Story telling Sangkuriang

“Tangkuban Parahu”

 

A long time ago, the ancient land of sunda was ruled by a king and a queen who had a single daughter named, Dayang Sumbi. She was beautiful and clever, but also pampered and spoiled. One day, as she was weaving, she dropped her shuttle on the floor. She exclaimed “can anybody take the shuttle for me? if you are a girl I’ll take you as my sister, but if you are a boy, I’ll marry you.”

At that very moment her dog Tumang, a demigod possessing magic power, came up to her with the shuttle in his mouth. Dayang Sumbi had to fulfill her promise and marry him.

 

They lived happily together, and Dayang Sumbi gave birth to a baby boy. She named him Sangkuriang. As the boy grew up, he was always guarded by the faithful dog Tumang, whom he knew only as a companion and not as his father.
One day his mother asked him to go hunting with the dog and bring her a deer liver. After hunting all day without success, Desperatly, he took an arrow and shot the dog.
“Here is the deer liver, mom” said Sangkuriang.
“O thank you, my dear.  You just did a great job” replied Dayang Sumbi happily. “Ummmm  anyway,  where’s Tumang?”
For a while Sangkuriang kept silent. Dayang Sumbi was curious and worried, “Where is Tumang, Sangkuriang?  Tell me what happened?”
“Mom, forgive me, to tell you the truth, what I had given you was actually Tumang’s liver, I had no choice I had to take any liver because I didn’t want to disappoint you”
“What?  I can’t believe it!!  Oh my goodness, how could you kill your own father, my lovely husband, you’re a bad boy!”  She hit Sangkuriang leaving a scar on his head.  Sangkuriang left his mom to wander around the world.
Years later, Sangkuriang met a beautiful woman and instantly fell in love with her. It was his own mother. They did not recognize each other. He proposed her and she agreed to marry him. However, later Dayang Sumbi found out that he was her own son when she detected the scar on his head. Being unsuccessfully dissuaded him, to avoid the marriage, she set conditions she thought impossible to meet: Sangkuriang had to make a lake that filled the whole valley and build a boat  all before dawn.
Sangkuriang started to work. His love gave him extraordinary strength, and he used his magic power to summon the spirits to help him. They dammed the river in the valley. In the early morning he chopped down a huge tree in the forest and began hollowing it out to make a boat. When Dayang Sumbi saw that he was about to finish what she had thought impossible, she called on the gods to bring the sun up earlier and thwart Sangkuriang. The cock crowed, the sun rose much earlier than usual, and Sangkuriang realized he had been deceived. In a fit of fury he cursed Dayang Sumbi and kicked the half-finished boat back into the forest.
There it lies upside down today, forming the mountain Tangkuban Perahu (Upturned Boat). From the story we can learn to keep our promise , we also learn that love can make people blind, according to our religion, it’s not allowed for a mother to marry her own biological son. So the story goes.