Page 27 - EBOOK_Jamu: The Ancient Indonesian Art of Herbal Healing

result was a work of 12 volumes consisting of 725 cantos. It is believed that

Serat centhini was compiled as a deliberate act of defiance by the Sunan’s son
against his father, who was extremely devout and who considered anything other
than religious works unacceptable. According to the Javanese scholar Tim
Behrend, the explicit nature of some of the material may have been calculated to
enrage and offend the old man.

A MULTI-CULTURAL EXCHANGE

Dutch influence is evident in colonial-era architecture, furniture, some food and even some words in
the national language, Bahasa Indonesia. The cultural exchange was a two-way affair, judging by the
number of books and papers on Indonesia that found their way to libraries and publishers in Europe.
In the early 1900s, Mrs Jans Kloppenburg-Versteegh, a Dutch woman living in Semarang at
the turn of that century, wrote De Platen-Atlas (The Pictorial Atlas) and Indische Planten en haar
Geneeskracht (Indigenous Plants and their Healing Powers), having collected and tested hundreds
of herbal medicine recipes before putting them into print.

Photo courtesy of vilan van de loo (Koppenburg collection, leiden)

Born in 1862 at Soekamangli, a large coffee plantation in the district of Weliri, the young girl
was educated at a boarding school in Batavia (Jakarta), until the family fortunes declined and she had
to return home to help her mother. Jans’ mother, Albertina van Spreeuwenburg, looked after the
health of all the people living in and around the plantation; as the local people said: “The nonja besar
(lady) knew everything about medicinal herbs.”
In his memoirs, Fred Kloppenburg, Albertina’s grandson, writes of his grandmother: “Outside
the cultivated gardens … everything grew wild, but grandma seemed to recognize everything. During
these walks, grandma would often talk with the Javanese village elders. She would ask them how the
population was doing, were there any health problems, what were they doing about it. Often she
would give advice to these people, showing them what herbs (weeds to us) were beneficial and how
to prepare the medication.”
It was in this environment, at her mother’s side, that the young Jans became familiar with the
local plants and their healing powers; even after her own marriage to Herman Kloppenburg in 1883,
she pursued her interest in herbs. She became the president of a local healthcare society in Semarang,
and received patients, and, when necessary, visited them at home. Her name and her reputation as a