HLM 302 Treatment of Illness
This course delves into the basic techniques of albularyo and mananambal, the general practitioners of the healing world. This involves the teaching of both the mundane, such as folk and herbal remedies, but also the supernatural. The course begins with an attempt to commune with environmental spirits, usually during a dream-state, in order to secure a relationship with a benefactor that will provide both knowledge and assistance to the healer. These spiritual benefactors are essential to the power of an albularyo or mananambal.
HLM 401 Hilot
Hilot is a special healing technique to treat muscle and bone pain and dysfunction. This course will cover the three major forms of hilot: the mirror technique (usually only for treatment of children), the banana leaf technique (where the leaf sticks to the spot that is at the root of the ailment), and the splint technique (where splinting and special prayer formulas are used in conjunction).
HLM 402 Luop
This course teaches luop, a ritual that is effective in ascertaining the cause of an illness, particularly if the illness is caused by spiritual beings. Attention is given to both the material components of the ritual (such as the baong-lalaki, the shell of a coconut with a "dimple" at a particular place), and the mechanics of the "Rite of the Cross" and other parts of the ritual.
HLM 403 Buga
This course teaches buga, which is a specialty technique that allows the curing of wounds through a combination of prayers and the application of chewed betel nut. Students will learn the proper preparation of nganga (a mixture of betel leaves, areca nut, lime and tobacco), and the properties of the three types of spittle: sali, bungang-putay, and lubigan, each of which are effective against different types of wounds.
Jayawarman 9th Remembers the Dragon Archipelago
Chris Mooney-Singh
The writing of Chris Mooney-Singh (Australia/Singapore) has appeared in The Best of South-East Asian Erotica, The Best of Singapore Erotica, Love and Lust in Singapore and Crime Search: Singapore. His recent poetry collection The Bearded Chameleon (2011) explores cultural adoption as a convert to Sikhism. The Laughing Buddha Cab Company (2007) looks at Asia through a series of taxi rides. Two short plays were produced for the Singapore Short and Sweet festival in 2008 and 2009. Based permanently in Singapore, he is presently a post-graduate research scholar at Monash University, Melbourne.
1. Prologue
Not many rajahs live the life of dragons.
Most come and go in love with their istanas.
Wisdom is earned outside of history.
Map your footsteps through philosophy.
The once-upon-a-time name Jayawarman—
my final fixed abode on earth, is just
a history lesson. A name is but a name,
the sense of "mine" on temporary loan.
One's living actions have no end at all.
My old pink fortress perches on the cliff,
its fallen gate—a gaping jungle mouth
and cairn of stones, protected by bamboo
is the bone-yard where they piled our heap of dead.
Although each wall and pillar of the body
has crumbled back to dust, my eyes can see
the past and future from Pelangi Peak.
Looking down, I note my chronicle
of rajah years like childhood on a playground
underneath a wide waringin tree.
I am lucky that I got to live with dragons.
The teller is inside his story now . . .
2. Birth of Dragons
This world began when Mountain Naga met
with Water Dragon Dewi from the depths
on each side of an island, balancing
on the turtle of the world. They kept alert
as guardian snakes awake to sea-bed earthquakes.
Then collided in a squall. Their cold union
hovered as a hot monsoonal threat
for weeks, until the boiling sky let loose
one hundred thousand baby nagas like
a storm of blistering meteors on the sea.
Over time, these emerald islands rose
like vertebrae at buckling intervals,
poking through the ocean's bluish-green;
and so we have our archipelago.
Now, note the head, those jagged spinal humps,
a whiplash tail, and how the morning changes
from yellow cantaloupe to midday blue;
and when green hills go dark each afternoon,
the coastal sky returns to pinkish rose.
I and my lineage had lingered long
with mountains, cliffs and beaches, reptile rocks,
until one night. The Father Rajahs brought
into my dream some storm cloud like a fist
with a future looming bad for all of us.
So they divulged the soul-shape of the Barong,
the good Barong of time, space and protection,
our primal Guardian—tooth, wing and claw
part lion, tiger, boar with serpent tail—
joining the far quarters of our island.
A dragon naga serpent is cold fusion.
3. Making the Barong
I had the icon carved. Light changed the look
of his fierce mask to scare away base spirits
sunrise to dusk. This was a ruse to front
our fears, a demon form with bigger claws
to slay new demons. His snout and snarling teeth,
and jagged fern-sharp wings were set to guard
the sky along the half-moon of the beach
and eat invaders, ripping heads like rats.
I placed him in the garden on the hill
and let the sun through slits in palm slats taunt him
green to red. Then growing huge, the shadows,
length to length, each rose colossus-like
like soldiers in his service standing guard.
This is where we taught our young to sit
and look with eyelids closed, through champa joss,
rising up around our hook-nailed god;
and as we sat to ponder our ancestor
like an old volcano smoldering, yet ready
to unleash his molten fury any moment
we came to learn that nothing stays forever.
Whatever brought us to our pinnacle
dispatched us into the dragon-breathing wind.
4. My Land, My People
My subjects were the simple nutmeg race
old as mussels, cuttlefish and clams
scavenged from the rock pool and the beach,
or running free between liana trails—
bamboo blowpipes poised upon two legs
according to totems of tiger, snake and boar.
And the fishermen among us cast their nets
from outriggers. They were cut for speed,
swerving inside reef and atoll rocks
after ray and turtle, crab and eel and shark;
while the bulk of my subjects lived upon the uplands,
because they believe the gods are in the mountains
enjoying cooler winds while tending padi,
employed by hard seasons of the hoe,
pinching down each rice shoot into mud,
trickling pools of rain through gates of earth
and terracing the hills like steps to Heaven.
A clever few maintained the bomoh calling—
one who scratched a melody from the rebab,
while the other moved with ghost-cries on his tongue—
shamans who then sliced the throats of bantams.
Soused in rice arrack, they paid the Dead
for fear of failing crops, or a stillborn son.
Then, there were my subjects who chose to live
outside my laws and edicts' lucid ways—
outcastes with the lust of raiders and pirates.
Nested like spiders in green bays,
they
hoisted sails to loot with kris and club,
hoarding gold and jewels and contraband,
living it up like rude lords in my realm.
Despite such mosquitoes on my shores,
who, sometimes I would slap down with my troops,
liberating their wealth on elephant backs
I, the rajah, ruled these Dragon Islands.
5. Confluences
Gradually, civilizations from the East
traded well with us—the Hindu-Buddhists
bringing too, the arts of temple friezes—
the visages of men who would be dewas;
and our best were sent to India for higher learning,
or for steps of temple dance and architecture;
or China-ward to understudy ceramics,
and learn the forging of metals into gongs.
Next, dragon-headed Chinese temple priests
settled among us. They carried the South Sea goddess
for prosperity among our sea-town merchants,
hosting loud occasions with gods and ghosts
deploying gunpowder, fire-crackers, and sky rockets
to scare their dead souls when they got too hungry.
Thus, envoys come in droves and sit and feast
on coconut rice served on banana fronds
and small fish wrapped in green leaves, skewered and baked
with the finest spices, sauces, sweet meats, tidbits
as feasting is the prelude to politics,
the elephant trade of mutual wealth and peace.
Gifts demanding gifts, made bonds and treaties.
Princesses from China or the Malabar Coast
were brought to build the blood stock of the court,
strengthening ties with fragrant etiquette
adept with music, silks, and other graces—
the sacred arts of the red bird rising up
before the gates of jade from dusk to dawn.
The Brahmin blessed my seaport town with joss
on holy days. This was the royal way of Rajah
Jayawarman—chiseling in stone,
the Barong's great, yet frightening countenance.
6. Nutmeg
Thus, millennia had docked here for our nutmeg,
a sweet ancillary to cakes or eggnog,
a piquant garnish for all fish, flesh or fowl
slowing down the process of decay.
I wish I'd known this would be ours as well
through a spice that masks the rot in meat.
First—Indian and Middle Kingdom fleets,
then Arab traders with a new conversion
that we received, yet never lost ourselves,
wearing them like another coat of silk.
Each adapted each through intermarriage,
softening the nutmeg in our pallor.
Pirates plied their trade with long snake boats,
with dhows, the junks and Indian unnatas,
all bound with spices, ivory and sandal,
dragon silk brocade, imperial Ming.
Some shipwrecked here and gurgled to the depths,
rattling nails and teacups in the current
as gold and silver tinkled onto the coral.
7. Adventurers
It seemed there was enough for all, until
European galleons dropping anchor,
forced themselves into our grand istanas—
clinking men—steel conquistadors,
brassy, cunning, venal, loud and blunt,
demanding trading rights upon our shores.
Their doggedness was gauche, yet refusal
was not a way of action that we practiced.
We followed in the path of courtesy,
through a dynasty of Jayawarmans.
Gradually, we saw them as they were—
double-tongued, bent on grabbing all;
and later on, wind-jammers stopping too
with green tea and opium as tender,
invading with false dragon-breath our dreams,
annexing the islands of our bodies,
squeezed us in their merchant-python grip.
Appropriating hands would not let go,
seeking to chain us, divesting us of power,
relentless as the earthquakes that now came
one after the other. As Ruler, I was blamed.
The priests performed the ritual with a lotus
to the dragon in the smoking mountain,
reciting prayers and waving champa joss,
then stuck them into offerings of papaya
because this rajah had become too modern,
inviting foreigners to our spice-tray table.
Accepting tribute, refusal would be rude
and fire carillons of cannons from their ships.
What could I do? We had not said No before
to Indians, Chinese or the Arab traders.
Our royal ocean barges were outmatched
by gunboats shouting off at us for show.
Every hoard of nutmeg, costing blood
was traded on to Europe, that famished ogre.
8. Patronage
I held my head up as a puppet rajah,
a cut-out figure in this modern wayang
hoping that the better men would come
and see us as we were—a cultured race
with music, dances, shadow puppets, sculpture.
Our wayang of poetry on the stage
may have shared its fine intelligence,
but to them our Ramayana was child's play.
I tried to fuse the last vestiges of power
into an epic dance and antique classics:
my biggest shows exerted old prestige
with flames and lights. The fire-rockets
Yes, this was my sentimental zenith—
nurturing art and artisans: from childhood—
little girls with eye and finger mudras
had such refinement that old men wept with joy.
Therefore, every village had a stage,
an enclosure with the mask-face of each god,
hanging like a council of Time's elders.
The gifted ones, the blessed by Gods among us
breathed in the pranic blue breath of the Spirit
through deer and peacock dances, tiger hunts
with elephants on stage. The ultimate
observance was to play a hero-god,
saving Sita with a monkey army;
or going primal with a matted body—
our frightening archipelago Barong,
awakened from our prehistoric epochs
when gods were rivers, clouds, volcano outcrops.
Such actors wore the mask with psychic skill,
fixing dragon movements in their limbs
to bless for crops, or to kill which means protect;
yet even they could not restrain the Ghosts
with pale skins not living in our world
who came with gunboat manners, iron muskets,
and burning lust—all ravenous for nutmeg.
9. In the Temple of the Dead
For years, I'd bought them off by selling slaves
for plantation work on Dutch Batavia.
When it was clear that no amount of swords
and elephant charges with brave warriors
could match five warships of those hard marines,
there was only one thing left for us to do:
to take the moral ground before the guns.
Actors donned their masks carved from pale
Hibiscus wood. Yes, it was time to show
our pride, our race, our culture and our faith
with the trance-inducing dance of the Barong.
At first, the monkeys seated on the stones
in a torso-swaying circle, move their arms
this way and that. Their ululating throats
chant to Rangda, hairy p
rotégé of Kali,
Then, the banished queen of witches springs
into the Temple of the Dead.
With deafening drums
she dances on the stones, hard-footed, whorish,
a baby-gorging goddess of revenge,
dispersing her black magic through white silk—
so all will turn their kris blades on themselves.
But then, the Barong enters. Through stone pillars
he lunges forth with dragon fangs and claws,
lashing out with a coiled razor tail
above the front rank heads of the Dutch marines,
then spins with a final swipe of lightning
and turns the monkey bellies to dragon hide.
Drums and gamelan gongs reach their peak.
Kris blades snap on skin, and the monkeys live.
Rangda, mad and disarmed by deeper magic
disappears between the temple pillars,
goaded by the Barong and monkey troupe.
I was glad because the Dutch were sweating.
Terror is the palpable Barong,
a rumbling from the earthquake ring of fire.
It was conjured from the guts of an epic poem,
warming us up for the crux of our rebellion.
10. Denouement
Light had already plugged the mouth of darkness
in a realm the Dutch invaders could not see.
All that was left was to sprinkle consecration:
so my High Brahmin took his jeweled kris
and stabbed his loving rajah in the heart.
My noble retinue of fifteen hundred
dressed in the finest silk embroidery,