Henri Nurcahyo, a Panji cultural activist from the East Java Art and Culture Community, poses at the Museum of Panji in Malang, East Java, in 2019. - JP
JAKARTA (The Jakarta Post/Asia News Network): The International Panji Festival is set to return this year in October with preparations currently ongoing by the Education, Culture, Research and Technology Ministry and the East Java administration.
Similar to previous iterations, the festival will involve participants from Asean countries. Wardiman Djojonegoro, the festival’s programme director, said the festival would be held as an effort to preserve cultural heritage, as well as to tighten connections in the region.
“We need an effort to preserve Panji as literature and cultural heritage, especially for the younger generations.”
As part of the festival, events will be held in Yogyakarta; Surakarta in Central Java; and Kediri, Surabaya, and Malang in East Java.
The Panji tales were recognised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) as a Memory of the World (MoW) in October 2017.
The Panji tales have been passed down through the generations in the form of spoken literature. They tell a story about the heroic acts of Raden Inu Kertapati, also known as Panji Asmarabangun, and his love for Dewi Sekartaji, also known as Galuh Candrakirana.
The stories have many versions and have spread throughout Asean countries, such as Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and the Philippines.
