The court buffalo-fight at the court of Sultan Iskandar Muda|Sultan Iskandar Muda in 1613 was a state spectacle staged at Banda Acheh|Koetaradja in honour of the visiting English envoy Thomas Best, in which buffaloes were deployed as vechtdieren (fighting animals) alongside elephants in a choreographed sequence that constitutes one of the earliest European eyewitness descriptions of court spectacle at the Acheh|Atjeh capital. The fight is documented in Thomas Best|Best’s journal — edited by William Foster as The Voyage of Thomas Best to the East Indies, 1612-14 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1934, p. 168) — and is cited in J. Kreemer|Kreemer’s Kreemer’s De Karbouw (*De Karbouw* (1956) (p. 84), drawing on Kreemer’s Atjeh (Kreemer’s *Atjeh* (vol. I, p. 192), as the principal first-hand account of buffalo-fights as a courtly entertainment in Acheh|Atjeh.
The event
The fight was staged as part of a larger state festival held in Thomas Best|Best’s honour during his Thomas Best’s visit to Atjeh (embassy of 1613 to the court of Sultan Iskandar Muda|Iskandar Muda (r. 1607–1636), the “Roi soleil” of the Atjehse vorsten. J. Kreemer|Kreemer’s summary of Best’s journal in De Karbouw (p. 84) gives the sequence:
“Eén der hoofdmomenten daarvan was een toernooi van olifanten. ‘After them came buffelos, a beast verie fierce and stronge, which maid a worthie feight and gave greatt content to the spectators.’” The choreography — elephant-tournament followed by buffalo-fight — is significant. The pairing of the two species as vechtdieren points to a courtly culture in which animal combat had been elevated from a village pastime to a spectacle of kingship, and the use of the buffalo (the principal working-animal of the Atjehnese rice-economy) alongside the elephant (the principal carrier-beast of Atjehnese state-power) is a juxtaposition that resonates with the wider Atjehnese pattern, recorded elsewhere in De Karbouw, in which the buffalo figures in both the productive economy (as plough- and cart-animal) and in the ritual-military complex (as siege-engine material, sacrificial victim, and courtly spectacle).
Best’s journal and the European record
Thomas Best|Best’s description of the fight — preserved in his original early-seventeenth-century English spelling — is one of the earliest European attestations of the word “buffalo” in an East Indian context, and the documentary nucleus of the entry on the court buffalo-fight. The passage was edited by William Foster and published by the Hakluyt Society (London, 1934) as part of The Voyage of Thomas Best to the East Indies, 1612-14, at p. 168. It was transmitted into the Dutch scholarly literature by J. Kreemer|Kreemer in his Kreemer’s Atjeh (*Atjeh* (vol. I, p. 192) and re-cited in his Kreemer’s De Karbouw (*De Karbouw* (1956) (p. 84) as the principal authority on the court buffalo-fight as an institution of Sultan Iskandar Muda|Iskandar Muda’s reign.
The wider context
The court buffalo-fight of 1613 is, in J. Kreemer|Kreemer’s reading, the courtly original of which the village buffalo-fights of more recent centuries are a “zwakke weerklank” (faint echo). The same courtly-military complex is attested by the persistence of the koeta djaq|buffalo-hide “walking fort” as an Atjehnese siege-engine (already mentioned in the mid-eighteenth-century Atjehnese epic Potjoet Moehammat|Potjoet Moehammat) and by the survival, in much attenuated form, of village buffalo-fights in the archipelago in later centuries. The fight is also one of the documents of the early-seventeenth-century Anglo-Atjehnese diplomatic relationship, which would later be retraced and contextualised by P. H. van der Kemp|Van der Kemp in his studies of the Raffles’ Acheh treaty of 1819 Raffles agreement and of the eighteenth-century correspondence between the Atjeh sultans and the British in Bengal.
Significance
The court buffalo-fight of 1613 is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history as the principal documented instance of the buffalo-fight as an institution of Atjehnese kingship — a spectacle staged before a foreign envoy at the Atjeh bloeitijdperk (Atjeh *bloeitijdperk* court of Sultan Iskandar Muda|Iskandar Muda. It anchors the village buffalo-fights of later centuries as a faint echo of a courtly original, and points to the wider integration of the buffalo into the productive, ritual and military-economic complex of the Atjehnese state.
Sources
The Voyage of Thomas Best to the East Indies, 1612-14, edited by William Foster (London: Hakluyt Society, 1934), p. 168.
De Karbouw — Zijn betekenis voor de volken van de Indonesische Archipel, by J. Kreemer (‘s-Gravenhage / Bandung: N.V. Uitgeverij W. van Hoeve, 1956), p. 84. Atjèh, by J. Kreemer, vol. I (1922), p. 192.
See Also
- Atjeh bloeitijdperk (1607-1636)
- Banda Acheh
- Kreemer’s Atjeh (1922-23)
- Kreemer’s De Karbouw (1956)
- P. H. van der Kemp
- Potjoet Moehammat
- Raffles’ Acheh treaty of 1819
- Sultan Iskandar Muda
- Thomas Best’s visit to Atjeh (1613)
- Thomas Best
- William Foster
- koeta djaq