Article

The origin of the wayang theatre (shadow play

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The origin of the wayang theatre (shadow play

Anker Rentse’s 1947 article in the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society challenges Dr. H. Meinhard’s 1939 thesis (published in Man) that the Javanese wayang shadow play was introduced to Java from India. Rentse argues 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, and that the South Indian Chayanataka tradition may itself be a derivative or parallel development rather than the source.

Summary

Rentse’s argument proceeds by comparing the South Indian Killekyata figure with its Javanese and Malayan counterparts. He contends that Meinhard’s identification of the Indian shadow play as the prototype rests on a misreading of the evidence: the Killekyata—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 (pp. 12–13). The Javanese Semar, Rentse argues, is a “village elder” of the agricultural class whose wise, determined appearance reflects an older animistic divinity, while the Kelantan Pak Dogah is a tall, erect warrior-clown who defends justice and attacks evil (p. 13).

The article’s most distinctive contribution is its linking of these figures to rice-cultivation animism. Rentse notes 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 (p. 13). He further observes 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 (p. 14). This, Rentse concludes, indicates that these figures are of an older date than the Hindu-derived characters and were “degraded to ordinary clowns” only after Hinduism took hold in the archipelago (p. 15).

Rentse also draws on ethnographic evidence of the exorcising and agricultural powers attributed to these figures in both South India and Malaya—ancestor worship of the leather figures, their use in curing the possessed, and their association with harvest rituals—to demonstrate a shared animistic substrate (p. 14). He cites Dr. John D. Gimlette’s Malay Poisons and Charm Cures (1929) for the use of Semar in the Main berbagih healing performance, and reports his own observation of a Kelantan performer invoking Pak Dogah’s power for personal purposes (p. 14).

Key Findings

  • Javanese wayang is attested in records of 860 A.D. and 1157 A.D., predating the earliest confirmed Indian shadow-play references (p. 12).
  • The South Indian Chayanataka is documented from at least the thirteenth century A.D., with possible allusions as early as the second century B.C. (p. 12).
  • Indian trade with the Malay Archipelago is known from the 7th century B.C., meaning Indian traders could have carried the shadow play from Java to India rather than the reverse (p. 12).
  • In Kelantan, nursery rice plants are called Semar or Sumar (elsewhere in Malaya Semai), directly linking the figure to rice-cultivation animism (p. 15).
  • Semar, Pak Dogah, and Sangyang Tunggal (the supreme divinity) are referred to as the same divinity (dia juga) in Kelantan tradition (p. 15).
  • The four hulubalang (fire, water, air, soil) are associated with the red, white, yellow, and black Semar, reinforcing the animistic cosmological framework (p. 15).

Conclusion

Rentse concludes that the shadow play reached its highest cultural development in the Malay Archipelago, and that if it did not originate in Java specifically, its roots must be traced through animism and shamanism back into Central Asia (p. 15). His central historical takeaway is that the Semar/Pak Dogah figures represent a pre-Hindu indigenous divinity of agricultural creation that was subordinated to a clown role by the arrival of Hinduism but never fully displaced, retaining its sacred power in village practice to the present day.

Context

  • The article draws on Rentse’s own fieldwork in Kelantan, previously published in J.R.A.S.M.B. Vol. XIV, pt. III (The Kelantan Shadow-Play (Wayang kulit) and Majapahit Amulets in Kelantan), as well as on Gimlette’s 1929 monograph on Malay medicine.
  • Historiographically, the piece is an early example of arguing for indigenous Southeast Asian cultural agency against the then-dominant “Indian diffusion” model of the 1930s–40s, a position that would be substantially refined by later scholarship on wayang’s complex syncretic development.

References