Indonesian Dongeng, Quo Vadis?

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I remember, when I was a kid, my parent used to told me the dongeng (stories or fairy tales) when I was about to sleep. I recall some dongeng like a smart and cunning character, Si Kancil, or tales about Timun Mas and many others. These dongengs are close to my heart, as they are inspirational and keep me remember my parent love over the years.

Basically, dongengs are set of fictional stories, usually featuring romantic folkloric characters (i.e. Princes and damsels, giants, animals, witches, etc), which contains positive values of virtues, will, hopes and happiness. Sometime, these dongengs are also merged into local legends, where historical facts and tales are linked together as one narratives. The link and the story telling skill are essential to keep the audiences on believing that the dongeng was actually taken place in the real world. However, these dongengs almost never have superficial references to any actual places, persons, or events. The ‘once upon a time‘ and ‘… in far away place‘ words are commonly used in most dongengs.

I was thinking of start to learn telling dongengs to my son, just like what my parent has done for me in the past. Several weeks ago, I tried to find some books on Indonesian dongeng at one of local book store in Jakarta. I could not believe my eyes, I found nothing! The famous book store only sells imported stories for children. Therefore, I went to another book store, and another, and more others, but still could not find any. Yet, I found one book store selling what I was looking for. However, to my dissatisfaction, these books pressing quality was very ‘below standard’. I did not buy it.

I began to wonder, ‘Has the art of children story telling been lost from Indonesian culture?‘.

Then, I tried to search for some pages on dongengs from ‘the old faithful’ Internet search engines. I tried Google, Yahoo and went to several free blog sites. I have had no difficulties in finding fairy tales or stories for children topic in Internet, there are plenty of them scattering around the Internet. However, I found only a handful of sites that published Indonesian fairy tales, Indonesian stories for children, and dongeng (you can find the links to these stories at the end of this journal).

Again, I started to think, ‘Maybe, the art of children story telling is lost and stays dormant in Indonesian culture‘.

When I was hanging out with old my friends from my childhood, I asked whether they had told dongengs to their children. To my surprise, they had never done that! Then again I was amazed when they said that nowadays there are plenty of TV programs and Japanese manga for children, theirs had no need for story telling anymore.

At this stage, I concluded, ‘I believe that the art of children story telling has been lost from Indonesian culture‘.

What is this? We strive to improve our way of life day by day, to be a rich and modern society, yet we lost basic ideals in exchange. Where are our dongengs for children? Are we living in a so modern society, that no one pays any attention to these dongengs anymore?
I believe that dongeng are still important for our children development, both socially and mentally. I will try to preserve this culture or tradition, at least for my son. Now, instead of looking for Indonesian dongeng books, I am thinking about collecting, recording and sharing some of dongengs into this website. Any dongengs contributors for this purpose?

Link to Indonesian stories:
link #1, link #2, link #3, link #4, link #5