THE PANGOLIN

Abstract

Many thousands of intricately ornamented, volcanic stone monuments, candi, dot the landscape of Central Java. These spiritual ‘cosmic mountains’, commissioned by Hindu and Buddhist patrons between the 8th and 9th centuries, are mostly forgotten ‘memoryscapes’, built environments that represent the past glories of early Java. The 9th-century Candi Loro Jonggrang (of Prambanan village) is a powerful testament to its period and patrons yet present-day visitors know very little about the meaning of this site. Investigation and interpretation of specific details of this intricately ornamented complex, however, reveal cultural memories – some that still have cogent meaning despite forgotten connections. This article considers one specific cultural memento: the presence of the pangolin, a scaly anteater, at the Candi Loro Jonggrang. Animals are particularly effective receptacles of communal memories and this article aims to tease out why the pangolin was given prominence in the temple site and how it encoded spiritual, political, and economic concepts.

Notes

*An early exploration of this topic was presented at ‘Crossroads and Commodification: A Symposium of Southeast Asian Art History’, University of Michigan, 25–26 March 2000. I would like to acknowledge Dr Geneviève Duggan for her unfailing energy in organising this IMW special issue and her valiant attempts to bring my contribution in on time as well as her advice and aid in rewriting this essay. My gratitude also extends to the anonymous reviewers who provoked me to look deeper and strengthen my argument. Despite the above help, all errors are mine alone.

¹These singular ruins comprise hundreds of sites; about 289 sites (possessing from 1 to 250 individual volcanic stone structures) have been identified in Central Java. None of these sites are exactly alike; the largest complexes have very unique configurations, see Bosch (1915), Degroot (2009), and Krom (1914).

²This complex is also known as Prambanan, a name taken from its village location that includes several temple sites.

³The 856 CE inscription associated with the Loro Jonggrang's main temple, Candi Siwa, called Prasasti Siwagriha  [Chamber of Siwa [Shiva] Inscription] includes Pikatan's wish to become one with Siwa at this site. The ongoing discussion to identify the artists, planners and possible financiers of this site (and others built in Central Java prior to 855) is beyond the scope of this article.

⁴Although few excavations have been carried out within the outer courtyard to ascertain what this surrounding land was specifically used for in the 9th century, it seems realistic to think it would not be too different from today. Candi Loro Jonggrang is a large complex that draws many visitors. Food and drink vendors, souvenir sellers, and a park with places to picnic and rest are integrated with buildings for the various maintenance of the site as well as offices for supervisory personnel who work at this UNESCO World Heritage site.

⁵Although de Haan reported that these three temples display the same garland motif at the top of their base plinths as that of Candi Siwa this is incorrect (de Haan 1996: 159). Candi Siwa's garland is ornamented with large layered, frontal rosettes and those of the facing three candi have small, thinner rosettes that spill a tassel from their centres. I argue now and will in future publications that this distinction along with many other ornamental differences set the facing set of temples apart and support the theory of a full wahana set of candi.

⁶Although for most of the Loro Jonggrang candi, garghagriha is best translated as ‘inner chamber’ (Slaczka 2007: 203 n. 12) for the main candi ‘womb chamber’ is the best translation of the room where Siwa stands (Totton 2005: passim and Slaczka 2007: 202 n. 12). Besides the pripih of the candi shafts other deposit sites were found in the courtyard totaling 28 altogether.

⁷For further reading on this topic see Slaczka (2007).

⁸Also see Wessing and Jordaan (1997).

⁹‘[e]en bizonder grooten mierreneter’ - the pangolin skeleton had not been burnt to indicate a more usual sacrifice – suggesting that it may have been buried alive.

¹⁰Apparently each site is uniquely ‘seeded’. See O'Connor (1966, passim) and Wahyuni Triasih (1992: 79, 85, 70).

¹¹This triadic relationship of the central figure and the lesser side figures is a prominent convention of this site's sculptural and ornamental programme.

¹²Remains of a giant pangolin found in Java, a Manis palaeojavanica 2.5 metres long, has been dated to 40,000 years ago. Similar fossilised remains have been found at the Javanese sites of Trinil, Rali Gajah, Jebis, Ngandong, and Sampung (Whitten, et al. 1984: 42).

¹³Its only aggressive manoeuvres are rattling its scales, spraying a foul liquid, and vicious lashing with its sharp scaly tail. See Breen (2003); Finn (1929); Prater (1965: 301–3); Tate (1947: 113–15) and Whitten et al. (1996) for more on the pangolin and its habits.

¹⁴Li Shih-Chen (1973), Pen Ts'ao and Ching and Shang's 7th-century (1981), Xiu Xiu Pen Ts'ao. Cheng Ch'en of T'ang China is said to have authored a regional version called Hu Pen Ts'ao [Barbarian Materia Medica], regarding the plethora of Southeast Asian materials. Also see Wang (1998: passim); Wolters (1967: passim); Read (1931: passim); Cheung et al. (1983: 145–91); and Umschuld (1985: passim). For more on this subject see Su and Shang (1981) as well as Li (1973).

¹⁵The fate of the pangolin in South and Southeast Asia is so critical that the Singapore Zoo sponsored a conference on this subject in 2008.

¹⁶For instance, in early 6th-century China, animals represented on tombs were matched carefully to the rank of the deceased. Tigers were considered appropriate for military officials, whereas rams, metaphors for filial piety and incorruptibility, were appropriate for senior bureaucrats. Imperial tombs, on the other hand, were guarded by fanciful creatures like qílín or bìxié. These hybrid animal constructions apparently possessed power beyond the norm like the royal men they guarded (Spring 1993: 150, 60–98).

¹⁷South Indians call pangolins ‘jungle carp’ (banrohu); the Chinese call the pangolin lingli (hill carp). Ling is a pun that plays on both the meaning of ‘holy’ and ‘mountain’ recalling the triangular shape of their scales and perhaps an ancient reverence for these animals. See Jerdon (1867: 314) and Birrell (1982: 297). Other old Chinese names for pangolin are ‘dragon carp’, ‘wearing mountain scales’, and ‘stone carp’ (Pen Ts'ao book 43, dragon class). Other word associations in Old Javanese emphasise scales and the behaviour. Panggilingan means ‘roll’ in another Old Javanese dictionary, giling is identified as a ‘kind of fish’, and panguling means ‘to sleep’ (Zoetmulder 1982: 525–6, 551).

¹⁸See the kola nut container, Yoruba, University of Pennsylvania Museum, 29-93-6; the Museé Guimet's Zhou jade  ornament no. MA 3882, and the pangolin scale war jacket, c.17th-century, Borneo, Musee de l'Homme, Paris. Also note that in the Chinese materia medica text, Pen Ts'ao (Read 1931), pangolins are listed in book 43, under dragon class.

¹⁹An even earlier Vietnamese bronze pangolin (3rd century BCE – 2nd century CE) has recently been on display in the United States as part of the ‘Arts of Ancient Vietnam: From River Plain to Open Sea’ exhibition at the Asia Society, New York, 2 February to 2 May 2010.

²⁰One of these monkeys is very badly damaged, only its arm is visible.

²¹Goldman (1984: canto 73–5: 265, 393 n.7, 395 n.1). Also see Nanavati (1982: 67–8). In the Ramayana kakawin this scene is found in sarga 2 (Santoso 1980).

²²Goldman (1984: 103) has pointed out that Valmiki, the author credited with the Ramayana epic, focuses on amazing feats and celestial powers.

²³For example, in book I, sarga 2, canto 8: ‘The blue lotuses were moving, blown by the wind. They seemed to reject their husbands because of great jealousy. They were angry, because the bumble-bees had visited the red lotuses first. Being jealous is characteristic of a devoted wife’ (Santoso 1980: 49).

²⁴See Totton (2003: passim).

²⁵Javanese dictionaries of the names for pangolin also support these concepts: pangil can mean ‘deviation’ (Wojowasito 1979: 319). In modern Javanese, pangil translates as ‘a notice’. In Hindi, the pangolin is called silu or sals. In Old Javanese, silu means to ‘hide, to wrap oneself’, and silur means ‘to turn around’.

²⁶Although some arguments remain to counter this reading of soma, I argue that art may also add weight to the interpretation of mushrooms as the substance of soma (see Dannaway 2009 as well as Stuhrmann 2006: passim). Both of these recent studies confirm that the most likely source for soma is the Amanita mushroom. Also see Wasson (1968: passim). Given the description of soma's effect and how it had to be pressed into liquid and drunk the same day, the mushroom is the likely essence of this intoxicating juice of the Vedic poems (Doniger 2009: 122).

²⁷This dwarf avatar was Wisnu's fifth, the predecessor to Parasurama.

²⁸ Ular-ular translates as ‘snakes’ but also means ‘a ceremonial speech given by a community elder to advise a newly married couple’. This concept was written in poetic Old Javanese in Lampung, south Sumatra, a region known for the high literacy rate of Old Javanese (Totton 2009: 86, 168). This speculation has one flaw: only one ular (snake) is depicted rather than ular-ular.

²⁹The next scene portrays Rama's father and his third wife, who forces King Dasaratha to put her own son on the throne and send Rama into exile for 14 years.

³⁰A 15th-century East Indian variation of the Ramayana addresses this unresolved problem. A new scene was inserted very early into the first book of the epic: Before Rama was born, Parasurama came to kill King Dasaratha. But the clever king ‘swallowed his pride and respectfully bowed at [Parasurama's] feet’. He pledged his fealty and asked for mercy. The appeal worked. Dasaratha was allowed to live and beget his warrior caste family, only to finally wrest ultimate power from the Brahmin Parasurama through his son Rama (Smith 1988: 89).

³¹‘The more menacing the power, the thicker the mask’, as James Scott (1990: 3–8) cogently argues.

³²Because a pangolin has been depicted only on two of the thousands of candi reliefs found in Java the reader may not be convinced of its importance. However consider the fact that only two candi are ornamented with reliefs of the Ramayana story, a story that permeates western Indonesian culture. The relative rarity of pangolin presence could signify exclusivity of this motif rather than its ordinariness.

³³The connection between medicine and religion is common to many cultures; it is customary to pray for divine help in illness. Medical texts of the ancient Greeks and Indians as well as the ancient Chinese, are imbued with religious doctrine and magic. In fact until the Song dynasty, medicine and divination held equal importance in the Chinese regions. Later Malay medical texts also mix healing and spirituality.

³⁴While casually skimming through old shipping records in the Kuching Museum in 1999, I came across a 1962 record that listed a shipment of 16 tons of dried pangolin skin and scales (estimated to be about 11,000 animals) exported from Borneo to China. Today the scales, viewed as particularly powerful, have a high blackmarket value in both China and Africa for medicine and magic.

³⁵Ayuvedic (from the Sanskrit ayur-veda, the ‘science of life’), texts are part of the Vedas, the oldest sacred books of Hinduism.

³⁶Hindu temple geomancers routinely sought to free the earth of demons by rituals and magical implanting of stabilising forces (Kramrisch 1946, I: 13n. 28–15).

³⁷See Soekmono (1995: 116, 65). A more current study of consecration deposits (those not under discussion in this article) that were secured in stone containers and other vessels can be found in Slaczka (2007). This author uses an Indian text that post-dates the Loro Jonggrang site by at least two centuries. However she concludes that these ritually placed deposits were often filled with ‘riches of the earth’ and meant to afford auspicious effects (prosperity, fertility). In fact, many consecration rituals are described in terms of ploughing the earth. Animals that remind worshippers of fertilising the soil and ‘who grub in the soil’ like bulls (and perhaps pangolins) are described in this section of the text (Slaczka 2007: 5, 201, 124). Slaczka (2007: 7, 8, 259) also notes that the use of bodily remains or animal offerings not prescribed for Hindu temples.

³⁸The African symbology of pangolins as links with one's maternal clan and /or other ancestral claims apparently resonates with the planners of the ancestral shrine of Loro Jonggrang (Roberts 1995: 95).

³⁹Arab merchants who brought the pangolin to Rome from Asia and Africa called it abu-khirfa, ‘father of cattle’ (Burton 1969–1970: 1829).

⁴⁰The buried human and two dogs are also significant actors – but purely in support of the pangolin and Nandi just as Vishnu and Brahma support and flank Siwa at this complex.

⁴¹Also see Wessing (2006: 219). A contrast between pangolin and buffalo types is also found in Deli, north Sumatra where people remember two types of rhinoceros: a ‘buffalo rhino’ (peaceful type) and a ‘pangolin rhino’ (savage type). The latter, now extinct in Sumatra, was probably the one-horned West Javan rhino, Rhinoceros sondaicus, once the most populous rhinoceros in Asia; the former is the two-horned Sumatran rhino, Dicerorhinus sumatrensis (Whitten et al. 1984: 41).

⁴²Today this term is said to mean ‘bamboo shoot’ and this triangle motif recalls the basic form of a mountain as well (Langewis and Wagner 1964: 23, 37). In Minangkabau textiles (a culture closely related to the Srivijayans), the line of triangles symbolises a communal fence, paga nagari, i.e. ‘protection’ (Summerfield 1991: 178; Schnitger 1989: 43). In Malay, ‘bamboo shoot’ refers to royal children and indirectly, fertility.

⁴³The primal triangle of Sanskrit texts, trikona, relates to another name for Siwa, ‘three-eyed’. As for the shape of the mountainous candi, in the Cantonese language the name for the pangolin translates as ‘the animal that digs through the mountain’ (<savethepangolins.org>).

⁴⁴For a fuller discussion on this topic see Totton (2002: 62–7).

⁴⁵The scaly pangolin (as naga) symbolises the watery beginnings of life, as well as wealth and fertility and femaleness. Nandi, a gentle bull, rests on his pedestal between images of the sun and moon deities as the earth rotates between them. Also see Wessing's explanation of Javanese dimensional symbolism (Wessing 2006: 207–8, 220–3).

⁴⁶The subheading, which references her father Sukarno, the former first President of Indonesia, reads roughly: ‘Sukarno conveys a divine essence to her in a new era of struggle’ (Sega 1999a: 30–1).

⁴⁷The phrase banteng ketaton (lit. the ‘spirit of the wounded bull’) is a kenning that means ‘bravery’.

⁴⁸These events are a bit foggy but from extant inscriptions we are made aware that Pikatan died in 855 the same year that Balaputra was exiled with the help of someone named Kumbhayoni. The next ruler, Kayuwangi, apparently had the Loro Jonggrang consecrated in 856. See the Sivagriha inscription of 856 (de Casparis 1956: 16) the Wanua Tengah III inscription (Jordaan 1993: 49–51) and the Plaosan-Lor Inscriptions (de Casparis 1956: 14, 20–6).

⁴⁹To the south of the pangolin corpse, under the Angsa candi, two dogs were interred at two different depths. Yama, the god of death, is associated with dogs and indeed we see two dogs represented in the Ramayana narrative reliefs – one in the cremation scene of Rama's father, King Dasaratha, and the second who invades the household of Rama and Sita as Sita is kidnapped by Rawana. Both dogs signify death (King Dasaratha and Jatayu) just as the dogs under the Angsa candi reify this symbolism.

⁵⁰This is clear from the Siwagriha inscription (de Casparis 1956: 16).

⁵¹According to Chandra Rajan, the colophon of the Panchatantra characterises it as an instructional manual on the art of kingship, rajanitisastra (Rajan 1993: xxviii).

⁵²Another point that suggests the pangolin represents a local point of view.

⁵³This debacle causes the king so much grief that he dies soon afterwards and the half-brother forced to take the throne is also greatly pained by his mother's hateful act.

⁵⁴Furthermore, in Java, Shaivite sites were not wholly devoted just to Siwa. He was worshipped together with Durga, Ganesha, and Agastya. Candi devoted to Wisnu and Brahma as well as the wahana candi of Nandi, Garuda, and Angsa are less popular in Central Java.

⁵⁵‘Animals are good to think’ (Levi-Strauss 1963: 89).

⁵⁶Hopefully this modest article will generate further investigation into the interpretation of Javanese temple art and how cultural motifs and metaphors are transmitted for over a millennium. For further information on the topic of memory and cultural transmission please see Carruthers (1990) and Wertsch (2009).