Revitalization and Transformation of the Ruwatan Ageung Gunung Manglayang Tradition in Cibiru Wetan Village, 2019–2024

Abstract

This article examines the revitalization and transformation of the Ruwatan Ageung Gunung Manglayang tradition in Cibiru Wetan Village, Bandung Regency, through 31 October 2024. It focuses on accounts of an earlier interruption and the documented public events from 2019 onward, changes in its performance, the involvement of various actors, and the continuity of its values amid growing tourism, ecological pressures, and negotiation between Sundanese custom and Islamic understandings. The study uses the historical method, encompassing heuristics, external and internal source criticism, interpretation, and historiography. Primary sources consist of interviews with customary figures, the kuncen, residents, a religious leader, and village officials, field documentation, audiovisual sources, and institutional publications. The documentary evidence available by the cutoff is compared with books and articles published by that date; later interviews and publications require temporal verification. The findings distinguish an older Ruwatan Leuweung tradition from public activities described around 2019–2024; a continuous hiatus in 2005–2018 is not established by the surviving contemporary evidence. Perhutani's 2020 record documents participation by forest managers, LMDH, village representatives, cultural groups, customary figures, and residents; later testimony describes further mediation by a religious leader. Accounts of the ritual describe the procession, sanduk-sanduk, rajah, kidung, pamali, ngarekes, sajen, and balakecrakan, alongside Islamic prayers, shared consumption of the meat, conservation activities, and a public cultural program. The timing of individual adaptations cannot be fixed from the available records. The study's contribution is a source-critical chronology of the documented events and an analysis of how religious, ecological, and institutional meanings intersect, subject to verification of the retrospective testimony.