ABSTRACT
The name Parahyangan for the highlands of West Java dates back to the early-colonial era. The name, commonly referred to as Priangan, has been attributed different meanings. The most common one refers to this remote and mountainous region as a heavenly abode, where the land reaches into the sky. The vast wilderness was believed to have been more settled and inhabited once upon a time. According to one interpretation, the lands in the region had become wild and uninhabited. This recalled the social disruption following the fall and eventual destruction of the pre-colonial Hindu state of Pacacaran. Little is known about the history, organization and scale of the centre which must have been somewhere close to present-day Bogor. Archaeological finds from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries provide evidence of its Hinduization but not of the agrarian order underlying it. De Haan (I 1910: 23) reported on the remains of this civilization at the start of the twentieth century. Prabu Siliwangi, the last ruler of the fallen kingdom, continued to fight against Islamized rivals operating from harbour principalities on the north coast. He was finally defeated in the second half of the fifteenth century by attacks on his territory from the harbour principalities of Banten and Cirebon (Ten Dam 1957; see also Ekadjati 1980).
