Reuntjong

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tagsconcept, weapon, acehnese, resistance, wood-carving, precolonial, dagger, aceh, rentjong, rencong, bawar, achehnese, adat
aliasesrencong, rentjong, Acehnese kris, Acehnese dagger, Atjehsche rentjong, Atjeh dagger, Atjeh rentjong met houten schede, Wagner's rentjong, bawar, Atjehsche dagger, poesaka rentjong

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The reuntjong — also rencong, rentjong, the Acehnese kris or dagger — was the traditional bladed weapon of the Acehnese, and the symbolic weapon of the Acehnese resistance in Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. (1954). The reuntjong also appears in F. A. Wagner’s Sierkunst in Indonesië (1949) as an Atjeh product whose wooden sheath was decorated with stylised leaf-motifs in fine engraving — a craftsman’s account that complements the soldier’s account of Dames. The two accounts together give the reuntjong its full AcehWiki presence: the weapon of the resistance, made by the Atjeh craftsman, decorated with the Atjeh wood-engraver’s leaf-motif, and produced in Atjeh until the tradition declined in the late-colonial period.

The reuntjong and the resistance (Dames’s account)

In Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L., the reuntjong is paired with the klewang of the Manisee: the two blades meet in the moment of Peutoeha Gam Masén’s death, when Gam Masén “trok zijn reuntjong, de Atjehse kris” and threw himself on the two voorste Marechaussees — the dardanellen of the luitenant — before being shot by Nussy and worked over with the klewang by Enoch.

The reuntjong was the symbolic weapon of the Acehnese resistance. When Peutoeha Gam Masén was omsingeld and summoned to surrender, “hij trok zijn reuntjong, de Atjehse kris” — he drew his reuntjong, the Acehnese kris. The drawing of the reuntjong was the refusal of submission: the Acehnese hoofd who drew his reuntjong was the hoofd who would not come in. The reuntjong was therefore both a weapon and a sign: the sign of the resistance that would not submit.

The reuntjong of the Acehnese resister is paired in the book with the klewang of the Manisee. The two blades meet in the moment of Peutoeha Gam Masén’s death: Gam Masén drew his reuntjong, threw himself on the dardanellen, and was killed by Nussy’s karabijn and Enoch’s klewang. The pairing is the book’s small symbolic register of the war: the klewang of the colonial soldier against the reuntjong of the Acehnese resister.

The reuntjong and the wood-carving tradition (Wagner’s account)

In F. A. Wagner’s Sierkunst in Indonesië of 1949, the reuntjong is described in the chapter “Houtsnijwerk” (Wood-carving), in the section “A. Wapens” (Weapons), as a dagger formerly produced in Atjeh, whose wooden sheath was decorated with stylised leaf-motifs in fine engraving. Wagner’s account is short — a single sentence — but it is the only passage in his volume that explicitly identifies the rentjong as an Atjeh product, and it places the rentjong alongside the principal bladed weapons of the archipelago.

In the section on the wood-carving of weapons, after describing the kris (the national weapon of Java, Bali, Lombok, the Makassarese and the Buginese) and the mandau (the sword of the Dayas of Borneo), Wagner turns to the Atjeh rentjong: “In Atjeh werd vroeger nog de rentjong (dolk) vervaardigd, waarvan de van hout vervaardigde schede versierd werd met diverse gestyleerde bladmotieven in fijn graveerwerk uitgevoerd.”

The passage carries four claims:

  1. The rentjong is a dolk (dagger) — a short, bladed weapon, distinct from the kris (which is described as the national weapon of Java and Bali) and from the mandau (which is described as the sword of the Dayas).
  2. The rentjong was “in Atjeh … vroeger nog … vervaardigd” — formerly still produced in Atjeh. The phrase “vroeger nog” (formerly still) marks the production as belonging to the past, by the time of Wagner’s writing in 1949: the rentjong was, in 1949, no longer being produced in Atjeh, or was being produced only in diminished quantity.
  3. The sheath (schede) of the rentjong is of wood — “de van hout vervaardigde schede.”
  4. The sheath is decorated with “diverse gestyleerde bladmotieven in fijn graveerwerk” — diverse stylised leaf-motifs in fine engraving. The decoration is thus a wood-engraved ornament of leaf-forms, executed in a fine manner, and the rentjong’s decorative art is, in Wagner’s account, the art of this engraved leaf-motif on the wooden sheath.

Wagner’s placement of the rentjong in the chapter on wood-carving is significant: the rentjong’s blade is metal, but the rentjong’s decorative art is, for Wagner, the wood-carving of the sheath. The rentjong thus appears, in Wagner’s account, not in the chapter on metalwork (where the kris and the mandau are described in detail by way of the chapter on metalwork’s discussion of iron-working) but in the chapter on wood-carving, where the rentjong’s wooden sheath takes its place alongside the wooden kris-hilts of Java and Bali, the wooden mandau-sheaths of the Dayas, and the wooden hilts and sheaths of the swords of Tjikëroe in the Preanger.

The Atjeh rentjong’s sheath-decoration is, in this wood-carving context, an example of “fijn graveerwerk” — fine engraving — on wood. The technique is the technique of the wood-engraver, not the technique of the wood-sculptor: the decoration is incised into the surface of the sheath, not built up in relief. The motifs are “gestyleerde bladmotieven” — stylised leaf-motifs — which is to say, leaf-forms that have been conventionalised into a decorative vocabulary rather than copied from nature. The rentjong’s sheath-decoration is, in this sense, a fine engraved ornament of conventionalised leaf-forms, on a wooden surface, executed by an Atjeh wood-engraver.

The reuntjong and the Atjeh warrior tradition

The reuntjong is, in itself, the principal bladed weapon of the Atjeh warrior. It is the weapon that, in the Aceh War of 1873–1914, was the symbolic weapon of the Atjehnese resistance — the weapon that the Atjeh warrior carried alongside his musket and his rotan shield and his powder horn. Wagner’s account of the rentjong’s production in Atjeh — “in Atjeh werd vroeger nog de rentjong vervaardigd” — is thus an account of the production of the Atjeh warrior’s principal weapon, in the region whose warrior tradition produced the resistance of 1873–1914.

The fact that Wagner describes the production as “vroeger nog” — formerly still — is, in turn, a marker of the decline of the Atjeh rentjong tradition by 1949. The rentjong had been, in the period of the Atjeh-oorlog, the weapon of the Atjeh resistance; by 1949, the production of the rentjong in Atjeh had, in Wagner’s account, ceased or diminished. The rentjong’s decorative tradition — the fine engraving of stylised leaf-motifs on the wooden sheath — had, by the same token, ceased or diminished; and the Atjeh wood-engraver’s art, as applied to the rentjong’s sheath, was, by 1949, a thing of the past.

The two accounts together

The two AcehWiki accounts of the reuntjong are, in this sense, two accounts of the same weapon from two different sources. Dames’s account in Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. (1954) is a soldier’s account, in which the reuntjong is the weapon of the Atjeh resister who draws it in the moment of refusal. Wagner’s account in Sierkunst in Indonesië (1949) is a craftsman’s account, in which the reuntjong is the product of the Atjeh wood-engraver’s art, decorated with stylised leaf-motifs in fine engraving on a wooden sheath. The two accounts together — the soldier’s and the craftsman’s — give the reuntjong its full AcehWiki presence.

Significance

The reuntjong is significant in Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. as the symbolic weapon of the Acehnese resistance. The book’s argument is that the reuntjong — the traditional bladed weapon of the Acehnese — was both a weapon and a sign: the sign of the resistance that would not submit. The pairing of the reuntjong with the klewang is the book’s small symbolic register of the Aceh War: the two blades that met in the moment of Gam Masén’s death are the two blades that met, in the book’s economy, throughout the forty-five-year war.

In the larger history of Atjehnese decorative art, the rentjong in Wagner’s account is, in turn, the principal example of Atjeh wood-carving on a weapon — the principal instance of the Atjeh wood-engraver’s art applied to the sheath of the Atjeh warrior’s principal blade. Its significance is that it places the Atjeh wood-engraver’s art alongside the Atjeh weaver’s art (the idja, the anker-motief, the plang) and the Atjeh metalworker’s art (the Atjeh brass lamps, the heetsen, the tjawardi, the Atjeh silver-wire ornament) in the cluster of Atjeh craft traditions. The rentjong’s decorated sheath is, in this sense, the wood-carver’s contribution to the Atjeh warrior’s kit — the kit that included, in metal, the blade of the rentjong itself, and, in wood, the engraved leaf-motifs of its sheath.

Sources

Atjeh, door H.C. Zentgraff. Gedrukt bij Drukkerij “De Unie”, 1938, Batavia. OCR-filename: 20260709_002148_DLP-81-Atjeh_OCR.txt.

Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter X, XII.

See Also

Source

Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L., by G. W. T. Dames, Maj. Inf. K.N.I.L. b.d. (‘s-Gravenhage: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1954), chapter “De colonne Schmidt.”

Sierkunst in Indonesië, by F. A. Wagner, Insulinde — Serie Handleidingen voor de Kennis van Indonesië, Vol. VI (Groningen, Batavia: J. B. Wolters’ Uitgevers-Maatschappij N.V., 1949), p. 94.

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