Karuhun, Space, Place and Narratives

Abstract

As mentioned in Chapters 2 and 3, the major meaning of the ancestor narratives is to signify a transformation given to the land: the space of the wild forest transformed into 'hindu land', and later into 'muslim land'. Written narratives in the form of the babad have preserved the villagers’ imagination of the past. There is a clear indication that the babad functions to freeze the genealogy of the ancestors, the karuhun genealogy. However, we see a different focus in narratives of the oral tradition. The Babad does not recite clearly how the protagonist, Shaykh Abdul Muhyi, found a cave, converted Batara Karang, and made shelters in the southern part of the Sunda region. Contrasting with the Babad Pamijahan, oral narratives retell the Wali’s itinerary in this area in a very lively way. If the Babad chronicle tries to draw the importance of Pamijahan in a framework of the Javanese and Sundanese realms, oral narratives tend to focus on the existence of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi in his own time. Oral narratives have implications for the way that villagers imagine their ancestry and territory.