Nyai Roro Kidul

On the beaches below Yogyakarta the sea comes in cold and heavy off an ocean with nothing between it and Antarctica, and the warnings handed to visitors are not about the current. They are about what to wear. Green is the thing to avoid, and specifically the shade the Javanese call gadhung mlathi, a sea-green shot through with jasmine white. It is her colour. The understanding along that coast is that anyone who walks into her water wearing it is not drowning so much as being collected.

She rules the Southern Ocean from a palace on its floor, and she rules the spirits of Java, both the ones that live in springs and old trees and the ones that used to be people. Her authority runs the length of the south coast, from Palabuhanratu in the west through Parangtritis and Parangkusumo, past Pangandaran and Karang Bolong and Ngliyep, out to Puger and Banyuwangi. Whole industries operate under her licence. The men who gather edible birds’ nests at Karang Bolong go down the cliff face on coconut-fibre rope to a bamboo platform above the water, wait for a wave, drop into it and let it sweep them under the overhang into the cave, where they hunt in total darkness and then have to time the tide exactly to get back out. They regard her as their patron. Given the arrangement, it would be strange if they did not.

She began on land, and she began human. The stories make her a princess of Pajajaran in Sunda, west Java, though nobody agrees on who her father was. Prabu Munding Wangi, Prabu Mundingsari, Prabu Siliwangi and Prabu Cakrabuwana all get named, and some tellings move her east to Galuh or Kediri or older Koripan entirely. What survives every version is the expulsion. In the most popular Sundanese telling she is Kadita, so lovely she is called the Sun Goddess, and a jealous second wife pays a shaman to curse her; by nightfall her skin is crusted with boils and scabies and the smell of her is unbearable. Healers are brought in and fail. The court decides she is bad luck and sends her out. Other versions have her banished for refusing suitor after suitor until her father lost his temper, or leaving of her own accord to meditate in the forest, where she gained the power to work miracles and to change between woman and man.

The reasons look different and do the same work. A hermit, an unmarried woman and a person with a disfiguring skin disease all sit outside the ordinary social order, and the exile simply moves her to a place where that is not a problem.

She walked south for seven days and seven nights, by one account, until the land ran out at the cliffs. Then she heard a voice out of the surf telling her to go in. She went in. The water took the boils off her without leaving a mark, left her more beautiful than she had been, and the spirits of the sea crowned her their queen. A minority of tellings are bleaker and have her throw herself off the cliff in despair, only to be drawn down to a palace and crowned anyway. Either way the sea is the cure and the promotion at once.

What she looks like after that depends on when you catch her. When the moon waxes she is a young woman on a golden throne; when it wanes she is old and ugly, having shed her years the way a snake sheds skin, an image the sources return to constantly. Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX described exactly this pattern of change in his own memoir. Painters and storytellers often give her a fish’s tail, and just as often a snake’s coils, and her carriage in Javanese folk art is a winged naga. One scholar who worked with people who venerate her found that his informants called the goddess herself a naga. The link is not decoration. Across island Southeast Asia the spirit that owns the soil and guarantees its fertility is very often a snake living in a spring or a pool, and she is the grandest of them.

Her rise to national prominence dates from a single afternoon on the sand at Parangkusumo. Panembahan Senapati, who had received a sign that he was to rule all Java, went down to the shore to put the question to God. He prayed with such force that a storm came out of the west, tore up trees and set the sea boiling until dead fish washed in. She noticed the disturbance from the bottom of the ocean, came up to see who was responsible, found a man on the beach lost in prayer, and asked him to stop. He stopped. The storm dropped. Reading his thoughts, she told him his prayer had been answered and that he and his descendants would rule Java.

Then, according to the Babad Tanah Jawi, they went down to her palace and stayed there three days and three nights. She taught him statecraft and promised him her spirit armies whenever the realm was threatened, on the condition that whoever ruled Java kept up the relationship with her. He came back up the beach and ran straight into Sunan Kali Jaga, one of the nine saints who brought Islam to Java, who told him to lean on Allah and not on magic. Senapati, who was a usurper and knew it, leaned on both, and founded Mataram in 1575.

The compact is still being serviced. Once a year, the day after the anniversary of his accession, the Sultan of Yogyakarta sends a procession down to Parangkusumo with a bundle of goods called the ubarampe: lengths of batik cloth with names like Semekan Gadhung Mlathi, and the Sultan’s own hair and nail clippings, all of it committed to the water. Parallel bundles go up Mount Merapi to the north and Mount Lawu to the east, and every eighth year, in the Javanese year Dal, a larger version reaches the hills at Dlepih Khayangan. The court of Surakarta keeps its own end of the arrangement in the Bedhaya Ketawang, a dance so closely tied to her that she is said to attend it.

Whether any of this predates Senapati is argued about. Some hold that he invented the whole encounter to shore up a shaky claim, which is a reasonable suspicion about a usurper. Against it stands the fourteenth-century king Hayam Wuruk of Majapahit, who made regular sacred journeys to the south coast; a figure in the Babad called Cemara Tunggal who left court rather than marry, could shift between male and female, and promised her spirit armies to whoever would rule Java; and the older habit, found from Cambodia to Sulawesi to the Philippines, of founder-kings marrying serpent princesses out of the water. The Khmer version has the rulers of Cambodia cohabiting nightly with a nine-headed snake spirit that owns all the soil of the kingdom, and the welfare of the realm depending on it. She did not come from nowhere.

There is one wrinkle that the popular accounts smooth over. Some people at Parangtritis insist that Nyai Roro Kidul is not the queen at all but the patih, the chief minister, of an older being called Ratu Kidul who actually rules the ocean, with Nyai Roro Kidul in charge of the spirit world beneath her. The two are described almost identically, both beautiful and enthroned in gold, and the one reliable difference offered is that Ratu Kidul prefers purple while Nyai Roro Kidul prefers green. Dutch observers dismissed the distinction as a mistake. Kejawen practitioners still keep it.

Her powers follow from all of this. She controls the waves and the weather of the Indian Ocean, commands armies of spirits, moves between shapes and ages at will, and as the naga who owns the ground she underwrites the fertility of Java itself. She is credited with a specific annual tally of young men taken down to her palace to serve or to be her lovers, which the Indonesian film industry has been mining enthusiastically for decades. Yet she is not written as vicious. She is called a noble-hearted protector of the peace of the court, and her displeasure is reserved for people who ignore what is owed her.

The limits are just as clear. Her help is conditional and always has been, hanging on a relationship that a ruler has to keep renewing; the labuhan is not sentiment, it is maintenance. Her writ is territorial, running to the southern quarter and the sea, which is why the northern coast has its own goddess and Merapi its own arrangements. She was outflanked once already, in the version where she declined to become Muslim when Pajajaran fell and followed her father into the forest, most of the court turning into tiger-spirits around her; that telling makes her queenship a consolation prize for being on the wrong side of history. And she remains, in the end, answerable to the deal. When Hamengkubuwono IX died in 1988, palace servants reported seeing her at the kraton, and were certain she had come to pay her respects. Even a queen of the ocean turns up at the funerals of her own kings.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Nyai Roro Kidul?

Nyai Roro Kidul is the spirit queen of the Southern Sea in Javanese and Sundanese tradition, ruling the Indian Ocean off Java’s south coast along with the spirits of the island. Most tellings make her a princess of the Sundanese kingdom of Pajajaran who was driven out of her father’s court and became a goddess when she entered the sea. She is also the supernatural consort of the rulers of Mataram and its successor courts at Yogyakarta and Surakarta.

Why can’t you wear green on Java’s south coast?

Sea-green, called gadhung mlathi in Javanese, is Nyai Roro Kidul’s colour, and the belief along the south coast is that wearing it into her water marks you out for her. People who do are said to be taken to serve as her soldiers or servants rather than simply drowned. The taboo is observed at Parangtritis, Parangkusumo, Palabuhanratu and other beaches associated with her.

How did Nyai Roro Kidul become the Queen of the Southern Sea?

In the best-known Sundanese version she was the princess Kadita, cursed with a disfiguring skin disease by a rival at court and exiled from the palace. She walked south until she reached the ocean, heard a voice telling her to enter the water, and was healed and restored to beauty as she swam. The spirits of the sea then made her their queen.

What is her relationship with the kings of Java?

The Babad Tanah Jawi records that she met Panembahan Senapati on the beach at Parangkusumo, told him he and his descendants would rule Java, taught him statecraft and pledged her spirit armies to the realm, on condition that every ruler after him maintained the relationship. Senapati founded Mataram in 1575. The courts of Yogyakarta and Surakarta still honour the agreement through the annual Labuhan offerings and through court dances such as the Bedhaya Ketawang.

Is Nyai Roro Kidul the same as Kanjeng Ratu Kidul?

Usually the two names are treated as one figure, but not always. Some people on the south coast hold that Ratu Kidul is an older being who genuinely rules the ocean, and that Nyai Roro Kidul is her patih or chief minister, in charge of the spirit world beneath her. Where the distinction is kept, Ratu Kidul is said to favour purple and Nyai Roro Kidul green.

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