Unlike shadow puppet theater, which requires darkness to enact, rod puppet theater can be enacted at any hour. Two other Muslim saints are said to have originated the art form of three-dimensional rod puppets. The elaborate tuned percussion ( gamelan) orchestra used in Java and Sunda (West Java) was introduced at this time. The elongation of arms, noses, and other features that gives an air of abstraction to the Javanese figures is attributed to this tradition. Contemporary dalang consider themselves the literal or spiritual descendants of the wali. Although wayang encompasses traditional Javanese stories and Hindu elements, most dalang are Muslims. He presented his first performance in the local mosque and, in order to enter, viewers had to recite the Islamic confession of faith (“There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet”). Kalijaga understood and created the first leather puppet. Sunan Gunung Jati drew the outline of a wayang figure on the ground with a stick.

One story told by Sundanese puppeteers is that Sunan Gunung Jati, a wali of Cirebon, was having a conversation with another saint, Sunan Kalijaga, about how to attract people to Islam. On Java, however, dalang say the art was invented by the wali, the nine saints who converted Java to Islam. The Balinese (who remained Hindu) believe wayang was introduced by refugees from Majapahit, the last Hindu-Buddhist kingdom on Java, when it fell around 1520. Some scholars feel that the Balinese puppet traditions resemble-in the realistic form of their puppets and the looser structure of their performance sequences-the art as it was performed on Java before the arrival of Islam to Indonesia in the 1500s. The repertoire is largely based on the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the great Hindu epics. The poetic language used by puppeteers in songs and narratives is laced with Sanskrit-based words. A long ritual opening to the wayang performance celebrates his arrival on the island he came bearing the hanacaraka, the Sanskritized Javanese alphabet, which he then split into four, casting a quarter to each of the four directions and thus transmitting literacy and prosperity throughout the land. According to myth, a prince named Aji Saka brought aspects of Indian culture to Java. Regardless of whether the impulse behind wayang is indigenous, widespread development of the art took place during the Hindu-Buddhist period, especially between 8. Today, such ritual stories are performed infrequently, but they remain a part of the history of the art. In times past, if the harvest was threatened by various pests, the story of the Indonesian rice goddess, Sri, might be performed to ward off the attack. There is evidence that local animism has been a source of the puppet arts. Ancestors are believed to have particular favorite stories. Performances of puppetry are still held once a year at cemeteries where the founders of each village are buried. Even today in some areas of Indonesia, carvings, puppets, and gongs are considered by some to be objects that ancestral spirits can temporarily inhabit. Indeed, Semar, the principal jester, is sometimes said to be the ancestral spirit of the island of Java itself, and this character is sometimes used in healing or protective rites. It has been debated whether or not puppetry is indigenous to Indonesia or was introduced from India or China. Indigenous origins are argued by scholars who point toward connections between the jesters and ancestral spirits the jester characters that appear in every play have no clear Indian precedent. These people are like men who, thirsting for sensuous pleasures, live in a world of illusion they do not realize the magic hallucinations they see are not real.” 1 A court poet during the reign of King Airlangga (1035–1049) wrote: “There are people who weep, are sad and aroused watching the puppets, though they know they are merely carved pieces of leather manipulated and made to speak. Wayang kulit, shadow puppetry using figures made from water buffalo hide, is considered to be the oldest freestanding puppet form the earliest references to it date from the 800s.

The term for puppetry, wayang, comes from the Indonesian word for shadow bayang. Ahim with his wayang puppets in Ciampa, Indonesia, from Voices of the Puppet Masters: The Wayang Golek Theater of Indonesia by Mimi Herbert (2002). Puppet master (dalang) and master carver M.

Shadow puppetry facrs