Pitting Tigers Against Death

ALTHOUGH it has long been declared extinct, some researchers believe the Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) still roams the Muria Mountains in Central Java. During their lifetime, they were forced to be fighting animals in royal performances in Java.

In Southeast Asia, animals have been an integral part of royal feasts since the 16th century. Aside from being consumed, they were pitted against each other to make a spectacle for the crowd. Each kingdom had its own special fighting animals. In Aceh, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia and Siam (Thailand), for example, elephants were the main fighting animals. In these kingdoms, elephants were seen as a symbol of military power.

"Kings gathered large numbers of elephants, rode them in training for war and battle... and identified themselves with them in competitions with other animals," Anthony Reid wrote in Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680.

Meanwhile, kingdoms in Champa (Vietnam) and Java used buffaloes and tigers as fighting animals. In Java, people considered buffaloes far more spirited than elephants. Foreigners were not always impressed by elephant fights either. Even if elephants were pitted against other animals such as tigers, the fight wasn't always balanced. Hence, in the kingdom of Ayutthaya (Thailand), a tiger was forced to face two to three elephants in one fight.

In Java, people preferred to watch the fight between buffaloes and tigers captured from the forests around Kediri, Blitar, and Tumapel. The king deliberately held the event openly and invited foreigners to witness it.

In the middle of a patch of land surrounded by a fence, a buffalo and a tiger were battled. Before the fight, the buffalo and tiger were provoked to make them go on a rampage. The buffalo was doused in chili water, while the tiger was shoved with a hot iron. After that, the fight began. At the end, the tiger died, and the buffalo won. People cheered. John Crawfurd, as quoted by Anthony Reid, wrote, "The excitement was definitely not little watching this small and docile animal defeat its savage and cruel opponent."

Buffaloes were not always alone against the tiger. If the buffalo is small, sometimes the tiger is put inside the encirclement of several buffaloes to make the fight more balanced.

The fights, which had been held in Mataram since the 17th century, had a deep meaning for the Javanese. According to Ann Kumar in Prajurit Perempuan Jawa (Javanese Women Warriors), the Javanese envisioned themselves as buffaloes (maesa) and saw foreigners as tigers (simo). However, for Robert Wessing, a University of Illinois anthropologist, the Javanese identification with tigers is much more complex, even ambiguous.

"Javanese also see the tiger as an embodiment of ancestors, so they often call it grandmother. But then the tiger can be a disaster or a disruptor of harmony and must be eliminated," Wessing wrote in "A Tiger in the Heart: The Javanese Rampok Macan," KITLV Journal 148 No. 2 (1992). In addition, tigers are depicted as evil intentions or bad desires within oneself that must be conquered.

The battle between buffalo and tiger can be translated as a battle between harmony and chaos.

However, the Javanese view of the buffalo is simpler than that of the tiger. The ancient Javanese saw the buffalo as a vehicle for humans in the afterlife. In Vedic literature, the buffalo is believed to be an expeller of evil and a purifier of harmony. "Thus, the battle between buffalo and tiger in the north square can be translated as a battle between harmony and chaos," Wessing continued.

The battle began to change in the 18th century. Tigers were not only pitted against buffaloes, but also against humans. At that time, Mataram had been divided into the Sultanate of Yogyakarta and the Surakarta Sunanate. "Rampogan tiger", the name of this new event, was held in the northern squares of the two kingdoms. Pigeaud, an expert on ancient Javanese history, said the tradition of pitting tigers against humans in Java had existed earlier. However, Wessing said there is no written evidence of tiger-human fights before the Islamic period. Reid is of the same opinion, "There was no rampogan tradition in the 17th century or earlier."

Rampogan in the Sultanate of Yogyakarta had been held continuously since 1791 during the celebration of Eid al-Fitr and the Islamic New Year. These moments were chosen because on those days, Muslims are symbolically starting a new day in their life cycle. The sins of the past are considered to have been pardoned, and the tiger symbolizes those sins. As a manifestation of this, tigers are pitted to death against humans. The public was allowed to witness this event. In fact, this event was sometimes held specifically to welcome foreign guests of the sultan. This event in front of foreigners symbolizes the military power of the Sultanate of Yogyakarta.

In the rampogan, a number of tigers were put into several cages which were placed in the center of the square. Thousands of speared warriors surrounded them in several rows. From a distance, in a safe place, the sultan watched the event part by part, from the sounding of the gamelan, the lighting of the fire, to the release of the tigers from the cages. The speared warriors then hunted the released tigers one by one. Then the soldiers scrambled to spear it to death. This is why the event is called rampogan, which means scrambling.

Rampogan spread to the Kediri, Blitar, and Tumapel prefectures in the 1860s. In Yogyakarta, the event slowly lost its importance. Meanwhile, the Surakarta Sunanate still held rampogan until the 19th century. Junghuhn, a plant expert who loved the nature of the Dutch East Indies, once wrote about his experience witnessing rampogan in Surakarta in August-September 1844. He watched it from morning to noon. By the time some cages had burned down and two servants were opening the fourth or fifth cage, the sun was usually far overhead.

Until the early 20th century, several districts in Java still held this event. The Dutch East Indies government banned rampogan in 1905. Eid in some districts became less crowded. However, this didn't mean much for the survival of Javanese tigers, as they were still hunted and displaced from their habitat due to forest encroachment in Java. In only less than a century, they became extinct.