“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.
