In The History of Java written by Sir Thomas Stamford
Raffles and published at 1817, The Ex-Lieutenant Governor General of British in
Java was said that native Javanese dress better than residents in western
India. Most raw materials for clothing come from imported fabrics. Blue and
chintz fabrics are imported in large quantities from West India. The rulers
usually need a lot of shirt, velvet and other types of fabric to make jackets, pantaloons
pants and other clothes. Usually the residents are well dressed. Dirty clothes
are a disgrace, and they dress fancy when attending certain ceremonies.
Although most people's clothing is relatively simple. Class grades in this
country make a difference in the way they dress, and there are some clothes
that are only allowed for noble families. The difference is also seen from the
way he uses a kris.
The caste in Hinduism that at the time was
adopted also influenced the way people dressed, although according to Casparis
(1954) this caste regulation was not as hard as in India. It was divided the
class of society into only 3. That is the Village Community, Nobility and
Religious Figures.
In the Karmawibhangga reliefs at Borobudur Temple, it is
seen that these three groups have different clothes patterns. For the general
village community, men wore the lower part of their body to look like pants and
were bare-chested, although they still wore cloth headbands, as did ordinary
women, wearing cloth from the waist that hung below the knees.
While the nobility group, equipped themselves with jewelry
and ornamental headgear, with a type of cloth that was better than most groups.
While for the Brahmins, wearing a village people’s cloth, only wears a long
cloth as a cover for the upper body and wears a better headgear.
We can find a discussion about Javanese ancient fashion in
the educational banner in the HISTORY OF JAVA MUSEUM, even though it uses a similar
name with the title of the book written by Raffles, but this Museum which is
established on Jl Parangtritis km 5.5 Bantul Yogyakarta Special Region, not
merely leaning his collection into the Raffles book.
The manager of the History of Java Museum itself hopes that
the museum, which is equipped with Augmented Reality, Diorama and even
facilitated with the Food Court and Open Stage, can be as comprehensive as the
Raffles book.
This museum presents its collection chronologically with a
fairly complete banner of information ranging from the history of Javanese
civilization to a time that was not too past.
Visiting this museum means exploring the history of the
island of Java with the support of the existing technology, quite pleasant to
trace the history of a region with a little feeling involved in it.
