Pulo Sembilan — Malay “Nine Islands” — is the chain of larger and smaller hills in the bay of Aroe opposite Pangkalan Soesoe, recorded by Van Rijn in 1888 and identified by local tradition as having “come here from the Overwal” and as having “belonged to the Nine Islands of Koeala Pérak, of which now only eight are said to lie there”. The same tradition holds that the island “would marry with Poelau Salahadji, but could not proceed further than the present place, where it anchored before a tree which is still found and which, at high as well as low water, is visible in the bay of Aroe and always protrudes equally far above the water”.
The Van Rijn record
In his 1888 visit to the bay of Aroe, Van Rijn recorded that “the island Sembilan opposite Pangkalan Soesoe consists of a chain of larger and smaller hills. According to the tradition this island came here from the Overwal and would have belonged to the 9 islands Koeala Pérak, where now still 8 islands must lie. The same tradition relates that this island would marry with Poelau Salahadji, but could not proceed further than the present place, where it anchored before a tree which is now still found and which, at high as well as low water, is visible in the bay of Aroe and always protrudes equally far above the water”.
Decoding: the djangkar and the taroe nama
The Inlanders in these regions, Van Rijn further recorded, “go often to offer at that tree and have much reverence for Poelau Sembilan, where none of them will fell a tree”. De Roo de la Faille decodes the tradition as a bedekte taal riddle: the “marrying” of Sembilan with Salahadji is a riddle on the djangkar (anchor) and Hangker; the “tree” before which Sembilan anchored is a riddle on boom = taroe nama, i.e. Taroema, “always visible in the bay and always equally far (djaoeh) protruding above the water” — a riddle on cljawa..oe.l-ér, “reverent awe for the Land of Origin”.
The Nine Islands of Perak
The tradition that Sembilan “belonged to the Nine Islands of Koeala Pérak” — of which only eight are now said to lie there — De Roo de la Faille reads as a bedekte taal form for the ancestral land of Taroema at the bay of Aroe: the “Nine Islands” (Sembilan) is the same P.Kam-pé boe-rak of the bay’s sacred geography, whose central islet is Kampi. The same tradition, De Roo de la Faille argues, underlies the Nine Islands off Perak that Pinto records as his waypoint on the 5 October 1539 run from Malacca to Aru.
Significance
For AcehWiki, Pulo Sembilan is the principal token of the survival of the Taroema-Kampi-Aroe sacred geography in east-coast folk tradition — the bedekte taal riddle by which the older Hindu-Buddhist place-world was concealed beneath the surface of folk tale. Its identification, by De Roo de la Faille, with the Nine Islands of Perak also fixes it as the 5 October 1539 waypoint of Pinto’s voyage to the Atjeh-Aru war.
See Also
- Aroe-baai
- Poelo Kampi
- Pulo Breueh
- Pangkalan Soesoe
- Taroema
- Mendez Pinto
- Atjeh-Aroe War (1539)
- Van Rijn van Alkemade
- Bedekte taal
- Historische Curiositeiten uit Malajoe en Java
Source
Historische Curiositeiten uit Malajoe en Java, by P. de Roo de la Faille (Den Haag: Maart 1954), chapter “Mendez Pinto op Sumatra”, pp. 11-12.