809-154 Battle between the monkey army and the army of Rawana

Ramayana scenes in ider-ider form. Scene 1 (description by Peter Worsley): The first scene depicts an audience in which Rama greets Rawana’s brother Wibhisana who has withdrawn his support from his brother and sided with Rama. We see Rama and behind him his brother Laksmana in the middle of the scene. They are seated on a raised stone next to a tree with a tree fern attached to its trunk and surrounded at its base by rocks and pandanus plants. They sit above the commanders of the monkey army who kneel respectfully in front and behind Rama and Laksmana. There are eight monkey commanders in front of Rama and Laksmana including Sugriwa, the monkey king, and Hanuman, and behind them, there are seven more, making fifteen in total. In front of Rama, kneeling on the ground beside the tree with his hands clasped and raised to below his chin in respect, is the figure of Wibhisana. Immediately under Laksamana are the two parekan, Twalen and Mredah and in front of them under the tree two dogs are pictured on either side of a flaming kala head. The rock motifs along the underside of this scene and karang scene dividing motifs indicate that the audience takes place is in the open air. Scene 2: The second scene is separated from the first by karang motifs which signal that the painting is at this point to be read from left to right. The next scene is by far the longest of the painting. It depicts the battle between Rama’s monkey army and that of Rawana, the king of Lengka. In fact the scene is divided into a series of short vignettes of one-to-one combat between Rama’s commanders and their demon opponents. The scene is filled with flying rocks and weapons and still smaller depictions of struggles between lesser opponents. The first vignette depicts the fight between the monkey commander Sampati armed with a large club and the demon Prajangga, an expert kick boxer. The vignette captures the moment when Prajangga’s leg was about to strike Sampati and when the latter’s club was on the point of coming down on Prajangga’s head (RY 20.7–14). The second vignette depicts the fight between Nala and the two demons, Sphutadaksi and Pratanaksi and captures the moment when Nala, having despatched Spuhtadaksi with a blow of his bare hand, seizes Pratapanakßi by the legs and is swinging him around before smashing him on the ground (RY 20.15–19). In the third vignette, we see under a depiction of the sun, Hanuman doing battle with Jambumali who is armed with a sharp sword. The painting catches the moment when Hanuman seizes Jambumali and smashes him on a large rock (RY 20.24). In the third vignette we see Rawana’s brother, Wibhisana on the left, swinging the club with which he is about to kill the demon Mitraghna (RY 20.24). Following this last vignette are depicted a group whom in the epic kakawin are described as seers, and gandharwa come to the battlefield to honour the slain warriors. At the head of the group on the right are two seers, depicted as brahmana priests, and behind them three female gandharwa, the first of whom carries a jar of holy water and her companions two offerings. Behind them are two male gandharwa carrying fans (?). These characters are easily identified by the fact that they are portrayed floating in the air. As they make their way across the battlefield amidst flying arrows their feet do not touch the ground, as do those of other characters in the painting (RY 20.27–8). Directly in front of the two seers is the fourth vignette of hand-to-hand fighting. On this occasion it is Sugriwa who fights Praghasa. Both have smashed each other’s clubs and Sugriwa has struck Praghasa on the chest smashing it into a thousand pieces (RY 20.26). In the fifth vignette of hand-to-hand conflict we see Mainda and the diamond fisted Bajramusti. The painting captures the moment when Mainda has torn off Bajramusti’s head and is about to hurl it away (RY 20.29). Then we see Rama’s brother Laksmana firing an arrow into the heart of Wirupaksa who falls to the ground (RY 20.34). The seventh vignette is of the monkey Nila doing battle with Anikumbha. He has seized Anikumbha, who wields a huge club, and is in the process of biting off the latter’s head (RY 20.30–32). There is one more depiction of hand-to-hand battle between one of the monkey commanders and a demon who falls to the ground dead (his eyeballs are rolled upwards). The monkey commander appears to have strangled him or be in the process of cutting him in two with a wire. The epic kakawin records no such death. The very last of the hand-to-hand struggles which the epic work describes is between the monkey Drawida and the demon Asaniprabha. However in this case Asaniprabha is clubbed to death (RY 34). We come now to the final and much longer vignette. It begins on the left with a procession of ten of the monkey commanders all of whom are hybrid monkeys. Sugriwa stands at their head, behind Wibhisana, Laksmana and Rama who are all pictured watching a fight between a monkey general, Anggada, who wilds a tree trunk and his opponent, Indrajit, who armed with a club turns amid fallen bodies and a hail of flying weapons to flee from harm’s way (RY 20.35–6). Scene 3 The third scene is separated from the second by karang motifs. Again they point the way to the right. On the other side of the scene, however, the karang motifs point in the opposite direction, to the left, indicating that the remaining four scenes in the painting are to be read in the reverse order. That is from right to left. The two sequences of scenes running opposite directions point to this third scene as the climax of the painting’s narrative. We shall give a brief description of this scene and deal with it in detail later when we have completed the identification of the remaining scenes. In the middle of the scene lying under a tree we see Rama and Laksmana bound in the coils of Indrajit’s snake arrow. To their right and to the right of the tree we see the kneeling Wibhisana, Sugriwa, Hanuman and a third monkey commander. To the left of the entrapped figures of Rama and Laksmana stand four high priests, each of whom gestures as if speak. Our search for the narrative must now move to the right hand end of the painting to read the narrative from right to left: scenes 7, 6, 5, and then 4. Scene 7 This, the final scene of the painting, depicts Rawana giving audience. The scene is the counterpart of the first scene at the other end of the painting in which Rama, in the presence of his monkey commanders gives audience to Wibhisana. In it we see Rawana standing facing to the left his hand raised in a gesture indicating that he is speaking. Behind him stand the parekan Sangut, and a small demon both kneeling and behind them five male figures of high status, each with a supit urang hair knot. One of these figures may indeed be Indrajit, who we will see plays an crucial role in bringing about the moment of crisis which we have briefly described in scene 3. In front of Rawana – on the other side of a tree with a tree fern attached to its trunk and surrounded by rocks and pandanus plants – kneels Delem, the other parekan and behind him a demon general in front of two rows of demons who kneel respectfully and whom Rawana is addressing. Scene 6 The second scene in this second sequence is separated from the previous scene by karang motifs signalling that we are to read the scenes in this part of the painting from right to left. This small scene pictures Rawana’s son, Indrajit, kneeling on the left of the scene under a tree addressing or honouring a naga who rests on a pedestal on the other side of the tree. Behind Indrajit are two parekan, Delem and Sangut. According to the epic kakawin’s account of the story, Indrajit is seething with anger at his defeat and the death of his horses and destruction of his chariot at the hand of Anggada. He has entered a temple, there to honour his snake-arrow and through the power of his meditation to become invisible. (RY 20.52–4). Scene 5 Karang motifs also separate scene 5 from scene 6 and again indicate that we should continue to read the narrative sequence from right to left. In the scene we see Indrajit on the right with two parekan, Delem and Sangut, in tow dancing his way, legs spayed across the field of battle towards a group of small monkeys of low status who cower before the oncoming Indrajit. The depiction of stars starting in the previous scene and around the three figures in this suggest that Indrajit and the two parekan descend from the sky. The epic poem, in the passage describing Indrajit’s return to the battlefield tells us that he was invisible (RY 20.55–58). However later, when Wibhisana goes in search of him, the epic tells us that he catches sight of Indrajit in the heavens (RY 20.75). Indeed the scene might well be understood to be read twice, recounting two moments of drama: Indrajit’s arrival on the battlefield and the moment of his escape from Wibhisana’s wrath. Scene 4 In scene 4 – again separated from the previous scene by karang motifs indicating that we are to continue to read the painting from right to left – we see Indrajit pictured on the right, bow in hand and in the company of the same two parekan. On this occasion Wibhisana, also bow in hand, confronts him. Between them on the ground are the crowd of small monkeys we saw in the previous scene but now trapped within the coils of one of Indrajit’s snake-arrows. Indrajit has turned to flee and looks back over his shoulder in the direction of Wibhisana. The scene portrays a second moment of action. Behind Wibhisana we see Indrajit again bow in (his left) hand and his right in the air and behind him the Delem and Sangut. On the ground in front of him lie first the two parekan, Twalen and Mredah, trapped in the coils of one of Indrajit’s snake arrows and further away also on the ground under a tree we also see Rama and Laksmana also caught tightly in the coils of another of Indrajit’s powerful snake arrows. With this we have arrived back at scene 3, which pictures the moment of great drama in the paintings narrative.

809-154: Dergelijke ider-ider, zeer smalle en lange beschilderde (of geborduurde) doeken, werden tijden ceremoniën en rituelen opgehangen aan het dak van (tempel) paviljoens of altaren. Ze zijn vervaardigd in de Kamasanstijl, een typische stijl van schilderen, met op de achtergrond kleine wolkachtige versieringen.