Richard Oh

Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s
Arok of Java: A Novel of Early Indonesia
Translated by Max Lane
Horizon Books
387 pages

In his final critical hours, Pramoedya was rushed to a hospital. Lying in bed struggling for his life, he surprised everyone at his bedside with a request for his favorite kretek cigarette. When told he was not allowed to smoke in hospital, he asked to be immediately removed back to his house. His last wish finally granted, he took a few puffs at his kretek cigarette and passed away. Those final moments could very well sum up Pramoedya’s life as a man and a writer: an undaunted man who fought unflinchingly against any forms of injustice, repression and inhumanity.

Arok of Java, translated by Max Lane, is a much-anticipated addition to the collection of Pramoedya’s works that have been made available to English-speaking readers. The originally titled Arok Dedes was published in 1999. Compared to the preeminent Buru Quartet, it is not much known abroad, except for a handful of Pramoedya’s scholars. It is nonetheless an important work that eerily foretells the political state we are in today. Pramoedya showed that greed, intrigues, betrayals, racial and religious conflicts brought on by those in power often result in the loss of the lives of common people and are as recurrent in the past as in present day Indonesia.

Set in the year 1140 Saka (1220 A.D), in a Gubernatorial State of Tumapel under the reign of King Sri Kretajaya in Kediri, Arok is a tale of the rise of a sudra (the lowest Hindu caste) young man with unknown parentage named Arok who learns from a Budhist monk and a Vishnu Bramin to become a ksatria, a warrior, to lead a band of commoners just like himself to topple the rule of the ruthless brigand-turned Governor of Tumapel, Tunggul Ametung. What makes the novel especially intriguing is the way Pramoedya details Arok’s rise through his clever maneuvering rather than his skills as a warrior to penetrate into Tunggul Ametung’s inner-circle and with the help of Ken Dedes, the beautiful but reluctant consort of the Governor, for she was kidnapped from her village and forced to marry the villain, finally trumps the evil ruler.  For Pramoedya, the kstarias, the military, are basically untutored brutes manipulated by lure of greed and power, just as Tunggul Ametung by the King of Kediri. The Brahmins, the educated elite, are also scathingly criticized for being uselessly inert in their wisdom. Arok, being of the lower caste, educated by a Budhist teacher and A Brahmin master to read Sanskrit and the lontars, historical tracts, is the perfect amalgamation of a scholar-warrior approved by the Brahmins to take on the task of taking down the corrupt ruler of Tumapel. In the end, Arok wins the admiration and the heart of the Brahmini Ken Dedes, but there is a hint that she, too, cannot stand having to share power with a man not of Hindu blood. One gets a sense in the end that the prolonged conflicts involving race and religion can never be truly resolved unless one makes real efforts to respect another human being despite his/her creed or race. Arok’s triumphant address to his supporters clearly points this out: “Look now. Here I am a worshipper of Shiva, my wife Umang, worshipper of Vishnu, my adopted father Bango Samparan and also Ki Lembung are Vishnuites. My teacher, respected Tantripala is a Buddhist, my master teacher His Holiness Dang Hyang Lohgawe is a Shivaite. The good laws that have lasted now for two hundred years were the blessed gift of a Vishnu king, Sri Erlangga. The goodness of a person cannot be judged by how he worships the gods but by his behavior towards his fellow human beings.”

When the novel was banned during the New Order regime, there was much speculation that Arok Dedes was aimed at Suharto, who arose from the peasant stock and later ruled the country by force. Max Lane in his preface leaves this open for our speculation, drawing our attention rather to the historical parallel of the first president, Soekarno. Whichever way the allusion might seem to point, I believe that Pramoedya’s main concern is much broader and sweeping. He shows us that throughout our fragile history innocent blood has been shed because of the self-interest of a small ruling group of people grappling for power. These people are often described by Pramoedya as the priyaji, or in his harsher description, ‘the clowns.’ Pramoedya maintained to the end of his day that the current so-called reformasi politicians are but clowns who don’t know how to lead. One is inclined to speculate at the end whether Arok will rule as wisely as all the people of Tumapel hope he will. With the highbrow Ken Dedes, who has had of a taste of power since moving into the Tumapel palace, on one side and his brave but unpolished peasant wife on the other side, Arok is, no matter how well-intentioned his vision might be, indeed in a double bind. Perhaps Arok should have heeded more closely what his Brahmin master Lohgawe has hinted at when he recounted to Arok about his restless search for the secret of Budhism’s great power. Lohgawe travels all over until one day he arrives in Ceylon and encounters a monk by the name Viriyasanti who poses this question to him: “Why does my honored friend seek the secret power of Buddhist beliefs? Is not that power to be found hidden in every person? From among all the people, one individual rises up, others carry out his will. Great worldly achievements occur because others are ready to bow down before him as his slave. He is a king. Does my honored friend aspire to become a king?”  Lohgawe ceases his search because he chooses to be a humble fumbler of knowledge.

Arok of Java is a seamlessly crafted tale unfolding initially through the viewpoints of each character taking off from different departure points of the narrative to be rejoined into one thrusting stream in the final chapters. Page by engrossing page is brought vividly alive by Pramoedya’s mastery of the era, its religion, myths and history. Max Lane’s translation captures the simplicity of Pramoedya’s prose and focuses meticulously on the flow of narrative rather than nitpicking on individual word choices. Although it is marred occasionally by such editorial mishap as misspellings of Tunggul as Tunggal Ametung, it is nonetheless a smoothly rendered work we should all be grateful for.