The Mountain of Oedipus Legend. Kind of like a title of a corny Hollywood movie or a fantasy novel that doesn’t get approved for publication. Surprisingly enough, however, given the context of the (admittedly wacky) story well known amongst Indonesians about how it originated, it may be one title that is suitable enough when one want to refer the famous Tangkuban Perahu Mountain. You’ll see the reason why if you continue to read this post more.

This post is the first part of a series of posts in this blog about various famous tourism spots in, or around, Bandung.

Some of you might ask what my intention is in calling Tangkuban Perahu Mountain the “Mountain of Oedipus Legend.” The thing is, there’s a very famous legend about how the Mountain was first formed. It’s a story obviously not rooted in reality, but interesting nevertheless (it’s going to be while, but bear with me a bit.) Once upon a time, there’s a couple very much in love, a relationship that resulted in a son named Sangkuriang. Due to some (decidedly supernatural) circumstances, however, the father was forced to stay in the form of a dog, a dog that Sangkuriang made as his pet (don’t ask me what those circumstances are; I have no idea, hahaha.)

One day, Sangkuriang’s mother, Dayang Sumbi, inexplicably craved to eat a deer meat. Sangkuriang, who loved his mother more than anything else in the world, went hunting for a deer. Alas, he could not find one no matter how hard he tried. Pushed by his desire to prove his worth to his mother and to make her happy, Sangkuriang decided to kill his pet dog and tried to present the meat he gathered from it as a deer meat to his mother. Dayang Sumbi, realizing that Sangkuriang has killed the dog, was very furious and hit Sangkuriang extremely hard on his head it left him a visible scar. Shocked by what his mother did to him, Sangkuriang escaped from her and went off to someplace far away. Both of them then got separated for many, many years.

Sangkuriang then grew into a fine and handsome young lad, while Dayang Sumbi (due to yet some unexplainable circumstances) still looked as beautiful and as young as ever. Sangkuriang, who did not recognize Dayang Sumbi (a good hit on the head tends to create memory problems, after all) fell in love with her, and Dayang Sumbi, who also did not recognize Sangkuriang after he has grown into a man, fell in love with him as well (having to endure your own kid murdered your own husband in the form of a dog tends to create psychological issues, you know.) Fortunately, before any incest accident could truly happen, Dayang Sumbi noticed and recognized the scar on Sangkuriang’s forehead and immediately realized that the fine young man was in fact his own long lost son. Naturally, she then rejected his further advances, but Sangkuriang, the man in love, persisted.

Horrified by the prospects of having to marry her own son, Dayang Sumbi then made a proposal. She said that she would accept Sangkuriang’s forbidden love for her with one condition: he must build her a humongous ship with the size of a mountain in just one night so that his love for her could be proved. Sangkuriang then proceeded to work on her request, and almost managed to complete his work right before the night was over (if you have yet to notice, logic has already walked out from the room quite a while ago, hahaha.) Scared of what would happen if he succeeded, Dayang Sumbi then awoke the roosters and tricked them into thinking that dawn has arrived and thus they crowed. Infuriated by the sound of the roosters and thinking that he had failed to complete what he was asked to do, he kicked the almost-complete gigantic boat, flipping it upside down. The flipped boat then somehow transformed into a huge mountain, and thus the Tangkuban Perahu Mountain was born (the mountain is indeed shaped like an upside-down boat.)

The End (and yes they didn’t tell us what happened next to Sangkuriang and Dayang Sumbi, since no one seemed to care about them after the mountain was born, hahaha)

I will detail the attractions available in Tangkuban Perahu on another post.

Tags: Bandung Tourism Spots, Mountain, Tangkuban Perahu, Tangkuban Perahu Bandung
Categories: Bandung Tourism Spots

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 4:46 AM and is filed under Bandung Tourism Spots. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.