From Distant Tales.

From Distant Tales: Archaeology and Ethnohistory

in the Highlands of Sumatra .

Edited by

Dominik Bonatz, John Miksic, J. David Neidel, Mai Lin Tjoa~Bonatz

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Fro~ Di:iil&l\t T~l~s: Archaeology an51 ~thnohlst~ry in the Highlands of Sumatra, Edited by Dommtk Honatz, J<:1hn M1ksic, J. David Neidel, Mai Lin Tjoa~Bonatz

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of lllustrations .. , ..... ,, ....... , .... ,,,,,,,, .. ,,,, .. ,,,,, ..... ,,,,, ........ ,: .. ,, .. ,, ... ,,, ...... viii List of Tables,,,,, ......... , ............................. ,,, ...... , ........ , ...... , .......... , ........... xiv

Introduction,., ...... , ..... , .... , ........................ , ............... , ........ , ........................ , I

Part I: General

The Dawn of Humanity in Sumatra: Arrival and Dispersal from the Human Remains Perspective .................................................... 28 Harry Widianto

The Neolithic in the Highlands of Sumatra: Problems of Definition ......... 43 Dominik Bonatz

Highland-Lowland Connections in Jambi, South Sumatra, and West Sumatra, 11'" to 14'" Centuries .................................................................. 75 John Miksic

Part II: Northern Sumatra

Is there a Balak History? ................. : ....................................................... I 04 Anthony Reid

Ceramics, Cloth, Iron and Salt: Coastal Hinterland Interaction in the Karo Region of Northeastern Sumatra ........................................... 120 E. Edwards McKinnon

Ethnicity and Colonization in Northeast Sumatra: Bataks and Malays ... 143 Daniel Perret

The Role ofl,ocal Informants in the Making of the Image of"Cannibalism" in North Sumatra ........................................................ 169 Masashi Hirosue

vi Table nt" (.:(1ntcnt!il

Part Ill: C•ntral Sumatra

The Megaliths and the Pottery: Studying the Early Material Culture of Highland Jambi ... ., .............................................................................. 196 Mai Lin Tjoa-Bonatz

Adityavam1an's Highland Kingdom ....................................................... 229 Hermann Kulke

Tamho Kerinci C. W. Watson

. ............. ........................................................... 253

Piagam Serampas: Malay Documents from Highland Jam bi .................. 272 Annabel Teh Gallop

Settlement Histories ofSerampas: Multiple Sources, Contlicting Data, and the Proble1n of Historical Reconstruction ............................... , ......... 323 J. David Neidel

Social Structure and Mobility in Historical Perspective: Sungai Tcnang in Highland Jambi ............. : ...................................................................... 347 Heinzpeter Znoj

Kerinci's Living Past: Stones, Tales, and Tigers .................................... 367 Jet Bakels

Kerinci ·rraditional Architecture ........... __ ................................................ 383 Reimar Schcfold

The Meaning of Rainforest for the Existence ofSuku Anak Dalam in Jambi ................................................................................................... 402 Reino Handini

Part IV: Southern Sumatra

Mounds, Tombs, and Tales: Archaeology and Oral Tradition in the South Sumatra Highlands .............................................................. 416 Dominique Guillaud, Hubert Foresticr, Truman Simanjuntak

vii

Southeast Sumatra in Protohistoric and Srivijaya Times: Upstream· Downstream Relations and the Settlement of the Pencplain ................... 434 Pierre· Yves Manguin

From Sukit Scguntang to Lahat: Challenges Facing Gumay Origin Ritual Practice in the Highlands of South Sumatra ................................ 48S Minako Sakai

. . 501 Contributors ............................................................................................ .

Index .................................................. . ........................................... 504

Ii

IS THERE A BATAK HISTORY?

ANTHONY REID1

Introduction

The 6-8 million Bataks of northern Sumalra arc one of Indonesia's most important and intriguing groups (fig. 5-1 ). Their anceslors have clearly been on Sumatra for thousands of years. They have attracted a large number of studies of religion and missiology, and a few good ethnological and language studies. Yet they remain a people without history. It seems a classic case of Eric Wolrs argument, in EUrope and the Pet•ple without History, that the neglect of the history of such stateless people was not just an absence but a distortion (Wolf 1982: 3). Ethnographers and colonial officials of the 19'' and 20"' centuries created such categories as ·highlanders, primitives, proto-Malays, and indeed Bataks as ethnic categories, and assumed their unchanging isolation from the currents of world history. But the Bataks, who were forcibly brought into the scholarly world's consciousness at that stage were, to follow Wolrs argument, already wholly transformed by international influences -their "isolation" was itself a historical process.

Ashis Nandy makes the more specific charge that it is the statelessness of precmodern non-Europeans that has denied them a history. In his view, my profession - modem secular history !IS practised in the academies - is inextricably linked as.a mode ofana!ysis with the modem nation state and its rise. History traces the lineage and legitimacy of modern states, and distorts our understanding of the past by doing so (Nandy 1995).

Highland Sumatra does appear to support his case. Until the 20'' century, the great mojority of Sumatra's people, and its complex, irrigated· rice-growing, literate societies, were in the highlands. Yet these are never mentioned in the historical record. Virtually the only way in which Sumatra appears in histories of either Indonesia or the wider world before 1500 (except"' a visiting-point of travellers like Marco Polo) is through

1 This paper was initially delivered as a Public Lecture in the Museen in Dnhle1n, Groller Vortragsraum, Berlin, 22 September 21)06.

Anthony Reid I 05

Srivijaya, thought to have ruled a large area from its scat in Palembang between the 7"' and the IO" centuries. Concrete evidence on the ground about this stale and its people is as scarce as what we know about highland societies in a similar period. Yet because Srivijaya appeared as a state in Chinese and Arab records, it alone is celebrated in the history books.

• Likoty 1illl!:li Of lr'tdi$ri inlh.11!tr"tee p!'t•1500

Fig. 5-1: Sites of Indian (pre-Islamic) influence in northern Sumatra and modern ethnic subdivisions of the Batak homeland

Of course I could not resist testing the coupling of"Batak" with "History" in a Google search. Sure enough, the p0pular items at the top of the Googling process revealed no books or articles on lhe subject. but rather items such as a new keep-fit training apparatus called a Balak (and which seems already to have a history), as well as a village in Bulgaria. "forever 11Ssociated with the April Uprising of 1876, one ofthe,most heroic events in Bulgarian history." The Batak of Bulgaria have a history, it appears, but not those ofSumatra.

.: .•. ,

'I

!06 ls there a llatak I listory'I

Historiography

The curious absence of Batak history does indeed apply chiefly to the history as written by academics, as Ashis Nandy might have expected. To my knowledge only three professional historians have written dissertations in English on Balak history. All wrote exclusively about the 20'" century, and all regrettably remain unpublished in the original English (Castles 1972; van Langenberg 1976; Hirosue 1988). In French there was a unique attempt by Daniel Perret (1985) al a more comprehensive history, albeit of the North Sumatra region rather than Bataks per se. Fortunately church or mission history is better served, especially in German. The publications here include one extremely detailed history of the early Karo mission written by anthropologist Rita Kipp ( 1990).

The general dearth of histories of any highland people in Indonesia is reflected in the national histories of Indonesia and regional histories of Southeast Asia. The more detailed studies may report the Christianization and incorporation of highlanders into the colonial state at the end .of the I 9"' century, but nothing before that and almost nothing after. One of the recent histories of Indonesia, that of Jean Taylor (2003), has no mention whatever of Bataks.

Bataks themselves have written history, though to a very limited extent in the professional academy. The favourite topic of popular writers was, as in many other regions, the official link between minority ethnicities and lhe nationalist narrative - a "nation~! herou sanctioned by the process inaugurated by Sukarno in 1959. Singamangaraja XII (1845-1907) was surprisingly the first Sumatran to make this list, in 1961, after a campaign throughout the 1950s by some of his descendents and a.ffines to make him the pre-eminent Batak hero. He was well-placed as not only the last major resistance leader against the Dutch, hunted down and killed in 1907, but also the scion of the dynasty to approach nearest to sacred king-like status. albeit most respected by the Sumha group of Toba Balak lineages spread around his western-lake redoubt of Bakkara.

The first hagiography was published in 1951 by Adniel Lumban Tobing (1957), who was also the leading figure in a festive reburial of his remains and the erection of a statue in his honour in the Toba Balak heartland, at Tarutung, in 1953. Further writing in this genre was stimulated by the success of this campaign when Singamangaraja XII was declared an Indonesian national hero in 1961, and a huge statue (fig, 5-2) erected in his honour in Medan (marking the Toba Bataks • definitive arrival in the regional capital). Mohammad Said was one of the pi<Jnccrs to build on Tobing's slim work by marrying Dutch sources with looal legend (Said

Anthony Reid 107

1961). Among a plethora of speculative works which followed. the book of Bonar Sidjabat (1982) of the Jakarta Theological Seminary sought to establish Singamangaraja's credentials in the Indonesian amdemic.world.

The increasing role of Singamangaraja XII in Toba Batak popular self­identification was based largely on this success on elevating him lo the official national pantheon, and therefore into the national textbooks read by all Indonesian school-children. For later generations educated in Indonesian national schools, he becan10 the sole Batak historical figure. His lineage, although historically shadowy before the 19'" century, could also represent a sin1ulacrum of a state, a key for later Batak intellectuals to try to read the "state" back into their earlier history. ·

Fig. 5-2; Statu• of Si Singamagaraja XII in Medan, inaugurated by President Sukarno in 1961. Tho Aceh-intluenced !lag of the dyn•sty is depicted on the pedestal

108 Is there a Satak 11 istory?

In the 1957 reissue of his original 1951 book, Tobing (1957: 14-19) put a version of this legendary lineage into print, beginning with the miraculous virgin binh of the progenitor of the line. The imaginative engineer Mangaradja Parlindungan took speculation of this kind to new height• in his 1965 book, Tuank" Rao, of which more later. Batara Sangti, a Toba Balak government official (wedana) who had accepted the task in the 1950s of writing an "official" history of Singamangaraja XII, finally produced his book well after Parlindungan's, in 1977. This was the first book to call itself a "Balak History", and was hailed by its publisher with the words, \\until this time it can be said that there was no book of~Batak: History' of a general 3Jld conlplete kind~ which was on a level with the histories of the kingdoms that formerly existed in the northern Sumatra region and/or Indonesia" (Batara Sangti 1977: 3). He took the portentous step of providing dates fot these shadowy figures, by the simple device of allowing thirty years berween the birth dates of each of the twelve. By this means "history" was pushed back to the imagined birth of the first Singamangaraja in 1515 (Batara Sangti 1977: 22). _

The most interesting figures in linking Batak sources with international history-writing are two Batak intellectuals to whon1 we must return. Mangaradja Parlindungan ( 1965) has puzzled both historians and the Batak identity industry ever since his remarkable book Tuanku Rao was published in 1965. He reconstructed Balak history based on evidence he claimed his father had assembled with the Dutch colonial official and Batak .. kenner C. Poortman~ reconciling oral and written Balak sources, many of them mysteriously Jost to all other researchers, _with the data available in Acehnese and Dutch writing (Mangaradja Parlindungan 1965: 424-435 and passim). Secondly, there was the poet Sitar Situmorang, who began to take an interest in Batak history when in a kind of exile in Holland in the 1970s and '80s. His first writings on Singamangaraja XII were compatible with the tradition of Dutch ethnography, and to ensure the association did not sully his credentials. he never mentioned Parlindungan or Poortman in his work (Sitor Situmorang 1987: 221-233). After his return to Indonesia, however, he developed the idea of"the institution ofSingamangaradja as the principle ofToba unity." He sought to qualify Lance Castles' reading of "statelessness" (Castles 1979) through the notion of the ritual community or bius, 150 of which were individually sovereign throughout the Toba Batak territory, yet formed a kind of federative unity through the Singamangaradja. He made a bold use of Batak mythology to construct what he ca.llt;d uThe socio-political history of an institution from the 13'" to 20'" centuries." (Sitar Situmorang 2004: 20).

Anthony Reid 109

"Batak" in the Historical Record

Historians arc anxious to find voices that speak directly from •vanished past rather than through the medium of multiple generations of memory. Inscriptions and archaeological evidence from within, and the infonnation of travellers from without, arc their preferred keys to the proto-historic past. There is no doubt that we are at a terrible disadvantage in this respect with highland peoples such as those in Sumatra. Tome Pires (1944: 16$), our most reliable recorder of all manner of states and societies in I 61

h century Southeast Asia) rnerely records uThere are many heathen kings in the island of Sumatra and many lords in the hinterland, but, as they arc not trading people and known) no mention is made of them."

As with all shadowy protohistories, the question arises with Balak whether we are 011 safer ground tracing the history of a place~ the domain currently dominated by the six major Batak ethnolinguistic groups of today's North Sumatra province, or of a people called Balak or identifiable in some other way. And if the latter, what does this concept mean before the period of national selt:definition in the 201h century?

In terms of place, physical remains have so far offer_ed us three major urban cotnplexes in the North Sumatran area prior to the lslamization of coastal ports. All must have been important gateways for the trade of the

- interior highlands. though on the borders of what is thought to be Balak territory today. Starting with the oldest, the¥ arc:

• The camphor and benzoin port' of Barus on the west coast. flourishing from the s•h to 13'" centuries, and recently excavated by a freuch-lndono•i•n loam lod by Claudo Guillot (1998, 2003).

• The Buddhist temple complexes of Padang Lawas, and particularly the fortified settleme•1t of Si Pamutung. near the contluence of the Pane and Baruman rivers. The ten inscriptions (two of which in Batak script) on these sites, the Chinese ceramics associated with them. and the architectural re1nains, all confir1n occupation between the l O~h and early 14•h centuries but a peak probably In the 1111'-12'h centuries. The sites may be associated with the kingdom of Pane mentioned in both a Cola inscription (I 025) and the Nagarakenagama of Java ( 1365), as well as later texts. Ald1ough in the extreme soum of current Barak territory, its location 200 km up the Barumum River, near an important east·west corridor of trade, suggest an hnportant 1nediu1n through which Indian and Buddhist ideas reached the Bataks (Miksic 1996; Perret et al. 2007; Dupoizat 2007).

110 ls there a Batak History?

• The east coast port of Kota Cina, near Medan, which flourished from the 12"' to 14'" centuries, and must have had a role in the presumably Karo-Batak kingdom of Aru, a major maritime and piralic power rrom the 13"' 10 16'" centuries (Milner et al. 1977).

While archaeology remains in its infancy in this area, it is safe to conclude that these would have been $iles through which Indian (especially), Chinese, Javanese, and other intluences entered the Bataklands at this time if not before. Kota Cina i• usually associated with the intlux of Hindu elements among the Karo, and Barus among the Toba Batak. But Padang Lawas remains mysterious, and the new work there may prove it to be a more important key to a state·fonning "path not taken".

The only element of "Batakness" spectacular enough to be noted in the c-arliest sources is their cannibalism. Foreign sources note il• presence in Sumatra long before the appearance of the term "Batak" or any other feature which could be identified with it. l'tolcmy was the first, around I 00 Cf:, to record the presence of cannibalism in what he identified as an island cluster of Barusae, presumably Sumatra (Hirostle, infra). Following him a long series of Arab, Indian, and European sources, including Marco Polo, attest to the existence of cannibalism in the island, including on its more accessible north coast. Nicolo da Conti was the first European, in 1430, to use the term Batak (Batcch) for this cannibal population in Sumatra.'

The ternl Batak appears even earlier in Chinese sources, but as a polity or place, not a people. Chau Ju-kua (1226) has an obscure reference to Bo­t• as connected with Srivijaya, while the Yuan (Mongol) dynastic chronicle mentions Ma-da next' to Samudera (Pasai). both offering tribute to the Imperial court in 1285-1286. Ma-da would be pronounced Ba-ta in Hokkien, the likely language of Chinese trader informants.'

This 13'" century Bara appears to have survived to the beginning of the 161

h century. the first great watershed in Batak self-definition because of the confrontation with Islam. About 1515, before the rise of Aceh, Pires described a norninally Muslim kingdon1 in the same area.

The kingdo1n of Btthl is bordered on one side by the kingdom of Pase and (ul the other by the kingdom t-.f Aru (Darou). The king of this country is called Raja Tomjano.4 He is n Moorish knight. He often goes to sea to pillage. He is the son~ln~\aw of the king ~)f Aru. He brought. in the ship Prol

l "In cjus insu\ae [Taprobana""'Sumatru), quam diC\1nt Bate-ch, rartci anthtl)pophagi habii.nt 1 ... ].'' -:;ted in Yule/Burnell (1979: 74). ~ I owe this pQint to Geolf Wade. "This title may be the ti'.~ffOe ac:: tht: Tin1orr1:!.JU ("ea.stem king") in the title of the:: king ieputedly encountered hy Pinto around 1540 (Pinto 1989: 20).

Anthony Reid

de ta Mar which was wrecked in a stortn off the coast of his country, and they say he recovered everything water could not spoil. wherefore they ;ay he is very rich. (Pin.-s 1944: 145·146}

Ill

Pires' most specific geographical infonnation is that this Batak possessed the sources of petroleum in the Tamiang-Perlak area, later a precious resource for Aceh. The fact that the-king was listed as Muslim and a son-in-law of the Aru king, also in some sense Muslim, indicates that the religious situation was still tluid, the inhabitants of the island recognised themselves by place rather than ethnicity or religion, and that the natural centre for slate·like formations for the interior peoples was at their points of connection with maritime trade. But Mendes Pinto did not list this presumably hybrid Karo stale as cannibalistic; that honour was reserved for the west coast area above Singkil (Pires 1944: 163).

For J'into writing of 1539, northern Sumatra had been transformed by the expansion of Aceh along the north coast, swallowing whatever kingdoms there were between its Banda Aceh centre and Arn. l'he militantly Islamic character of this expansionism was vividly described by Pinto, but is also evident in other Portuguese, Turkish, and Acehnese sc:mrces on the I 6'h century confrontation between an Aceh-led commercial coalition and the Portuguese, with whom were associated both non-Muslims and kingdoms like Aru whose Islam had rested lightly on the ruling court (Reid 1988-1993, 11: 143-150; 2004: 69-93; Pinto 1989: 20-49). This confrontation seemed already to have turned the term Balak definitively into a description of a people; a people defined by their resistai;ite to Islam in this militant new form. Out it was still a people with a kin~ "the King oft.he Bataks'', whose capital was at J'anaju, now on the west coast, about eight leagues (50 km) up a river Pinto calls Guatean1gim (Pinto 1989: 20-25). This wa' presumably one of the west coast rivers to the south of Singkil giving access to the crunphor and benzoln land west of Lake Toba. The capital's name Panaju is reminiscent of the kingdom of Pano (P§o) mentioned in the same area by Pires.' and the Pane discussed above.

Pinto makes his story of the Bataks a tragic one, with a king first refusing the offer of Islam and determining to fight the Acehnese sultan, then making a treaty and n1arriage alliance with him, which the sultan treacherously broke by attacking and killing his sons. The Balak king then assembled a major alliance of local chiefs to fight the Acchnese. whose Turkish reinforcements however proved too much for him. He then retreated far up the river (Pinto 1989: 20-30).

'Vires (on page 410 hi lb; PorUJg>""' text). In his English tnm.'lation ( 1944: 16.'l), Cort.,;i!o gratuitously rendered Pi\o as B11ru.s. <kohoing it "obviously a transcriber's mistake:·

l 12 Is there a Batak History?

This appears to mark the last of the coastal "kingdoms" associated with Bataks either by name or life-style. The ports were hereafter all Muslim to some degree, and the people of the uplands who resisted the Acehnese jihad were called Batak by them. Thus Barros, writing in mid-century, could report that Sumatra

is inhabited by two kinds of people, moros [Muslims] and gentios [heathens]; the latter are nativcsi while the former were roreigners who came tor rea..~ns of commerce and began to senle and populate the maritime region, multiplying so quickly that in less than 150 years they had established themselves as seniuJres [lords] and began calling themselves kings. The heathens, leaving the coast. took refuge in the interior of the island and live there today. Those who live in the part of the island facing Malaca arc called Batas. 'lhey are the most savage and warlike people in the whole world; u..,y eat human flesh. (Barros 1977: 509)

The definition of Bataks as being those who resisted Islam and continued to eat pork was shared by a 17'" century Aceh text, the Hikayat Aceh. It twice mentions Batak as an ethnic group. In a succession conflict of the 1590s it portrays a rebel prince stopping at Barus on the way to challenge his brother at the capital, and recruiting two upriver Batak datu (healers), "skilled in the arts of sorcery (sihir) and magic (hikmat)", who caused the king to become sick (Teuku lskandar 1958: 92). A second incident is more surprising, portraying the young lskandar Muda encountering .. an old Batak'1 on a hunt for a wild buffalo, who trickL"<i the prince into giving him a sword and kris, and then scampered off into the forest (Teuku · Iskandar 1958: 186·187). This presumably says nothing about ethno-linguistic identity, but 1neans only that there were still villagers unincorporated into the Aceh state and religion very close to Banda Acch, and that such people were called "Balak". This became in succeeding ceitturies a definition that many Bataks accepted. 19th.century witnesses a~sert that when Minaha'ilsan missionary teachersi and Chinese traders, penetrated into Batak areas for the first time they were also considered Balak, since they ate pork (Perret 1995: 60).

"Isolation" of the long 181h Century

The aggressive expansion of Islamic Aceh in the period 1520-1630, at the expense of all the varied coastal states. ensured a separation not only between Bataks and Islam, but also between Bataks and the porHtates of the coa5t. Balak "statelessness" can be dated from this period, when states calll• to be associated by 8atak with an aggressive "other". This statelessness was however qualified. The Karo and Simelungun on the east

:i ~·.

Anthony Reid t 13

coast, and the Toba Batak on the west, each preserved from the earlier period 11 certain memory of statehood, often linked through tradition with Aceh. Thus the four Sibayak who had a certain ritual primacy in the Karo area, and the four Raja who held a somewhat stronger position in the Simelungun area, were popularly believed to have been inaugurated during the period of Aceh hegemony over the coast (Joustra 1910: 23; Kipp 1993: 215·217; Rae 1994: 63·64). Parlindungan claims Toba sources from Bakkara chastised the Karo Md Simelungun for erecting their own states and thereby falling away from the "Sori Mangaradja" dynasty, but it is very doubtful there was evc'I' such a sense of common identity anrnng the different cthno·linguistic groups.

Many Toba Batak traditions also linked a principal of sacred descent with the coastal kingdoms they remembered " Aceh and Barus. The latter was long recognised as a crucial port for Toba Batak, and therefore some ritual tribute was to be expected. Meint Joustra (1910: 25·26), was struck by the surprisingly unifonn set of traditions about the Barus link with Bakkara and the Singamangaraja line. 1 will present the story here in the fom1 of the Barus Hilir chronicle edited by Jane Drakard, which deseribes the journey or the founder of the Muslim dynasty of Barus Hilir, Sultan Ibrahim, through the Batak territories prior to establishing his kingdom on the coast. First in Silindung, and then at the Singamangaraja's sacred place of Bakkara. and finally in the Pasaribu territory, the local chiefs pleaded with him to stay and become their king. At Bakkara he urged ,_the Bataks to become Muslim, because then they would be one people (bangsa) with him and he could stay as king. The Bataks responded apologetically, "We do not want to enter Islam. Whatever else you order we will obey." He therefore moved on, but not before fathering a child by a local wo111an, who bcca1ne the first Singamangaraja. ln each place agreements were sworn to by both sides, establishing the long-term relationship between upland Batak producers on one hand and coastal Malay traders on the other. These included establishing the "four penghulu (headmen)" or Silindung as a supra-village institution linked l-0 the Barus trade (Drakard 1990: 75-80).

Since Barus and oiher ports on the west coast were themselves fTequently under Aceh suzerainty, it is not surprising that Aceh also figured in Batak memory. its ritual pre-eminence over the Singamangaraja line was acknowledged in various ways in the better-documented 19'" century. including the Singamangaraja's seal and flag, both of which appear modelled on those of the Aceh Sultan. This link, mythologised in the mysterious Balak progenitor·figure Raja Uti who disappeared to Aeeh, may go back to the l 61h or 17•h ce1itury links.

114 Is there a llatak History?

For Parlindungan, however, and the Batak manuscripts of the Arsip Bakkara he claims as a source, there was another powerful connection with Aceh in the late 18'h century. He claims that these documents reveal a treaty or friendship between the otherwise unknown Singamangaraja l'X and Sultan Alauddin Muhammad Syah, known to have ruled Aceh uneasily from 1781 to 1795. 1lie treaty purportedly agm'd that Singkil was Acehnese, the Uti Kanan (Simpang Kanan?) area Batak, and. Barus a neutral zone. But the Acehnese cannon which sealed the deal caused such havoc among some elephants at Bakkara that Singamangaraja IX was killed by one of them (Mangarndja Parlindungan 1965: 486-487).

As so often with Parlindungan"s fanciful stories) there seems to be something of substance in this. In the 1780s, the Singkil area was developed for pepper cultivation, and the limits of Acehnese control became an· urgent concern. Acchnese raided the British outstation of Tapanuli (Sibol~a) in 1786, aod the British responded by attacking some Acehnesc forts. This was indeed a time, in other words, when Acehnese would have sought to lock Balak suppliers and traders into their networks rather than the British ones.

Let me throw in a further fanciful vignette, if only to undermine further what remains of the idea of Balak "isolation" during the long 18"' century. In 1858 a Frenchman or Eurasian called De Molac told a Pondicherry newspaper that in the last quarter of the 1 s•h century "his family settled in the most savage part or Sumatra, established magnificent agricultural establishments tht-Te, acquired great influence among the natives and succeeded in reforming their customs." The head of the family "had recently been elected chief of the confederation of Bataks, a Malay people whose lands border Dutch possessions and the kingdom of Aceh."7 While no doubt largely invented. this story i~ sufficiently consistent with the supernatural inferences drawn about 19'" century visitors to the Batak highlands, including Burton and Ward, Neubronner van der Tuuk and Elio Modigliani, that wc should not be surprised if such a pattern began earlier.

'Lee Kam Hing (1995: 67-75). The British record on lhis seems unlikoly to have heen available to Parlindungwi, though it may have been to his alleged source, R.esidet)t Poortm~n. who he s1:1y8 was an offioii,J in Singkil around 1900 and in rctircmt:I'lt made a trip to Dritish arcliives in 1937. 1 le Monile1<r Universe/ (Paris) I 04, 4 april 1858: 467.

Anthony Reid 115

Padri Incursions

The t 91h century was another time of great upheaval for the Bataklands. l'he Christianisation of its last three decades is rather well docurnemed by Western and Batak writers, but the traumatic Padri invasions remain poorly covered. By far the most detail is provided by Parlfodungan, and is therefore highly suspect. Yet this episode is so important that it demands serious attention. Batak sources agree that some of the most militant or the Islamic marauderS who brought lire and sword 1o lhe Toba area were tl1emsclves newly-converted Bataks. Singamangaraja X was killed by a militant Padri the Bataks called Si Pokki, around 1830 according to roost authorities. Parlindungan however puts this event 1n 1819 and traces the source of the hostilities to cleavages within the Sing.:mangaraja lineage itself, with Tuanku Rao presented as an alienated Batak turned militant Muslim.

ln any case, this event marked the historic ernergence of the Singamangaraja dynasty as a symbol of Balak unity against outsid~ threats. It begins a period of upheaval as these unprecedented threats assail the mountain strongholds one after lhe other. And for these upheavals of the early 19•h century there arc enough traces in the pu.,taha (palm-leaf manuscripts) as well as European sources to create the stuff of real historical debate.

Concluslqn~

So, is there a Batak history? Yes, there have been son1e ingenious attempts by aatak authors 1o

•h ·r h. h extend the known story back in time to the 16 century, even 1 t is as not yet made a significant impact on the r~ceived history of the professionals. Yet even these Balak la.bours remain a 8?".'7wh.at perverse attempt to make Balak history more hke every other c1V1hzat1onal story, with a respectable state to give it meaning.

Should not the glory of the Bataks be rather their success in managing without states and the real challenge for the Balak historian be to show how social ~d economic history could for once be written without the distorting lens of state-imposed hierarchies?

It is not an easy task, but I believe that there is much that can be done. Let me end with just three avenues which seem particularly promising, if challenging.

116 ls there a Balak History'/

• The difficult Batak manllscripts, the pustaha, They have so far seemed so difficult and so ahistorical as not to repay sustained effort to master their contents. Yet the claims of Parlindungan/Poortman are so suggestive, those of Sitor Situmorang so ingenious, that somebody ought to follow these tracks systematically, to establish what can be known about the connections with Islam, with Aceh and Barns, and with the east coast; what can be said about the Padri incursion and the social upheavals they brought, and what was the dynamic of Balak society in that century before Christianisation.

• The "underside" of history can be accessed through the slaves who found their way to Malacca, Padang, Batavia (modern-day Jakarta), Penang; and Singapore_ There is an unfortunate avoidance of this feature by nationalist historians, though the documents are richer on slaves than any other non-elite cat~gory. ft n1ay well be, for example, that the Sumatran slave who accompanied Magellan around the world, Enrique, was as much a Batak as anybody at that time. 8 Pcnang counted 509 Bataks among its population in 1824 and 561 in 1835, and some did enter into court and other records before being assimilated into Malay or Chinese populations (SSR Hl3, 1825: 344; Low 1972: 126, 290-291).

• A fuller examination of material culture, including the textiles which Sandy Niessen ( 1985) "scd to such effect; the systems of trade and exchange which effectively 1mited the coastal regions and the interior of Sumatra in an efficient four-day market cycle (Sherman 1990: 36-47); and the ritual systems which helped establish the coherence uf Batak society.

By these and other means our successors may eventually reveal through Batak history how to truly write a history without states. I wish them well.

8 Magellan and Pigafctta agret: that 8nrique w1:1s a· Sumatran, pun;hascd by ·

Magellan in Malacca around 1514. Yet curiously it is Pilipinos and Malaysians who have oompctcd to claim him, never Sumatrans to the best ol'my knowledge.

Anthony Reid I t7

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Bartos, Joao de 1977 Da Asia. Lisbon: Regia otlicina. [reprinted Lisbon 1973] Decada

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Guillot, Claude~ ed. 1998 Histoire de Barus I, Paris: Association Archipel. 2003 Hfatoire de Barus Sumatra. le Site de lohu Tua. II. Etude

archeologique et D<Jcument.•. Paris: Association Archipel. Hirosue, Masashi 1988 Prophet" and Follower.• in Balak Millenarian Responses lo the

Colonial Order: Parma/in. Na Siak Bagi, and I'arhudamdam (1890-1930). Ph.D. di$$. Australian National University, Canberra.

Joustra, M. 1910 Balak-Spiegel. Leiden: van Doesburgh. Kipp, Rita Smith 1990 The Early Years of a Dutch Colof!ial Mission: The Karo Field. Ann

Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. 1993 Dissociated Identities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Langenberg, Michael van 1976 National Revolution in North Sumatra: Sumatra Timur and

Tapanuli, 1942-19511.'Ph.D. diss. Sydney University. le Moniteur Universe! (Paris), no. 104, 4 april 1858.

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Lee Kam Hing 1995 The Sultanate of Aceh: Relations with the British, 1760-1824. Kuala

Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Low, James 1972 The Brirish Settlement of Penang. [ 1836] reprinted Kuala Lumpur:

Oxford University Press, Mangaradja Parlindungan n. d. [1965] Tuanku Nao: Terror Agama /skim M,dwb Hamhali di Tanah

Balak, 1816·1833. Jakarta: Tandjung Pengharapan. Miksic, John 1996 Ancient History: Jndo1Wsia Heritage, Singapore: Editions Didier Millet. Milner, Anthony Crothers, Edmund Edwards McKinnon, and Tengku

Luckman Sinar 1978 A note on Aru and Kola Cina. Indonesia 26: 142. Nandy, Ashis 1995 History's forgotten doubles. H1:,,ory and Theory 34(2): 44-66. N icssen, Sandra A. 1985 Motif, of Life in Toba Balak Texts and Textiles. Dordrecht: Foris. Perret, Daniel 1995 La Formation d 'tm Paysage Ethnique: Balak et Mala is de Sumatra

Nord-Est. Paris: Ptesscs de l'EFEO. Perret, Daniel, Heddy Surachman, Lucas Koestoro, and Sukawati Susetyo 2007 Le programme archeologique Franco·lndonesien sur Padang Lawas

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502 Contributors

Hormann Ku Ike: Depanment of History, Kiel University/Germany; Main books: The Devaraja cult (1974); Kings and cults. State formation and legitimation in India and Southeast Asia ( 1993); The state in India (1995); A history oflndia ( 1998).

Edmund Edwards McKinnon: Independent researcher, Bogor/lndoncsia; Main book: The Pulau Buaya wreck ( 1998).

Pierre-Yves Manguin: Ecole fran9aise d'Extreme-Orient, Paris, France; Recent research on Sumatra: The amorphous nature of coastal polities in Insular Southeast Asia. Restricted centres, extend~d peripheries, in: Moussons (2002); The archaeology of the early maritime polities of Southea~t Asia, in: Southeast Asia. From prehistory to history (2004).

John N. Miksie: Associate Professor, Southeast Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore/Asia Research Institute/Singapore; Main books: Old Javanese gold (I 990); Borobudur. Golden tales of the Buddhas (1990); Historical dictionary of ancient Southeast Asia (2007); Icons of art. National Museum Jakarta (2007).

J. David Neidel: Asia Training Program Coordinator, Yale/Smithsonian Environ1nental Leadership and Training Initiative: Visiting Senior Research Fellow, National University of Singapore/Singapore; Main .book: 1'he garden of forking paths. History. its erasure and remembrance in Sumatra~s Kerinci Sehlat National Park (Ph.D. 2006).

Daniel Perret: Ecole frarn;aise d'Extreme-Orient Jakana-Kuala Lumpur­Paris/Indoncsia-Malaysia-france: Main book: La fonnation d'un paysage ethnique. Batak et Malais de Sumatra nord-est (1995).

Anthony Reid: Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore/Singapore. Main books: Southeast Asia in the age of commerce, 1450-1680 (2 vols, 1988-1993); Charting the shape of early modern Southeast Asia ( 1999); An Indonesian frontier: Acehnese and other histories of Sumatra (2004).

Minako Sakai: Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Sciences University of New South Wales at ADFA campus/Australia; Main

From Distant Tales 503

books: Beyond Jakana. Regional autonomy and local societies in Indonesia (2002); The politics of the periphery in Indonesia. Social and geographical perspectives (in press). ·

Reimar Schefold: Professor emeritus of Cultural Anthropology, Leiden Universityrrhe Netherlands. Main books: Lia, das grosse Ritual auf den Mentawai-lnseln ( 1988): Banua Toraja. Changing patterns in architecture and symbolism among the Sa'dan Toraja, Sulawesi, Indonesia (1988); Treasure hunting? Collectors and collections of Indonesian artefacts (2002); Indonesian houses (2 vols; 2004/2008).

Mai Lin Tjoa-Bonatz: Lecturer, Institute of· Southasian Art History, Free University .of Berlin/Germany; Main book: Das Shophouse im kolonialzeitlichen Penang (Ph.D. 2003).

Truman Simanjuntak: Professor, National Research and Development. Center for Archaeology and Center for Prehistoric and Austronesian Studies/Indonesia; Main books: Contribution a l'ctude de la prehistoire et de la protohistoire de Lozere et des Grands Causses (1991 ); Austronesian in Sulawesi (2008).

C. W. Watson: Emeritus Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of ·Kent, Canterbury/UK; Main books: Kinship, propeny and inheritance in Kerinci, Central Sumatra ( 1996); Multiculturalism (200 t ); Of self and injustice (2006).

Harry Widianto: Head, Balai Pelestarian Situs Manusia Purba Sangiran/lndonesia; Main book'. Unite et Diversitc des Hominides Fossiles de Java: Presentation de Restes Mumaii1s Fossiles lnedits (Ph.D 1993).

Heinzpeter ZnQj: Professor. Institute of Social Anthropology, llniversiUU Bem/Switzerland; Main book: Tausch und Geld in Zentralsumatra. Zur Kritik des Schuldbegriffs in der Wirtschaftsethnologie ( 1995).