|
Puteri Gunung Ledang
The Fairy Princess of Mount Ophir
Later that night, there appeared an old woman, bent-double with age, who told Tun Mamat that if the Raja of Melaka desire the Princess, let him make for her a bridge of gold and a bridge of silver from Melaka to Gunung Ledang.
On returning to Melaka, Tun Mamat presented the Princess’s demands, upon which the humbled Sultan said, “All that she demands, we can provide, save only the blood of our son; that we cannot provide, for our heart would not suffer us to take it.” Pires' Suma Oriental lends some credence to the Gunung Ledang fable when he mentions "the enchanted queen in the hill of Malacca called Gulom Leydam (Gunung Ledang) ..... where there are only women, and they have no men, and that they are got with child by others who go there to trade and then leave, and others are made pregnant by the wind ...."
She makes her home in a cavernous cave on the summit of the mountain and here she lies on a raised couch decorated with dead men's bones. She takes the form of a beautiful young girl, adorned with silk and gold." Eredia describes the cave as "planted with thickets of bamboo, from which proceed harmonious voices and sounds of flutes and other musical instruments." The ‘Sejarah Melayu’ also mentions these "singing bamboos that birds on the wing stopped to listen to and every creature that heard it was enchanted ...".
Perhaps the most bizarre twist to the fable is found in the ‘Hikayat
Hang Tuah’, which mentions Puteri Gunung Ledang as actually being
the Sultan's own daughter, by his Javanese consort Raden Mas Ayu! In
the Hikayat, the Sultan is supposed to have 'withdrawn
from the world' and left his kingdom to Puteri Gunung Ledang, and it
was during her reign that the Portuguese attacked and she had to flee
to the land of the Bataks in Sumatra, where
Sources: Muhammad Haji Salleh, ‘Sulalat Al Salatin’, Yayasan
Karyawan dan Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1997
About the Author
|
|---|
Perhaps
one of the more captivating tales to come out of the reign of Sultan
Mansur Shah is the legend of the Fairy Princess of Mount Ophir or
Puteri Gunung Ledang in Malay. Located in Johor state, Gunung Ledang is
the highest mountain in southern Peninsular Malaysia. According to the Sejarah
Melayu, Sultan Mansur once declared to his court that he desired to
have a wife who shall surpass the wife of any prince in the world. When
his ministers reminded him that he was already married to a princess of
China and a princess of Java, the vain Sultan said: “For one prince to
marry the daughter of another prince – even other Rajas do that. What I
desire is a bride such as no other Raja possesses: that is the girl we
wish to marry. We desire to ask for the hand of the fairy princess of
Gunung Ledang.” 
He
immediately dispatched his finest warrior, the now-elderly Hang Tuah,
to Gunung Ledang, together with other captains such as Sang Setia and
Tun Mamat. As they ascended the mountain, they were struck by a strong
wind and could climb no further. Tun Mamat bade Hang Tuah and the
others to stay, while he and two or three other men travelled on. Tun
Mamat climbed further, pass thickets of singing bamboos and reached a
point where the “clouds seemed so close as to be within reach”.
He finally came upon a beautiful garden, where he found four women and
he told them of his quest to find the fairy princess and presented the
Sultan’s marriage proposal. One of the women, Dang Raya Rani, said that
she was the Guardian of the Fairy Princess and would tell the Princess
of the Sultan’s wish. After saying this, all the women vanished in thin
air. 
“And
for a betrothal gift let there be seven trays of mosquito hearts; seven
trays of the hearts of mites; a vat of water from dried areca nuts; a
vat of the tears of virgin maidens; a cup of the Raja’s blood; and a
cup of his son’s blood.” 
There
is a whole chapter on Gunong Ledang in Eredia's 'Description of
Malaca' (1613), where he describes her as "the Oueen Putri, the
companion of Parameswara, founder of Malacca .... and to Gunoledam
retired the Queen Putri and here the enchanted Putri remains forever
immortal and here she lives to this day by her magic arts. 
Eredia
also says that surrounding these thickets are forests are occupied by
tigers who guard the Putri. He goes further by saying that "the Banuas
('orang benua' or Orang Asli) learn their magic arts in this cavern at
Gunong Ledang and use these arts to transform themselves from human
form into tigers, lizards, crocodiles, birds and other animals". Eredia
relates that so many of these were-tigers came in the night into Melaka
and killed women and children that the first Bishop of Melaka, Dom
Jorge de S. Lucia, solemnly excommunicated these 'tigers' in a High
Mass in 1560! 
R
O Winstedt's study of the occult in his "The Malay Magician"
also mentions "a were-tiger that guards the fairy princess of Mt.
Ophir". He further adds that she was said to take the form of a girl in
the morning, appears in noon as a woman and at night as an old hag.
Even in the ‘Sejarah Melayu’, Tun Mamat never ever actually
meets face to face with the Putri Gunung Ledang but speaks with an old
woman "bent double with age ... and the old woman who spoke with Tun
Mamat was Puteri Gunung Ledang herself in disguise." Winstedt records
local folklore telling how she would take the form of an old woman
carrying a cat and some 'kunyit' (saffron or turmeric) and ask
the boatmen on the Gemenceh River for passage - if it is refused, the
boat eventually runs aground, if she is taken aboard, it glides along
the river more swiftly than usual. When she leaves the boat, she would
give the boatman some saffron, which would turn to gold in his hand! 
Johor
traditional folklore says the fairy Princess was married to the
legendary Malay seafarer Nakhoda Ragam. While they were sailing in his
boat somewhere off Melaka, Nakhoda Ragam one day playfully tickled his
wife’s ribs while she was sewing and, in an uncontrollable reaction,
the Princess inadvertently stabbed her husband in the chest with the
needle, killing him. The Princess returned to her home on Gunung Ledang
and vowed never to set eyes on another man. Nakhoda Ragam’s boat was
left empty and deserted, floundering on the Straits, and was one day
crushed by a storm and sunk. Legend has it that debris from the wreck
were magically transformed into the present six islands off Melaka. The
boat’s galley became Pulau Hanyut, its cake-tray became Pulau Nangka, a
water-jar became Pulau Undan, the incense-burner became Pulau Serimbun,
the hen-coop Pulau Burong and the cabin of the two lovers became
Pulau Besar. In his book 'Shaman, Saiva and Sufi', Winstedt said that
after his death from the prick of her needle, she donned fairy garb and
flew to Gunong Ledang, whence she migrated later to Bukit Jugra further
up the coast with a sacred tiger as her companion. 
Another
traditional version of the fable believes that the princess had seven
sisters who were from Java, as well as other relatives in Johor,
including Puteri Gunung Banang in Batu Pahat, Puteri Gunung Panti in
Kota Tinggi and Puteri Gunung Beremban on the border between Johor and
Pahang. It is said that these princesses cannot normally be seen by
human eyes but people who have lost their way in the forest have on
occasion met and talked to them. Another oral tradition has it that
Puteri Gunung Ledang stayed at the top of the mystical Gunung Mahligai
and had a lover, a jinn prince, who lived on top of Gunung
Rundok. As a result of a curse, the two were banished to live alone on
the summit of these mountains and could not leave their respective
mountains. However, so strong was their love, it was said that the
summit of Gunung Rundok would, every night, tilt towards Gunung
Mahligai, and the two lovers would meet and spend the time together
until the break of dawn, when the two summits would be separated again.
One night, while they were together, they did not realise that time had
passed and this caused the summit of Gunung Rundok to remain
permanently tilted, to this day. It is said that if one were to climb
Gunung Ledang from Kampung Asahan in Melaka, one will encounter a deep
crater before reaching the mountain top. This large crater was believed
to have separated the two mythical mountains of Gunung Rundok and
Gunung Mahligai. 
Together
again, the curse was broken, and the two lovers wed. They left Gunung
Mahligai and went to live on Pulau Besar. One day, while Puteri Gunung
Ledang was sewing on the beach under a coconut tree at the seaside, her
husband playfully came up from behind to surprise her. She was so
startled that she accidentally stabbed her husband's hand with her
sewing pin. He immediately fell to the ground and died, for little did
she know that he had been cursed to die if stabbed by a pin.
Grief-stricken, she retired to Gunung Ledang and vowed never to marry
again, living there to this day 
A
film version of the Puteri Gunung Ledang fable, directed by S Roomai
Noor in the 1960s had the princess come to the Sultan's chambers in the
dead of night in his dreams. Not knowing who she was, he summoned the
Royal Astrologer, who tells him that it was indeed the Fairy Princess
of Gunung Ledang. Hang Tuah led a team up the mountain but the elderly
warrior retires to a cave in exhaustion and urges Tun Mamat on in the
quest for the Sultan. Tun mamat encountered the famed were-tiger, whom
he manage to trap in a pit. He also encounters a group of hostile Orang
Benua, whom Tun Mamat defeats in battle. Tun Mamat eventually meets
with the Princess's Guardian Dang Raya Rani, a bevy of four beautiful
fairies and the Princess herself. On hearing of the impossible
conditions set by the Princess for her dowry, Hang Tuah feels his
promise to the Sultan cannot be fulfilled and vows not to return to
Melaka in shame. He throws his kris into the Sungai Duyung and descends
into the river's depths, vowing that Hang Tuah will only ever step on
Melaka soil when the keris floats upon the river surface. 
The
Sultan agrees to the Princess's demands and cruelly oppresses the
people of Melaka in his quest for the gold and silver needed for the
bridge. Wracked with madness, he draws his keris to kill his son for
the cup of blood required but, as he is about to plunge the blade, the
Princess magically appears and swears that she will never marry a man
who is so weak and cruel as to oppress his people and murder his own
son.