Tenaga Dalam Volume 2 - August 1999
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Tenaga Dalam Volume 2 - August 1999 The Voice of the Indonesian Pencak Silat Governing Board - USA Branch Welcome to the August issue of Tenaga Dalam. A lot has occurred since May issue. Pendekar Sanders had a very successful seminar in Ireland with Guru Liam McDonald on May 15-16, a very large and successful seminar at Guru Besar Jeff Davidson’s school on June 5-6 and he just returned from a seminar in England. The seminar at Guru Besar Jeff Davidson’s was video taped and the 2 volume set can be purchased through Raja Naga. Tape 1 consists of blakok (crane) training and Tape 2 has about 15 minutes more of blakok training followed by a very intense training session in various animal possessions including the very rare Raja Naga possession. Guru Besar Davidson and his students should be commended on their excellent portrayal of the art. Tape 1 is available to the general public, but due to the intense nature of tape 2 you must be a student. It is with great sadness that I must report that Guru William F. Birge passed away. William was a long time personal student of Pendekar Sanders and he will be missed by all of the people that he came into contact with. 1 Tribute to Guru William F. Birge Your Memory Will Live On In Our Hearts. 2 DJAKARTA aeroplane is a lead-coloured line of sand beaten by EX ‘PEARL OF THE EAST’ waves seeping into a land as flat as Holland. The Dutch settlers who came here in 1618 and founded The following is a passage from the wonderful Batavia must have thought it strangely like their book Magic and Mystics of Java by Nina Epton, homeland. Scattered clumps of coconut palms like Octagon Press, ISBN 0-900860-39-1. The book is abandoned umbrellas are the only proof that this is a “must have” and is about one woman and her no northern territory. search to find the “old ways”. It also contains rare information on the Badui tribe who live in West The capital of Indonesia sprawled beneath the Java. There are only three sources that I have ever aircraft-dirty white, almost treeless and seen on this elusive tribe, i.e. the 1817 book History criss-crossed by Dutch-built canals. As we circled of Java by Thomas Ruffles, this book and a video lower I saw the lean form of a sedate Dutch tape sold by Herman Suwanda - Survey 1 of Silat Reformed church set beside a park surrounded by in Java. villas and bungalows. This used to be the Dutch residential area in the old colonial days when As we approached a larger island than the rest, Batavia was still known as ‘the Pearl of the East’. half-hidden by mist and dotted with smoky blue It is difficult to think of Batavia, and still less of pyramids-smoky and smoking, for Java’s Djakarta, as a pearl -at least not from a scenic or volcanoes are very much alive - I looked down a an architectural point of view. This name must have little apprehensively, wondering whether I would been bestowed upon the capital as a symbol of the succeed in the quests I had set myself. wealth amassed there from the products of the Indonesian archipelago: tea, coffee, tin, palm oil, I had flown halfway round the world to wrest three spices. Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and English secrets from this lovely, little-known island. I fought each other bitterly to get this lucrative trade, wished to see the ‘Invisible People’ - a remote so much so that even a saint like Francis Xavier, jungle tribe in West Java; I wished to probe into who came here to save -heathen souls, could not ancient court ceremonial at the palace of the Sultan fail to remark how very rapacious we Christians of Jogjakarta, near the south coast, and I wished to were. meet Javanese mystics and magicians. My friends in Indonesia had already warned me that these The moment you land at Djakarta the hot, humid would be very difficult tasks to achieve. atmosphere seizes you and strips away all energy. None has described it with more admirable effect Djakarta lies on the northern coast of Java; this is than Lt. Stockdale, who traveled through Java in the flattest and least interesting of her coasts and 1811: unfortunately it is this side that confronts visitors ‘Most of the people who live here and even many arriving from the West. All they see from the of the rich who might be supposed to have attained 3 the summit of their wishes have something in their sunshine and limpid blue skies, but this is not so. countenance expressive of discontent and detection Java lies near the equator and is therefore nearly which seems a certain sign that an is not right always cloudy. The year is divided into wet and within. After a short residence in this debilitating dry seasons and in Djakarta you sit and drip in a atmosphere a state of languor and love of inactivity fairly constant humidity of 99 per cent all the year soon overcome all the active powers of the mind round. and, occasioning a total neglect of exercise, ruin the constitution and induce an absolute repugnance My hosts, Hamid and Zeina, a young Indonesian to every kind of occupation. The only resource for couple of Arab origin, drove me in a blue Chevrolet those who are in this state of listlessness from the airport to their bungalow. The only cars approaching to torpidity is to seek for relief in imported into Java seem to be large expensive society and to endeavour to kill the heavy hours in American ones. On the other hand, public the most frivolous manner. Smoking tobacco, transportation is totally inadequate for the needs uninteresting and useless conversation, drinking of the three million people who live in the capital. and card playing form the sum of their Now the hand amusements-utterly at a loss how to pass the many tedious hours of the day, only solicitous to make We drove quickly through the town centre, past choice of such ways of killing time as least interfere the President’s palace and the Ministries-all built with their beloved state of motionless repose.’ by the Dutch-to the residential area with its avenues of almost identical bungalows specially built (again For a long time, the town was a white man’s by the Dutch) for the tropics. Their small front graveyard. Dutch writers remarked that the gardens are filled with magnolia trees and all those frequency of deaths in old Batavia: renders familiar tropical plants that are so popular and expensive the mention of them and little signs are shown of in England at the moment. It is tantalizing to see emotion and surprise on hearing that the companion them growing so easily out of doors and in such of yesterday is today no more. When an profusion. acquaintance is said to be dead, the common reply is: “Well, he owed me nothing!” or on the contrary: Every one of these bungalows has a veranda which “I must get my money from his executors.” is used as a sitting-room where family and friends gather in the comparative cool of the evening t6 The suddenness of deaths in this difficult climate lounge and gossip in rattan-fibre armchairs or to was so much taken for granted that when a listen to the languorous strains of kronchung music European married, the attorney who drew up the broadcast by Radio Djakarta. Kronchung is a form contract at the same time made out the will of of romantic jazz said to have been inspired by old the newly-wed couple. Portuguese airs, but they have also become oddly Many people think of Java as a land of bright Hawaianized during their long stay in the islands. 4 The words of these love ditties are cooed into the flanking the opponent, so his weak side is microphone by charming Indonesian artists with matched against your strong side (two arms and small, tender voices, not unlike their figures. The legs against one arm and leg) hand patterns, typical Indonesian figure is slender, with almost weight distribution, besets (back sweeps) and imperceptible curves. The women have tiny sapus (front sweeps are incorporated.) To bosoms, firm as berries, and equally firm, small illustrate the tiga we will start with the luar. buttocks round which their ankle-length sarongs (Photo 133). Starting at the base line the first are tightly and unequivocally wound. juru is done directly after the right leg sapus or forward sweeps. On the forward sweep notice There is another veranda at the back of the the hand position. (Photo 134). The lead hand bungalows, overlooking the strip of back-garden goes low and strikes to the groin area, while the where the large daily washing is hung out to dry. rear hand protects the face and can strike high Dishes arc also laid out to dry in the sun on a after the opponent if he would pitch forward table by the side of the outdoor sink. The from the groin attack. These blows are done just washing-up is always performed in the open. Off before the actual sapu is made. One can not the L-shaped covered passage at the back are the sweep anyone who has both legs together or is kitchen, the servants’ quarters, and the Malay strong in their base. The idea is that the person bathroom.