The Legend of Gunung Geulis

Once lived a couple who had married for a long time but they had yet to be blessed with children. Wanting a child so bad, the husband prayed and prayed to God to bestow upon him a child.

His prayer seemed to be answered when one night he had a dream in which he was instructed to go to a place east of their village, which was a mountain, to meditate. When morning broke, he was so excited that he told his wife the dream that he had the night before. She permitted him to fulfill the instruction of the dream. He then started his journey to seek the mountain where he would meditate and pray to God.

According to the instruction of the dream, he found the mountain and began to do a forty night-and-day meditation. At the fortieth night, a very beautiful princess came to him. She was so beautiful that he fell in love and forgot his initial plan. He ended up married the princess who was actually a false appearance of a large snake that dwelt in the mountain.

Months after her husband’s leaving, the wife began to worry and went herself to look for him. She found him in the embrace of the huge snake, which surprised her and made her worried for her husband’s safety. Caring for her husband, she sought for a way to save him. She found out the way to catch the snake, which was by entrapping it. The snake was eventually trapped. It was so huge that it had to be dragged by a horse down the mountain. At a place, which now is known as Cikuda, the horse was tied to a tree.

            When the husband saw that his wife was about to kill the snake, he readily prevented her to do so, for in his eyes it was not a snake, but a beautiful princess whom he was in now in love. To her disgust, she killed both the snake and her husband, who had forgotten that she was his wife.

A week later the body of the snake and the husband disappeared. Legend has it that the body of the husband was turned into a snake which lives in the mountain. The mountain, which is located in Jatinangor, a region in Sumedang Residence, is now called Gunung Geulis (Mountain of beauty) after the snake that appeared as beautiful princess.


Dikisah ulang oleh Taufik Ampera.