Atjehsche invloed op adat en bestuursinstellingen der Batakken — the Atjehnese influence on the adat and administrative institutions of the Bataks — was, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey of the Outer Possessions, the institutional and cultural imprint left by the Atjehnese sultanate on the Karo-Batak and Timoer-Batak lands during the long period of Atjehnese supremacy in the Gajo- and Alaslanden and Atjehsche suprematie over de Timoerhoogvlakte. The imprint was, the Bureau records, principally institutional — the Atjehsche viervorsten-systeem imposed on the Karo sibajaks and the Timoer rijkjes — though it left, in the Bureau’s judgement, “slechts zeer weinig levenskracht” — “only very little vitality” — in the Karo lands, where the indigenous adat institutions remained “het meest ongeschonden” — “the most intact.”
The institutional imprint: the viervorsten-systeem
The principal institutional imprint of Atjeh on the Bataks was the Atjehsche viervorsten-systeem — the “four-princes” system by which the Atjehnese sultanate grouped the chiefdoms of its highland and peripheral dependencies into groups of four, each group headed by a radja berempat (literally “four-princes”). The Bureau records that the Atjehsche viervorsten-systeem had been imposed, in parallel, on both the Timoerhoogvlakte and the Karo hoogvlakte — a uniform Atjehnese institutional arrangement across the entire Batak highland country.
The Bureau records: “Sommige bestuursinstellingen volgens het Atjehsche viervorsten-systeem (dat ook op de Karo-hoogvlakte werd ingevoerd door Atjeh) worden nog aan dien invloed toegeschreven” — “Some administrative institutions according to the Atjehsche four-princes system (which was also introduced on the Karo hoogvlakte by Atjeh) are still attributed to that influence.” The four Karo sibajaks of Lingga, Sarinembah, Baroes Djahé and Soeka were, the Bureau records, the Karo radja berempat.
The slightness of the imprint on the Karoland
Despite the institutional imprint of the radja berempat, the Bureau records that the broader Atjehnese imprint on the Karo adat and institutions was slight. “Het meest ongeschonden zijn de oude instellingen gebleven in het Karoland; wel vinden wij ook hier sporen terug van Atjehschen invloed, doch zelfs deze hebben, ondanks de geregelde verbindingen, welke tusschen het Karoland en Atjeh bestaan hebben, slechts zeer weinig levenskracht gehad” — “The most intact old institutions have remained in the Karoland; we do indeed find here too traces of Atjehnese influence, but even these have, despite the regular connections that existed between the Karoland and Atjeh, had only very little vitality.”
The slightness of the Atjehnese imprint on the Karo adat is, the Bureau records, all the more striking in contrast with the Malay coastal influence on the Karo Doesoen and Timoerland. The Bureau records: “De Maleische invloeden uit de kuststreken echter, die in de Doesoen, doch vooral in het Timoerland, zoo goed zijn na te speuren, bestaan hier niet” — “The Malay influences from the coastal regions, however, which in the Doesoen, and especially in the Timoerland, can be so well traced, do not exist here [in the Karoland].” The Karo hoogvlakte had, in other words, been more open to Malay coastal influence — mediated by the Djohorese Malays of the East Coast — than to Atjehnese influence across the highlands.
The Atjehsche (?) element in the Perangin-angin merga
The Bureau records, in its discussion of the five Karo mergas (the patrilineal clans), that the fourth merga — Perangin-angin — “omvat waarschijnlijk verschillende, ten deele wellicht vreemde (Atjehsche?) elementen” — “contains, probably, various, partly perhaps foreign (Atjehsche?) elements.” The Bureau’s attribution of an Atjehnese element to the Perangin-angin merga is hedged with two qualifications — “waarschijnlijk” (“probably”) and the parenthetical “Atjehsche?” with its question-mark — but it is, in the Bureau’s framing, the principal demographic trace of the Atjehnese imprint on the Karo merga system. The Atjehnese imprint on the Karo lands thus extends, in the Bureau’s account, from the institutional (the radja berempat) to the demographic (the Perangin-angin merga).
The Atjehsche title “kedjoeron”
The Bureau records, in its discussion of the Karo Doesoen oeroeng-heads, that the title kedjoeron borne by some of these heads is a marker of Atjehnese influence. The Bureau records: “Deze titel duide weder op Atjehsche invloeden” — “This title again indicates Atjehnese influences.” The kedjoeron title — borne by the Malay-coast-appointed oeroeng-heads of the Karo Doesoen — was, in the Bureau’s framing, an institutional fossil of the Atjehnese presence on the East Coast, transmitted through the Malay coastal sultanates that had succeeded the Atjehnese overlordship.
Significance
The Atjehsche invloed op adat en bestuursinstellingen der Batakken is, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey, the most concrete trace of the Atjehnese supremacy in the Gajo- and Alaslanden on the eastern side of the highlands. Its slightness — the Bureau’s judgement that it had “slechts zeer weinig levenskracht gehad” — is, in the Bureau’s framing, the more remarkable in view of the duration of the Atjehnese supremacy and the regular connections between the Atjehnese and Karo lands. The deliberate Dutch revival of the Atjehnese-era radja berempat after the 1904–1906 annexation is, in turn, the most striking instance of the colonial state’s strategic use of the Atjehnese institutional legacy to structure its own administration of the highland Batak lands.
See Also
- Acheh
- Batak
- Batak-Karo
- Batak-Timoer
- adat
- merga
- Perangin-angin
- radja berempat
- sibajak
- kedjoeron
- atjehsche-viervorsten-systeem
- atjehsche-oppermacht-in-de-gajo-en-alaslanden
- atjehsche-suprematie-over-de-timoerhoogvlakte
- atjehsche-invloed-op-het-karoland
- Dutch subjugation of the Karo-Batak lands (1904-1906)
- 1607
- 1636
Source
De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Afl. 3: Oostkust van Sumatra. Eerste Stuk, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1918), pp. 117, 166–167, 174, 177 n. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, shelfmark LS.08781.