Pusat Tasek Pauh Janggi | sialjambalang

According to Malay folklore, there is, in the ocean, a great whirlpool known as the 'Pusat Tasek' or the 'navel of the seas'. At the centre of this whirlpool, there is an enormous tree known as the Pokok Pauh Janggi. ‘Pauh’ is the Malay name for the mango and it is likely that the fabled 'Pokok Pauh Janggi' is a mango tree and not a coco de mer palm as contemporary nomenclature in the region would suggest. The name janggi probably derives from the Toroja word 'djjandji' which like the Malay 'buah' means 'fruit'. Antonio Pigafetta, a mariner on Ferdinand Magellan's pioneering voyage of ‘discovery’ (1518-1522), mentions local tales of an island surrounded by whirlpools, somewhere north or south of Java Major (Borneo), called Puzathaer (Pusat air?) on which there was a very large tree in whose branches perch enormous birds called Garuda. The fruit of this tree was said to be 'larger than a cucumber.' This size comparison, which must surely be with the in terms of the chayote cucumber from the Americas, suggests that the tree concerned was, indeed, a mango tree rather than, as some suggest, a coco de mer. The location of this Pusat Tasek is however variable according to the source of the myth one follows. Pertinent to the present work, that was shot during the course of a performance in Lumut, according to local lore associated with the founding of the present Perak dynasty with the installation of Sultan Mudzaffar Shah I, the Pusat Tasek Pauh Janggi is located somewhere off the mouth of the Perak river.