Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/310

288 in classic Kawi, preserve acquaintance with the literary language among the common people. There is a form of wayang-wayang half-way between this puppet-show and the real drama, in which the actors themselves are visible, wearing distorted masks; but the plays are of modern times, in the common dialect, and the manager often improvises his lines and scenes as the play progresses. With these popular dramas there rank the performances of the graceful bedaya, or dancing-girl, whose tightly folded sarong, floating scarf-ends, measured steps, outward sweep of the hand, and charming play of arm and wrist recall the Japanese maiko. Although the winsome bedaya is sculptured on Boro Boeder's recording walls, there is nothing there to indicate the puppet-play, nor anything from which it might have evolved, although from other records ethnologists claim that the Javanese possessed this dramatic art when the Hindus came. A love of the drama in the form of the topeng and the wayang-wagang was so ingrained in the tastes and fixed in the customs of the people that the Mohammedan conquerors could not suppress those popular amusements, and were finally content to modify them in trifling points. The Dutch were also wise enough never to interfere with these harmless pleasures of the people, the greatest distraction and delight of these sensitive, emotional, innately esthetic and refined Javanese, who will sit through shadow-plays for half the night, and are moved to frenzy and tears by the martial and romantic exploits of their national heroes.

All of society,—the two hundred of Djokja's superior circle,—European and native together, gathered at