Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
The motto of this article, taken from a novel by Rushdie (1995: 3), briefly summarizes its theme. The ‘traveller’ I wish to discuss is the love story of Abimanyu and Ksiti (or Modern Javanese Siti) Sundari. The earliest account of this story seems to be the Old Javanese kakawin Gaoṭkacâsraya (‘Gaṭotkaca's help’), said to be composed by mpuPanuluh in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century (Zoetmulder, 1974: 277). But how the story travelled and what mouths it ended up in! In 1990, for instance, Kamal Z. recorded his performance of the Javanese pop song ‘Siti Sundari’, composed by himself, in which he sang the following lines: