In Pamijahan, and popularly among Muslims in general, a wali is recognised as having blessing and grace. He is a Friend of God and an intermediary between the common people and God. The radiation of his power spreads into the place where he lived and was buried. As shown in India, Morocco, and elsewhere, the tomb of a saint is a principal coordinate in mapping the landscape of a village. As a central point in space, the tomb or the shrine must be protected and maintained, particularly by the wali’s descendants (turunan). What is significant in the notion of place is that villagers assume that the place can be classified according to degrees of sacredness ranging from the most sacred place to the less sacred and the profane.
In contemporary Pamijahan, people move from one place to another so that the place where people stay does not always reflect their membership of a side (pongpok). However, the notion of pongpok is still important in every ritual being linked to Shaykh Abdul Muhyi.
The Pamijahan places described here are spaces where various ‘historical energies’, borrowing Pemberton’s phrases (Pemberton 1994: 270) criss-cross the village. The history of Shaykh Abdul Muhyi is materialised in the form of the sacred signs namely the tomb; the mosque, the cave, the village, as well as the symbolical territory called Kapamijahanan and pongpok.
In such setting, the shrine, the sacred narratives, the sacred mosque, the sacred village appear to be dominant symbols. In this, place villagers orchestrate these various signs in order to support their cultural ideology. For instance, the relation between genealogy and places is metaphorically conceived as the relation between the sides of the tomb of Shaykh. These metaphors are indicated by the formation of custodianship where the leader of custodians always comes from the first pongpok.
Semiotically, the transformation can be drawn as follows:
The first sign is the word 'pongpok' (S1). This term means ‘the side’. In Peircean terms it becomes an object of the first sign (O1). Later, it acquires an interpretation as ‘the sides of the wali’ (I1) and also appears to be a new sign (S2) that is the concept of ‘genealogy’. This second sign has a new reference (O2), that is the concept of genealogy which is later interpreted as the four main lines (I2). This interpretant becomes another sign (S3), which has a different object (O3) that is the four abstract spaces. This connotation is then interpreted as the four managers of the sacred site (I3). This chain of semiosis theoretically could be endless as long as there is homo-semioticus who can comprehend external phenomena based on their perception. However, as Umberto Eco says, the culture could resist such a process.
The map of Pamijahan is a collective interpretation where the meaning will be generated for one who is able to access such collective interpretant: but, accessing intepretants are the mater of negotiation, which is called by Eco (1999) a ''chewing-gum'' process The blessing, barakah, of their wali is subject to dynamic interpretation. Such different interpretations, for instance, can be seen clearly from the different perceptions of two villages, Kampung Pamijahan, and Kampung Panyalahan, regarding the spatial concept and the sacredness of their village. Although both villages share the same ancestors, Pamijahanese recognise himself or herself as closer to the saint than Panyalahanese. Furthermore, there is also a different interpretation regarding ancestors' value that should be converted into their daily life.
As we have seen, the increase in the number of people undertaking pilgrimage visits to Pamijahan is due to the holiness of the founder of the village, Shaykh Abdul Muhyi. In village culture, the centre of barakah is situated at the centre of village where the shrine is located. Thus, the centre, which is marked as a non-smoking area, is also the focal point for interpretation. This is due to that fact that the villagers apply two different systems of meaning when they read the map of the village as a text. As we saw above, the genealogical system is used by the people who live in the centre. This system has created what might be called 'the ideology of proximity (qaraba) or closeness'. The notion of closeness has been applied to space. Thus, one who are close to the wali's line may have access to the sacred sites, particularly the centre. Conversely, those who are not so close do not have the same access. The second system is derived from narrative, from sacred reported speech. It is evident in the village that there are groups that use both ideologies, and there are groups that tend to emphasise just the second one. The applications of these systems of meaning have significant implication for villagers in their social and symbolic interaction. To elaborate this issue, I will illustrate with the case of Pamijahan and Panyalahan.
Lets us start with the narratives concerning spatial order as understood by the people of Panyalahan. The quotation given below is taken from a testament copied by Nyi Raden Nuri, a Panyalahnese, from the testament of another Panyalahanese, Mama Halipah.
Now, let us recite the history of the pasidkah land that passed from Shaykh Haji Abdul Muhyi to his brother (Eyang Kudrat). The boundaries of this land are: from the west the tip of the tree on the mount of Tangkil then to the Satus to the south, then to the west in Bongas, up the hill of Bubuway, then to Pandawa Tengah, to the mount of Gadung, to the river of Cisela, to the Angsana tree planted in the north graveyard of Dalem Yudanagara, then east to the graveyard of Bengkok, to Madur in the southeast of Parungpung, to the river of Cihandiwung Jero, to the Cikeuyeup, to Cigaru, to Cikangkareng, to Nagreu, to Burujul, to the Bed Stone, to the river of Cijalu where Eyang Nurdin planted four incense trees brought from Demak, to the Cibentang, to Cilingga, then to the top of the hill along the mountain of Tangkil. (The Testament of Mama Halipah Djainal Aripin)
This excerpt defines the boundary of the sacred sites given by the Shaykh, the tanah pasidkah. Both Pamijahanese and Panyalahanese, to some extent, agree about this boundary. However, both Pamijahanese and Panyalahanese take opposing positions when it comes to the terms of custodianship and settlement in the sacred sites such as Kampung Pamijahan.
The polysemic interpretation of space is shown, for instance, by the appearance of ‘letters of testimony’. The Panyalahanese have produced letters of testimony (surat wasiat), using them in a campaign rejecting the privilege of people who live within the sacred site (kampung Pamijahan). In their campaign they state
Those who live in Panyalahan, Cioga, Ledar, Cibentang, and even Tujul, must be careful. Those who settle in the sacred heritage site (tanah wasiat) who originate from whatever families, must shows their loyalty to Pamasalahan [Panyalahan].
It is clear that for Panyalahanese, settlement in the centre of Pamijahan, which is the most sacred space in the village, is forbidden because it is the wali’s space and should be kept unpolluted and pure. should be cleaned and purity. The Panayalahanese also recite that they too have a right to the sacred land and the people who live in the centre of Pamijahan should even pay tribute to Panyalahan. On the other hand, the Pamijahanese absolutely reject these statements. For them, it is unthinkable to send tribute to Panyalahan. According to them, it is the Panyalahanese who should in fact respect the privileges of the Pamijahanese, who, from time immemorial have lived in the sacred territory bequeathed to them. In more recent time times, the ever increasing revenued coming in to Kampung Pamijahan from pilgrimage, has attentuated this long-standing controversy.
Previously I have discussed a cognate icon and index, as well as symbol used to identify the position of people in space and other mnemonic devices to trace the point of origin in the cultural space of the village. Various devices have been identified namely: the metaphor of a flowing river, the sides, and closeness or proximity. However, I have to present another important cognate icon, which is hardly used in villagers’ daily activities, but it is used occasionally in crucial narrative performances. By crucial narrative, I mean a process of telling a sign in history to warn any villagers, and non-villagers, to perceive the space and places in the appropriate way as required by the Wali.
To prevent people from taking an undefined or unsanctioned ‘path’, according to the chief custodian of Pamijahan (1997) the Wali has said that “New green leaves will never grow at the top of the tree, nor will new roots ever grow at the bottom.” This tradition strongly interdicts any superfluous semiotic process. There are two important key words in the testimony: ‘green leaves” or pucuk and ‘root’ or akaran. In other words, the community, which is likened to a tree, will never have new roots into the past, nor ever fresh grwoth and branches into the future. Nevertheless, as an open text, space and place are always subject to precedence and negotiation, and for this reason the ‘leaves’ and the ‘roots’ need to be maintained - the signs need to be ‘cultivated’. This process will be explored in Chapters 8 - 10.
The Pamijahanese have another source of genealogy that is quite different from the linkages set out in the Babad Pamijahan. If the Babad Pamijahan links the people of Pamijahan with the two biggest kingdoms in Java, and lays foundation for spatial and social organisation in the village, there are other narratives that connect villagers to a wider Islamic world through Sufism. This will be taken up in the next chapter.