Menangkabau

Menangkabau (modern spelling Minangkabau) was the principal cultural and political territory of west-central Sumatra, whose princes’ domain was separated from the Acehnese sultanate’s territory by Baros on the West Coast, and whose matrilineal (adat perpatih) civilisation served as the standing comparative point of reference for the institutions of Acheh throughout the modern scholarly literature. The boundary between the territory of the princes of Menangkabau and that of the Sultans of Acheh was marked at Baros or whatever other point the Acehnese regarded as the correct boundary.

Menangkabau had its own distinct political and cultural traditions — most notably its matrilineal (adat perpatih) social system — that contrasted with the patrilineal and Islamised structures of Acheh. Its territories lay south and east of the Acehnese zone of influence along the western Sumatran coast, centred on the volcanic massif of Padang and the valley of the river of that name.

The Southern Boundary of Acheh

The limits of the kingdom of Acheh in Sumatra are placed, Snouck Hurgronje writes in The Achehnese Vol. I, “by the Achehnese themselves at Tamiang on the East Coast, but far more to the South on the Western Coast, viz. at Baros or whatever other point they regard as marking the boundary between the territory of the princes of Menangkabau and that of the Sultans of Acheh.” The Achehnese, in other words, recognised the Menangkabau princes as their only peers on Sumatra, and treated the dividing line between the two spheres as the southern limit of their own empire. Within that boundary the territory described as “Acheh proper” or Great Acheh was far more restricted, bounded by a line from Kluang on the west to Krueng Raya on the north coast, passing through Reueng-reueng, Pancha, and Janthoe.

The Jeumphan and the Malay Lapat

The Achehnese prepare a sweet cake, the jeumphan (also called limphan), made of glutinous rice wrapped in plantain leaf in a particular parcel-shape and cooked by steaming (seu’ob) or by boiling in a little water. This confection, Snouck Hurgronje observes, “most closely resembles what the Malays call lapat.” The Malay equivalent of the Achehnese jeumphan is thus the lapat, a word which the author notes belongs especially to “the Malay of Menangkabau.” The mention is brief but significant, for it places an item of Achehnese popular cuisine within a wider Sumatran continuum in which the Minangkabau dialect supplies the standard term.

The Number Four in Genealogical Subdivisions

The number four, the author notes, is a favourite one in Achehnese genealogical subdivisions. “It is known that the sukus (the word actually indicates the fraction) of the Menangkabau people are also based on the number four. Anyone at all versed in genealogical legends is aware that all such tables of descent are, as regards their uppermost part, artificial or mythical or — in brief — fictitious, while the really traditional or more reliable elements must be sought for in the most recent branches.” The Achehnese sukeë and the Menangkabau suku thus appear as parallel instances of a fourfold clan-organisation current across Sumatra.

The Suku and the Malignant Spirit

The parallel between Achehnese and Menangkabau folklore extends even to beliefs that seem most local. The Achehnese give the name of a malignant spirit bidaʾ or biday (also explained as a “bag” or “sack”), the connection of ideas being the formidable size of the snake of that name. “The people of Menangkabau give to a similar malignant spirit the name of ula biday or liday, the connection of ideas being the formidable size of the snake of that name, which they compare with the biday, a rattan mat of great length used for drying padi.” The same dread of a particular reptile, identified with a household object, is shared by both peoples.

Formal Oratory and Common Eloquence

A further point of resemblance lies in the formal oratory of the two peoples. “The constant repetition of this question, though the persons addressed are present,” the author remarks of an Achehnese ritual dialogue, “appears also in the formal orations to which the adat of Menangkabau gives rise. Specimens of these are to be found in the work printed by R. Edw. van Muien in 1890 at Padang: Adat tiang bagai fafanai luarpakai dalam nan salajas Kampung. This is far from being the sole point of resemblance between the eloquence of the Menangkabau people and that of the Achehnese.” The resemblance extended, the author suggests, to the prolix discourses on weighty occasions that in Acheh accompanied every marriage, election, and reception.

Marriage Customs and the Ta’liq-Adat

In the comparative account of marriage customs, the Minangkabau are repeatedly cited as the type of a matrilineal people. “The custom prevalent in West Java, according to which the father of a young girl seeks out a suitable son-in-law, is regarded as incorrect by the Achehnese. ‘The well does not look for the bucket’, they say.” Snouck Hurgronje observes that the Achehnese proverb “cannot be taken as in itself proving the rarity of such a case, for in Java, where a proposal of marriage on the woman’s side is not uncommon, it is still called timpang angulati alu = ‘the mortar seeking the pestle’; and even the people of Minangkabau, among whom the rule is for the relations of the woman to seek her a husband, have a saying anau mauchari jangjang = ‘the aren-tree seeking the ladder’.” The comparison shows that the Achehnese practice, in which the proposal ordinarily comes from the man’s side, is the reverse of the Minangkabau rule.

The author groups together “Acheh and the Menangkabau territories” as the two regions in which the ta’liq-adat — the conditional divorce formula attached to the marriage contract — has produced the same effect upon the position of the wife. In both, the author writes, “the woman is, so far as lodging and maintenance are concerned, practically independent of her husband, since she continues to form an integral part of the family wherein she was born.” An Achehnese woman whose husband has gone as a pepper-planter to the East or West Coast and gives no sign of his existence for years, may indeed, by the operation of the ta’liq, free herself from the bond of marriage and contract another.

The parallel between Acheh and the Menangkabau territories is the more striking in that the ta’liq is, in its origin, an institution of the Mohammedan law, developed especially by the jurists of Arabia and propagated through the archipelago by teachers of that law. Yet its practical consequences — the wife’s continuing membership of her natal family, her economic independence, and her power to dissolve the marriage by her own motion — coincide in the two Sumatran regions in a manner that points to a common substratum of pre-Islamic custom. In Java, by contrast, where the ta’liq was ordained in olden times by the rulers of Mataram, Chirbon and Banten, its effects were different, and the wife’s position remained distinct from that enjoyed by her Achehnese or Menangkabau sister.

The “Rawa” Strangers on the West Coast

The people of mixed descent on the West Coast are nicknamed aneu’ Rawa (“people from the province of Rawa”) — Rawa being a district of Minangkabau origin — “to which latter nickname the epithet ‘tailed’ (meuikit) is also added.” These “tailed or tail-less strangers contributed their quota to the composition of the Achehnese race.” Minangkabau emigrants, like the Kling traders of the East and the Arabs and Bugis of the royal house, are thus among the foreign elements whose share in the formation of the Achehnese people Snouck Hurgronje regards as “merely accidental”, in contrast to the established unity of the Achehnese themselves.

Account from Stapel’s De Koloniën (1931) — the Constitutional Fiction

Menangkabau (modern Minangkabau) was the inland Sumatran polity whose king — usually called the “keijser” (keijser) of Menangkabau by the Dutch — claimed suzerainty over the West Coast of Sumatra’s coastal lands and was, from 1662 onward, the principal native ally of the Compagnie in its contest with Atjeh for the Westkust. In Dr. F. W. Stapel’s Geschiedkundige Atlas van Nederland Menangkabau is the constitutional fiction on which the Painansch Contract system rests: a native sovereign whose authority the Compagnie invokes to legitimise its Westkust government.

The Atjehsche yoke and the appeal to the Compagnie

Before 1662 the Westkust was under Atjehsche sovereignty, exercised through Atjehsche governors in the pepper ports. The Menangkabau chiefs’ complaint about “the hard yoke of the Atjehers” (het harde juk der Atjehers) was the political occasion for the Compagnie’s first overtures. The repeated Menangkabau appeals — “the already repeatedly directed request of the Menangkabau chiefs ‘that we should bind ourselves to defend them against the Atchinders, both by water and by land’” (dat wy ons souden verbinden haar tegens d’Atchinders te defenderen, soo te water als te lande) — were finally accepted by Batavia in 1656, in the wake of the 1656 blockade and the arrest of Van Voorst.

The 1662 secret mission

Jan van Groenewegen’s 1662 secret mission — the political foundation of the Painansch Contract — was framed as the act of drawing the Menangkabauers “from the croone of Atchin to the protection of the Compagnie” (van de croone van Atchin tot de bescherming van de Compagnie te trecken). The Menangkabau chiefs’ defection from Atjeh to the Compagnie was the political essence of the Painansch Contract of 6 July 1663.

The 1666 stadtholder-ship

Jacob Jorisse Pits’s appointment as the Menangkabau king’s stadtholder over the coastal lands — c. 1666 — was the constitutional instrument by which the Compagnie’s chief of trade at Padang became a native military-chief with the right to appoint regents. “One of the most influential princes of the Padangsche Bovenlanden, usually indicated as the king of Menangkabau, had appointed Pits as his stadtholder over the coastal lands” (Een der invloedrijkste vorsten der Padangsche Bovenlanden, gewoonlijk aangeduid als de koning van Menangkabau, had Pits benoemd tot zijn stadhouder over de kustlanden).

The 1672 Singkel accession

The extension of the Painansch Contract to Singkel on 19 March 1672 is the clearest statement of the Menangkabau constitutional theory. The Singkel chiefs “acknowledged the king of Menangkabau as their sovereign and the Compagnie as protectress” (erkennende den koning van Menangkabau als haaren souvereinen koning ende hooft, ende d’Ed. Compagnie als haare beschermers ende gebieders).

The 1680 imperial confirmation

The year 1680 opened with a change at the top of Menangkabau. On 24 February 1680 the commandeur Hurdt at Padang received an embassy from the uplands, announcing “that a new ‘keijser’ in the Menangkabau realm had succeeded; that he had the old contracts, ‘concluded with his predecessor’ confirmed, and at the same time given order ‘to confirm commander Hurdt in the honour-title of imperial stadtholder’” (dat een nieuwe ‘keijser’ in het Menangkabausche rijk was opgevolgd; dat hij de oude contracten, ‘met sijn voorsaat aangegaan’ liet bevestigen, en tevens opdracht gegeven had, ‘den commandeur Hurt in de eertitul van keyserlycke stadthouder te confirmeeren’).

The 1680 Padang Conference

The Padang Conference of 29 August 1680 was the high-water mark of the Menangkabau constitutional theory. The “keijser” (keijser) of Indrapoera — acting in the name of the Menangkabau sovereign — was the senior signatory, and the panglima-radja at Padang signed in his capacity as the king’s military governor. The Compagnie’s authority on the Westkust was, in form, the authority of the Menangkabau king’s stadtholder.

The 1684 panglimaschap

The Tikoe submission of 20–21 June 1684 brought the panglima-radja title into the Compagnie’s own hands. The chiefs of Tikoe “promised ‘to acknowledge and obey the commandeur at Padang as their panglima.’ … They declared that their regents were to be appointed by the commandeur, ‘by force of the panglimaschap’” (belovende de commandeur op Padang voor haer panglima te erkennen en gehoorsamen. … zij verklaarden, dat hun regenten door den commandeur moesten worden aangesteld, ‘kragte van het panglimaschap’).

Significance

Menangkabau matters for AcehWiki on two fronts. First, as the chief matrilineal people of Sumatra, the Menangkabau provide the standing parallel for Achehnese kinship, inheritance, and adat — parallels which are developed at length in Snouck Hurgronje’s comparative apparatus, especially in connection with the suku or fourfold clan system, with formal oratory, with the ta’liq-adat and the wife’s practical independence, and with the matriarchal survivals of Achehnese domestic life. Second, the Menangkabau king is the constitutional fiction on which the Painansch Contract system rests: the Compagnie’s Westkust authority is, in form, the authority of the Menangkabau king’s stadtholder, and the Painansch Contract signatories acknowledge the Menangkabau king as their sovereign. The fiction allowed the Compagnie to displace Atjehsche sovereignty without appearing to acquire direct sovereignty itself — a useful constitutional ambiguity that persisted through the entire VOC period. The Menangkabau fiction is also the principal point of contact between the Westkust story and the larger history of the Padangsche Bovenlanden: the interior uplands — the future heartland of the Padri War — were the seat of the Menangkabau king, and the Compagnie’s relationship with them through the stadtholder-ship was the precondition of its later nineteenth-century involvement with the Padangsche Bovenlanden.

Account from Het recht op den grond in Atjeh (D. W. N. de Boer, 1931) — the shared institution of harta seharkat

Minangkabau appears in the Atjehnese land-law literature as the region with which Atjeh shared, under the same name, the adat institution of jointly acquired marital property.

D. W. N. de Boer recorded that ground made fruitful by husband and wife in new clearance during the marriage was regarded as belonging to both together, though the husband had the management of it, and the produce of such ground served the common maintenance of the couple. Property so acquired by the joint labour of man and wife bore in Atjeh, he wrote, the same name as in Minangkabau: harta seharkat, in Atjehnese atra thihareukat.

The division of the harta seharkat on divorce varied by district within Atjeh: in the onderafdeeling Sigli, two-thirds to the husband and one-third to the wife; in the onderafdeeling Lho’ Seumawe and in Groot-Atjeh, one half to each.

The institution formed, together with the atra peunoelang, the customary counterweight in Atjeh to the small share allotted to a wife or widow under Mohammedan inheritance law — the same function it served in the Minangkabau adat.

Sources

The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A. W. S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R. J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E. J. Brill, 1906. Chapter I, § 1, p. 1 (limits of the kingdom of Acheh); comparative sections on the suku, the bidaʾ/biday malignant spirit, formal oratory, marriage customs, the ta’liq-adat, and the aneu’ Rawa of the West Coast.

De Koloniën, by Dr. F. W. Stapel, in Geschiedkundige Atlas van Nederland (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1931), kaart 19, blz. 14–22 (tekst bij blad 4: Atjeh en de Westkust van Sumatra in 1684).

Het recht op den grond in Atjeh (“The Right to the Soil 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.

description	Highland region and people of west-central Sumatra; the chief comparative point of reference for Achehnese institutions and the constitutional fiction on which the VOC Painansch Contract system rested.
tags	place, region, sumatra, foreign, people, highland, polity, adat, achehnese, colonial, property, comparative
aliases	Minangkabau, Menangkabouw, Menangkabau people, Manangkabau, Menangkabau territories, Minangkabau territories, Menangkabau country, Minangkabau country, territories of the Menangkabau, Menangkabausche, Minangkabauers, King of Menangkabau, Emperor of Menangkabau, Keijser van Menangkabau

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