1351. The king of Sunda, and his attendants, enter Majapahit, wondering at its grandeur.
There are great gates and markets, courtyards and temples. They make camp inside the city.
Tomorrow, they will go to the palace and enter its famous red brick walls.
They'll see its courtyards of pools and trees.
The great king himself will mount his chariot, pulled by dogs and leopards, and
take them to the tournament ground, where he holds lavish banquets and watches his nobles spar, and
they'll see his great menagerie, where the songs of exotic birds trapped in enormous cages echo off the walls.
They've come to wed their princess to the king and soon will share in this wealth. A gate swings open.
Majapahit soldiers march out and stand in an honor guard. Between them comes a man dressed in armor.
Not the king, but Gajah Mada.
Something is wrong.
Very wrong.
When Gajah Mada made his vow not to taste spice until he had united the archipelago, the courtiers had laughed.
None were laughing now.
Queen Gitarja's regency had been a period of expansion and success. Gadjah Mada had done his work
well, bringing kingdoms under the royal banner through diplomacy,
tributary relationships, and alliances.
Majapahit spread its rule east, west, and north.
Those that weren't persuaded by softer means soon found Majapahit ships off their coast,
loaded with an amphibious invasion force. At
times, Queen Gitarja led the army in person, riding on the back of a great war elephant.
Often, that was not necessary. The eastern Spice Islands needed Javanese rice and local governments
mostly wanted to ally with Majapahit. Especially now that they controlled the Strait of Malacca.
The new, sixteen year old king, Hayam Wuruk, had inherited an empire.
Majapahit only directly governed Eastern Java and Bali,
but their tributary states stretched from New Guinea and the Spice Islands to Eastern Sumatra, and even parts of the Malay Peninsula.
It kept diplomatic relationships with kingdoms in China and present-day Vietnam and Thailand.
But one notable holdout was the kingdom of Sunda, which controlled Java's western third.
After years of confrontation, Gajah Mada
finally broke down and offered Sunda a deal:
Hayam Wuruk would marry the Sundanese princess, forming an equal alliance between their kingdoms and letting Sunda
share in Majapahit's riches. So they had come to deliver the bride.
But instead of the king, here was Gajah Mada with a
clarification: there would be no wedding and the Sundanese princess would not be a queen. Instead,
she would be a royal concubine in the king's harem, a symbol of Sunda's vassalage.
The Sundanese were surrounded and outnumbered,
standing in an enemy capital. But this insult could not go unanswered.
Instead of surrendering their princess the whole royal household, from guards to princes to the king himself
drew their weapons. At first, they attempted to break out. But when escape proved impossible,
they redirected their charge at Gajah Mada. The betrayer would die.
Instead, Mada drew his sword and laid into the survivors with his personal guard.
One by one, they struck down the royal family of Sunda. In the face of capture and dishonor, the bride-to-be
chose to fall among her family (RIP).
Questions remain over whether this was an ambush or a diplomatic misunderstanding.
It's even possible the king had wanted the marriage, and Gajah Mada
intentionally provoked violence to torpedo the match. But if it had all been a grand stratagem, it backfired.
Due to this outrage, Sunda would never ever fall under Majapahit's rule.
The incident may have not sat right with Hayam Wuruk either,
because afterward, it appears Gajah Mada got sidelined for a few years.
He still wrote and institutionalized the system of laws, but he would never be
all-powerful again. Hayam Wuruk was not a Jago like his minister; he was a righteous prince, a god-king
who was the embodiment of everything good. You see, though Gajah Mada hadn't ever sat on the throne himself,
he'd reshaped it. Previous rulers had been kings in the Indian Hindu style,
but Gajah Mada seems to have gradually introduced more and more indigenous Javanese elements to religion and the monarchy.
He played up the animistic spirit beliefs and ancestor worship that already existed in Hindu Buddhism,
inviting in traditions that had retreated to the mountains when the newer religions had arrived.
Royal ashes had always been interned in temples,
but now it was said that these kingly predecessors had merged with Shiva, who was also the Javanese Sun God. Family
compounds built spirit houses to worship and sacrifice to their ancestors
Mada took the gods, demons, and spirits that were always hiding in the back country and made them once again part of the state religion.
Javanese shadow puppetry troops continued performing Indian epics like the Mahabharata and the Ramayana,
but also added tales of venerated ancestors. Dance and master performance followed suit,
and this "Javanesation" didn't just stay at home. Mada had specifically introduced, and
sometimes forced, these beliefs on neighboring Bali, and he helped encourage and spread Javanese theater forms around the archipelago, and
Hayam Wuruk himself would not be a king in the Hindu mold, but a Javanese one.
Hindu and Buddhist kings generally kept their wives and daughters out of sight, but he displayed them as part of his retinue, and
publicly consulted them as advisers.
Hinduism and Buddhism preached sobriety and abstemiousness, even among rulers.
Instead, Hayam Wuruk - through indulgent parties filled with feasting, dancing, and entertainers - at the climax of each night
the queen consort, deeply in her cups, would sing for their guests, and afterward the equally drunken king
would don a mask and perform a comedy skit. When he traveled his domain in Java and Bali,
collecting taxes, buying off local rulers, and performing religious duties, his train of elephants and horse-mounted retainers formed a rolling
party. He'd finish a religious duty,
sacrificing to the gods and venerating the ancestors, only to emerge from the temple mobbed like a rock star.
The very embodiment, they say of the god of love.
Women climbed trees to see him, Hindu nuns pined to be seduced, and
even the animals, it is said
submitted to his will. They would allow the king to kill them, knowing they would be reborn as human, and
if that all sounds a little exaggerated, well,
you're probably right.
Because it's during the reign of Hayam Wuruk that we get two
documents directly from Majapahit. The first, the Book of Kings, is a
chronicle charting the kings of Singhasari and Majapahit.
In fact,
it's this historical record, alongside an older one, that we followed in this series so far. As for how accurate it is,
well, that's a tough one. This document was commissioned by Hayam Wuruk to glorify his own lineage,
and this was an ancestor-worshiping society that clearly wanted to hide any skeletons in the royal closet.
But then again, the document is full of less-than-glorious moments,
so scholars consider it useful. Though, it probably contains more than a little folklore.
But the Book of Kings wasn't the only record from this period.
The second source is the epic poem, Nagarakretagama (say that ten times fast), which describes the life and religious practices
at the court of Hayam Wuruk, as well as the state of the kingdom and a detailed description of Majapahit's domain.
To write it, the poet followed the king on his tax-collecting and religious missions,
chronicling royal foibles, the strength of various religious institutions, and the common people.
Through him, we see a vibrant Majapahit; one where thriving religious institutions attract foreign students.
We see Majapahit's bureaucracy function.
If not perfectly, at least effectively, and that may be putting it mildly. In some places, Majapahit-style
administration remained in use centuries after the empire fell, and
while the grand claims of Majapahit's coastal empire might seem extreme,
it's important to remember that Indonesian kingdoms show dominance through tributary relationships and temple construction, rather than
territorial conquest.
Instead of direct, on-the-ground domination,
it's better to think of Majapahit's expansion as a sphere of diplomacy and trade that wielded influences in many Indonesian
capitals, which, in turn, directly ruled the land, and
while personal descriptions of Hayam Wuruk make us roll our eyes a little, he was unquestionably a successful ruler. These parties and royal
performances were not mere revelry, they were a type of monarchy by theater; a
display of both royal and divine power, and as a result,
it's probably no accident that Javanese theater forms truly flowered during his reign.
Introducing plays and characters that still see the stage today.
In fact, Hayam Wuruk had it together enough to keep the success rolling
even after Gajah Mada died in 1364. His reign lasted until
1389, and was, by all accounts
glorious.
But he did make one last, teeny-tiny,
little mistake right before he died, and if you've watched this show for the last five years, like I have,
I bet you can guess what that mistake was.
It's the thing smart rulers almost always do to mess up a good thing. So sing it with me now: (Place your bets!)
(To the tune of Itsy, Bitsy Spider) ♪ The pretty decent King split the crown between his heirs,
♪ Down dropped his head and they started throwing chairs.
♪ Succession crises lead to civil war,
♪ And the pretty decent kingdom was doomed to be no more. (clap clap clap)
Wooh! That one is a classic. So, join us next time as the sharks begin to circle.