Dayang Sumbi

Dayang Sumbi, also called Rarasati, is the tragic heroine of the Sangkuriang legend of West Java. In the fullest Sundanese tellings she is of half-divine birth, daughter of King Sungging Perbangkara and a goddess enduring a curse in the shape of the wild sow Wayungyang, and her unfading youth and beauty set the tale's machinery in motion. Withdrawn to a hilltop to weave, she idly vowed to marry whoever retrieved her fallen shuttle; it was fetched by Tumang, a god cursed into the body of a dog, who became her husband and the father of her son Sangkuriang. After the boy killed Tumang on a hunt and she struck his head in grief, mother and son were parted, and when the grown Sangkuriang returned and wooed the ageless woman, only the old scar betrayed him. To escape the marriage she demanded a lake and a boat built in one night, then defeated the attempt by spreading her luminous white cloth, the boeh rarang, so that the eastern sky glowed like daybreak. Interpreters from R.W. van Bemmelen, who linked the story to the volcanic history of the Bandung basin, to Jakob Sumardjo, who reads her weaving and vigilance as emblems of cosmic order, have kept her at the centre of Sundanese mythological studies.

Children

• Sangkuriang

Domains

• weaving
• asceticism

Powers

• to remain eternally young
• to conjure a false dawn by spreading her glowing white cloth

Relations

• mother of: SangkuriangDayang Sumbi bore Sangkuriang to the god who lived as the dog Tumang, banished the boy after he killed his father, and years later unknowingly became the object of his suit, thwarting the marriage with her false dawn.Ajip Rosidi et al. (eds.), Ensiklopedi Sunda: Alam, Manusia, dan Budaya (Jakarta: Pustaka Jaya, 2000) (secondary); R.W. van Bemmelen, The Geology of Indonesia, vol. IA: General Geology of Indonesia and Adjacent Archipelagoes (The Hague: Government Printing Office, 1949) (secondary)

Sources

• Dayang Sumbi is the eternally youthful weaver of the Tangkuban Parahu legend, mother of Sangkuriang, who prevented her son's unwitting incestuous marriage by conjuring a false dawn.: Ajip Rosidi et al. (eds.), Ensiklopedi Sunda: Alam, Manusia, dan Budaya (Jakarta: Pustaka Jaya, 2000) (secondary); Jakob Sumardjo, Simbol-Simbol Artefak Budaya Sunda: Tafsir-Tafsir Pantun Sunda (Bandung: Kelir, 2003) (secondary); R.W. van Bemmelen, The Geology of Indonesia, vol. IA: General Geology of Indonesia and Adjacent Archipelagoes (The Hague: Government Printing Office, 1949) (secondary)