In Sunda, particularly in Pamijahan, ‘our ancestors’, or karuhun urang, can refer to the founding ancestors, a single ancestor, the village ancestors, or to family ancestors.

Karuhun is a central concept in the village culture, referring to the founder, Shaykh Abdul Muhyi, as well as to his companions and to Muhyi’s ancestors. The line of descent after Shaykh Abdul Muhyi, which is called kolot or kolot urang is also crucial. It influences the social interaction in the village. On the other hand, the line of karuhun is stable, in so far as it is generally accepted and agreed upon. It connects the villagers directly to the network of the Nine Saints of Java or wali sanga, as well as to the King of Sunda. In Sunda, these lines seem compulsory since they help Sundanese to ‘domesticate’ their conversion to Islam. (Djajadiningrat 1913 and 1965) The narratives reflect the dynamics of 16th century Java when Islam penetrated from Cirebon on the north coast to Galuh and from Banten to Pajajaran. (cf. Lombard 1996) In other words, the story is able to provide a better framework for the villagers to respond to the mixed myth of their ancestors.

In their narratives concerning village ancestors, or karuhun, villagers rarely refer to the king of Sunda, but they often make references to the Saints of Java. This is due to the fact that the Islamization of this area was undertaken by people from Cirebon as well as a number of Mataram missionaries. Sometimes, in different settings, villagers will refer both to Sundanese and Javanese ancestors as long as they are Muslims. The Muslim ancestors receive more attention than the pre-Islamic ones. Stories of the past are able to reconcile the contradiction between the winner, the Muslims, and the defeated, pre-Islamic Hindu Sunda.

In the Babad Pamijahan, the genealogy of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi starts with Sunan Giri and and continues through Shaykh Abdul Muhyi’s descendants from his four wives. Accordingly, in ritual speech, Pamijahanese enumerate ancestral spirits starting from Shaykh Abdul Muhyi. The Shaykh is the founding ancestor of Pamijahan, and in ritual, they call him Eyang. ^[1] An eyang belongs the category of founding ancestors, or karuhun. The term is used for apical ancestors of Pamijahanese who set up a new village. In rituals they say ''Let's recite prayers for karuhun urang, all of our ancestors''. The second level generation after the eyang is called sepuh urang. A sepuh urang is the origin point of a subgroup within a village, still relatively close to the contemporary life of eyang. In the village, the line of succession of names is called the kokocoran or the ‘source of the river’. It is perceived as a river flowing vertically down from the karuhun. According to the custodian Ajengan Endang, ''By defining these lines, it is clear that the sacred tomb and other sacred territories, from the death of the Wali until now, have been maintained by four kokocoran.”

The village’s karuhun is now a place of pilgrimage and the villagers are mostly dependent economically upon its associated pilgrimage (ziarah). In such circumstances, kokocoran is pivotal in the contemporary village, as sub-groupings can influence the 'management' of rituals and the balance of power in village politics. The ‘flow of the river’, the kokocoran, or the generation after the Wali’s line is unstable and susceptible to contestations of precedence (see Chapters 8 and 9). In this chapter, I will primarily focus on a narrative of space and place. As will be seen below, a mystical itinerary of the founder and the genealogy are two important ‘grounds’ for seeing the landscape of Pamijahan.

Before I discuss these two elements of landscape, I will first describe how the contemporary Pamijahanese see landscape. In doing so I will show the villagers’ own point of view of their space and places through the map drawn by a local artist under the custodian’s supervision.