A town named for bitter fruit

The decoy army

The rebel was Jayakatwang, ruler of Kediri and a vassal of King Kertanagara. Most of the king's forces were away fighting in Sumatra, and a secret letter urged Jayakatwang to strike: there was only one tiger, and it had no teeth. His first army rampaged through the northern farmland under white and red banners, and Kertanagara sent his son-in-law Raden Wijaya to meet it. Wijaya won, and the enemy fled.

That army was the lure. A much larger one was moving through the ravines and valleys of the southern highlands with orders to carry no flags and make no noise, and it reached the capital unnoticed. The king was drunk, in the middle of a ritual that involved wine, when the attackers poured over the walls. He was killed, and the city was looted and emptied.

Wijaya's retreat

Wijaya, still celebrating his victory, retreated into the northeastern rainforest. He was too weak to march on Kediri, and Jayakatwang could not leave his own capital without risking his shaky grip on the throne. Jayakatwang bought him off with a plot of land where he could build a city: an overgrown jungle in the Tarik forest.

A town named bitter

Wijaya's men found one tree growing there in great numbers, the maja, whose pear-shaped fruit has a woody rind that needs a hammer to crack and an orange pulp that smells of roses and tastes a little like marmalade. A hungry man cutting the forest bit into one, found it bitter, and threw away everything he had picked. Pahit means bitter in Javanese, and the place became Maja Pahit.