Читать книгу Jamu: The Ancient Indonesian Art of Herbal Healing - Susan-Jane Beers - Страница 9

CHAPTER 1

Indonesian Healing Through the Ages

THE USE OF HERBS IN A CURATIVE OR HEALTH-GIVING CAPACITY IS AS OLD AS JAVANESE CIVILIZATION ITSELF.

Tracking down the origins of jamu is no easy task. The use of herbs in a curative or health-giving capacity is as old as Javanese civilization itself. Indonesians believe herbal medicine originated in the ancient palaces of Surakarta (Solo) and Yogyakarta in Central Java. The culture of the courts also developed as a result of various exotic influences—Chinese, Indian and Arab—and these influences are reflected in their herbal medicine. But as with many things Indonesian, solid evidence is hard to find.

Early Evidence

Experts agree the use of plants for medicinal purposes in Indonesia dates from prehistoric times. The theory is substantiated by the impressive collection of Neolithic stone implements in Jakarta’s National Museum that were almost certainly used for daily health-care. Tools such as mortars or rubbing stones were used to grind plants and obtain powders and plant extracts.

Further proof can be found in stone reliefs depicting the human life cycle at the famous Borobudur temple dating from C. AD 800– 900. In these carvings the kalpataruh leaf (from the ‘mythological tree that never dies’) and other ingredients are being pounded to make mixtures for women’s health and beauty care. These reliefs also depict people giving body massage, a healing process recorded in many parts of the world, particularly in China, Japan and India. With the establishment of early trade routes between Asia and Asia Minor, healing techniques would have quite easily passed from East to West, and vice versa.

At the end of the first millennium, the influence of Javanese culture began to spread to the neighbouring island of Bali, whose peoples had already absorbed influences from as far away as India. The powerful Majapahit kingdom thrived in East Java, controlling much of the seas between India and China; links were established between Java and Bali (a channel of less than five km [three miles] separates the two islands). But the Majapahit kingdom wanted more, and in 1343 an army under Gajah Mada was sent by ruler Hayam Wuruk to subjugate the Balinese. His success was short-lived and the Balinese retaliated on several occasions, trying to impose their rule on the territories at the easternmost end of Java.

Following the adoption of Islam and subsequent breakup of the Majapahit empire in the late 15th century, many Javanese fled to Bali, taking their books, culture and customs with them. There they remained isolated until 1908, when the Dutch subjugated the island. This accident of history means that Balinese healing frequently mirrors that of Java 400 years ago, and here, Javanese healing traditions have remained largely intact.

Written Records

Gaining access to surviving records is very difficult: many are in the hands of healers or their families who are reluctant to let anyone see them, let alone scan their contents. Indeed when, in the course of researching this book, it came to the manuscripts at Yogyakarta Palace, the librarian was not at liberty to show them to anybody unless that person had received permission from a higher authority. Because of their religious content, palm manuscripts are considered sacred and are only handed down to a chosen few. (Balinese healing knowledge was inscribed on lontar leaves, dried fronds of a type of palm.) In Java, important information was also recorded on paper manuscripts, but surviving examples are in bad condition: inks have faded; pages are torn, missing or covered in dust; and whole sections have been attacked by mould or insects which have transformed them into delicate but unreadable pieces of lace.

Dating the written material is also complex. In the absence of modern printing presses, hand-copying texts was the only way to make them available to a wider audience and dates were included at the whim of the scribe. The paper used can sometimes gives a rough guide, but identifiable watermarks are rare. In the case of usada (book of Healing), a collection of texts dealing with healing practices, scholars are still unable to determine a precise date with any certainty. There are, however, two manuscripts in the Surakarta Palace library that have been dated, and are arguably the best references on jamu and traditional medicine in existence—namely, Serat Kawruh bab Jampi-jampi (A Treatise on All manner of cures) and Serat centhini (book of centhini).

The former probably gives us the most systematic account of jamu. It comprises a total of 1,734 formulæ made from natural ingredients, together with information on their use. A further 244 entries are in the form of prayers or symbolic figures used as powerful amulets or talismans to cure specific health problems, or to protect the owners from any black magic aimed in their direction.

ADVICE FROM THE SERAT CENTHINI

Still considered one of the major references on jamu, the 300-year-old Serat Centhini has plenty of illustrative tales which not only make interesting reading but are also instructive.

For example, it tells how a certain Mas Cebolang went to visit Ki Bawaraga, leader of a Javanese gamelan orchestra (photo left depicts a contemporary gamelan player). It was around midnight when he encountered an acquaintance called Amadtenggara, who had a toothache; Mas Cebolang gave him some medicine for it. He recommended chewing kenanga flowers (Canangium odoratum; ylang-ylang) mixed with salt. The story goes that the swollen gum was pierced with a fish bone and the patient was healed immediately. Apparently it was also necessary to choose an auspicious date and time for this operation, to ensure its total success.

The earlier Serat centhini, an 18th-century manuscript produced on the orders of a son of Kanjeng Susuhunan Pakubuwono IV, ruler of the central Javanese kingdom of Surakarta from 1788 to 1820, is a celebration of life. Three men were charged with collecting as much information as possible on the spiritual, material, scientific and religious knowledge of Javanese culture. The result was a work of 12 volumes consisting of 725 cantos. It is believed that Serat centhini was compiled as a deliberate act of defiance by the Sunan’s son against his father, who was extremely devout and who considered anything other than religious works unacceptable. According to the Javanese scholar Tim Behrend, the explicit nature of some of the material may have been calculated to enrage and offend the old man.

A MULTI-CULTURAL EXCHANGE

Dutch influence is evident in colonial-era architecture, furniture, some food and even some words in the national language, Bahasa Indonesia. The cultural exchange was a two-way affair, judging by the number of books and papers on Indonesia that found their way to libraries and publishers in Europe.

In the early 1900s, Mrs Jans Kloppenburg-Versteegh, a Dutch woman living in Semarang at the turn of that century, wrote De Platen-Atlas (The Pictorial Atlas) and Indische Planten en haar Geneeskracht (Indigenous Plants and their Healing Powers), having collected and tested hundreds of herbal medicine recipes before putting them into print.

Photo courtesy of vilan van de loo (Koppenburg collection, leiden)

Born in 1862 at Soekamangli, a large coffee plantation in the district of Weliri, the young girl was educated at a boarding school in Batavia (Jakarta), until the family fortunes declined and she had to return home to help her mother. Jans’ mother, Alber-tina van Spreeuwenburg, looked after the health of all the people living in and around the plantation; as the local people said: “The nonja besar (lady) knew everything about medicinal herbs.”

In his memoirs, Fred Kloppenburg, Albertina’s grandson, writes of his grandmother: “Outside the cultivated gardens … everything grew wild, but grandma seemed to recognize everything. During these walks, grandma would often talk with the Javanese village elders. She would ask them how the population was doing, were there any health problems, what were they doing about it. Often she would give advice to these people, showing them what herbs (weeds to us) were beneficial and how to prepare the medication.”

It was in this environment, at her mother’s side, that the young Jans became familiar with the local plants and their healing powers; even after her own marriage to Herman Kloppenburg in 1883, she pursued her interest in herbs. She became the president of a local healthcare society in Semarang, and received patients, and, when necessary, visited them at home. Her name and her reputation as a healer spread rapidly, so it was perhaps not surprising that she decided to publish her findings.

The Pictorial Atlas, as its name suggests, pictorially and textually describes the principal common plants that Mrs Kloppenburg used in her recipes. Indigenous Plants and their Healing Powers taught people how to prepare the herbs, and make the remedies. It was first published by Masman and Stroink in 1907, and was reprinted for several decades, with the last edition appearing in the late 1980s in Bahasa Indonesia.

Serat centhini was copied and revised so often no one knows which edition is the original. Some versions are dated 1742 in the Javanese calendar, which equates with 1814 in a Western calendar, but experts say much of the material dates from centuries earlier. Although the work covered every imaginable subject, much of Serat Centhini is concerned with sexual problems and includes copious advice on a variety of ailments as well as a number of remedies. Much of its style is fairly earthy and at times it resembles a series of fairy tales.

Yet, despite its basic approach, Serat centhini gives one of the best accounts of medical treatment in ancient Java. In nearly every instance, the remedies are taken from nature and many are easy to administer. Spots on the skin could be cleared up with a preparation of what was termed pucung paste which was made from the fruit of the kluwak tree (pangium edule) mixed with urip (euphorbia tirucalli; milk bush or finger tree) and widuri (calotropis gigantea; mudar plant) which had to be boiled up with the fruit. It was applied to spots while warm and was not to be removed for at least one day. The instructions suggest finishing the cure by grinding elung ubi jalar (the young leaves of sweet potato or Ipomoea batatas) with powdered lime and rubbing this mixture onto the affected area.

In addition to the recipes and formulae, Serat centhini includes a great many stories and folk tales that illustrate the use of jamu in daily life. One such tale relates to a newly married couple. The husband, who presented himself to his bride on their wedding night, was told that his sexual equipment was not up to the mark and that something must be done to rectify the matter. Feeling thoroughly dejected, the young bridegroom set off in search of an answer. He roamed far and wide until he came upon a magic mushroom one day. It appeared this mushroom did the trick, because his wife, as the story went, was overjoyed to find her husband suddenly so well-endowed.

Similar advice is found in other manuscripts or primbon in the Palace library at Solo. These manuscripts span many subjects and comprise some 5,000 texts written on 700,000 pieces of paper, which are bound into over 2,100 volumes, some dating from as far back as the 1720s. They include historical documents, political correspondence and court diaries, prophecies, poetry, moral tracts, erotic lore, Islamic theology and law, Sufi lyrics, scripts for shadow puppet plays, court customs and manuals of magical and divinatory practices, not to mention the four sections devoted to ‘pharmacy, prescriptions and recipes’. The latter provide detailed guidance on the curing of specific ailments. Other manuscripts contain a prince’s advice on sexuality and marriage to one of his children on the night before his wedding. Jamu inevitably plays an important part in these discussions. Indeed, as part of their marriage trousseau, brides were kitted out with a magnificently decorated, square- or pyramid-shaped box comprising stacks of small drawers full of medicinal herbs.

A relief at borobudur depicts someone taking jamu from a bowl.

It would be wrong to assume these old manuscripts were only known to the rich and well educated. The contents were usually written in verse and were sung or intoned as part of regular public performances. Those who lacked formal education became attentive listeners as they heard the pieces often, thereby absorbing the endless flow of cultural information the verses contained. In this way, Javanese philosophy and knowledge were spread to all levels of society.

As well as the more disciplined approach to herbal medicine promoted by the various kraton, many other healing traditions exist in other parts of the archipelago. A wide range of healing practices can be found in Bali, Sumatra, Kalimantan and Madura, which are also renowned for the use of magic and aphrodisiacs. Java, however, is in a class of it own, due to the all-embracing nature of the cures, their success, and their links to the palaces; jamu from the areas around a kraton was, and still is, considered to be the best in terms of status, prestige and—ultimately—efficacy. In much the same way that today’s designer goods carry a mark of quality and are deemed superior to mass-produced goods, so it was with jamu.

Developments in the 20th Century

Indonesia’s medical profession only realized the true value of its natural apothecary in around 1940. In June of that year, a meeting took place in Surakarta that was to revolutionize the future of traditional medicine: the Second Congress of the Indonesian Physcians Association. To coincide with this event, the Mothers’ Association of Yogyakarta decided to mount a special Expo entitled ‘Traditional Indonesian Remedies’. It is uncertain who influenced whom, but before the Congress ended, a motion was passed recommending an in-depth study of traditional medicine and its applications. This was the first step towards improving the status of jamu and transforming it to complementary medicine status.

LOOKING BACK TO THE COLONIAL DAYS

In 1968, Tong Tong magazine printed an article by a Dutch woman who was brought up in Indonesia. The extract below is reprinted by kind permission of Tong Tong in the Hague.

“The article in Tong Tong No. 13 from the Indische (Indonesian Newspaper) of 1910 reminded me of the traditional recipes my mother made from leaves, barks, seeds and roots. When I was a small child the doctor never came to our house because we couldn’t expect him to come out for every little illness.

“That’s why my mother made her own medicines. She made a compress of daon inggoe (devil’s dirt leaves) and vinegar for treating severe fever. For sprains the proven remedy was Beras Kencur and for mumps she used a pilis (compress) of maize and garlic. She had various cough syrup recipes and if one didn’t cure it then my mother tried another. I still remember many healed us completely.

“We usually walked barefoot and often came home with badly blistered and scratched feet. In such instances a sirih (betel) leaf was mixed with some coconut oil, flattened to a pancake shape and applied to the sore spot. The foot was bandaged and when this was removed a few days later, the cuts never festered. Some years later, our dentist made an oral rinse using extract of sirih leaves. The same decoction was used for ulcerating cuts instead of a soda bath. The result was amazing.

“However, my mother was not a gentle healer. If we were cut by splintered glass, a nail or a sharp piece of bamboo she took the bottle of vinegar and said, ‘Close your eyes.’ We closed our eyes but instantly opened our mouths to shout when she poured it onto the open wounds! When the bleeding stopped she would put sirih leaves on the cuts.

“She also had a splendid recipe for dysentery— a mixture of kaki-kuda leaves (small leaves of horsehoof grass or Indian pennywort) and roots of jambu biji (guava) with a few other bits and pieces. During an outbreak of amoebic dysentery she made this reliable jamu for friends. A good friend, a Danish doctor, always opened his ‘clever’ medical book when in doubt. Here he learned butterburr had an important basic ingredient called yatren which was used in a prescription he gave his patients. After that he always accepted a small glass of Mama’s curd. Mind you I don’t believe that kaki-kuda of Begagan is from the Pelargonium family though the shape of its leaf is similar.

“Personally I feel I have received more benefit from the Indonesian remedies than doctor’s prescriptions. Once I had an unexpected guest in my stomach—a tapeworm. The doctor gave me medicine on three separate occasions but the worm refused to leave. Then I thought of Mrs Kloppenburg’s book (see page 16). I read her recipe and peeled 500 kernels of the delicious gurih fruit (Hydrocotyle asiatica). First time around I had to eat 200 before food and then 300. I felt awful and dizzy but my guest felt worse and the Kloppenburg remedy won. Quinine was always used to treat malaria of course, but Mama said ‘Oh no, pule-bast (bark of Alstonia scholaris) is better or meniran (Phyllanthus niruri) and sambiloto (Andrographis paniculata).’ She always had something to help if someone was sick no matter if the malaria made them hot or cold. At that time there was still much malaria and people who caught it shivered so badly they often thought they would die and tried to get rid of it by staying in the sun but Mama’s medicines were usually best.”

The next important development took place between 1942 to 1944, during the Japanese Occupation. The Dai Nippon Government supported herbal medicine by setting up the Indonesian Traditional Medicines Committee in June 1944, under the guidance of Professor Dr Sato, Chief of the Government Department of Health. The committee then appointed the head of the Indonesian Physicians’ Association to coordinate with the traditional medicine producers.

Traditional medicine received a further boost during Indonesia’s War of Independence. Orthodox medicine was in short supply, so doctors turned to herbal remedies to treat patients. Later, Indonesia’s newly installed President Sukarno issued the Proclamation of Independence, which stated that the nation must be self-supporting. In accordance with this directive, imported, modern drugs became extremely difficult to obtain and people were thrown back on their own resources. Many returned to their parents’ and grandparents’ age-old, tried-and-tested remedies. Since that time, interest in traditional medicine has blossomed, and a whole series of conferences, exhibitions, seminars and scientific studies have been organized.

During the last two decades of the 20th century, development of Indonesia’s traditional medicine industry accelerated. Frequently under siege from politics, competition from imported drugs and a severe shortage of funding for research, the industry has always returned in force following each setback. To introduce some order to the unregulated industry, steps have been taken to implement modern, clinical trials to back performance claims with scientific data, and to standardize the burgeoning industry in such a way that it may be accepted nationally and considered on an international level. With the creation of eight herbal medicine testing centres in the early 1980s, the endorsement of further research centres and the growing interest amongst medical professionals, the foundations are now in place for international recognition of jamu.

This process has been further helped by an increased demand for jamu from outside Indonesia’s borders, especially in the developed world, which in turn reflects a general trend towards more natural methods of preventative medicine. Alternative therapies are no longer treated with the suspicion they received even a decade ago; in fact, therapies such as acupuncture, Reiki, acupressure, massage, the taking of herbal teas and elixirs, have become— if not mainstream—certainly perfectly acceptable. All this is good news for those who want to see Indonesia’s herbal medicine out in the open—and available in the wider world.

AN INTERVIEW WITH SOEDARMILAH SOEPARTO OF JAMU DARMI

Soedarmilah Soeparto is the name behind Jamu Darmi (see story on page 152), a small but successful and well respected jamu production company located in a suburb of Central Jakarta. As with many such companies, it grows its own supply of medicinal herbs (see left). In a question and answer session taken from her lectures, the founder answered some commonly-asked questions about jamu.

Does jamu have any harmful side effects?

There are no side effects or harm because genuine jamu is made only of herbs, unadulterated by chemicals and artificial fillings, not spoiled by modern processing. The natural balance of the active enzymes and vitamins gives the human body its wholesome effect.

Is it all right to take different types of jamu?

Depending on your needs, it is perfectly all right to combine jamu intake. For example, a woman who intends to lose weight can alternate between Galian Lansing and Kempes Perut.

Is it dangerous to go above the recommended dose?

No. The recommended dosage is usually the minimum dosage that will allow the jamu to take effect quickly. For quicker results, a higher dose can be taken without harm. However, in cases like Kempes Perut, very high doses can cause diarrhoea. A reduction in the dose is required if the jamu causes diarrhoea.

Is jamu heaty?

Complaints about heatiness of jamu could be due to individuals not being used to the high dosage recommended. In this case, it would be advisable to start on a lower dose so the body gets used to jamu and slowly increase the intake.

Is it harmful to take jamu during menstruation?

No, although it is advisable to avoid taking jamu during this period as it might upset the system.

Is jamu intake addictive?

Certainly not. Once the desired effects are attained, the jamu can be stopped. However, it is wise to take jamu regularly to maintain health.

How does slimming with jamu differ from slimming the Western way?

Western slimming products work like a laxative and reduce fats without providing alternative strength, which results in a haggard look for the slimmer. Jamu slims the natural way. Jamu like Kempes Perut balances your glands and removes old fats but retains the nutritious elements without affecting your appetite or making the skin flabby.

Jamu gendong Ibu nur and her aunt set out at 7 am from her house in yogyakarta to visit her regular clients.