History of Wayang Kulit

The history of Indonesian Shadow puppetry, Wayang Kulit, goes back a very long way – to the beginnings of the 1st Century A.D., when Hinduism first arrived in the islands of Indonesia and Malaysia. It was at this time that traditional Indian Hindu stories met a culture with a rich tradition of storytelling, which may have already involved the use of puppets. The blending of pupperty, storytelling and Hindi mythology merged in one of the oldest examples of the art of performance-based storytelling in human history.

Over the course of the last two millenia, numerous shifts have taken place in the religion and culture of Indonesia. The growth of Hinduism was followed by the introduction of Islam which, unlike Hinduism, prohibits the representation of a god in human form. This has led to many conflicts in the art form which have played themselves out, over and over again in the history of Indonesia, over the last 800 to 1000 years. Wayang Kulit remains a practiced art form on in the island regions of Java and Bali. Both of these regions have developed their own distinct styles of the art.