Bhoma's Kitchen: Food Culture and Food Symbolism in Pre-Islamic Java

Abstract

This article discusses the food symbolism in martial scenes of kakavin, narrative poems composed in Old Javanese between the ninth and fifteenth centuries CE. Starting from the hypothesis that Javanese conceived of a battle and a preparation of food with a common set of ideas and concepts, a striking food metaphor, found in the Bhāratayuddha, has been analyzed. The slaying of Kama, an epic hero who sided with the Pāndavas, is likened to the process of steaming rice. Karṇa's body is compared to a dish of half-cooked rice stirred before it is put into the bamboo steamer to be finished over the boiling water. I have argued that this literary vignette represents the earliest Javanese detailed description of the method of cooking rice by steaming, the method now common in Java and Bali. In the second part of this article I have analyzed three “literary breakfasts,” using the rich evidence of the Kakavin Rāmāyana and the Bhomāntaka. I have demonstrated that in pre-Islamic period the Javanese already had a well-developed concept of breakfast, the first meal of the day. In the third part of the article I have argued that the famous “feasting passage” in Bhomāntaka, 81.34–49, which describes a meal organized for warriors on the night before their march to battle and which represents an immensely rich account of dishes prepared from hearts, lungs, intestines and marrow, is best understood as a participatory animal sacrifice. The Bhomāntaka thus supports a view that the consumption of meat in the martial context had a ritual character in pre-Islamic Java.