Parripe was the Toba-Batak term for a dependant settled on land issued or re-issued by the Radja (ni) Hoeta, and thereby bound to him; the corresponding lands were the parripean grounds. The institution was described by D. W. N. de Boer in Het recht op den grond in Atjeh only as a comparative foil, since he found no parallel to it in Atjeh.
Function in the Batak land system
Where a Radja Hoeta had annexed land left by a deceased or emigrant dependant without entitled heirs, he might either retain it for his own use or issue it (uitgifte) or re-issue it (heruitgifte (re-issue of land)) to new immigrants. Settlers admitted on such terms became his parripe’s: their tenure of the soil constituted the tie of dependence on which the radja’s harajaon rested. In the Toba-Batak lands the practice was, in De Boer’s account, a necessity of political survival after the fragmentation of the marga.
Absence of a parallel in Atjeh
De Boer stated the negative finding explicitly: “Naar een parallel met parripean-gronden zoekt men hier vergeefs” — one searches in vain here for a parallel with parripean lands. Nor, he added, was the clearer of waste land in Atjeh subjected to any requirement of village membership, a point on which he referred to Van Vollenhoven’s Adatrecht, pp. 190 and 200. The nearest Atjehnese analogue in economic effect — though not in genealogical purpose — was the thiplah-tano contract imposed on non-indigenous cultivators, under which half of the cleared land or half of the yearly half-crop passed to the oeleebalang.
See Also
Source
Het recht op den grond in Atjeh, by D. W. N. de Boer, dated Scheveningen, November 1931, pp. 59-80. Offprint DLP-141, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, ‘s-Gravenhage; Bibliotheek KITLV accession 0060 4460 60 081470 428.