Kasepuhan palace, Cirebon

The Kasepuhan palace stands at Cirebon, a north-coast city sitting exactly at the join between Javanese and Sundanese speech. The everyday language of the city, called Cirebonan or Cirebon Javanese, carries elements of both, and its standing as a language of its own or as a Javanese dialect is disputed in the same way as in the Osing case.

That condition of transition is legible in the court's repertoire. Its dress, its buildings, its gamelan and its batik motifs carry Javanese, Sundanese, Chinese and Islamic elements in an arrangement that cannot be separated into distinct layers. The Cirebon court is therefore one of the places where the assumption that Indonesian culture is composed of sharply bounded ethnic groups is most plainly seen to be inadequate.

Panjang Jimat is the observance of the Prophet's birth held on the night of 12 Rabiulawal, with a procession of heirloom objects — above all the large dish that names the ceremony — from the court to the Great Mosque, and the distribution of rice to those present. It is held jointly by several Cirebon courts, which since the divisions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries number more than one.

Megamendung, the tiered cloud motif that marks Cirebon batik, comes from a Chinese visual repertoire that entered through trade and through marriage in court circles. The motif is today used far beyond Cirebon and far beyond batik, including on printed goods and official emblems, and that use bears on the question of motif use recorded in the batik entry.