The Legend of Sangkuriang
>> Monday, October 6, 2008
A long time ago, the ancient land of Sunda was ruled by a king and a queen who had but a single daughter. Her name was Dayang Sumbi. She was beautiful and clever but also pampered and spoiled. One day as she was weaving in her pavilion, she became moody and distracted, which caused her to keep dropping her shuttle on the floor. Once when it fell she exclaimed she would marry the one who gave it back to her. At that very moment her dog Tumang a demigod possessing magic powers, came up to her with the shuttle in his mouth. Dayang Sumbi had to marry him.
They lived happily together, and Dayang Sumbi gave birth to a baby boy, human in appearance but endowed with his father’s magic powers. She named him Sangkuriang. As the boy he grew up, he was always guarded by the faithful dog Tumang, whom he knew only as a companion and not as his father. Sangkuriang became handsome and brave.
One day his mother asked him to go hunting with the dog and bring her venison for feast. After hunting all day without success, Sangkuriang worried about facing his mother empty-handed. Desperate, he took an arrow and shot the dog. He returned home and handed over the meat to his pleased mother.
Soon after feast, however, Dayang Sumbi questioned her son about the absence of Tumang. At first he evaded her queries but finally told her what had happened. She was horrified and struck her son so hard on the temple that he collapsed. For that, the old king banished his daughter from the court and she was made to roam around the kingdom. Sangkuriang recovered with a large scar in his temple, and he too left the court to wander about the world.
Years later, Sangkuriang met a beautiful woman and instantly fell in love with her. It was his own mother-they did not recognize each other. He proposed to her and she agreed to marry him. On the day before the wedding, as she was caressing her fiancée’s hair, Dayang Sumbi detected the scar on the temple. Horror struck her, for she was about to marry her own son, Sangkuriang. Without revealing the whole truth to him, she tried unsuccessfully to dissuade him. Desperate to avoid the marriage, she set conditions she thought impossible to meet: Sangkuriang had to make a lake that filled the whole valley and build a boat for the couple to sail in, all before dawn.
Sangkuriang started to work. His love gave him extraordinary strength, and he used his magic powers to summon the spirits to help him. With boulders and much they dammed the river in the valley and the water rose and began to form a lake. In the early morning hours he chopped down a huge tree in the forest and began hollowing it out to make a boat. When Dayang Sumbi saw that he was about to accomplish what she had thought impossible, she called on the gods to bring the sun up early and thwart Sangkuriang.
The cock crowded, the sun rose much earlier than usual, and Sangkuriang realized he had been deceived. In a fit of fury he cursed Dayang Sumbi and kicked the half-finished boat back into the forest. There it lies upside down today, forming the mountain Tangkuban Perahu (Upturned Boat). Not far away is the stump of the tree Sangkuriang had felled, now called Bukit Tunggul. The dam Sangkuriang had built caused the valley to become a lake, where both Sangkuriang and Dayang Sumbi drowned themselves. They were never had of again.
They lived happily together, and Dayang Sumbi gave birth to a baby boy, human in appearance but endowed with his father’s magic powers. She named him Sangkuriang. As the boy he grew up, he was always guarded by the faithful dog Tumang, whom he knew only as a companion and not as his father. Sangkuriang became handsome and brave.
One day his mother asked him to go hunting with the dog and bring her venison for feast. After hunting all day without success, Sangkuriang worried about facing his mother empty-handed. Desperate, he took an arrow and shot the dog. He returned home and handed over the meat to his pleased mother.
Soon after feast, however, Dayang Sumbi questioned her son about the absence of Tumang. At first he evaded her queries but finally told her what had happened. She was horrified and struck her son so hard on the temple that he collapsed. For that, the old king banished his daughter from the court and she was made to roam around the kingdom. Sangkuriang recovered with a large scar in his temple, and he too left the court to wander about the world.
Years later, Sangkuriang met a beautiful woman and instantly fell in love with her. It was his own mother-they did not recognize each other. He proposed to her and she agreed to marry him. On the day before the wedding, as she was caressing her fiancée’s hair, Dayang Sumbi detected the scar on the temple. Horror struck her, for she was about to marry her own son, Sangkuriang. Without revealing the whole truth to him, she tried unsuccessfully to dissuade him. Desperate to avoid the marriage, she set conditions she thought impossible to meet: Sangkuriang had to make a lake that filled the whole valley and build a boat for the couple to sail in, all before dawn.
Sangkuriang started to work. His love gave him extraordinary strength, and he used his magic powers to summon the spirits to help him. With boulders and much they dammed the river in the valley and the water rose and began to form a lake. In the early morning hours he chopped down a huge tree in the forest and began hollowing it out to make a boat. When Dayang Sumbi saw that he was about to accomplish what she had thought impossible, she called on the gods to bring the sun up early and thwart Sangkuriang.
The cock crowded, the sun rose much earlier than usual, and Sangkuriang realized he had been deceived. In a fit of fury he cursed Dayang Sumbi and kicked the half-finished boat back into the forest. There it lies upside down today, forming the mountain Tangkuban Perahu (Upturned Boat). Not far away is the stump of the tree Sangkuriang had felled, now called Bukit Tunggul. The dam Sangkuriang had built caused the valley to become a lake, where both Sangkuriang and Dayang Sumbi drowned themselves. They were never had of again.
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