Article

Shadow plays

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Shadow plays

The Shadow Play in the Malay World

The shadow play, known in Malay as wayang kulit (literally “leather puppet”), is a theatrical tradition in which the shadows of intricately cut leather figures are projected onto a white cloth screen illuminated from behind by a lamp. It is performed across the Malay Peninsula and Borneo, with distinct regional variants in Kelantan, Trengganu, Perak, and Patani, and is closely related to the Javanese wayang purwa and the Khmer nang sebek and nang trolung traditions [1], [2], [3]. The tradition is of considerable antiquity: Javanese records attest to shadow-play performance by the first half of the eleventh century, and the Kelantanese form is traceable to the late eighteenth century [4], [5]. Its significance extends beyond entertainment into the realms of ritual, cosmology, and agricultural practice, and it has been the subject of sustained scholarly investigation from the early twentieth century to the present, encompassing questions of origin, transmission, ritual function, and material culture [1], [2], [3], [4], [6], [5], [7].

Scope and Historical Definition

The Javanese scholar R. van Beuningen van Helsdingen, writing in 1913, catalogued seven kinds of Javanese theatre, of which wayang purwa (also called wayang kulit) and wayang gedog are the two principal shadow-play forms [4]. In wayang purwa, the shadows of leather puppets of peculiar shape are thrown on a screen (kelir) of white cloth, often with a red border, stretched on a wooden frame (panggung); behind the screen hangs a copper lamp (blenchong), under which the performer (dalang) is seated [4]. The plays are drawn from the parwas of the Mahabharata and from the Ramayana, and the close connection between theatre and religion is evidenced by the offering to the spirits (sayen) that takes place before the play commences [4]. Van Beuningen van Helsdingen, drawing on the scholarship of Dr. G. A. J. Hazeu and Dr. Brandes, argued that the shadow-play was an indigenous Javanese institution of pre-Hindu origin, developed from shamanic ritual into a codified theatrical art, and that all the technical terms are pure Javanese [4]. A copper record from Bali dated 1058 A.D. mentions aringgit (equated with awayang, “performing the shadow-play”), and a record of Caka 782 references juru barata (actor), establishing the tradition’s presence in Java by the first half of the eleventh century [4].

In Kelantan, the shadow play exists in two forms: a rare Javanese variant, traditionally said to have arrived from Java only about a century before Anker Rentse’s 1936 account, and a far more common Siamese-derived form so thoroughly adapted to local legend and aesthetics that Rentse preferred to call it simply the Kelantan Wayang-kulit [2]. Only the Ramayana cycle is performed, but centuries of oral transmission have corrupted and enriched the text with local folklore bearing traces of pre-Islamic Indonesian belief [2]. Islam has penetrated the tradition only at the level of incantation, where the names of the four Archangels and certain prophets have replaced the names of ancient guardian deities of the four quarters of the world, while the underlying cosmology remains essentially Hindu-animist [2]. A.H. Hill, writing in 1952, distinguished the wayang siam (based on the Ramayana) from the wayang jawa (based on the Mahabharata and Javanese mythology), and noted that the wayang jawa tradition traces its Javanese heyday to the Hindu kingdom of Majapahit, which perished in 1475 A.D. with the advent of Islam [8].

Ritual Architecture and Performance

The ritual dimensions of the Kelantan shadow play were documented in meticulous detail by Rentse in 1936. The performance runs for seven consecutive nights, commencing approximately at 9 p.m. and ending at midnight, except the final night which continues until morning, during which a single continuous Ramayana narrative is staged [2]. The stage (panggong) is a primitive hut measuring approximately 10 by 12 feet, raised 3–4 feet from the ground, with a front height of 9 feet sloping to 3–4 feet at the back; the screen is a white cloth stretched over two banana stems [2]. The orchestra comprises two large gongs, two small gongs (chanang) in wooden frames, one clarionet (serunai), and six drums of three types (gendang, geduk, gedombok); Rentse identified it as possibly the only Malay orchestra that has avoided foreign instrumental influence [2].

The opening ceremony (buka panggong) involves the To’ Dalang (puppeteer) propitiating a vast pantheon of spirits—Hindu deities, local ghosts, dragons, and Muslim figures—by dividing a propitiatory offering among them according to species and locality [2]. The special offering (pengan guru) for the deity Batara Guru consists of old Kelantan tin coins valued at 10 keneri (33 cents), placed on unboiled rice with a raw egg erect in the centre, surrounded by raw cotton thread (benang mentah) [2]. The closing ceremony (lepas permainan) mirrors the opening in its logic: the spirits are formally dismissed to their respective masters—King Solomon, Shiva, Vishnu, the Spectre Huntsman, and the Dragon at the navel of the sea [2].

In the Javanese tradition, van Beuningen van Helsdingen described a comparable ritual architecture. A few hours before the show commences, cheerful gamelan music announces the performance to the people [4]. The dalang seats himself on a mat under the lamp, and the gunungan—a heart-shaped leather piece depicting a conical tree and two wild animals—is placed in the centre of the screen as a sign that the performance has not yet begun [4]. At the court of Surakarta, Arjuna does not appear before midnight; the clowns Semar, Petruk, and Gareng serve to keep spectators awake until that hour [4]. The performance concludes when the dalang reinserts the gunungan among the assembled Pandawas, indicating that the spectators must imagine they see nothing more [4].

Amin Sweeney’s 1971 study of Peran Hutan, the shortest drama in the Wayang Siam repertoire (lasting 15–30 minutes, compared with a minimum of nine hours for the shortest other items), demonstrated how ritual function governs textual stability [6]. The drama serves a dual ritual purpose: pelepas panggung (casting away evil influences from the operating box before performance) and, in Kelantan specifically, a component of the berjamu (feasting) ritual in which the dalang enters trance and feeds the spirits of his puppets [6]. Sweeney showed that two ritual performances by pupils of the same dalang were remarkably similar in plot and presentation, while a non-ritual demonstration performance before an audience of children was presented largely as comedy, with the clown punning on the tiger’s name and insulting his teacher [6].

The Question of Origin and Transmission

The question of the shadow play’s origin has been the subject of sustained scholarly debate. Van Beuningen van Helsdingen, in 1913, argued on the basis of Javanese literary sources and the purely Javanese character of the technical vocabulary that the wayang was invented in Java and was in existence before the Hindus came [4]. Dr. Hazeu concluded that the shadow-play was known in Java about 800 Caka (probably even earlier), and that the acting was technically the same as at present [4].

Anker Rentse challenged the prevailing “Indian diffusion” model in his 1947 article, arguing that the shadow play’s core figures—particularly Semar in Java and Pak Dogah in Kelantan—preserve indigenous Indonesian animistic beliefs that predate Hindu influence [1]. Rentse contended that the South Indian Killekyata figure, described as a jet-black, pot-bellied, phallus-bearing imp who performs obscene jokes, represents a “degenerated form” of a figure that in Java and Kelantan has been preserved in a more dignified patriarchal guise [1]. He linked these figures to rice-cultivation animism, noting that the creation legend of Pak Dogah—formed from daki (dirt) scraped from the supreme divinity’s body and buried in mud—mirrors the planting of padi seed in a rice paddy, and that Kelantan farmers still call their nursery rice plants Semar or Sumar [1]. Rentse further observed that Semar and Pak Dogah are treated with greater reverence than any Hindu deity figure in the shadow-play repertoire: they are hung on the wall with jasmine offerings and a white cord, rather than stored with the other puppets [1].

Mubin Sheppard proposed a different transmission route in 1968, arguing that the Malay shadow play of Kelantan and Trengganu derives not from Indonesia but from the Khmer shadow play tradition, which itself originated in ancient India [3]. The core of his argument rests on a fundamental difference in manipulation technique: in the classical Indian and Khmer traditions, puppeteers stand behind a long screen and hold large composite figures above their heads, whereas in the Indonesian tradition puppeteers sit behind a much smaller screen [3]. Sheppard supplemented this with historical evidence of direct Khmer-Malay political and cultural contact, most notably the reign of Suryavarman I, a Malay prince who ruled the Khmer kingdom from Angkor for forty years beginning in 1002 A.D. [3]. He noted remarkable visual similarities between Khmer single figures still in use in Battambang and Kelantan and Trengganu Ramayana figures dating from the late nineteenth century, before Thai stylistic influence was introduced [3].

The Comic Figures and Local Innovation

The genealogy of the comic figures in the Kelantan shadow play illustrates the dynamic interplay between local invention and foreign import. Mubin Sheppard traced the evolution of Pa’ Dogol and Wa’ Long, the two indispensable comic figures in the Kelantan tradition, arguing that they are indigenous Malay inventions rather than derivatives of Javanese or Indian clown traditions [5]. The historical reconstruction begins with the reign of Long Yunus (1763–1798), when the Kelantan shadow play was centred at the Court of the Raja of Patani [5]. At this stage, the prologue featured the sage Maha Risi accompanied by two forest clowns, Endeng and Epong, who hunted game and fought a tiger before the main performance could begin [5].

The critical disruption came through Demukmin, a pupil of Wan Sit’s son Awang, who sailed for Java at age fourteen and studied the Javanese shadow play for thirty years before returning in 1835 [5]. Demukmin elevated Semar to paramount rank, supplanting Maha Risi, and the forest clowns consequently disappeared from the repertoire [5]. The recovery of comic figures came during the short reign of Sultan Ahmad (1886–1889), when the puppeteer Saman invented two new clowns with mobile jaws: Pa’ Diman and Pa’ Kadir [5]. After Saman’s death, his best pupil Ya’akub renamed and modified the pair into Pa’ Dogol and Wa’ Long, giving Pa’ Dogol a sense of authority and Wa’ Long his mirth-provoking nose [5]. W. W. Skeat’s 1896 collection of 154 leather figures from the travelling puppeteer Che Abas, now at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge, includes Pa’ Diman and Pa’ Kadir but contains no trace of Pa’ Dogol and Wa’ Long, confirming the later date of the latter’s invention [5].

Material Culture and Museum Collections

The physical artefacts of the shadow-play tradition have been collected and preserved in museums across the region, though the circumstances of their acquisition are often obscured. Johnson and Lim’s 2022 study of the 146 Malayan shadow puppets held in Singapore’s Asian Civilisations Museum revealed that only 9 of the 147 Malayan puppets have clearly accessioned records from the former Raffles Library and Museum; the remaining 123 wayang siam puppets are of uncertain origin, a gap attributed to the director Cecil Boden Kloss’s 1924 dismissal of small-accession registration as “unnecessary routine work” and to data loss during the Second World War [7].

The collection includes 132 wayang siam puppets, 5 Thai nang talung, and 9 indeterminate figures possibly representing the extinct wayang gedek genre [7]. Tengku Khalid bin Tengku Bendahara donated 9 wayang siam puppets in 1932, and Anker Rentse, a Danish MBRAS member and long-time Kelantan resident, donated a complete set of wayang siam puppets to the Raffles Library and Museum, receiving coverage in the 1935 and 1936 annual reports but no entry in the accession registry [7]. Rentse had earlier donated 150 puppets to the Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen in 1931 [7]. Johnson and Lim demonstrated how local-level artistic transformations in Kelantan during the 1920s and 1930s were shaped by court patronage, the establishment of the Kampung Temenggung Arts Centre, and cross-ethnic theatrical collaborations, and how these transformations were then captured, decontextualised, and stored by the colonial museum [7]. The sayap sandang (curved “wings” attached at the waist of royal male figures) is absent from the Tengku Khalid puppets of 1932 but present on later figures, supporting a dating of the style’s widespread adoption to the late 1930s or after [7].

A complete Kelantan wayang kulit theatre had been deposited in the Raffles Museum, Singapore, by the time of Rentse’s 1936 publication [2]. Van Beuningen van Helsdingen’s 1913 article included photographic plates of specimens in the Raffles Museum, taken under the supervision of its Director, Dr. R. Hanitsch [4]. A fully equipped To’ Dalang possesses over one hundred puppets, including representations of houses, palaces, and trees; the panggong stage floor measures approximately twelve feet square and is raised five feet off the ground on open scaffolding [8].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on the shadow play spans nearly a century and reflects shifting scholarly priorities. The earliest contribution, van Beuningen van Helsdingen’s 1913 article in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, was an abstract from the Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch Indie and represented the Dutch colonial-era scholarly tradition of systematic ethnographic description grounded in Javanese literary sources and museum specimens [4]. Rentse’s 1936 article marked a shift toward fieldwork-based ethnography, with the author conducting direct observation in northern Kelantan and transcribing incantation texts from illiterate local performers [2]. His 1947 article then moved into the historiographical debate on origin, challenging the then-dominant “Indian diffusion” model with an argument for indigenous Southeast Asian cultural agency [1].

The post-war period saw a broadening of scope: Hill’s 1952 survey situated the shadow play within the wider context of Kelantanese recreation, drawing on personal attendance at events and comparison with earlier colonial-era accounts [8]. Sheppard’s 1965 article introduced a material-culture approach, using physical specimens to reconstruct the genealogy of comic figures over a 130-year period [5]. His 1968 article extended the geographical frame to Cambodia, proposing a direct Khmer-Malay transmission route supported by both material comparison and political history [3]. Sweeney’s 1971 study represented a methodological advance in performance linguistics, using controlled comparison of field-recorded renderings to demonstrate how ritual function governs textual stability [6].

The most recent contribution, Johnson and Lim’s 2022 article, shifts the analytical lens from performance to museology, treating the puppets’ material forms as primary historical sources and foregrounding the politics of colonial collecting at the periphery of Malaya [7]. Together, these works trace a trajectory from colonial-era description, through mid-century ethnographic fieldwork and historiographical debate, to contemporary concerns with material culture, performance linguistics, and the politics of museum representation.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. A. Rentse (1947). The origin of the wayang theatre (shadow play JMBRAS 20(1): 12–15. Read on JSTOR
  2. A. Rentse (1936). The Kelantan shadow-play (wayang kulit JMBRAS 14(3): 284–301.
  3. Mubin Sheppard (1968). The Khmer shadow play and its links with ancient India, a possible source of the Malay shadow play of Kelantan and Trengganu JMBRAS 41(1): 199–204.
  4. R. Van Beuningen van Helsdingen (1913). The Javanese theatre: Wayang Purwa and Wayang Gedog JSBRAS 65: 19–28. Read on JSTOR
  5. Mubin Sheppard (1965). Pa’ Dogol and Wa’ Long: the evolution of the comedians in the Malay shadow play in Kelantan JMBRAS 38(1): 1–5. Read on JSTOR
  6. A. Sweeney (1971). Peran Hutan, a Malay wayang drama JMBRAS 44(2): 79–107. Read on JSTOR
  7. I.C. Johnson and D. Lim (2022). Curating Shadows: Malayan Shadow Puppets in Singapore’s Asian Civilisations Museum JMBRAS 95(1): 51–58.
  8. A.H. Hill (1952). Some Kelantan games and entertainments JMBRAS 25(1): 20–34.