalkan kota tanpa izin dari polisi. Hal ini disebabkan urutan raja bahwa semua gerakan Bakhtiari diawasi dan dilaporkan. Selain ketidaknyamanan ini, mereka dibiarkan dalam damai. Pada saat kedatangan mereka, rumah di Isfahan hampir siap untuk pendudukan dan itu adalah waktu kemudian bahwa Eva melahirkan seorang anak cantik, Bijan, pada tanggal 15 Oktober 1937. Soraya kini sedikit indah 5 tahun ketika Bijan adiknya lahir. Bijan adalah gemuk, berambut pirang dan penuh kehidupan. Keluarga itu mulai bekerja pada rumah untuk melengkapinya dan terutama pada kebun dengan menanam pohon lebih banyak buah dan membangun kolam bulat kecil untuk mencelupkan dalam pada hari-hari panas musim panas.
Rumah di Isfahan
Desain rumah itu campuran keduanya Persia dan Eropa. Itu adalah rumah yang nyaman bagi keluarga muda dan anjing Jerman mereka Sheppard dan greyhound. Ia dilengkapi dengan pembakaran kayu perapian dan kompor. Hal ini juga harus mandi dengan air panas dan dingin, yang merupakan kemewahan pada masa itu. Soraya menghadiri sekolah Jerman menjelang Isfahan oleh Mentel Ibu dan menghabiskan banyak waktu dengan anak-anak dari keluarga Jerman lainnya sebayanya.
Studi-studi Persia tradisional namun tidak diabaikan dan guru akan datang ke rumah untuk mengajar kedua anak-anak silabus sekolah di Persia. Sekolah Jerman tetap terbuka hingga Juni 1941 ketika pasukan Sekutu menutupnya dan mengusir warga Jerman. Frauline Mentel namun tetap di Iran dan kembali mengajar dia secara pribadi di rumah sederhana itu. Itu adalah tahun 1944 bahwa anak-anak mulai sekolah mereka di Sekolah Misionaris Inggris di Isfahan dan berlanjut sampai keberangkatan mereka untuk Eropa tahun 1947.
Setiap kali mereka bisa, keluarga muda akan menghabiskan waktu di desa Ghahfe-Rokh dan tinggal di benteng Esfandiar Khan, bermain di sekitar hutan dan memancing dan berenang di sungai. Mereka juga akan naik di atas kuda dan Khalil khan akan melakukan beberapa permainan berburu. Soraya adalah seorang pembalap cukup bagus tapi Bijan akan naik kuda enggan.
Soraya, Eva, Bijan di Isfahan 1940
Soraya dan Bijan di Esfandiar Khan di Fort Ghahfe-Rokh 1942
Isfahan 1947
Shah meminta tangan Soraya dalam pernikahan
Ketika Perang Dunia 2 berakhir, Eva yang rindu untuk kembali ke Eropa setelah 10 tahun di Isfahan membujuk Khalil Khan bahwa sudah waktunya untuk kembali. Mereka pindah ke Swiss pada 1947 dan menyewa sebuah apartemen di Zurich. Soraya dikirim ke “La Printaniere” di Montreaux, sebuah sekolah akhir untuk memoles bahasa Prancis-nya. Setahun kemudian ia dipindahkan ke “Les Roseaux” dekat Lausanne, sekolah lain Finishing. Dia menjadi fasih berbahasa Prancis dan belajar bahasa Inggris. Untuk meningkatkan bahasa Inggris-nya, itu diatur bahwa ia akan menghabiskan musim panas 1950 di Inggris. Beberapa sepupu 2nd nya juga tinggal di London. Dua di antaranya, Goudarz, seorang fotografer amatir yang tajam, dan Malekshah tinggal di sebuah rumah kos di dekat Park St James dengan Bibi Shoakat, ibu Goudarz dan menghadiri sekolah bahasa. Soraya juga terdaftar di sekolah yang sama dan pindah bersama sepupu-sepupunya dan Shoakat Bibi untuk menikmati perlindungan dan pengawasan dari anggota keluarga.
Di Swiss
Pada saat ini, Syah setelah menceraikan istri pertamanya, Putri Fauzieh Mesir, sedang mencari seorang istri dan calon banyak yang diperkenalkan kepadanya baik secara langsung atau melalui foto.
Suatu hari, Bunda Ratu (Taj-ol-Moluk) bertanya pada teman dekat dan orang kepercayaan Forough Zafar Bakhtiari, putri Sardar Zafar, yang pasti ia bisa menemukan pengantin yang cocok untuk Shah di antara keluarga Bakhtiari luas. Forough Zafar mulai pencariannya dan ingat bahwa salah satu keponakannya, Ghamar Ahmadi yang baru saja kembali dari perjalanan ke Eropa, telah menyebutkan bahwa sementara di Swiss, ia diundang ke apartemen Khalil Khan Esfandiari dan telah bertemu Soraya putrinya yang dia ditemukan menjadi beberapa bahasa yang sangat indah, berpendidikan, dan berbicara. Ghamar Ahmadi juga menambahkan bahwa Soraya kini belajar di Inggris untuk memoles bahasa Inggris-nya. Ketika Forough Zafar disebutkan Soraya kepada Ibu Ratu, Ratu meminta untuk melihat beberapa foto. Forough Zafar dihubungi Goodarz, di London dan meminta dia untuk mengambil beberapa foto Soraya dan mengirimkannya padanya di Teheran secepat mungkin. Seperti itu hanya setelah Perang Dunia II, surat itu tidak terlalu cepat atau efisien sehingga butuh beberapa saat untuk foto-foto tiba. Sementara itu, sebelum kedatangan foto, Syams Putri sedang melakukan perjalanan ke London untuk melihat dan mewawancarai dua calon lain untuk Shah. Forough Zafar meminta sang Putri, “sementara di London, mungkin Anda juga bisa mengatur untuk bertemu Soraya Esfandiari dengan mengundang Malekhah keponakan saya, saya akan memastikan ia membawa Soraya bersamanya sehingga Anda bisa bertemu dengannya secara pribadi.”. Pertemuan berlangsung di suite pribadi sang Putri dan dia sangat terkesan dengan keindahan Soraya dan kepribadian yang dia mengirim pesan darurat kepada Ibu Ratu mengatakan bahwa “Memiliki sepupu bertemu Forough Zafar, saya tidak perlu melihat gadis lain. Wanita ini lahir akan menjadi Ratu. Dia cantik, sangat berpendidikan, dan memiliki perangai yang sangat baik “.4 Pada saat foto-foto dari London juga mencapai Forough Zafar yang segera membawa mereka ke Ibu Ratu yang pada gilirannya meneruskannya ke Syah muda. Shah melihat foto-foto dan mendengarkan uraian bahwa Putri Syams telah diberikan, dan menyatakan keinginannya bahwa mereka harus bertemu. Pesan itu dikirim ke Syams Putri untuk membawa Soraya ke Teheran dengannya.
Forough Zafar
Soraya menulis dalam memoarnya, “Le Palais de kesunyian” bahwa “ketika Malekshah meminta saya untuk pergi ke resepsi dengan dia, pada awalnya saya enggan memenuhi salah satu keluarga Pahlevi karena apa yang telah mereka lakukan Bakhtiaris tetapi saya harus mendengar bahwa Putri Syams adalah seorang perempuan yang bagus dan menarik sehingga rasa ingin tahu saya mendapat yang lebih baik dari saya “. Putri Syams dan Soraya pergi ke Paris dari London untuk berbelanja di rumah mode Dior dari dan Channel. Setelah mendengar berita tentang perjalanan yang akan datang Soraya ke Teheran, Forough Zafar menulis kepada Khalil Khan mengatakan kepadanya apa yang terjadi dan menyarankan bahwa ia harus bergabung dengan Putri dan Soraya di Paris. Putri dan Soraya terbang dari Paris ke Roma di mana mereka bergabung dengan Khalil Khan dan kemudian ke Teheran. Secara kebetulan, Amir Jang juga bepergian ke Teheran dengan penerbangan yang sama tetapi tidak menyadari apa yang terjadi. Itu adalah dengan lemari penuh dari mode Paris terbaru yang mereka tiba di Teheran.
Soraya cukup banyak kelelahan setelah perjalanan panjang dan ingin beristirahat tapi Bunda Ratu dan Shah begitu penasaran untuk melihatnya sesegera mungkin bahwa dia dipanggil ke istana Ibu Ratu untuk makan malam kecil pada malam yang sama. Keluarga Kerajaan diterima dengan hangat dan selama seperempat jam, mereka bertukar obrolan ringan diikuti dengan kebiasaan Persia biasa bertanya setelah kesehatannya dan kesehatan keluarganya! Mereka semua menunggu kedatangan Shah.
Putri Syams mengatakan kepada Soraya bahwa kakaknya tidak terlalu tampan agar tidak meningkatkan harapan dia. Akhirnya seseorang mengumumkan kedatangan Mulia Shah. Mereka semua bangkit berdiri dan Shah muncul di seragam seorang jenderal dari Angkatan Udara Iran yang jelas seragam favoritnya. Ia memeluk ibunya dan kemudian Soraya yang disajikan kepadanya. Keduanya tertarik satu sama lain langsung dan percikan api mulai terbang. Di meja makan, Soraya duduk di samping Shah dan berbicara tentang Swiss dan negara sekitar Montreux dan Lausanne dan sejenisnya dan tidak suka. Setelah makan malam mereka bermain game dan keluarga menjadi lebih rileks. Larut malam Soraya tersisa untuk tidur tetapi pada 2 pagi Shah menelepon dan minta bicara dengan Khalil Khan. Ketika Khalil Khan datang ke ponsel, Shah mengatakan kepadanya bahwa ia adalah meminta tangan Soraya dan dia ingin tahu bagaimana perasaannya tentang hal itu. Jawaban Soraya tentu saja ya sebagai dia juga sedang dikalahkan oleh Shah tampan muda. Keesokan paginya, Pengadilan kekaisaran informasi media berita dan foto-foto Soraya dibagikan antara newspapers.5 Keesokan harinya Shah datang mengunjungi Soraya yang tinggal di Hossein Amir Khan Zafar vila, dan mulai merayunya. Saat itu menjelang akhir tahun itu pada 11 Oktober 1950, bahwa mereka resmi bertunangan.
Pada minggu-minggu berikutnya, Shah dan tunangannya melihat satu sama lain hampir setiap hari dan dengan setiap pertemuan, mereka tumbuh lebih intim. Mereka pergi naik di kaki bukit Shemiran, bermain tenis, dan pergi terbang dengan Shah di kontrol. Di malam hari saudari Syah dan saudara memberikan partai kecil bagi pasangan yang menyenangkan. Mereka juga memeriksa beberapa istana Kerajaan di Teheran dan di sekitar tempat tinggal untuk masa depan mereka. Soraya akhirnya memilih salah satu istana sederhana dan kecil di Pasteur Ave sebagai tempat tinggal masa depan mereka dan dekorator yang disewa untuk melakukan pekerjaan yang diperlukan. Pasangan itu juga menetapkan tanggal 26 Desember sebagai hari pernikahan mereka. Pada saat ini, Soraya tiba-tiba jatuh sakit tipus dan demam nya tidak mereda, pernikahan ditunda.
Pernikahan
Soraya cukup pulih untuk pernikahan akan berlangsung pada tanggal mereka telah ditetapkan pada bulan Februari meskipun masih sangat lemah dan gemetar. Pada 12 Februari 1951 pasangan menikah. Upacara pernikahan berlangsung di Aula terkenal of Mirrors di Istana Golestan di tengah-tengah banyak kebesaran dan keadaan. Para tamu pernikahan bernomor 1.600 menurut beberapa laporan berita. Pengantin wanita mengenakan gaun pengantin indah dibuat oleh Christian Dior terdiri dari 37 meter dari perak lumpuh dengan 20.000 bulu dan potongan berlian 6.000 dijahit pada. Soraya masih sangat lemah dari pertarungan terakhir dengan Tifoid dan menggigil dalam dingin yang Februari malam. Shah tersampir sebuah jaket bulu Dior indah di sekitar bahunya, yang menambah kesulitan dia dalam berjalan di bawah beban berat seperti jaket dan baju dengan kereta panjang. Syah dan Dr Ayadi datang dengan solusi. Sebuah terampil dayang-menunggu dipanggil dengan gunting yang memotong meter dari rok dan jalan tanpa dia harus melepas pernikahan gown.6
Di Roma
Shah dan Soraya hidup sangat bahagia dan sangat mencintai selama dua tahun berikutnya tanpa acara banyak sampai hubungan antara Raja dan dipilih secara populer dan Perdana Menteri nasionalistik, Dr Mossadegh datang ke kepala. Peristiwa yang menyebabkan peristiwa tahun 1953 telah didokumentasikan dengan baik dan banyak rincian kini telah ditulis tentang dan tidak perlu pergi melalui mereka dalam artikel ini. Namun itu harus disebutkan bahwa Syah, Inggris, dan Amerika Serikat telah sepakat bahwa Mossadegh harus diberhentikan dari jabatannya dan Shah kemudian memerintahkan pemecatannya dan tetap di kediamannya oleh berita Kaspia menunggu reaksi Dr Mossadegh itu. Laporan pertama adalah tidak baik dan ia memutuskan untuk meninggalkan Iran dengan Soraya dan pilot pribadinya. Setelah singgah sebentar di Baghdad, pasangan Kerajaan tiba di Roma dengan kecemasan bubur dan tidak yakin dari fase berikutnya dari kehidupan mereka. Syah dan Soraya tinggal di Excelsior Hotel di Roma. Media sedang mengalami hari lapangan dan wawancara satu demi satu sedang diberikan. Soraya dengan baik diingat dalam gaun tanpa tali putus-putus dan kacamata hitam besar itu.
Shah dan Ratu Soraya tinggal di suite mereka sebagian besar waktu dengan telinga ditempelkan ke radio gelombang pendek sesuai untuk Radio Teheran. Apa yang mereka dengar di radio tidak mendorong dan Shah sudah mulai putus asa dan kehilangan keberaniannya. Pasangan muda mendiskusikan langkah berikutnya dan Shah beralih ke Soraya dan berkata: “Kita harus menghemat, sebab Aku menyesal untuk mengatakan bahwa saya tidak punya uang banyak, cukup mungkin untuk membeli kami pertanian di suatu tempat”. Soraya kemudian bertanya di manakah mereka pergi dan dengan ngeri dia menjawab:. “Mungkin Amerika Ibu dan Syams adikku sudah ada dan saya harap saudara-saudara saya mungkin dapat mengikuti kami Kami semua kemudian bisa hidup bersama untuk hidup secara ekonomi. “. Modal Syah pada waktu itu terdiri dari warisan bahwa ayahnya telah meninggalkannya dan penyisihan Syah sebesar $ 750.000 per tahun dari luar yang harus memenuhi semua biaya Pengadilan serta menyediakan untuk tanggungan keluarganya. Karena ia tidak mampu menempatkan banyak aside.7
Di pengasingan di Roma
Berita tentang kudeta
Saat itu pukul dua sore hari 19 Agustus 1953. Syah dan Soraya baru saja kembali dari berbelanja dan sedang makan siang di ruang makan di hotel ketika seorang reporter muda dari Associated Press datang ke meja mereka dan menyerahkan mereka penuh kemenangan pesan Teletype. Bunyinya: “Mossadegh digulingkan-IMERIAL PASUKAN PENGENDALIAN Teheran-Zahedi PREMIER”. Berita itu baru saja selama Teletype dan sementara mereka dilanjutkan dengan makan siang mereka, reporter AP bergegas bolak-balik antara kantor dan hotel membawa mereka berita terbaru dan perkembangan. Soraya tenang tapi Syah telah berubah jadi pucat yang Soraya takut ia akan pingsan. Syah dan Soraya memeluk dan bergegas ke lantai bawah di mana semua media berkumpul. Sebagai pasangan kerajaan sampai di lobi, manajer hotel bergegas ke depan dan menyerahkan Shah telegram, yang baru saja tiba. Telegram itu berbunyi: “Yang Mulia, rakyat Iran telah meningkat Kita semua menunggu kembali beberapa Imperial Anda yang aman dan cepat ke ibukota.” Telegram itu ditandatangani: “Jenderal Zahedi, Perdana Menteri”. CIA dan Badan Intelijen Inggris telah ditarik dari kudeta berhasil Shah kembali ke Teheran pada tanggal 21 Agustus 1953 sampai dengan mendengar pemanasan t diterima. Soraya juga segera kembali.
Soraya suka memiliki beberapa anggota keluarganya di sekitarnya di Pengadilan. Rostam Amir Bakhtiar menjadi Sekretaris Pribadi dan Malekshah Zafar, Ghobad Zafar, Majid Bakhtiar, Salar Bakhtiar dan Jamshid Bakhtiar menjadi sering pengunjung ke Pengadilan dan merupakan mitra malam dari Shah dalam permainan Poker dan Jembatan. Umum Teymour Bakhtiar, sepupu jarak Soraya, seorang komandan berani dan karismatik dari Brigade lapis baja yang bergerak menuju Teheran di kepala brigade-nya untuk mendukung royalis, dihargai dan menjadi Gubernur Militer Teheran. Dia kemudian menjadi orang yang paling berkuasa di Iran sebagai kepala Keamanan Dalam Negeri yang baru terbentuk, SAVAK.
Hari-hari yang tenang pernikahan diikuti. Pasangan Kerajaan itu selalu bersama-sama dan mereka punya waktu untuk bepergian. Di antara perjalanan adalah kunjungan kenegaraan ke Rusia pada tahun 1956 untuk memenuhi Mr Khrushchev, kunjungan lain membawa mereka ke India, Amerika Serikat, Inggris, Turki, Spanyol, dan Lebanon. Perjalanan ini juga memberikan semacam bulan madu yang tertunda untuk Kembali couple.8 di Teheran, Soraya menyibukkan diri dengan merenovasi dan memperbaiki istana tempat tinggal mereka dan menghadiri kepada organisasi-organisasi amal yang dibentuk berdasarkan patronase nya. “Ratu Soraya Amal Pahlevi” adalah amal utama patronase nya, yang dibentuk dan dikelola secara efisien oleh Forough Zafar.
Sementara itu, Shah telah menunjuk duta besar ayah Soraya ke Jerman, sebuah pos ia dihargai meskipun ia tidak melibatkan diri dengan tugas-tugas seorang duta besar. Ia meninggalkan kepada Menteri dan para profesional Office lainnya Luar Negeri diposting ke kedutaan.
Perceraian ini
Ketika pada tahun 1949 upaya yang dilakukan pada kehidupan Syah dari mana ia melarikan diri dengan hanya luka ringan, penasihatnya mendesak dia untuk mempertimbangkan ahli waris demi kelangsungan monarki. Dalam banyak kasus di kerajaan-kerajaan lain di dunia, saudara atau paman akan diangkat sebagai ahli waris sampai ahli waris langsung lahir tapi Shah selalu menolak saran tersebut. Namun ia tidak menganggap untuk sementara waktu, menunjuk Pangeran Ali Reza sebagai ahli warisnya tetapi ketika ia meninggal dalam kecelakaan udara, hal ini menjadi lebih mengganggu. Dengan situasi politik di Iran menjadi tenang dan lebih stabil, persoalan suksesi menjadi topik percakapan sehari-hari dan perhatian antara Soraya dan Shah. Soraya telah berkunjung ke setiap spesialis dikenal di dunia untuk menemukan obat untuk kemandulan, tapi ada gunanya. Bahkan selama 1954 kunjungan Desember mereka ke Soraya AS terlihat oleh yang terbaik tetapi berita itu tidak menggembirakan. Satu dokter menyarankan operasi yang sangat berisiko dengan kesempatan minimal sukses tetapi risiko maksimum, yang pasangan tidak menerima.
Suatu hari pada Juli 1957 pasangan itu pergi berjalan-jalan di halaman Istana. Shah berbicara tentang kelangsungan hidup dinasti dan dibesarkan isu pewaris dan fakta bahwa mereka akan segera harus membuat keputusan tak peduli betapa menyakitkan. Mereka berbicara tentang alternatif seperti Shah mengambil istri kedua dan mungkin mengubah konstitusi untuk memungkinkan salah satu saudara tirinya untuk menjadi raja sesudah tuanku. Mereka tidak bisa menyepakati salah satu alternatif dan menemukan masing-masing tidak dapat diterima. Mereka akhirnya memutuskan dengan berlinang air mata dan dengan hati yang sangat berat, untuk memisahkan. Sebelum berangkat untuk Eropa, Soraya membakar semua surat-surat pribadinya; dikemas souvenir dan hadiah yang telah diterimanya, dan meninggalkan Teheran pada 14 Februari 1958 tidak pernah melihat negara tercinta lagi. Soraya menetap di Saint-Moritz Syah vila untuk sementara dan selama tinggal, Shah akan meneleponnya setiap hari, dan kemudian ia memutuskan untuk berhenti. Dari Swiss ia pulang untuk tinggal bersama orang tuanya di Jerman untuk sementara waktu. Amir Jang, yang lebih tua dari keluarga dan Senator sebuah dikirim untuk melihat Soraya untuk mencoba dan membujuknya untuk menyetujui Shah mengambil istri kedua tetapi dia menolak. Umum Yazdanpanah didampingi oleh istri dan Umum Dr Ayadi juga berkunjung ke Jerman pada dua kesempatan untuk membujuk Soraya untuk kembali. Eva menerima mereka tetapi Soraya bahkan menolak untuk bertemu dengan mereka. Syah dan Soraya bercerai pada 14 Maret 1958 setelah 7 tahun menikah. Mereka sudah mengatakan selamat tinggal sedih mereka menangis baik secara pribadi. Cinta mereka satu sama lain tetap sampai akhir. Soraya mulai kesedihannya dalam martabat pribadi dan dalam seperti Bakhtiari benar.
Tahun Soraya dari Iran
Shah telah bertekad menyediakan kehidupan yang nyaman dan martabat bagi mantan Ratu-nya. Dia telah menetap sejumlah uang pada dirinya selain telah membuat beberapa pemukiman yang mendukung dia selama pernikahan mereka dalam bentuk uang serta tanah dan surat berharga. Soraya bawah menyarankan dari ayahnya, telah diinvestasikan baik sehingga pada saat perceraian, ia memiliki keberuntungan sederhana yang bersama-sama dengan penyelesaian akhir Syah akan cukup untuk memungkinkan dia untuk hidup dengan nyaman. Syah juga mengeluarkan keputusan khusus dan diberikan kepada Soraya judul Imperial Putri untuk hidup disertai dengan paspor diplomatik. Dia karena itu menjadi oleh pangkat, sama dengan saudara Shah dan Kedutaan Persia harus terus memperlakukan dia sebagai anggota keluarga kerajaan. Selanjutnya, dalam masyarakat Eropa, ia mengambil diutamakan daripada banyak anggota bangsawan tertinggi. Dia menikmati paspor diplomatik dan hak istimewa yang datang dengan itu sampai revolusi Iran tahun 1979 ketika Raja Hassan dari Maroko memerintahkan paspor diplomatik Maroko dikeluarkan padanya. Akhirnya, ia menjadi warga negara Jerman hanya beberapa tahun sebelum kematiannya.
Soraya tinggal di Roma untuk jantung sementara rusak dan pertapa. Dia menyewa sebuah villa cantik yang terletak di antara kebun-kebun anggur, tiga puluh menit dari Roma. Teman-teman lamanya datang dan menemaninya tetapi secara keseluruhan ia tinggal dengan tenang dan perlahan mulai menikmati kehidupan barunya tetapi jiwa gelisah dia tidak bisa tenang. Segera, ia menjadi gelisah dan selama musim panas ketika Roma menjadi terlalu panas, ia pergi ke Eropa Utara dan tinggal di Cologne untuk sementara waktu dengan ibunya dengan siapa dia merasa aman. Masa kesedihan dan kehidupan tanpa tujuan sepertinya tidak ada habisnya untuknya. Sekarang sendirian dan tanpa alat bantu atau perlindungan dari pengadilan Imperial, ia harus melakukan semuanya sendiri, dan bahkan lebih sulit lagi adalah bahwa dia sekarang harus belajar bagaimana menjalani kehidupan warga negara biasa lagi. Dia sendirian, ketakutan, dan tidak pasti tentang masa depannya. Satu-satunya keamanan dan kenyamanan berada di keluarga dekat. Dia mulai bepergian secara ekstensif.
Dia pindah dari Roma ke Cologne, ke Munich, ke Paris, ke Roma untuk Monaco dan akhirnya berakhir di Roma lagi. Dia terpikat oleh industri film karena selalu mimpinya untuk suatu hari menjadi bintang film. Dia bertemu Dino de Laurentis pada malam satu partai di Roma. Dino menawarinya peran dalam film yang ia buat. Soraya mudah diterima. Judul film ini adalah “Tiga wajah seorang wanita” dan Mauro Bolognini, Michelangelo Antonioni dan Franco Indovina diarahkan itu. Film ini adalah bencana. Rumor mengatakan bahwa ketika Shah mendengar bahwa Soraya adalah untuk muncul dalam film, ia begitu marah bahwa seluruh dunia sekarang akan mantan istrinya dalam adegan romantis yang ia memerintahkan semua salinan dibeli dan dihancurkan. Soraya terus satu salinan, yang akhirnya dijual dengan lelang real di Paris dalam bulan Mei 2002 bersama dengan semua efek pribadinya.
Film Poster
Lelang barang milik Soraya
Putri Soraya jatuh di bawah mantra Franco Indovina dan menemukan kenyamanan dalam ekspresi cintanya. Sebuah kisah cinta yang penuh gairah mulai berkembang antara kedua tapi masa depan tidak pasti. Franco adalah menikah dan punya dua anak. Indovina mengatakan bahwa dia akan menceraikan istrinya dan mereka akan memiliki kehidupan together.9 Soraya berangkat ke Munich dan kembali 6 bulan kemudian untuk bergabung Franco yang baru saja berpisah dari istrinya. Pasangan ini memiliki 5 tahun bahagia hidup bersama penuh dengan cinta dan kebahagiaan sampai hari yang menentukan pada 4 Mei 1972 ketika pesawat Franco jatuh di Sisilia dan ia tragis tewas.
Dengan Indovina di set film
Ini pukulan kedua untuk hidup dan tragedi kehilangan dia cintai dengan cara tersebut mengantarnya pada awalnya menjadi sebuah periode kesendirian total. Butuh waktu beberapa bulan dia untuk keluar dari keadaan kesedihan dan pindah ke Paris dimana dia disambut dan dianut oleh Masyarakat Tinggi kaum bangsawan Eropa yang sebagian besar merasa hak istimewa untuk memiliki-Ratu mantan Iran dalam daftar tamu mereka . Dia juga menghabiskan banyak waktu di vilanya di Marbella, Spanyol.
Selama masa pengasingan, Khalil Khan terus berhubungan dengan Jenderal Dr Ayadi 10 dan Assadollah Alam 11 di Teheran. Ayadi adalah dokter pribadi Syah dan pengagum Ratu Soraya. Melalui Dr Ayadi, Shah juga terus up to date dengan berita dan Soraya nya kesejahteraan. Khalil khan akan menggunakan saluran ini untuk meminta bantuan keuangan untuk Soraya setiap sekarang dan lagi. Soraya juga akan menulis ke Shah Alam melalui Mr meminta bantuan keuangan. Sebagai contoh, ia menulis kepada Alam pada tahun 1976 meminta Shah untuk membeli sebuah apartemen untuknya ia terlihat di Jalan Montaign Paris. Pak Alam diperintahkan untuk segera bertindak dan mengatur pembelian. 12 Pada kesempatan lain pada tahun 1973, Soraya menulis kepada Shah melalui kantor Alam mengatakan bahwa karena runtuhnya harga saham di pasar saham, pendapatan dan standar hidup telah sangat menderita. Syah memerintahkan Alam untuk membuat pengaturan yang diperlukan untuk mentransfer uang ke account.13 nya
Soraya Kematian
Soraya melanjutkan hidupnya di Paris dan menghabiskan musim panas nya padanya Villa Maryam (bernama setelah neneknya) di Marbella, Spanyol. Dia bergerak di kalangan masyarakat tinggi dan menghabiskan waktu dengan beberapa teman pilih.
The Legend Of Nale Damayanti
Damayanti with Swan
Nala was the ruler of Nishada. Nala pined for Damayanti the daughter of the King of Vidarbh, with Nala fell in love with her without seeing her.He spent long hours in the garden of his palace dreaming about her. A group of swans lived in the lakes in the garden. They daily observed the despondent king wasting his time. One day the leader of the swans approached the king and asked him what the matter was. The king informed the swan that he was in love with Damayanti but was unable to press his suit. He did not even know if Damayanti was in love with someone else. Custom prevented him from going to Vidarbh himself and this was too delicate a mission to entrust to someone else. “If you think fit I can deliver your message,” said the swan. Nala lighted up. At last there was an end to his immediate problems. And there could be no more romantic way to woo a maiden. That night the swan left for Vidarbh. This painting shows the Swan conveying Nala’s love to Damayanti.
Vegetable Dyes on Silk
Shakuntala with her sakhis.
Shakuntala was born of the sage Vishwamitra and the Apsara Menaka. Menaka had come at the behest of the King of the Gods, Indra, to distract the great sage Vishwamitra from his deep meditations. She succeeded, and bore a child by him. Menaka left the newborn Shakuntala in the forest. It was here that the new born child was found by Kanva Rishi surrounded by birds. He thus named her Shakuntala. Kanva Rishi took the child to his ashram, which was known as “Kanva Ashram” on the banks of the Malini River which rises in the Shivalik hills of Himalayas. Shakuntala is with her friends Priyamvada and Anasuya. This is where Shakuntala grew up, to become a lovely maiden and lived a happy life among friends, under the loving care of Gautami and Kanva, and loving the flowers and trees and animals of the forests and her playmates in the ashram. Acrylic on Silk, 24″/36″, Teakwood Frame.
Damayanti with Swan.
Nala was the ruler of Nishada. Nala pined for Damayanti the daughter of the King of Vidarbh, with Nala fell in love with her without seeing her.He spent long hours in the garden of his palace dreaming about her. A group of swans lived in the lakes in the garden. They daily observed the despondent king wasting his time. One day the leader of the swans approached the king and asked him what the matter was. The king informed the swan that he was in love with Damayanti but was unable to press his suit. He did not even know if Damayanti was in love with someone else. Custom prevented him from going to Vidarbh himself and this was too delicate a mission to entrust to someone else. “If you think fit I can deliver your message,” said the swan. Nala lighted up. And there could be no more romantic way to woo a maiden. That night the swan left for Vidarbh. This painting shows the Swan conveying Nala’s love to Damayanti. Acrylic on Silk, 24″/30″, Teakwood Frame.
Kadambari.
Kadambari is the central character of a romantic novel in the Sanskrit language, which B?nabhatta wrote in the seventh century. The king of a race of demigods had a daughter named Kadambari. The story is about Kadambari and her friend Mahasweta, and their lovers
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The Nala-Damayanti Katha in Vyasa’s Mahabharata |
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| Those who have kept track of Writers Workshop’s effort at serving up theMahabharata in small doses to the extremely busy twenty-first century reader through the remarkable Kathaseries will be pleased to know that the latest addition, the eighth, the Nala-Damayanti Katha, is now available. Like the earlier books it is a reproduction of the Nala-Damayanti episode in the Vana Parva of Prof. P.Lal’s magnum opus, the shloka-by-shloka transcreation of theMahabharata. And, as with the earlier books, the two very compelling features of this work are the exquisite transcreation of Prof. P.Lal in free-flowing English verse and the splendid introduction by Dr. Prema Nandakumar. The Nala-Damayanti episode is a curious tale in many ways. It is the entire Kuru-Pandava story in miniature with Nala, the king of the Nishadhas, playing the Pandavas. He is a great king, very fond like Yudhishthira of playing dice and, like him, not too good at it. He wins Damayanti in the svayamvaracongregation as the Pandavas do Draupadi. The description of the two ladies, the ‘lovely-waisted Damayanti’ and the ‘slim-waisted Draupadi’ is almost the same: Damayanti achieved world-wide fame‘for her incandescent beauty, grace, virtue and excellence’ She was faultless-featured; ‘with her ornaments she dazzled like lightening in the sky. A lady of impossible beauty! Like large-eyed Sri-Lakshmi! None among the gods or yakshas could equal her. None among humans or others Ever possessed such beauty: She soothed the eyes, She was lovelier than a goddess.’ (III.53.10-14, Nala-Damayanti Katha)And, ‘auspicious, eye-ravishing, large-black-eyed Panchali rose from the yajna altar,Dark-skinned Panchali Lotus-eyed lady,wavy-haired Panchali, Hair like dark blue clouds, Shining coppery carved nails, Soft eye-lashes, Swelling breasts Shapely thighs. A girl like goddess born to humans. ‘There was none on earth to match her loveliness. Gods, anti-gods, and yakshas yearned for such celestial beauty.’ (169:45-47, Adi Parva, Mahabharata) Both were equally beautiful except that Draupadi was ‘dark-sinned’ and Damayanti was perhaps very fair because interestingly, she has been compared to lightening twice, one in this passage and again at the time of her entry into the city of Subahu ‘ ‘you dazzle like lightening in the midst of clouds’. Then the dice game. Both Nala and Yudhishthira play the game and lose everything. Why do they play the game? Why indeed do they feel honor-bound and compelled to play? And that too when, being well-educated, they are surely aware of scriptural injunctions against gambling. The Aksha Sukta a rare secular sukta of the Rigveda condemns the game of dice, ‘Akshairma divyah krishimit krishasva vitte ramasya vahumanyamanah In spite of such injunctions they resort to some na’ve argument of compulsion of honor, and play. Yudhishthira ignored the fact that there could be no honor in deeds not sanctioned by the Vedas. He knew that it was wrong to play dice yet he says, ‘If he challenges me, I will accept the challenge. I have firmly vowed this.’ And then he says, ‘Like flashing flames blinding the eyes, fate blinds clear thinking.’ Again, before the second dice game he says, ‘The old monarch commands me to play dice again. I know it means my doom. But I cannot refuse.’ Once more, the question of the Kshatriya honor. On this Vaishampayana comments, ‘When doom is imminent, thinking gets blurred.’ (Sabha Parva). This then was Yudhishthira’s compulsion’ if challenged it was his vow never to refuse. But what were Nala’s compulsions? Nothing much really. When Pushkara ‘insistently kept inviting him to a dice-game, the maha-minded raja could not refuse.’ So, ‘obsessed, he could think only of the dice-game’ and ‘Damayanti saw the fulsomely-famed, noble-minded king obsessed with gambling, and seemingly bereft of his reason.’ He too, like Yudhishthira, lost all and went on exile to the forest. In Yudhishthira’s case there was some justification, though fairly vague, that he was one of the chief protagonists of the power struggle of the time and he had to contend with a very strong opposition. He might have considered the dice game to be an acceptable alternative and might have thought of taking this shortcut to success, like most gamblers. Militarily he had no chance as all the kings conquered by him during the Rajasuya sacrifice were on the side of the Kauravas, as he himself admits in the Vana Parva during a conversation with Draupadi and Bhima. He must have had, at that time, supreme confidence in his own dice-playing abilities. But Nala was not under any such duress. There was no power-struggle, no political necessity ‘Pushkara was not a claimant to the throne’and peace and prosperity reigned everywhere. It was just a gambler’s urge that made Nala play. But in Nala’s case there was also supernatural intervention. Three deadly factors combined against him: an evil god (Kali) possessed him, an evil time (Kali yuga) and the worst throw of dice (the four yugas are named after the four throws of dice, Krita, Trita, Dvitaand Kali of which Krita is the best throw and Kali the worst). No such power was operating on Yudhishthira; he played of his own volition. However, both committed political hara-kiri on the dice-board. Dice were usually made of vibhitaka nuts. In the Virata Parva Yudhishthira carries “black and red dice made of gold inset with sapphires and beautiful ivory pawns of blue, yellow, red and white by hue.” In the Nala-Pushkara game, “Kali transformed himself into the principal dice to be cast at the game.” In the Yudhishthira-Shakuni game, Vyasa merely speaks of Shakuni, a supremely skilled player and Dvapara-incarnate, cheating in the dice-throw. There is an interesting point about the dices used in the game of the two kings. Even though Kali had earlier asked his friend Dvapara to enter the dice, during the actual game ‘Kali transformed himself into the principal dice to be cast at the game.’ So the dice here was cleverly doctored. A similar charge of doctoring the dice in the Yudhishthira game too has been raised by Parashuram, the well-known satirist of Bengali literature, in his story, ‘The Third Dice-game’ (translated into English by Dr. Pradip Bhattacharya) – Shakuni hid a beetle inside his dice. So, in whichever way one threw the dice it would always fall the right-side up due to the obstinate beetle inside which ‘being of extremely intractable nature could not be overturned or turned on its side.’ The concept of doctored or enchanted dice made of the bones of Shakuni’s father is a later vernacular addition. However, cutting out all the frills of Kali and the beetle, there is no doubt that both Nala and Yudhishthira were cast against much stronger adversaries and were soundly thrashed. The only thing that can be said for Nala, if that is any consolation, is that he was a much better player than Yudhishthira since he could continue playing for months whereas Yudhishthira lasted not even a day’ and he played twice in that single day. The Nala story reflects most of the important events of the Pandava story in some way or the other. The Draupadi-vastraharana episode is considered to be an interpolation by some. If so, Vyasa would not have written about the birds flying away with Nala’s cloth, his cutting Damayanti’s cloth in two with the magically appearing sword and disappearing, leaving her wearing just half of it. The similarity between the two stories indicates that both are integral to the original, though some details may have been interpolated. Both the kings went to the forest thereafter with their wives. Like the thirteenth year of the Pandavas, Nala spent the last period of his exile incognito in the court of Rituparna as his charioteer. Like Yudhishthira he also obtained the Aksha-hridaya, expert knowledge of the game of dice. Damayanti too spent some time with the princess of Chedi, Sunanda, in the kingdom of Subahu as Sairindhri, just as Draupadi spent the last year of exile with Sudeshna, the Virata queen, disguised as Sairindhri. Both of them put up the same terms as conditions of their service. Prema Nandakumar has very perceptively pointed out in her introduction that this story ‘also gave insights to the Pandavas and Draupadi when they wished to disguise themselves and live in an alien land for one whole year.’ Yudhishthira became Kanka, a companion to the king who would play dice with him (in which he had already become an expert like Nala by learning Aksha-hridaya from sage Brihadashva); Bhima became Ballabha, the cook (an expert chef like Nala who got his expertise in cooking from Yama-Dharma during the svayamvara congregation); Arjuna became Brihannala, transforming himself into a transvestite using the curse of Urvashi just as Nala’s appearance was changed by Karkotaka’s bite; Nakula became Granthika, the expert in horses like Nala; and Sahadeva took the name, Arishtanemi, the keeper of cattle, the sole exception who did not take a pointer from the story of Nala. Nandakumar gives a reason: ‘The youngest brother, wise, intelligent and an unequal devotee of Krishna, it was natural for him to become the guardian of the cow.’ However, there is no evidence of Sahadeva’s unequalled Krishan-bhakti in Vyasa. The remark is based on Villi’s Tamil version of the epic where Sahadeva is so depicted. Brihadashva was a wise old seer. He had seen the world. Not for nothing he chose this tale to console Yudhishthira in an effort to draw him out of his massive self-pity. This story, while it provided some succor to Yudhishthira, was also an indictment. Yudhishthira, in his blind headlong plunge into self-destruction, not only staked himself and his brothers but also Draupadi. Was this shameful act in consonance with his much vaunted idea of Kshatriya ‘honor’? Nandakumar writes, ‘Not all tomes expounding the significance of the term ‘honor-bound’ can wipe away their shame of considering one’s wife as disposable chattel!’ Even if we accept Yudhishthira’s argument of Kshatriya– dharma, his action of staking Draupadi can never be a part of that dharma. It merely exposes the extent to which he had fallen at that moment of madness, the depths of his frightening and compulsive addiction. Nala, on the other hand, knew his limits. When he heard Pushkara say, ‘How about staking Damayanti?’ his heart broke. He looked painfully at Pushkara, took off all his ornaments and left silently, wearing a single piece of cloth, with Damayanti. And in that moment of silence, Brihadashva placed the Dharmaraja squarely in the dock in utter condemnation. He showed him that even a king of Nishadhas, a tribal king, can rise above a Kshatriya king who is none other than the son of Dharma. But then the story does not exculpate Nala completely. He too on his part has failed Damayanti. He left her to fend for herself in the wilderness on the flimsy ground, ‘if I leave her she will probably go to her parents’ He never paused to think that even if Damayanti decided to go to her parents, how she was going to find her way through this perilous forest infested with wild creatures and men of evil temperament. It was surely a childish and irresponsible decision which ultimately caused Damayanti untold misery. And in the final moment of truth, Nala too falls prey to the folly of Yudhishthira: he stakes Damayanti in the final game of dice with Pushkara. Granted that by this time he was the master of the Aksha-hridaya and he knew that he would never lose, but it was a principle that was compromised by that deed. The knowledge of Aksha-hridaya gave him supreme confidence, in fact, it made him vain, but it also clouded his sense of values. Even if you are one hundred per cent sure, you do not use your wife as stake in gambling. If Brihadashva was trying to pass a message of this kind indirectly to Yudhishthira to begin with, he failed by narrating this last game of dice in which Nala was guilty of the same offence as Yudhishthira. Well, every cloud has a silver lining. Perhaps it was due to this part of the story that we do not see another command performance by Yudhishthira in the Mahabharata on the dice board, even though, like Nala, he too at that time was armed with the Aksha-hridaya and had every reason to feel confident enough to take on Shakuni. Perhaps that was the objective of that wise man, Brihadashva: Yudhishthira must learn about the pitfalls that arrogance of learning holds. We have seen that Yudhishthira did learn his lesson well. In fact, the entire Vana Parva contains the progress of Yudhishthira’s education. He had two big problems. He had to be first helped to get over his gigantic self-pity. Secondly, he had to be trained to become a king ‘ a kind of advanced course in administration that included acquiring administrative skills and power in the form of weaponry and political alliances. At the time of the dice game, he was young, inexperienced and had no political ally except Krishna and the Panchalas. The kings they defeated during the Rajasuya yajna, were naturally not friendly. His was a new kingdom, yet to find its political and diplomatic feet and all the alliances were with the established Hastinapur kingdom which was inimical to him. At this juncture he was exiled before he could organize himself politically. In addition to this predicament, he fell into a bitter depression and wallowed in self-pity, a luxury that he could ill-afford. So the benevolent forces more or less combined together and got busy in reconstructing Yudhishthira. Shiva, Indra and other gods gave Arjuna many weapons. The sages, the seers, conducted a severe regimen of education, one after the other. Vyasa came and gave him the Pratismriti spell. Shaunaka, Dhaumya, Markandeya, Baka, Brihadashva and Lomasha continued his education through a series of kathas and didactic discourses. Ajagara-Nahusha had a fruitful didactic discussion with him. He learnt about environmental balance through the deer who appeared in his dream. And finally, as an end-of-course examination, he had the famous encounter with the Baka-Yaksha-Dharma. With this encounter in the last chapter of Vana Parva, Yudhishthira’s education was complete. The problem of his self-indulgence was also handled in the process. First, Shaunaka advises him how to handle grief, fear and greed. He was the one who advised him on Nishkama Karma, much before Krishna recited the Gita to Arjuna. Apparently, he was not convinced. He seemed to be fairly desperate when confronted by Draupadi and Bhima. So, when Brihadashva came the first question he asked was, ‘Is there any raja on earth more miserable than me? Have you heard of one, seen one? I can think of none.’ Brihadashva’s was swift in administering a rather severe reprimand, ‘There was a raja on this earth who suffered more than you’In the forest, O raja, Nala had neither servants nor chariots; he had no brother and no friends to console him. But you have heroic brothers, equal to gods, and the best of Brahmins, equal to Brahma. You should not be sad.’ Then he launched into the narration of the Nala-Damayanti tale. Whether the story had any effect on him or not is not clear, but one thing is absolutely clear ‘ it made no dent in his impregnable self-pity. We find him carrying this burden till almost the end of Vana Parva and asking Markandeya after the Jayadratha episode, ‘Is there anyone in the world as unfortunate as I am? Have you heard of such a man? Have you seen one?’ Markandeya said Rama was such a king and began the narration of the Ramayana. After completing the story, he said, ‘This was how’Rama’endured such agonizing exile’O foe-tormentor, why do you grieve? You have supporters who can vanquish the thunder-wielder-Indra and the Maruts’Rama without such help, killed the ten-necked rakshasa of tremendous valor and rescued Vaidehi Sita. Rama’s only allies were black-faced bears and beast-like tree-men’do not grieve’mahatmas like you must never despair.’ After this tale, we find a dent in Yudhishthira’s self-pity and see him looking around and becoming conscious about the problems of others, especially of his wife. So he asks Markandeya, ‘Maha-muni, I am not sorry (?) for myself’I feel sorry for Draupadi’Have you ever heard of a woman as maha-fortune-favored and husband-devoted as Draupadi? Have you seen one?’ So, this brings forth the story of Savitri-Satyavan from Markandeya. With Nala too the same thing happened. He too wallowed in self-pity during exile for deserting Damayanti, reciting a shloka every evening lamenting her fate. He too acquired power in the form of Aksha-hridaya from King Rituparna with which he would be able to handle Pushkara. The Nala-Damayanti tale is a romantic story ‘ the story of immortal love between a love-struck husband and his wife, steadfast in her love for her husband. They fall in love when they had not even seen each other through the intervention of the divine postman, the golden swan. Thereafter it continues unswervingly through a myriad trials and tribulations till it reaches a happy conclusion. There is certain softness in the treatment of the character of Damayanti which sets her apart from Draupadi. She gives an impression of being like a creeper that is entirely and unconditionally dependant on the Nala-tree. She has a different, a stronger facet but, first and foremost, she is the beloved of Nala and is head over heels in love with Nala. She never complains when Nala deserts her except once during her helpless wanderings in the wilderness and is always worried about his well-being because she believes that a man is the happiest when he is with his wife, ‘What medicine is there for misery more healing than a wife?’ she asks Nala. In the most heart-rending scene in the forest, which is very unlike Vyasa, she runs from tree to tree and asks them about her Nala. It reminds one of Rama doing the same thing after Sita’s abduction. This kind of treatment of a female character persuaded Sri Aurobindo to comment that Nala-Damayanti is the creation of a young Vyasa when he was still under Valmiki’s influence. In the core Mahabharata, Vyasa is the stern and high epic poet. Perhaps that is why we do not see another instance of possession after Nala’s by Kali except when king Kalmashpada is possessed by a demon sent by Vishvamitra. But then, Damayanti after all is a Vyasan character. It cannot be all milk and honey. The spark of fire, the strength of the obelisk must be there somewhere, lying dormant. She is intelligent and fearless. That strength peeps through the veneer of soft romance time and again. The first time we see this strength is when Nala meets her for the first time, not on his own behalf but on behalf of the gods. Nala tries to persuade her to choose a god as he is scared for his life. But Damayanti puts her foot down and says, ‘I would like all the gods to come with you to mysvayamvara. Nishada king, at that time I will choose you for my husband. O maha-muscled one, I do not see anything wrong in this.’ End of conversation. A princess has decided to exercise her rights as a bride going to svayamvara even against the opinion of her beloved whom she has met for the first time. She handles the gods who presented themselves like Nala in the assembly very cleverly and with ‘lan, throwing the ball into their court: ‘And she decided finally to seek help from the gods themselves’ saying, ‘The gods were the ones who settled that he be my husband. That is the truth; therefore, O gods, point him out to me.’ This capacity of thinking on her feet, shows her to be an intelligent and creative woman with an extraordinary personality. A strong woman who would refuse even gods for her beloved even though he has established himself to be slightly wanting in matters of love and intelligence. Later, when she saw that Nala was losing badly in the dice-game, once again she gave proof of her foresight and decision-making by deciding to send the children to her father’s place. By burning the Vyadha in the forest for making lewd advances, she made it clear that she was not one to be trifled with. Her conditions of service placed before the Rajmata at Chedi displayed her self-respect, personality and strength of character. Her proactive nature comes out very strongly when we see her sending out messengers to search for Nala, playing the ruse of the second svayamvara as a means of bringing Nala to her, in establishing his identity and meeting him in person when he did not look at all like the Nala she knew. Through all this, Nala did nothing except to sigh and lament. I think in his eagerness in portraying Damayanti in brilliant light, Vyasa painted Nala as more daft than necessary. But Damayanti, though strong, cannot be compared fairly with Draupadi. It is a matter of scale. If Damayanti is an unswerving bright lamp, Draupadi is a conflagration, proud flames rising from the sacrificial altar. From the time she, born of fire, appears in the epic she blazes through the rest of the story as the cause celebre of the destruction of the Kaurava clan. Damayanti is the heroine of a small tale, the product of a young and romantic mind but Draupadi is an epic heroine, conceived by a matured mind that is honed by experience and refined by the fire of ascesis, described by Sri Aurobindo as ‘the pale and marble rishi, the austere philosopher, the great statesman, the strong and stern poet of war and empire’ Damayanti’s tragic moments are underlined deliberately whereas Draupadi’s moments of pathos, her softer moments, are overwhelmed by her tremendous personality, her pride, passion and unforgiving temper. This is perhaps the reason that persuaded Sri Aurobindo, who, unlike many, was convinced that ‘These poems (Nala and Savittrie) are very Vyasa’, to write, ‘Here we have the very morning of Vyasa’s genius, when he was young and ardent, perhaps still under the immediate influence of Valmekie (one of the most pathetic touches in the Nala is borrowed straight out of the Ramayana {Sri Aurobindo is probably referring to the scene where Damayanti, like Rama, is asking the trees the whereabouts of Nala}: at any rate without ceasing to be finely restrained to give some rein to his fancy. The Nala therefore has the delicate & unusual romantic grace of a romantic and severe classic who has permitted himself to go-a-maying in the field of romance. There is a remote charm of restraint in the midst of abandon, of vigilance in the play of fancy which is passing sweet and strange.’ Therefore being young and ‘with Valmekie’s mighty stanzas in his mind’ he created a fairy tale ambience in the Nala story with people having lots of magical powers thrown in. So, we have golden swans talking in a human voice, talking birds fleeing with clothes, a sword appearing from nowhere with which Nala would cut the cloth, burning of the hunter, Karkotaka Naga changing his size at will, hermitage appearing and disappearing, Nala’s magical powers over nature as a result of the gods’ boons, Rituparna’s ability to count leaves, etc. A lot of shape-shifting is also going on, like, the gods take on Nala’s form, Karkotaka becomes small and large, Nala, a handsome man, becomes ugly with Karkotaka’s bite and regains his original form later, Kali becomes the dice, etc. In the main tale of the Mahabharata, obviously a much later work, we see much restraint in Vyasa; here he has become the stern and high poet of the epic. He still loves the wonderful and the strange, but the touches of wonder and strangeness here are fleeting, ‘gone as soon as glimpsed’. So this weakness, coming down from the younger days still exists but severely ‘bitted and reined in.’ In any case, a romantic tale, severely influenced by Valmiki, ornamented with Valmikian frills and infested with fairy tales and magic, does surprise us. Prof. Lal has captured the typical Nala-Damayanti ambience, most unusual for a Vyasan creation, admirably in his transcreation of the tale in free-flowing English verse, his hall-mark. But that is only expected. The text therefore does not require any comment, neither do the readers need any encouraging nudge from a review. One has to merely catch hold of a copy, sit back and enjoy some brilliant poetry describing one lovely story from Indian mythology without getting hindered by any intellectual road-block. To quote one remarkable passage, Damayanti imploring the gods, ‘And, trembling with fear, in pranjali, said: There are of course some minor mistakes that have crept in. Like, why at one place, he keeps referring to Nala as Varshneya is not very clear. Nala’s father is Virasena and Varshneya is the name of Nala’s charioteer. It must be an oversight. Besides Prof. Lal’s transcreation which, according to Dr. Prema Nandakumar, is in ‘bracing, easy-to-read, delightful English of our century’s Vyasa,’ the other asset of the book is the excellent introduction by her. She has described the tale, nicely bringing out the commonalities between the stories of Nala and Yudhishthira and also discussing how the Nala story is an indictment of Yudhishthira. She goes on to discuss some of the major Sanskrit, Malayalam, Tamil, Telegu and English versions of the Nala legend (Sriharsha’sNaishadhacharitam, (also known as Naiadhiyacarita, or Naiadha,) Kshemeswara’sNaishadhananda, Trivikram Bhatta’s Nala Champu, Unnayi Warrier’s Nalacharitram, Nallan Chakravarthy Sadagopacharya’s Bhaimi Svayamvaram, Ramaraja Bhushana’sHarishchandra-Nalopakhyanam, Ativeera Rama Pandyan’s Naidadham, Pugazhendi’sNalavenpa, Sri Aurobindo’s The Tale of Nala and K.R. Srinivasa iyenger’s Sati Sapthakam) and a very informative discussion on why Nala was one of the very few persons for whom Vyasa has used the epithet, punyashloka. In the process we get a glimpse of how these legends get enmeshed in the psyche of our society. The introduction is not only pleasant-reading but extremely enriching. However, it is not understood why she has translated ‘Kali’ as shani, Saturn, in the beginning of the essay. We find this Kali-Shani equation in the later parts of the essay too. In a personal communication she has explained, ‘I had this doubt, but could get no clarification. Hence I have given some details about the Tirunallaru temple where Saturn is worshipped, equated with Kali and the pond there is supposed to have cleared Nala of Kali-dosha.’ While talking of vernacular versions of the legend, I must mention that as in South India, the Nala-Damayanti story is quite popular in Bengal too. It is a part of the folk consciousness and there are many versions of the story based on which yatras are performed even today in rural Bengal. But I was quite surprised to find that there is no composition by any major litterateur of Bengal on this subject. If such a composition exists it has escaped my attention. Only Dinesh Chandra Sen, the famous historian of Bengali literature, mentions a few works: Loknath Datta’s Naishadh (1768 AD) describing the story of Nala, Ramayana and Indradyumna in 1440 verses, Sri Majhi Kait’s Naishadh (1147 BS) and Madhusudan Napit’s Nala-Damayanti(1809 AD) in 2124 verses (Dinesh Chandra Sen, Bangabhasha O Sahitya, Gurudas Chattopadhyaya & Sons, Kolkata, 7th ed. (first edition 1896)). It is interesting to note that Abul Faizi wrote a Persian version of the story at the instance of Akbar, the great, entitled Kisseh-ishq-i-Nal va Daman. |
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Pundarika and Chandrapida. This painting shows Kadambari playing the Sitar. Vegetable Dyes on Silk, 24″/30″, Teakwood Frame.
livin sculpture and princess
watercolor 10×11″
Ottanthullal- a dance of kerala
13.5×14 watercolor on febriyano
Kathiruppu (Sold)
Watercolor
തോണി
A Fishing methode.Watercolor
Kathiruppu
Watercolor 12×14″
In a village
Watercolor 10×11″ handmade
Parampil
Water color 10×11″
Chungam Alappuzha
Watercolor.Handmade.Old work
waiting for krishna-water-acrylic
My New Painting-Acrylic
Rajasringaram
Yekshimol(witch-lusty)
Water color
Sita and the golden deer.
The demon Mareecha took the form of a golden deer and attracted Sita’s attention and drew away Rama and Laxmana from her side. This allows Ravana, the King of Lanka to kidnap Sita, disguising himself as a brahmana mendicant while her husband was away fetching the magnificent golden deer. Acrylic on Silk. 24″/36″, Teakwood frame.
Lady at a ball game
This sensuous painting of Raja Ravi Varma shows a lady playing with a ball while her sari unravels. This painting is naughty, bold, and graceful at the same time. This paintings uses acrylic on silk, which is mounted on a tussar silk fabric in typical Orissan design.
Damayanti with Swan
Nala was the ruler of Nishada. Nala pined for Damayanti the daughter of the King of Vidarbh, with Nala fell in love with her without seeing her.He spent long hours in the garden of his palace dreaming about her. A group of swans lived in the lakes in the garden. They daily observed the despondent king wasting his time. One day the leader of the swans approached the king and asked him what the matter was. The king informed the swan that he was in love with Damayanti but was unable to press his suit. He did not even know if Damayanti was in love with someone else. Custom prevented him from going to Vidarbh himself and this was too delicate a mission to entrust to someone else. “If you think fit I can deliver your message,” said the swan. Nala lighted up. At last there was an end to his immediate problems. And there could be no more romantic way to woo a maiden. That night the swan left for Vidarbh. This painting shows the Swan conveying Nala’s love to Damayanti.
Vegetable Dyes on Silk
Lord Rama meeting Sita
This painting is based on the theme from the Indian epic Ramayana. Sita grew up to be a girl of unparalleled beauty and charm. When Sita was of marriageable age, her father King Janaka decided to have a “Swayamvara” which included a contest. The king was in possession of an immensely heavy bow, presented to him by the god Shiva; whoever could wield the bow could marry Sita. The sage Vishwamitra attends the Swayamvara with Rama and Lakshmana. Only Rama could wield the bow and breaks it. Marriages are arranged between Rama and Sita as well as other sons of Dasharatha and daughters and nieces of Janaka. This painting portrays the memorable scene where Rama, the King of Ayodhya sees Sita, his consort for the first time before the Swayamvara in a garden.
Vegetable Dyes on Silk
Taradevi
This painting is of Taradevi, which is another name of Goddess Saraswati. In this painting, Goddess Saraswati is playing the Veena on a boat.
Vegetable Dyes on Silk
Mohini on a Swing
Mohini , is the name of the only female avatar of the god Vishnu. She is portrayed as a femme fatale, an enchantress, who maddens lovers, sometimes leading them to their doom. Mohini is introduced into Hindu mythology in the narrative epic of the Mahabharata. Here, she appears as a form of Vishnu, acquires the pot of Amrita (an elixir of immortality) from thieving asuras (demons), and gives it back to the Devas (demi-gods), helping them retain their immortality. The earliest reference to a Mohini-type goddess appears in the Samudra manthan or Churning of the Oceans. The Amrita, or nectar of immortality, is produced by the churning of the Ocean of Milk. The Devas and the Asuras fight over its possession. The Asuras contrive to keep the Amrita for themselves, angering the Devas. Vishnu, wise to their plan, assumes the form of an “enchanting damsel”. Mohini uses her allure to trick the Asuras into giving her the Amrita, and then distributes it amongst the Devas.
Acrylic on Silk
Shakuntala
The legend of the exquisitely beautiful Shakuntala and the mighty king Dushyant is a thrilling love story from the epic Mahabharata, which the great ancient poet Kalidasa retold in his immortal play Abhijnanashakuntalam. While on a hunting trip, King Dushyant of the Puru dynasty meets the hermit-girl Shakuntala. They fall in love with each other. In this painting Shakuntala is Looking for Dushyanta. Shakuntala spent much time dreaming of her new husband and was often distracted by her daydreams. Ravi Varma, depicts Shakuntala, a prominent character of Mahabaratha, pretending to remove a thorn from her foot, while actually looking for her husband/lover, Dushyantha, while her friends call her bluff.
Acrylic on Silk
Dancing Apsaras
Acrylic on Wood
In another effort at fusion and adaptation, the painter has decorated a wooden screen which is used as a partition. This large work features four women dancers from the temple who are preparing for the festival of the Lord. At the centre is featured the temple with an ornate elephant. The dancers are full and buxom and the poses are adapted from the sandstone statues of apsaras sculpted in the Orissa style. One of the dancers are shown applying ‘alta’ on her feet while others are applying make-up or practicing dance.
Tribal Figures
Acrylic on Silk
In another effort at fusion and adaptation, the painter has decorated a silk lampshade with figures in the style of Saora tribal art. The figures are colourful and have no facial features. They feature men, women and children.
Saora Tribal Paintings are basically paintings made in the inner walls of their mud huts which are called ittlans. These paintings are done with the aims of preservation of good harvests, avoiding bad luck and disease and honoring the dead and the valiant. The tribals’ occupation being mainly agriculture, they tend to depict lots of natural vistas in their paintings – farming, fields and landscape form important categories of painting. However, items of the modern world, like the plane, chairs, desks, etc have also started featuring in their works. The entire process includes a prolonged procedure of invocation of the spirits in order to make their hopes and wishes work.
Vegetable Dyes on Silk
As per Hindu Mythology, Lord Vishnu is supposed to undertake ten incarnations to restore order and peace in the world, and the primacy of good over evil. Nine of the incarnations are already manifest or completed, with one to come at the end of the present “Yuga” which is the Kali Yuga (Kalki Avatar). In Patachitra tradition, in Kalki avatar Vishnu rides a horse and has a sword in hand. It is interesting to note that Lord Buddha is counted as some branches of Hindu mythology (especially the Orissa School) as an incarnation of Vishnu. This may indicate the influence of Buddhism over this part of India. This panel uses vegetable dyes on silk and is one of the painter’s first pieces and is 15 years old. Some observe that coincidentally, the sequence of the avatars match the order of evolution of life on earth.
Acrylic on Wood
In another effort at fusion and adaptation, the painter has decorated a wooden screen which is used as a partition. This large work features four women dancers from the temple who are preparing for the festival of the Lord. At the centre is featured the temple with an ornate elephant. The dancers are full and buxom and the poses are adapted from the sandstone statues of apsaras sculpted in the Orissa style. One of the dancers are shown applying ‘alta’ on her feet while others are applying make-up or practicing dance.
Acrylic on Silk
In another effort at fusion and adaptation, the painter has decorated a silk lampshade with figures in the style of Saora tribal art. The figures are colourful and have no facial features. They feature men, women and children.
Saora Tribal Paintings are basically paintings made in the inner walls of their mud huts which are called ittlans. These paintings are done with the aims of preservation of good harvests, avoiding bad luck and disease and honoring the dead and the valiant. The tribals’ occupation being mainly agriculture, they tend to depict lots of natural vistas in their paintings – farming, fields and landscape form important categories of painting. However, items of the modern world, like the plane, chairs, desks, etc have also started featuring in their works. The entire process includes a prolonged procedure of invocation of the spirits in order to make their hopes and wishes work.
Page 5 of 12
Vegetable Dyes on Silk
As per Hindu Mythology, Lord Vishnu is supposed to undertake ten incarnations to restore order and peace in the world, and the primacy of good over evil. Nine of the incarnations are already manifest or completed, with one to come at the end of the present “Yuga” which is the Kali Yuga (Kalki Avatar). In Patachitra tradition, in Kalki avatar Vishnu rides a horse and has a sword in hand. It is interesting to note that Lord Buddha is counted as some branches of Hindu mythology (especially the Orissa School) as an incarnation of Vishnu. This may indicate the influence of Buddhism over this part of India. This panel uses vegetable dyes on silk and is one of the painter’s first pieces and is 15 years old. Some observe that coincidentally, the sequence of the avatars match the order of evolution of life on earth.
“Young Krishna and friends stealing butter”
Acrylic on Silk
Lord Krishna, the son of Devaki and Vasudev, was brought up by Nandadev, a Yadav chieftain and his wife Yasodha in idyllic Vrundavan. He had a really joyful childhood, playing with his cowherd friends and getting into all kinds of mischief. One of his favourite past-times was stealing butter. This painting shows lord Krishna and his friends forming a human pyramid to reach pots of butter hung high and out of reach of the children.
Pair of paintings depicting Krishna with Gopis
Acrylic on Silk
This painting is part of a pair of paintings featuring Krishna in the company of Gopikas. The painter has used coloured silk cloth as the background instead of the natural silk colour, which is more commonly used. The colours used compliment the background and give the paintings a unique lustre.
“Kandarpa Hathi” or “Woman-elephant”
Acrylic on Silk
Kandarpa is another name for Kamadev, the Hindu God of Love. Themes in pata-chitras that have erotic overtones include the kandarpa ratha (Cupid-car) and the nari ashva (woman-horse) and ‘kandarpa hathi (women-elephant). In this painting, a group of gopi (cowherd) maidens form themselves into an elephant on which Krishna and his sweetheart Radha ride together. The intricate positions and level of detail make this a very interesting painting to view
“Young Krishna and friends stealing butter”
Acrylic on Silk
Lord Krishna, the son of Devaki and Vasudev, was brought up by Nandadev, a Yadav chieftain and his wife Yasodha in idyllic Vrundavan. He had a really joyful childhood, playing with his cowherd friends and getting into all kinds of mischief. One of his favourite past-times was stealing butter. This painting shows lord Krishna and his friends forming a human pyramid to reach pots of butter hung high and out of reach of the children.
Pair of paintings depicting Krishna with Gopis
Acrylic on Silk
This painting is part of a pair of paintings featuring Krishna in the company of Gopikas. The painter has used coloured silk cloth as the background instead of the natural silk colour, which is more commonly used. The colours used compliment the background and give the paintings a unique lustre.
“Kandarpa Hathi” or “Woman-elephant”
Acrylic on Silk
Kandarpa is another name for Kamadev, the Hindu God of Love. Themes in pata-chitras that have erotic overtones include the kandarpa ratha (Cupid-car) and the nari ashva (woman-horse) and ‘kandarpa hathi (women-elephant). In this painting, a group of gopi (cowherd) maidens form themselves into an elephant on which Krishna and his sweetheart Radha ride together. The intricate positions and level of detail make this a very interesting painting to view
Acrylic on Silk
This painting features Lord Vishnu as in Ananta Sayana form – reclining on Snake Ananta in a state of inactivity and bliss surrounded by his ten avatars including the one to come- Kalki. As per Hindu Mythology, Lord Vishnu is supposed to undertake ten incarnations to restore order and peace in the world, and the primacy of good over evil. Nine of the incarnations are already manifest or completed, with one to come at the end of the present “Yuga” which is the Kali Yuga. It is interesting to note that Lord Buddha is counted as some branches of Hindu mythology (especially the Orissa School) as an incarnation of Vishnu. This may indicate the influence of Buddhism over this part of India.
He realized that Krishna was the Supreme Lord, the master of everything. The creatures in the river also pay their respects to Krishna.
Acrylic on Silk
This painting portrays Ras-Lila, which is the dance of love that Krishna enjoyed the with the gopis, many of whom are expansions of his own internal energies. The supreme gopi known as Radha is the object of Krishna’s highest devotion. This beautiful dance would occur in the autumn season at night under a full moon when Lord Krishna would captivate the young gopis with the extraordinary music of his flute. Even today, we have villagers in India taking part in Raslila and depicting various stories of Radha and Krishna through dance, music and drama.
Acrylic on Silk
Horses have always been an essential part of patachitra paintings. However, the theme of dancing horses is a part of a recent effort by some artists to introduce a different element to this form. This painting shows horses in various poses representing joy and happiness. An effort has been made to convey freedom and motion in the painting. The decorative detail in the painting also adds to the effect.
Acrylic on Silk
This painting shows the defeat of Kaliya the snake by young Krishna. This episode is the first time during the avatar that Krishna reveals his superhuman strengths. As the story goes, due to the giant snake Kaliya’s poison, trees and grass near the bank of the Yamuna had all dried up. Lord Krishna jumped into the poisonous lake and Kaliya, the serpent grabbed Krishna with His mighty coils and held him in his coils for two hours. Krishna then freed himself and then started to dance on the hoods of Kaliya. Gradually, Kaliya was reduced to struggling for his very life. Kaliya then began to vomit blood instead of poison; he was completely fatigued. His whole body appeared to be broken by the kicks of the Lord. Within his mind, however, he finally began to understand that Krishna was the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and he began to surrender unto Him.
Acrylic on Silk
This painting is part of a pair of paintings featuring Krishna in the company of Gopikas. The painter has used coloured silk cloth as the background instead of the natural silk colour, which is more commonly used. The colours used compliment the background and give the paintings a unique lustre.
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Hieronymus Bosch
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Art Pictures Collections
Table of Contents
1. Jacob’s first visit to s’Hertogenbosch, Jeroen paints Terra Nostra, 1467-1468
2. Jacob returns, Jeroen paints the Garden Triptych, 1468-1470
3. Sibylle and Jacob’s Wedding, They leave for Antwerp, The Storm flood, 1472-1477
4. Jeroen marries Aleit, His Father dies, Bronchorst Epiphany, Last Judgment, 1478-1492
5. Jacob returns, Jacob’s Baptism and admittance to The Botherhood of Our Lady, 1494-1496
6. The Table of the Seven Deadly Sins,The Temptation of St. Anthony, 1497-1502
7. Disaster Strikes, The Haywain, Jacob persued by the Archbischop of Colologne, 1502-1504
8. Jeroen takes Jacob to Spain and Portugal, Jacob dies on the ship home, 1505-1506
9. Jeroen returns to bankrupt shop, Sicut Erat in Diebus Noë, He dies a pauper, 1507-1516.
10. Notes to the unwary Reader
Bosch’s Paintings
1. Pilgrim’s Badges excavated in Den Bosch, 15th cent, Rotterdam
2. Fragment of a Last Judgment, 1466, Munich
3. Temptation of St. Anthony, 1466, Madrid
4. Garden Triptych, Right Wing, the Burning City, 1467, Madrid
5. Garden Triptych, Right Wing, the Tree Man, 1467, Madrid
6. Garden Triptych, Right Wing, Musical Instruments, 1467, Madrid
7. Garden Triptych, Right Wing, the Emperor Bird, 1467, Madrid
8. Wedding at Canaa, Female Initiation Altar, copy 1568 (original 1476), Cologne
9. Garden Triptych, Right Wing, Terra Nostra, 1468
10. Garden Triptych, Central Panel, Wedding Cavalcade, 1468, Madrid
11. Garden Triptych, Central Panel, Sibylle and Death in Paradise, 1468, Madrid
12. Garden Triptych, Central Panel, Love and Death in Paradies, 1468, Madrid
13. Garden Triptych, Central Panel, Loving Couple in a Pomegranate, 1468, Madrid
14. Garden Triptych, Central Panel, The Hoopoe and the Persian Birds, 1468, Madrid
15. Garden Triptych, Central Panel, Jeroen and Sibylle, 1468, Madrid
16. Garden Triptych, Central Panel, The Cave, Jacob, Sibylle, and Jeroen 1468, Madrid
17. Garden Triptych, Central Panel, The Paradise,1468, Madrid
18. Garden Triptych, Left Panel, Creation of the New Covenant,1469, Madrid
19. Garden Triptych, Left Panel, Betrothal of Jacob and Sibylle,1469, Madrid
20. Garden Triptych, 1470, Madrid
21. Garden Triptych, Outside, Third Day of Creation, 1470, Madrid
22. Wedding at Canaa, copy 1570 (original 1475), Rotterdam
23. Wedding at Canaa, Christ, Ficino-Albertus Magnus, 1570 (original 1475), Rotterdam
24. Wedding at Canaa, Jacob, Sibylle, Female Altar, 1570 (original 1475), Rotterdam
25. Wedding at Canaa, Drawing after Bosch painting, Louvre, 16th cent
26. St. Hieronymus in Prayer, 1482, Ghent
27. The Second Coming of Christ, 1482-1496, Vienna
28. The Bronchorst Epiphany, 1485, Madrid
29. The Bronchorst Epiphany, Adam 1485, Madrid
30. Four Wings of Christ’s Second Coming, 1492, Venice
31. Allard Duhameel, Engraving of a Last Judgment after Bosch, 15th cent, Amsterdam
32. The Prodigal Son, 1495, Rotterdam
33. St. John the Evangelist on Patmos, 1496, Berlin
34. St. John the Evangelist on Patmos, Reverse: Christ’s Passion, 1496, Berlin
35. Adoration of the Christ Child, copy 1568, (original 1496), Cologne
36. The Table of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1498, Madrid
37. Christ Bearing the Coss, 1499, Escorial
38. St Christopher carrying the Christ Child, 1497, Rotterdam
39. Temptation of St.Anthony, Outside, 1502, Lisbon
40. Temptation of St.Anthony, Middle Panel, 1502, Lisbon
41. Temptation of St.Anthony, Middle Panel, St. Anthony, Black Mass, 1502, Lisbon
42. Temptation of St. Anthony, Middle Panel, Duck-Ship, 1502, Lisbon
43. Temptation of St.Anthony, Middle Panel, Broken Column of Deuteronomy, 1502, Lisbon
44. Temptation of St.Anthony, Middle Panel, Army of Enemies, 1502, Lisbon
45. Temptation of St.Anthony, Middle Panel, Stricken People, 1502, Lisbon
46. Temptation of St.Anthony, Right Wing, St. Anthony in the Desert, 1502, Lisbon
47. Temptation of St.Anthony, Right Wing, St. Anthony among the Travestites, 1502, Lisbon
48. Temptation of St.Anthony, Left Wing, St. Anthony’s Fall from Grace, 1502, Lisbon
49. Temptation of St.Anthony, Left Wing, St. Anthony flying,Sodomite Airship, 1502, Lisbon
50. Temptation of St.Anthony, Left Wing, Papal Bulle, St. Anthony’s Rescue, 1502, Lisbon
51. The Haywain, Middle Panel, copy 1516, (original 1504), Madrid
52. The Haywain, Outside of Triptych, Jacob on Pilgrimage, 1516, (original 1504), Madrid
53. Sicut Erat in Diebus Noë, Sibylle’s Rescue, Jacob’s Conversion, 1415, Rotterdam
54. Sicut Erat in Diebus Noë, The Nephilim, Noah’s Ark, 1415, Rotterdam
55. Sicut Erat in Diebus Noë, Sibylle and her Child, 1415, Rotterdam
Portrait of Hieronymus Bosch ,
| Hieronymus Bosch | |
|---|---|
Attributed to Jacques Le Boucq, Portrait of Hieronymus Bosch. c. 1550 |
|
| Birth name | Jheronimus van Aken |
| Born | c. 1450 ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Duchy of Brabant (Netherlands) |
| Died | Buried on 9 August 1516(1516-08-09) |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Field | Painting |
| Movement | Early Netherlandish Renaissance |
| Works | The Garden of Earthly Delights The Temptation of St. Anthony |
Hieronymus Bosch (English pronunciation: /ˌhaɪ.əˈrɒnɨməs ˈbɒʃ/, Dutch: [ɦijeːˈɾoːnimʏs ˈbɔs]; born Jheronimus van Aken Dutch pronunciation: [jeɪˈɾoːnimʏs vɑn ˈaːkə(n)];[1] (c. 1450 – 9 August 1516), was a Dutch painter. His work is known for its use of fantastic imagery to illustrate moral and religious concepts and narratives.[2]
Contents
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Hieronymus Bosch was born Jheronimus (or Joen,[3] respectively the Latin and Middle Dutch form of the name “Jerome”) van Aken (meaning “from Aachen“). He signed a number of his paintings as Jheronimus Bosch (pronounced Jeronimus Boss in Middle Dutch).[4] The name derives from his birthplace, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, which is commonly called “Den Bosch”.
Little is known of Bosch’s life or training. He left behind no letters or diaries, and what has been identified has been taken from brief references to him in the municipal records of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, and in the account books of the local order of the Brotherhood of Our Lady. Nothing is known of his personality or his thoughts on the meaning of his art. Bosch’s date of birth has not been determined with certainty. It is estimated at c. 1450 on the basis of a hand drawn portrait (which may be a self-portrait) made shortly before his death in 1516. The drawing shows the artist at an advanced age, probably in his late sixties.[5]
First known entry of Bosch’ name in the municipal record, 5 April 1474.
Bosch was born and lived all his life in and near ‘s-Hertogenbosch, a city in the Duchy of Brabant. His grandfather, Jan van Aken (died 1454), was a painter and is first mentioned in the records in 1430. It is known that Jan had five sons, four of whom were also painters. Bosch’s father, Anthonius van Aken (died c. 1478) acted as artistic adviser to the Brotherhood of Our Lady.[6] It is generally assumed that either Bosch’s father or one of his uncles taught the artist to paint, but none of their works survive.[7] Bosch first appears in the municipal record in 1474, when he is named along with two brothers and a sister.
‘s-Hertogenbosch was a flourishing city in fifteenth century Brabant, in the south of the present-day Netherlands, at the time part of the Burgundian Netherlands, and during his lifetime passing through marriage to the Habsburgs. In 1463, 4,000 houses in the town were destroyed by a catastrophic fire, which the then (approximately) 13-year-old Bosch presumably witnessed. He became a popular painter in his lifetime and often received commissions from abroad. In 1488 he joined the highly respected Brotherhood of Our Lady, an arch-conservative religious group of some 40 influential citizens of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, and 7,000 ‘outer-members’ from around Europe.
Sometime between 1479 and 1481, Bosch married Aleyt Goyaerts van den Meerveen, who was a few years older than the artist. The couple moved to the nearby town of Oirschot, where his wife had inherited a house and land from her wealthy family.[8]
An entry in the accounts of the Brotherhood of Our Lady records Bosch’s death in 1516. A funeral mass served in his memory was held in the church of Saint John on 9 August of that year.[9]
The Garden of Earthly Delights, Bosch’s most widely known triptych, El Prado Museum
Bosch produced several triptychs. Among his most famous is The Garden of Earthly Delights. This painting, for which the original title has not survived, depicts paradise with Adam and Eve and many wondrous animals on the left panel, the earthly delights with numerous nude figures and tremendous fruit and birds on the middle panel, and hell with depictions of fantastic punishments of the various types of sinners on the right panel. When the exterior panels are closed the viewer can see, painted in grisaille, God creating the Earth. These paintings—especially the Hell panel—are painted in a comparatively sketchy manner which contrasts with the traditional Flemish style of paintings, where the smooth surface—achieved by the application of multiple transparent glazes—conceals the brushwork. In this painting, and more powerfully in works such as his Temptation of St. Anthony (Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon), Bosch draws with his brush. Not surprisingly, Bosch is also one of the most revolutionary draftsmen in the history of art, producing some of the first autonomous sketches in Northern Europe.
Bosch never dated his paintings. But—unusual for the time—he seems to have signed several of them, although other signatures purporting to be his are certainly not. Fewer than 25 paintings remain today that can be attributed to him. In the late sixteenth-century, Philip II of Spain acquired many of Bosch’s paintings, including some probably commissioned and collected by Spaniards active in Bosch’s hometown; as a result, the Prado Museum in Madrid now owns The Adoration of the Magi, The Garden of Earthly Delights, the tabletop painting of The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things, the The Haywain Triptych and The Stone Operation.
In the twentieth century, when changing artistic tastes made artists like Bosch more palatable to the European imagination, it was sometimes argued that Bosch’s art was inspired by heretical points of view (e.g., the ideas of the Cathars and putative Adamites) as well as of obscure hermetic practices. Again, since Erasmus had been educated at one of the houses of the Brethren of the Common Life in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, and the town was religiously progressive, some writers have found it unsurprising that strong parallels exist between the caustic writing of Erasmus and the often savage painting of Bosch. “Although the Brethren remained loyal to the Pope, they still saw it as their duty to denounce the abuses and scandalous behaviour of many priests: the corruption which both Erasmus and Bosch satirised in their work”.[10]
The Owl’s Nest. Pen and bistre on paper. 140 × 196 mm. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Others, following a strain of Bosch-interpretation datable already to the sixteenth-century, continued to think his work was created merely to titillate and amuse, much like the “grotteschi” of the Italian Renaissance. While the art of the older masters was based in the physical world of everyday experience, Bosch confronts his viewer with, in the words of the art historian Walter Gibson, “a world of dreams [and] nightmares in which forms seem to flicker and change before our eyes.” In one of the first known accounts of Bosch’s paintings, in 1560 the Spaniard Felipe de Guevara wrote that Bosch was regarded merely as “the inventor of monsters and chimeras“. In the early seventeenth century, the Dutch art historian Karel van Mander described Bosch’s work as comprising “wondrous and strange fantasies”; however, he concluded that the paintings are “often less pleasant than gruesome to look at.”[11]
In recent decades, scholars have come to view Bosch’s vision as less fantastic, and accepted that his art reflects the orthodox religious belief systems of his age.[citation needed] His depictions of sinful humanity, his conceptions of Heaven and Hell are now seen as consistent with those of late medieval didactic literature and sermons. Most writers attach a more profound significance to his paintings than had previously been supposed, and attempt to interpret it in terms of a late medieval morality. It is generally accepted that Bosch’s art was created to teach specific moral and spiritual truths in the manner of other Northern Renaissance figures, such as the poet Robert Henryson, and that the images rendered have precise and premeditated significance. According to Dirk Bax, Bosch’s paintings often represent visual translations of verbal metaphors and puns drawn from both biblical and folkloric sources.[12] However, the conflict of interpretations that his works still elicit raise profound questions about the nature of “ambiguity” art of his period.
Some writers attempt to interpret his imagery using the language of Freudian psychology. However, such theses are commonly rejected; according to Gibson, “what we choose to call the libido was denounced by the medieval church as original sin; what we see as the expression of the subconscious mind was for the Middle Ages the promptings of God or the Devil.”[13]
The exact number of Bosch’s surviving works has been a subject of considerable debate. He signed only seven of his paintings, and there is uncertainty whether all the paintings once ascribed to him were actually from his hand. It is known that from the early sixteenth century onwards numerous copies and variations of his paintings began to circulate. In addition, his style was highly influential, and was widely imitated by his numerous followers.[14]
Over the years, scholars have attributed to him fewer and fewer of the works once thought to be his, and today only 25 are definitively attributed to him.
References
On a late September day in 1467 Jacob wandered among the booths of the Michaelis Fair in s’Hertogenbosch. A good-looking, tall man with a prominent nose, a sensuous mouth. and intelligent dark eyes below a two-part receding hairline. Jacob was well-dressed for a semi-itinerant magister of philosophy, astrology, and mathematics. He had arrived in Brabant as one of the tutors of the eight-year-old Maximilian of Hapsburg.
Maximilian had been sent by his father Friedrich III, Archduke of Austria and Roman Emperor, as an emissary to attend the inauguration of Charles the Bold as Duke of Brabant. But the true purpose of Maximilian’s journey was for him to make the acquaintance of ten-year-old Marie of Burgundy, the heiress to Charles the Bold’s possessions in Brabant, the Low Countries, and Burgundy. A delicate political mission which offered the promise to greatly increase the realm of the Hapsburg dynasty.
Jacob had much free time to explore s’Hertogenbosch. One reception followed the other, at which he was not needed. They were roasting three oxen in the town square, which together with an abundance of wine the influential citizens of the city had presented to Duke Charles. The common folks crowded the fair in a meadow extra-muras of town. Jacob liked what he saw, the people, their bucolic dances, and their refreshing spirit. Innsbruck, where he had spent most of the year with Maximilian, was a small, sedate town trapped between mountains. Before his appointment to the Emperors court he had lived several years at Galeazzo Sforza’s court in Milan and in Florence at the feet of Marsilio Ficino, at Cosimo di Medici’s famous Neoplatonic Academy. Italy was ruled by autocrats and the all-pervasive Church. By comparison Brabant was a wide open country inhabited by unruly people. The power lay in the hands of the wealthy merchants, of its rich cities, and a few landowners. Their Burgundian Dukes lived far away. The simple people stood on two legs, always ready to defend their independence. They were strong-willed and obstinate, a trait which was missing among the commoners of Austria and Italy. There was an openness to revolutionary, often heretical ideas here, which the Church suppressed further south.
Jacob was Jewish. Although he did not practice his religion, the Christian Church was anathema to him. A mind-set he had learned to hide. He had been born in the German Rhineland, which had earned him the surname van Almaengien. He had left his town and the narrowness of its community early in exchange for a life as an independent wanderer through the learned cities of Europe.
There were dozens of stands on the fair grounds, temporary tents and scaffolding. Anything was being sold from trinkets, to kitchen utensils, earthenware, bread, vegetables, and precious cloth. In its central square, surrounded by eateries and wine merchants, they were dancing to a simple band of fiddles, drums and pipes. A chaotic, burlesque scene. He walked down a narrow lane in which fortune tellers, vendors of herbal medicines, and dentist practiced their trades. At the end of the lane ladies of easy virtue beckoned to the “feine Herr.” The lane opened into a meadow, where in a guest-house a troop of prostitutes from Amsterdam had taken up residence for the occasion. The wings of a windmill turned on a neighboring hill.
He turned into a neighboring lane and found himself in front of two booths. A sign on the first said “Jeroen van Aken – Schildereij,”—paintings. In the other sat a young, red-blond woman with her back to him. The sign on her stall announced “Sibylle – Palm Reader – Pilgrim’s Badges.” Sibylle and the young Jeroen, a man of about eighteen with curly hair, broad lips, and a tanned complexion, were absorbed in an intense conversation. Sibylle gesticulated with her hands to make a point to Jeroen, who every now and then broke out in hearty laughter. Although he saw her only from the back, her graceful, lively gestures and her intensity intrigued him. She radiated a power, which he could not explain. He watched them for a while. Absorbed as they were with each other, they did not notice him.
Suddenly Sibylle turned and stared at him. For a few seconds she said nothing, then got up, made a deep curtsey before him, and to his surprise addressed him in Hebrew, “My Lord, are you the Messiah who will deliver us from this vale of tears? I offer you my life.”
Jacob stared at her in bewilderment. Her ageless face, her eyes! He courtly extended his hand to raise her. She examined his hand, but said nothing. “How did you guess that I speak Hebrew?” he asked perplexed. She looked at him and their eyes met, full of intense questions.
Jeroen’s laughter broke the spell. “I didn’t understand what she said to you,” said Jeroen innocently. “Sibylle often has attacks of clairvoyance. She sees things, we cannot see. Sir, don’t be offended by her words. She means no harm. Come sit with us.” Jeroen went into the back of his stall to get a stool for Jacob.
Avoiding her eyes Jacob said embarrassed “I am no Messiah,” and added with annoyance in his voice, “What a preposterous idea.” Sibylle did not respond. She sat on her stool staring at him, mute. Jeroen took over. “She is exhausted from seeing you,” he said. “Sir, look at her trinkets.”
Pilgrim’s Badges excavated in Den Bosch, 15th cent, Rotterdam
He pointed at Sibylle’s table. It was strewn with pewter amulets, a Madonna in a mandorla, Christ with thorns, various saints, a witch riding a broom, and an assortment of profane objects, a penis with wings and feet, a couple copulating, a vulva carried in state by three penises. Jeroen explained, “The pilgrims who come to the fair buy these amulets. They are very fashionable. I design them, and she has them cast from wooden molds.”
Jacob listened absentmindedly, the silent woman disturbed him. What else did she know? Where was she from? He felt a confused attraction to her. “Let me show you my schilderen,” said Jeroen. They got up and walked into his stall. Being out of reach of Sibylle’s intense gaze helped.
Fragment of a “Last Judgment”, 1466, Munich
Temptation of St. Anthony, 1466, Madrid
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Garden Triptych, Right Wing, the Burning City, 1467, Madrid
Garden Triptych, Right Wing, the Tree Man, 1467, Madrid
Garden Triptych, Right Wing, Musical Instruments, 1467, Madrid
Garden Triptych, Right Wing, the Emperor Bird, 1467, Madrid
Wedding at Canaa, Female Initiation Altar, copy 1570 (original 1475), Cologne
Garden Triptych, Right Wing, Terra Nostra, 1468
Garden Triptych, Central Panel, Wedding Cavalcade, 1468, Madrid
Garden Triptych, Central Panel, Sibylle and Death in Paradise, 1468, Madrid
Garden Triptych, Central Panel, Love and Death in Paradise 1468, Madrid
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Garden Triptych, Central Panel, Loving Couple in a Pomegranate, 1468, Madrid
Garden Triptych, Central Panel, The Hoopoe and the Persian Birds, 1468, Madrid
Garden Triptych, Central Panel, Jeroen and Sibylle 1468, Madrid
Garden Triptych, Central Panel, The Cave, Jacob, Sibylle, and Jeroen 1468, Madrid
Garden Triptych, Central Panel, The Neoplatonic Paradise,1468, Madrid
Garden Triptych, Left Panel, Creation of the New Covenant,1469, Madrid
Garden Triptych, Left Panel, Betrothal of Jacob and Sibylle, 1469, Madrid
Garden Triptych, 1470, Madrid
Garden Triptych, Outside, Third Day of Creation, 1470, Madrid
During the winter of 1471-72 Jacob let it be known that in the Spring he would present a series of symposia on Plato and Italian Renaissance philosophy. He worked hard on his preparations, translating several Hebrew texts, and reading Albertus Magnus whom Ficino had occasionally referred to, and Jacob now adopted as his local spiritual patron. Albertus was well-known and would make a good advertisement for his lectures among his Northern audiences. The response was more enthusiastic than he had expected. At the first meeting twelve gentlemen appeared, most of them well-educated local noblemen, eager to be part of the fabled Renaissance. Among them were Cornelis van Bergen and Johann von Nassau. Both were younger than he, but had inherited large landownings and political power, von Nassau in southern Brabant and van Bergen locally. Moreover Cornelis van Bergen was a friend of Maximilian von Hapsburg. Jacob knew him well. Jeroen sat among them. Sibylle and Herberte were the only women present.
It was a pleasure to watch Jacob in his role as teacher. Emulating Ficino at the sessions of the Florentine Academy Jacob lost his usual sarcastic tone. Sitting in front of his eager, young students, backed by Jeroen’s triptych, he first gave a general introduction to Ficino’s philosophy, enriched by his own recent insights into the deeper questions of the meaning of life. Starting with Albertus he painted a humanist view of the future of man that combined Greek, Christian, and Hebrew elements. Later they read Plato’s discourses using Ficino’s translation and commentaries. A Platonic banquet concluded the five days.
Johann von Nassau approached Jeroen and Jacob with an offer to buy the triptych for a sizable sum of money. It was a great temptation. Jacob had not charged for his discourses but needed money badly. On the other hand, he required the triptych for future lectures, and, last not least, the painting belonged to Jeroen not him. After a lengthy negotiation, von Nassau suggested to pay a portion of the price and leave the triptych with Jeroen as long as it would be needed by Jacob. The other gentlemen followed von Nassau’s generous example. Jacob’s lectures would be well endowed for a while. The triptych quickly became famous in the illustrious circles of Brabant.
One night Sibylle brought disturbing news. The Jewish community of Vught was grumbling about the large influx of outsiders. A few extremists were even threatening to put fire to Herberte’s house. This was no empty threat, and the fear of losing the triptych made them apprehensive. The situation was resolved by Cornelis van Bergen at the second symposium. He offered Jacob the use of his townhouse in s’Hertogenbosch not far from the house of the Confraternity of Our Lady, the highly regarded intellectual meeting place in northern Brabant.
Less easily smoothed over were the increasing difficulties between Sibylle’s father Noah and Jacob. Impressed by Jacob’s learned intelligence, her father had received him with open arms after Jacob had “rescued” Sibylle from the fire. He could hardly have wished for a better husband for her. Jacob was less sanguine. Sensitive as he was to fanatics, Jacob found Noah’s demonstrative, anti-Jewish and anti-Gentile posturings offensive and stupid. Now, after Noah witnessed Jacob’s success, he tried to recruit him as a loan-shark among the rich and powerful. Jacob refused in no uncertain words, and to Sibylle’s distress it almost came to blows between the two. She and Jacob were planning to have their wedding at her father’s house in March. She narrowly patched their intransigent differences.
Wedding at Canaa, copy 1562 (original 1476?), Cologne
Wedding at Canaa, Christ framed by Ficino and Albertus Magnus, 1562 (original 1476), Cologne
Wedding at Canaa, Jacob, Sibylle,stepmother, and the Female Altar, 1562 (original 1476), Cologne
Wedding at Canaa, Drawing after Bosch,16th cent, Louvre
Jeroen mourned his lost love. Despondent and preoccupied, he locked himself into his room and covered endless sheets of paper with doodles, witches, monsters, entire landscapes covered with eyes and ears and distorted human beings. His mind was a wasteland. In his darkest hours he berated himself for having let go of her so easily, first to Jacob and then to Ghent and Antwerp. Had he persuaded them to stay, Sibylle would still be alive. Why had Jacob left her alone in Antwerp when he went to Ghent? Why had he stayed that long? On the other hand had Jacob been in Antwerp during that night, he might well have both been among the dead. Jacob, the foreigner, had no respect for the sea and its dangerous vagaries like all inhabitants of the Low Countries had. Jeroen’s emotional condition had reached a disturbing low.
Jeroen’s father felt that maybe a wife could assuage his pain and revive his will to live. He had long had his eyes on Aleit van de Mervenne, the sole daughter of a close acquaintance who owned a number of properties in town, which he rented. Jeroen could offer no comparable inheritance to bring into a marriage with Aleit, but the triptych had made him famous in Brabant. They were not a bad match. He approached Jeroen with this suggestion, who shrugged, it was all the same to him. His father looked at his sullen face. If he could only reanimate this most gifted of his sons. “Look,” said his father. “You have not laughed ever since this Jacob disappeared. Maybe a wife could cheer you up. You know Aleit, she is a kind and decent woman, five years younger than you.” Jeroen nodded unresolved. His father spread his arms and with a trace of impatience in his voice described her assets. “Aleit will inherit a small fortune. As long as she lives, both of you will be well provided for by her income from her properties. If you would only learn to control your dark moods, yours could be a perfect marriage. May I ask her father for her hand in your stead?” Jeroen said faint-hearted, “Dear father, no woman can replace the one I lost, but I promise you that I will be a devoted husband to Aleit and treat her well, if she agrees to this arranged marriage. Talk to her father. I will do everything that is expected of me. Maybe love as I have known will come later.”
In Spring 1478 Aleit van de Mervenne and Jeroen van Aken were married by deacon Ghjisbert de Bije at Sint Jan’s Cathedral. Jeroen made his vow loud and clear and even smiled at the unexpected turn his life had taken. Everybody thought they made a most handsome pair.
Almost overnight Jeroen had become the co-owner of a four-story townhouse on the Groote Plats in Den Bosch. By the end of the century Jeroen van Aken was, as the records show, among the five highest taxpayers in Den Bosch. A rare and enviable situation among artists of his time, he was at liberty to paint what he liked. No patron could dictate what he painted. The uninteresting commissions he left to the family shop, of which he became the head after his father’s death. This is one reason, why the paintings attributed to Jeroen van Aken, dit Hieronymus Bosch, are so uneven in quality and execution. His own idiosyncratic paintings stand out like beacons along the path of his long life.
In the same year of 1478, at Ghent, Marie of Burgundy gave birth to a male heir. They named him Philip, to which his subjects added the by-name the Fair, because in contrast to his bold Burgundian grandfather and resolute mother, he was a meek child, a mere pawn in the hands of his powerful Hapsburgian father. Three years later, in 1481, Maximilian convened the Order of the Golden Fleece in s’Hertogenbosch. It was the only major city in Brabant where he could show himself. His enemies in Ghent would have chased him out of town. To stem the widespread discontent of his rule, Maximilian took the opportunity to knight three-year-old Philip. This heraldic move did little to subdue the impeccable hostility of his Brabantian subjects. A year later Philip’s mother, Marie of Burgundy fell from a horse and broke her neck. Despite Philip’s tender age, the Brabantians declared him Duke of Brabant in earnest. To give their claim substance, the good burghers of Ghent seized Philip and kept him hostage for the next three years. Maximilian, urgently engaged elsewhere, was forced to let it happen. But Philip’s guardians were agreeable to let Maximilian hire Jacob as tutor for his son. The first steady job Jacob had held in fifteen years.
St. Hieronymus in Prayer, 1482, Ghent
The Second Coming of Christ, 1482-1496, Vienna
It shows “Christ’s Second Coming” Fig.28
The Bronchorst Epiphany, 1485, Madrid
Herr van Bronchorst and Jeroen agreed that the triptych would be a regular Epiphany, which would, however, most unconventionally show the Old Adam witnessing his rebirth and salvation. Fig.29
The Bronchorst Epiphany, Adam 1485, Madrid
He drew and redrew Adam for weeks. There was no example he could have followed. He had decided that Adam would be naked to make him symbolically and visually stand out next to the sumptuous robes of the Three Wise Men. But he had to cover Adam’s nakedness somehow. Fig.30
Four Wings of Christ’s Second Coming, 1492, Venice
The arrangement of the four panels is in dispute. Two of the panels depict the fall of the damned into hell, and two the ascent of the chosen.
Allard Duhameel, Engraving of a Last Judgment after Bosch, 15th cent, Amsterdam
Allart Duhameel (1449-1507) was the chief architect of the new St. John’s Cathedral in Den Bosch, and one of the first master printers in Brabant. He certainly knew Bosch and his paintings. The print shows a youthful Christ sitting with nonchalantly crossed legs on a rainbow above an earth filled with armies of every conceivable “Boschian” monster. To the right the chosen are guided by armed angels upwards through a canyon between fire-spewing hills, where on top of a mesa stands a small group of the blessed, praying and waiting to sail off. This example shows that conceptions of a path to the Hereafter without the help of the Church were entertained in the Low Countries — not only by Bosch.
ThE END
In the first light of a gray October day in 1494 an emaciated vagrant knocked on Herberte’s door in Vught. Frightened by the strange man, she would have slammed the door on him, had he not said with a choked voice. “Herberte, don’t you recognize me? I am Jacob, Jeroen’s friend.” She let him in, but didn’t hug him. “My Lord,” she said, “you look terrible. Come in and warm yourself.” He set a hamper with his possessions on the tiles of the hall and leaned his long walking stick to it. A dog was barking and scratching at the door. Jacob looked pleadingly at Herberte. “It’s Maxi-the-Third, would you allow him in? Please!” She opened the door a crack and a mongrel almost indistinguishable from Maxi I slipped in, shying from her, but wagging its curled tail. Hollowed cheeks in a pallid face, his hair almost completely white, Jacob looked ten years older than she knew he was. Around his left leg he wore a bandage over a festering sore. His pants were torn at the knee, his jacket threadbare. He was shivering uncontrollably.
The Prodigal Son, 1495, Rotterdam
She went to make hot tea and warm-up some leftovers from the night before. As she returned from the kitchen, she saw him hiding a small vial with pills. “What pills are you taking?” she asked quietly. She guessed what the pills were. “Something against hunger,” he said abashed. “I haven’t eaten or slept for two days. I walked all night in the hope of finding shelter at your house.” She sat down at the table with him, and while he ate, she talked to him in her quiet voice without reproach or accusation. “Be honest with me, these are the same pills Jeroen gave you to try twenty years ago.” She looked at him saddened. “When my husband and I lived in Antwerp, we helped a man from Africa to get over this habit. I make you a proposal, I will put you up, if you’ll agree to let me wean you from this scourge. I know a herbal tea that counteracts the effects of the pills and will help you get over the withdrawal symptoms of your addiction.” Jacob let his food stand and on his knees, tears running down his cheeks, thanked her for her Samaritan kindness. “It will be hard on you,” she warned him, “and take a few months, but if you wish to get cured, we will succeed. Promise me that you will try —and give me that vial.” Jacob went crimson and sheepishly handed her the vial. She smiled and said, “You already got some color in your face. I promise you that your addiction problem will remain between the two of us. I will tell only Jeroen. He has worried too much about you.”
She kept Jacob hidden in the house for several days, before she told Jeroen of his return. These first days were hell for Jacob, but he stuck to her regimen and her bitter tea. Herberte bought a keg of beer, and in the evening Jacob often went asleep drunk. When Jeroen came to see him, he had slept and eaten regularly and looked much better, only the pernicious sore on his leg was still festering. Herberte had warned Jeroen not to mention the little red pills. She would tell him about this problem at a later time.
Jeroen arrived with an assortment of clothes. The two friends hugged each other in tears. “My prodigal teacher has returned,” cried Jeroen. Jacob looked at him and remarked with a chuckle, “Do you remember the evening I had seen an angel who brought me clothes after the fracas with the Orthodox? You look better than this heavenly messenger. Your pants will hang loose around my frame. Nothing left but bones.” Herberte, watching the two, laughed. “Jacob, you have recovered your old sarcastic self. You make me happy. We will succeed.” Herberte brought beer. The three sat around the table. “Twenty years have passed,” said Jeroen. “So much has happened. Have you heard that your father-in-law has died?” Jacob nodded. The Vught magistrate had notified him of Noah’s death and that he had stipulated in his will that his son-in-law should receive only one ducat from his estate. “Don’t remind me of this old miser,” he said, “but the knowledge of his demise encouraged me to return to Den Bosch.” To divert him Jeroen suggested to take him upstairs where in Jacob’s old lecture room he had set up a gallery of his paintings.
Jeroen had let the shop paint a series of copies of his panels. The big triptychs he had reduced in size, of some he had retained only the middle panels. They all hung or leaned against the walls of the room. Jacob walked from painting to painting in awed silence. He stopped before their portraits in the cave. “Look, how young we were then,” said Jacob. “How irresponsibly self-sure we took on this enormous task. And you were laughing and then painted this masterpiece!” He sighed. “What glorious days they were!”
After a while Jacob was overcome by a severe shaking of his whole body, the emotional reunion had tired him out. Herberte sent him to bed. “I will spend many hours up here,” Jacob said as they parted. Jeroen walked home in deep thought. They would keep Jacob in Den Bosch. He was sure Aleit would agree.
Jeroen, deeply affected by the emaciated condition of his friend painted Jacob as he imagined him on the morning of his return. In the painting, commonly known as the Prodigal Son or the Pedlar, Jacob is walking past the whore house in the meadow on the way to Vught. Jacob’s leg is bandaged, the hamper on his back, a scarf around his short-cropped head and unshaven face. He wears two unequal shoes and holds a floppy hat in his left in which sticks a once cocky feather. Maxi III follows him. It is early, a cow moos wanting to be milked, and in the lowest quadrangle of the a-gate sits Jacob’s dispirited magpie. Jacob looks better than Herberte had seen him, wasted and shivering from his addiction. In the painting Jacob has some spirit left, some spring in his gait. Apparently Jeroen could not bring himself to show his teacher in his lowest hour.
At the next meeting of the Confraternity Jeroen told Cornelis van Bergen of Jacob’s return. Cornelis was delighted and persuaded the Confraternity to collect a charitable sum to relieve Jacob’s dire financial situation.
Herberte’s withdrawal treatment became a rocky path for Jacob. Fortunately there was no place in Den Bosch where he could have bought the pills except at the pharmacist’s, whom Jeroen had warned. Herberte had immediately put the content of his vial into the fire. The smoke had nearly overcome her. Jacob suffered through nights of sweating and shivers, which Herberte fought with plenty of food and a liberal supply of beer. He would take his beer upstairs into Jeroen’s gallery and often fall asleep there, drunk. Jeroen brought the old Bible and the books and notes Jacob had left with him. In the morning Jacob would read in his lecture notes and even wrote a letter to Ficino. Ficino had meanwhile expanded his search into a peculiar version of mystical astrology. Jacob only shook his head.
One day he and Jeroen discussed the Epiphany triptych. Jacob was impressed how well Jeroen had explained the complex tradition of the Old and New Adam. He couldn’t have formulated it better. Jacob told him about a sect of Adamites near Brussels, which the Church had declared heretic. The authorities were dutifully persecuting its adherents. A dangerous subject. Persecutions by the Church had increased. Jacob felt, waving a sheet of his old notes, that today he could no longer say what he had taught in 1474 and warned Jeroen to be careful. Jeroen was depressed by these news. He had hoped that it would help Jacob to recover, if he were to give lectures at the Confraternity. Yes, Jacob said, if he followed Christian doctrine and were not a Jew. A watered-down version of Ficino’s Neoplatonic philosophy could still be discussed in Den Bosch. In Italy even that had become impossible. His friend Pico della Mirandola, Ficino’s brightest student, had been imprisoned by Pope Innocent VIII despite that Pico had padded his celebrated manifesto of Renaissance philosophy with much flattering praise of the Church’s notables.
Did he want to sit idle in Den Bosch, asked Jeroen and never use his sharp mind again? “Oh, very simple,” said Jacob with a derisive laugh. “I would first have to get baptized, and then use all my intelligence to avoid displeasure and persecution.” Jeroen pondered this novel aspect. He told himself that Jacob was probably right. He felt terribly dispirited. Alone on his way home through the night he relieved his frustration with a string of obscenities against the Church.
Their conversation was reinforced by Cornelis van Bergen, who took Jeroen aside one night and told him that in order to become a full, elected member of the Confraternity Jacob had to become a Christian. Jacob was, in his mind, such an honest, learned man that he should be offered an honorable membership. Van Bergen had tried, but regretted to have to inform him of this verdict of the admission committee. Times were tight, the commission had no choice. Jeroen listened in such obvious dismay that Cornelis bought him a drink.
Jacob’s cure dragged on. He still had an occasional miserable night. Aleit invited him to her house. It was a good day, and Jacob over dinner, in a brilliant delivery described his life in Florence and the gossip at Il Moro’s court in Milan. There were rumors that Maximilian I was about to make Bianca Sforza, Il Moro’s daughter, his second wife. Jacob doubted that Bianca, a spoiled and fashionable lady, could ever replace Marie in Maximilian’s life, whom he had loved dearly. Jeroen silently thought of Sibylle. Seeing his friend’s mind shine, Jeroen once again suggested that Jacob give a lecture on Plato’s Symposium at the Confraternity. Jacob raised his brows and said, “Dear Jeroen, you are overoptimistic. Don’t be surprised if they refuse you. I am not a Christian.” Aleit protested, among intelligent men this had never been a important matter. Fate would interfere before Jeroen could test his persuasion at the Confraternity.
Emperor Maximilian I married Bianca Sforza in 1494, and soaring on this political success he arranged a marriage for his juvenile eighteen-year-old son Philip the Fair with Juana, the daughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, king and queen of unified Spain. A great dynastic victory for Maximilian. To boost his son’s position in Brabant, which strenuously fought Maximilian’s proxy-rule in Philip’s stead with two uprisings, Maximilian decided to have Philip acclaimed as Duke of Burgundy in s’Hertogenbosch, one of the least rebellious towns in Brabant.
In December 1496 a newly married Philip the Fair, Emperor Maximilian, and a large entourage of nobles descended on Den Bosch. Albertus Cuperinus , the chronicler of Hertogenbosch reports: the town presented Maximilian, the Roman King with two large, expensive oxen with silvered horns and two cart-loads of wine. There was feasting for two days. At a reception of the illustrious guests at the Confraternity of Our Lady, Cornelis van Bergen pleaded with Maximilian for Jacob. Maximilian was surprised that he had not been informed of his former teacher’s destitute existence in town and indicated that he would take care of Jacob’s difficulties. Jacob was called into the presence of Maximilian who graciously told him that he had arranged for Jacob to be baptized at Sint Jan’s Cathedral next day, right after the homage to Philip. The Emperor would not accept any objections. He himself, Philip, Cornelis and his brother Johannes van Bergen, and several other of Jacob’s friends would be present and act as godparents.
Next day Jacob was escorted in great pomp to St. John’s Cathedral and before the entire Brabantian assembly of nobles dunked into the Holy Font.
Albertus Cuperinus records this remarkable event: When the homage was done, young Prince Philip rode to Sint Jans-Church and there a Jew was baptized by Master Ghjisbert den Bije the Deacon of Sint Jans, in presence of Duke Philip, the Herren Jan van Bergen and Cornelis van (Zeven)Bergen and other great Herren, who were all friends and godfathers of the baptized Jew, and they gave him a name, to wit: Philip van Sint Jans, who had previously been named Jacob van Almaengien.—The baptism of a Jew on orders of the Emperor must have been a scandal in Brabant, a clear, imperial infringement by Maximilian upon local customs and an affront to the Archbishop of Cologne, to whose diocese northern Brabant belonged.
Jacob was humiliated. How could his imperious friend and student baptize him against his reservations and wishes? He had reduced him to a mere pawn in his power game with the Brabantian nobles and the Church. This baptism would cause endless troubles to his already precarious existence.
The records of the Confraternity of Our Lady show that at their annual Christmas meeting of 1496 Magister Philip van Sint Jans, formerly a Jew, was admitted as a full member. Jacob gave an acceptance lecture on Plato’s Phaedo, carefully cleansed of any content that could be construed as being offensive to the Church. He said laughing to Jeroen, “I might yet learn how to teach a superficial, bland course on the history of Greek philosophy. How similar Socrates’ times were to ours. Everything was changing rapidly, thinking, religion, and the life of the polis. But I will take care not to remind my well-fed listeners of that.” Amazed by Jacob’s erudition the Confraternity asked him to give a series of monthly lectures on the philosophy of Plato and his time.
Jeroen was relieved. He could not comprehend the demeaning effect this forced conversion had on Jacob. In his, admittedly naive view, Maximilian had done well: with one simple sweep of his imperial hand he had removed all the obstacles in Jacob’s way. Jeroen had been brought up as a Christian. Religious abstractions were not his preoccupation. He said to Jacob, “Sometimes I use my inherited Christian symbols to express my thinking, at other times to hide a deeper, possibly heretic meaning from the unwary. But my conscience doesn’t bother me, when I do that.” Jacob looked at him thoughtfully and said, “Would you become a Jew?” Jeroen was puzzled. “Why should I? I see no reason or advantage in becoming a Jew. You could teach me Hebrew, but would that make me a Jew?” “No,” said Jacob with an edge in his voice.” But your grandmother would make you one. You have no idea, what troubles with her conscience she had to cope with, or I for that matter. By any measure I am an irreligious Jew, I have not taken part in a Jewish service for fifty years, but my conscience still bothers me.” Jacob shook his head and continued darkly, “I have not been able to unravel this conundrum. I don’t know how to free myself from this ancient bond, even if I wanted to. Like your Adam I am tied to the fearsome Old-Testament God with a thin chain, while you Gentiles are promised to fly straight to heaven.” Jeroen suggested kindly, “Maybe your problems are connected with your impeccable dislike of the Church. I also hate the Church, but does that mean I am not a Christian?” “No,” said Jacob sadly. “The Church is not the reason for my problems with myself. They lie deeper. But my practical troubles have only just begun. The Church is vindictive and pursues its goals in secrecy. They wouldn’t face off with Maximilian over such a small matter, but they will haunt me, and maybe even you, the friend of a convert.”
The first person to get to feel the displeasure of the Cologne Archbishop was deacon Ghjisbert den Bije. He was quietly transferred to a parish in Limburg closer to Cologne.
It was customary to present a gift to the Confraternity on the occasion of one’s election as a member, and such gifts were carefully recorded in the expense reports of the fraternity. An existing altar carved by Adrian van Wesel lacked two leaves. Jeroen set to work to commemorate Jacob’s initiation. Appropriately the altar was dedicated to the two St. Johns. In 1494 Jeroen had painted a St. John the Baptist in the Desert for a customer who had rejected the painting. The Baptist was too well-fed and comfortable. Bosch overprinted the donor with a large black thistle and used it as one of the two leaves. The painting shows the grandfatherly Baptist reclining on a rock in an open landscape contemplating a lamb in the foreground. With one hand he points at this representation of Christ.
St. John the Evangelist on Patmos, 1496, Berlin
The second leaf, St. John the Evangelist on Patmos, Bosch painted in 1496. The Evangelist in the familiar red coat, quill in hand writes in the Apocalypse on his knees. He has paused to gaze at an apparition of Mary and the Child in a mandorla in the sky. An angel speaks to him. A lovely Dutch landscape fills the background. The dark hill on which the angel stands distinctly off-sets the youthful saint’s face. A high, bushy tree, symbolizes the savior. St. John’s eagle watches him and an armed Boschian hybrid with a fanatical face. To judge by his cape the hybrid is a magister of canonical law. He is poised to interrupt the saint’s reverie. Aside from this creature no disturbing elements trouble the tranquil scene. On closer inspection one recognizes that the saint’s profile is that of Jacob’s in the betrothal scene in the Garden. Philip van Sint Jan rejuvenated to the time of his and Jeroen’s first encounter! Only then does one become aware that Mary has reddish hair and Sibylle’s oval face, and that this St. John is writing in Hebrew, from right to left. The right page is finished, and he is poised to complete the first sentence on the left page. Jeroen knew, of course, that the Apocalypse was written in Greek. He wanted to make a subtle point. Jacob’s magpie has metamorphosed into the eagle, the Evangelist’s symbol. A hopeful Jeroen shows Jacob van Almaengien’s transformation into Philip van Sint Jans.
St. John the Evangelist on Patmos, Reverse: Christ’s Passion, 1496, Berlin
The St. John on Patmos panel carries a less euphoric message on its outside. A tondo in predominantly brown grisaille shows Christ’s Passion in a circular band surrounding an ibis on a steep rock drawing blood from his chest to feed its young. The stations of Christ’s path to Golgotha are arranged like a clock. His last day begins at Gethsemane at four in the early morning. He is praying to the invisible God to take this chalice from Him. His disciples are asleep. At five o’clock He is surrounded by a tumultuous group of armed soldiers. Judas kisses Him as one Oriental pursuer lays hands on Him. At seven He is being presented to Caiaphas. The bulbous domes of Herod’s palace separate Him from carrying His cross up the Hill of Golgotha. At twelve noon, the sky half-darkened by the eclipse of the sun, John and Mary Magdalene are the only people left under His Cross and those of the two men who were crucified with Him. The last scene shows Him at three in the afternoon, being laid to rest in Joseph of Arimatheas’ tomb. Jacob is not present unless one wants to detect his profile in that of Christ praying at Gethsemane. The space between the tondo and the dark edge of the panel is filled with barely visible Boschian monsters and mutilated human beings, probably by a different hand.
In its concentration and layout this tondo is one of Bosch’s masterpieces. Few if any depictions of Christ’s Passion have achieved a comparable cohesion and visual brevity. Jeroen proudly signed the Patmos panel Jhieronymus Bosch. His second signed painting. Bosch’s authorship of the two paintings was dutifully mentioned in the records of the Confraternity, but the occasion and the name of the donor have been omitted.
A few months after the altar had been set up at St. John’s Cathedral, at a meeting of the Confraternity a man sidled up to Jeroen and praised his work. The man whispered confidentially, “Isn’t St. John on the painting really Jacob van Almaengien? I give you a friendly advice, stay away from this baptized Jew.” He grinned and vanished in the crowd. Jeroen was speechless. Nobody seemed to have noticed the stranger, or knew who he was. Furious, he told Jacob of the incident. Jacob said darkly, “Yes, I know, some such unidentified strangers have appeared also at my lectures on Plato.” Jeroen in disbelief asked, “Why don’t you throw them out?” Jacob shrugged. “What would that help? The Archbishop has been ordered by Pope Innocent VIII to vanquish all dissidents.” Jeroen couldn’t quite see how the Church could accomplish that. Jacob laughed briefly. “By force and intimidation as you have seen. You have to become more careful. I will teach you the Jewish way of keeping a low profile.”
1497, the twentieth anniversary of Sibylle’s death. The memory hung heavily over Jacob and Jeroen. Quietly Jeroen painted a simple Adoration of the Child with Sibylle and Jacob bent over the Christ Child.
Adoration of the Christ Child, copy 1568, (original 1496), Cologne
Jacob’s magpie, fat and well taken care of, sits on top a wall behind him. A ruddy shepherd peers at the three. Is he a self-portrait of Jeroen? He doesn’t look like him. In the background a peasant couple, the same as in the Epiphany triptych, has lit a blazing fire to warm themselves. He gave the painting to Jacob on Cosmas and Damianus day. Sibylle’s quiet oval face and red hair make this painting the loveliest portrait of the woman they both loved. Jacob is not idealized as St. John on Patmos was. His face reflects Jacob’s full age of fifty-seven years. But Jeroen has dressed him in the red robe and black shawl of a learned magister. Notwithstanding the intimacy of their relationship, he still revered the teacher in him. We only have a copy of this small panel, but Jacob’s age suggests this fateful year for Bosch’s original.
Slowly the Inquisition was spreading through northern Europe. On his deathbed Pope Innocent VIII issued the infamous Bull Malleus Maleficarum, the “Hammer for the Infidels,” a lengthy, meticulously worded legal document authorizing the persecution of “witches” and heretic scholars. It had been prepared by two German canons at the diocese of Cologne. Over time this Papal Bull would cost many thousands of women their lives. Innocent VIII also, primarily for political reasons, actively encouraged the Inquisition in Spain, where Isabella and Ferdinand had made Tomás de Torquemada, Isabelle’s father confessor, a Dominican of Jewish descent, their chief inquisitor. In an overzealous letter to the worldly rulers of Germany, England, France, and the Low Countries Innocent VIII demanded that they return all non-baptized immigrant Jews to Spain for trial. In Northern Europe the Church denounced suspected people, but in general left their prosecution to the worldly authorities, who did little fearing to estrange their money lenders. In Flanders and Brabant a few leaders of heretic sects were tried and condemned to the stake, but there was no outbreak of anti-heretic hysteria among the populace. In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII died and was succeeded by Alexander VI, born Rodrigo Borgia. Alexander VI browbeat the Florentine government to try and burn Savanorola, who had exposed the corruption of the Church and Alexander’s excesses. But Alexander was more interested in expanding the personal power of the Borgias than the Inquisition. A debauchee, he left much of his ambitions political campaigns to Cesare Borgia, one of the several children he had fathered with his favorite mistress. Ferdinand and Isabella were free to institutionalize the Inquisition in Spain.
In this politically and religiously volatile climate Jacob made a mistake. A few people, all trusted former participants of his early lectures, had approached Jacob to head a small group who wanted to try to expand their religious understanding by reading original Hebrew texts. Jacob’s knowledge of the Jewish scriptures would allow them to go beyond the Church-sanctioned Biblical translations. They would meet at the private houses of the participants, change the location of their meetings every time, and restrict the group to less than twelve. Jacob considered the proposal. The undertaking was decidedly heretic, but the safeguards seemed sufficient. He was not going to be able to continue his philosophical lectures at the Confraternity much longer, they were infiltrated too easily. He longed to teach again, to present his treasure of Hebrew texts to an intelligent audience. Jeroen would later accuse him of hubris, but Jacob agreed to the proposal.
The group met for the first time in Jeroen’s upstairs gallery at Herberte’s house. Another tactical mistake because of the overwhelming effect of Jeroen’s paintings, which no one had ever seen assembled. A good part of the evening was spent with Jeroen explaining the intricacies of the Bronchorst triptych. During the second half of the meeting Jacob read from his translation of Deuteronomy. Jeroen could not understand why this description of the deeds of Mose attracted Jacob. None of his listeners had ever read or heard this part of the Old Testament
At a later meeting one of the participants, a man with some theological education, suggested to extend their meetings by setting up an altar on which they could occasionally celebrate communion in the Old-Testament way. In the Jewish tradition only a quorum of three men was required, said the theologian, a rabbi was not necessary. Jeroen raised his brows but remained silent, leaving the decision to Jacob. Jacob came up with a description of such a table from Ezekiel 41.22: In the Temple stood a wooden altar three cubits high and two cubits wide and its walls were of wood, and God said to me “This is the table that is before the Lord.” Jacob explained, which as long as the Temple existed served as altar for the atonement of the Israelites. Later, after the destruction of the Temple, it lost its numinosity and degenerated into a simple dining table from which the rich fed the poor. Jacob was all for such a symbolic altar and looking at Jeroen suggested that he might be able to paint it with a cycle of the Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things. Jeroen indicated that he needed time to think about the project.
When the two friends were alone, Jeroen, visibly angered, called Jacob a hypocrite possessed by hubris. “Don’t you remember,” he shouted at him, “when Sibylle asked whether you were the Messiah? Now the devil has shown you how to become just that for these ignorant men. You are playing with the fire of which you warned me.” Jacob haughtily said, “I have no intention to play the Messiah. Besides, there should be no danger in this reasonable request, we all know each other.” Jeroen was unmoved. “You will create a tangible proof of your heretic activities for anybody to see. You are foolish to believe that you can hide this piece of furniture from the curious eyes of others. Sooner or later someone will denounce you. What then? You can hide thoughts and maybe words but not such hard evidence.” Jacob indicated that the table would use Christian symbols, only the initiated would know its meaning. Jeroen took a deep breath and said with finality, “I will not be part of such a project of modifying the Holy Sacrament, and since you have been baptized, you shouldn’t either.” Jacob stung by this reference straightened himself and said irritated, “I will design this table myself and persuade one of your brothers to paint it in the shop. They will not look through its purpose. I’ll pay for it myself.” Jeroen realized that he could not warn his brothers of this commission without revealing the existence of their group. He stayed away from their meetings, and the two friends did not speak to one another for several months.
The Table of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1498, Madrid
The curious Table of the Seven Deadly Sins was surely painted by the van Aken shop, although it has been attributed to Bosch himself. It is undated and unsigned. 1498 seems a likely year. Jacob designed its layout. He took its inscriptions from the Song of Mose (Deuteronomy). The two bands read, at the top: Gens absque; concilio est, et sine prudentia. Utinam saperent, et intelligerent, ac novissima providerent, at the bottom: Abscondam faciem meam abeis, et considerabo novissima corum, and in the center: Cave, cave Dominus vidit.— In the Standard King James translation: “For they are a people void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them. O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their end.” and below: “I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be.” At the center: “Beware, beware, the Lord sees you.” To Jeroen, who saw the table at the shop, these quotations seemed to have no connection to the Christian Sacrament of the Holy Communion. Mose addressed the Israelites. The riddle of Jacob’s preoccupation with Deuteronomy had deepened.
The table is an almost square rectangle. Its center, surrounded by a magical Pythagorean mandorla of exactly 128 golden rays, is God’s eye. A dark-blue circle, in which Christ appears with a raised finger standing in his grave. This is enclosed in a wide concentric circle depicting the Seven Deadly Sins: Ira–rage, Superbia–pride, Luxuria–lust, Accidia–bad temper, Gula-gluttony, Invidia–envy, and Avarice–greed. A few of the illustrations follow Brabantian proverbs, others are more sophisticated and obscure, all are crudely painted. In the four corners of the table appear four medallions showing the Four Last Things: Death, Resurrection, the entry of the blessed into Heaven, and Hell. They are not only stereotypically simple but some, like the entry into Heaven, are outright mindless. They fall far below similar conventional depictions of the subject in Flemish painting. All four are, if possible, even cruder in execution than the illustrations of the seven sins. Bosch had no hand in this venture.
Christ Bearing the Cross, 1499, Escorial
Disheartened by his quarrel with Jacob and truly worried about his friend, Jeroen painted him as Simon of Cyrenea carrying Christ’s Cross to Golgotha. Christ has broken down and is on his knees looking at the viewer. A Jewish elder tells Simon-Jacob to pick up the heavy load. Jacob dressed in a white cassock with a hood grimly looks straight ahead. A huge henchman in pink is whipping the fallen Christ. A crowd of Jews follow them. In the far distance before the towers of Jerusalem St. John embraces Maria Magdalene.
Jeroen felt that Jacob was on the way to get himself crucified, that he was following a deep-seated penchant for self-sacrifice. Why, he could not understand. The meetings, rotating from one house to another, were continuing unnoticed by the authorities. Jeroen knew that they celebrated their communion on the first Friday of the month. He resolved to try to heal their estrangement and went to one of Jacob’s lecture meetings. Jacob noticed and welcomed him with a smile of happiness.
For Jeroen’s benefit Jacob changed his subject that day and read the last four chapters of Deuteronomy: The Israelites were poised to cross the river Jordan to the Promised Land of Canaan. Mose had been told by God that he would not set foot into the Promised Land. He knew he was close to death. He assembled the elders of the tribes and in an impassioned speech one last time made them swear to abide by Yahweh’s Covenant. He reminded them that they should not forget their God, who had rescued them from the slavery of Egypt, had led them through the Red Sea and the desert, and ruthlessly slain their enemies. However, he foresaw that once they lived in the Promised Land, they would get fat and lazy. They would forget their God and follow other gods. It had happened before, when he had been on Mount Sinai to receive the Tablets of the Ten Commandments. Like they had followed the golden calf then, they would follow other idols again. Their God was a jealous God, who would punish them terribly. In the end God ordered Mose to sing of their doom.
Jacob explained, that Mose was one of the greatest seer of all times, but he had had a lisp and stuttered. He had been a poor orator and the Israelites were a stubborn, argumentative people. Throughout his life Mose had never been successful in rousing his people. God’s command to sing of their doom had been a great hardship for Mose.
Jeroen listened with increasing fascination when Jacob read the entire text as if it was a promise of his own salvation, a litany of his personal sins and omissions, and finally his condemnation. He had never seen his friend so emotionally moved.
The Song of Mose
Deuteronomy 32: 15-33:
[15] Jeshurun (Israel) you waxed fat, you grew thick, you became sleek; then you forsook God who made you, and scoffed at the Rock (covenant) of your salvation.
[16] They stirred him to jealousy with strange gods; with abominable practices they provoked him to anger. [17] They sacrificed to demons which were no gods, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come in of late, whom your fathers had never dreaded. [18] You were unmindful of the Rock that begot you, and you forgot the God who gave you birth.
[19] The Lord saw it, and spurned them, because of the provocation of his sons and his daughters. [20] And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end will be, for they are a perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness. [21] They have stirred me to jealousy with what is no god; they have provoked me with their idols. So I will stir them to jealousy with those who are no people; I will provoke them with a foolish nation. [22] For a fire is kindled by my anger, and it burns to the depths of hell, devours the earth and its increase, and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains.
[23] And I will heap evils upon them; I will spend my arrows upon them; [24] they shall be wasted with hunger, and devoured with burning heat and poisonous pestilence; and I will send the teeth of beasts against them, with venom of crawling things of the dust.
[25] In the open the sword shall bereave, and in the chambers shall be terror, destroying both young man and virgin, the sucking child with the man of gray hairs.
[26] I would have said, I will scatter them afar, I will wipe their name out from among men,” [27] had I not feared provocation by the enemy, lest their adversaries should judge amiss, lest they should say, “Our hand is triumphant, the Lord has not wrought all this.
[28] For they are a nation void of counsel, and there is no understanding in them. [29] O, if they were wise, they would understand this, they would discern their latter end! [30] How could one chase a thousand, and then put ten thousand to flight, unless they had sold their Rock, and the Lord had given them up?
[31] For their rock is not like our Rock, even our enemies themselves agree. [32] For their vine comes from the vine of Sodom, and from the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of poison, their clusters are bitter. [33] For their wine is the poison of serpents, and the cruel venom of asps.
After the session, alone, Jeroen and Jacob hugged each other in tears and happiness. Jeroen took Jacob to show him his Christ Bearing the Cross panel. Jacob was moved, but said, “I thought I could carry Christ’s Cross, but I cannot follow him. Christ cannot remove my disregard of the Covenant of my forefathers, but as a Jew he might be able to intercede on my behalf with the God you just heard speak. For that to work I would have to believe in Christ and that I cannot.”
Jeroen was silent. He finally understood the deeper meaning of the table and its incoherent inscription.. It had been Jacob’s attempt to atone his trespasses against the commands of Deuteronomy through Christ. It had proven a failure.
As if Jacob had guessed his thoughts, he said, “Jeroen, schilderer, painter of pictures, I need your help. Had we worked together on this table, you might have been able to prevent my downfall. I didn’t know that the sins which this table is to atone are not my trespasses. This is one insight my forced baptism has taught me.” Jeroen looked at him and asked, “Aren’t Moses’s Ten Commandments the same for Jews and Christians?” “Yes,” said Jacob, “but the Jews are God’s chosen people. If we neglect paying attention to Him, if we follow other gods, He threatens to bring terrible punishments upon us. Christ has changed all this for the people of the New Covenant. Christ has assuaged God’s wrath for His believers, but you Gentiles are not God’s chosen people. During the past year I have come a long way in understanding myself. My friendship with you is crucial. I need you, visionary, to paint Mose’s terrible words in this song to understand my sins against the faith of my ancestors. O, had God allowed us to visualize Him! God forbade us to make graven images and instead sent us a stutterer to illustrate his will!”
St Christopher carrying the Christ Child, 1497, Rotterdam
Temporarily relieved of his fears by their reunion Jeroen painted St. Christopher carrying the Christ Child. He had always identified with this giant. Among Jacob’s learned friends he sometimes felt as slow in comprehension and as naive as St. Christopher. While painting the picture he made a solemn vow that he would save Jacob from his troubles and from his restless mind. St. Christopher was the protector of wanderers and pilgrims. Sibylle had sold many Christopher badges. He resolved to take his friend on a pilgrimage to Compostela. He looked at his painting. St. Christopher walking through the river of forgetting! The idea excited him. Yes, he thought, along Saint Jacob’s Way! They were no longer young, it might take them two years, but the journey would remove them from the turmoil of Brabant. He gave the painting a cheerful green landscape with woods on the other side of the river and the towers of Compostela in the distance. He did not show the painting to Jacob, but kept it for a future day.
One night Jacob met with Jeroen in his gallery to discuss the new painting. Jacob wanted a panel showing the idols of Egypt, the temptation of the Chosen People, the wrath of God, and its effect on the renegade Israelites. Jeroen was concerned about how to hide these most surely heretic symbols from the unwary viewer, and came up with the idea of a Temptation of St. Anthony. This would allow him to depict the nefarious Egyptian rites within commonly established images of the saint’s temptations. Jacob agreed and suggested that he should show a Black Mass, in which three priestesses used the frog holding the egg from Sibylle’s initiation altar. Jeroen was surprised, what had Sibylle told him about this altar? Jacob explained that after he had seen Jeroen’s painting of their wedding, he had asked her about the altar, and she had told him as much as she knew. According to her stepmother the altar had been brought from Egypt to Provençe several centuries before her time by some Manicheans.
Jeroen worried, no matter how he would paint this scene, it could always be construed as witchcraft under Pope Innocent’s VIII new Bull. What did Jacob want to do with this painting? Jacob vacillated. Primarily he wanted to watch Jeroen paint it, to clear his mind. “I urgently have to rid myself of these forces in my life. They poison my mind, whether I remain a Jew or I become a believing Christian.” They could eventually sell it to a Jewish art dealer, Jacob knew in Amsterdam. Jacob realized that in the present climate, he was asking Jeroen to risk his life for his salvation. Embarrassed, he said so. Still hoping that Jacob would eventually become a true Christian and swear off his Jewish demons, Jeroen, thinking of his vow to save his friend, asked for time to consider this request.
The complexities of the painting and the dangers it would create became a supreme challenge to Jeroen. He was about to paint a Temptation like nobody had ever seen. He resolved to make it into a triptych. The wings would show Anthony in meditation on the right and his fall from his flight of hubris on the left. Jacob’s hubris and fall, because that was what he considered this undertaking to be. He would have to use all his ingenuity to hide its real meaning. A labor of love. He had to work by himself. Once again he carried all his painting utensils to Herberte’s house, at night, not to arouse suspicion. He instructed Herberte to deny his presence. He asked Jacob to trust him and not to interfere. He would show him the painting when he felt the time was right.
Temptation of St.Anthony, Outside, 1502, Lisbon
The outside of the triptych gives no hint of the acrimonious language one will be faced with when one opens it. In yet another masterly, eerily gray-green grisaille Jeroen painted Christ’s way to Golgotha. Appropriate to the mood of the triptych, the two scenes are more bucolic than the one on the backside of St. John on Patmos. Especially the right panel shows ordinary people following the stumbling Christ like in a popular Passion procession in Brabant. There appear a giant and a Flemish Veronica with her sudarium.
Temptation of St. Anthony, Middle Panel, 1502, Lisbon
The middle panel Jeroen laid out as he saw fit. Apart from the appearance of Anthony in a ruined castle, the saint’s traditional hermitage, the painting has nothing in common with St. Anthony’s legend. The ruddy face of the saint at its very center looks at the viewer. He raises his hand in a blessing. Anthony does not seem to sense that next to him a pretty lady with a reptilian tail is insinuating herself on him. She is offering a silver bowl with the perverted, bitter wine of Sodom to a dubious nun on the saint’s right. A sharp gent, elegantly dressed in the head-scarf and pink pants of a scholar, without arms or body, only legs and head, is lewdly eying the reptilian lady. To Anthony’s left, around a circular table three priestesses are celebrating a Black Mass. A dark-skinned Egyptian woman holds up a lunar silver plate on which the flesh-colored frog raises the egg of regeneration in his forepaws. Crowned by a hat of snakes, a priestess offers a golden beaker of ceremonial wine to a pig-man. She is assisted by the third sub-lunar priestess dressed in blinding white. The pig-man, an owl on his head and a guitar under his arm, eagerly pushes his way towards the communion table. He is followed by an aged, one-legged cripple who holds on to his left hand.
Temptation of St. Anthony, Middle Panel, St. Anthony and the Black Mass, 1502, Lisbon
This scene is placed on a seemingly solid bridge from under which spills a lake of sewage carrying all kinds of flotsam: a duck-ship steered by a monkey carries a cleric singing blasphemous hymns from behind bars. To its left sails a boat with a carp’s head. Shielded by a stingray an eviscerated priest furtively reads from the Bible. A beggar wearing a magician’s top hat displays his amputated leg on a tablecloth on the floor of the bridge.
Temptation of St. Anthony, Middle Panel, The Duck-Ship, 1502, Lisbon
Behind this spook, in the dark chapel inside the hermitage, Christ points at His crucifixion, as if to protect Anthony and the viewer from these evil forces. In the upper left of the panel a village is burning and two airships ply the skies. Adjacent to the hermitage rises an obscure water tower and a bathhouse frequented by animals. People are jumping from its stairs and galleries into the murky waters.
Temptation of St. Anthony, Middle Panel, The Broken Column of Deuteronomy, 1502, Lisbon
Jeroen inscribed the Deuteronomy text, the key to the triptych, in a relief frieze which spirals around a crumbling obelisk. On the topmost level Mose receives the Tablets of the Ten Commandments from the hands of an invisible Yahweh.. Directly below the Israelites dance around the Golden Calf. The movements of the dancers reveal them to be Moriskos, Spanish Sufis, who at the time traveled in Maximilian’s I entourage. In the next lower level of the frieze appears, in his customary form of a dog, the Egyptian god Anubis, who watched over the embalming of the dead. Characterized by their head gear, a group of Jews offers a lamb, an ox, and a forbidden swan to this false god. A reference to Exodus 14: 11-12, where against God’s orders and Mose’s exhortations, the recalcitrant tribe of Jacob (sic!) embalmed their dead during their long march through the desert. On the lowest spiral tier, two scouts return from the Promised Land carrying a huge bunch of grapes.
Temptation of St. Anthony, Middle Panel, The Army of Enemies, 1502, Lisbon
From both sides approach groups of deformed people. Faithful to Jacob’s wish Jeroen on the middle left illustrated the “Armies” which a wrathful Yahweh will send, and on the lower right the suffering of the plague-stricken people. Both are examples of Bosch’s unshackled imagination. The vanguard of the army is led by a twin pair of armored dogs, followed by a willow witch, who grabs a fierce Basilisk with the cloven feet of a goat and a unicorn’s horn. According to medieval legend, the Basilisk was a reptile with the wings of a rooster. A relative of the Greek Gorgo it had the power to annihilate anyone with a single glance. Behind this formidable beast and its female retainer walks a pert rat with rouge on her cheeks and pearls in her ears, a broken flower pot on her head. She shoulders a wagon wheel, on which hangs the withered leg of the last quartered criminal. Apparently the rat comes from the Schindanger, the place of execution. To top this off Bosch has hung a second victim from the rat’s wheel, the carcass of a pig. In medieval times animals, which had attacked humans, were executed like criminals. Obviously a double horror in this Jewish context. A sword-wielding ghost of a knight concludes the troupe. His armor is empty! “I will stir them to jealousy with those who are no people; I will provoke them with a foolish nation.”
Temptation of St. Anthony, Middle Panel, The Stricken People, 1502, Lisbon
While this enemy is bizarre but clearly shown, the sufferings of the Stricken People are as vague and subliminal as the rest of Bosch’s visions in this painting. They wade or ride into the morass of the cloaca in the process of undergoing a mysterious transformation. The hind-part of the horse of a young falconer has been turned into an earthen crock from which pours stinking putrefaction. The rider has grown wings, his head has been turned into the fruit of the psychotropic Jimsonweed (Stechapfel, datura stramonium). A woman riding a fat rat has been turned into a willow-witch with a reptilian tail. She is cradling her baby. Her husband’s dreamy gaze seems to express the poison creeping up his legs like Socrates’ experience in Phaedo.
Jeroen showed the panel to Jacob, who spent a candle-light vigil before the painting alone. As Jeroen had expected he said nothing to indicate the state of his mind. “Oh,” said Jeroen, “I will now add wings to this triptych, to explain how it connects to you.” Jacob shuddered.
Temptation of St. Anthony, Right Wing, St. Anthony in the Desert, 1502, Lisbon
The right wing allowed Jeroen to vent his rage against the corrupt Church. Next to the meditating saint a sprawled frog impregnates a virgin in the hollow of a willow. A table, held up by men exposing their mutilated sexual organs, is laid with a simple meal for the hermit, who seems completely unaware of these travesties. Looking straight from the picture, a wane smile on this face, he seems to wink at the viewer. Behind this scene a lake borders on the bulbous defense towers of a city, the only trace of realty in the painting. All other structures are crumbling or burning or vanishing in the decay and morass that surrounds them. A childish cretin wanders through the middle ground, and a couple sails in the green sky on a large fish.
Temptation of St. Anthony, Right Wing, St. Anthony among the Travesties, 1502, Lisbon
The left wing connects these happenings with Jacob and his fall from grace. Splayed backwards on an obscene frog Anthony sails the skies in a sodomite’s airship from which he is about to fall. Below, three men carry the fallen hermit across the wooden bridge that separates reality from the nightmare of the middle panel. Their leader is Jacob in his magister’s robe. Under the bridge a bishop reads Jacob’s indictment to two canal-rats. Bosch’s most famous messenger, a bird dressed as a canon, an inverted funnel on his head to indicate his up-side-down mind, is skating on the frozen waters of conscience. He carries the Papal condemnation.
Temptation of St. Anthony, Left Wing, St. Anthony’s Fall from Grace, 1502, Lisbon
Jeroen extended his daring sexual innuendo on the Church to the left wing. At the right edge of the panel, in continuation of the riffraff approaching the Black Mass, moving in the opposite direction, a fake cardinal beckons a stag-headed cleric to enter a dark sodomites’ pub between the legs of a laughing monster. Jeroen shrugged: Not all dignitaries of the Church could afford the means to maintain three mistresses and brazenly produce a score of illegitimate children like Alexander VI, their Pope. Some were reduced to satisfy their lust on little altar boys.
Temptation of St. Anthony, Left Wing, St. Anthony flying on a Sodomite Airship, 1502, Lisbon
When Jeroen had finished, he showed the triptych to Jacob, who was overwhelmed. A couple of days later Jacob said, “You finally succeeded to get under my skin. I have had wild dreams of flying for two nights. It is, of course, I who is in danger of falling from my flight of hubris. Sibylle’s magpie is dead. I couldn’t say who killed him, Maximilian or the Church. Thank you for giving me a second chance as my own rescuer. I might yet succeed.”
But Jacob’s mind was not at ease. In true Jacob fashion he returned a few days later with a manuscript of a free translation of a passage from Isaiah. “Let me read this to you,” he said. “it is the Biblical text underlying the left panel and my confusion.”
(Isaiah 59)
Hear ye this, O house of Jacob; thus said the Lord: Your iniquity has separated you and your Lord. Your hands are defiled with blood. Your lips have spoken lies, your mouths muttered perverseness. No one caller for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity. They hatch adders’ eggs, they weave the spider’s web; he who eats their eggs dies, and from one which is crushed a viper is hatched. Their works are works of iniquity, and deeds of violence are in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity, desolation and destruction are in their highways. The way of peace they know not, and there is no justice in their paths; they have made their roads crooked, no one who walks on them knows peace. Therefore, justice is far from you and righteousness does not overtake you; we look for light, and behold darkness, and for brightness, but we walk in gloom. We grope for the wall like the blind, we grope like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among those in full vigor we are like dead men.
Jacob said, “You have already shown the Basilisk. He is my vision of death. Unless I drag him out and face him, unless I unmask him, he will destroy me with his glance. Could you paint the Adder’s Egg, laid by a rooster and hatched by a toad, from which the Basilisk emerged, in the empty corner next to the bridge and the frozen brook of my conscience?” He watched while Jeroen inserted the cracked egg on which stands a bird swallowing the toad.
Temptation of St. Anthony, Left Wing, the Papal Bulle and St. Anthony’s Rescue, 1502, Lisbon
Jeroen’s most touching reference to Jacob is easily overlooked. On the frozen brook lies his soul-bird, his magpie, killed by an arrow. The blood of the bird is splattered in a puddle on the bridge.
Jeroen deeply affected by Jacob’s humiliation, brought out his St. Christopher panel and told him of his vow to take him on a pilgrimage to Compostela. Jacob hugged him in tears of relief.
The birth of a male heir, whom they named Charles, had greatly enhanced Philip the Fair’s and Juana’s position. In time Charles would become Emperor Maximilian’s I successor, the heir to Philip the Fair’s possessions in Burgundy and the Low Countries, and King of Spain and its heavily mortgaged world-wide empire.
In 1502 Ferdinand and Isabella summoned Philip and Juana to Spain. Philip soon found the morally and religiously restricted court life trying and tedious. Juana was pregnant again, her third child in two years. After a violent quarrel with Juana, Philip left his wife behind and returned to Ghent. Juana went berserk. She demanded to be united with her husband. To subdue her willful daughter, her mother declared her uncontrollable and locked her up in the castle of La Mota.
Dynastic politics were the reason for this extreme measure. After the deaths of Juana’s only brother John, of her older sister Isabella, and of her sister’s infant son, Juana suddenly was the sole heiress to the Spanish kingdoms. In 1502 the Cortezof Castile and Aragon, attributing Juana’s behavior to her pregnancy and recognized her and her husband as the future sovereigns of Spain.
In March of 1503 she gave birth to Ferdinand. Juana became ever more frenzied. On a cold November night, consumed by her infatuation with her handsome husband, threatening her keepers with the Inquisition, she fled La Mota in her nightshirt. She was stopped at the gates of the city. When her mother arrived, she insulted her with foul language. Her parents could no longer contain her and had to let the Queen designate of Spain return to Ghent. There she found a philandering Philip in bed with one of her buxom ladies-in-waiting. The chroniclers report that Juana in a terrifying scene cut off the woman’s long hair, and threw her out. Philip slapped Juana’s face. She went on a hunger strike. After a few days Philip ruefully returned to her bed.
In November 1504 her mother Isabella died, and Juana was proclaimed Queen of Castile. Ferdinand, her Machiavellian father, refused to vacate the throne and for two years ruled both Spains nominally together with Juana. Whereupon Juana, who had followed Philip to Ghent, induced-complacent Philip to contest Ferdinand’s kingship with the Spanish Cortez. The process dragged on until 1506.
In 1505 Juana gave birth to her fifth child. Leaving her older children in the care of Philip’s sister Margaret of Austria, she took her husband back to Spain. After they nearly drowned in a shipwreck on the coast of England, they reached Burgos on April 28, 1506. Ferdinand tried to persuade Philip to declare Juana incompetent, lock her up, and rule Spain with him. The attempt failed, because Ferdinand of Aragon and Philip of Hapsburg were equally suspect to the Castilian nobles. As the lesser evil, the Cortez, in early 1506, proclaimed Philip I King of both Spains. Six months later, on September 25, 1506 Philip died in Burgos from a mysterious illness. He was probably poisoned by Ferdinand, with whom he had had a series of violent quarrels. Juana pregnant with their sixth child went insane—or so the Spanish historians claim. For months she journeyed with Philip’s coffin through the barren vicinity of Burgos, bemoaning her love. Never divested of her title of Queen of Castile, Ferdinand locked her up in the castle of Tordesillas in 1509. There she died forty-six years later. In 1555 her son Charles V had her and Philip entombed in Granada. From Philip the Fair and Charles V the Spanish royal house inherited the famous deformed Hapsburgian jaw and from Juana a tendency to “madness.” The Low Countries became a Spanish dominion.
In early 1504 most of these royal intrigues and portentous events were still hidden in the not-so-distant future. Curiously, court records show, that in the beginning of the year Philip the Fair had ordered a very large “Last Judgment” from the van Aken shop. Apparently Philip made a down payment, but there exists no indication that the triptych was ever paid for, or, for that matter, painted. Philip, pressed by his personal problems, seems to have defaulted on his order. Or were there other reasons—connected with Jacob?
Disaster struck when Jacob and Jeroen had almost forgotten the dangers they lived in. Jacob’s study group had continued to meet, last at Cornelis van Bergen’s house. The cursed altar table had, well hidden, been left there. A few days after the meeting Jacob was asked to appear before the city magistrate, who politely but obviously annoyed asked him, what kind of clandestine meetings he was conducting in van Bergen’s house.
A maid had denounced them at the Bishop’s palace. She claimed to have found a magician’s table in Cornelis’ room and had told the churchmen that this was not the first meeting of these men at the house. Of course, the names of the eight participants were well known. Jacob remained cool and explained that he had been teaching Hebrew to the group. But what was the table for? countered the magistrate. He demanded that the meetings stop immediately. He would take up the matter with van Bergen. For the time being he would not take the issue before a Court. They were upright citizen in good standing and moreover some were personal friends of Duke Philip. However, he could not tolerate such activities in town. Besides he, Philip van Sint-Jan, was a baptized Jew. He was being watched by the Bishop, who could pressure the city magistrate to take more severe action against his person.
Jacob did not panic, but two members of his reading group let him know that they would no longer attend the meetings. A third one, a young monk who had been a student of Erasmus’ of Rotterdam, vanished. They later found that he had been severely reprimanded by his order and sent overseas. Cornelis van Bergen was perturbed after he had had a talk with the magistrate. He suggested, now that the Church had got wind of their meetings, to disband the sessions.
Jacob claimed that he was being followed in town. More obvious was that at night an unknown person was prowling around Herberte’s house, where he still lived. Visibly disconcerted Jacob got everyone alarmed by pointing out that Jeroen’s even more damaging paintings were hanging in the upstairs gallery. A raid on Herberte’s house would be a real disaster. Cornelis van Bergen came to their help. He offered to hide Jeroen’s paintings in the attic of one of his secluded country houses. They moved the entire lot including the Temptation of St. Anthony in the darkness of a foggy December night.
The issue was further aggravated by the Bishop of Den Bosch, who did not let the matter rest. He complained to Duke Philip about the clandestine activities of his proteges, and Philip, through his secretary, issued a formal warning to Cornelis and Jacob. Van Bergen got cold feet and without Jeroen’s permission sold the St. Anthony triptych to a Jewish art dealer in Amsterdam. Post factum Cornelis paid the lion share of the proceeds to an upset Jeroen, the rest he kept as a commission.
According to Dutch art-dealers the Anthony triptych was in 1530 bought by the young Damiaan de Goes. De Goes (1502-1574) was a widely traveled Portuguese historian and humanist, a friend of Luther’s and Erasmus’. In 1571 when the Inquisition convicted de Goes of Lutheran heresies and imprisoned him for life, the triptych appears to have been appropriated by King Juan III of Portugal, one of the four sons-in-law of Juana’s and Philip’s. It is the only major Bosch triptych which escaped the henchmen of King Philip II of Spain.
Jacob, dismissed by Philip for the second time, sat brooding at home. He became a depressing liability to all of them. Jeroen, having lost his entire private collection, was fuming at Cornelis van Bergen. Alone by himself he would curse the altar table, but he never accused Jacob for the mishap. He had foreseen it years ago. This was not the time to burden Jacob with more guilt. Philip’s default on his order caused Jeroen less pain. He had given this order to the shop anyway.
Jacob suggested to leave for their planned pilgrimage to Compostela. His initiative cheered up Jeroen. “Wait a few months,” said Jeroen, “I first have to work off my anger at the masters of this world. You don’t want to start in the middle of winter, do you?” Jacob agreed grumbling, “I am tired of these Christian charades. I feel tempted to declare my apostasy and disappear in the Jewish ghetto of Amsterdam.” Laughing, Jeroen reminded him, that before he could pose as an intellectual martyr and renounce his baptism, he first had to get a pilgrim’s pass from some willing parish priest. He offered to take care of that.
The Haywain, Middle Panel, copy 1516, (original 1504), Madrid
Once again Jeroen set out to paint a triptych. Compared to the Anthony panels the Haywain appears like a harmless genre piece, which, however, would prove no less enigmatic to posterity. The center of the middle panel is occupied by a large farmer’s cart stacked with hay. It is pulled by a chaotic troupe of hybrid monsters towards the right, as it were to Hell. On top of the hay load sits a young man with a lute accompanying his girl singing love songs. A devil blowing a long shalwm and a praying angel try to influence the outcome of this tête-à-tête. As a warning or as an imagined temptation a second couple is seen kissing in front of a dark tree behind them. In a cloud above Christ helplessly raises his hands and with a kindly tilted head commiserates the foolishness of the world.
The foreground is populated by a colorful variety of everyday scenes. A quack pulls the tooth of a love-sick woman. Two pregnant women commiserate each other about their misfortune. A vagrant tries to abduct a child. While tending a roasting chicken over a fire, a woman feeds her baby. Three women bring sacks of hay to an overweight prior. Closer to the cart all hell has broken loose. A robber is about to cut the throat of a man on the ground. A friar is trying to restrain a man from beating his wife. A one-legged cripple is strangled by another man, and half a dozen people are trying to grab some hay from the wagon. We finally understand that the solution to this riddle is the simple figure of speech: “You are making money like hay.”
Those who do, in Bosch’s angered view, are riding to Hell: the Pope, the Emperor, Cornelis van Bergen, and to the very left a childish, stupid-looking Philip the Fair in an ermine-fringed light-blue cape. The Emperor has a bearded face, which Maximilian had not. Neither he nor the Pope bear any likeness to the contemporary potentates whom Bosch knew well.
Jeroen showed it to Jacob, and the two laughed at the naive Philip. Jacob wanted to know who was the turbaned prophet preaching to the doomed crowd. “Don’t you recognize him?” said Jeroen. “It is your favorite Jesaia! Nobody is listening to him.” The two wings were leaning on the wall, unfinished. “I will let the shop paint them,” said Jeroen, “but the outside is finished.” With Jacob’s help he turned the panels around. They showed Jacob the Wanderer, in the same posture as in the Prodigal Son, only his hair was now completely white. Carrying his travel pannier, Jacob is dressed almost elegantly in a brown cape and pants. Maxi III follows him with bared teeth. The background has changed. In a hilly landscape a couple is dancing to a bagpipes-player, and robbers are stripping their hapless victim. A gallows threatens on a nearby hilltop. Jacob is about to cross a wooden foot bridge over a brook.
The Haywain, Outside of Triptych, Jacob on Pilgrimage, copy 1516, (original 1504), Madrid
“Where am I going?” asked a perplexed Jacob. “To Compostela!” Jeroen said chuckling. “While our enemies go to hell, you are crossing the bridge to a new life. This landscape is in Spain. You haven’t found the magpie yet. With a little imagination, it appears twice in the lower corner. The old magpie of Sibylle’s time sits on Adam’s thigh bone next to an ass’ scull, and the second one flies away. I don’t yet know why. Maybe it isn’t even a magpie!”
Jeroen came home with two pilgrim’s passes from the parish priest. “He issued me one for you too,” he exclaimed exulted. “For an extra ducat he re-baptized you Jacob van Sint-Jans. Now I don’t confuse you with Philip any longer. The man remembered your baptism well.” Jeroen suggested that they buy two horses to ride at least as far as Vezelay, where the path began. They could sell them later, when their money ran low.
On a beautiful May morning in 1505 they started out towards Leuven. Jeroen, who had never been farther afield than Tilburg, was excited. He would finally get to see the world. He had persuaded Jacob to take an extended route and visit some of the places where his famous contemporaries had left their paintings. In Leuven they stayed at the Bronchorst’s house, where Jeroen’s Epiphany hung in a conspicuous place. He took Jacob to Saint Peter’s Church. “I want to show you the work of two painters which I have never seen,” said Jeroen, “Dieric Bouts the Elder and Rogier van der Weyden. Van der Weyden is a giant. Dieric Bouts died 15 years ago. He was the official painter of Leuven. He is closer to me. His Holy Eucharist Altar is barely forty years old. It was commissioned by the Leuven Confraternity of the Holy Eucharist. Bouts painted it with the help of two canons from Leuven University, Masters Jan Varenecker and Aegidius Ballawel, who, like you, instructed him as to the subjects the Confraternity wanted. It is a large triptych, larger than my Garden.”
Bouts’ painting turned out to be unique. In the center panel Christ celebrates the Eucharist among the Apostles. Jacob counted twelve! “Judas is putting on his coat,” suggested Jeroen. “He is about to leave the table. Look at Christ’s mystical face. These days everyone likes Bouts’ Christ. This face recurs on several of Bouts’ paintings.” The two scholars were standing in the background. “He repeated them,” said sharp Jacob pointing, “in the double portrait hanging on the wall!” The Old Testament subjects of the four side panels were equally unusual: The Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek, The Gathering of Manna, Elijah in the Desert, and a Celebration of Passover among four Jews and two women in contemporary costumes. “Amazing,” exclaimed Jeroen. “This must be the only assembly of Jews on an altar of our times. The courageous canons must have expressly sanctioned them.” After a while he added, “Forty years ago this was still possible, besides Leuven belongs to the archdiocese of Liege. They are more independent from the Pope there than in Cologne.”
Van der Weyden’s Deposition Altar, thirty years older and slightly smaller than the Bouts, hung in the neighboring Chapel of the Confraternity of the Archers. “Fabulous, look at it! This is Flemish painting at its most exalted,” said Jeroen. “Rogier died when I was fourteen. My father was always holding him up to me. I have to admit that he was right. Rogier’s brush control is superb. By comparison I am a fast and sloppy painter. He must have spent months on it.” Jeroen examined the detail close up and noted the saturation of colors, which Rogier could only have obtained with solid layers of thick paint. ” To be able to work faster I thin my paint until it flows like water. This makes any under-drawing visible, like Maxi in the Garden. So, I eliminated extensive under-drawings and paint from sketches.” Musing about van der Weyden he continued. “Rogier had a large shop and often left the detailing to his assistants. But he must have painted this altar by himself. Look at the faces. Beautiful craftsmanship!” They stood in silence before the painting, and then Jeroen said, “I have lost the patience for this kind of painting. I might be the last painter of his generation. After me these costly altar triptychs will die out. The customers will demand that the painter paints everything himself.” With emphasis he added, “This is not my kind of subject and not my style. I don’t see the world with such clarity and definition. To me everything floats, good and evil, the sacred and the profane, and God and the Devil are intertwined. Bouts knew that too, but he worked on commission.”
They passed through Aachen, Liege, Auxerre and in June, drenched from three days riding in the rain, arrived in Vezelay. Vezelay was a disappointment. Jeroen had heard so much about thousands of devout pilgrims crowding the place that he had been apprehensive. The place was empty. There were only two dozens pilgrims present, and they were mostly local country folk. The Cathedral of the Magdalene, too, was not as magnificent as he had imagined. For the first time they stayed at a pilgrims lodge. A grimy dormitory and a communal refectory with rough benches and coarse food. Jacob laughed, “We have been living like kings. This is the real world you wanted to see.”
Early next morning they went up to the cathedral. A priest was celebrating mass for a group of pilgrims on their knees. The two friends stood hidden in the dark recesses, spectators both. Jeroen discovered the sculpted capitals on top the columns. Whispering he pointed them out to Jacob. “They are lovely and down to earth.” People milling grain, Mary on a tired donkey fleeing Egypt, the grape harvest, a few saints and many expressive devils pursuing the faithful.
The pilgrims had vanished on a circumambulation through the chapels behind the altar. “I really don’t like churches,” said Jeroen. “May we leave?” Jacob nodded. They had entered through a side door. Meanwhile the main gates had been opened. As they walked out, Jeroen looked back and noticed the sandstone tympanum over the inner entry. He stood rooted. The Second Coming of a most lively Christ, his legs turned sideways, his arms spread over the multitude of small people below him, his loose robes flowing in great, almost transparent folds exposing his limbs. He said to Jacob, “I thought that only my generation had discovered the human aspect of Christ. This was made two hundred years ago!” The movement continued through the people to Christ’s left and right, as if a holy wind made their garments cling to their bodies. “Had I seen this tympanum earlier,” said Jeroen, “I would have painted Christ like this.” He laughed, “but I would have given him Dieric Bouts’ mystical Holy Face.”
In the late afternoon Jeroen suggested to go back to the cathedral. The sun had come out and was casting the western facade into warm light. The great tympanum stood out in sharp contrast in the light coming from the open doors. The nave was empty. They walked down the isles looking at the capitals.
Suddenly, halfway down the nave Jeroen felt dizzy. He noticed that he was standing in the center of a large spiral maze inscribed into the floor. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Jacob was gone. He shuddered. A wind was blowing through the immense building. He heard the wind moan in the upper galleries. The giddiness returned, and he sat down in the center of the mandala with closed eyes. He had a strong vision of Jacob and himself on a promontory overlooking the blue sea. It was sunny, a wind was blowing, and he could hear the surf pounding. Jacob was lying on the ground motionless. He knew Jacob was dying. He tried to help him but couldn’t move. Jacob cried out in Hebrew. Then it was all over.
Jeroen shook off the spell. Jacob was calling him from the side nave. On his question why he had suddenly sat down, Jeroen said, “I got trapped in the old maze. A giddy spell overcame me, nothing to worry about.” But he feared that Jacob would die on their way, some place near the sea, perhaps in Portugal.
They agreed to keep the horses and, as Jacob pointed out sarcastically, their good life. Beaune was not far. They took their time, rode up the lovely valley of the Cousin, through rolling vineyards, small Burgundian villages, and seemingly endless woods. In four-days time they reached Beaune. Jeroen pressed to see the Rogier van der Weyden’s polyptych, which, however, was not that easy. The painting hung in the Hôtel de Diéu, a large hospital foundation for the poor. They had to get special permission and then walk through several wards, where behind red curtains stood the beds of the sick. Jacob was impressed by the cleanliness and order. Jeroen was forging ahead without looking right or left saying, “I don’t like sick people nor these smiling nuns.”
When they finally stood before the enormous altar piece, two pairs of wings on each side of the central panel, Jeroen began at once to analyze its composition. “Here you see the work of a large workshop. Christ and the Angel of the Apocalypse weighing the good and the bad souls is by Rogier himself. Probably some of the heads in the wings, the Fall into Hell, and the Blessed being admitted through the Church to Heaven are his work, too. But the naked people resurrected from their graves and the angels above are painted by his assistants. Famous as he was, he had some excellent painters in his shop. But these small figures are crude and unimaginative.” He walked a few steps back and continued, “An old-fashioned treatment of the subject. How far we have come in the years since the forties! Hans Memling, who worked for a while in Rogier’s shop, had a less rigid hand. I have only seen a copy of the Last Judgment Memling painted for St. Mary’s Church in Danzig twenty years later. I now see that Rogier’s Deposition in Leuven is his greatest masterpiece. This polyptych doesn’t come close.”
Jacob listened amused. He couldn’t have found a more critical guide to Flemish painting than this outspoken, latter-day master. He thought of the contemporary Italians he had seen and met in Florence. How distant their sensitivity was from Flanders. But Jeroen, who had never seen any of their paintings except in reproductions, would not listen to him. “The Italians are shallow,” Jeroen said with the same finality with which he had just reduced this van der Weyden to its weaknesses and faults. “In their preoccupation with form and painterly surface they lack the depth of the emotions we have.” Which was, Jacob felt, clearly untrue. The rich Brabantian merchants obviously thought much like his friend. They had never commissioned a Boticelli painting as the Florentine merchant Potinari had done by ordering an altar and a lovely Nativity from Hugo van der Goes. It was all a matter of the heart.
Heading southwest they left Burgundy. The neighboring Auvergne was a sparsely populated moon-scape dotted with bizarre cones of ancient volcanoes. Hundreds of sheep, few trees, impoverished villages. Because of the scarcity of tolerable accommodations they rode fast and long distances,. It had become July and the weather had stabilized. Jeroen had acquired a full gray beard shot with white, while Jacob’s was completely white and pointed. It complemented his haggard, dark, hook-nosed face.
At an inn in Riom they made the acquaintance of a gentleman who, besides French, spoke German and Italian. Jacob was delighted. Hyppolitus d’Andreae, a native of Geneva, had spent a month at the University of Paris and was on his way home. It soon transpired that he was a Dottore juris, a doctor of civil law. In his late thirties, he was slender, and vivacious. His long brown hair framed a sharp, well-shaven profile. A good-looking man in his prime.
Hyppolitus, hearing that they came from Brabant, filled them in on the political news. Philip the Fair had been elected King of Spain. He and his wife had moved to Burgos in April from where they were contesting the throne of both Spains, which Philip’s father-in-law refused to vacate. The outcome was not yet known. “Just imagine,” said Hyppolitus, “Maximilian’s grand scheme of securing the crowns of half of Europe for the Hapsburg dynasty might be within reach!” How came that he, a scholar of law, was so well informed on these matters, asked Jacob. Lowering his eyes Hyppolitus confessed that he was the ambassador of the Swiss Confederacy to Maximilian’s court. “Traveling alone?” asked Jacob. Hyppolitus looked quizzically at Jacob and explained, “This is a personal journey. In Paris I attended a series of lectures by Erasmus of Rotterdam, who is on his way from Oxford to Italy. I like traveling incognito. It gives me time to think.” With a smile he added, “Erasmus’ sober view of the world is encouraging.” Jacob sighed and in a softer voice said, “I have lived pent up in s’Hertogenbosch for so long that I have lost contact with academia. We have more acquaintances in common, than either of us could have guessed. I was Maximilian’s tutor before he became Emperor designate.” Hyppolitus’ face brightened, “I have heard of a Master Jacob van Almaengien, but Jacob van Sint-Jans?” Jacob smiled, “The Babylonian confusion of names in northern Europe! Both refer to the same person, who sits before you. Maximilian in 1496 graciously decided to have me baptized Philip van Sint-Jans. For various reasons I reverted back to Jacob, the only name that is truly mine.” Hyppolitus spontaneously shook Jacob’s hand. They clinked glasses and Jacob with a sarcastic smile toasted to “Maximilian the Last Knight.” Hyppolitus asked who Jacob’s friend was. “He is a painter,” said Jacob with a grand gesture of his hand. “He is better known by his artist’s name: Hieronymus Bosch.” Surprised, Hyppolitus changed to German and turned to Jeroen, “Did you paint the large triptych crowded with exalted nude people, which I saw at Johann von Nassau’s palatial house in Brussels?” Jeroen shyly acceded. Hyppolitus jumped up and bowed to Jeroen. “I am most honored to find myself in your company. We must drink to this meeting.” He ordered a bottle of the best Burgundy in the house. “Now you will have to explain to me what this painting is about,” said Hyppolitus, when the wine arrived.
In the course of this long evening Jeroen gave a description of the Garden without having recourse to the painting, and Jacob of his years at the feet of Ficino in Florence and his lectures in Den Bosch. Testing Hyppolitus’ mindset he mentioned his troubles with the Archdiocese of Cologne and the high-handed Maximilian. Hyppolitus did not comment and described his own life. He had been born in Turin. His father had been the vice president of the civil court there. The family came from Bologna, where he had studied. In the end Hyppolitus mentioned that he was heading to a symposium of philosophers, poets, and statesmen at the nearby Chateau-de-Tournoël. He invited them. “You will enjoy it,” he said. “The hostess and owner of the chateau is Françoise de Talaru, a twenty-five-year-old égérie of great men.”
The chateau de Tournoël crowned a mountain spur above the river Ambéne. Françoise received Hyppolitus with open arms and the two pilgrims with graceful charm. Magister Jacob’s intimate knowledge of the Neoplatonists would greatly contribute to their discussions. She turned to Jeroen and said in slow French, “Hyppolitus has been very impressed by your work in Brussels. Your compatriot Gerard David visited me last month. He presented me with a small Madonna with Child by his hand. It hangs in the library.” Jeroen thanked her in his broken French, he had heard of David but not seen any of his paintings.
After having been shown to their room, the two friends explored the library. Jeroen at once found David’s Madonna. “You know,” he said in a low voice. “Put this Madonna into the elegant, low-cut dress Françoise is wearing, and you’ll recognize her as our hostess! Had I had such a beguiling patroness, maybe I would also have painted Madonnas.” Jacob saw something else, he grinned saying, “This will be your first Italianate painting! By Florentine standards it is not a great piece of art, but the angels definitely speak Italian.” Jeroen shot him an annoyed glance, “Yes, I see that,” he said. “David is as Flemish as I am. The only difference is that he speaks French. He lives in Bruges and is a student of Memling’s. The painting is as Flemish as it could be. Look at the city in the background. The angels are a concession to his darling.”
On the shelves Jacob found the complete works of Ficino and next to them a copy of Christine de Pizan’s revolutionary Book of the City of Ladies. He was suddenly struck by a vague recollection: “D’Andreae?” he mumbled. “Her name was Novella d’Andreae!” He found Pizan’s account of Novella and read it to Jeroen: “‘Giovanni d’Andreae, a solemn canonicus in Bologna had a fair and good daughter, named Novella, who was educated in the law to such an advanced degree that, when he was occupied with some other matter, he let her present his lectures to his students. And to prevent her beauty from distracting her audience, she had a small curtain drawn in front of her.’ She must be an ancestor of Hyppolitus!” He shook his head, “The sorcery of beautiful women! We have entered a magic circle of learned people.”
At dinner seven gentlemen and one woman, a poet from Southern France, congregated in the dining hall. Françoise, by far the youngest, dressed to her ankles in beautiful green velvet, her lovely breasts half exposed, sat at the head and introduced everyone with a short comment. A bevy of waiters served delicious Burgundian dishes. Jeroen was shocked by an hors d’oeuvre of snails in their shells. After he had watched the others eat these lowly creatures, he gobbled them up with gusto. The next dish, pork entrails forced into sausage skins and fried, he was more accustomed to. It was followed by a gigot de mutton which had been marinated in old Burgundy and cognac. The wines were dark and heavy. Slightly tipsy, he felt like a barbarian.
The conversation turned around politics and the latest events. One man, who had just arrived from Dijon, brought the news that Philip the Fair had finally been installed as King Philip I of Spain. Instantly, the group split into two parties, one including the hostess and Hyppolitus cheered for Philip and Juana, while most of the older gentlemen regretted the expansion of the power of the Hapsburgs. Françoise offered a spirited defense of Juana, whom she claimed was being suppressed and intimidated by her father and cuckolded by her husband. An older canon from Tourain remarked, “She is crazy and irresponsible, and besides her husband’s elevation endangers the fragile peace accord between France, Spain, and Burgundy.” Françoise countered that Juana was a woman of intelligence and great courage. She had, practically on her own, saved her entire entourage from perishing in a shipwreck on the shores of England. She raised her glass to Juana who had born two future emperors and three potential queens. Nobody could deny her claim. Whereupon laughter broke the stand-off.
The only Spaniard among them, a Jewish refugee from the Inquisition, changed the subject to the explorations of Christopher Columbus, who had just returned from his fourth voyage to the Western Indies. Spain would finally gain a foothold in India and reap immense fortunes. A lively debate ensued over whether the lands Columbus had discovered were indeed India or a new continent.
An astronomer from Paris pointed out that there was yet another Italian explorer in Spanish employ, Amerigo Vespucci who had sailed west and claimed to have discovered a New World. “Now a German cartographer had the ingenuity to call it America, after the popular Vespucci!” “Just imagine,” added the French canon, “Their Majesties the Catholic Kings of Spain will not only become the richest monarchs in Europe, but will be able to present thousands of heathen souls to the Church!” Everyone but the Jewish Spaniard laughed at this quip. “However,” said the astronomer, “more serious are rumors that one Copernicus is maintaining that the earth revolves around the sun. If this, supposedly scientific claim, holds true, it will upset our whole concept of the universe. Man will no longer be its center, there may even be people on other planets. I am afraid the All-Catholic Church cannot tolerate this theory, and will persecute the canonicus. We are standing at the abyss of an intellectual revolution.” Hyppolitus added, “And of a religious one in addition. Strong anti-Papal sentiments are seething in Geneva, Germany, and Bohemia. Pope Alexander VI has driven the credibility of the Church to its nadir.” Françoise threw him a glance of caution, she did not want to get embroiled in this hot subject, and Hyppolitus fell into polite silence.
One day Hyppolitus gave a talk on Erasmus’ cool and sober philosophy. On another Françoise passionately defended the writings of Christine de Pizan, her older sister-in-arms.
On Saturday Françoise introduced Margaret de Beaujeu, a sister of Anne de Beaujeu and a professor of music at Perpignan University. She would present her latest discovery, the once famous Roman de Fauvel complete, with singers and musicians..
A little nervous, Margaret gave an introduction.. Le Roman de Fauvel had originally been a long satirical poem on the corruption of government and church written in 1310, during the time of the Avignon popes, by a certain Gervais de Bus. The underground poem became so popular that a few years later Chaillou de Pesstain, a Parisian poet, added a second part. In 1316 Phillipe de Vitry, the founder of Ars Nova, the New Art of Music inserted a number of musical pieces into the French text: Gregorian chants, courtly songs, narrative lays, obscene street songs, and exquisite examples of new-style polyphony. She had discovered a beautifully illuminated manuscript of the Roman including de Vitry’s notation, which formed the basis for her present revival. During the performance she would read an arrangement of verses from the poem, and her students would perform and sing de Vitry’s music.
The performance became a most enjoyable evening. Margaret presented the first book, “Fauvel’s Career and Aggrandizement” in the late afternoon, and after dinner she turned to the second, “Fauvel’s Marriage with Vain Glory” followed by the final “Tournament of the Virtues against the Vices.”
In the poem Fauvel is a dun-colored (fauve: fawn, malodorous) mule. His father was an ass, his mother a mare. However, “Fauvel” is also an acronym (in medieval French) for Flaterie, Averice, Uilanie, Variete (fickleness), Envie, and Laschete (cowardice). These six ladies of vice adore and constantly groom him. They set up Fauvel as their King: Fauvel no longer had to live in the stable, he sat enthroned in the grand hall and fed from a golden manger. Fortuna makes him master of her house: Beggars and nobles, prelates and popes flocked to honor him. There was nobody who didn’t seek his favor, read Margaret. Crimia, malicia, culpa nescit terminum, crime, malice, and guilt knew no end, sings the chorus. The six ladies put the idea into Fauvel’s head to marry Fortuna: she is a most proper wife for you, because she is vain and so are you. Marry her and make her your queen. The first book ends with the chorus lamenting the corruption of the world.
During dinner the canon asked Margaret, why she had not staged the piece as a pantomime. She pointed out that the characters are all allegories which are hard to personify, just as the text was a never ending play with words. In the end it was all unreal. In the second book this would reach its culmination, when in his motets de Vitry artfully confuses the listener with multiple, simultaneously sung texts and often starkly dissonant polyphonies.
The second part begins with a hymn on Paris: N’il na cité si renommee par tout de cretienité, —there is no city of higher repute in all of Christendom. There, Fauvel wants to celebrate his wedding. Instead of Bishops and abbots he invites his female admirers: Charnalité, Yvresse (drunkenness), Outrage (grossness), Ribaudé (sloveness), Lecherie, Ypocrisie, Heresie, Mençonge (mendacity), etc. However, vain Fauvel makes a mistake. To show off his triumph, he also orders by decree the Virtues Virginité, Sapience (wisdom), Providence, Bonté, Verité, and more to appear. In a polyphonic motet on four texts the chorus sings the refrain: Fauvel est mal assegné–Fauvel is badly advised. Trumpeters blow their horns. Extravagant feasting begins. The guests are guzzling themselves, followed by a wild charivari of dancing. Fortuna, who has two faces and constantly plays with her wheels, descends to earth. Indignant at the anarchy, Fauvel has created, she refuses to marry the mule and sets him up with Vain-Glory, one of her handmaidens. Fauvel spends several nights with her making “Nouveaus Favaus.” Meanwhile the heavily armed Vices attack the Virtues. The chorus calls the Virgo Virginens and Christ for help. In a heated battle the Vices are defeated, and Fauvel is imprisoned. France is free again. Generous applause rewarded Margaret and her students, and nobody blinked an eye, when Françoise disappeared with Hyppolitus to her chambers.
Kissed good-bye by their hostess one early morning Jeroen and Jacob set out on well-fed horses for the Pyrenees.
Jeroen looked at Jacob and laughed, “After this civilized indulgence will we ever recover our resolve to continue this pilgrimage?” “What pilgrimage?” mocked Jacob. Jeroen fell silent. He enjoyed this new view of the world, but where were the spiritual experiences, he had expected? And Jacob? He had noticed that Jacob had lost his usual verve among these educated people. Jacob would not admit to it, but he felt despondent, left behind by the rapid changes in thought and intellectual fashion. Everyone had read Plato, and Ficino had become a philosophical relic, replaced by Pico della Mirandola and now Erasmus. Jacob had not dared to offer giving a lecture on one of his favorite Platonic dialogues. To Jeroen this omission spoke of Jacob’s inner condition.
As they rode up the steep road towards the Pyrenean pass, the beauty of the countryside and the physical exercise blew away Jeroen’s gloomy thoughts. Breathing heavily, they dismounted and pulled their horses uphill. Jeroen had never seen snow-covered mountains. He laughed delighted. “Our mountains are mere molehills compared to these, yet every Flemish painter puts wild, rocky snow peaks in the background of his panels, pure fantasy.” By the end of the second day Jacob was exhausted. They stopped for the night at a primitive hospice in Roncesvalles. Spain at last.
They rested again for a couple of days near Pamplona. Despite being visibly tired, Jacob pressed on. He wanted to get to Burgos to see and hear for himself, what had become of Juana after Philip’s death. It turned October, the countryside was bare and monotonous. The harvest had long been brought in. They had now been on their way for over half a year. Jeroen reminded himself, that Jacob was sixty-six, ten years older than he. It took them a week to ride the short distance.
They put up at a modest inn in Burgos. The locals had little more information to offer than what they already knew. Juana had gone completely crazy. She had taken Philip’s coffin with her and for weeks had every night been traveling aimlessly from one village to another. During the day she would set up the casket at the village church and take refuge at a nearby monastery. Gruesome rumors were passing around that she had had the casket opened at night and had thrown herself on the decaying corpse, kissing and hugging her lost love. Afraid of being poisoned, she would not allow anybody to get close to her..
Jacob grew more morose every day. “I have never told you,” he said to Jeroen, “how I spent the months after Sibylle’s death. It was a terrible time. That was when I took refuge in your little red pills.” Jeroen commented that Juana was not Sibylle. He had never particularly liked her and had thought little of Philip. Why did these two disturb him so much? “I don’t know,” said Jacob. “Maybe I have become older and more sentimental. I have terrible dreams about her. She loved this man as much as I loved Sibylle. She is not crazy, only in terrible distress.”
They left Burgos before daybreak. Near Hornillos they noticed smoke rising from a fire in the fields. As they drew nearer they came upon a group of peasants gawking at a funeral procession. The tired carriers had set the elaborate coffin on the ground. A young acolyte was mechanically reciting from a prayer book. Next to the coffin the black-veiled widow stood moaning. Suddenly Jacob fell on his knees and with a crazed voice began praying in Hebrew. The acolyte stopped his litany. Jacob continued in French, “God have mercy upon me. I never buried you, my beloved, my savior. I repent all the wrongs I have done you. God’s wrath will follow me to my grave.” In a flash Jeroen saw Jacob kneeling illuminated by the flames of the burning house of Sibylle’s father. He bent over his friend and asked in Flemish. “Who is she?” The woman turned around, removed her veil, and in a hysterically exalted voice exclaimed, “I am Juana the Queen of Castile.” Tears streaming down her face she pointed at the coffin and shouted in Flemish, “And this is your Duke whom you called the Fair. My beloved husband poisoned by my own father, the Aragonese animal. Yes, God’s wrath be upon him!” Jeroen now saw that she was hugely pregnant. He tried to calm Jacob, who was trembling all over. Jacob stared at him from hollow eyes full of dread, “The Basilisk! It is gazing at me. Jeroen, protect me from its deadly glance.” Jacob collapsed, and Jeroen put his coat over his head.
Juana ordered the carriers to get on their way. They shouldered the casket and vanished towards Hornillos in the gray, uncertain light. There, refusing any help, Juana would give birth all by herself to Catalina, her last child. For fear of her father’s henchmen, she chased away all servants and lived on bread and water. After four months, clutching her child, her only consolation, she set out once more to wandering through the villages around Burgos with Philip’s casket. The world condemned her as demented, yet she would live fifty more years locked up by her father in Tordesillas.
Jacob was in no condition to continue their journey. Jeroen loaded him on his horse and took him back to Burgos. For several days Jacob lay motionless on his bed. At night he would scream in his sleep, and when Jeroen woke him, would recite passages from the Song of Mose. Jeroen thought that this was the end, and suggested to get a priest to read the last rites over his friend. This got Jacob so angry that he jumped out of bed and at considerable length heaped abuse on the Christian church. After this outbreak he improved and in another week was well enough to continue their journey. Avoiding Hornillos, they rode along a different route.
On the long stretch to Leon through ever more desolate country, Jacob developed a new fixation, he wanted to reach the sea. Jeroen thought of his vision in the cathedral of Vezelay and tried to convince him to return home, after Compostela. Jacob would not hear of it. “I no longer care about Compostela, but before I die, I must unite with the ocean which holds the soul of my beloved.” Jeroen sighed, and Jacob said, “Don’t you remember the journey of the birds? They drowned themselves in the ocean of love and compassion.”
Surprisingly Jacob seemed to gather strength from this abstraction. His sarcasm disappeared. Jeroen suggested to abandon Compostela entirely and turn southwest to Portugal. From Oporto, he was sure, they could find a boat passage back to Amsterdam. Jacob thanked him for this suggestion. He became happier than Jeroen could remember and endured the most strenuous rides.
It took them three weeks. When they entered Oporto, they found the city teeming with refugees. Penniless Spanish Jews who had been robbed of all their possessions and threatened with death had taken advantage of the confusion following Ferdinand’s abdication to escape. Some had been forcefully baptized, others were defiantly holding on to their faith. A pitiful lot. There were no cheap accommodations left in town. Jeroen, full of ominous apprehension took Jacob to an inn in a village by the sea. Jacob seemed light-hearted. Watched by a worried Jeroen, he submerged himself completely in the cold ocean. “Oh no,” Jacob said when he came out shivering. “Don’t worry, thou shalt not kill and especially not yourself. I will not drown myself.”
They sold the horses for a good price, and Jeroen went to town to search for a passage to the Low Countries. It became a long and frustrating search. There were scores of people who would have paid any amount of money for a place on-board a ship. He returned empty handed. He found Jacob on his bed surrounded by a group of villagers. The innkeeper told him that Jacob had collapsed unconscious. He had summoned a competent Jewish doctor, who had diagnosed a stroke. Jeroen threw the curious out and talked to the doctor. Jacob had come-to fairly quickly, but would be paralyzed on one leg for a while. His mind seemed unaffected. Prescribing rest and some medication the doctor promised to be back in a day.
Jacob smiled wanly at Jeroen, apologizing for the trouble he was causing. As gently as he could, Jeroen told him of his poor success. When Jacob would be feeling better, he would go out again. Jacob did not have to ride or walk home. He would find a passage for the two of them.
During this dark night, the sea pounding below the inn from a storm that had come up, Jacob told Jeroen of how he had discovered Sibylle, when he returned from Ghent after the storm-flood in September of 1477. He had searched for hours in the polder below the village, they had lived in. There were piles of debris and many dead bodies strewn over the ground. He had finally found her near a last puddle still tied to the bundle with their dead child. She had lain there for two days and was blue and bloated. A horrifying sight. Because they were Jews, he had not been able to find a cemetery where to bury her as Jewish custom demanded. Together with many unidentified bodies the villagers had put her in a mass grave. “My greatest sin of omission, which cannot ever be atoned.”
The doctor returned and told Jeroen to take Jacob on daily short walks to exercise his leg. Jeroen mentioned his futile search for a passage to Amsterdam. The doctor nodded, he had an acquaintance, who was in the shipping business, he would see what he could do.
Every morning Jacob, supported by Jeroen, took walks along a path overlooking the sea. Jacob quietly concentrated on his recovery and very slowly regained enough control over his leg that he could gingerly walk along the walls at the inn. Two weeks later the doctor returned with two passages to Amsterdam. The price was high. Jeroen set aside the money from the horses to pay for food and other expenses on the three-week journey and negotiated a credit-advance with a Portuguese merchant, who had a Kontor in Amsterdam.
The catwalk to the ship was narrow, there was the danger that Jacob would fall with his weak leg. Jeroen carried him on board. “Like Christopher in your painting,” joked Jacob, accepting the mortification. The boat was overloaded. They were given two bunks in a crowded dormitory. Every place, even on the bare deck, was taken by hapless Jewish refugees. Eventually Jacob made the acquaintance of a learned doctor who spoke Latin and French. The others, despite their shared fate, left him indifferent. He had nothing in common with this Sephardic lot, who spoke a Babel of languages.
They sailed from Oporto on an auspiciously sunny day, but it was late October, and they were sure to encounter bad weather on their way. Jeroen spent the days on deck watching this ship of fools. Spontaneous quarrels and fighting over territory would break out; the wrangling at the daily mass feeding; two were standing in a dark corner below desperately making love; the fear of the sea, and the sick vomiting overboard or wherever they were. The stench soon became unbearable. At the height of Bordeaux the feared storm caught up with them. Everybody crammed into the lower quarters. Breakers washed over the deck. Every able hand worked at the bilge pumps The ship heaved and groaned frightfully. Jacob, unaccustomed to sea voyages, got sick like all the others. Jeroen tried to spread calm and courage, only one more week and they would be safe.
The storm over, Jacob, at night in his sleep, had a second stroke. Jeroen noticed it only next morning, when Jacob did not rise. All Jeroen’s efforts were in vain. The Jewish doctor, whom Jacob had befriended, examined him. He pronounced him dead. Jeroen told the doctor how Jacob had just described to him the rigorous laws by which a dead Jew had to be buried properly. The doctor smiled sadly, these were the laws of a people who for thousands of years had been land-bound. Mose, who could part the Red Sea, was long gone. The rules of the sea demanded that the corpse be given over to the sea. His friend could not be embalmed, nor could he be hidden for another week. The captain demanded an immediate sea burial. The ship was crowded, the danger of an epidemic too large.
Bundled tightly and weighted with a stone, Jacob’s body was lowered overboard within sight of the Isles d’Ouessant in front of the coast of Brest. The captain read the last rites and made three crosses over Jacob van Sint-Jans.
In late November Jeroen returned to Den Bosch and found his life in shambles. The family shop had gone bankrupt. After their departure rumors had begun to circulate in Brabant that Jacob had abandoned his Christian faith. Both Peter van Os and Cuperinus, the chroniclers of Den Bosch, briefly report his apostasy as simple fact: die Jode en bleeft niet stantaftig en viel weder van syn Kerstenheyt en wert een Jode.”—The Jew didn’t remain steadfast and deserted Christianity again and became a Jew.” Out of fear, several customers had canceled their orders with the shop. Later, an anonymous letter arrived threatening the van Akens with dire consequences, if they produced any more paintings for Jacob’s heretic circle. Jeroen, who might have been able to divert the disaster was absent. To keep the family business afloat his brothers had seen themselves forced to sell most of their stock of oak planks. Cornelis van Bergen had quietly sold the remaining copies of Jeroen’s pictures on the gray market in Amsterdam. He had shared the proceeds with the Akens, but the amount had been insufficient to pay-off their creditors. Jeroen’s older brother shrugged, what could he have done? Business had quickly come to a standstill. He had to dismiss the helping hands. To make things worse, Aleit, not to be drawn into the bankruptcy of the shop, had seen herself forced to separate her inherited assets from Jeroen’s. She took Jeroen back into her house and paid his debts for their passage to the Amsterdam merchant, but in eighteen months of absence Jeroen had become a penniless pauper. His brothers had sold the original of the Haywain. The shop copy needed to be sold too.
Jacob was dead. His presence no longer irritated the ecclesiastical authorities. Duke Philip had also died. In 1508, Maximilian I, in yet another show of power in s’Herttogenbosch, installed Philip’s eight-year-old son Charles as Duke of Brabant keeping the regency of the Low Countries to himself. Slowly the defamations and attacks on of the van Akens stopped. However, Jeroen, depressed by the loss of his closest friend and the collapse of his business ceased to paint.
From the years between the Haywain (1504) and Bosch’s death in 1516 parts of only one triptych have survived, painted entirely in a depressing, gray-brown grisaille. It is today generally agreed that the two panels were the wings of the Bosch triptych Carel van Mander described in 1604 in his Het Schilder Boek under the name Sicut erat in Diebus Noë. Klein dates the panels to 1514/15, a year before Bosch’s death.
The subject matter and the, at first, mysterious title have a simple explanation. Jeroen painted the triptych as an epitaph to his friend’s life.
Sicut Erat in Diebus Noë, Sibylle’s Rescue, Jacob’s Conversion, 1415, Rotterdam
The two panels carry four tondos in which Jeroen describes the happenings in Jacob’s life in the Winter of 1472-73. On the top left a clearly shown Jacob is kneeling in front of Noah’s burning house from which a formally dressed Sibylle is fleeing. In a courtyard one of the arsonists beats up an inhabitant of the house. Two of Noah’s pigs wallow in the mud. In the tondo below a member of the tribe of the “Nephilim” has thrown Jacob off his horse, and in the top tondo of the right panel two beat him up. The fourth tondo shows a naked Jacob kneeling before an apparition of Christ. In the background an angel brings him new clothes: Sicut erat in Diebus Noë, as it happened in the days of Noah!
Sicut Erat in Diebus Noë, The Nephilim, Noah’s Ark, 1415, Rotterdam
On the other two panels Jeroen depicts Noah’s Ark stranded after the flood on a low hill of a devastated earth, and an apocalyptic landscape populated by miscreant chimeras flying in a sky illuminated by a burning city, or creeping on land among deformed people. Considered formerly to show hell, Fraenger identified the creatures on this panel as Nephilim, (Genesis 6, 1-8), the offspring of the fallen angels who coupled with Adam’s daughters, including Adam’s first wife Lilith, and who were destroyed in the Biblical flood. This finally offers a name and a scriptural pedigree to Bosch’s monsters.
Sicut Erat in Diebus Noë, Sibylle and her Child, 1415, Rotterdam
On close inspection of the right panel showing the Ark, one discovers among debris and dozens of dead animals and people, near a last puddle in the very foreground, the body of a drowned woman to whom her dead child is tied, like Jacob had described dead Sibylle to Jeroen. A devastated Jacob is seen praying on his knees to the left.
This reading may appear disingenuous, and in fact, the condition of the panel would make the identification of Jacob questionable, if the other two panels did not explicitly support it.
The lost middle panel may have shown the ship Jacob and Jeroen sailed on in the harbor of Oporto: A crowd of Israelites trying to get on board by whatever means possible. They are attacked from behind by a mob people, who are killing and strangling the refugees. The houses of Oporto and the Cathedral of Vezelay on a hill are on fire. The Ocean is rising. The world is coming to an end. An angel leads Jeroen carrying Jacob on his back across a gang plank. On deck of the overloaded ship people are fighting for space.
Hieronymus Bosch died a pauper on the 6th of August, 1516 at the advanced age of 66. Few painters of his time were allotted such a long life, few have had such a strong influence on 15th and 16th century painting in the Low Countries. As the many posthumous copies show, his fame, or was it his notoriety, spread like wildfire all over Protestant Northern Europe. His wife, Aleit van de Mervenne survived him by six years. The archives of s’Hertogenbosch report that Herberte and Bosch’s two brothers collected his few belongings from her house. As was the custom with indigent members, the Confraternity of Our Lady paid for his funeral. His co-brethren sang a requiem mass in Sint Jans Cathedral for him. No tomb stone indicates his grave.
10. Notes to the unwary Reader
This piece is a historical “Novel”, albeit on a contentious subject. Its historical events —Maximilian I’s repeated visits to s’Hertogenbosch, Charles the Bold and Marie of Burgundy, the stories around Philip and Juana, the manipulations of the Inquisition by Popes Innocent Vlll and Alexander Vll, and the baptism of Jacob van Almaengien—are facts taken from various historical sources and the Chronicles of s’Hertogenbosch by Cuperinus and van Os.
The connecting story of Jacob van Almaengien, aka Philip van Sint Jans, and Jeroen van Aken, dit Hieronymus Bosch, are my arguable invention. Preciously little biographical information on Bosch exists in various city documents and the archives of the Brotherhood of Our Lady of Den Bosch, and only one of his paintings, St. John on Patmos, can be dated from these records.
I have tried to read Jeroen’s and Jacob’s story from Bosch’s paintings. This was made possible by the unpublished work of Prof. Paul Klein, a dendrochronology expert at Hamburg University. Beginning in the 1980s Klein dated the wooden planks of, among thousands of Flemish paintings, 54 paintings by or attributed to Bosch. Only the dates of the Table of the Seven Deadly Sins and the Bronchorst Epiphany could, for technical reasons, not be determined.
And here the controversies begin. To this day the art historians refuse to accept Klein’s dates. Klein was prevented from publishing his results. The apparent reasons are disturbing, it seems too many reputations were involved. Meanwhile it has been accepted that only 23 of Bosch’s panels were painted during Bosch’s lifetime, the remainder are copies by Bosch’s shop or by “followers” after his death.
This is no place to discuss this controversy. I resolved to make a novelistic experiment by taking Klein’s dates literally, adding uniformly 9 years for drying of the planks, and see how they fit into the historical and other known biographical facts of Bosch’s life. I believe that this experiment successfully supports Klein’s dates and produces a wealth of insights which were hitherto invisible.
Quite apart from the dating issue, any close examination of Bosch’s paintings poses interpretative questions and may yield new understandings. My first important realization was that Bosch could, at the age of 18, not have painted the great Garden Triptych—according to Klein his first triptych (1468-70)—nor his last, the Temptation of St. Anthony in Lisbon (1502), without advice from a Hebrew-speaking scholar. This insight had first occurred to Wilhelm Fraenger in the 1950s, who discovered Jacob van Almaengien in Cuperinus’ Chronicle. Unfortunately Fraenger made the mistake of promoting van Almaengien into a Hochmeister of an Adamite sect, which cost him the attention of the art historians—unjustly so, because Fraenger, as an anthropologist, contributed many interpretative discoveries that had escaped the professionals. In my reading of several paintings, foremost in the Temptation of St. Anthony Triptych, I have made liberal use of Fraenger’s erudite interpretations.
With no better person in sight I revived Jacob van Almaengien as the learned Jewish intellectual advisor and life-long friend of Bosch. In many ways this novel is the story of their friendship.
As a physicist, who has no art-historical ego to defend, I have tried to de-mystify Hieronymus Bosch wherever possible. Some readers will complain that I have reduced him to a mere painter of Jacob’s purported neoplatonic ideas. They should read the part surrounding the Triptych of the Temptation of St. Anthony. Bosch was an artistic genius sine qua non, but he was not a scholar with Jacob’s education.
The Supercute Artphotography
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Copyright @ 2012
HOW AMIZING THE GOD GREATED
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IR SUPERCUTE
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WHITNEY, WE ALWAYS YOVE YOU
WHITNEY ART PHOTOGRAPHY
WHITNEY WE ALLWAYS LOVE YOU
Whitney houston funeralWHITNEY Houston’s funeral will be held on Saturday in the New Jersey church
where she first showed her singing talents as a child.
The service will be held at noon at the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark.
The 48-year-old died last Saturday at a hotel in Beverly Hills. S he was underwater and apparently unconscious when she was pulled from a bath.
Her body was returned to New Jersey late today.
Houston was born in Newark and began singing as a child at the New Hope church, where her mother, Grammy-winning gospel singer Cissy Houston, led the music programme for many years. Cousin Dionne Warwick also sang in its choir.
Mourners left flowers, balloons and candles for Houston at the wrought-iron fence around the tall brick church.
WHITNEY BIOGRAPHY
| Whitney Houston | |
|---|---|
Whitney Houston performing at Good Morning America in Central Park on September 1, 2009. |
|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Whitney Elizabeth Houston |
| Born | August 9, 1963(1963-08-09) Newark, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Died | February 11, 2012(2012-02-11) (aged 48) Beverly Hills, California, U.S. |
| Genres | Pop, soul, R&B, dance, gospel |
| Occupations | Singer, actress, model, film producer,[1] record producer,[2] songwriter |
| Instruments | Vocals, piano |
| Years active | 1977–2012 |
| Labels | Arista, RCA |
| Associated acts | Cissy Houston, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, Jermaine Jackson, Mariah Carey, Enrique Iglesias, Bobby Brown |
| Website | Official website |
Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012) was an American singer, actress, producer, and model. In 2009, the Guinness World Records cited her as the most-awarded female act of all time.[3] Her awards include two Emmy Awards, six Grammy Awards, 30 Billboard Music Awards, and 22 American Music Awards, among a total of 415 career awards as of 2010. Houston was also one of the world’s best-selling music artists, having sold over 170 million albums, singles and videos worldwide.[4][5] Inspired by prominent soul singers in her family, including her mother Cissy Houston, cousins Dionne Warwick and Dee Dee Warwick, and her godmother Aretha Franklin, Houston began singing with her New Jersey church’s junior gospel choir at age 11.[6] After she began performing alongside her mother in night clubs in the New York City area, she was discovered by Arista Records label head Clive Davis. Houston released seven studio albums and three movie soundtrack albums, all of which have diamond, multi-platinum, platinum or gold certification.
Houston is the only artist to chart seven consecutive No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hits (“Saving All My Love for You“, “How Will I Know“, “Greatest Love of All“, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)“, “Didn’t We Almost Have It All“, “So Emotional” and “Where Do Broken Hearts Go“). She is the second artist behind Elton John and the only female artist to have two number-one Billboard 200 Album awards (formerly “Top Pop Album”) on the Billboard magazine year-end charts. Houston’s 1985 debut album Whitney Houston became the best-selling debut album by a female act at the time of its release. The album was named Rolling Stone‘s best album of 1986, and was ranked at number 254 on Rolling Stone‘s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[7] Her second studio album Whitney (1987) became the first album by a female artist to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 albums chart.[7] Houston’s crossover appeal on the popular music charts as well as her prominence on MTV, starting with her video for “How Will I Know”,[8] influenced several African-American female artists to follow in her footsteps.[9][10]
Houston’s first acting role was as the star of the feature film The Bodyguard (1992). The film’s original soundtrack won the 1994 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Its lead single “I Will Always Love You“, became the best-selling single by a female artist in music history. With the album, Houston became the first act (solo or group, male or female) to sell more than a million copies of an album within a single week period.[7] The album makes her the only female act in the top 10 list of the best-selling albums of all time, at number four. Houston continued to star in movies and contribute to their soundtracks, including the films Waiting to Exhale (1995) and The Preacher’s Wife (1996). The Preacher’s Wife soundtrack became the best-selling gospel album in history.[11] Three years after the release of her fourth studio album My Love Is Your Love (1998), she renewed her recording contract with Arista Records.[11] She released her fifth studio album Just Whitney in 2002, and the Christmas-themed One Wish: The Holiday Album in 2003. In 2009, Houston released her seventh studio album, I Look to You.
On February 11, 2012, Houston died of currently unknown causes at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California.[12]
Whitney Houston was born in what was then a middle-income neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, the third and youngest child of Army serviceman and entertainment executive
John Russell Houston, Jr. (September 13, 1920 – February 2, 2003),
and gospel singer Cissy Houston (née Emily Drinkard).[13]
She was part African-American, Native American and Italian through her father, who was half Italian, with further African-American, Native American (via a great-grandfather) and Dutch (via her maternal great-great-great-grandfather) ancestry on her mother’s side of the family.[14] Her mother, along with cousins Dionne Warwick and Dee Dee Warwick and godmother Aretha Franklin were all notable figures in the gospel, rhythm and blues, pop, and soul genres. Houston was raised a Baptist, but was also exposed to the Pentecostal church. After the 1967 Newark riots, the family moved to a middle class area in East Orange, New Jersey when she was four.[13]
At the age of 11, Houston began to follow in her mother’s footsteps and started performing as a soloist in the junior gospel choir at the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, where she also learned to play the piano.[15] Her first solo performance in the church was “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah”.[16]
When Houston was a teenager, she attended Mount Saint Dominic Academy, a Catholic girls high school in Caldwell, New Jersey, where she met her best friend Robyn Crawford, whom she described as the “sister she never had”.[17] While Houston was still in school, her mother continued to teach her how to sing.[9] In addition to her mother, Franklin, and Warwick, Houston was also exposed to the music of Chaka Khan, Gladys Knight, and Roberta Flack, most of whom would have an impact on her as a singer and performer.[18]
Houston spent some of her teenage years touring nightclubs where her mother Cissy was performing, and she would occasionally get on stage and perform with her. In 1977, at age 14, she became a backup singer on the Michael Zager Band‘s single “Life’s a Party”. Zager subsequently offered to obtain a recording contract for the young singer, but Cissy declined, wanting her daughter to finish school first. Then in 1978, at age 15, Houston sang background vocals on Chaka Khan‘s hit single “I’m Every Woman“, a song she would later turn into a larger hit for herself on her monster-selling The Bodyguard soundtrack album. She also sang back-up on albums by Lou Rawls and Jermaine Jackson. In the early 1980s, Houston started working as a fashion model after a photographer saw her at Carnegie Hall singing with her mother. She appeared as a lead vocalist on a Paul Jabara album, entitled Paul Jabara and Friends, released by Columbia Records in 1983.[19]
She appeared in Seventeen[20] and became one of the first women of color to grace the cover of the magazine.[21] She was also featured in layouts in the pages of Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Young Miss, and appeared in a Canada Dry soft drink TV commercial.[22] Her striking looks and girl-next-door charm made her one of the most sought after teen models of that time.[22] While modeling, she continued her burgeoning recording career by working with producers Ben Dover, Bill Laswell and Martin Bisi on an album they were spearheading called One Down, which was credited to the group Material. For that project, Houston contributed the ballad “Memories”, a cover of a song by Robert Wyatt. Robert Christgau of The Village Voice called her contribution “one of the most gorgeous ballads you’ve ever heard”.[23]
Houston had previously been offered several recording agencies (Michael Zager in 1980, and Elektra Records in 1981). In 1983, Gerry Griffith, an A&R representative from Arista Records saw her performing with her mother in a New York City nightclub and was impressed. He convinced Arista’s head Clive Davis to make time to see Houston perform. Davis too was impressed and offered a worldwide recording contract which Houston signed. Later that year, she made her national televised debut alongside Davis on The Merv Griffin Show.[24]
Houston signed with Arista in 1983 but did not begin work on her album immediately. The label wanted to make sure no other label signed the singer away. Davis wanted to ensure he had the right material and producers for Houston’s debut album. Some producers had to pass on the project due to prior commitments.[25] Houston first recorded a duet with Teddy Pendergrass entitled “Hold Me” which appeared on his album, Love Language.[26] The single was released in 1984 and gave Houston her first taste of success, becoming a Top 5 R&B hit. It would also appear on her debut album in 1985.
With production from Michael Masser, Kashif, Jermaine Jackson, and Narada Michael Walden, Houston’s debut album Whitney Houston was released in February 1985. Rolling Stone magazine praised Houston, calling her “one of the most exciting new voices in years” while The New York Times called the album “an impressive, musically conservative showcase for an exceptional vocal talent”.[27][28] Arista Records promoted Houston’s album with three different singles from the album in the US, UK and other European countries. In the UK, the dance-funk “Someone for Me”, which failed to chart in the country, was the first single while “All at Once” was in such European countries as the Netherlands and Belgium, where the song reached the top 5 on the singles charts, respectively.[29]
In the US, the soulful ballad “You Give Good Love” was chosen as the lead single from Houston’s debut to establish her in the black marketplace first.[30] Outside the US, the song failed to get enough attention to become a hit but in the US, it gave the album its first major hit as it peaked at No. 3 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, and No. 1 on the Hot R&B chart.[25] As a result, the album began to sell strongly, and Houston continued promotion by touring nightclubs in the US. She also began performing on late-night television talk shows, which were not usually accessible to unestablished black acts. The jazzy ballad “Saving All My Love for You” was released next and it would become Houston’s first No. 1 single in both the US and the UK. She was now an opening act for singer Jeffrey Osborne on his nationwide tour. “Thinking About You” was released as the promo single only to R&B-oriented radio stations, which peaked at number ten of the US R&B Chart. At the time, MTV had received harsh criticism for not playing enough videos by black, Latin, and other racial minorities while favoring white acts.[31] The third US single, “How Will I Know“, peaked at No. 1 and introduced Houston to the MTV audience thanks to its video. Houston’s subsequent singles from this, and future albums, would make her the first African-American female artist to receive consistent heavy rotation on MTV.[21]
By 1986, a year after its initial release, Whitney Houston topped the Billboard 200 albums chart and stayed there for 14 non-consecutive weeks.[32] The final single, “Greatest Love of All“, became Houston’s biggest hit at the time after peaking No. 1 and remaining there for three weeks on the Hot 100 chart, which made her debut the first album by a female artist to yield three No. 1 hits. Houston was No. 1 artist of the year and Whitney Houston was the No. 1 album of the year on the 1986 Billboard year-end charts, making her the first female artist to earn that distinction.[32] At the time, Houston released the best-selling debut album by a solo artist.[33] Houston then embarked on her world tour, Greatest Love Tour. The album had become an international success, and was certified 13× platinum (diamond) in the United States alone, and has sold a total of 25 million copies worldwide.[34]
At the 1986 Grammy Awards, Houston was nominated for three awards including Album of the Year.[35] She was not eligible for the Best New Artist category due to her previous hit R&B duet recording with Teddy Pendergrass in 1984.[36] She won her first Grammy award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female for “Saving All My Love for You”.[37] At the same award show, she performed that Grammy-winning hit; that performance later winning her an Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program.[38]
Houston won seven American Music Awards in total in 1986 and 1987, and an MTV Video Music Award.[8][39][40] The album’s popularity would also carry over to the 1987 Grammy Awards when “Greatest Love of All” would receive a Record of the Year nomination. Houston’s debut album is listed as one of Rolling Stone‘s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and on The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame‘s Definitive 200 list.[41][42] Houston’s grand entrance into the music industry is considered one of the 25 musical milestones of the last 25 years, according to USA Today.[43] Following Houston’s breakthrough, doors were opened for other African-American female artists such as Janet Jackson and Anita Baker to find notable success in popular music and on MTV.[44][45]
With many expectations Houston’s second album, Whitney, was released in June 1987. The album again featured production from Masser, Kashif and Walden as well as Jellybean Benitez. Many critics complained that the material was too similar to her previous album. Rolling Stone said, “the narrow channel through which this talent has been directed is frustrating”.[46] Still, the album enjoyed commercial success. Houston became the first female artist in music history to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and the first artist to enter the albums chart at number one in both the US and UK, while also hitting number one or top ten in dozens of other countries around the world. The album’s first single, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)“, was also a massive hit worldwide, peaking at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and topping the singles chart in many countries such as Australia, Germany and the UK. The next three singles, “Didn’t We Almost Have It All“, “So Emotional“, and “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” all peaked at number one on the US Hot 100 chart, which gave her a total of seven consecutive number one hits, breaking the record of six previously shared by The Beatles and The Bee Gees.[47][48] Houston became the first female artist to generate four number-one singles from one album. Whitney has been certified 9× Platinum in the US for shipments of over 9 million copies, and has sold a total of 20 million copies worldwide.[49]
At the 30th Grammy Awards in 1988, Houston was nominated for three awards, including Album of the Year, winning her second Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)”.[50][51] Houston also won two American Music Awards in 1988 and 1989, respectively, and a Soul Train Music Award.[52][53][54] Following the release of the album, Houston embarked on the Moment of Truth World Tour, which was one of the ten highest grossing concert tours of 1987.[55] The success of the tours during 1986–87 and her two studio albums ranked Houston No. 8 for the highest earning entertainers list according to Forbes magazine.[56] She was the highest earning African-American woman overall and the third highest entertainer after Bill Cosby and Eddie Murphy.[56][57]
Houston was a supporter of Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid movement. During her modeling days, the singer refused to work with any agencies who did business with the then-apartheid South Africa.[58][59] On June 11, 1988, during the European leg of her tour, Houston joined other musicians to perform a set at Wembley Stadium in London to celebrate a then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday.[58] Over 72,000 people attended Wembley Stadium, and over a billion people tuned in worldwide as the rock concert raised over $1 million for charities while bringing awareness to apartheid.[60] Houston then flew back to the US for a concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City in August. The show was a benefit concert that raised a quarter of a million dollars for the United Negro College Fund.[61] In the same year, she recorded a song for NBC‘s coverage of the 1988 Summer Olympics, “One Moment in Time“, which became a Top 5 hit in the US, while reaching number one in the UK and Germany.[62][63][64] With her world tour continuing overseas, Houston was still one of the top 20 highest earning entertainers for 1987–88 according to Forbes magazine.[65][66]
Houston performing “Saving All My Love for You” on the Welcome Home Heroes concert in 1991
In 1989, Houston formed The Whitney Houston Foundation For Children, a non-profit organization that has raised funds for the needs of children around the world. The organization cares for homelessness, children with cancer or AIDS, and other issues of self-empowerment.[67] With the success of her first two albums, Houston was undoubtedly an international crossover superstar, the most prominent since Michael Jackson, appealing to all demographics. However, some black critics believed she was “selling out“.[10] They felt her singing on record lacked the soul that was present during her live concerts.[20]
At the 1989 Soul Train Music Awards, when Houston’s name was called out for a nomination, a few in the audience jeered.[68][69] Houston defended herself against the criticism, stating, “If you’re gonna have a long career, there’s a certain way to do it, and I did it that way. I’m not ashamed of it”.[20] Houston took a more urban direction with her third studio album, I’m Your Baby Tonight, released in November 1990. She produced and chose producers for this album and as a result, it featured production and collaborations with L.A. Reid and Babyface, Luther Vandross, and Stevie Wonder. The album showed Houston’s versatility on a new batch of tough rhythmic grooves, soulful ballads and up-tempo dance tracks. Reviews were mixed. Rolling Stone felt it was her “best and most integrated album”.[70] while Entertainment Weekly, at the time thought Houston’s shift towards an urban direction was “superficial”.[71]
The album contained several hits: the first two singles, “I’m Your Baby Tonight” and “All the Man That I Need” peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart; “Miracle” peaked at number nine; “My Name Is Not Susan” peaked in the top twenty; “I Belong to You” reached the top ten of the US R&B chart and garnered Houston a Grammy nomination; and the sixth single, the Stevie Wonder duet “We Didn’t Know“, reached the R&B top twenty. The album peaked at number three on the Billboard 200 and went on to be certified 4× platinum in the US while selling twelve million total worldwide.
With America entangled in the Persian Gulf War, Houston performed “The Star Spangled Banner” at Super Bowl XXV on January 27, 1991.[72] Due to overwhelming response to her rendition, it was released as a commercial single and video of her performance, and reached the Top 20 on the US Hot 100, making her the only act to turn the national anthem into a pop hit of that magnitude (Jose Feliciano‘s version reached No. 50 in November 1968).[73][74] Houston donated all her share of the proceeds to the American Red Cross Gulf Crisis Fund. As a result, the singer was named to the Red Cross Board of Governors.[72][75][76]
Her rendition was considered the benchmark for singers and critically acclaimed.[77] Rolling Stone commented that “her singing stirs such strong patriotism. Unforgettable”, and the performance ranked No. 1 on the 25 most memorable music moments in NFL history list. VH1 listed the performance as one of the greatest moments that rocked TV.[78][79] Following the attacks on 9/11, it was released again by Arista Records, all profits going towards the firefighters and victims of the attacks. This time it peaked at No. 6 in the Hot 100 and was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.[80]
Later in 1991, Houston put together her Welcome Home Heroes concert with HBO for the soldiers fighting in the Persian Gulf War and their families. The free concert took place at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Virginia in front of 3,500 servicemen and women. HBO descrambled the concert so that it was free for everyone to watch.[81] Houston’s concert gave HBO its highest ratings ever.[82] She then embarked on the I’m Your Baby Tonight World Tour.
Throughout the 1980s, Houston was romantically linked to American football star Randall Cunningham and actor Eddie Murphy, whom she dated.[83] She then met R&B singer Bobby Brown at the 1989 Soul Train Music Awards. After a three year courtship, the two were married on July 18, 1992.[84] On March 4, 1993, Houston gave birth to their daughter Bobbi Kristina Houston Brown, her only child, and his fourth. Brown would go on to have several run-ins with the law, including some jail time.[84]
On a June 1993 trip to Israel, Houston said of her visit, “I’ve never felt like this in any other country. I feel at home, I feel wonderful.”[85]
With the commercial success of her albums, movie offers poured in, including offers to work with Robert De Niro, Quincy Jones, and Spike Lee; but Houston felt the time wasn’t right.[83] Houston’s first film role was in The Bodyguard, released in 1992 and co-starring Kevin Costner. Houston played Rachel Marron, a star who is stalked by a crazed fan and hires a bodyguard to protect her. USA Today listed it as one of the 25 most memorable movie moments of the last 25 years in 2007.[86] The movie is also notable for not mentioning or needing to explain its interracial aspect. Houston’s mainstream appeal allowed people to look at the movie color-blind.[87]
Still, controversy arose as some felt the film’s advertising intentionally hid Houston’s face to hide the film’s interracial relationship. In an interview with Rolling Stone in 1993, the singer commented that “people know who Whitney Houston is – I’m black. You can’t hide that fact.”[18] Houston received a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Actress. The Washington Post said Houston is “doing nothing more than playing Houston, comes out largely unscathed if that is possible in so cockamamie an undertaking”,[88] and The New York Times commented that she lacked passion with her co-star.[89] Despite the film’s mixed reviews, it was hugely successful at the box office, grossing more than $121 million in the U.S. and $410 million worldwide, making it one of the top 100 grossing films in film history at its time of release, though it is no longer in the top 100 due to rising current ticket prices since the time the film was released.[90]
The film’s soundtrack also enjoyed big success. Houston executive produced and contributed six songs for the motion picture’s adjoining soundtrack album. Rolling Stone said it is “nothing more than pleasant, tasteful and urbane”.[91] The soundtrack’s lead single was “I Will Always Love You“, written and originally recorded by Dolly Parton in 1974. Houston’s version of the song was acclaimed by many critics, regarding it as her “signature song” or “iconic performance”. Rolling Stone and USA Today called her rendition “the tour-de-force”.[92][93] The single peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for a then-record-breaking 14 weeks, number one on the R&B chart for a then-record-breaking 11 weeks, and number one on the Adult Contemporary charts for five weeks, thus becoming the first single to top those three charts simultaneously for five weeks.[94]
The single was certified 4× platinum by the RIAA, making Houston the first female artist with a single to reach that level in the RIAA history and becoming the best-selling single by a female artist in the US.[95][96][97] The song also became a global success, hitting number-one in almost all countries, and one of the best-selling singles of all time with 12 million copies sold.[98] The soundtrack topped the Billboard 200 chart and remained there for 20 non-consecutive weeks, the longest tenure by any album on the chart in the Nielsen SoundScan era, and became one of the fastest selling albums ever.[99] During Christmas week of 1992, the soundtrack sold over a million copies within a week, becoming the first album to achieve that feat under Nielsen SoundScan system.[100][101] With the follow-up singles “I’m Every Woman“, a Chaka Khan cover, and “I Have Nothing” both reaching the top five, Houston became the first female artist to ever have three singles in the Top 11 simultaneously.[102][103][104] The album was certified 17× platinum in the US alone,[105] with worldwide sales of 44 million, making The Bodyguard the only album by a female act on the list of the world’s Top 10 best-selling albums.[106]
Houston won three Grammys for the album in 1994, including two of the Academy’s highest honors, Album of the Year and Record of the Year. In addition, she won a record 8 American Music Awards at that year’s ceremony including the Award of Merit,[107] 11 Billboard Music Awards, 3 Soul Train Music Awards in 1993–94 including Sammy Davis, Jr. Award as Entertainer of the Year,[108] 5 NAACP Image Awards including Entertainer of the Year,[109][110][111] a record 5 World Music Awards,[112] and a BRIT award.[113] Following the success of the project, Houston embarked on another expansive global tour, The Bodyguard World Tour, in 1993–94. Her concerts, movie, and recording grosses made her the third highest earning female entertainer of 1993–94, just behind Oprah Winfrey and Barbra Streisand according to Forbes magazine.[114] Houston placed in the top five of Entertainment Weekly‘s annual “Entertainer of the Year” ranking[115] and was labeled by Premiere magazine as one of the 100 most powerful people in Hollywood.[116]
In October 1994, Houston attended and performed at a state dinner in the White House honoring newly elected South African president Nelson Mandela.[117][118] At the end of her world tour, Houston performed three concerts in South Africa to honor President Mandela, playing to over 200,000 people. This would make the singer the first major musician to visit the newly unified and apartheid free nation following Mandela’s winning election.[119] The concert was broadcast live on HBO with funds of the concerts being donated to various charities in South Africa. The event was considered the nation’s “biggest media event since the inauguration of Nelson Mandela”.[120]
In 1995, Houston starred alongside Angela Bassett, Loretta Devine, and Lela Rochon in her second film Waiting to Exhale, a motion picture about four African-American women struggling with relationships. Houston played the lead character Savannah Jackson, a TV producer in love with a married man. She chose the role because she saw the film as “a breakthrough for the image of black women because it presents them both as professionals and as caring mothers”.[121] After opening at number one and grossing $67 million in the US at the box office and $81 million worldwide,[122] it proved that a movie primarily targeting a black audience can cross over to success, while paving the way for other all-black movies such as How Stella Got Her Groove Back and the Tyler Perry movies that have become popular in the 2000s.[123][124][125] The film is also notable for its portrayal of black women as strong middle class citizens as opposed to stereotypes.[126] The reviews were mainly positive for the ensemble cast. The New York Times said “Ms. Houston has shed the defensive hauteur that made her portrayal of a pop star in ‘The Bodyguard’ seem so distant.”[127] Houston was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for “Outstanding Actress In A Motion Picture”, but lost to her co-star Bassett.
The film’s accompanying soundtrack, Waiting to Exhale: Original Soundtrack Album, was produced by Houston and Babyface. Though Babyface originally wanted Houston to record the entire album, she declined. Instead, she “wanted it to be an album of women with vocal distinction”, and thus gathered several African-American female artists for the soundtrack, to go along with the film’s strong women message.[121] As a result, the album featured a range of contemporary R&B female recording artists along with Houston, such as Mary J Blige, Aretha Franklin, Toni Braxton, Patti Labelle, and Brandy. Houston’s “Exhale (Shoop Shoop)” peaked at No. 1, and then spent a record eleven weeks at the No. 2 spot and eight weeks on top of the R&B Charts. “Count On Me”, a duet with CeCe Winans, hit the US Top 10; and Houston’s third contribution, “Why Does It Hurt So Bad“, made the Top 30. The album debuted at No. 1, and was certified 7× Platinum in the United States, denoting shipments of seven million copies.[49] The soundtrack received strong reviews as Entertainment Weekly said “the album goes down easy, just as you’d expect from a package framed by Whitney Houston tracks…. the soundtrack waits to exhale, hovering in sensuous suspense”[128] and has since ranked it as one of the 100 Best Movie Soundtracks.[129] Later that year, Houston’s children’s charity organization was awarded a VH1 Honor for all the charitable work
In 1996, Houston starred in the holiday comedy The Preacher’s Wife, with Denzel Washington. She plays a gospel-singing wife of a pastor (Courtney B. Vance). Houston earned $10 million for the role, making her one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood at the time and the highest earning African American actress in Hollywood.[130] The movie, with its all African-American cast, was a moderate success, earning approximately $50 million at the U.S. box offices.[131] The movie gave Houston her strongest reviews so far. The San Francisco Chronicle said Houston “is rather angelic herself, displaying a divine talent for being virtuous and flirtatious at the same time” and that she “exudes gentle yet spirited warmth, especially when praising the Lord in her gorgeous singing voice”.[132] Houston was again nominated for an NAACP Image Award and won for Outstanding Actress In A Motion Picture.
Houston recorded and co-produced, with Mervyn Warren, the film’s accompanying gospel soundtrack. The Preacher’s Wife: Original Soundtrack Album included six gospel songs with Georgia Mass Choir that were recorded at the Great Star Rising Baptist Church in Atlanta. Houston also duetted with gospel legend Shirley Caesar. The album sold six million copies worldwide and scored hit singles with “I Believe in You and Me” and “Step by Step“, becoming the largest selling gospel album of all time. The album received mainly positive reviews. Some critics, such as that of USA Today, noted the presence of her emotional depth,[133] while The Times said “To hear Houston going at full throttle with the 35 piece Georgia Mass Choir struggling to keep up is to realise what her phenomenal voice was made for”.[134]
In 1997, Houston’s production company changed its name to BrownHouse Productions and was joined by Debra Martin Chase. Their goal was “to show aspects of the lives of African-Americans that have not been brought to the screen before” while improving how African-Americans are portrayed in film and television.[135] Their first project was a made-for-television remake of Rodgers & Hammerstein‘s Cinderella. In addition to co-producing, Houston starred in the movie as the Fairy Godmother along with Brandy, Jason Alexander, Whoopi Goldberg, and Bernadette Peters. Houston was initially offered the role of Cinderella in 1993, but other projects intervened.[136] The film is notable for its multi-racial cast and nonstereotypical message.[137] An estimated 60 million viewers tuned into the special giving ABC its highest TV ratings in 16 years.[138] The movie received seven Emmy nominations including Outstanding Variety, Musical or Comedy, while winning Outstanding Art Direction in a Variety, Musical or Comedy Special.[139]
Houston and Chase then obtained the rights to the story of Dorothy Dandridge. Houston was to play Dandridge, who was the first African American actress to be nominated for an Oscar. She wanted the story told with dignity and honor.[135] However, Halle Berry also had rights to the project and she got her version going first.[140] Later that year, Houston paid tribute to her idols such as Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, and Dionne Warwick by performing their hits during the three-night HBO Concert Classic Whitney, live from Washington, D.C. The special raised over $300,000 for the Children’s Defense Fund.[141] Houston received The Quincy Jones Award for outstanding career achievements in the field of entertainment at the 12th Soul Train Music Awards.[142][143]
After spending much of the early and mid 1990s working on motion pictures and their soundtrack albums, Houston’s first studio album in eight years, the critically acclaimed My Love Is Your Love, was released in November 1998. Though originally slated to be a greatest hits album with a handful of new songs, recording sessions were so fruitful that a new full-length studio album was released. Recorded and mixed in only six weeks, it featured production from Rodney Jerkins, Wyclef Jean and Missy Elliott. The album debuted at number thirteen, its peak position, on the Billboard 200 chart.[144] It had a funkier and edgier sound than past releases and saw Houston handling urban dance, hip hop, mid-tempo R&B, reggae, torch songs, and ballads all with great dexterity.[145] From late 1998 to early 2000, the album spawned several hit singles: “When You Believe” (US No. 15, UK #4), a duet with Mariah Carey for 1998’s The Prince of Egypt soundtrack, which also became an international hit as it peaked in the Top 10 in several countries and won an Academy Award for Best Original Song;[146] “Heartbreak Hotel” (US No. 2, UK# 25) featured Faith Evans and Kelly Price, received a 1999 MTV VMA nomination for Best R&B Video,[147] and number one on the US R&B chart for seven weeks; “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay” (US No. 4, UK #3) won Houston her sixth Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance;[148] “My Love Is Your Love” (US No. 4, UK #2) with 3 million copies sold worldwide;[149] and “I Learned from the Best” (US No. 27, UK #19).[150][151] These singles became international hits as well, and all the singles, except “When You Believe”, became number one hits on the Billboard Hot Dance/Club Play chart. The album sold four million copies in America, making it certified 4× platinum, and a total of eleven million copies worldwide.[34] The album gave Houston some of her strongest reviews ever. Rolling Stone said Houston was singing “with a bite in her voice”[152] and The Village Voice called it “Whitney’s sharpest and most satisfying so far”.[153] In 1999, Houston participated in VH-1’s Divas Live ’99, alongside Brandy, Mary J. Blige, Tina Turner, and Cher. The same year, Houston hit the road with her 70 date My Love Is Your Love World Tour. The European leg of the tour was Europe’s highest grossing arena tour of the year.[154] In November 1999, Houston was named Top-selling R&B Female Artist of the Century with certified US sales of 51 million copies at the time and The Bodyguard Soundtrack was named the Top-selling Soundtrack Album of the Century by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).[155] She also won The Artist of the Decade, Female award for extraordinary artistic contributions during the 1990s at the 14th Soul Train Music Awards, and an MTV Europe Music Award for Best R&B.[156][157][158][159][160]
In May 2000, Whitney: The Greatest Hits was released worldwide. The double disc set peaked at number five in the United States, reaching number one in the United Kingdom.[151][161] In addition, the album reached the Top 10 in many other countries.[162] While ballad songs were left unchanged, the album features house/club remixes of many of Houston’s up-tempo hits. Included on the album were four new songs: “Could I Have This Kiss Forever” (a duet with Enrique Iglesias), “Same Script, Different Cast” (a duet with Deborah Cox), “If I Told You That” (a duet with George Michael), and “Fine“, and three hits that had never appeared on a Houston album: “One Moment in Time”, “The Star Spangled Banner”, and “If You Say My Eyes Are Beautiful”, a duet with Jermaine Jackson from his 1986 Precious Moments album.[163] Along with the album, an accompanying VHS and DVD was released featuring the music videos to Houston’s greatest hits, as well as several hard-to-find live performances including her 1983 debut on The Merv Griffin Show, and interviews.[164] The greatest hits album was certified 3× platinum in the US, with worldwide sales of 10 million.[165][166]
Though Houston was seen as a “good girl” with a perfect image in the ’80s and early ’90s, by the late ’90s, her behavior changed. She was often hours late for interviews, photo shoots and rehearsals, and canceling concerts and talk-show appearances.[167][168] With the missed performances and weight loss, rumors about Houston using drugs with her husband circulated. On January 11, 2000, airport security guards discovered marijuana in both Houston’s and husband Bobby Brown’s luggage at a Hawaii airport, but the two boarded the plane and departed before authorities could arrive. Charges were later dropped against them,[169] but rumors of drug usage between the couple would continue to surface. Two months later, Clive Davis was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Houston had been scheduled to perform at the event, but failed to show up.[170] Shortly thereafter, Houston was scheduled to perform at the Academy Awards but was fired from the event by musical director and long time friend Burt Bacharach. Her publicist cited throat problems as the reason for the cancellation. In his book The Big Show: High Times and Dirty Dealings Backstage at the Academy Awards, author Steve Pond revealed that “Houston’s voice was shaky, she seemed distracted and jittery, and her attitude was casual, almost defiant”, and that while Houston was to sing “Over the Rainbow“, she would start singing a different song.[171] Houston later admitted to having been fired.[172] Later that year, Houston’s long-time executive assistant and friend, Robyn Crawford, resigned from Houston’s management company.[170]
In August 2001, Houston signed the biggest record deal in music history with Arista/BMG. She renewed her contract for $100 million to deliver six new albums, on which she would also earn royalties.[173][174][175] She later made an appearance on Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Special. Her extremely thin frame further spurred rumors of drug use. Houston’s publicist said, “Whitney has been under stress due to family matters, and when she is under stress she doesn’t eat.”[176] The singer was scheduled for a second performance the following night but canceled.[177] Within weeks, Houston’s rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” would be re-released after the September 11 attacks. The song peaked at No. 6 this time on the US Hot 100, topping its previous position.[150] Houston donated her portion of the proceeds.
In 2002, Houston became involved in a legal dispute with John Houston Enterprise. Although the company was started by her father to manage her career, it was now actually run by company president Kevin Skinner. Skinner filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit and sued for $100 million (but lost), stating that Houston owed the company previously unpaid compensation for helping to negotiate her $100 million contract with Arista Records and for sorting out legal matters.[178] Houston stated that her 81-year-old father had nothing to do with the lawsuit. Although Skinner tried to claim otherwise, John Houston never appeared in court.[179] Houston’s father later died in February 2003.[180] The lawsuit was dismissed on April 5, 2004, and Skinner was awarded nothing.[181]
Also in 2002, Houston did an interview with Diane Sawyer to promote her then-upcoming album. The interview was the highest-rated television interview in history. During the prime-time special, Houston spoke on topics including rumored drug use and marriage. She was asked about the ongoing drug rumors and replied, “First of all, let’s get one thing straight. Crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack. Let’s get that straight. Okay? We don’t do crack. We don’t do that. Crack is wack.”[172] The line was from Keith Haring’s mural which was painted in 1986 on the handball court at 128th Street and 2nd Avenue.[182] Houston did, however, admit to using other substances at times, including cocaine.[172]
In December 2002, Houston released her fifth studio album, Just Whitney…. The album included productions from then-husband Bobby Brown, as well as Missy Elliott and Babyface, and marked the first time that Houston did not produce with Clive Davis as Davis had been released by top management at BMG. Upon its release, Just Whitney… received mixed reviews.[183] The album debuted at number 9 on the Billboard 200 chart and it had the highest first week sales of any album Houston had ever released.[184] The four singles released from the album, didn’t fare well on the Billboard Hot 100, but became Hot Dance Club Play hits. Just Whitney… was certified platinum in the United States, and sold approximately three million worldwide.[185]
In late 2003, Houston released her first Christmas album One Wish: The Holiday Album, with a collection of traditional holiday songs. Houston produced the album with Mervyn Warren and Gordon Chambers. A single titled “One Wish (for Christmas)” reached the Top 20 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and the album was certified gold in the US. Having always been a touring artist, Houston spent most of 2004 touring and performing in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Russia. In September 2004, she gave a surprise performance at the World Music Awards in a tribute to long time friend Clive Davis. After the show, Davis and Houston announced plans to go into studio to work on her new album.[186]
In early 2004, husband Bobby Brown starred in his own reality TV program, Being Bobby Brown (on the Bravo network), which provided a view into the domestic goings-on in the Brown household. Though it was Brown’s vehicle, Houston was a prominent figure throughout the show, receiving as much screen time as Brown. The series aired in 2005 and featured Houston in, what some would say, not her most flattering moments. The Hollywood Reporter said it was “undoubtedly the most disgusting and execrable series ever to ooze its way onto television.”[187] Despite the perceived train-wreck nature of the show, the series gave Bravo its highest ratings in its time slot and continued Houston’s successful forays into film and television.[188] The show was not renewed for a second season after Houston stated that she would no longer appear in it, and Brown and Bravo could not come to an agreement for another season.[189]
After years of controversy and turmoil, Houston separated from Bobby Brown in September 2006, filing for divorce the following month.[190] On February 1, 2007, Houston asked the court to fast track their divorce.[191] The divorce was finalized on April 24, 2007, with Houston granted custody of the couple’s daughter.[192] On May 4, Brown sued Houston in Orange County, California court in an attempt to change the terms of their custody agreement. Brown also sought child and spousal support from Houston. In the lawsuit, Brown claimed that financial and emotional problems prevented him from properly responding to Houston’s divorce petition.[193] Brown lost at his court hearing as the judge dismissed his appeal to overrule the custody terms, leaving Houston with full custody and Brown with no spousal support.[194] In March 2007, Clive Davis of Arista Records announced that Houston would begin recording a new album.[195] In October 2007, Arista released another compilation The Ultimate Collection outside the United States.[196]
Houston gave her first interview in seven years in September 2009, appearing on Oprah Winfrey’s season premiere. The interview was billed as “the most anticipated music interview of the decade”.[197] Whitney admitted on the show to using drugs with former husband Bobby Brown, who “laced marijuana with rock cocaine”.[198] By 1996, she told Oprah, “[doing drugs] was an everyday thing… I wasn’t happy by that point in time. I was losing myself.”[199]
Houston released her new album, I Look to You, in August 2009.[200] The album’s first two singles are “I Look to You” and “Million Dollar Bill”. The album entered the Billboard 200 at No. 1, with Houston’s best opening-week sales of 305,000 copies, marking Houston’s first number one album since The Bodyguard, and Houston’s first studio album to reach number one since 1987’s Whitney. Houston also appeared on European television programs to promote the album. She performed the song “I Look to You” on the German television show Wetten, dass..?. Three days later, she performed the worldwide first single from I Look To You, Million Dollar Bill, on the French television show Le Grand Journal. Houston appeared as guest mentor on The X Factor in the United Kingdom. She performed “Million Dollar Bill” on the following day’s results show, completing the song even as a strap in the back of her dress popped open two minutes into the performance. She later commented that she “sang [herself] out of [her] clothes”.
Whitney Houston at the O2 Arena, April 28, 2010, as part of her Nothing but Love World Tour
The performance was poorly received by the British media, and was variously described as “weird” and “ungracious”,[201] “shambolic”[202] and a “flop”.[203] Despite this reception, “Million Dollar Bill” jumped to its peak from 14 to number 5 (her first UK top 5 for over a decade), and three weeks after release “I Look to You” went gold. Houston appeared on the Italian version of The X Factor, performing the same song “Million Dollar Bill” to excellent reviews.[204] She was awarded the Gold Certificate for achieving over 50,000 CD sales of “I Look To You” in Italy.[205] In November, Houston performed “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength” at the 2009 American Music Awards in Los Angeles, California. Two days later, Houston performed both songs on the Dancing With The Stars season 9 finale. As of December 2009, “I Look to You” has been certified platinum by the RIAA for sales of more than one million copies in the United States.[206] On January 26, 2010, her debut album was re-released in a special edition entitled Whitney Houston – The Deluxe Anniversary Edition.[207]
Houston later embarked on a world tour, entitled the Nothing but Love World Tour. It was her first world tour in over ten years and was announced as a triumphant comeback. However, some poor reviews and rescheduled concerts brought some negative media attention.[208][209] Houston canceled some concerts due to illness and received widespread negative reviews from fans who were disappointed in the quality of her voice and performance. Some fans reportedly walked out of her concerts.[210]
In January 2010, Houston was nominated for two NAACP Image Awards, one for Best Female Artist and one for Best Music Video. She won the award for Best Music Video for her single “I Look to You”. On January 16, she received The BET Honors Award for Entertainer citing her lifetime achievements spanning over 25 years in the industry. The 2010 BET Honors award was held at the Warner Theatre in Washington, DC and aired on February 1, 2010. Jennifer Hudson and Kim Burrell performed in honor of her, garnering positive reviews. Houston also received a nomination from the Echo Awards, Germany’s version of the Grammys, for Best International Artist. In April 2010, the UK newspaper The Mirror reported that Houston was thinking about recording her eighth studio album and wanted to collaborate with will.i.am (of The Black Eyed Peas), her first choice for a collaboration.[211] Houston also performed the song “I Look to You” on the 2011 BET Celebration of Gospel, with gospel–jazz singer Kim Burrell, held at the Staples Center, Los Angeles. The performance aired on January 30, 2011. Early in 2011, she gave an uneven performance in tribute to cousin Dionne Warwick at music mogul Clive Davis’ annual pre-Grammy gala. In May 2011, Houston enrolled in a rehabilitation center again, as an out-patient, citing drug and alcohol problems. A representative for Houston said that it was a part of Houston’s “longstanding recovery process”.[212]
In September 2011, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Houston was to produce and star (alongside Jordin Sparks and Mike Epps) in the remake of the 1976 film Sparkle. It was also reported that Houston would play Sparks’s “not-so encouraging mother”. Houston was to have had executive producer credits on top of acting credits according to Debra Martin Chase, producer of Sparkle. She stated that Houston deserved the title considering she had been there from the beginning in 2001 when Houston obtained Sparkle production rights. R&B singer Aaliyah‘s death in a 2001 plane crash derailed production, which would have begun in 2002.[213][214][215]
On October 7, 2011, RCA Music Group announced that it was disbanding Arista Records along with J Records and Jive Records. With the shutdown, future material involving Houston was to have been released on the RCA Records brand.
Later that evening Houston appeared at Hollywood nightclub Tru, for fellow R&B singer Kelly Price’s pre-Grammy party. “Kelly Price & Friends Unplugged: For the Love of R&B” served as both a celebration and a jam session to preserve that genre, which was scaled back from eight categories to four this year.
Houston was billed as one of the evening’s special invited guests but after her appearance earlier it was shocking to see the singer arrive. More put together in her appearance,
Houston briefly sang a duet with Price.
In what has become her final performance, clips of the two singing a gospel hymn made the rounds because of the singer’s unsteady vocals.
February 12th, 2012 7:14pm EST
Just three days ago Whitney Houston was spotted leaving Tru Hollywood nightclub Thursday after a night of partying. The unflattering photos show the singer with what looks to be blood dripping down
Just three days ago Whitney Houston was spotted leaving Tru Hollywood nightclub Thursday after a night of partying. The unflattering photos show the singer with what looks to be blood dripping down one of her legs and some scratch marks on her wrist.
More details have been revealed in the singer’s death. According to TMZ.com, an employee at the Beverly Hilton Hotel said the singer was found dead with her face underwater in the bathtub of her room Saturday afternoon. Police were called and paramedics attempted CPR on Houston to no avail and she was pronounced dead at 3:55pm.
Police ruled out foul play; however, eye-witnesses report that she was drinking heavily in the hotel’s bar with a group of friends.
Houston is know to have been taking prescription drug Xanax for her anxiety, and early speculation is that she may have fallen unconscious as a result of taking the drug and drinking and then drowning.
Although an autopsy was performed on Sunday, toxicology reports on the singer’s death may have the answer, but those tests normally take weeks.
Beverly Hills police reportedly did find several prescription pill bottles, but there were no illegal drugs found in her room.
Last month a story also broke about the singer being on the brink of bankruptcy, which her publicist denied.
The Beverly Hilton Hotel, where Houston was found dead.
On February 11, 2012, Houston was found dead at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, in Beverly Hills, California, of causes not immediately known.[216] According to TMZ, Houston was running late to get ready for the pre-Grammy Awards party being held four floors down in the hotel by her mentor, Clive Davis. After her stylists and bodyguards became concerned that Houston was in the bathroom for over an hour, they knocked on the door but Houston did not answer back. A female hairdresser went to check on Houston and found her lying in the bathtub. A bodyguard came in and quickly pulled Houston out of the bathtub. It was reported that Houston’s face was underwater and her legs were up like she had slid down the back of the bathtub. Her body was reported to be very cold as her bodyguard unsuccessfully attempted to perform CPR before alerting hotel security.[217][218] Beverly Hills paramedics arrived at approximately 3:30 p.m. and found the singer unresponsive and performed CPR. Houston was pronounced dead at 4:00 p.m. PST.[216] Local police said there were “no obvious signs of criminal intent”.[219]
On the Thursday before her death, Houston visited singers Brandy and Monica, together with Clive Davis, at their rehearsals for Davis’ pre-Grammy Awards party. A reporter for the Los Angeles Times reported that Houston was reeking of alcohol and looked very bloated and disheveled, wearing mismatched clothing with her hair dripping of either water or sweat.[citation needed] During the two singers’ rehearsal, Houston was seen skipping around the lobby or wandering aimlessly around the hotel ground. At one point guests of the hotel became so concerned that they reported her behavior to security after she was seen doing handstands by the hotel pool. Houston attended a party that evening held by Kelly Price at Tru nightclub in Hollywood, California. A scuffle was narrowly avoided with singer Stacy Francis. Reports say that Houston got belligerent and her boyfriend Ray J was forced to step in, although he defended Francis. Houston attempted to raise her hand, but was calmed down. Later in the evening, Houston gave what is now her final onstage performance when she took to the stage along with Price for a one minute performance of “Jesus Loves Me“. Houston was photographed leaving the club clearly intoxicated and with scratches and blood stains on her legs, although it is unknown where these marks came from.[220]
The Clive Davis party that Houston was expected to attend and which featured many of the biggest names in music and movies, went on as scheduled though was quickly turned into a tribute to Houston. Davis spoke to those attending the party about Houston’s passing by saying at evening’s start, “By now you have all learned of the unspeakably tragic news of our beloved Whitney’s passing. I don’t have to mask my emotion in front of a room full of so many dear friends. I am personally devastated by the loss of someone who has meant so much to me for so many years. Whitney was so full of life. She was so looking forward to tonight even though she wasn’t scheduled to perform. Whitney was a beautiful person and a talent beyond compare. She graced this stage with her regal presence and gave so many memorable performances here over the years. Simply put, Whitney would have wanted the music to go on and her family asked that we carry on.”[221]
Mariah Carey was one of the first celebrities to react, releasing the following statement on Twitter and Facebook: “Heartbroken and in tears over the shocking death of my friend, the incomparable Ms. Whitney Houston. My heartfelt condolences to Whitney’s family and to all her millions of fans throughout the world. She will never be forgotten as one of the greatest voices to ever grace the earth.”[222]
Tony Bennett spoke of Houston’s passing before performing at Davis’ party by saying “First it was Michael Jackson, then Amy Winehouse, now, the magnificent Whitney Houston. I’d like every person in this room to campaign to legalize drugs. Let’s legalize drugs like they did in Amsterdam. No one’s hiding or sneaking around corners to get it. They go to a doctor to get it.” Bennett, who battled drug addiction in the 1970s, went on to perform “How Do You Keep the Music Playing?” in honor of Houston and her long battle with drug addiction. “This is a song Frank Sinatra asked me to sing,” Bennett told the crowd. “I’d like to dedicate it to Whitney. When I first heard her, I called (producer) Clive Davis and said, ‘You finally found the greatest singer I’ve ever heard in my life.'”
Several other celebrities released statements responding to Houston’s death. Dolly Parton, whose song “I Will Always Love You” was covered by Houston, said, “I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, ‘Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed’.” Houston’s godmother Aretha Franklin said, “It’s so stunning and unbelievable. I couldn’t believe what I was reading coming across the TV screen.”[223]
SNL tribute image Molly Shannon and Houston, from her 1996 appearance.
Moments after news of her death leaked out, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News all broke from their regularly scheduled programming to dedicate time to non-stop coverage of Houston’s passing. All three featured live interviews with people who knew Houston including those that have worked with her, interviewed her along with some of her peers in the music industry. Saturday Night Live displayed a still photo (pictured) in silent reverence of a smiling Houston, alongside Molly Shannon, from her 1996 appearance.[224][225] MTV and VH-1 interrupted their regularly scheduled programming on Sunday February 12 to air many of Houston’s classic videos with MTV often airing news segments in between and featuring various reactions from fans and celebrities.
Houston’s former husband, Bobby Brown, was reported to be “in and out of crying fits” since receiving the news. He did not cancel a scheduled performance and within hours of his ex-wife’s sudden death, an audience in Mississippi observed as Brown blew kisses skyward, tearfully saying: “I love you, Whitney”.[226]
Ken Ehrlich, executive producer of the 54th Grammy Awards announced that Jennifer Hudson and Chaka Khan would perform a tribute to Houston at the February 12, 2012, awards. He said “event organizers believed Hudson — an Academy Award-winning actress and Grammy Award-winning artist — could perform a respectful musical tribute to Houston”. Ehrlich went on to say: “It’s too fresh in everyone’s memory to do more at this time, but we would be remiss if we didn’t recognize Whitney’s remarkable contribution to music fans in general, and in particular her close ties with the Grammy telecast and her Grammy wins and nominations over the years”.[227] At the 65th British Academy Film Awards Cuba Gooding, Jr., said “Whitney, I will always love you” before announcing nominations with applause from the audience.
Coroner’s officials in Los Angeles Monday made the body of Whitney Houston available to her family, as they have finished their investigation in the wake of the singer’s untimely death at 48 on Saturday.
Houston’s funeral is expected to be in her native New Jersey. NBC reported that her body will be transported from L.A. to Newark Monday evening, and that the singer will be laid to rest at the Hope Baptist Church later this week.
“The investigation is ongoing,” according to Los Angeles Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter. “It’s too early to tell. The family is making arrangements. I don’t know when the family is going to have her body picked up. But they are making arrangements and sometimes it takes a couple days.”
PHOTOS: Last Pictures Taken Of Whitney Houston Alive
As we previously reported, officials have wrapped up Houston’s autopsy, but said it might be several weeks before they can determine what killed the Grammy-winning singer. A source told us exclusively law enforcement officials found Lorazepam, Valium and a sleeping medication in the Beverly Hilton hotel room she was found in.
On Monday, the Houston family released a statement to the public: “We are devastated by the loss of our beloved Whitney. This is an unimaginable tragedy and we will miss her terribly. We appreciate the outpouring of love and support from her fans and friends. The Houston Family.”
In related news, Houston’s ex Bobby Brown flew back into Los Angeles International Airport late Sunday to be at the side of the couple’s 18-year-old daughter Bobbi Kristina, who’s been hospitalized twice in the wake of her mother’s passing. Since Houston’s death, Bobbi Kristina has been hospitalized twice in a 12-hour span at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
PHOTOS: Celebrities Found Dead In Famous Hotels
The I Have Nothing singer, who sought help for a crack addiction last year, was seen in public for the final time late Thursday in Hollywood, looking disheveled and sporting cuts as she left a club.
Stay with RadarOnline.com for more on the shocking death of Whitney Houston
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 One of Houston’s best selling singles worldwide and recognized songs, “I Will Always Love You” prominently uses melismas.
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Houston was a mezzo-soprano.[228][229] Her vocal range extended from G below middle C (G3) to high B-flat (B♭5); she could belt out to treble F (F5).[230] She came in third on MTV’s 22 Greatest Voices,[231] and sixth on Online Magazine COVE‘s list of the 100 Best Pop Vocalists with a score of 48.5/50.[232] In 2008, Rolling Stone listed Houston as the thirty-fourth of the 100 greatest singers of all time, stating, “Her voice is a mammoth, coruscating cry: Few vocalists could get away with opening a song with 45 unaccompanied seconds of singing, but Houston’s powerhouse version of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” is a tour de force.”[92]
Mariah Carey stated, “Whitney has a really rich, strong mid-belt that very few people have. She sounds really good, really strong.”[233] While in her review of I Look to You, music critic Ann Powers of Los Angeles Times writes, “[Houston’s voice] stands like monuments upon the landscape of 20th century pop, defining the architecture of their times, sheltering the dreams of millions and inspiring the climbing careers of countless imitators”, adding “When she was at her best, nothing could match her huge, clean, cool mezzo-soprano”.[229]
Houston’s vocal stylings have had a significant impact on the music industry. She has been called the “Queen of Pop” for her influence during the 1990s, commercially rivaling Mariah Carey and Celine Dion.[234] Stephen Holden from The New York Times, in his review of Houston’s Radio City Music Hall concert on July 20, 1993, praised her attitude as a singer highly, writing “Whitney Houston is one of the few contemporary pop stars of whom it might be said: the voice suffices. While almost every performer whose albums sell in the millions calls upon an entertainer’s bag of tricks, from telling jokes to dancing to circus pyrotechnics, Ms. Houston would rather just stand there and sing.” He added the comments on her singing style: “Her [Houston’s] stylistic trademarks – shivery melismas that ripple up in the middle of a song, twirling embellishments at the ends of phrases that suggest an almost breathless exhilaration – infuse her interpretations with flashes of musical and emotional lightning.”[235]
Elysa Gardner of The Los Angeles Times in her review for The Preacher’s Wife Soundtrack praised Houston’s vocal ability highly, commenting, “She is first and foremost a pop diva – at that, the best one we have. No other female pop star – not Mariah Carey, not Celine Dion, not Barbra Streisand – quite rivals Houston in her exquisite vocal fluidity and purity of tone, and her ability to infuse a lyric with mesmerizing melodrama.”[236] Houston has been commonly referred to as “The Voice”, in reference to her exceptional vocal talent.[237]
A Barbie doll inspired by Houston’s appearance in the music video for “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)” (1987). Houston became one of the few black female artists whose music videos received heavy rotation on MTV and other music video channels.
During the 1980s, MTV was coming into its own and received harsh criticism for not playing enough videos by black artists. With Michael Jackson breaking down the color barrier for black male artists, Houston did the same for black female artists. She became one of the few black female artists to receive heavy rotation on the network following the success of the “How Will I Know” video.[238] Following Houston’s breakthrough, other African-American female artists, such as Janet Jackson and Anita Baker, were successful in popular music.[44][45] Baker commented that “Because of what Whitney and Sade did, there was an opening for me… For radio stations, black women singers aren’t taboo anymore.”[239]
Allmusic additionally noted her contribution to success of black artists on the pop scene, commenting, “Houston was able to handle big adult contemporary ballads, effervescent, stylish dance-pop, and slick urban contemporary soul with equal dexterity; the result was an across-the-board appeal that was matched by scant few artists of her era, and helped her become one of the first black artists to find success on MTV in Michael Jackson’s wake.”[240] The New York Times stated that “Houston was a major catalyst for a movement within black music that recognized the continuity of soul, pop, jazz and gospel vocal traditions”.[241] Richard Corliss of TIME magazine commented about her first success breaking various barriers:
Of her first album’s ten cuts, six were ballads. This chanteuse [Houston] had to fight for air play with hard rockers. The young lady had to stand uncowed in the locker room of macho rock. The soul strutter had to seduce a music audience that anointed few black artists with superstardom. […] She was a phenomenon waiting to happen, a canny tapping of the listener’s yen for a return to the musical middle. And because every new star creates her own genre, her success has helped other blacks, other women, other smooth singers find an avid reception in the pop marketplace.[242]
According to The New York Times, Houston “revitalized the tradition of strong gospel-oriented pop-soul singing”.[243] Ann Powers of the Los Angeles Times referred to the singer as a “national treasure”.[229] She was considered by many to be a “singer’s singer”, who had an influence on countless other vocalists, both female and male.[244][245] Similarly, Steve Huey from Allmusic wrote that the shadow of Houston’s prodigious technique still looms large over nearly every pop diva and smooth urban soul singer – male or female – in her wake, and spawned a legion of imitators.[240] Rolling Stone, on her biography, stated that Houston “redefined the image of a female soul icon and inspired singers ranging from Mariah Carey to Beyoncé“.[246][11] Essence ranked Houston the fifth on their list of 50 Most Influential R&B Stars of all time, calling her “the diva to end all divas”.[247]
A number of artists have acknowledged Houston as an influence, including Celine Dion,[248] Mariah Carey,[249] Toni Braxton,[250] Christina Aguilera,[251] Jessica Simpson,[252] Nelly Furtado,[253][254] Kelly Clarkson, Britney Spears,[255] Ciara,[256] P!nk,[255] Robin Thicke,[257] Jennifer Hudson, Stacie Orrico, Amerie,[258] Destiny’s Child,[255][259] Regine Velasquez, Lady Gaga, and Charice. Mariah Carey, who was often compared to Houston, said, “Houston has been a big influence on me.”[260] She later told USA Today that “none of us would sound the same if Aretha Franklin hadn’t ever put out a record, or Whitney Houston hadn’t.”[261]
Mary J. Blige said that Houston inviting her onstage during VH1‘s Divas Live show in 1999 “opened doors for [her] all over the world”.[262] Brandy stated, “The first Whitney Houston CD was genius. That CD introduced the world to her angelic yet powerful voice. Without Whitney, half of this generation of singers wouldn’t be singing.”[263] Kelly Rowland, in an Ebony‘s feature article celebrating black music in June 2006, recalled that “[I] wanted to be a singer after I saw Whitney Houston on TV singing ‘Greatest Love of All’. I wanted to sing like Whitney Houston in that red dress.” She added that “And I have never, ever forgotten that song [Greatest Love of All]. I learned it backward, forward, sideways. The video still brings chills to me. When you wish and pray for something as a kid, you never know what blessings God will give you.”[264]
Beyoncé told the Globe and Mail that Houston “inspired [her] to get up there and do what [she] did”.[265] Alicia Keys, in an interview about her album The Element of Freedom with Billboard magazine, also said “Whitney is an artist who inspired me from [the time I was] a little girl”.[266] Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson cites Houston as her biggest musical influence. She told Newsday that she learned from Houston the “difference between being able to sing and knowing how to sing”.[267] Leona Lewis, who has been called the New Whitney Houston, also cites her as an influence. Lewis stated that she idolized her as a little girl.[268][269] American recording artist Lady Gaga said that Houston had been one of her “vocal idols” for years. In an interview with IBN Live, Gaga revealed that she used to listen to Houston’s version of “The Star Spangled Banner” over and over again. At the 2011 Grammys, Gaga gave a shout-out to Houston, and said that she wrote the song “Born This Way” thinking about Houston’s vocals.[270]
Houston was the most awarded female artist of all time, according to Guinness World Records,[3] with 2 Emmy Awards, 6 Grammy Awards, 30 Billboard Music Awards, 22 American Music Awards, among a total of 415 career awards as of 2010. She held the all-time record for the most American Music Awards of any female solo artist and shared the record with Michael Jackson for the most AMAs ever won in a single year with 8 wins in 1994.[271] Houston won a record 11 Billboard Music Awards at its 4th ceremony in 1993.[272] She also had the record for the most WMAs won in a single year, winning five Awards at the 6th World Music Awards in 1994.[273]
In May 2003, Houston placed at number three on VH1‘s list of “50 Greatest Women of the Video Era”, behind Madonna and Janet Jackson.[274] She was also ranked at number 116 on their list of the “200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons of All Time”.[275] In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list of the Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists to celebrate the US singles chart’s 50th anniversary, ranking Houston at number nine.[276][277][278] Similarly, she was ranked as one of the “Top 100 Greatest Artists of All Time” by VH1 in September 2010.[279] In November 2010, Billboard released its “Top 50 R&B/Hip-Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years” list and ranked Houston at number three whom not only went on to earn eight No. 1 singles on the R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, but also landed five No. 1s on R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.[280]
Houston’s debut album is currently listed as one of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time by Rolling Stone magazine[41] and is on Rock and Roll Hall of Fame‘s Definitive 200 list.[42] In 2004, Billboard picked the success of her first release on the charts as one of 110 Musical Milestones in its history.[281] Houston’s entrance into the music industry is considered one of the 25 musical milestones of the last 25 years, according to USA Today in 2007. It stated that she paved the way for Mariah Carey’s chart-topping vocal gymnastics.[43] In 1997, the Franklin School in East Orange, New Jersey was renamed to The Whitney E. Houston Academy School of Creative and Performing Arts. In 2001, Houston was the first artist ever to be given a BET Lifetime Achievement Award.[282]
Houston was also one of the world’s best-selling music artists, having sold over 200 million albums and singles worldwide.[4][5] Although she released relatively few albums, she was ranked as the fourth best-selling female artist in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America, with 55 million certified albums sold in the US alone.[206][283]
She held an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities from Grambling State University, Louisiana.[284]
| Year | Title | Role | Notes and awards |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1992 | The Bodyguard | Rachel Marron | Nominated – 1993 MTV Movie Award for Best Female Performance[285] Nominated – 1993 MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance[286] Nominated – 1993 MTV Movie Award for Best On-Screen Duo with co-star Kevin Costner[287] Nominated – 1992 Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress[288] |
| 1995 | Waiting to Exhale | Savannah Jackson | Nominated – 1996 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture[289] |
| 1996 | The Preacher’s Wife | Julia Biggs | Won – 1997 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture[290] Nominated – 1997 Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Favorite Female Actress(Comedy/Romance)[291] Nominated – 1997 Kids’ Choice Award for Favorite Movie Actress[292] |
| 1997 | Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella | Fairy Godmother | Made for television film, part of a revival of the Wonderful World of Disney.[293] |
| 2012 | Sparkle | Emma | Posthumous release |
| Year | Title | Network | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1984 | Gimme a Break! | NBC | Rita | “Katie’s College” (Season 3, Episode 20)[294] |
| 1985 | Silver Spoons | NBC | Herself | “Head Over Heels” (Season 4, Episode 1, Air date: September 15, 1985)[294] She performed the edited version of “Saving All My Love for You“, changing some of the words. |
| 2002 | Boston Public | Fox | Herself | She performed “Try It On My Own” from the 2002 studio album Just Whitney. |
| Year | Company | Promoting | Country | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1983 | Dr Pepper/Seven Up | Canada Dry (soft drink beverage) |
United States |
|
| 1986 | Coca-Cola | Diet Coke (soft drink beverage) |
United States | |
| 1988 | Coca-Cola | Diet Coke (soft drink beverage) |
United States |
|
| 1990 | SANYO | Electronics (the stereo, TV) |
Japan |
|
| 1994 1995 |
AT&T | Telephone services | United States |
| Year | Title | Director | Notes and awards |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1997 | Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella | Robert Iscove | Executive producer[304] Nominated – 1998 Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety, Music Or Comedy Special[305] Nominated – 1998 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Television Movie/Mini-Series[306] |
| 2001 | The Princess Diaries | Garry Marshall | Producer[307][308] Won – 2002 Young Artist Award for Best Family Feature Film – Comedy[309] Nominated – 2002 Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Family Film (Live Action)[310] Nominated – 2002 Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Family Film[311] Nominated – 2002 Teen Choice Award for Film – Choice Movie, Comedy[312] |
| 2003 | The Cheetah Girls | Oz Scott | Producer[313] |
| 2004 | The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement | Garry Marshall | Producer[314] |
| 2006 | The Cheetah Girls 2: When in Spain | Kenny Ortega | Co-executive producer[315] |
![Ile de Fîleh (Philae) - premier pylône - inscription Française gravée sur l'ebrasement oriental, en M [i.e,. H], 1851-2, by Félix Teynard](http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6111/6319927668_46812564d9_m.jpg)
![Médînet-Abou (Thèbes) - constructions postérieures - deuxième cour - galerie sud-est [sic], 1851-2, by Félix Teynard](http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6119/6319917374_3d9028b685_m.jpg)
![Ivy-covered tree at Colinton, ʼThe Fairy Treeʼ [Landscape 45], 1843-7, calotype negative, by Hill and Adamson](http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6156/6180349422_27b62c06ef_m.jpg)
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