写真

The story of Wayang Kulit,
Wayang is an Indonesian and Malay word for theatre, when the term is used to refer to kinds of puppet theater, sometimes the puppet itself is reffered to as wayang. "Bayang", the Javanese word for shadow or imagination, also connotes "spirit". Performences of shadow puppet theater are accompanied by gamelan in Java and by gender wayang in Bali.
Wayang is a generic term denoting traditional theater in Indonesia. There is no evidence that wayang existed before Hinduism came to Souheast Asia sometime in the first century CE. The first record of a wayang performence is from an inscription dated 930 CE which says "si Galigi mawayang" or "Sir Galigi played wayang" from that time till today it seems certain features of traditional puppet theater have remained. Hinduism arrived in Indonesia from India even before the Christian era and was slowly adopted as the local belief system. Sanskrit became the literary and court language of Java and later of Bali. The Hindus changed the Wayang (as did the Muslims, later) to spread their religion, mostly by stories from Mahabharata or the Ramayana.

Wayang Kulit, shadow puppets prevalent in Java and Bali in Indonesia and Kelantan in Malaysia are without a doubt the best known of the Indonesian wayang. Kulit means skin and refer to the leather construction of the puppets that are carefully chiseled with very fine tools and supported with carefully shaped buffalo horn handles and control rods.
Unesco designed Wayang Kulit, a shadow puppet theater and the best known of Indonesian Wayang as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity on November 7th 2003.
( Source from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Pictures was taken from Summarecon Plaza, Serpong - West Java, this wayang kulit is apart of Indonesian 63th Independence day festival (August 17th). The wayang figured Hanoman and Cakil (red face) and its represented the good and the evil in wayang kulit story.


greetings from Jakarta
daniel