Hive Fest Diary, Day 3: Batu Caves: Guano & Ammo, Stone Ships & Golden Gods

Layers of Time at Batu Caves

On the third day of the Hive Fest in Kuala Lumpur in October, we hopped onto a coach and visited the Batu Caves. The Batu Caves are a limestone "mogote" (according to Wikipedia)... Apparently, a "mogote" is an

isolated, steep-sided residual hill in the tropics composed of either limestone, marble, or dolomite.

At the top of the Batu "mogote" there is an entrance to a series of caves and the hill that contains them has becme one of Malaysia’s most recognisable landmarks. Today the site is dominated by a towering golden statue of the resident idol, Lord Murugan, and 272 brightly painted concrete steps that lead up to the mouth of the cave inside which you will find a series of hindu temples. Lord Murugan, however, is a relative newcomer to the site.

The walls of the Batu Caves are about 400 million years old. They began as marine sediments deposited when the region lay beneath shallow tropical seas. Over time those layers compacted into limestone and the twenty-or-so caves were formed by acidic erosion from rain water or something like that.

For generations the caves were known to the indigenous Temuan people who lived in the surrounding forests. They used the outer caves as temporary shelters but did not establish permanent residence inside the caves.

Then, in 1878, an American naturalist called William Temple Hornaday discovered the cave complex and wrote about them. British colonial officials later mapped and surveyed the area, and so the Batu Caves came to be know to the outside world.

The Myth of the Ungrateful Son and the Stone Ship

The hill in which the Batu Caves are located is known locally as "Kapal Tanggang" or the ship of Si Tanggang, a legendary "ungrateful son."

According to the tale, Tanggang left his poor mother to seek fortune overseas and sailed back years later as a wealthy merchant. Ashamed of his humble origins, he refused to acknowledge his mother when she approached his ship. In grief she cursed him, and his ship was turned into stone. The limestone outcrop is believed to be the petrified remains of the vessel, though I don't know whether the legend was created to explain the form of the outcrop, or whether it already existed and was applied to it by some local wiseacre.

The cave complex itself is known in Tamil as "Pathu malai" but "pathu" is not related to the modern term "batu" - Pathu malai literally means "ten hills" and refers to the cave complex itself.

Later, it seems, the British administrators give the complex its modern name, "Batu Caves" from the Malay, “gua batu”, meaning “stone cave.”

Batu Bats

Large colonies of bats occupied the Batu caves, leaving thick deposits of guano across the cave floors. In the nineteenth century guano was a valuable agricultural fertiliser, rich in nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. These nutrients were essential for maintaining soil fertility, particularly in tropical farming areas where heavy rainfall washed nutrients from the ground. Chinese coolies harvested and transported the guano for use on nearby plantations and farms. Batu Caves thus became part of a local agricultural economy, supplying fertiliser rather than attracting pilgrims. For several years, the caves were worked spaces rather than spiritual ones.

The Advent of Lord Murugan

The transformation into a Hindu sanctuary began in the early 1890s and a set of wooden steps up to the caves were built in 1920.

The project was initiated by a Tamil trader by the name of K. Thamboosamy Pillai. He thought the form of the main cave entrance resembled the shape of the Hindu deity Lord Murugan's ceremonial spear, or "vel," so he chose the spot as the ideal location to worship the deity.

Lord Murugan is a Tamil Hindu deity linked with youth, warfare, and spiritual victory, the son of Shiva and the brother of Ganesha. According to tradition, the goddess Parvati gave him the vel so he could defeat destructive forces and restore balance. Seeing symbolic meaning in the cave’s natural form, Pillai installed a statue of Murugan inside the main chamber in 1891, dedicating the space to the worship of Lord Murugan.

Thaipusam Festivals

The first Thaipusam festival followed in 1892. Thaipusam takes place during the full moon in January or February and commemorates Murugan receiving the vel. Some devotees carry a kavadi, a wooden or metal framework decorated with flowers and images of the deity, borne on the shoulders or attached to the body as a ritual burden. In more extreme practices, participants pierce their skin, cheeks, or tongues with hooks or skewers as part of acts of physical discipline and sacrifice, as I found when when they were played over and over again on the tv screens of our tour coach as we waited in the temple complex coach park for the stragglers to return from their exploration of the temple complex.

Batu Caves: A Japanese Ammunition Dump

During the Second World War another layer was added to Batu’s history. Under the Japanese occupation of Malaya, sections of the cave system were used for the (manufacture and ?) storage of ammunition. Allied prisoners of war were used as slave labour to "fit out" the caves for ammo storage. Here's a photo of some of the graffiti they left on the cave walls:

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205208616

It is difficult to find any Japanese or Malay records of this period, but after the war, photographs document Japanese prisoners clearing shell casings from the caves under British supervision.

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205208611

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205208613

Whether Hindu worship was formally suspended during the occupation is unclear; no surviving records confirm an official ban, though pilgrimage activity was likely disrupted while the caves were in military use.

The Batu Caves Massacre, 1942

What I did manage to find out, however, was that the Batu Caves became linked to one of Malaya’s darkest resistance episodes. On 1 September 1942, a secret meeting of leaders from the Malayan Communist underground took place either in the caves or in the forested area nearby. Acting on intelligence from a double agent, Japanese forces surrounded the gathering and launched a dawn ambush. Dozens of resistance members were killed or captured in what became known locally as the “Batu Caves Massacre,” which pretty much destroyed organized resistance leadership in the area.

The Batu Caves Today

As pilgrimage to the shrine increased, access improved. The wooden steps were replaced by the concrete staircase in 1940, which is still in use today, though it recently had a fresh paint job, turning the steps into all the colours of the rainbow. The massive golden Murugan statue at the foot of the hill was erected in 2006, and has become the dominant symbol of the site today.

Cheers!

DH
#InspiredFocus

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