1 Epic, Affect, and Amir Hamza
A key feature of epic storytelling across South and Southeast Asia is the prominence of affect. A felt quality inheres both in the narration of epic tales and in the storyworlds that the narration brings into being. Emotions, sentiments, moods, dispositions, characters, atmospheres, and sensations are brought to the surface and thematized time and again (Arps 2023).
While affectfulness characterizes South/Southeast Asian epics across the board, its forms and functions are not identical from one story or rendition to another. Told in many genres and languages across a region stretching from Istanbul to Xinjiang and Makassar, until the early 1900s the adventures of the Arab hero Amir Hamza (an uncle of the Prophet Muhammad) and his kin constituted the principal epic of Islam in Asia. In parts of Java, they continue to feature in puppetry and dance. Hamza narratives, too, are suffused with feeling, attributed to dramatis personae as individuals (temperaments) or on particular occasions (states of mind), and to scenes (atmospheres). Now the realm of feeling remains almost entirely unexplored in studies of Javanese literature and drama. Also, after initial surveys of Hamza texts by Van Ronkel (1895) and Poerbatjaraka (1940), little has been done to broaden our general understanding of this epic storyworld that used to be familiar and hugely popular around the Java Sea. And too often the study of narrative restricts itself to either text or performance, disregarding moreover real-life narrativity, an artificial division of labor inherited from a textualist western scholarly tradition. Trying to break through these tendencies, I will argue in this chapter that there is a Hamza affect, which is intrinsic to how the epic’s plots are built. Complex and historically variable though it is, this realm of feelings-in-action is typical of Hamza storytelling irrespective of genre. It resonated in society.
To identify the Hamza affect I consider four renditions of an episode, all from Java. The last three are puppetry performances held in 1985, 2019, and 2020. The first is literary and at least four centuries older: the poem Stories of Amir (Caritanira Amir), which once circulated in the Java Sea world (Arps 2021).
1.1 Getting Amzyah to Rescue His Father-in-Law
This poem is cast in tĕmbang macapat verse forms, structured for melodic reading (Arps 1992). It recounts a string of adventures in the adult life of Amzyah (as Hamza is called in this text). His and his family’s wellbeing is forever under threat from his own father-in-law, the Persian emperor Nursiwan, who resides in Madayin (Ctesiphon). As a first indication of how affect operates in Stories of Amir, here is a summary of the intricate beginning of the illustrative episode, noting its rapid-fire succession of feelings, dispositions, and emotive behaviour:
When Nursiwan’s son Herman learns that his father has fallen into the hands of Sadad Kabul Umar, the king of Abyssinia (Abĕsi), and is subjected to endless torments, Herman is heartbroken and wants Nursiwan to be freed. Herman consults his father’s wise counsellor, who says that only Amzyah can accomplish this. But Amzyah, who resides several days’ travel away with his wife Munigarin – the emperor’s daughter – is not favorably disposed towards Herman, nor towards the opportunistic and unbelieving emperor himself. Herman thinks that a request for help will just make Amzyah angrier with them than he already is. So the counsellor suggests that Herman appeal to the compassion that the empress, Munigarin’s mother, feels for Nursiwan. Herman should ask the empress to write Amzyah a letter begging him to pity the emperor. This letter will no doubt be seen also by Munigarin, who is likely to burst into tears, for she loves her father dearly. In this way Amzyah will be moved by love for his wife to travel to Abyssinia.
Herman does as suggested. The empress obliges with a flattering letter, invoking Amzyah’s “compassion for the miserable” and the fact that he is “feared by the entire world.” She beseeches Amzyah to pity the unfortunate emperor, stressing Amzyah’s bravery in the face of danger.
The letter is hand-carried to Amzyah. Reading it, Amzyah realizes that Herman is behind it. He decides nonetheless to obey his mother-in-law’s wish. With a smile Amzyah orders his companion Umarmaya to show the letter to Munigarin inside the palace. Amzyah tells the envoy to convey to the empress that he will oblige although Herman has done him harm.
When Umarmaya presents the letter to Munigarin, she recognizes her mother’s handwriting. Deeply distraught she weeps, imagining Nursiwan’s suffering. Umarmaya returns to describe Munigarin’s reaction. Amzyah is touched and his resolve to free the emperor becomes even stronger. Amzyah tells Umarmaya to travel with him to Abyssinia. Umarmaya, however, advises against the undertaking. He predicts that the emperor will continue to wish Amzyah ill and warns that it will lead him into sorrow and misery, danger, self-blame, and disappointment. Amzyah falls silent, then vents extreme irritation with what, apparently, he considers self-conceit on Umarmaya’s part. Amzyah persists. He takes leave of the Arab nobles who are his followers and departs. (Stories of Amir, VII.58–VIII.22)
In the final analysis Hamza’s journey is his own decision, but this decision is enveloped in multiple layers of other people’s agency,1 all grounded in emotions. The journey is instigated by Herman, in turn encouraged by the senior counsellor. At Herman’s bidding it is requested by Hamza’s mother-in-law. It is further motivated by Munigarin (by Herman’s machinations, again following the counsellor’s advice). And it is countermotivated by Umarmaya. By the will of God, the journey will end in calamity for Amzyah. With the sole exception of the counsellor’s involvement, in every case the motive is strong affect: pity and love for the emperor, love for a spouse, worries about a companion’s wellbeing, God’s own displeasure.
Sketched in broader strokes and without noting all instances of affect, this is how the episode continues.
Amzyah reaches Nursiwan and carries him off in his cage. Recently, however, Amzyah has been presumptuous, failing to acknowledge the will of God. Before he can free Nursiwan, by God’s disposition Amzyah loses his way, gets trapped in a desert called the Sea of Dissolution, and nearly dies.
Sadad Kabul Umar finds Nursiwan; they are reconciled.
Having failed to trace Amzyah, Sadad concludes that he is dead. Sadad and Nursiwan rejoice and march on Kaus, the city where Amzyah resides. Sadad has long coveted Munigarin and sees his way clear to win her.
Meanwhile Amzyah, languishing in the Sea of Dissolution, invokes the name of God. (This will boost his luck.)
Alerted to Amzyah’s misfortune by a dream, Umarmaya goes looking for him. He finds him, helps him to recover, and describes the situation in Kaus.
In a short intervening storyline, Sadad’s son, on the throne of Abyssinia in his father’s absence, attacks Amzyah, is subjected by him, and converted to Islam. Amzyah leaves for Kaus.
Meanwhile Sadad, joined by King Jobin (another of Amzyah’s vassals, who hereby defects) and Herman, besieges Kaus. They do battle with Amzyah’s followers.
A magically powerful Abyssinian presents himself to the invaders, offering to infiltrate the city. He sneaks into the palace and murders Kobat Sariyan (Amzyah and Munigarin’s son). A tumult breaks out, everyone mourns the nobleman. Munigarin appears to have lost her sanity.
In the enemy’s camp Nursiwan feels regrets but Sadad has the battle re-commence. Amzyah and Umarmaya arrive. Sadad flees but is killed. At the same time, in boundless sorrow, Munigarin seeks death on the battlefield. Jobin thinks she has come to offer herself, but she shoots him with an arrow. He thrusts his sword into her back. Amzyah arrives and kills Jobin, but Munigarin cannot be saved.
Amzyah is devastated by the deaths of his wife and son. Laments fill the air. Munigarin’s body is taken to Amzyah’s home city Mecca for burial. After 21 days of mental breakdown, Amzyah is visited in a dream by the prophet Abraham, who reprimands him for loving his wife more than God and reminds him to be steadfast. Amzyah begins to interact with others again, but not for long. He mourns at Munigarin’s grave day and night and sends away all his companions. The entire universe shows pity for Amzyah. He even chases away Umarmaya, asserting that he will not change his mind about this. But as Amzyah fails to invoke the will of God, he calls down His anger. (Stories of Amir, VIII.22–IX.67)
This heralds the next adventure.
1.2 Tracing Affect in the Narrative
The episode is built from Amzyah’s going to Abyssinia, his straying, and further movements occasioned by these journeys. As the summaries show, it is affect that inspires protagonists to go or be dispatched somewhere, thus launching the respective storylines – trains of events centered on a protagonist – that, woven together, form this episode. But how does affect relate to plot in other episodes of Stories of Amir, and how is affect actually narrated? These questions are addressed in the next section. I will show that affect is instrumental not only in starting storylines, but also in how they proceed and end. Meanwhile, the text promotes a meta-affective stance as well: steadiness of heart, and God’s affects play a constitutive role in steering the plot.
In the third section I consider other sixteenth-century narratives in Javanese, and the Malay antecedents of Stories of Amir, to form an idea of whether Stories of Amir’s affect-in-action paradigm was typical. After discussing the feelings-plot nexus in later literary tellings of the Hamza epic, I turn to recent performances of puppetry. Differences in some respects and striking similarities in other respects suggest how the Hamza affect has fared historically.
2 Feeling and Plot in Stories of Amir
Stories of Amir is contained in a palm-leaf manuscript, MS Jav. b. 2 (R), donated to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, in 1629 (Arps 2021). The provenance of manuscript and text is unrecorded, as is its authorship. But there are signs that the poem was composed in Banten, on the north coast of western Java, in the sixteenth century. Versions of this particular telling of the Hamza epic have been identified in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century manuscripts from Madura and Lombok. Possibly they occur in manuscripts from Palembang from the same period as well (Arps 2021). In these places around the Java Sea everyday spoken interaction was in other languages, but certain works of literature in Javanese enjoyed esteem, as did other kinds of cultural javanaiserie (Arps 2018).
Comparison (as yet unpublished) reveals that Stories of Amir was based on a Malay exemplar, the Hikayat Amir Hamzah (Samad Ahmad 1987). This prose narrative in turn was adapted from a Persian text likewise in prose (Van Ronkel 1895), probably written in Iran in the eleventh century (Pritchett 1991: 2). These adaptations were faithful to their respective exemplars’ dramatis personae and plot. Yet the outcome, Stories of Amir, is distinctly Javanese in terms of language, style, and partly also storyworld (Arps 2021: 652–53). This raises the question how much of the affect and its plot-driving power in Stories of Amir was Malay, Persian, Madurese, and so on, as well as Javanese. There is a tendency in Javanese studies (and area studies generally, as well as anthropology) to seek out local cultural uniqueness. But like the Anbiya texts examined by Ronit Ricci in the present volume, the Hamza epic helped to establish and uphold cultural features and patterns across a much broader region than Java and other islands around the Java Sea.
2.1 The Narration of Affect
Unquestionably the category comprising emotion, temperament, ambience, and so on has great cultural significance, but it is not easy to do it rigorous analytical justice. Small wonder that in Javanese literature and performance it has hardly been studied.2 But while the content of individual categories of affect is difficult to define, the means of representing them in storytelling are clear. In Stories of Amir affect is narrated in four main ways. Before reviewing them, however, I should mention that (like in all tembang texts treated in this volume) the melodic nature of the text’s reading produced an affective dimension as well, one that was continually present during the reading and hearing of the story, but that changed in character with the verse form (Arps 1992). Unfortunately, no melodies from before the late nineteenth century are recorded for the verse forms of Stories of Amir. Their affective features in earlier times are unknown.3
The most elementary way of narrating affect attributes individual or shared emotions and dispositions to dramatis personae verbally. Examples are “Umarmaya was delighted” (suka twasirÔmarmaya),4 “feeling troubled in his heart” (ewĕh rasaning nala), “there were numerous onlookers / who were astonished” (akweh punang aniningal / kagawokan). The affect may be represented metaphorically rather than explicitly named: “it was as if Amir’s / heart was rent out as he heard this” (sira Amir / lwir sinĕndhal twasnyângrungu), “their hearts were sprinkled with water of life” (twase kabeh ingamrĕtan).
These personal or communal emotions and suchlike shade into more complex feelings which in English one might call realizations. The narrative nature of these affects is expressed by phrasing them as a tiny tale, such as “he sensed in his heart / that he had run into dangerous difficulty” (rumasêng twasipun / yan sira amanggih wisthi). A shared emotion is stated punchily in a single word (“startled,” kaget) but quickly elaborated by means of such a micro-narrative in “The people of Ctesiphon were startled for they really did not know / that the king of Abyssinia had come / They had not worried there might be trouble / as treachery was not on their minds” (Kaget wong Madayin apan tuhu tan wruh / yan dhatĕng raja Abĕsi / datan anangsayêng kewuh / dening tan amanah juti). This example shows how affect may be narrated in layers: the absence of perfidiousness is stacked upon worry, in turn stacked upon startle. Authors did not hesitate to assign feeling in complex sequences and configurations; witness Umarmaya’s warning to Amzyah, mentioned near the end of the earlier summary:
For if you choose not to heed my advice / to you, by your leave / if against better judgement you insist / and travel to Sadad Umar / by your leave, you are certain to / encounter sorrow / on this undertaking of yours // And you will encounter misery once you reach your destination / Great danger is what you will find / You will lay the blame on yourself / feel extreme disappointment / It is better to follow my advice /
(Apan yan tan kedhĕpa atur manira / ing pakanira singgih / yan amaksakĕna / maraêng Sadad Umar / yakti pakanira singgih / amanggih duhka / ing lampahira iki // Amanggih malarat sira tĕkêng paran / wisthi agung kapanggih / anĕsĕl sarira / liwat analahasa / yogya tutĕn atur mami / (Stories of Amir, VIII.15–16))
Thirdly, affect may be unnamed but evident from action. To mention one case, when Umarmaya has rescued Amzyah from the Sea of Dissolution he reports that an infidel king is marching on Kaus to capture Munigarin. Amzyah’s response is charged with emotion: “Then the nobleman / was silent, he did not say a word” (yata Wong Menak / mĕnĕng sira tanpângling).
The last major way of narrating affect concerns not so much emotion as the atmospheric sensibility of a situation, event, or place. Most if not all narrative elements and categories have an affective dimension, rather than being either affective or not, but at key junctures an ambience is explicitly thematized. The narrative in the Bodleian manuscript begins in medias res with the appointment of Kobat Sariyan, Amzyah and Munigarin’s son, as ruler in Kaus. A few stanzas later a sense of general wellbeing concludes the episode in question (which presumably was recounted in an earlier volume of the text):
Now he reigned as king for a considerable time / Kobat Sariyan was content / The city-state of Kaus flourished / as did the border regions / All were the same, none stood out //
(Alawas mangke panjĕnĕngira prabhu / Kobat Sariyan wus trĕpti / krĕta nagara ing Kaus / muwah ingkang tĕpi siring / apapak tan anâmojok // (Stories of Amir, I.17))
The next episode begins:
Let it be told then that evil deeds were afoot / There was malevolence in the city / So let us speak of Chancellor Baktak / who did not cease to commit falsehood / for he sought to lead into wickedness //
(Wantĕn ta ucapĕn duskrĕtaning laku / wontĕn dusthaning nagari / dan Patih Baktak winuwus / tan mantun akarya juti / sabab amrih duduning wong // (Stories of Amir, I.18))
An air of evil is created by description, building on the knowledge that Nursiwan’s chancellor is unreliable, immoral, and malevolent all through the epic. Here he exudes evil in Kaus. In the next stanza, Baktak will observe that currently there is no war. No-one stands in Amzyah’s way. Baktak proceeds to stir up a conflict.
An ambient sensibility may also be summoned through poetic style. There are at least three distinct evocative styles in Stories of Amir (Arps 2021: 664). One represents a sense of entrancement (mostly rapture) occasioned by the sights, sounds, and scents of a place or situation, usually as protagonists travel through nature or arrive in a beautiful garden. The affect, expressed iconically through poetic formulations rich in alliteration and Old Javanese words, is sensed by them but ascribed to the setting or circumstances.5 The other two styles are a register evoking chaos, often in battles, employing markedly onomatopoetic words with a humorous undertone, and a style that by means of frequent enjambments signifies dynamism and urgency during combat and other physical movement.
2.2 A Manager of Affect: Umarmaya
As demonstrated by the complex emotion-laden contrivance that opens the illustrative episode and by Umarmaya’s plea to Amzyah not to go to Abyssinia, feelings may be managed by others. The paramount manager of affect is Umarmaya, Amzyah’s companion since childhood.
Stories of Amir tells us little about what Umarmaya looks like. The sole indication of his appearance is the appellation Si Pothet “little rascal,” which Amzyah uses affectionately and in jest. Umarmaya and Amzyah are often mentioned in a single breath. At one point, Umarmaya describes their relationship in metaphorical terms: they are like pollen and flower petals, or soul and body (Stories of Amir, IX.64). Amzyah is probably the pollen and soul, Umarmaya the petals and body that encase them.6
Umarmaya is deeply and recurrently involved in affect. Amzyah considers him his beloved (kakasih). In the course of the narrative Umarmaya himself experiences joy, anxiety, sorrow, desperation, elation, contentedness, the gamut of feelings. But more important is his effect on others. He acts as emissary, especially Amzyah’s, and in this capacity triggers emotions: “Upon the arrival of Umarmaya / Munigarin’s heart seemed sprinkled with life-giving water / She felt as if raised from the dead / So, too, did the knights” (SapraptanirÔmarmaya / lwir minrĕtan twasira Munigarin / lwir pĕjah amarabangun / muwah para satriya). He is a renowned fighter, inspiring confidence in some and terror in others. A warrior who murdered Umarmaya’s father is warned: “Not a single king dares to stand up / to Umarmaya, in any circumstance / It appears that you desire to die / that you have had enough of life” (Norâna ratu wania / sapisan-pisan ing Umarmayêki / baya sira arĕp antu / bosĕn sira agĕsang). Umarmaya likes to play the fool as well, as when he is reunited with Amzyah after a lengthy separation:
He danced about, looking up to the sky, pouting / squealing and shrieking with laughter / All the onlookers were amused / by Umarmaya’s little act / The palace servants were greatly delighted //
(Angigĕl tumĕnga ing tawang mucucu / gumuyu abĕlik-bĕlik / suka sakwehing andulu / polahirÔmarmayêki / nti sukaning kang papandho // (Stories of Amir, XI.39))
And, key in the present context, Umarmaya stewards the feelings of Amzyah. Time and again he attempts to shield him from sorrow.
2.3 Affect as Source of Story
Not only does our illustrative episode as a whole start with affect, so do its individual storylines. When Sadad Kabul Umar, king of Abyssinia, goes to search for his prisoner Nursiwan who has vanished, he is motivated by a series of feelings. Waking up to find Nursiwan gone along with his cage, “He felt alarmed, he thought to himself in bewilderment / ‘Hey, who could it possibly have been / that had the audacity to take him?’” (Gadgada manahira umangĕ sira / heh sapa baya iki / kang wani ameta). He finds a note from Amzyah, “And thereupon King Sadad’s heart began to pound / He was visibly afraid” (Yata gumĕtĕr twasira Raja Sadad / sira asĕmu wĕdi). He convenes his warriors, reports what has happened, and considers that “‘It will be best if at this point I acknowledge / the wickedness of my deeds in the past’” (Abĕcik iki ingsun aprasadua / ing duduningsun uni). This gets the action going: they leave, soon to find the cage containing Nursiwan. Later in the episode, the brief interposed story about Sadad’s son is another example of affect setting in motion a train of actions. Once this prince (who remains nameless) has been summarily introduced into the narrative, in the space of three stanzas it is told that he feels alarmed (gadgada) when he learns that Amzyah has resurfaced, orders the battle-drums to be struck, and marches on Amzyah.
The same applies to the other storylines and major episodes in Stories of Amir. We have seen, for instance, how a mood of evil centered on Baktak in Kaus opens the text’s first new episode. A different pattern, mentioned in the summary with regard to Umarmaya, occurs so often that it merits illustration. God (implicitly and behind the scenes) sends a dream – often ominous – to a protagonist, the dream sparks their affect, the affect motivates them to go somewhere or dispatch an emissary, the journey makes a new storyline. One night Amzyah has a dream.
It was Prince Umar Yunani7 whom he got to see / in the dream that came to him / swimming through a surface of water / the surface of an ocean of blood / Soon the sea washed him away // Thereupon he startled, the nobleman awoke / Immediately he sat upright / and at once began to feel bewildered / becoming exceedingly apprehensive / as he turned it over in his heart // Soon he had conveyed the news to Umarmaya / about the dream that he had had / Umarmaya said with respect / “It would be best if your servant8 / went after him,9 ahead of others // […]” / Amir then said “Umarmaya, do make haste / you must depart immediately.” / Soon Umarmaya had asked his leave / and then he departed like the wind / He moved without ever slowing down //
(Raden Umar Yunani sira kadulu / ing jro swapĕnanirêki / anglangi tĕngahing laut / lauting sagara gĕtih / anuli kanyut maring lod // Yata kaget sira Wong Menak awungu / anuli sira alinggih / nĕhĕr ta sira angun-ngun / dahat sangsaya ing ati / rinasa-rasêng twas mangko // Winrĕtakĕn sirêng Umarmaya sampun / ri swapĕnanirêng uni / Umarmaya sira matur / abĕcik amba puniki / tumutur rumuhun mangko // […] Lingira Amir Umarmaya den asru / mangkata kita den aglis / Umarmaya amit sampun / yata mangkat kadi angin / lampahira datan alon // (Stories of Amir, VI.111–115))
This leads into an adventure that includes Umar Yunani’s murder (a crime passionnel) and ends with the conquest and conversion of Kashmir by Amzyah.
Overall, then, it is from strong and purposive emotion that storylines start. The affect may be a sequence or otherwise complex, or simple, but it is conspicuous and its ends, too, are clear. It may belong to the protagonist whose movement is narrated in the storyline, like Sadad Kabul Umar and later his son. Alternatively, it belongs to that protagonist’s motivator (Amzyah in the previous example, Herman and others in the emotional scheming I began the summary with). An ambient sensibility may also have this plot- engendering function. Baktak’s evil in Kaus is a case in point. He composes a letter to King Sadad suggesting he attack Mecca. It is brought to Abyssinia and read out. “The king was elated when he heard / everything the letter contained / His Majesty was carried away” (Sang Nata garjitângrungu / sawirasaning rĕrĕpi / lamlam twasira Sang Katong; Stories of Amir, I.29). Sadad marches on Mecca.
2.4 Rebooting the Epic Plot
There is an exception to the common pattern that episodes start with feelings or a pronounced atmosphere. At one juncture in Stories of Amir there occurs what could be called an affect-free reboot of the epic narrative. The previous episode was concluded with the conversion of an infidel king to Islam. He joins Amzyah’s ranks and all celebrate. What is narrated next is how Amzyah appears in audience. With no trace of affect he asks his warriors and allies:
“Of what use is it to have / the infidels encamped outside the city walls?” / King Sarkab said with reverence / “It is right to repel them by means of war” //
(paran pedahe iya / kafir anêng jaba kutha akukuwu / matur sira Raja Sarkab / pĕnĕd tinundhung ing jurit // (Stories of Amir, IV.4))
Amzyah follows Sarkab’s advice. In this epic, in which Islamization is a major trope, the mere proximity of infidel enemies may be sufficient reason for embarking on a new adventure.10
2.5 Quickenings, Changes of Course, Conclusions
Besides starting storylines, feelings keep storylines going. A string of stanzas may be infused with an affectful ambience. The evocative poetic styles described earlier are typically used for this. Or a storyline is invigorated with a burst of feeling. This tends to happen when protagonists on different journeys meet, and their storylines are thereby joined. Various emotions may be involved, depending on the relationship between these protagonists and what preceded. Before enemies come to blows on the battlefield, for instance, they exchange intimidating boasts and angry insults. Affect may also steer a storyline in a new direction, triggering further journeying to a destination not envisioned earlier. The example of Amzyah not saying anything when he hears that back at home his wife is under threat shows how sophisticated the interweaving of emotion-induced storylines may be. The normal narrative pattern in Stories of Amir – namely that strong emotion triggers movement – suggests that Amzyah wants to go there. But this turn in the storyline is cut short by the son of Sadad. Only after his intervening subepisode is Amzyah able to depart for Kaus.
Episodes and their storylines end in affect as well. I have mentioned the general contentment that rounded off an episode early in the text. Another case is the son of Sadad storyette, a concise version of a typical Hamza epic storyline. It ends in the joy felt by both Amzyah’s side and that of Sadad’s son after the latter has been subjected and converted to Islam. “They made merry day and night / having a drinking-feast / with an exquisite choice of food” (akasukan dina-ratri / sirândrawina / mwang dhadhaharan adi). At the other extreme lies the universal sorrow that marks the conclusion of our episode. Aired visibly and audibly by birds, trees, even rocks and the sun, this devastating sadness is narrated in three stanzas in a poetic style that abounds in florid, archaic, and assonant words and phrases, evoking ambient entrancement. It is Amzyah’s heartbreak that calls this up in nature. This ending also builds a bridge to the next episode, which will see the grieving Amzyah abducted.
2.6 An Affective Stance and God
Meanwhile one particular affect – a meta-affective disposition – stands out in Stories of Amir as highly prized but very difficult to maintain. It is expressed in the precept “be stable” (steadfast, tĕtĕp), usually said of the heart, the seat of feelings: “be steadfast in your hearts” (den tĕtĕp twasirêki). Close to this is tĕguh “firm, steady, resolute,” as in “do remain resolute in your heart” (tĕguhakĕna ing ati) and – with reference to action – “stay steadily on your course” (den atĕguh ing lampah). Unlike most affect in the story, tĕtĕp and tĕguh are not narrated in the indicative mood but are used in dialogue as optatives or imperatives, as when Umarmaya says to Amzyah who has just heard that his son is hurt: “You must be steadfast, Your Highness / Don’t be excessively concerned” (den atĕtĕp sira Pukulun / sampun sirâsru prihatin).
Affective stability is desirable in general. A stranger has helped Amzyah to recover from a head injury:
The Victor in the Battlefield / sensed in his heart that he was indebted to him / Then the Amir spoke and said / “Oh, how exceptional is your love / I have incurred the greatest debt towards you now / Pray be steadfast in your heart / May the Almighty recompense” //
(Yata sira Jayêng Rana / kapiutangan rasane twasniki / dan lingirÂmir amuwus / dhuh antyanta sihira / agung utangingsun ing sira mangkweku / den tĕtĕp uga twasira / mogha walĕsĕn ing Widi // (Stories of Amir, IV.55))
This is about maintaining an ethical sensibility, but the ideal of constancy is usually brought up at moments when the addressee has lost their equilibrium. Abraham appears in a dream to Amzyah who is mourning Munigarin: “The Prophet Abraham said / ‘As to the present moment, you / must not be weighed down in your heart / Rather you should be steadfast’” (Nabi Ibrahim angucap / ana pon mangke sirêki / aja sak ing atinira / tĕtĕpa uga sirêki). Abraham appears as a messenger from God. The fact that God Himself is the implied source of the message suggests that affective stability is part of the religiosity promoted in the text.
This value is invoked most prominently in advice from Umarmaya to Amzyah. It resonates in the vehemence with which Umarmaya argues against Amzyah’s going to Abyssinia to free his father-in-law. Umarmaya wants to convince Amzyah not to act on his emotions. He suspects that Amzyah’s response will lead to further misery. Umarmaya, then, tries to manage Amzyah’s plot-steering emotions, to prevent chains of affect, to break up the plot. He is unsuccessful.
There is a second way in which Amzyah fails, from time to time, to live up to standards. He reveals to an opponent on the battlefield:
When all of these rulers / lose their lives or are laid in bonds / it does not happen by my personal desire / Such is simply the decree of God / Who disposes over life and death // It is made to happen through my hands / I have been granted a powerful ability by the Almighty / so I am able to take their lives /
(sakwehing kang para ratu / mati muwah kabanda / dudu lawan karsaningsun dhawak iku / iya uwus ukuming Hyang / anitah ing pati urip // Minargakĕn tanganingwang / sinung pangawasa dera Hyang Widi / kawasa mateni ingsun / (Stories of Amir, X.38–39))
Indeed, Amzyah is addressed by his friends as “commander of the faithful who / is well liked by the Divine Spirit” (amiril mukminin kang / sinukan dera Hyang Suksma). Yet the affect Amzyah raises in God is not always fondness. God is “the One Who reigns over all desire” (Sang Amurbêng Kapti; Arps 2021: 658), but Amzyah repeatedly loses sight of the crucial importance of God’s disposition (titah, panitah). Sending away his companions from Mecca, Amzyah asserts he will not change his mind, but
As the Amir declared this / he did not have an eye to the Will / He failed to say “Allah so desires” / He incurred the Almighty’s wrath / Great misfortune would be coming upon him //
(kalângucap sirÂmir / nora lumiring kahayun / tan angling masa’Allah / olih duhkaning Hyang Widi / balahi agung kang tumĕka ing sira // (Stories of Amir, IX.65))
Amzyah’s certitude about the future moves God to modify his storyline. In due course, Amzyah will realize the error of his ways and ask forgiveness, but the pattern will repeat itself.
The ways feelings serve plot in Stories of Amir yields a narrative paradox. Amzyah and his kin and companions move in an eventful world. On the one hand, destabilizing affect should be avoided, conducive affect sustained. Steadiness of heart is the ideal and God’s anger should not be aroused. These key ideologies underly the narrative in the affective realm and – it is important to realize – are promoted by it. On the other hand, time and again God sends disconcerting dreams, ploys to incite emotion succeed, Amzyah cannot contain his feelings while Umarmaya fails to manage them, and Amzyah lapses in his piety, provoking God’s displeasure. Those who are fond of stories may be grateful. Affect is the source of the protagonists’ movements and adventures, hence of plot, hence of the telling of Hamza’s epic.
3 Affect-in-Action Paradigms in the Java Sea World
My analysis thus far has shown that the affect-plot nexus in Stories of Amir consists of four interplaying processes. In the realm of narrative structure, the text is built from a recurrent abstract pattern of affect (feeling or atmosphere) starting, re-energizing, modifying, and concluding storylines, which are constructed around a protagonist’s goal-oriented movement. On top of this comes the common, plainly discernible motif of attempts, sometimes by means of “white lies,” to manage a hero’s emotions, that is, in narratological terms, to shield that hero from storyline-inducing affects (often unsuccessfully) or on the contrary to arouse such affects. Third, coupled with this is the repeated injunction to maintain stability of feeling and attitude. And fourth, in the background hover the doctrine of God’s disposition and the likelihood of Him intervening in a hero’s storyline to expose them to difficulty, and indeed of Him creating new, taxing storylines for him or her, especially as their missteps provoke His ire. The affective dimension of Stories of Amir is fast-moving, rich, and nuanced. Was this unusual in the narrative economy of the sixteenth-century Java Sea world? How widespread was the affect-in-action paradigm (let me call it that) that underlay this text and was propounded by it? Questions about affect open up a dimension of Javanese and Malay narrativity that turns out to be varied and fascinating. I offer some initial findings.
The Hikayat Amir Hamzah, which contains the exemplar of the Bodleian manuscript’s Stories of Amir, was rendered into Malay from Persian possibly in Pasai (north Sumatra) in the second half of the fourteenth century (Guillot 2020: 423). The Malay text continued to circulate in the Java Sea world after its translation into Javanese.11 On the face of it, the Hikayat Amir Hamzah’s affect-in-action paradigm differs from that of Stories of Amir. The passage in which Harman Syah12 motivates Hamzah to rescue Nusyirwan (Samad Ahmad 1987: 397–98) refers to Hamzah surely obeying his mother-in-law’s wish because he is considerate of his wife. The mother-in-law’s letter asks what the public will say (about Nusyirwan’s imprisonment), appealing to Hamzah’s sense of justice. Next to these intimations of affect the passage contains just one explicit mention, namely Umar Umaiyah’s prediction that Hamzah will regret it (menyesal) if he goes to Abyssinia. To mention another kind of affect I have discussed for Stories of Amir: in an earlier episode there is no mention of an ambience of evil generated by Chancellor Bakhtik; the narration starts later in the episode and refers back to Bakhtik’s wicked scheming only indirectly (Samad Ahmad 1987: 353). Likewise, the focal episode ends with Hamzah’s devastation over his wife’s death, but this is not reflected in universal sorrow, let alone one evoked through a markedly poetic style (1987: 407).
In the Hikayat Amir Hamzah, then, affect seems not to be in a constant embrace with the protagonists’ movements. Upon closer reading and reflection as well as contextualization, however, this impression turns out to be unwarranted. To be sure, the Malay text is more economically worded than Stories of Amir, but the same plot developments occur. The protagonists are likewise set in motion by their and others’ feelings and sentiments, not by narration but by inference. The tale is pale in terms of named affects, but the action is animated by them nonetheless. The injunction to stabilize one’s heart (in Malay: pertetapkan hatimu and variants) is as prevalent in the Malay as in the Javanese, as are God’s disposition and His likes and dislikes.
Two explanations are likely for the understatedness of affect in the Hikayat Amir Hamzah. The first is that, for this work and possibly for the literary culture of Malay prose narratives (hikayat) generally, the onus of feeling was on readers and listeners. The plot is there, full of potentiality for empathizing. Indeed, a famous episode in the Malay Annals (Sejarah Melayu) suggests that the Hikayat Amir Hamzah was read for its ability to inspire bravery in battle (Braginsky 2004: 116). In the Hikayat Amir Hamzah’s preface, the narrative is framed as removing sadness from the world and affording cheer to all people (Samad Ahmad 1987: xxx). It was neither intended nor considered to be emotionally flat. Additionally (not alternatively), the text’s elementary affect may have been elaborated by reciters or storytellers. The Malay Hikayat Amir Hamzah used to be read in Aceh, for instance, while its contents featured in storytelling there (Snouck Hurgronje 1894: 183). Until at least 1981 it was in a storyteller’s active repertoire; one recorded telling, in Acehnese larded with Malay, lasted 15 hours (Durie 1996: 130–35). This is precisely how the Persian prose text used to function in Iran and Mughal India: as a source for oral retelling and elaboration (Pritchett 1991: 3–8, Khan 2015, Yamamoto 2021).
All the same there are diverse ways of building a story, of dealing with affect, and of connecting affect and courses of action. The affect-in-action paradigm of Stories of Amir is not self-evident. In other Javanese-language texts composed in the sixteenth century other paradigms obtain, even when they share the same poetic form as Stories of Amir, that of kidung or gita, “song.”
The Song of Surajaya (Kidung Surajaya), dated 1510 CE, recounts the peregrinations of several students of Hindu-Buddhist religiosity from guru to guru in the highlands of east and central Java (Kartika 2015). The text is known from manuscripts in a mountain hermit’s library probably assembled in the eighteenth century (Kuntara and Van der Molen 2001). The narrative is an allegorical representation of the exploratory search for a way to withstand affective impulses and successfully practice yoga. The obligation to subdue one’s emotions, conceived as temptations, is a fundamental premise. Grief motivates the main protagonist to wander aimlessly, as he struggles to overcome it. Later, feelings of love threaten to hold him back, rather than pushing him on a trajectory to a definite goal as in Stories of Amir. While affect management has a prominent place in the form of instructions from gurus and fellow seekers (in episodes that tend to be stationary), the narrative does not posit a higher power intervening in the plot. The individual seekers’ struggles to defeat their passions stand central. One affect, however, is cast in a positive light. This is the entrancement called kalĕngĕngan in the text. In the affect-packed preamble the narrator frames his narration as a deeply concentrated striving for this sensation while attempting to prevent his thoughts and sense-perceptions from straying (Kartika 2015: 64–65). Thus, Song of Surajaya positions itself in the Old Javanese poetical tradition that is occasionally referenced in Stories of Amir by means of its rapturous passages. As Zoetmulder explains these Old Javanese aesthetics: “in an experience of oneness that blurs the distinction between subject and object, consciousness of the self vanishes too” (1974: 172). The affect that Song of Surajaya attempts to generate, then, is that of yoga. The affect-in-action paradigm that underlies Song of Surajaya is yogic.
Song of Sunda (Kidung Sunda) is also Hindu-Buddhist, but its affect-in-action paradigm is altogether different. Set in the fourteenth-century kingdom of Majapahit in eastern Java with historical figures as dramatis personae, the poem was probably expanded from a shorter text in Bali in the mid-to-late 1500s (Berg 1927b: 5). Like Stories of Amir, this heart-rending narrative features love, anger, grief, and a range of other emotions, often in quick succession. This is common in the genre of which Song of Sunda is part, known to scholarship as “the historical kidung” (Berg 1927a, Zoetmulder 1974: 409–26). Some affect management occurs in the requisite didactic dialogues. But once the affects are considered in relation to dramatic action, notable differences between Song of Sunda and Stories of Amir surface. While affect is the driving force behind several storylines, often it does not clearly and directly inspire the action. At key moments protagonists precisely do not feel what might be expected in the circumstances (a bad omen, advice from senior people), let alone act accordingly. And ultimately, it is not the protagonists’ current feeling or agency that directs their storylines but their deeds in earlier incarnations. No personified deity intervenes in the plot, but a force called Hyang Widhi (“Divine Universal Order”) has an inescapable causal role (Berg 1927b: 50). Aggregating deeds from the main protagonist’s former lives, this force inflicts calamity on him (1927b: 46).
Story of Joseph (Carita Yusuf; Kitab Yusuf 1981) is Islamic and may hail from the same or a kindred literary environment as Stories of Amir (Arps 2021: 663, 672). It is faith-oriented and less mundane than Stories of Amir, and its affective repertoire is smaller. Alongside astonishment (kagawokan), triggered by human beauty and puzzling feats (which both come from God), it is dominated by love in various shades and forms. Many opportunities for narrating feeling are not taken up. The principal storylines, focused on Joseph and Jaleka (Arps 1990: 52), do start from affect, and once they have met, a dose of infatuation (hers, not his) gives their now unified storyline new impetus (1990: 47). But several shorter storylines are not triggered by feeling at all. A famous tableau – Jaleka parading Joseph before the courtiers’ wives in Egypt to make them experience his irresistible beauty – is a successful attempt to change the plot by managing affect, but not the hero’s. Joseph’s inner life is not protected by anyone but himself and God, let alone to avoid chains of affect. Affect-related maxims mostly concern death and the last judgment. Their message is: if believers trust in God’s love and forgiveness, they need not fear. Joseph incurs God’s anger when he asks not God but a fellow human for help; the consequences are dire (Arps 1990: 49–50). But earlier, when Joseph became conceited because of people’s reactions to his beauty, everyone in the next settlement he visited was as beautiful as he (1990: 43). In Stories of Amir such a lapse typically leads to God’s displeasure and a new adventure. More prominent than wrath, indeed, is the fact that Joseph is beloved of God; this leads Him to intervene in his storyline on many occasions.
A Javanese telling of the narrative of Iskandar (Alexander), found in a royal manuscript dated 1729 CE, is said to have been adapted from Malay in the early 1600s (Sudewa 1995: 23, Ricklefs 1998: 46–47). Hamza and Iskandar stories have much in common: their epic nature, geographical setting, and the trope of subjection and conversion of infidel rulers. Iskandar’s Malay exemplar, too, was rendered from Persian (Guillot 2020: 427–28). Scrutiny of the Javanese poem reveals that the advice to be steadfast (tĕtĕp) occurs repeatedly. Like in Stories of Amir it is held up as a hard-to-achieve affective ideal. It is invoked even in advice that a devil, disguised as a sage, gives a sun-worshiping king, inspiring him to go to war; it is coupled with the advice to “be long-suffering” (den sabar).13 Like in Stories of Amir, God intervenes in storylines, mostly at a protagonist’s request to help them on their course of action, but also at His initiative, most prominently when He chastises Iskandar for being covetous (loba). Although no divine affect is mentioned, in a commentary addressed to the text’s readers and listeners the consequences for Iskandar are called “calamity from the Almighty” (cilakaning Widi; Sudewa 1995: 120). Against this background of similarities, however, Iskandar’s affect-in-action paradigm is quite unlike Stories of Amir’s. Feelings are far less frequently narrated. When they are, what triggers them is sometimes unclear. Most storylines simply do not start from affect, not even implicitly. Most typical in Iskandar is responsive emotion that may be strong but does not inspire movement.
Affect-in-action paradigms are not limited to narrative, of course. They are reflected in the earliest surviving Javanese Islamic treatises, in a few manuscripts acquired by the first northwest European traders to come to Java in the late 1590s. The so-called precepts of Shaykh Ibrahim, a list of norms of religious morality (Drewes 1978: 18–23, 62–63; 1954: 32–37, 108–14), contain much affect, but not usually formulated in relation to action. The precepts that do concern affect-in-action lead us to Islamic asceticism. Being compassionate to one’s fellow creatures, a condition for asceticism (Drewes 1954: 32; 1978: 18), receives little emphasis in Stories of Amir and Iskandar, worldly as their orientations are, although it is in line with Story of Joseph. Likewise, the need to be aware of the evil of one’s passions so that one may avoid gratifying one’s desires (Drewes 1954: 34; cf. 1978: 20) accords with the ethos of Story of Joseph and is prominently thematized once in Iskandar, but it is far from the impassioned affect-in-action paradigm of Stories of Amir. Regretting and repenting to God over vain and improper conduct (Drewes 1954: 32; 1978: 18), a retrospectively oriented form of affect-and-action that clears the way for new courses of action, is done by protagonists once in Stories of Amir (Arps 2021: 658), once, though by implication, in Iskandar (Sudewa 1995: 123), and repeatedly in Story of Joseph, where it is moreover thematized in an aside commentary (Arps 1990: 38, 39, 41, 43, 49, 50). Finally, a precept that features in Stories of Amir is: do not state that what you will do is certain and do say “God willing” (Ar. in shāʾa Allāh) (Drewes 1954: 3–5; 1978: 20–2114).
These correspondences show that socio-religious principles involving feelings in relation to action were promoted to sixteenth-century Muslim communities in narratives as well as didactic treatises. When Stories of Amir was rendered from Malay possibly in 1526 or later (Arps 2021: 662), its configuration of affect management, stability of heart, and Divine intervention was retained, while the Malay text’s mostly tacit tendency to have affect start, steer, and close storylines was not just retained but made explicit. It is possible that Stories of Amir was written as an Islamic contribution to an extant Javanese-language genre of which Song of Sunda was a specimen, roughly that of “the historical kidung,” known from Bali but probably once written and heard in Java too. If so, in terms of affectfulness per se, Stories of Amir followed an established local model. But not in the links it made between affect and courses of action. There the Malay text’s potential was elaborated. Despite its Javaneseness, then, in key components of the affective realm the poem reflects its Malay and ultimately its Persian ancestor. Too little research has been done to state whether the affect-in-action paradigm of Stories of Amir – passionate, social and worldly, immediate, goal-oriented, but flawed and cut short at crucial moments – was unique, but indications are that it stood out in the narrative economy of the sixteenth-century Java Sea world.
4 A Brief Look at Other Hamza Texts in Javanese
How did this Hamza affect turn out in later texts? A short sketch must suffice. The so-called Yasadipuran version of the Hamza epic is a long narrative poem of the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century that was repeatedly published from the 1880s onwards and, by all accounts, became immensely popular. In the edition issued in the 1930s by the colonial government’s publishing house Bale Pustaka, the episode we have considered is in a volume titled The Nobleman’s Pining (Menak Gandrung). Although it is cast in very different and far more elaborate wordings than Stories of Amir, and there are divergences of detail, the plot of this episode and its affective impulses are the same as those in Stories of Amir (Menak Gandrung 1934: 16–22).
The Yasadipuran version was probably expanded from a rendition that has survived in a royal manuscript of 1715, labelled “the Menak Kartasura” by Poerbatjaraka (1940: 9–33). Its version of the same episode is much shorter than Stories of Amir but, again, identical in outline.15 Although Muninggarin’s reading of her mother’s letter is not described, the same appeals to emotion occur. As to two other affective passages in Stories of Amir we have considered: Baktak’s evil ambience is there in rudimentary form, as a single-sentence soliloquy, “For a long time there has been no war” (mĕngko lami nora aprang). Albeit shorter, less elaborate, and less pervasively Old Javanese in tone, the universal grief caused by Ambyah’s mourning is recounted as well. Later, however, the author of the Yasadipuran version would embrace both passages with relish. Baktak’s soliloquy was extended:
Let Chancellor Bĕstak be described / He was thinking to himself / “If the world is merely like this / without any warfare going on / how remarkably still and empty it is / Much better if there are many wars” /
(Ki Patih Bĕstak winuwus / apikir piyambakira / mangkenea jagad iki / nora nana pĕpĕrangan / iya tĕka sĕpi wae / abĕcik akeh pĕprangan / (Menak Kuristam 1982: 68))
The part about Hamza’s mourning received extensive narrative emphasis and lent the volume The Nobleman’s Pining its title.
5 Three Puppetry Performances (1985, 2019, 2020)
Certain episodes of the epic were evidently so memorable that they remained in the narrative repertoire. They are performed in several genres of puppetry in Central Java.
5.1 Jobin Defects by Dhalang Sindu (Rod Puppetry, 1985)
One genre is wayang golek, rod-puppet theatre. The play Jobin Defects (Jobin Mbalik) recounts our illustrative episode, though it ends before Hamza’s mental breakdown. A transcript of the texts spoken and sung during an all-night performance in 1985, along with an English rendition, was published as Sindu Jotaryono 1999. The puppeteer was Sindhu Jataryana (1919–1988), popularly known as Dhalang Sindu (Figure 4.1), from the district of Mirit, Kebumen regency, near the south coast of western Central Java. According to local wayang criticism two kinds of affect were design features of Jobin Defects. It was deemed to bring bad luck (or even considered taboo; Setiodarmoko 1988: 17), particularly because it depicts the death of Hamza’s wife Muninggar; its emotional scenes would, in addition, impact the puppeteer (Van der Putten 1986: 106). Yet it was a standard play in Dhalang Sindu’s repertoire (1986: 157). It displayed an altogether different kind of affect as well: Hamza’s love for his kin and his loyalty towards his father-in-law (Sunarto 2011: 240).
Dhalang Sindu in performance. On stage, left to right: Jayengrana weeping, Umarmaya, horse
Photo Bernard Arps, 4–5 December 1982
Let me summarize the beginning of our focal episode to illustrate. Like earlier, affect is explicitly noted. It was represented in words but also through suluk (“mood songs” sung by the puppeteer), the music of the accompanying gamelan orchestra, and puppet movement or posture. These are among the regular means of evoking mood, character, and atmosphere in Javanese puppetry (Arps 2016: 451–54, 464, 467).
Jayengrana (Hamza) gives audience. When all puppets are on-stage, a serene mood song is sung followed by a tenser one. After greeting his advisers, Jayengrana says that he has heard rumors that his father-in-law Nursewan and Chancellor Bĕstak are held prisoner by the king of Abyssinia, Sadat Kabĕli Ngumar. Umarmaya and the other advisers wonder whether Sadat, supposedly their ally (and thus also Nursewan’s), has turned callous (hard-hearted, tĕgĕl, tega, kolu) towards Nursewan. As signalled by a sad mood song during which Dhalang Sindu has Jayengrana’s puppet cover its face with its sash, Jayengrana is overwhelmed with grief and weeps out of sympathy with his father-in-law’s distress. Those present try to bring Jayengrana to his senses and wonder what is moving King Sadat. Perhaps, Umarmaya suggests, he is trying to teach Nursewan and Bĕstak a lesson, as they stubbornly remain at odds with Jayengrana. A tense mood song signals that Jayengrana makes up his mind. He will travel to Abyssinia to release Nursewan from his misery. Umarmaya and the others should guard the city. To the accompaniment of a vigorous gamelan piece, Jayengrana leaves.
Umarmaya expresses anxiety about Jayengrana’s fate. This may be a trap. He will follow Jayengrana. (Sindu Jotaryono 1999: 116–23)
The particulars of this version differ from Stories of Amir. Puppetry performances – of Hamza and other epic repertoires – traditionally begin with a formal audience of a ruler facing his chancellor, allies, relatives, and other advisers. Their dialogue features differences of opinion about a central issue. Here the raw narrative material is cast into this mold. It allows the puppeteer to bring out the dramatis personae’s individual temperaments and emotions, and to set the episode’s plot in motion. The intricately layered configuration of protagonists, communications, and sentiments that leads Amzyah to leave for Abyssinia in Stories of Amir has a simpler counterpart here, even if Nursewan is not alone but accompanied by Bĕstak.16 God’s will is not invoked. Yet in this episode and in Dhalang Sindu’s performance of Jobin Defects generally, plot and affect are likewise closely interwoven. It is feelings that get protagonists underway to achieve some purpose. The story ends in disaster for Jayengrana. It is remarkable that puppetry’s additional means of representing affect, particularly suluk and orchestral music, occur at precisely those points where Stories of Amir narrates affect by naming feelings or describing emotive responses. Suluk are sung and music is played, evoking affect, when storylines commence, to resume and reinvigorate them, when different characters’ storylines are joined, when a course of events changes direction, and to conclude.
5.2 Jayengrana Poisoned by Ki Yuwono (Rod Puppetry, 2019)
Possibly in part because of the misgivings surrounding it, the story of Jobin Defects remains in the active repertoire of Javanese rod puppetry, not only in Kebumen. Under the title of Jayengrana Poisoned (Jayengrana Racun), Ki Yuwono performed it in a four-hour performance in Yogyakarta in May 2019 (Yuwono 2019). Ki Yuwono is a grandson of Ki Widiprayitno, Yogyakarta’s celebrated rod-puppeteer who rose to fame in the 1950s and was based in Sentolo, south-west of the city.
Although the plot corresponded to the version performed by Dhalang Sindu 34 years earlier and was coterminous with it, the story was not entirely the same. In line with recent stylistic developments in Javanese puppetry, there was a so-called prolog before the first audience scene (Emerson 2022). It showed a tête-à-tête between Jobin and Sadat Kabĕli Ngumar, in which Sadat claims to have a plan for eradicating Jayengrana that will enable Jobin to win Muninggar. The atmosphere is one of boisterous crudeness and evil. When Sadat has left, Jobin bursts into a love song for Muninggar, creating an air of infatuation (with humorous touches as the puppeteer has Jobin make risqué allusions to actual people). The prolog, then, told a backstory dense with moods and emotions.
The ensuing audience scene resembled Dhalang Sindu’s but with different accents. When Jayengrana asks Jobin (who attends the audience) for his view, after a tense mood song Jobin boldly voices his eagerness to attack Abyssinia and capture Sadat, whom he claims to loathe. Jobin becomes increasingly agitated when he is reprimanded by Umarmaya, who believes that Sadat is merely trying to teach Nursirwan [sic] and Bĕstak a lesson. Jayengrana too becomes enraged and rudely orders Umarmaya to leave. After an abrupt gamelan piece that musically enhances the extreme tension, Umarmaya responds that he doesn’t mind (Figure 4.2) and leaves. Afterwards Jayengrana claims to have acted based on the feeling (rasa) that he is right, and in order to uphold the authority of a king who commands other kings. Overall, then, the prolog and this scene abound in feelings that rapidly follow one another, that surge and spread, and are used to justify action. Again, the affective realm is the wellspring of initiative.
Umarmaya is expelled by Jayengrana. Left to right: Jayengrana, Umarmaya, an ally, Jobin
Ki Yuwono’s performance, 2019, live-streamed on Youtube by Samiaji Channel in collaboration with Pepadi DIY and Dinas Kebudayaan DIY
5.3 A Shadowplay Performance by Ki Suluh Juniarsah (2020)
The last performance was a three-hour shadowplay by Klaten-based puppeteer Ki Suluh Juniarsah. The first half told the episode we have been considering. After Muninggar’s death it would continue with the epic’s next episode. Ki Juniarsah opened with a prolog.
Jayengrana and Muninggar are courting. The music, singing (a male- female duet), and choreography (a slow moving around each other) build an atmosphere of amorous fondness. Jayengrana takes his leave (Figure 4.3) because Muninggar’s mother, his mother-in-law, has been weeping. He feels he must go to Abyssinia. Muninggar will not be disappointed because his departure expresses his loyal devotion to his father-in-law. She should not be apprehensive; he will return shortly. Jayengrana strokes and kisses her face, then leaves. (Suluh Juniarsah 2020: 0.05.20–0.11.50)
Jayengrana (left) takes his leave of Muninggar
Ki Suluh Juniarsah’s performance, 2020, live-streamed on Youtube channel Budaya Maju by Direktorat Pengembangan dan Pemanfaatan Kebudayaan, Direktorat Jenderal Kebudayaan, Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan. Detail
This part of the prolog (which continued for five more minutes) was imbued with romantic and spousal love, expressed in music, discourse, and mise-en- scène. It depicted a senior family member’s grief as the prime reason for leaving. Loyal devotion – bĕkti, a recognized feeling (rasa) in the central Javanese affective economy – was added at the end, as was a negation of two felt responses that, by current normative standards, could be expected: Muninggar’s disappointment (kuciwa, Indonesian kĕcewa) that her husband will be away, and apprehension (waswas) over his fate. The scene with its amorous atmosphere was entirely unlike the multiplex emotional scheming that began the episode in Stories of Amir and the heated discussions in Jobin Defects and Jayengrana Poisoned. But in Ki Suluh’s performance, too, the hero’s departure brimmed with emotions. Affects pushed him to go, other affects threatened to pull him back. The story had its way: he departed.
6 Conclusion
I have characterized the sixteenth-century Stories of Amir as a thoroughly affectful telling of part of the Hamza epic, in which feelings inspire the beginning, continuation, joining, changing, and conclusion of courses of dramatic action. As it turns out, four hundred years later so are Jobin Defects, Jayengrana Poisoned, and Ki Suluh’s performance. There is no space to demonstrate that in these late twentieth- and twenty-first-century performances, affect management featured as well. Suffice it to say that Umarmaya continues to try to protect Jayengrana from negative emotions, and to try to break up dangerous chains of affect – still without much success. On the other hand, adages meaning “be steadfast in your heart” are old-fashioned now, and God’s interventions in a hero’s storyline are rarely highlighted. This is not surprising. After another four centuries of Islamization, partly through Hamza narratives, these once explicitly iterated values and doctrines are commonsense and current. They have moved from text to context.
The ways affect operates in relation to dramatic action in Stories of Amir is remarkably similar to Javanese puppetry performance, not only when the repertoire is from the Hamza epic but also in genres with other epic story matter. Yet in literary narratives roughly contemporaneous with Stories of Amir, affect used to function in quite other ways. The rudiments of Stories of Amir’s affect-in-action paradigm were present in the epic before it was rendered into Javanese. It appears that these principles were injected into the extant genre of the historical kidung. This yielded the interplay of processes that makes up the Hamza affect: feelings inspiring movement, the management of (important, beloved) people’s feelings, the almost unattainable ideal of emotional stability, and God’s plot-changing measures occasioned by His love and wrath.
These observations suggest that the Hamza affect has been weighty in Javanese literary, performance, and indeed cultural and religious history. The epic of Hamza spread and sustained an action-oriented sensibility in the Java Sea world. This epic may not have been the sole means (my restricted survey cannot confirm such a sweeping claim) but it was prominent. It helped to promote the sense that affect of all sorts is a moving force toward a definite end.
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Dr Kumiko Yamamoto for opening my eyes to the likely roles of Malay oral storytelling and the information she gracefully supplied about the Persian text edited by Jaʿfar Shiʿār (1968). Jorrit Blonk alerted me to references to Acehnese Hamza storytelling by Mark Durie and C. Snouck Hurgronje. For their critical questions I thank the members of the research group New Directions in the Study of Javanese Literature at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies (2018/2019) and an anonymous referee. My participation was co-funded by the IIAS and the Marie Curie Actions, FP7, in the framework of the EURIAS Fellowship Programme.
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This accords with another feature of South/Southeast Asian epic (alongside the prominence of affect): the exploits of the main protagonists tend to be not of their own design but willed by others (Arps 2023).
Beside Day’s contribution on minor characters and their depiction and Wieringa’s on autobiographical musings (both in the present volume), an important exception is Benamou’s study of vocal music (2010). It has been suggested that Javanese, Balinese, Sasak, and Malay puppetry promotes a particular sensibility of space and place, a spatial affect (Arps 2016). Beatty 2019 is an inspiring anthropological study of emotion among others in Java. Beatty formulates the key theoretical insight that emotion has narrativity. He relates emotions to places (through their inhabitants), ethnic groups, and religions. He does not consider emotion in Javanese or translingual and transcultural narrative.
A musical layer is integral also to dramatic performances. This will be mentioned below.
TwasirÔmarmaya is a contraction of twasira Umarmaya “the heart of Umarmaya.” In Stories of Amir this kind of vowel sandhi (fusion of vowels across a word boundary) occurs regularly for metrical reasons. In the transliteration it is signalled with a circumflex accent to facilitate comprehension.
In employing this style, Stories of Amir references a poetics that is central to Old Javanese literature (Zoetmulder 1973: 172–73, Robson 1983: 311–12). I will briefly come back to this.
As shown by his popular epithet ʿAmar or ʿUmar ʿAyyār, in the Persian renditions he is a ʿayyār, a trickster and spy. The same goes for the Urdu version (available in English translation: Pritchett 1991, Lakhnavi and Bilgrami 2007). Although in the Malay and Javanese renditions this designation is absent, Umarmaya (Umar Umaiyah in Malay) does continue to exhibit conduct associated with it. Pigeaud placed the Umarmaya of Javanese puppetry in the category of “astute deformed clowns” (1950: 237–38). On Pigeaud’s authority, Bausani (1974: 460) proposed a theory of structural equivalence and historical connection between the ʿayyār and these divine clown-servants of Javanese and Balinese mythology. In the Hamza shadowplay of Lombok and Bali, Umarmaya indeed has the iconography of such a character. But as amusing, dutiful, and supernaturally gifted as Umarmaya may be, no literary or performative storytelling genre known to me from Java casts him as a divine clown-servant.
One of his sons.
Amba (“your servant”) is a self-depreciating first-person pronoun.
Umar Yunani.
This is so also in another early Javanese rendition of the Hamza epic, which recounts almost his entire life (e.g., Poerbatjaraka 1940: 19).
There are, for instance, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Hikayat Amir Hamzah manuscripts from Batavia (Van Ronkel 1908: 195; 1909: 249–50) and Surakarta (Florida 1993: 241).
Herman’s name in this version. The dramatis personae’s names in the different Malay and Javanese versions are mostly similar. If the correspondence is evident, I will refrain from noting it.
Unlike being tĕtĕp, the norm of being sabar is alive in Javanese culture, as it was in the twentieth century (Geertz 1959: 232, Keeler 1987: 75).
The former text does not mention the Arabic phrase.
It is an open question how the Menak Kartasura is related to the version of the epic reflected in Stories of Amir. Similarities in wording suggest that they are connected.
Behind this lies a kinship-based narrative logic. Nursewan is Hamza’s father-in-law, while Bĕstak is Umarmaya’s. Hamza and Umarmaya’s status as paired protagonists – the latter being the former’s adviser and helper – is counterbalanced by that of Nursewan and Bĕstak as paired antagonists. See Arps 2023 on kinship as a principle by which South/Southeast Asian epics tend to expand.