The Last Raja of Karangasem

PLACES & SPACES | ROOMS & GARDENS | CABANA MAGAZINE

Amid the turbulence and great changes of his life, flowing water remained a constant obsession for the last Raja of Karangasem in eastern Bali. Adi Hong-Tan visits the ruler's ancient water gardens at dawn, discovering a once-private paradise where the last Raja was both sovereign and divine. 

BY ADI HONG-TAN | ROOMS & GARDENS | 13 SEPTEMBER 2024

More than follies, the water gardens of the last Raja of Karangasem in eastern Bali are each a microcosm of the cosmos. Motifs of the sea and mountain recur. Such gardens were an expression of the Javano-Balinese ideal of kingship. Here, the ruler became the cakrawartin of Hindu-Buddhist cosmology: a god-king at the centre of the universe.

The last Raja led an eventful life of drama and contrast. Born in 1887, prior to the final Dutch conquest of Bali, he reigned from 1908 until 1950 under the colonial regime as Anak Agung Agung Anglurah Ketut Karangasem. He lived through two World Wars, dying in 1966 in post-revolutionary Indonesia. His lifespan witnessed an unlikely leap from the age of warrior-kings to the dawn of mass tourism.

My family’s story became intertwined with that of the Raja soon after our connection with Bali began in the early 1950s. My Jakarta-born great-uncle, Karel Gandanegara, and his Dutch wife, Emilie Langlois van den Bergh, had recently acquired a beach bungalow on the island. They befriended the Raja’s son, Bali’s first university-trained medical doctor, Anak Agung Agung Made Djelantik, whose wife, Astri, was the daughter of the celebrated Dutch modernist and designer, Piet Zwart. The two mixed-race couples – art lovers with much in common – became the closest of friends. In this charmed context, my family got to know the elderly Raja.

Amid the great changes of his life, flowing water remained one of the Raja’s constant obsessions. While water gardens formed part of an ancient court tradition, he reimagined them anew. According to Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias, who met the Raja in the 1930s, he was ‘a man of high Balinese education’. Concurrently, he was intrigued by and receptive to new ideas. The design influence of foreign cultures is much in evidence at his many water gardens.

Among the earliest is the modest pond surrounding his private pavilion at the 18th-century Puri Gede, the old palace of Amlapura, royal capital of Karangasem. The pavilion’s mix of Chinese and Dutch elements contrasts with courtyard upon courtyard of Balinese classicism in orange-hued bricks. At the end of the 19th century, the preceding Raja commissioned a new palace, the Puri Agung.

Here, the last Raja reconceived his pond – magnified many times over as a gigantic, rectangular telaga or lake. It lies at the heart of the new palace. To its west are the Raja’s private quarters with his love of decorative eclecticism, while those of his wives lie to the north. In the east is a Chinese-style hall, where family meetings take place today. A floating pavilion, called the gili or island, graces the middle of the lake.

Away from court ritual, the Raja commissioned so-called ‘water castles’. Enclosed pleasure gardens, water features even more prominently here. The largest of these is Taman Ujung, inaugurated in 1921. Situated between the sea and a hill, it is a ring of concentric quadrangles of water, centred upon his floating pavilion. Like a mandala, its outer limits merge into a landscape of rice fields. Here lay the choicest of the monarch’s productive land, pinned upon his meditating person.

The most recent of the water castles is Tirta Gangga, built in 1948. It was intended to enhance and beautify a sacred spring. Each minute, 10,000 litres of water feeds its pools before flowing onto surrounding villages and beyond. Split over three tiers of pools, demonic statues guard the lowest level. One step up are pools dedicated to human endeavour, just below those of the gods. Shaded by an adjoining forested hill, the Raja’s own pool lies on top. Still above is his hermitage under a sacred banyan tree.

The Raja granted Made and Astri Djelantik their own enclosure at the water castle – its final addition in the 1950s and the young couple’s hideout. They would invite our family for weekends in Karangasem, visiting the Puri Agung and staying at Tirta Gangga. Decades and generations later, our two families still continue these sojourns. Today, however, the royal water gardens are crowded, public attractions.

Tucked inside are the private quarters of the Karangasem dynasty. At dawn, I walk over for a dip in the Raja’s pool. The cool freshwater is crisp as a blade. Smelling morning dew, I gaze up the forested hermitage above me. Before tourists arrive, before the noonday sun, close your eyes. Suspended in time, you might just catch a glimpse of the warrior-sovereign, meditating upon the threshold of godhood.