The ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute (formerly Institute of Southeast Asian Studies) is an autonomous organization established in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of socio-political, security, and economic trends and developments in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment. The Institute’s research programmes are grouped under Regional Economic Studies (RES), Regional Strategic and Political Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS). The Institute is also home to the ASEAN Studies Centre (ASC), the Singapore APEC Study Centre, and the Temasek History Research Centre (THRC). ISEAS Publishing, an established academic press, has issued more than 2,000 books and journals. It is the largest scholarly publisher of research about Southeast Asia from within the region. ISEAS Publishing works with many other academic and trade publishers and distributors to disseminate important research and analyses from and about Southeast Asia to the rest of the world. First published in Singapore in 2021 by ISEAS Publishing 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Singapore 119614 Email: [email protected] Website: bookshop.iseas.edu.sg All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. © 2021 ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore The responsibility for facts and opinions in this publication rests exclusively with the author and her interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or the policy of the publisher or its supporters. ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Name(s): Pullen, Lesley S., author. Title: Patterned splendour : textiles presented on Javanese metal and stone sculptures ; eighth to the fifteenth century / by Lesley S. Pullen ; drawings by Yiran Huang. Description: Singapore : ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: ISBN 9789814881845 (paperback) | ISBN 9789814881852 (PDF) Subjects: LCSH: Sculpture—Indonesia—Java. | Textile design—Indonesia—Java. Classification: LCC NB1160 P98 Typeset by ISEAS Publishing Printed in Singapore by Markono Print Media Pte Ltd Front Cover: The photograph is of the statue of Mañjuśrī Arapacana, 1265 ce from Caṇḍi Jago, in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. The pattern is a drawing by Yiran Huang of the textile presented on this statue. Back Cover: The pattern is a drawing by Yiran Huang of the textile presented on the statue of Sudhanakumāra, c.1268-80 from Caṇḍi Jago, in the Museum Nasional Indonesia, Jakarta. Contents Foreword by John N. Miksic vii Preface xi Acknowledgements xiii Drawing and Photograph Credits xvii List of Maps xviii Orthography xix 1. Background 1 2. Javanese Textile Traditions 21 3. Central and Early East Java: Metal and Stone Sculpture 61 from the Eighth to the Eleventh Century 4. Kediri and Singhasāri: Stone Sculpture from the Eleventh to 129 the Fourteenth Century 5. Majapahit: Stone Sculpture from the Fourteenth to the 223 Fifteenth Century 6. Conclusion 251 Epilogue 261 Appendices List of Museums 267 Chinese Terms for Geographical Regions: From Yijing 635–718 268 Chinese Terms for Geographical Regions: From Zhufanzi, 269 Twelfth to the Thirteenth Century Old Javanese Literature 270 Glossary 271 Extended Glossary of Textile Terms 275 Bibliography 283 Index 293 About the Author and Illustrator 308 Foreword Archaeologists have made some progress in the study of ancient Southeast Asian textiles, but the results of this form of research are likely to remain limited to verifying the types of plants used to make the fibres and dyes, and possibly the weaving techniques employed. It seems likely that we will have to depend on indirect methods for the foreseeable future in our attempts to reconstruct the textiles used in early Southeast Asia. Historical sources contain some data, but these have serious limitations. Most surviving documents only refer to textiles in passing. Many terms used to refer to them are no longer understood. Old Javanese vocabulary concerning textiles is extensive, a sign of their interest in this topic and its importance in society, but there is scant chance that the literal meanings of these words will ever be recovered. For several years I taught a course on traditional arts of Southeast Asia in the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries, in which I emphasized the importance of textiles in trying to understand the roles of what in the West we call art and artists. No female artists and very few male artists are mentioned in ancient inscriptions. Artists were not a separate category of people in ancient Java; as in early twentieth- century Bali, the making of objects possessing what is now called artistic value was a common activity of children as well as adults, as were performances of music and dance. Artists were not marginal members of society, though some people were certainly recognized as more skilful than others in creating textiles or pottery, both of which were exclusively made by women. The high aesthetic and technical value of Southeast Asia textile production only came to be acknowledged in the West in the mid- nineteenth century. Since that time, scholars have elevated the importance of textiles as a medium of artistic expression in traditional Southeast vii viii Foreword Asia from the status of a craft to the cultural equivalent of painting and sculpture. Textile art in precolonial Southeast Asia had great ceremonial and symbolic value. Locally made textiles commanded high economic value not only within Southeast Asian societies but also in diplomatic gift exchange with China. Textiles were traded in both directions, into and out of Southeast Asia to South and East Asia. Indonesia may have exported large quantities of textiles to Cambodia during that civilization’s golden age, as the author suggests, but unfortunately we know very little about regional trade within Southeast Asia during this period. Further study of textile patterns may enable scholars to recover information about this topic. Textiles possess major scholarly value as evidence of long-distance communication. One question for future research arises from the question of whether the medium of transmission of the designs was exclusively through textile trade, or whether some other media such as illuminated manuscripts were also involved. Javanese sculptors in the thirteenth century devoted considerable attention to depicting the textiles worn by figures sculpted in stone. Temple reliefs in central Java may also have depicted textiles worn by people of that time and place, but textile designs might have been represented in plaster coatings that covered most of the reliefs—only faint traces of which survive. It is not known whether statues in central Java were similarly coated with plaster that was then painted. In India, as in ancient Greece, it was common practice to paint statues of divinities. It is possible that the change to carving detailed textile patterns directly on stone in the thirteenth century was correlated with increased social differentiation, which was denoted by the types of textiles people wore. The same types of textiles, and jewellery, were worn by both men and women, which suggested a relative degree of equality between the sexes. A fourteenth-century Chinese trader named Wang Dayuan wrote detailed descriptions of clothing worn in various ports in Southeast Asia. This gives the impression that clothing was a significant badge of local identity in the region. Wang would have easily appreciated this fact, since textiles played the same role in China. Dr Pullen’s book shows how useful it is to compare the evidence for cultural interaction as exhibited in textile motifs with communication patterns expressed in other media such as sculpture, architecture, language and ceramics. This book provides comparisons with textiles in many others parts of Asia: Nepal, Tibet, India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bhutan, Persia, the Sasanian Empire, Central Asia and China, and proposes a new, more detailed chronology of thirteenth-century Javanese statuary based on textile forms. This is a very useful contribution to the study of the history of Javanese art during the thirteenth century—a violent Foreword ix yet brilliantly artistic period. Like jewellery, textiles display elements of both style and fashion. The idea of fashion has fascinated archaeologists such as A.L. Kroeber and David Clarke since the early twentieth century. Fashions change quickly; archaeologists and art historians can use them to create precise evolutionary sequences, which aid in the development of detailed chronologies. Dr Pullen’s analysis shows that thirteenth-century Indonesian sculptors were not making up designs; they were endeavouring to depict real textiles as faithfully as possible. This is useful in deciding whether to accept the assumption that the Indonesian statuary and reliefs were not depicting imaginary realms but were accurately reflecting the society in which the artists lived. Some relevant questions probably can never be answered. Were the motifs found on textiles symbols of character or status, or were bodies purely frameworks on which to hang textiles for display as symbols? And—something that we cannot deduce from the statuary—how important was colour? The huge number of detailed illustrations found in this book will be a major permanent resource for other scholars. The assiduous effort by Dr Pullen to document these motifs and to trace their distribution over a broad swath of the globe is a significant and lasting contribution to the study of communication and exchanges of artistic ideas in general. I am very happy that the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute has agreed to publish this volume. John N. Miksic