A Surviving Example of Polychrome Painting from the Late-East Javanese Period: The Image of the Rama-Story on the Keris Scabbard Preserved at Banna-ji Temple

SUZUKI Suzuki

This paper examines a Javanese polychrome painting executed on a keris scabbard, considered to date from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. The object is preserved in Japan as a treasure of Banna-ji, a Buddhist temple in Tochigi Prefecture. According to its description, the keris had already been recorded in a temple inventory compiled in the mid-eighteenth century, and a surviving manuscript copy of the inventory dated 1886 confirms that the object was known at least until the late nineteenth century. Through a typological analysis of the scabbard form, based on comparisons with iconography in stone reliefs, together with a comparative examination of the painting’s iconography, this study argues that both the keris and the imagery depicted on the scabbard were most likely produced in East Java between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The painted scene is further identified as an episode from the Rama-story. To the author’s knowledge, no surviving examples of polychrome painting from Java of this period have previously been reported. The object therefore provides exceptionally rare chromatic evidence for the study of Classical Javanese art, which has largely been understood through monochrome media. Comparison with the reliefs at Candi Siwa Prambanan, the Wonoboyo hoard, a relief panel in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and later wayang iconography offers new insights into the reception and transformation of Rama story imagery in Java.