IBSN · UDAYANA UNIVERSITY
Daniel Schuster IBSN-Nr.: 37B danielo.schuster@gmail.com

June 10, 2013

Cross Culture Management

Batak People

International Business Studies Network Faculty of Economics - Udayana University, Denpasar.

Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 Prehistory ................................................................................................................................... 1 Culture and Religion ................................................................................................................... 2 Language ..................................................................................................................................... 3 Ritual cannibalism....................................................................................................................... 4 References .................................................................................................................................. 6

Introduction
The Batak are indigenous inhabitants of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The Batak people is composed of several tribes, whose origin is in Samosir, an island in Lake Toba is located. According to legend, all Batak gods descended from a hero named Si Raja Batak, who was born on a sacred mountain near the Lake Toba. In reality, they probably came in several batches immigration from the mountain areas of Thailand and Burma to the Toba highlands and spread from there. A total of about 3 million live in Sumatra Batak. Batak predominantly found in North Sumatra, Indonesia. The term is used to include the Toba, Karo, Pakpak, Simalungun, Angkola and Mandailing, which are distinct but related groups with distinct, albeit related, languages and customs. Occasionally it is also used to include the Alas people of Central/Southern Aceh, but usually only as relates to language groups. In North Sumatra, Toba people typically assert their identity as 'Batak', while other 'Bataks' may explicitly reject that label, preferring instead to identify as specifically 'Simalungun', 'Karo', etc.

Prehistory
Linguistic and archeological evidence indicates that Austronesian speakers first reached Sumatra from Taiwan and the Philippines through Borneo and/or Java about 2,500 years ago, and the Batak probably evolved from these settlers. While the archaeology of southern Sumatra testifies the existence of neolithic settlers, it seems that the northern part of Sumatra was settled by agriculturalists at a considerably later stage. Although the Batak are often considered to be isolated peoples, largely because they were inland, away from influence by seafaring European colonials, there is evidence that they have been involved with trade and contact with other neighbouring kingdoms for a millennium or more. Reliable historical records of the Batak before 1800 are almost non-existent. The Bata were possibly documented in Zhao Rugua's 13th-century Description of the Barbarous People, which refers to a 'Ba-ta' dependency of Srivijaya. The Suma Oriental, of the 15th century, refers to the kingdom of Bata, bounded by Pasai and the Aru kingdom. 1

The Bataks were likely involved with trade with Srivijaya for benzoin and camphor, both of which were important commodities for trade with China, and grew in the Batak lands of northwest Sumatra, perhaps from the eighth or ninth centuries, and continuing for the next thousand years, Batak men carrying the products on their backs for sale at ports. It is suggested that the important port of Barus in Tapanuli was populated primarily by Batak people. A Tamil inscription has been found in Barus dated 1088, while contact with Chinese and Tamil traders took place at Kota Cina, a trading town located in what is now northern Medan that was established in the eleventh century, and comprising 10,000 people by the twelfth century. Tamil remains have been found on key trade routes to the Batak lands. These trading opportunities may have caused migration of Batak from Pakpak and Toba to the present-day Karo and Simalungun 'frontier' lands, where they were exposed to greater influence from visiting Tamil traders, while the migration of Batak to the Angkola-Mandailing lands may have been prompted by eighth-century Srivijayan demand for camphor. The Karo marga or tribe Sembiring "black one" is believed to originate from their ties with Tamil traders, with specific Sembiring sub-marga, namely Brahmana, Colia, Pandia, Depari, Meliala, Muham, Pelawi, and Tekan all of Indian origin. Tamil influence on Karo religious practices are also noted, with the pekualuh secondary cremation ritual specific to the Karo and Dairi people. From the sixteenth century onwards, Aceh increased the production of pepper, an important export commodity, and in doing so needed to import rice, which grew well on the Batak wetlands. Batak people in different areas cultivated either sawah "wet rice fields" or ladang "dry rice", and the Toba Batak, most expert in agriculture, would have migrated to meet demand in new areas. The increasing importance of rice had religious significance, increasing the power of the Batak high priests, who had responsibility for ensuring agricultural success.

Culture and Religion
The Batak developed a warlike culture with many battles between the villages and practiced ritual cannibalism, head-hunting with. Their religion was animistic with Hindu influences. Busy is the ritual ingestion of hallucinogenic mushrooms and the use of Pupuk as a charm. The Batak bury their dead in the chief ancestral houses that are similar to the houses decorated with carvings or stone tombs, the Tugu. The central belief in the traditional 2

ancestor worship is expressed mainly in the hard Knochenumbettung. It is a secondary burial, in which the remains of deceased family members to be placed in a partially lavish Tugu. The later introduced religions such as Christianity and Islam were strongly influenced by this belief. The Christian missionary is largely due to the work of the German missionary Ludwig ginger Nommensen and the Rhenish Missionary Society from about in 1860. About 85 percent of the Batak today are Christians, and most of the independent, founded in 1917 Huria Kristen Batak Batak Church Protestantism (HKBP) belong. There are minorities of Muslims (10%) and many Batak who practice their original religion. Also among the Christianized elements of the old Batak play an important role in ancestor worship, to the exercise of occult practices, eg the so-called "Begu-Ganjang" faith. In the culture of the Batak played Porhalaan ', a lunar calendar, an important role, but this was not the era but for cultic purposes. The social structure is mainly determined by a complicated clan culture. An essential element is the Marga (clan), whose name is passed by most Batak today as a surname. For example, marriages between members of the same Marga strictly forbidden, even if the persons concerned are only distantly related to each other, a marriage between cousins of the maternal line (Boru), however, is not a problem and is even often arranged. Even married women still bear the names of their birth Marga with the intent Boru and do not take the surname of her husband on. The Batak are considered outstanding singers and musicians and play a significant role in contemporary Indonesian music. Modern music is called Batak skirt. Opera Batak is the traveling theater, by an orchestra consisting of two Hasapi (boat-shaped lute), Sarune (oboe), Sulim (flute), Garantung (xylophone) and usually a beer bottle is accompanied as a clock.

Language
There are with Angkola, Mandailing, Toba, Pakpak, Simalungun and Karo Batak six different Bataksprachen. All have their own alphabet, and its own sound inventory with their own corresponding characters. Here we group three language groups: Northern Batak (Pakpak and Karo Batak), Central Batak (Batak Simalungun) and South Batak (Angkola - Mandailing 3

and Toba Batak). Within each of these language groups, it is possible to communicate, because the languages are very similar. Group Cross is an agreement but not readily possible. To the regional lingua franca of communication you had to use, what was the most popular for many centuries by traders Malay language from which the current national language of Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesia, has emerged. Each of the six languages mentioned has its own font. The researchers batakschen reference were aware of having knowledge quickly agree that the scriptures - like all Indonesian Fonts can be derived from an Indian script. It is unclear to this day, from which the various Indian scriptures they can be derived. It is however based on a derivation from the altjavanischen Kavi script, from which a frühsumatrische font should have developed. The characters are very similar and closely related to the Sumatran writing systems of Lampung and Rejang. The Batak fonts have eighteen consonants. Without further modification, each consonant is the sound a inhährent. To refer to other vowels, there are four vowel signs.

Ritual Cannibalism
Ritual cannibalism is well documented among Batak people, performed in order to strengthen the eater's tendi. In particular, the blood, heart, palms and soles of the feet were seen as rich in tendi. In Marco Polo’s memoirs of his stay on the east coast of Sumatra (then called Java Minor) from April to September 1292, he mentions an encounter with hill folk whom he refers to as “man-eaters”. From secondary sources, Marco Polo recorded stories of ritual cannibalism among the "Battas". Marco Polo's stay was restricted to the coastal areas, and he never ventured inland to directly verify such claims. Despite never personally witnessing these events, he was nonetheless willing to pass on descriptions which were provided to him, in which a condemned man was eaten: "They suffocate him. And when he is dead they have him cooked, and gather together all the dead man's kin, and eat him. And I assure you they do suck the very bones till not a particle of marrow remains in them...And so they eat him up stump and rump. And when they have thus eaten him they collect his bones and put them in fine chests, and carry them away, and place them in caverns among the mountains where no beast nor other creature can get at

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them. And you must know also that if they take prisoner a man of another country, and he cannot pay a ransom in coin, they kill him and eat him straightway. The Venetian Niccolò de' Conti (1395–1469) spent most of 1421 in Sumatra in the course of a long trading journey to Southeast Asia (1414–1439), and wrote a brief description of the inhabitants: "In a part of the island called Batech live cannibals who wage continual war on their neighbors." Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles in the 1820s studied the Batak and their rituals and laws regarding the consumption of human flesh, writing in detail about the transgressions that warranted such an act as well as their methods. Raffles stated that "It is usual for the people to eat their parents when too old to work," and that for certain crimes a criminal would be eaten alive: “The flesh is eaten raw or grilled, with lime, salt and a little rice.” The German physician and geographer Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn visited the Batak lands in 1840-41. Junghuhn says about cannibalism among the Batak (whom he called "Battaer"): “People do the honest Battaer an injustice when it is said that they sell human flesh in the markets, and that they slaughter their old people as soon as they are unfit for work...They eat human flesh only in wartime, when they are enraged, and in a few legal instances.” Junghuhn tells how after a perilous and hungry flight he arrived in a friendly village, and the food that was offered by his hosts was the flesh of two prisoners who had been slaughtered the day before, however he maintains that the Batak exaggerated their love of human flesh in order to frighten off would-be invaders and to gain occasional employment as mercenaries for the coastal tribes who were plagued by pirates. Oscar von Kessel visited Silindung in the 1840s and in 1844 was probably the first European to observe a Batak cannibalistic ritual in which a convicted adulterer was eaten alive. Interestingly, his description parallels that of Marsden in some important respects, however von Kessel states that cannibalism was regarded by the Batak as a judicial act and its application was restricted to very narrowly defined infringements of the law including theft, adultery, spying or treason. Salt, red pepper and lemons had to be provided by the relatives of the victim as a sign that they accepted the verdict of the community and were not thinking of revenge. Ida Laura Pfeiffer visited the Batak in August 1852 and although she did not observe any cannibalism, she was told that: 5

"Prisoners of war are tied to a tree and beheaded at once; but the blood is carefully preserved for drinking, and sometimes made into a kind of pudding with boiled rice. The body is then distributed; the ears, the nose, and the soles of the feet are the exclusive property of the Rajah, who has besides a claim on other portions. The palms of the hands, the soles of the feet, the flesh of the head, and the heart and liver, are reckoned peculiar delicacies, and the flesh in general is roasted and eaten with salt. The Regents assured me, with a certain air of relish, that it was very good food, and that they had not the least objection to eat it. The women are not allowed to take part in these grand public dinners." Dutch and German missionaries to the Batak in the late 19th century observed a few instances of cannibalism and wrote lurid descriptions to their home parishes in order to raise donations. The growing Dutch influence in northern Sumatra led to increased Malay influence in coastal trade and plantations, pushing the Karo farther inland. Growing ethnics tensions culminated in the 1872 Karo Rebellion where the Karo were suppressed by Dutch and Malay forces. Despite this, Karo resistance to Dutch imperialism lingered into the early twentieth century. In 1890 the Dutch colonial government banned cannibalism in the regions under their control. Rumors of Batak cannibalism survived into the early 20th century but it seems probable that the custom was rare after 1816, due partially to the influence of Islam.

References
Ethnologue: LVZ-Online: www.ethnologue.com/ http://www.lvz-online.de/lvzreise/urlaub/entspannt-unter-ex-kannibalen-am-

toba-see-auf-sumatra/r-urlaub-b-235782.html Border-Cross: http://www.border-cross.com/photo1-14-showPhoto-18.htm Open Salon: Outoftime: http://open.salon.com/blog/sean_paul_kelley/2009/01/05/ http://www.outoftime.de/tod-im-kulturvergleich/indones/batak.html final_thoughts_on_indonesia_sumatra_and_the_batak_people

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