5 - Majapahit: Stone Sculpture from the Fourteenth to the Fifteenth Century

Summary

A group of eight sculptures dated to the Majapahit period represent deified figures of kings and queens dressed in royal attire, which is evident from their high crowns, their substantial garments and the heavy ornaments on their ankles. The detailed pattern of the sinjang kawung repeating itself in slightly different variations on each sculpture indicates the reverence with which the Majapahit rulers held this particular motif. As Klokke has suggested, the presence of four arms is an unmistakably divine feature, with the attributes indicating the specific qualities of the various gods represented. The highest god is one who combines the visual characteristics of two deities to express the oneness of these gods, such as Ardhanarīśvara, the supreme concept of one god, joined as one in both male and female. They stand in a stiff, upright stance—a distinctive feature. Their eyes are downcast in deep meditation, combined with the limited mudrā of the lower two hands. Their deification led them to attain the highest spiritual knowledge (Klokke 1994, pp. 190–91). H.G. Quaritch Wales has suggested that at the foundation of the Majapahit there was a resurgence of pre- Indianized culture, which appeared to have little reference to the Indian legacy of the past. This was evident in the culture of non-Indian gods and ancestors, who appeared to reign supreme (Wales 1977, pp. 89–90).

The statues in this chapter, unlike with the previous sections, will be ordered chronologically where possible during the mid-fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, as the textile patterns all fall within two group. The first will include the ceplok patterns, and the second will consist of the different models in Java and in Sumatra.

The practice of deifying the ancestors was known at the beginning of the thirteenth century during the Kediri period and continued throughout the Singhasāri and Majapahit periods. The assumption that the images bear facial features of a certain king or queen is in contrast to ancient Indian and Southeast Asia sculptures whose features are generally without any specific character and appear to follow the convention or the style of the period. However, in East Java the sculptors did not deviate from this practice, as it would be necessary to have more than one statue bearing exactly the same features to be able to consider a statue as a portrait of a person.