Gedong was an Atjeher from Pasei, named in the origin legend of the marga Ramin of Boven-Singkel (Upper Singkel, in present-day Aceh Singkil Regency) as the eponymous stamvader (ancestral father) of that marga, whose descendants are said to abstain to this day from eating both eel and buffalo-meat in fulfilment of the oaths Gedong swore during a miraculous shipwreck on his way to Belawan. The legend is recorded in W. K. H. Ypes’s Bijdrage tot de kennis van stamverwantschap op Sumatra (cited at p. 57, nt. 1) and is reproduced in Kreemer’s *De Karbouw* ([[1956)]] (p. 220) as one of the Sumatran legends explaining the origin of buffalo-meat avoidance (pantang) prohibitions attached to particular genealogical groups.
The legend
The Gedong legend, as reproduced from Ypes in De Karbouw, runs as follows. Gedong, an Atjeher of Pasei and the eponymous ancestor of the marga Ramin of Boven-Singkel, suffered shipwreck on his way to Belawan (the North-Sumatran port in present-day Deli Serdang). He was caught by an eel (paling), which, however, brought him to land after he swore never to eat eel. On the beach, a buffalo awaited him, threatening to push him back into the sea — whether this was an albino buffalo is, the legend notes, not specified — but released him unharmed after he swore never to eat buffalo-meat. The members of the marga Ramin are said to abstain, to this day, from both eel and buffalo-meat, in fulfilment of Gedong’s two oaths.
The legend is structurally a compact double-taboo narrative: a single ancestor, in a single episode of maritime crisis, contracts two food prohibitions (eel and buffalo), each mediated by an animal rescuer-thrartner, and the prohibitions pass to his genealogical descendants. As Kreemer presents it, the legend belongs to the wider corpus of Sumatran *pantang* legends that explain, by appeal to an ancestral encounter, why a particular genealogical group abstains from a particular food — a corpus in which the buffalo (especially the albino buffalo) figures prominently across Groot-Atjeh (kawōm Dja Sandang), Atjeh’s Westkust, the Gajoland groups of Kedjoeroen Boekit and Petiambang, the Alasland mergō’s, and the Simaloer landschap Tapah.
Significance
Gedong’s significance for the encyclopedia of Acheh history is as the legendary ancestral figure of the marga Ramin of Boven-Singkel — a figure whose narrative anchors a living Sumatran food-prohibition in a putatively historical Atjehnese ancestor from Pasei, and thus ties the Singkil-area genealogical tradition to the North-Acehnese Pasai cultural sphere. The legend is also significant as a documented instance of the wider Atjeh-north-Sumatran pattern in which buffalo-meat avoidance is legitimated by an ancestral oath, a pattern that Snouck Hurgronje (cited in De Karbouw) cautiously suggested might once have had a totemistic basis, even if present-day obedience rests simply on fear of ancestral wrath.
Sources
Bijdrage tot de kennis van stamverwantschap op Sumatra, by W. K. H. Ypes, p. 57 nt. 1.
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. 220.
See Also
- Boven-Singkel
- Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje
- Kreemer’s De Karbouw (1956)
- Pantang of the albino buffalo in Atjeh
- Pasei
- W. K. H. Ypes
- kawōm Dja Sandang
- [[marga Ramin]
Gedong was an Atjeher from Pasei, named in the origin legend of the marga Ramin of Boven-Singkel (Upper Singkel, in present-day Aceh Singkil Regency) as the eponymous stamvader (ancestral father) of that marga, whose descendants are said to abstain to this day from eating both eel and buffalo-meat in fulfilment of the oaths Gedong swore during a miraculous shipwreck on his way to Belawan. The legend is recorded in W. K. H. Ypes’s Bijdrage tot de kennis van stamverwantschap op Sumatra (cited at p. 57, nt. 1) and is reproduced in Kreemer’s *De Karbouw* ([[1956)]] (p. 220) as one of the Sumatran legends explaining the origin of buffalo-meat avoidance (pantang) prohibitions attached to particular genealogical groups.
The legend
The Gedong legend, as reproduced from Ypes in De Karbouw, runs as follows. Gedong, an Atjeher of Pasei and the eponymous ancestor of the marga Ramin of Boven-Singkel, suffered shipwreck on his way to Belawan (the North-Sumatran port in present-day Deli Serdang). He was caught by an eel (paling), which, however, brought him to land after he swore never to eat eel. On the beach, a buffalo awaited him, threatening to push him back into the sea — whether this was an albino buffalo is, the legend notes, not specified — but released him unharmed after he swore never to eat buffalo-meat. The members of the marga Ramin are said to abstain, to this day, from both eel and buffalo-meat, in fulfilment of Gedong’s two oaths.
The legend is structurally a compact double-taboo narrative: a single ancestor, in a single episode of maritime crisis, contracts two food prohibitions (eel and buffalo), each mediated by an animal rescuer-thrartner, and the prohibitions pass to his genealogical descendants. As Kreemer presents it, the legend belongs to the wider corpus of Sumatran *pantang* legends that explain, by appeal to an ancestral encounter, why a particular genealogical group abstains from a particular food — a corpus in which the buffalo (especially the albino buffalo) figures prominently across Groot-Atjeh (kawōm Dja Sandang), Atjeh’s Westkust, the Gajoland groups of Kedjoeroen Boekit and Petiambang, the Alasland mergō’s, and the Simaloer landschap Tapah.
Significance
Gedong’s significance for the encyclopedia of Acheh history is as the legendary ancestral figure of the marga Ramin of Boven-Singkel — a figure whose narrative anchors a living Sumatran food-prohibition in a putatively historical Atjehnese ancestor from Pasei, and thus ties the Singkil-area genealogical tradition to the North-Acehnese Pasai cultural sphere. The legend is also significant as a documented instance of the wider Atjeh-north-Sumatran pattern in which buffalo-meat avoidance is legitimated by an ancestral oath, a pattern that Snouck Hurgronje (cited in De Karbouw) cautiously suggested might once have had a totemistic basis, even if present-day obedience rests simply on fear of ancestral wrath.
Sources
Bijdrage tot de kennis van stamverwantschap op Sumatra, by W. K. H. Ypes, p. 57 nt. 1.
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. 220.