The Life-Story of an old-time Priangan Regent as told by himself

Abstract

In Indonesia autobiographies are scarce, and the short biographical notices which pass by that name are hardly worthy of this designation. More often than not they are nothing but rather dry reports concerning the career of some well-deserving official, drawn up on his retirement and at best touched up with a few personal particulars and reminis cences. Some writings of this kind have been mentioned in my contribu tion to the 1851-1951 Jubilee issue of Bijdragen Kon. Instituut (Drewes 1951). In that article I paid particular attention to two books of at the time recent date, which, in spite of the fact that their authors had confined themselves to memories of childhood, were more entitled to be styled autobiographies (Pospos 1950 and Radjab 1950). In this paper I shall not deal with publications in this field which have appeared since, but with an earlier publication, which, though mention ed in my aforesaid paper, was not gone into there, viz., Babad Raden Adipati Aria Marta agara Regent Bandoeng. At the time I had to leave a discussion of this booklet aside for want of space, although it fully deserved a more detailed treatment so as to demonstrate the difference between this elementary specimen of autobiography and those more extensively dealt with in my article. Moreover, it is one of the best samples of its genre, and the author is not just anybody. R. A. A. Marta Nagara sprang from a noble and distinguished family, which in the course of the centuries several times made its mark in Priangan history, and himself too had a distinguished career and was held in great respect in his time. He was in public service for no less than 56 years, 25 of which he spent in Bandung as Regent of this important region. After his retirement in 1918 he moved to Sumedang and had a house built there. The colophon states that he finished this Babad in 1923, at the age of 78, dedicating it to his children, grandchildren and further progeny for them to keep as heirloom. One may ask whether this final statement should be understood in such a way that the retired Regent himself drafted the text of the Babad, or that he only put the finishing touch to a text in which his verbal communications had been committed to writing by some assistant ? not an uncommon procedure with high-placed authors. But no matter