Essay "Batik Teruntum"
Batik is one of the most famous cultural artwork from Indonesia, made by using a special wax that is heated and drawn on a white cloth using the “chanting”. In the earlier times, there were only the woman who “faire le batik” because it was too complicated for the man. The batik itself was a present from the ordinary citizen to their leader, the Sultan and his family in the palace until finally the using of batik spread inside the palace. On that time, batik was a difference between the palace families with the citizen outside the palace. As time goes by, Sultan then allowed the citizen use this clothing, but still there is a big difference between the palace families and the citizen on the kind of batik that they use. So that batik can also be used to show how high someone’s status is. Other than to show someone’s status, batik itself is so various in patterns, there is a lot of different patterns that signified different meanings.
One of the patterns is called “Teruntum”, the pattern is a lot of small flowers and the background is a dark colour.
There’s a history behind this pattern, it is said that long time ago there’s a queen of Sultan that is so dearly beloved, but because she cannot gives birth to a baby boy the Kraton family detached her from the palace. During the time she was on the seclusion place, she spent her time praying that someday her husband will be back to her. And also drawn batik while she stared to the stars on the dark night sky, that’s why the pattern is small flowers with a dark background colour. When the Sultan visited her and saw this pattern, he saw how much effort she’d put on it and he was touched, so he decided to bring her back to the palace and live the life together with her again.
Because of that story, this pattern is believed that it a signification of the “Returning Love” and a fidelity.
This Batik is usually used by the parents on the Javanese wedding ceremony on the part “Sungkeman”; Sungkeman is one stage of the marriage where the children kneel down and express their gratitude to the parents for rising them up. This is important because in Indonesia, the children usually lives with the parents until finally they get married, and this ceremony is a symbolic moments which shows that the parents have to let go of their children to live their own lives with his/her husband/wife.
The Javanese believe that by using this batik means that they’re praying for their child to always have a blooming love everyday and no matter what troubles that are coming into their future life they’ll get to go through it and have their love always returning.
The name “Teruntum” was taken from the Javanese word, “Tuntun” which means that no matter their children go, the parents will always take place and have an important role to lead their children to the right way, and it also shows that they want their children to follow their way of living on walking towards happiness and on solving the problems.
The using of this cloth by the parents on the stage “Sungkeman” shows the strong power of the culture on the Javanese tradition, it proofed on how they believe that there is a lot of prayer and hopes inside the cloth that they used during the ceremony.
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