Toba-Bataklanden

Toba-Bataklanden — the “Toba-Batak Lands” — was, in the Dutch colonial administrative geography of Sumatra, the region of the Toba-Batak people on Northern Sumatra, around Lake Toba in the uplands south of Atjeh. The region appears in Prof. T. J. Bezemer’s 1933 plate-atlas *Indonesische Kunstnijverheid* as the place of origin of the à cire perdue gold-casting technique documented by J. E. Jasper en Mas Pirngadie in De Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid in Nederlandsch-Indië, Vol. IV, pp. 25–26, and as the place of origin of the granulation technique documented in the same volume, p. 65. The region is, in this sense, the immediate Sumatran goldsmithing context against which the Atjeh *soeasa* wrapping technique is defined in the Bezemer atlas’s § H.

Geography and people

The Toba-Bataklanden occupy the volcanic uplands of Northern Sumatra around Lake Toba — the large volcanic crater-lake that is the geographic centre of the Batak homeland. The region lies to the south-east of Atjeh, across the mountains of the Barisan range, and to the north of the Padangsche Bovenlanden. The principal Toba-Batak towns — Balige, Tarutung, Porsea, Sibolga (on the coast) — lie around the lake and along the rivers that drain from it to the east and west coasts. The Toba-Batak are the largest of the six Batak peoples (Toba, Karo, Pakpak, Simalungun, Angkola, Mandailing), and their homeland is the geographic and demographic centre of the Batak region as a whole.

The Toba-Batak are, in the late colonial period, predominantly Christian (a consequence of more than half a century of German Rhenish Missionary Society activity from 1861 onward), but retain many pre-Christian religious and social institutions — including the marga (clan) system, the adat (customary law), and the ancestor-veneration practices documented in the colonial-ethnographic literature. The Toba-Batak were, in the late colonial period, one of the most economically dynamic of the Sumatran peoples; their involvement in the plantation economy of East-Sumatra’s east coast, and in the colonial commercial economy more broadly, gave them a substantial middle class by the 1930s.

Goldsmithing tradition

The Toba-Batak goldsmithing tradition is documented in the Jasper-Pirngadie passage quoted by Bezemer (p. 13). The passage describes, in unusually detailed technical terms, the à cire perdue casting process as practised by a Toba-Batak goldsmith (een Toba-Batakscher goudsmid) on Noord-Sumatra. The process involves the building of a clay-and-burnt-rice-bran core (de globale voorvorm, de kern), the laying-on of *rimbaga* (a wax-resin-fat compound) to form the wax model, the modelling of the relief in further rimbaga, the attachment of wax pouring-channels, the coating of the wax model with dry clay powder and then with a clay-and-rice-bran paste, the melting-out of the wax, and the pouring-in of the molten metal. The detail of the description — particularly the use of the indigenous technical term rimbaga — is the kind of craft-internal knowledge that, in the colonial-craft-scholarship convention, would have been supplied by Mas Pirngadie from his own craft knowledge or from his network of indigenous craft contacts.

The Toba-Batak cire perdue casting process is the immediate technical foil against which the Atjeh *soeasa* wrapping technique is defined in the Bezemer atlas. The contrast is documented by Bezemer precisely because Jasper and Pirngadie had already documented the Toba-Batak casting process: the Atjeh goldsmiths chose the wrapping technique — wrapping a copper core with *soeasa* sheet — as an alternative to the cire perdue casting used by their Toba-Batak neighbours. The juxtaposition of the two techniques in the same section of the Bezemer atlas’s § H is, in this sense, a comparative juxtaposition of two regional Sumatran goldsmithing traditions, within which the Atjeh technique is defined as the regional variant.

Granulation tradition

The Toba-Bataklanden are also documented, in the same Jasper-Pirngadie volume (Vol. IV, p. 65, quoted by Bezemer p. 13), as one of the regional centres of *granuleeren* (granulation) — the technique of decorating a metal surface with tiny soldered balls of precious metal. Bezemer notes that granuleeren is the technique of the Bataks, Dyaks and Timorese, and the Batak application is therefore the Sumatran variant of the technique. The Toba-Batak granulation and the Toba-Batak cire perdue casting are, in this sense, complementary techniques of the same regional Sumatran metalwork tradition, both documented in the same Jasper-Pirngadie volume.

Toba-Bataklanden in the Bezemer atlas

The Toba-Bataklanden are documented in the Bezemer atlas principally by the Ragidoep — a cotton ikat textile — of plate 64 (p. 48), captioned in four languages as Ragidoep. katoenen ikat. Toba-Bataklanden, Sumatra / Ragidup. Toba-Batak Lands, Sumatra / Ragidup. Pays des Toba Batak, Sumatra / Ragidup. Toba-Batak-Länder, Sumatra. The Ragidoep is a Toba-Batak cotton ikat textile — a parallel, in cotton, to the Atjeh silk ikats of plates 65 and 66. The juxtaposition of the Toba-Batak cotton ikat of plate 64 with the Atjeh silk ikats of plates 65 and 66 on the same page-spread of the Bezemer atlas is, in this sense, a comparative juxtaposition of two Sumatran ikat traditions — one in cotton, one in silk — within which the Atjeh silk ikats are placed.

The Toba-Batak are also documented in the brasswork chapter (§ F) of the Bezemer atlas by the brass armlet of plate 169 (p. 123), captioned Koperen armring der Toba Bataks. Sumatra / Brass Armlet of the Toba Batak. Sumatra / Bracelet de cuivre des Toba batak. Sumatra / Messing-Armspange der Toba-Batakker. Sumatra, and by the Batak man with brass armlet of plate 168 (p. 122). The Toba-Batak brass armlet is, in this sense, another Toba-Batak metalwork object documented alongside the Atjeh brassware of the same chapter — placing the Toba-Batak and Atjeh metalwork traditions in the same comparative frame.

Significance for Atjeh

For Atjeh’s history, the Toba-Bataklanden are significant principally as the Sumatran goldsmithing region against which Atjeh goldsmithing is defined in the late colonial Dutch scholarship. The Toba-Batak cire perdue casting process is the immediate technical alternative to the Atjeh soeasa wrapping technique; the Toba-Batak granulation is the decorative technique applied to the cast objects; and the Toba-Batak cotton ikat of plate 64 is the textile parallel to the Atjeh silk ikats of plates 65 and 66. The region is, in this sense, the principal Sumatran craft-geographical reference point for the Atjeh metalwork and textile traditions, alongside the Padangsche Bovenlanden to the south.

The Toba-Bataklanden are also significant as the immediate southern neighbours of Atjeh across the Barisan range, and as the principal non-Atjehnese region of Noord-Sumatra in the Dutch colonial administrative geography. The two regions — Atjeh and the Toba-Bataklanden — together constituted the highland-and-coastal complex of northern Sumatra, and their metalwork and textile traditions were, in the late colonial period, in continuing contact across the mountainous interior.

Account from Het recht op den grond in Atjeh (D. W. N. de Boer, 1931) — the Batak right of avail as comparative frame

The Toba-Bataklanden, and the territories that had borrowed their institutions, supplied D. W. N. de Boer with the comparative frame against which he measured the operation of the beschikkingsrecht (right of avail over unappropriated land) in Atjeh. His study opens with the proposition that the right “bestaat in Atjeh van huis uit niet in dien vorm, met die strekking, tot die bemoeienis, als in de Toba-Batak- en de daaraan ontleende landen” — does not from the outset exist in Atjeh in that form, with that tendency, to that degree of interference, as in the Toba-Batak and derived lands.

The two elements of the Batak right

In the Toba-Batak lands the right consisted of two elements. The first was an “angstvallig intensieve contrôle” — an anxiously intensive control — exercised in the first instance by the Radja (ni) Hoeta, the village radja, over the taking of land into use, and above all directed to preventing the alienation of land out of the community. The second was the annexation by that same Radja Hoeta of lands left by deceased dependants, or abandoned by emigrating ones, so far as no entitled heirs presented themselves — annexation either for his own benefit, or for issue and re-issue of the land to new immigrants, whom he thereby bound to himself as parripe’s.

The political foundation

For the Batak radja this right was “de basis van zijn macht, het fundament bij den opbouw van zijn harajaon” — the basis of his power, the foundation on which his chieftaincy was built. Without it, De Boer argued, the small Batak radja in general, and above all — since the fragmentation of the marga (clan) — the man founding a new village, could not have bound to himself the picked ripe’s, preferably belonging to his own marga, whom he needed to maintain or extend his harajaon. Nor could he have prevented representatives or members of other marga’s from nibbling away at his often insignificant little chieftaincy, until at last he found himself so far in the minority even in the village he had himself founded that under marga law he could be more or less set aside.

The contrast with Atjeh

De Boer drew the contrast sharply. The Atjehnese keradjaäns were not fragmented in that degree and were far larger; the Atjehnese village heads — the Keutjih and the Peutoeha — enjoyed no outward independence; and the formation of the various landschappen of Atjeh had not taken place along genealogical lines at all, the Atjehnese states having arisen territorially. There was consequently in Atjeh no dependence on a sufficiently strong following of members of the same lineage, sub-stem or marga, and so no necessity to handle the right of avail with circumspection. “Naar een parallel met parripean-gronden zoekt men hier vergeefs” — one searches in vain here for a parallel with parripean lands.

Comparative institutions of marriage and household

Three further Batak institutions served De Boer as comparanda for Atjehnese usages: the Batak indahan arian, which he equated with the Atjehnese atra peunoelang — the property given by a father or other guardian to his married daughter on the birth of her first child; the Batak mandjaë, corresponding to the Atjehnese peungkleh, the setting-up of a young couple in an independent household; and the Batak sinamot, corresponding to the Atjehnese djinaméë or bride-price.

Source

Indonesische Kunstnijverheid. Platen-Atlas met Inleiding van Prof. T. J. Bezemer (‘s-Gravenhage: N.V. tot Exploitatie van het Maandblad “Nederl-Indië, Oud en Nieuw”; ten Hagen’s Drukkerij en Uitgeversmaatschappij N.V., 15 October 1933), p. 13 (on the Toba-Batak cire perdue casting process, quoting Jasper and Pirngadie) and plate 64 (the Toba-Batak Ragidoep cotton ikat, p. 48), plate 168 (the Batak man with brass armlet, p. 122), plate 169 (the Toba-Batak brass armlet, p. 123). Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, LS 5411. See also De Inlandsche Kunstnijverheid in Nederlandsch-Indië, by J. E. Jasper en Mas Pirngadie, Vol. IV, pp. 25–26 (on the Toba-Batak cire perdue process) and p. 65 (on granulation).

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.

tags	place, highlands, sumatra, batak, goldsmithing, craft-center, colonial-administration, adat, land-law, comparative
aliases	Toba Batak Lands, Toba-Batak Lands, Toba-Bataklanden, the Toba Batak lands, Toba lands, Toba-Batak country, Toba-Batak territories, Toba region of Sumatra, the Batak lands on Noord-Sumatra, Toba-Bataksche landen

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