Stuart Robson's contribution to our knowledge of ancient Java's literary history has been considerable. With The Kakawin Ghaṭotkacāśraya by Mpu Panuluh he has added to an already impressive list of published editions and translations of major ancient Javanese epic kakawin and kidung poems.
Post-Enlightenment Western ‘regimes of truth’ have framed the dominant hegemonic discourses concerning the nature of the social and cultural life of colonised peoples and diverted attention from a need to understand how colonised indigenous peoples themselves imagined the world which they inhabited and the epistemological grounds on which their imaginings were founded and, importantly, from consideration of the shape in which indigenous discourses are cast: how knowledge concerning the social, moral, creative and spiritual life of these peoples was given expression in the form of narratives, song cycles, prayers, dances, art, architecture and ritual. (See inter alia, Vincent Clement, ‘Beyond the sham of emancipatory Enlightenment: Rethinking the relationship of indigenous epistemologies, knowledges, and geography through decolonizing paths’, Progress in Human Geography 43 (2019), and Regis Tove Stella, Imagining the Other: The representation of the Papua New Guinean subject [2007], and the literature cited there). Helen Creese in her study of marriage and sexuality in the courts of Java and Bali (Women of the Kakawin world: Marriage and sexuality in the Indic courts of Java and Bali, 2004) and Adrian Vickers in his study of the Malat epic (Journeys of desire: A study of the Balinese text Malat, 2005) and the various literary, theatrical, sculptural and painted forms in which it was cast in Bali, serve as an important reminder that in precolonial Java and Bali epic kakawin and kidung were important forms in which the inhabitants of aristocratic courts gave expression to their sense of community; how, in these epic poems, poets gave meaning to, and their audiences found confirmation of the foundations of their social existence and reinforcement of the hegemonic authority of the kings who ruled over them.
The kakawin Ghaṭotkacāśraya (Ghaṭotkaca to the rescue) is one such epic work. Robson informs us that its author mpu Panuluh lived and worked in the court of King Kṛtajaya, who ruled in eastern Java, somewhere in the vicinity of Kaḍiri in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. This calculation of when mpu Panuluh lived and authored his poems is based on the number of kakawin which have survived to us in the manuscript corpus of Java and Bali, a period which scholars consider to have been one of remarkable literary activity in the courts of eastern Java. It was in this period that mpu Panuluh first collaborated with mpu Sedah to author the kakawin Bhāratayuddha and later composed the kakawin Hariwangśa and Ghaṭotkacāśraya, the epic poem which is the subject of the present publication (p. 19).
The primary thematic interest of mpu Panuluh's poem are two marriages of Prince Abhimanyu, the son of the Paṇḍawa hero Arjuna and Subhadrā, the younger sister of King Kṛṣṇa who ruled the kingdom of Dwārawati with his older brother Baladewa. The story of Abhimanyu's two marriages is set in the court of Dwārawati in the context of the hostility between the five Paṇḍawa brothers and their Korawa kinsmen, a rivalry which culminated in open war between these two groups of kinsmen. Kings Kṛṣṇa and Baladewa favoured different parties in this dispute, King Kṛṣṇa the Paṇḍawa and Baladewa the Korowa. The story of Prince Abhimanyu's two marriages begins following a dice game in which Yudhiṣṭhira, the oldest of the Paṇḍawa brothers, loses his kingdom to the Korawa king, Suyodhana, and he and his four brothers are exiled from the kingdom for twelve years. The poem explores the very different character of Prince Abhimanyu's two marriages and closes on settlement of which of the two wives is senior, a matter which had great bearing on which of the offspring of marriages would succeed to the throne.
It is Abhimanyu's first marriage to Princess Kṣiti Sundarī, the daughter of King Kṛṣṇa and Queen Rukminī, and its consequences, which is the primary interest of mpu Panuluh's narrative. This is a love match and results, with the support of the personal attendants of the two lovers, in their lovemaking. Although a marriage between first cousins (sānak amisan) was a form of marriage favoured in the courts of ancient Java, the relationship between Abhimanyu and Kṣiti Sundarī lacked the formal approval of the bride's father, King Kṛṣṇa. The consequences for the two lovers were dire. The princess’ confinement and betrothal to Lakṣaṇakumāra, the son of the Korawa king, Suyodhana, result in the lovers’ relationship becoming embedded in the feud between the Paṇḍawa brothers and their rival Korowa kinsmen. Armed hostilities ensue between King Baladewa and Prince Abhimanyu who is supported by his older cousin Ghaṭotkaca. The dispute is finally resolved by King Kṛṣṇa, the princess’ father who approves of her marriage to Prince Abhimanyu. It is at this moment that the poet turns his attention to a brief account of Prince Abhimanyu's second marriage and the complications of Arjuna's decision that his son Abhimanyu should marry Uttarī, the daughter of King Mātsyapati, the ruler of the kingdom of Wirāta where Abhimanyu's father Arjuna had spent the last year of exile under the protection of its ruler. Prince Abhimanyu agreed to this second marriage and agreement was reached that Uttarī, the bride chosen by Prince Abhimanyu's father was to be the senior queen, an arrangement to which King Kṛṣṇa consented and which meant that it would be Parikṣit, Princess Uttarī's child, who succeeded to the throne.
Robson had nine manuscripts of the kakawin Ghaṭotkacāśraya available on which to base his edition. He judged two to provide the best readings. The first, KBG Jakarta lontar 847, a lontar of 67 folios originally from Den Pasar and dated Śaka 1823 (= 1901 CE), he describes as ‘clearly written in Balinese script without gaps or damage’ (p. 23). The second is a copy of P.J. Zoetmulder's transliteration of a manuscript from the Gedong Kirtya in Singharaja (1249/IVb) and used to compile his dictionary (Old Javanese–English dictionary, 1982). Robson comments further that his edition of the epic Ghaṭotkacāśraya greatly benefited from readings found in the citations from the epic kakawin found in this dictionary, which were ‘evidence of his [Zoetmulder's] close study of the text and his deep insight of Old Javanese idiom’ (p. 23).
Robson's excellent English translation carefully tracks the Old Javanese phrasing of the poem, and is supported by notes which comment on editorial decisions, the meanings and etymologies of words, morphological forms not recorded in Zoetmulder's dictionary and draws reader's attention to broader aspects of Javanese cultural life, enlightening us about such matters as kinship terminology, emotional life and marriage practices in ancient Javanese courts, musical performances and instruments, Javanese landscapes, their topographical formations and the fauna and flora found there, aspects of the architectural design of royal courts, the titles of courtly officers and attendants, and clothing and fabrics.
Robson, in his Introduction, provides readers with brief comment on aspects of ancient Javanese literature (pp. 1–2), an excellent summary of the story (pp. 2–13), and discussion of the poem's narrative (pp. 13–16). Here he comments on what he identifies as those aspects of the narrative which move ‘the plot forward’ (p. 14), the interaction between human and divine, the marriage practices which are at the heart of the poem's narrative, and the descriptions of the beauties of nature and the emotional content of the poem. He comments in particular on the words langut, lĕnglĕng, lĕngĕn and kalangwan, concluding that these terms ‘are indigenous Javanese, and there does not seem to be an allusion to the Sanskrit theory of rasa (taste), despite the similarities’ (p. 16). Robson goes on to discuss the origin of the poem's narrative. No Sanskrit source is known, but he explains there is evidence to suggest that the story may have a southern Indian origin in Malayalam-speaking regions including Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. He also notes reference to the deaths of Prince Abhimanyu and Princess Kṣiti Sundarī in the epic kakawin Bhāratayuddha and a possible relationship of the kakawin's narrative to lakon in the repertoire of the Javanese shadow play theatre (pp. 16–19). His Introduction concludes with a brief account of the kakawin's author mpu Panuluh (p. 19).
Robson's edition and translation is supported with a lexicographical list of the words he discusses in his notes to the translation, a list of metres and a list of personal names which provides readers with a useful means of tracking the identities of characters throughout the story. Finally, there is Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer's explanatory note attached to the illustration of Durgā Mahiṣāsuramardinī.
