The Potent Dead

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ASIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA

Southeast Asia Publications Series
THE POTENT DEAD

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ASIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA

Southeast Asia Publications Series
Titles in print
The Challenge of Sustainable Forests: Forest Resource Policy in Malaysia,
1970–1995, F.M. Cooke
Fragments of the Present: Searching for Modernity in Vietnam’s South,
Philip Taylor
The Emergence of a National Economy: An Economic History of
Indonesia, 1800–2000, Howard Dick, Vincent J.H. Houben,
J. Thomas Lindblad, Thee Kian Wie
Power and Prowess: The Origins of Brooke Kingship in Sarawak,
J.H. Walker
The Riddle of Malaysian Capitalism: Rent seekers or real capitalists?
Peter Searle
The Seen and Unseen Worlds in Java, 1726–1749: History, Literature and
Islam in the Court of Pakubuwana II, M.C. Ricklefs
War, Nationalism and Peasants: The Situation in Java, 1942–1945,
Shigeru Sato
Writing a New Society: Social Change through the Novel in Malay,
Virginia Matheson Hooker
Editorial Committee
Professor Virginia Hooker (Editor) Professor Barbara Andaya
Australian National University University of Hawaii
Dr Tony Day Dr Howard Dick

University of Melbourne
Dr Jane Drakard Professor Kevin Hewison

Monash University City University of Hong Kong
Professor Anthony Milner Professor Graeme Hugo

Australian National University University of Adelaide
Professor Rey Ileto Professor John Ingleson

Australian National University University of New South Wales
National University of Singapore
Professor Lenore Manderson Dr Milton Osborne

University of Melbourne
Professor Anthony Reid Dr Krishna Sen

University of California, Los Angeles Murdoch University
Professor Carl Thayer Dr John Butcher

University of Hawaii Griffith University
ThePotentDead 10/1/02 2:36 PM Page iii
THE POTENT DEAD
Ancestors, saints and heroes in contemporary Indonesia
Edited by
Henri Chambert-Loir
and Anthony Reid
Asian Studies Association of Australia

in association with
ALLEN & UNWIN
and
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI’I PRESS
HONOLULU
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First published in 2002

Copyright © this collection Henri Chambert-Loir and Anthony Reid, 2002
Copyright of individual pieces remains with the authors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or
by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing
from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of
one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any
educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational
institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright
Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Published in Australia by
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Published in North America by
University of Hawai’i Press
2840 Kolowalu Street
Honolulu, Hawai’i 96822
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
The potent dead: ancestors, saints and heroes in

contemporary Indonesia.
Bibliography.
Includes index.
ISBN 1 86508 739 4.
1. Dead. 2. Death. 3. Ethnology—Indonesia 4. Ancestor

worship—Indonesia. I. Chambert-Loir, Henri. II. Reid,
Anthony, 1939-.
393.09598
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The potent dead: ancestors, saints, and heroes in contemporary Indonesia /

edited by
Henri Chambert-Loir and Anthony Reid.
p. cm. — (Southeast Asia publications series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8248-2555-1 (alk. paper)
1. Funeral rites and ceremonies—Indonesia. 2. Ancestor worship—Indonesia.
3. Cemeteries—Indonesia. 4. Death—Symbolic aspects—Indonesia.
5. Indonesia—Religious life and customs. 6. Indonesia—Social life and customs.
I. Chambert-Loir, Henri. II. Reid, Anthony, 1939- III. Series
GT3280.A2 P68 2002

291.2'13—dc21 2001057018
Set in 10/11 Times by Midland Typesetters, Maryborough, Victoria

Printed by South Wind Productions, Singapore
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
Maps and illustrations vii

List of contributors ix
Preface xiii
Introduction by Henri Chambert-Loir and Anthony Reid xv
1 Castrated dead: the making of un-ancestors among the Aoheng,

and some considerations on death and ancestors in Borneo
Bernard Sellato 1
2 How to hold a tiwah: the potency of the dead and deathways
among Ngaju Dayaks
Anne Schiller 17
3 Witnessing the creation of ancestors in Laboya (West Sumba,
Eastern Indonesia)
Danielle C. Geirnaert 32
4 Reciprocity, death and the regeneration of life and plants in
Nusa Penida (Bali)
Rodolfo A. Giambelli 48
5 Remembering our dead: the care of the ancestors in Tana Toraja
Elizabeth Coville 69
6 Island of the Dead. Why do Bataks erect tugu?
Anthony Reid 88
7 Modernising sacred sites in South Sumatra: Islamisation of
Gumai ancestral places
Minako Sakai 103
8 Ancestors’ blood: genealogical memory, genealogical amnesia
and hierarchy among the Bugis
Christian Pelras 117
9 Saints and ancestors: the cult of Muslim saints in Java
Henri Chambert-Loir 132
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vi THE POTENT DEAD
10 The Tembayat hill: clergy and royal power in Central Java

from the 15th to the 17th century
Claude Guillot, (translated by Jean Couteau) 141
11 Interpreting the historical significance of tombs and
chronicles in contemporary Java
James J. Fox 160
12 The role of a Javanese burial ground in local government
George Quinn 173
13 ‘National ancestors’: the ritual construction of nationhood
Klaus H. Schreiner 183
Notes 205
Bibliography 220
Index 237
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Maps and illustrations
Maps
Map 1 Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan) 3
Map 2 Bali administrative divisions (Kabupaten), with Nusa Penida 49
Map 3 South Sulawesi: Toraja and Bugis 72
Map 4 Sumatra: Toba Batak and Gumai 89
Map 5 Research sites in South Sumatra 104
Map 6 Java 134
Illustrations
Figure 2.1 The sangkaraya is erected to begin the Ngaju tiwah ceremony 24
Figure 2.2 Ngaju preparing the bones of the dead for interment 25
Figure 2.3 The senior government official plays his part in the tiwah 30
Figure 3.1 Traditional Sumba village of Wujimate 34
Figure 3.2 Descendants of Raja Laboya (West Sumba) 39
Figure 3.3 Layout of houses and graves 40
Figure 3.4 New tomb built for Hoga Bora in front of his house 41
Figure 4.1 Collective washing of the ancestor’s bones after exhumation:
Pendukaha Kelod, Nusa Penida, 1990 55
Figure 4.2 The sanggah kemulan during a family festival, at Karangdawa,
Nusa Penida 62
Figure 6.1 Simarmata tugu in the shape of a lighthouse, northern Samosir 90
Figure 6.2 Manihuruk tugu, built 1993 to house the bones of hundreds of
descendants 91
Figure 6.3 1940s cement grave and 1980s tugu in northern Samosir 98
Figure 7.1 Renovation of an ancestral grave in Lubuk Raman village 110
Figure 8.1 The fake grave of Pua Sanro at Wotu in Luwu 128
Figure 10.1 Entrance to the mausoleum of Kajoran 142
vii
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viii THE POTENT DEAD
Figure 11.1 Genealogy of Ki Ageng Giring 168

Figure 11.2 The tombs of Senopati and his Mataram ancestors at Pasareyan
Kota Gede 170
Figure 12.1 The mausoleum of Jaka Kaiman, founder of Banyumas 176
Figure 12.2 Jaka Kaiman’s tomb 178
Figure 12.3 Actors portraying Jaka Kaiman and his wife in the 1994
procession 179
Figure 12.4 Portraits of previous bupatis paraded through the streets of
Purwokerto 179
Figure 13.1 The national monument at Taman Makam Pahlawan Nasional,
with the tomb of the ‘unknown hero’ 191
Figure 13.2 The ‘monument to sacred Pancasila’, featuring statues of the
seven slain generals 196
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List of contributors
HENRI CHAMBERT-LOIR is a senior research fellow at the Ecole Française

d’Extrême-Orient, Paris, and represented that institute in Jakarta over 15
years from the 1970s to 1990s. He has published a number of editions of
Malay literary and historical texts, as well as essays on Malay traditional
and Indonesian modern literature. He also edited (with Claude Guillot)
Le Culte des Saints dans le Monde Musulman (Paris, 1995) and wrote
(with Claude Guillot), ‘Pèlerinage aux neuf saints de Java’ in Mohammad
Ali Amir-Moezzi (ed.), Lieux d’Islam: Cultes et Cultures de l’Afrique à
Java (Paris, 1996).
ANTHONY REID is now Professor of History and Director of the Center for
Southeast Asian Studies at UCLA, Los Angeles, USA. Until 1999 he was
at the Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National
University. His books include Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce,
c.1450–1680 (2 vols, Yale U. Press, 1988–93) and The Blood of the People:
Revolution and the End of Traditional Rule in Northern Sumatra (Oxford
University Press, 1979).
ELIZABETH COVILLE is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Anthropology

Department at Hamline University in St Paul, Minnesota, USA. She
has published ‘Centripetal ritual in a decentered world: changing
Maro performances in Tana Toraja’ in Susan Russell and Clark Cunning-
ham, (eds), Changing Lives, Changing Rites (CSSEAS, University of
Michigan, 1989).
JAMES J. FOX is Director of the Research School of Pacific and Asian

Studies at the Australian National University. His recent publications on
Java include ‘Ziarah visits to the tombs of the Wali’ in M.C. Ricklefs (ed.),
ix
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Islam in the Indonesian Social Context (Clayton, 1991), ‘Sunan Kalijaga

and the Rise of Mataram’ in P. Riddell and A. Street, (eds), Islam: Essays
on Scripture, Thought and Society (Brill, 1997), and ‘Wali’ in J.J. Fox (ed.),
Religion and Ritual, Indonesian Heritage Encyclopedia (Singapore, 1998).
DANIELLE C. GEIRNAERT studied social anthropology in the Netherlands and

is now Professor of Anthropology at the University of Paris X, France. Her
publications include The Woven Land of Laboya: Cosmic Ideas and Values
in West Sumba (Eastern Indonesia) (Leiden, 1992) and ‘In honour of the
seaworms in West Sumba’ in Signe Howell (ed.), For the Sake of our
Future: Sacrificing in Eastern Indonesia (Leiden, 1996).
RODOLFO A. GIAMBELLI currently works as a Social Forestry and Rural

Development Consultant. His publications include ‘The coconut, the body
and the human being. Metaphors of life and growth in Nusa Penida and Bali’
in: L. Rival (ed.), The Social Life of Trees (Berg, Oxford, 1998) and ‘Working
the land. Babad as forest clearing and the analogy between land and human
fertility in Nusa Penida (Bali)’ in BKI 153, iii (1999). Dr Giambelli can be
contacted at: pretiwi@attglobal.net
CLAUDE GUILLOT is Directeur de Recherche at the CNRS and Directeur

d’Etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. In
collaboration with Henri Chambert-Loir, he edited Le Culte des Saints dans
le Monde Musulman (Paris, 1995).
CHRISTIAN PELRAS recently retired from his position of senior research

fellow at CNRS (1964–99), during which time he directed the research
teams DEVI and LASEMA. His publications in English include The Bugis
(Blackwell, 1996) and ‘Religion, tradition and the dynamics of Islamisation
in South Sulawesi’ in Alijah Gordon (ed.), The Propagation of Islam in the
Indonesian-Malay Archipelago (Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Sociological
Research Institute, 2001).
GEORGE QUINN is Head of the Southeast Asia Centre in the Faculty of Asian
Studies at the Australian National University. He is author of The Novel
in Javanese (KITLV Press, 1992), The Learner’s Dictionary of Today’s
Indonesian (Allen & Unwin, 2000) and an English translation of Anak
Agung Panji Tisna’s novel as The Rape of Sukreni (Lontar, 1998).
ANNE SCHILLER is Associate Professor of Anthropology at North Carolina

State University. Her publications include Small Sacrifices: Religious
Change and Cultural Identity Among the Ngaju of Indonesia (Oxford,
1997) and ‘Talking heads: capturing Dayak deathways on film’ in American
Ethnologist 28(1), 32–55 (2001).
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CONTRIBUTORS xi
MINAKO SAKAI is currently the program co-ordinator and lecturer in
Indonesian Language and Culture, University College, the University of
New South Wales. She is the editor of Beyond Jakarta: Regional Autonomy
and Local Societies in Indonesia (Crawford House, in press) and author of
the forthcoming The Nut Cannot Forget Its Shell: Ritual Practice and
Identity of the Gumai of South Sumatra.
KLAUS H. SCHREINER is currently head of the European Liaison Office of

INFID (International NGO Forum on Indonesia), but previously was
lecturer in Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Frankfurt. His
publications include Politischer Heldenkult in Indonesien. Tradition und
Moderne Praxis (Berlin, 1995), ‘The making of national heroes. Guided
democracy to New Order, 1959–1992’ in Henk Schulte Nordholt (ed.),
Outward Appearances: Dressing State and Society in Indonesia (Leiden,
1997) and, as editor, Islam in Asiën (Unkel, 2001).
BERNARD SELLATO has been working in and on Borneo since 1973. He is

the author of Nomades et Sédentarisation à Bornéo (1989), Hornbill and
Dragon. Arts and Culture of Borneo (1989, 1992), Nomads of the Borneo
Rainforest (1994), and Borneo. People of the Rainforest (a CD-ROM,
1998). He now heads the Institute for Research on Southeast Asia (CNRS)
in Marseille, France.
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Preface
Death is the central fact of life—the source of our most extravagant hopes
and fears. Religious and ritual activity has always sought to cope with it by
regulating the most important of life’s passages, channelling the spiritual
forces it unleashes, and allowing the living to grieve and move on. No
substantial part of the human family has given richer examples than the
Austronesians (of whom Indonesians form the current majority) of these
processes at work. At least since Arnold van Gennep a century ago the
preoccupation of Austronesians with death ritual has provided the most
important field for ethnographic exploration and theoretical speculation.
None of the authors in this book, however, set out to study this phenom-
enon as such. Yet each of us, whether anthropologist, historian or literary
scholar, has been struck by the continuing importance of the recently dead
for our Indonesian friends and informants.
When Henri Chambert-Loir was able to take a few months away from his
duties in Jakarta to become a Visiting Fellow at the ANU, therefore, it
seemed to us both that we should use the opportunity for a workshop on this
topic. Henri had long been concerned with the kramats of Java and the role
they play in pilgrimage, an interest he shared with George Quinn and James
Fox at ANU. I had recently returned from fieldwork among the Toba and
Karo Batak, still puzzling about their attitude to the dead.
Chambert-Loir, Reid, Fox, Quinn and Sakai were able to participate
in this workshop, and became interested enough in the phenomenon to wish
to pursue it further. Gradually the net widened to scholars working in other
parts of Indonesia. Henri was able to extend it to a Francophone circle of
scholars whose work is not always sufficiently appreciated by Anglo-
phones. We are grateful especially to those who were willing to contribute
to the volume despite not having been part of the initial excitement.
xiii
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xiv THE POTENT DEAD
The editors thank Clare Guenther, Jude Shanahan, Wendy Mukherjee

and Linda Poskitt for their help in getting these papers into a uniform
format and ironing out many wrinkles, Barbara Andaya for helpful
comments, and the RSPAS Cartography Unit for drawing some of the
maps.
Anthony Reid
Henri Chambert-Loir
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Introduction
Henri Chambert-Loir and Anthony Reid
Frankly, there is an impression among the public that the President spends
more time visiting the tombs of old figures than living people.
— NU cleric Attabik Ali, quoted Jakarta Post 16.6.2001
Abdurrahman Wahid, the first democratically elected President of the

world’s fourth most populous country, made many decisions in a way that
puzzled not only analysts but his own close followers. One of the most
damaging moves in the first year of his presidency, for example, was to sack
two unusually competent economic ministers of Vice-President Megawati’s
PDIP party, whose presence had been part of the careful political compro-
mise that had brought him to power. According to a report in Indonesia’s
most respected news magazine, Tempo, this decision was taken immediately
after someone told the President that a long-dead spiritual leader of
Nahdatul Ulama, Wahid’s own organisation, was unhappy that Wahid had
not visited his tomb. The President mobilised three helicopters to rush him to
the small East Java town of Situbondo, where he prayed before the tomb of
this leader in a manner very familiar to traditionalist Javanese Muslims. He
emerged from the tomb with new confidence and resolve, and announced the
sacking of the ministers immediately thereafter (Quinn 2001).
Nocturnal communing with the spirits of the ‘potent dead’ was normal
for Abdurrahman Wahid, and to his most passionate Javanese followers it
demonstrated the authority and sanctity of a man supernaturally marked for
leadership. It could be unsettling, however, to the many people in Indonesia
and abroad who rightly saw Wahid as a great democrat who might secure
an open, pluralist future for modern Indonesia. In May 2001, just before a
crucial cabinet meeting he should have presided over, he left Jakarta at
short notice on a special train. He headed for the small Central Java town of
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xvi THE POTENT DEAD
Kroya, where he arrived after nightfall to pray at the tomb of Haji

Muhammad Barokah, a locally revered Islamic leader. Reportedly he
prayed for 15 minutes, both for the repose of Barokah’s soul and for the
salvation of the nation. Then he headed back to his train, returning at 3 am
to a Jakarta whose busy politicians had begun to despair of him.
All Indonesians understand this behaviour, even if they do not approve of
it. To some the dead saints have such power to guide the living that no
leader would be safe without their blessing. Many, including normative
Muslims, Christians or modernisers who deeply disapprove of such
connections, believe that these powerful dead connect Indonesians to their
local place and to their past, Almost all Indonesians have a respect for
deceased ancestors and role models that to outsiders borders on the super-
natural. This book explores the phenomenon across a broad spectrum of
Indonesian societies.
INDONESIAN RELIGION
In historical terms, the universal religions penetrated the Indonesian archi-
pelago with its established belief systems relatively late. Hinduism and
Buddhism were introduced from India around the middle of the first millen-
nium AD, and helped to stimulate the earliest kingdoms in Java and parts of
Sumatra and Borneo. Islam began to spread around the 14th century, while
Christianity did not arrive until the 16th. Local religions also faced a wide
range of other influences, stimuli and coercions—the rise of polities with
territorial claims over various part of the archipelago, the expansion of
maritime communications, the use of Malay as a lingua franca for both
trade and Islam, the colonial experience which united the whole archipel-
ago under a government that claimed to be both Christian and rational, and
the post-Independence development of education, mass media and state
ideologies. Responses to these pressures spanned the whole spectrum, from
enthusiastic conversion to firm resistance and reaction.
Despite these outside pressures a few indigenous religious systems
gained official recognition, at the price of themselves changing in a
modern direction. The Aluk To Dolo of the Toraja, the Agama Pemena of
the Karo Batak and the Agama Kaharingan of the Ngaju Dayak (in 1969,
1977 and 1980 respectively) have been acknowledged by the Indonesian
state as separate branches of the Hindu Dharma religion, alongside the
long-recognised Hindus of Bali (Volkman 1987: 166; Steedly 1993: 69;
see also Chapter 2). At the other end of the spectrum, many individuals and
groups that had been part of the old belief system became uncompromis-
ing devotees of the universal religions, like the exemplary Muslim santri
of Java, or the Salvation Army converts in Central Sulawesi described by
Aragon (1987: 152–6).
Conversion, however, is a complex phenomenon, seldom obliterating
what went before even when it claims to do so (see Hefner 1993). The
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INTRODUCTION xvii
chapters in this volume repeatedly affirm the resilience of one trait that
is common to almost all indigenous religions—namely, the worship of
ancestors. This remains at the core of Indonesian praxis in all of the five
universal, or scriptural, faiths recognised by the Indonesian government—
Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism.
THE INDONESIAN NATION

According to official statistics, more than 85% of Indonesians are Muslim,
giving it the largest Islamic population in the world. Catholic, Protestant,
Hindu and Buddhist adherents are substantial minorities, each with over a
million adherents.1 This simplicity of categorisation is sanctioned by law.
Nobody is an atheist, and a population of 200 million inhabitants is
presumed to follow only these five religions. The rationalisation of political
life during the 32-year regime of Soeharto (1966–98) helped legitimise this
superficial simplicity. It recognised only three parties, required all mass
organisations to accept the Pancasila as their ‘sole foundation’, and limited
the two strong Islamic organisations, Nahdatul Ulama (Javanese/tradi-
tional) and Muhammadiyah (modernist), to religious activities. During
Soeharto’s New Order government the religious landscape seemed to
require little attention, and the view that the five religions lived in relative
harmony became basic to the government’s portrayal of the Indonesian
model of tolerance. Incidents that occurred with increasing frequency
(cultural oppression of the Chinese, arson against churches, harassment of
Catholic bodies) were systematically minimised in the media and their reli-
gious character denied. In the official credo, religion was immovable and
unquestionable. Together with ethnicity (Suku), race (Ras) and ‘intergroup
relations’ (Antargolongan), religion (Agama) remained one of the four
taboos (SARA) of public discourse.
Accordingly, although worship of sacred graves is a phenomenon of
immense importance throughout the country, especially in Java, involving
thousands of sites and hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, it has been
largely ignored by the national media. The Muslim community is divided
about the legitimacy of such practices, and it is feared that open discussion
could cause social unrest. Taking up an important but neglected topic, this
book addresses the role of the ‘potent dead’: that is, it seeks to examine the
power that certain dead—ancestors, saints and national heroes—exert over
the living in contemporary religious thinking and practice in Indonesia.
These three terms require some clarification. The chapters examine
ancestors, who may have survived in a Christian or Muslim form in the
context of indigenous religious practices, as well as saints within the larger
Islamic environment. In discussing the ‘indigenous’ (or ‘traditional’,
‘ethnic’, ‘autochthonous’, ‘archaic’) elements that survive in modern reli-
gions, however, we are not looking back at what such belief systems may
have been but are focusing on this specific category of religious
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xviii THE POTENT DEAD
phenomena in contemporary Indonesia. Ancestor or saint worship is never

an isolated practice. It is but one of the many manifestations of a creed.
Though the cult of the ‘potent dead’ is not in itself integral to any of
the universal religions, it must be emphasised that (with one exception) the
essays in this book deal with Muslim, Christian and Hindu societies. While
the pilgrims who visit the Javanese sacred graves may direct their prayer to
the local ‘saint’ rather than to God, their faith in Allah remains the pillar of
their devotions.
In no society in Indonesia and in probably no society in the world is the
worship of ancestors a religion of itself: it is only one part or one aspect of
religion. Moreover, as Schärer (1963: 152) remarked about the Ngaju: ‘We
find no support in Dayak religion for the assumption that worship of the
sacred dead is the beginning of religious development, and that from it first
spirit-worship and then the worship of a God developed’. It is impossible to
point to the ‘source’ of religious development, although the German and
Dutch anthropologists who initiated research on indigenous religions (for
references, see Stöhr 1968) were obsessed by origins. They conceived of
religion as an essentially coherent and autonomous system derived from the
knowledge of a unique God: ‘The worship of the dead is based only on
the conception of God and can only be understood in relation to it’ (Schärer
1963: 153). As Stöhr himself succinctly put it: ‘The principle [of a tribal
religion] is the idea of God and creation’ (Stöhr 1968: 173).
This approach was abandoned after World War II, with the result that
contemporary scholarship displays a very different approach to such
concepts as ‘religion’ and ‘belief’. In speaking of the Kodi district in West
Sumba, one anthropologist notes: ‘We can see how the indigenous system of
worship, initially defined as a system of practices and rules of ritual proce-
dure, was later reinterpreted as a system of belief’ (Hoskins 1987: 137).
Contrary to the ‘religions of the Book’, indigenous belief systems are not
based on an elaborate body of doctrine from which all elements of religious
life necessarily derive. They are composed of a multiplicity of disconnected
elements, the coherence of which—the ‘system’—is obscure. Many of
them (Batak, Ngaju, Toraja, Sumba, etc.) incorporate rich cosmological,
mythical and eschatological traditions. However, as they remain in the oral
realm, these traditions are only partially codified and manifest multiple
versions and variants, a characteristic that may have made them more
permeable to outside influences. Even literate societies like the Batak and
the Bugis did not produce any work that could have functioned as a reli-
gious code. The use of the term ‘religion’ in this context is justified by the
overall importance of the supernatural in everyday life, not because indig-
enous religions deal with a supernatural or sacred sphere distinct from the
natural or the secular. They encompass the totality of human activity,
comprising the political and economic spheres as well as the spiritual one.
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INTRODUCTION xix
ANCESTORS
Ancestors, as we deal with them here, are involved in every activity of the
living. The term ‘ancestors’ has two different meanings, an issue specifi-
cally addressed in Chapter 1. The first embraces all genealogical forebears,
however distant; the second is the limited category of forebears regarded as
more potent than others, whose prominence the living society acknowl-
edges. It seems that most pre-Islamic societies in Indonesia (one exception
is discussed below) were characterised by ancestor worship, or at least prac-
tised it. Surviving societies either worship all forebears in a collective way
or venerate selected ancestors who have acquired superior status and are
endowed with particular powers. The Nage of Flores make no distinction
between forebears and ancestors (Forth 1998: 243), whereas Chapter 3
shows that the Laboya of Sumba attribute the status of marapu (ancestors)
only to individuals who distinguished themselves while still alive. Because
these exceptional individuals had some kind of power on earth (rank,
wealth, progeniture), they now constitute an elite in the world of the dead.
The most revered among them are the ancestors who founded a village,
lineage or clan, whose legitimacy remains based on the memory of present
occupants or members. Indeed, numerous communities have maintained a
category of ‘memory specialists’ who are in charge of remembering the
genealogical continuity linking present society to its origins. Such examples
are seen in the junkuk and the juru kunci, cultural guardians whom Minako
Sakai and James Fox discuss in relation to two different Muslim societies.2
In such societies it is common, though not universal, to exclude from this
system people who died in a violent fashion or before due time (‘the bad
dead’ in Schärer’s terms), the influence of which is unanimously considered
as harmful. The spirits of the bad dead are malicious and dangerous because
their anti-natural death has automatically excluded them from the system of
exchange that links the living and the dead. They do not dwell in the land
of the dead.3
The conditions of the afterlife for the souls of the dead are conceived in
great detail, but also in an infinity of variants from one community to
another. The path that souls have to follow to reach their destination in the
afterworld is usually long in time and space. At the moment of death,
the soul separates from the body and is often transformed, either giving
birth to one or two different souls or being replaced by one or several new
souls. Stöhr (1968: 205–10) gives examples of a ‘vital soul’ and a new ‘soul
of the dead’ in five different groups (Ngaju, Toba, Nias, Maanyan and
Toraja), but these communities are probably too large to permit generalisa-
tions. Even within the Ngaju Dayaks variations are marked, so that the
descriptions given by Stöhr, Weinstock (1987: 79–80) and (in Chapter 2)
Anne Schiller are all somewhat different.
The ultimate destination of the souls is named, localised and often
described with precision. The soul or souls usually travel to the land of the
ThePotentDead 10/1/02 2:36 PM Page xx
xx THE POTENT DEAD
dead under the guidance of ancestors already living there, or of special

spirits, or of a mediating deity (Schärer 1963: 143; Stöhr 1968: 38, 207).
Located far away, the land of the dead is sometimes associated with the
group’s legendary territorial origin. The route there is dangerous and can be
reached only after a cycle of ceremonies. The land of the dead is repre-
sented as similar to that of the living: the dead have occupations resembling
those of their descendants, but everything is reversed (day is night, right is
left and so on).
Death provokes a rupture. The family of the deceased is excluded from
the community. Family members embark on the period of mourning while
the corpse begins to disintegrate. The soul wanders around the corpse or
its former house in a state of distress, while the living are charged with
pacifying it and preventing it from re-entering the corpse. The deceased is
still a ‘living dead’.
Funeral rites are extremely complex, even more diverse. A remarkable
effort of synthesis was made by Robert Hertz in 1905–06, on the basis of
data pertaining mainly to Borneo. A few years later (1909) Arnold van
Gennep published his famous Rites of Passage, mainly drawing on material
from Madagascar. Both studies (originally in French) appeared in English
translation in 1960. Hertz concluded that death represents the most danger-
ous of all the metamorphoses through which a human life passes. The body
is transformed through putrefaction, the soul wanders in expectation of its
final abode, the relatives of the deceased are contaminated by the impurity
of the corpse, the whole community is in a state of emergency. This situa-
tion prompts the performing of a double burial with a long transitory
(‘liminal’ in van Gennep’s terminology) period, which can last from a few
months to 10 years. During the time required for its total decay the corpse is
highly dangerous, as ‘the evil power which resides in the corpse and which
is linked with the smells must not be allowed to escape and strike the living’
(Hertz 1960: 32). Siegel (1983: 8–9) has remarked on the terror caused by
the smell of putrefaction in modern Javanese society, ‘when the flesh of the
corpse [has] not completely decayed’.4 It is only when the flesh and the
fluids have disappeared and the bones are perfectly dry that the pacified
soul can reach its ultimate abode. During that transitory period it undergoes
‘a kind of probation, during which it stays on earth in the proximity of the
body, wandering in the forest or frequenting the places it inhabited while it
was alive’ (Hertz 1960: 34). It is liberated only through the secondary
burial, a lavish ceremony that ‘has three objects: to give burial to the
remains of the deceased, to ensure the soul peace and access to the land of
the dead, and finally to free the living from the obligations of mourning’
(1960: 54). The mourning period can actually end much earlier through a
far less important intermediary ritual, like the tiwah ceremony of the Ngaju
to which Hertz referred and which is discussed in detail in Chapter 2. Even
among the Nage in Flores there are still three burial rituals, although these
are generally simplified (Forth 1998: 249–52).
ThePotentDead 10/1/02 2:36 PM Page xxi
INTRODUCTION xxi
The dead who have gained the status of ancestors are not the only entities
with which the living maintain a relationship in the supernatural world, for
it is also inhabited by a large number of spirits and gods. However, it seems
that the souls of the dead have an autonomous existence, without direct
contact with either gods or spirits. According to Weinstock (1987: 79–80),
‘there are two parallel, and yet overlapping, realms of spirits in Kaharingan
cosmology. One realm is that of spirits of the human soul, both of the living
and of the dead, while the other realm is of spirits which are non-human’.
These various categories of supernatural beings have specific powers,
specific functions and specific relations with the living. The ancestors are
not intercessors with any other category of spirits: they are worshipped for
the protection and the benefits they can provide the living.5
As in Africa, however, use of the term ‘worship’ can be misleading
(Uchendu 1981: 286). It has been remarked that ‘lineages are communities
of the living and the dead’ or, in Schärer’s terms, ‘the total community
comprises not only the living but also the dead’ (1963: 142). The relation-
ship between the living and the ancestors is one of reciprocity, interaction,
‘exchange of services’ (Hertz 1960: 61), ‘one of the basic social relation-
ships’ (see Chapter 3). Ancestors are by definition benevolent: they protect
their descendants, they guarantee their prosperity and guide them in all
important actions of life, on condition that they are honoured and fed. If the
living neglect their duties towards the ancestors, the latter will punish them
by inflicting all kinds of calamities: illnesses, bad crops, accidents. This
reciprocal relationship is not apparently governed by any moral consider-
ations. Ancestors do not punish offences against any overarching ethical
code; they seek retribution for any lack of proper attention to themselves.
The relations between ancestors and the living are almost permanent:
ancestors manifest themselves through their gifts or the signs of their wrath,
and often appear in dreams. In return, they are invited to all the ceremonies
of the living and are worshipped, collectively or individually, on many
occasions.
This picture is so overwhelming that any counter-example appears to be
merely an inconvenient exception. Nonetheless, Bernard Sellato’s discus-
sion (Chapter 1) of the central Borneo Aoheng, who do not recognise any
ancestors, is unsettling—particularly as this ‘exception’ seems to extend to
all the peoples of the Kayanic group. But this case presents the anthropolo-
gist with an unexpected touchstone: among the distinctive traits of Aoheng
society, it is its rigid stratification, Sellato stresses, which makes recourse to
ancestors unnecessary to status legitimacy and, thus, explains the Aohengs’
neglect of ancestors. As ‘status is not negotiable’, a cult of the ancestors
would not modify the social situation of either the living or the dead. On the
other hand, other stratified societies in Indonesia do acknowledge ances-
tors. It is possible that the peculiar case of the Aoheng is related to their
(former) nomadic condition.
ThePotentDead 10/1/02 2:36 PM Page xxii
xxii THE POTENT DEAD
SAINTS
Like ancestors, saints are humans who have successfully crossed the gap
between the world and the afterworld. They are aware of the mystery of life
and death, and are familiar with the supernatural forces that govern human
life. As Christian Pelras puts it in Chapter 8, their graves ‘are so to say an
access gate to [the invisible, parallel] world’. The transition from ancestors
to saints is actualised through mythical and legendary ancestors and
cultural heroes. In two Muslim societies where genealogy as proof of the
legitimacy of the social order is highly regarded (the Gumai in Sumatra and
the Bugis in Sulawesi), the most revered ‘ancestors’ are beings who came
down from heaven. In Chapter 9, Henri Chambert-Loir reviews the various
categories of saints in Javanese society. Like ‘ancestors’, the term ‘saints’ is
problematic, for the concept of sainthood (walâya) is extremely elaborate
in Islam and should properly be restricted to a very few among those
revered dead. Nonetheless, walâya and its derivatives are popularly used
throughout the Muslim world, from Morocco to India, to designate all the
dead revered on the site of sacred graves. Indeed, the worship of saints is so
common that it can be regarded as a characteristic of Islamic praxis.
Introduced to Indonesia as a foreign phenomenon in the early time of
Islamisation, saint worship naturally replaced or merged with pre-existing
ancestor worship. That this shift had already occurred within the first gener-
ations of converts is suggested by the condemnation by an orthodox
Javanese tract as early as the 16th century of those who ‘put the saints
above the prophets, or even above our Lord Muhammad’ (Drewes 1978:
38–9; also Reid 1993: 164–73). There is an obvious continuum between
ancestors and one large category of Javanese ‘saints’, that of village
founders (cikal bakal). Like ancestors, the saints revered on the site of their
graves are a source of protection, blessing and advice.
One of the many differences between saints and ancestors concerns their
role in the social order, and specifically the issue of morality. Graves may
be visited with trivial or even dubious aims,6 but on the whole saint worship
is associated with a respect for the laws of society and a craving for spiritual
perfection. This makes it possible for the orthodox to say that the source of
the saint’s beneficence may be in the heart of the worshipper.
HEROES
‘National Heroes’ are historical characters from the past whom the state
has institutionalised as ‘fathers’ and ‘mothers’ of the nation. The rituals
(annual ceremonies, reburial, purification of the bones), the sites (exclusive
cemeteries) and the atmosphere of sacredness nurtured by the government
have engineered an effective cult of National Heroes. The Soeharto regime
was particularly careful to select heroes from various periods and from all
provinces, and to make participation in the nationalist or anticolonial
ThePotentDead 10/1/02 2:36 PM Page xxiii
INTRODUCTION xxiii
struggle the principal if not sole criterion for inclusion. In so doing, the
government represented National Heroes as the founding ancestors of
the whole nation, which is thereby united as a large family. National
Heroes are undoubtedly potent dead. However, they cannot be equated
with either ancestors or saints other than metaphorically. Only a few graves
of National Heroes are individually revered, like those of Diponegoro,
leader of Java’s anti-Dutch rebellion of 1825–30, and Kartini, the young
aristocrat whose published letters gave her the status of Indonesia’s first
feminist. Reverence for them has little to do with their nomination as
‘heroes’ by the Indonesian state.
National Heroes may best be regarded as a collective group of the dead
whose potency was called into being by the state as an aspect of its legiti-
macy. In the past the graves of the most prestigious kings of the archipelago’s
varied monarchies were honoured by their reigning successors for similar
reasons. Indonesia’s inherent pluralism, however, made it essential that its
pantheon be equally plural, with no ethnic group content until it too had been
recognised by an officially designated hero.
CONVERSION AND THE POTENT DEAD

Ancestor rituals are observed in the indigenous religions still practised by
people who have resisted incorporation into the universal religions (including
many Ngaju, Toraja and Karo Batak, for example). These rituals and beliefs
are also influential, albeit in a partial or modified form, among a far larger
number of Indonesians who are already part of Islam or Christianity. The
process of conversion is long and complex. Transformations caused by the
impact of an external religion or ideology do not result in radical substitutions
of practices and beliefs—rather in new formulations and interpretations.
These come about as a result of progressive negotiation, of a continuing
‘dialogue’ (Hoskins 1987: 137), and of ‘transactions with the dominant
society’ (Atkinson 1987: 173).
Conversion is partly a process of translation. The Christian missionaries
who endeavoured to translate the Bible into the various languages of the
archipelago were confronted with the difficulty of naming God. Their
answer was often to give the name of the local superior divinity to the
Christian God. (Stöhr 1968: 31, 88, 111 gives examples in Borneo, Nias
and Mentawai, and Forth 1998: 19 in Flores.) By so doing they invested a
new meaning in a name that already had its own signification. The ambiva-
lence of this approach is illustrated by the opposite shift in meaning that
had taken place, ages earlier, when the Ngaju and the Toba underwent the
influence of Hindu, or Hindu-Javanese, religion. Do the Sanskritic names
of some divinities point to imported gods or to new names given to indig-
enous gods?
Some similar creative acts of translation undoubtedly assisted the
progress of Islam. Sembahyang, in particular, remains the most general and
ThePotentDead 10/1/02 2:36 PM Page xxiv
xxiv THE POTENT DEAD
popular word for prayer in Indonesia, including the prescribed Islamic

prayer, although its origins must lie in the reverence (sembah) for gods and
powerful spirits (yang) (Reid 1993: 168). Unfortunately we have few docu-
ments on the process of conversion to Islam in comparison with the
numerous records left by Christian missionaries. Examples collected by
Jones (1979), Ricklefs (1979) and Chambert-Loir (1985) in local literatures
are legendary or mythical texts, which account for conversion as a political
and social phenomenon but leave its spiritual and ritual aspects in the dark.
What can we then say about earlier conversions to Hinduism or Buddhism?
During the Hindu-Buddhist period prior to the arrival of Islam, the Javanese
principalities of the 14th–16th centuries had their religious centres
(mandala, dharma), some of which represented the sacred core of the
kingdom. Claude Guillot’s Chapter 10 is a pioneering study of the perceived
need to convert one of those sacred centres before the kingdom itself could
be brought into the new faith.
In Indonesian Muslim societies (we have to use a plural form, as the
differences in regional practice are evident in the chapters below), rituals
bear the mark of past transformations, either through reinterpretation
(sacred graves are tolerated on the understanding that the intention of the
pilgrims is to pray to God, not to the deceased) or through grafting onto
new rituals (the Gumai perform their agricultural rituals during the two
main Muslim yearly festivals). Similar phenomena are to be found in so-
cieties converted to Christianity. As Elizabeth Coville notes in Chapter 5,
the Toraja effigies ‘were not acceptable if they were considered to house the
spirits of the dead, but they were permitted if they were considered to be a
memorial to the dead’. Toba Batak funeral monuments (tugu) are consid-
ered by some as ‘the Batak way of carrying out the Christian injunction to
“honour thy father and mother”’ (see Chapter 6).
However, Dutch interference with indigenous religions was not limited
to endeavours to convert. For reasons which could be moral (orgies in the
Moluccas), economic (drastic diminution of cattle caused by the second
burial feast) or hygienic (contact with corpses), the colonial government
forbade a number of rituals and practices (Hertz 1960: 29; Stöhr 1968: 151;
Weinstock 1987: 90). The political and economic evolution of local so-
cieties, by transforming social structure, also had an influence on religions.
Education and the civil service provided new sources for the social status
which always determined the rank of the living and subsequently the selec-
tion of ancestors among the dead.
These various interventions were radicalised by the Indonesian govern-
ment. The majority of Indonesian societies were converted (most to Islam,
some to Christianity or Hinduism) at the time of the country’s independence
in 1945, and the state ideology, by limiting the number of acknowledged
religions, exerted new pressure on the as yet unconverted societies. As the
state’s hold on local administration was progressively intensified, the source
of authority often switched to a new elite. In Bugis territory, for instance, the
ThePotentDead 10/1/02 2:36 PM Page xxv
INTRODUCTION xxv
worship of mythical founding ancestors started to decline when the nobility

lost its traditional social function (see Chapter 8).
Many other factors linked to ‘modernity’ and ‘development’ have had an
impact on rituals. The staging of spectacular rituals that tourism encour-
aged, especially among the Batak, Toraja and Balinese, has given rise to
questions of authenticity and identity (see Volkman 1987: 165–7). Techni-
cal changes have also played a role in the evolution of rituals, which are
intimately linked to the ecological milieu. Any innovation has the potential
to upset the rhythm, tools and functions of agricultural life, as Forth (1998:
20) noted following the introduction of irrigated rice cultivation in Flores in
the 1930s. Not only did the modification of the nature and rhythm of crops
cause a modification of the rituals, but the buffaloes which were until then
‘used only as sacrificial victims and marriage prestations’ became draught
animals with a new commercial value. In a similar manner, the transform-
ations of the landscape—creation of roads, apparition of urban centers,
increase of transportation and commerce, architectural evolution—have
contributed to the modification of the context of ritual performance.
The variety of effects mirrored the diversity of causes. The Indonesian
government not only required that each individual or community should
adhere to one of the five acknowledged religions; it also, in the wake of the
colonial government, imposed a new definition of religion (agama) inde-
pendent of custom (adat) and culture (kebudayaan). Indigenous religions
had not made any distinction between the religious and the secular, but
appeared as a set of rules and procedures that governed all aspects of life in
society. Confrontation with the national ideology imposed both a definition
of religion in a restrictive way and a codification of religious beliefs.
Atkinson (1987: 174–8) thus traces the Indonesian concept of agama, its
(foreign) origin and the various influences it had undergone before it came
to mean what she calls Indonesian ‘civil religion’. It is noteworthy that
Clifford Geertz’s famous title, The Religion of Java, could not be translated
into Indonesian as ‘Agama orang Jawa’, because the scope of the book
makes it closer to the concept of budaya, where ‘Agama orang Jawa’ is
simply Islam.7
Agama had to be made distinct from adat. If this process was disruptive,
it was also an open door to negotiations. If agama was strictly limited, adat
on the other hand was apt to accommodate a great part of traditional
practice. Discussing the Toraja in the early century, Volkman (1987: 164)
comments: ‘One no longer had to renounce everything traditional in order
to convert, since adat, being secular and social, was deemed acceptable.
Only aluk, by definition heathen and religious, was threatening to the
church and would be forbidden’. The result was thus a dichotomisation
(agama/adat) of what used to be an overall system answering to all social
needs.
Another transformation of indigenous religions brought by state author-
ity and contact with world religions was the growing prominence of the
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xxvi THE POTENT DEAD
concept of religion as identity marker. Increasingly, religion had to conform

to the definition of the group as perceived from outside. Coville and
Schiller (see Chapter 2 and 5) both describe how local practice was
moulded by the systematisation of regional models.
In this dynamic context, migration to the cities and shifts in authority in
each community brought further changes. First, traditional definitions of
social status were overturned: ‘With the religious, political, and economic
changes set in motion by the arrival of the Dutch, achieved status (educa-
tion, Christianity, income) has challenged inherited rank as a source of
prestige and success’ (see Chapter 5). Geirnaert’s Chapter 3 on Sumba simi-
larly focuses on this switch of status sources. Second, the perantau, those
people who have moved away from their home village to pursue a career
and who usually return periodically with relatively high financial power,
use the funerary rituals to affirm both their place in the community and their
newly acquired status. Reid (Chapter 6) shows the competition among
‘urban, affluent, Christian and educated’ Tobak Bataks in erecting larger
and larger monuments to the dead, while Volkman (1987: 165) talks about
the ‘inflation of rituals’ organised by Toraja perantau on their return to their
homeland.
The potent dead, as this book demonstrates, are omnipresent in modern
Indonesia. Their interventionist role in the wellbeing of the living is part of
the conceptual framework within which modern society has to be inter-
preted. Both Soekarno and Soeharto, the first and second presidents of the
Indonesian republic, are known to have had a predilection for certain sacred
graves, where they meditated in search of supernatural assistance. Since
Soekarno’s death in 1970, his grave has itself become one of the most
important pilgrimage sites in Java. The modern avatars of ancestor worship
have more than one link with politics. Indeed, Quinn’s Chapter 12 demon-
strates how the cult of a distant founding ancestor can be diverted to the
benefit of current ideology. Observing the transformation of Indonesian
religions in our own time helps us to understand earlier processes of
conversion to Hinduism and Islam. The present informs the past as much as
the past explains the present.
ThePotentDead 10/1/02 2:36 PM Page 1
1
Castrated dead: the making of
un-ancestors among the Aoheng, and
some considerations on death and
ancestors in Borneo
Bernard Sellato
‘She doesn’t know what an unbirthday is!’ [said the Mad Hatter of Alice].
—Walt Disney’s, Alice in Wonderland
In the course of the past 15 years, the misuse of the term ‘ancestors’ in the
context of Borneo’s ethnic arts has plagued a number of otherwise interest-
ing books.1 Everywhere one finds photograph captions reading ‘ancestral
figure’, ‘ancestor effigies’ or ‘representation of an ancestor’, as if Borneo
were another Nias or another Leti, two islands famous both to anthropolo-
gists for their somewhat ubiquitous ancestors and to dealers and collectors
for their very dear art. Strikingly, older works on Indonesian art were much
less inclined to see ancestors everywhere.2
While some Bornean ethnic groups do honour their ancestors in certain
circumstances and some even seem to have a cult of the ancestors, it has
become exasperating to see again and again the same misinformed
captions under a photograph of anything as remote to an ancestor’s figure
as a Bahau carving of a spirit to ward off evil, a Ngaju hampatung statue,
the painted dragon face on a Kayan shield, a Busang hudo' mask—or even
a Kenyah row of smoked skulls of enemies (the caption reads ‘Ancestral
skulls’).
What is an ancestor? In a quick survey of the literature I found only hazy
and often contradictory definitions of such terms and expressions as
ancestor, ancestrality, cult of the dead, and cult of the ancestors. A first
point should be made here. Obviously there is some confusion due to an
indiscriminate use of the ancestor of our common vocabulary, which
1
2 THE POTENT DEAD
carries no more subtle an idea than that of ‘forebear’, and the anthropolo-
gists’ ancestor, which is a more complex concept. I return to the subtleties
of anthropological concepts later. Meanwhile, I use the term forebear in
place of the common language ancestor, and do not use the anthropological
ancestor.
As a starting point I deal with a straightforward phenomenon—death—
and move on to the concepts of the soul of the living being, and of the spirit
of the dead, investigating in the process the concept of passage and the rites
associated with the passage of death. The Aoheng, who may or may not
constitute a special case in Borneo, offer an opportunity to look into the
concept of death and the funerary rites in a historical, cross-cultural
perspective, and to review, in their relationship to systems of social organi-
sation, the main views held by the peoples of Borneo on funerals and the
afterlife.
Death, at first sight, transforms a deceased person into something else.
The phenomenon of death turns a living being into a corpse. This is a
natural passage. At the same time, for most of the world’s societies, the
soul of the living person either turns into a spirit of the dead, or simply
vanishes while a new spiritual being comes into existence. The concepts,
vague or elaborate, of the soul of the living being and of the spirit of a dead
person seem universally acknowledged.
Someone’s death is generally viewed as both a sad event for the
deceased’s family and an inauspicious one with potentially deleterious
consequences for the whole of the community of the living. The spirits of
the dead are considered dangerous. Immediately after death they are
believed to go to some transitional place (limbo), or to remain in this world
in the vicinity of the corpse.
As these spirits are dangerous, most societies stage a ritualised passage,
consisting in transferring them from their temporary dwelling place to a
final abode (heaven), where they can no longer threaten the living. This
passage is the obsequies or funerals. In Borneo, most societies did (and
some still do) perform ritualised passages in the form of various types of
simple or multi-staged funerary rituals.
THE AOHENG
The Aoheng are a 3000-person-strong Dayak group living in the centre of
Borneo. Their historical territory is the Long-Apari district on the uppermost
reaches of the Mahakam River, where they are distributed in five settle-
ments. One community split off long ago to settle in the upper Kapuas
region of West Kalimantan, and two more have migrated recently to the
middle Mahakam area (see Map 1). Ultimately derived from nomadic
hunting-gathering bands, the Aoheng first underwent the influence of the Ot
Danum (Uut Danum), a group of non-stratified agriculturalists now in
Central Kalimantan. After 1800 the Long-Gelat, a stratified Kayanic group
CASTRATED DEAD 3
BORNEO
SABAH
BRUNEI
an
ay
SARAWAK
K
ai
Sung
EAST
KALIMANTAN
Su
ng
as
a
u
Pontianak Sungai K a p
i
M ahakam o
Samarinda 0
Su
ng w i
WEST ai M ela
Sungai Barito
KALIMANTAN
CENTRAL
KALIMANTAN
SOUTH
Banjarmasin KALIMANTAN
N
Aoheng terrritory
0 200
kilometres
Map 1 Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan)

4 THE POTENT DEAD
of the upper Mahakam area, forced them to settle, and the Aoheng ever since
have been rice swiddeners and longhouse dwellers (Sellato 1986, 1992).
The descriptions below are in the ethnographic present tense, unless an
explicit reference is made to past or present time. A major feature of
Aoheng social organisation is stratification, showing three categories
(strata): aristocrats (süpï), commoners (kovi) and slaves (dïpon). The ideol-
ogy of stratification stresses that aristocrats and commoners are human
beings of different essences. Social ascription to one stratum is very rigid,
and vertical social mobility very limited within one’s lifetime. Social status
has little to do with wealth: a poor aristocrat always remains an aristocrat,
while a rich commoner can never become one. While their wealth may
become an important factor when it comes to inter-village aristocratic
marriages and alliances, the aristocrats do not rely on it to legitimise their
social position within their home community.
Kinship is cognatic and genealogies are reckoned bilaterally, sometimes
over some 10 generations. Genealogic lines (koturun or puhu') are resorted
to in order to establish kinship ties with individuals from other villages. If a
knowledge of genealogies may be needed in dynastic claims and disputes, a
recourse to the spiritual intervention of dead forebears has no relevance to
the legitimising of power and status in Aoheng society.
Kinship terms include aké' (PP), düo keaké' (PPP), and toü ko aké'
(PPPP).3 The expression aké' hau' refers to any forebear, beyond or includ-
ing PPP. Another expression, do (aké') né moni maé, ‘they (forebears) of
long ago before’, refers collectively to the Aoheng of a remote past.
No patronymic appellations exist, whereas in other regions of Indonesia
such appellations are more or less tightly linked to lineage founders and to
cults of particular forebears. A personal name (aran) is given to a child at
the name-giving ceremony, but an individual or his/her parents may change
it once or more according to circumstances (e.g. sickness), often following
a dream. The use of teknonyms is the norm, but a teknonym is often
combined with one or several other types of names—kin and affinal terms,
necronyms, nicknames, reciprocal appellations, honorific titles—each of
which may also be used alone or in combination with another, according to
the relationship between the speaker and the person addressed or referred
to. The fact that some personal names are those of animals may hint at an
ancient system of appellations including some forms of totemism, but is of
no relevance to today’s situation.
In aristocratic as well as commoner families, the personal name of a dead
grandparent or a more remote forebear is commonly picked up again
(ngokat aran, ‘to raise a name’), insofar as it is considered a ‘good’ name.
This corresponds to a vague belief that a forebear’s qualities may pass on to
any offspring bearing the same name, although no particular ritual is
attached to this. Certain names, especially of dead aristocrats, may not be
used by families of the lower strata, as these ‘noble’ names are for the aris-
tocratic stratum’s exclusive use.
CASTRATED DEAD 5
AOHENG GODS, SPIRITS AND SOULS

Nature is host to scores of local guardian spirits (otü nya'an), residing at
mountain tops or passes, and in certain trees and big boulders. Generally
rather impartial to humans, they may become aggressive if neglected, and
travellers are always careful to make offerings when passing a place hosting
a spirit. These guardian spirits fall into vague categories, such as the otun
danum (river spirits), rather well disposed, or the otun duno (fig-tree
spirits), easily irritated. The Aoheng, therefore, may be viewed grossly as
animists (in the sense of Tylor and Durkheim; see Durkheim 1960: 67ff).
Although, as elsewhere in Borneo, there seem to be some hints of naturism
(see below), this is not the place for a discussion of its past or present
importance in traditional Aoheng religion.
The Aoheng also believe in a pantheon comprising eight or ten deities
coming in pairs—Tingai and Tipang, Kito and Bangka’an, Halung and
Ha’an, Oü and Büan—and in a number of heavenly spiritual entities of
lesser importance, generally not named. The gods are listed in one breath in
invocations. Pairing stresses either their association (Oü mo Büan, Sun and
Moon) or the fact that a god has two names. The Aoheng are not too clear
about the different gods’ quality, specificity or function. They stress that
Tingai, also called Amun Tingai, is the highest god, which conforms to the
ideas held by the neighbouring Kayanic groups whose Taméi Tingéi was
borrowed by the Aoheng. Amun Tingai was later confirmed in its status by
the Catholic missionaries, who identified it with God. The names Tipang
and Bangka’an seem also to have been borrowed from Kayanic groups. As
for Kito, it is the high god of many nomadic groups and is also found
among some Kenyah groups (Sellato 1994: 161–2).
On this earth, a relevant distinction is made between a safe human
(cultural) sphere—the village and fields—and a threatening outer
(natural) world—the forest. Negotiations with the spirits are carried out
on a daily basis by the individual and the nuclear family, primarily entail-
ing propitiation (repelling spiritual danger). They do not involve or
concern the gods.
Conversely, contact is established between men and the heavenly gods
only in extraordinary situations (the consecration of a new village,
epidemics, a succession of crop failures). Such contact involves the
community as a whole, and acts to attract blessings from the gods to restore
the old alliance of men and gods, a harmonious relationship that is
perceived to have weakened, entailing misfortune. These half-forgotten
gods, viewed as distant or in semi-retirement from human affairs, are called
for assistance, generally through a mediator (e.g. a sacrificed pig), to ensure
health and prosperity for the village, its population and its crops. The major
occasion for communicating with the gods occurs in the course of the
pengosang (or mengosang) religious festival, the highest and most sacred
manifestation of the Aoheng’s ritual life (see Sellato 1986, 1992).
6 THE POTENT DEAD
Other categories of spiritual entities reside in heaven, which have no

connection with the spirits of the dead, nor perhaps with the gods. They
include healing spirits (otü penyangon, otü habai), who help the shaman in
curing a patient in exchange for an animal sacrifice; and singing spirits (otü
kelisum), who either inspire a singer of kelisum (spirit songs) or sing
through his/her mouth. Finally, spirits residing in the severed heads of
enemies (otun tekohong; see below), formerly wrapped in leaves and kept
hanging from rafters in the longhouse gallery, were ritually fed, then
dismissed, in the final stages of the pengosang festival.
The soul of a living person is called berüon—a term derived from düo,
‘two’, as in many Bornean languages, hence a spiritual alter ego. The term
kesongan, more physiological, refers to the breath, while songan, more
abstract, is akin to the Western concept of ‘conscience’. At death, the
berüon disappears, while a spirit of the dead comes into existence, otü or
otun kovo, which is of a different nature. The otun kovo remains in the
deceased’s house, until it is ritually accompanied to heaven (havun), where
the spirits of the dead finally dwell.
There it belongs to an undifferentiated category of unnamed entities, the
otun kovo. The Aoheng have only a vague concept of what life after death
might be like, and their cosmological and cosmogonic ideas, particularly
concerning the topography of havun and the spirit’s route to get there, were
heavily borrowed from the Kayanic groups (on Kayan religion, see
Rousseau, 1998). The Aoheng may mention the deceased—as Kovo
Nyangun, ‘the late Nyangun’—when recalling or referring to episodes of
his life, but they would never allude to the spirit Nyangun has become. The
otun kovo no longer have an individual existence in havun, and never inter-
vene in the affairs of the living.
The Aoheng’s major cultural hero, Sengiru (Tiger), should be mentioned.
Tiger introduced various rituals, at a stage of their history when the Aoheng
were still ‘savage’ nomads—he even introduced the night. He has been
identified as a true historical character, a Long-Gelat aristocrat whom the
Long-Gelat chief (named Liju, ‘Tiger’) married to an Aoheng band leader’s
daughter in order to pacify and ‘civilise’ them. A tiger spirit can heal the
sick, although it is mainly known to punish transgressors of taboos. Clearly
Tiger, a remote forebear not quite connected to remembered genealogies,
has been identified with an ancient, now obsolete meteorological deity (the
tiger-thunder), but he is neither a divinised cultural hero nor an ancestor,
and he is never given offerings or invoked, let alone given a cult.4
AOHENG FUNERARY PRACTICES

As stated briefly above, the Aoheng, a set of nomadic hunting–gathering
bands, underwent first the influence of the Ot Danum, an ethnic group
belonging to the Barito Group (see Sellato 1986, 1989, 1992, 1994; also
below), then that of the Long-Gelat, a stratified Kayanic group (see
CASTRATED DEAD 7
Rousseau 1990). The Ot Danum, to this day, perform double funerals,

whereas the Kayanic groups as a rule practise simple funerals. Before their
massive conversion to Christianity (Roman Catholicism) in the 1930s, the
Aoheng practised both types (see Sellato 1986: 407–9), encompassed in
the expression ‘custom for the dead’ (adet do né kovo).
In simple funerals, by far the most common, the corpse is kept within the
house for a prescribed number of days, and the spirit of the dead remains
around the body. The living keep the spirit company and entertain it. During
the last night, an elder ritually accompanies (nemotang icu') the spirit of the
dead along its journey to its last heavenly abode (havun), and a rite of sepa-
ration is held. The next morning the body in its log coffin is carried to its
grave, in the past a cave or rock shelter, now a burial in the ground.
Mourning taboos remain in effect until the next new moon, when the living
are reintegrated into society, life is regenerated and returns to normalcy, and
sociocosmic harmony, upset by death, is restored.
Rare occurrences of double funerals (norang) were in the past reserved
for certain aristocrats. After primary transition rites the body was kept to
weather on a platform near the village, normally until the following new
year (i.e. the new rice harvest). Meanwhile, a headhunting expedition was
organised. The severed heads procured were meant to provide the recepta-
cles for spirits which would serve as slaves to the spirit of the dead in its
final residence. The secondary funerals consisted in retrieving the dried-up
bones and placing them in a valuable ceramic jar. The ritual to accompany
the spirit of the dead to havun was held during the night preceding the
transfer of the jar to the caves.
FUNERARY RITES AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION:

THE BROADER PICTURE
The Aoheng case shows a combination of two main methods of handling
the dead in Borneo, corresponding to two distinct cultural spheres that in the
past have influenced the Aoheng.5
A set of groups belonging to what is called here the Barito Group are
found mainly in Central Kalimantan, with some in southern West and East
Kalimantan. The name Barito Group really stems from a linguistic group
(in the sense originally used by Hudson 1967), the members of which all
display significant cultural similarities, particularly the double funerals.
However, I have called the Barito Complex (see Sellato 1994: 187–90) an
ancient set of societies forming a single cultural sphere, which probably
covered the whole of the island’s interior in the first millennium, before the
spread of the Kayanic groups and their culture. These agricultural (or,
rather, horticultural) societies were very competitive (see Sellato 1987),
focusing prestige-seeking on great feasts of redistribution at secondary
funerals and the erection of extravagant monuments. Today such societies,
having all to a certain extent converted to rice farming, are still found in
8 THE POTENT DEAD
various, often far apart regions of the island. Some still practise double
funerals, which offer to the families organising these feasts an opportunity
to enhance their status and prestige.
Although they often are considered the most ‘archaic’ Dayak groups (e.g.
Stöhr & Zoetmulder 1968: 29), the groups called Kayanic (really also a
linguistic grouping; see Hudson 1978)—or, at least, the original speakers of
these tongues—are probably relative newcomers to Borneo. They may have
landed on Borneo’s north and east coasts in the first half of the second
millennium AD. They contributed to the wider diffusion of iron technology,
rice swiddening, a system of strict social stratification, and various new
beliefs, some of which concern funerary rituals. Better armed, warlike and
expansionist, they penetrated as far as the remote plateaus of central
Borneo, heavily disrupted the earlier ethnocultural setting, and culturally
assimilated many pre-existing groups in the north, east and centre of the
island (see Sellato 1993). The Aoheng are located right at the southern edge
of Kayanic cultural expansion, in a region previously occupied by groups of
the Barito Complex.
The general idea, among both the Barito and Kayanic groups, is that the
world of the dead is analogous to that of the living but more pleasant, and
that its society is organised in the same way as it is in this world (see van
Gennep 1960: 152; also Hertz 1905–6). As the society of the dead mirrors
that of the living, we find two distinct conceptions of life after death, which
corresponds to contrasted ideologies of social organisation.
Among the groups of the former Barito Complex, the family must make
sure that the spirit of the dead obtains in the afterworld, where wealth and
social status are critical factors, ‘living’ conditions matching those the
person enjoyed in this world. A disgruntled spirit will return to earth to
complain and may harm the living, especially its family or descendants.
The family, therefore, must hold a big funerary feast, including the sacrifice
of pigs or cattle (formerly a human sacrifice), to secure the spirit’s social
status. A grand mausoleum may also be erected. Meanwhile, the spirit, still
in transit, is ritually settled in a temporary residence, where it is harmless to
the living. It may take years or even decades for a family to gather the finan-
cial means to hold the feast. The family will ruin itself but will procure
prestige, both for the spirit in the afterworld and for itself in this world.
During the secondary rites, the spirit is transferred to heaven along with all
its riches. A similar situation prevails among a set of minor groups spread
across the northern half of Borneo (see Metcalf 1975, 1982).
Among the peoples of the Kayanic group, status is not negotiable for
either the living or the dead. The spirit of the dead is given grave goods only
as deemed necessary for the journey to heaven (e.g. a hat, sword, paddle
and some food). Once there, all is perfect, life is easy, wild boar, fish and
fruit are plentiful. A lavish funerary feast will not procure extra status to the
spirit of a dead aristocrat, and that of a commoner will not be socially
upgraded in the afterworld. As for the living, no measure of liberal
CASTRATED DEAD 9
spending will modify a family’s strictly ascribed social status. Burial is

individual, never collective, and standard single-staged funerals, with a
formal procedure determined by custom (adat) and commensurate with the
deceased’s earthly status, thus suffice to achieve their primary goal, that is,
to dispatch the spirit to its last abode. The spirit, in principle satisfied with
its prospect, never returns to this world.
For both sets of groups, ‘[t]he immediate concern is to remove the soul of
the dead person from the living as quickly as possible, and hold it at bay’
(Winzeler 1993: xv), by either seeing it off in single-staged funerals
(Kayanic) or detaining it in a temporary residence through primary rituals
while waiting for its final send-off in the secondary funerals (Barito).
In principle, once the spirit of the dead has been satisfactorily installed in
its last abode, it will not of its own initiative return to visit the living. In
principle, unless its intervention is solicited, the affairs of the living are no
longer its business. Whatever the length and sophistication of the rituals
death is surrounded with, the crucial element for the living always is the rite
of separation, however brief and simple it may be.
Among the Kayanic groups the individual coffin is left to decay, the
grave is never visited again or maintained, no further rituals are held, and
the spirit of the dead is never invoked or given offerings. The separation
rite, or in any case the lifting of the mourning taboos at the next new moon,
marks the definitive end of any form of association with the living.
The Barito groups generally store their dead in collective mausoleums
located in the middle of their villages. Such a mausoleum entails social
prestige, and is a visible symbol of the bond linking a genealogical group. As
a rule, however, these groups also certainly want to thwart any unsolicited
visit from spirits of the dead. But the living wish to retain the possibility to
summon the spirits of the dead to attend certain ceremonies. There seem to
be several types of situations, which I will not describe or list here,6 where
the spirits of ancient dead may be called on to attend a ritual, are given offer-
ings and prayed to, and are expected to provide protection to and bestow
blessings on the living. These visits, however, are occasional or contextual,
and not linked to recurring, cyclical manifestations of ritual life. As a
common example, when the remains of a recent dead are deposited in the
mausoleum, those of remote forebears are disturbed, and their spirits are
invited to attend the feast.
THE LEFTOVERS OF THE SEPARATION RITE

Whatever the sophistication of the funerary rituals, and the idea that the sepa-
ration rite terminates for good all relations between the living and their dead
kin, there is among the Aoheng the notion that ‘something’ remains behind.
By the end of a burial, for fear that the spirit of the dead might hold the souls
of some of the living present at the graveyard and take them along, the
Aoheng hold a ritual to recall those souls. Moments later, when leaving
10 THE POTENT DEAD
the graveyard, the Aoheng place two saplings across the path after the last
attendant has passed, in order to forbid the spirit of the dead, missing its
family, to follow the living back to the village.
What is that spirit, said to have departed for good the night before? Does
it, or some part of it, remain in residence in the grave, at least until the
lifting of the mourning taboos? The Aoheng are not clear about this. As
among the Kayanic groups, however, there is traditionally no subsequent
maintenance whatsoever of the grave and no further rituals held on it.
This remaining ‘something’ is by no means a phenomenon unique to the
Aoheng. While Christian Europeans generally believe that the souls have gone
elsewhere (Heaven, Hell or Purgatory), many also believe in ghosts and are
not too fond of graveyards at night. Most often, the existence of ghosts is
linked to the occurrence of ‘bad deaths’, meant as violent and untimely deaths.
This idea also exists among the Aoheng, as it does among all Bornean
groups. For the Aoheng, such bad deaths include death during the delivery
of a child, by severing of the head (a result of headhunting), fatal falls,
drowning and suicide. Such a deceased is called kovon cota, where cota
refers to the ‘unripe’ (untimely) character of the death. The spirit coming
into existence then is not an ordinary spirit of the dead. Called tovoran, it
roams around the site of death and is extremely dangerous to the living.
The Aoheng are at a loss when it comes to dealing with ‘bad death’.
They just do not know how to get rid of a tovoran. The standard funerary
procedure is useless and fails to transfer it to heaven, and no propitiation,
prayer or offering is able to assuage its implacable anger. Anger is said to
be the reason why the tovoran cannot undertake the journey to heaven. The
living carefully avoid the site of a bad death, which is said to be ‘hot’
(lasü'). Even whole villages have been moved to other sites after bad
deaths. The site of a bad death is left to ‘cool off’ for a long period of time,
years or decades, until it is again ‘cool’ (singom) or simply forgotten. In
due course, thus, the tovoran apparently do reach their final abode as the
Aoheng, following the Kayanic groups, ascribe a special place in heaven
for those spirits.
Leaving aside the Aoheng case, it is interesting to stress that societies
like those of the Barito and Kayanic groups, with very elaborate cosmolo-
gies and cosmogonies and complex funerary rituals, fail to take care of
those ‘homeless dead’ (see van Gennep 1960: 161) and get rid of their
spirits. These societies’ disposal techniques are not 100% efficient, and the
leftovers of the separation rites remain on earth and pester the living. Why
is that so?
Certain societies seem to be helpless, even in the event of ordinary deaths,
against the appearance of the spirits of the dead. The Punan and other
nomadic groups of Borneo state that, in the past, they did not know how to
achieve the transfer of the spirit of the dead to heaven—of which they had
extremely vague notions. As this spirit was potentially harmful, they left the
corpse on the spot and moved camp immediately (see Sellato 1994: 158–60).
CASTRATED DEAD 11
The Punan’s incompetence in handling all spirits of the dead, entailing a

general attitude of avoidance of and flight from death, the corpse and the
site, seems to parallel the Aoheng’s and other settled groups’ incompetence
in handling the spirits born of a bad death (such as the tovoran), while they
are generally quite able to handle ‘normal’ deaths.
SACRED PLACES AND OLD SKULLS

This may be an appropriate place to proffer some comments on the concept of
kramat. According to Guillot and Chambert-Loir (1995: 238–40), in the
Malay and Indonesian (more precisely, Javanese) context, a kramat is a place
endowed with power, where pilgrims from nearby or faraway places visit and
worship, often in order to request assistance, favours, blessings, spiritual
guidance or enlightenment. In certain cases, a kramat is the historic grave of a
Muslim holy man. It appears, however, that in a number of Javanese cases the
site of the kramat has little if anything to do with Muslim graves.
In Borneo, where I had the opportunity to visit a number of such sites,
worship at kramat places is not restricted to Muslims. Taking as an example
West Kalimantan, which shows an interestingly plural society, the same sites
may be the objects of pilgrimage and worship by Muslim Malays, Christian
Dayak and Chinese of diverse religious denominations alike. I need mention
here only an old Dayak graveyard on the Tayan River, showing a dozen large
pebbles, some of which are erect, and a rock shelter near Ketapang, showing
Neolithic wall paintings. At both sites the local Dayak pray for good crops,
the Malays for children and the Chinese for luck. Indeed, in a number of
Javanese cases a particular natural site (e.g. a cave, spring, large boulder,
or mountain top) may have been, since prehistoric times, endowed with
power. Such a site probably remained to the local residents a holy spot, used
successively or concomitantly by ‘animistic’, Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim
worshippers. The same ecumenical character pertains to manmade sites—
Neolithic stone terraces and megalithic monuments, or Buddhist and Hindu
ruined buildings—which continued to serve as worshipping places through
the centuries (see Guillot & Chambert-Loir 1995).
Among the Iban, a rare case has been described (Uchibori 1984) of the
grave of a local man of some fame having been ‘enshrined’ or turned into a
sanctuary. The grave has become a site of pilgrimage, appropriated by a
vast crowd of believers well beyond the limits of the man’s family and local
community, and visitors trust that their wishes will be granted in return for
offerings. It is not clear whether pilgrims believe that the spirit of this man
is present at the site.
In the case of Muslims worshipping at a holy man’s grave or Iban
worshipping at an Iban ‘shrine’, there may indeed be a cult to one particular
potent dead. In view of many other cases, however, it is more appropriate to
view the phenomenon of kramat in general as a cult of the place rather than
a cult to a given dead or ancestor, and to consider that it is the physical site
12 THE POTENT DEAD
that is believed to be endowed with supernatural power. Even in the Javanese

case, a holy man’s spiritual power is to be found at his grave only, and
nowhere else can he be prayed to (Guillot & Chambert-Loir 1995: 238).
Moreover, many such graves are simply fictitious (1995: 244, 253).
To proceed further along this line, one may note that, in Borneo as else-
where, the kramat character applies to a wide range of objects as well as to
a site. Such objects, among Dayak groups, include old Chinese ceramic
jars, rare glass beads, sacred old swords, commemorative spears and
revered bronze cannons.7 In all cases they refer to the Malay concept of
pusaka (sacred heirlooms). These objects, believed to house a spirit, are
given offerings, or at least treated with respect. Not everybody is entitled to
touch them for fear of supernaturally sanctioned misfortune (tulah), and
families often derive substantial social prestige from their ownership.
Among such objects are the dried or smoked human skulls, kept by the
warriors who took them, or their descendants, or the community as a whole.
Such a skull, among most Bornean groups, is believed to host a spirit,
although not that of the enemy who originally provided his head. Such spirits,
periodically fed, entertained and propitiated, are believed to ensure the
community’s welfare and prosperity. I will not enter here into a discussion of
the origins or ultimate significance of headhunting.8 It should be enough to
say that, because of the beneficent spiritual power believed to dwell in skulls,
many a Bornean group was eager to procure more of them. This has led some
authors to write of a cult of the skulls, and cult indeed there was, according to
Durkheim’s definition (see below).
This widespread interest of Borneans in skulls, however, has been misin-
terpreted often enough as a cult of the dead or a cult of the ancestors. In
fact, in most cases the skulls concerned are those of enemies, not forebears,
and the spirits they contain have nothing to do with the spirits of the dead
enemies, let alone with those of forebears. Indeed, after the loss of one of its
members to a headhunting raid, the group (the ‘head-givers’) knows only of
the coming into existence of a tovoran (see above)—as after ‘bad deaths’ of
other kinds not entailing head loss—and has no notion of another spiritual
entity associated with the lost head. This suggests that, for the ‘head-taking’
group, the much sought-after skull is nothing more than a type of container
or residence believed to be most favoured by the otun tekohong (above), a
kind of spirit of unclear origin.
As for kramat sites, one may draw a parallel conclusion that a place (grave,
spring, menhir), like an object, may be endowed with supernatural power, and
that the spirit attending the site, like that dwelling in a skull, might not be
connected in any way whatsoever with the spirit of any dead person.
ANCESTORS, CULTS AND PASSAGES

Let us return briefly to questions of definitions. Clear anthropological defi-
nitions of the term ancestor are few, and many anthropological works rather
CASTRATED DEAD 13
casually use the term ‘ancestor’ in the straight sense of ‘dead forebear’ (e.g.
Metcalf & Huntington 1991). In one extreme case, such various terms and
expressions as ‘ancestor’, ‘ancestor spirit’, ‘ancestral spirit’ and ‘spirit of
the dead’ are found indiscriminately used to seemingly refer to the same
‘spirit agencies’, some of which, however, are derived from the souls of
important, named dead leaders, whereas others are fused into an anony-
mous collectivity.
A recent definition reads: ‘To the community and to the individual
within the community, an ancestor is a being used as a reference and
honored through appropriate rituals’. (Krauskopff 1991: 65; my transla-
tion). For Indonesia, Stöhr and Zoetmulder (1968: 222–3) appear to
concur: ancestors are an ‘elite’, the spirits of remarkable people whose
deeds are meaningful to society, and these particular spirits are ritually
installed as ancestors. So does Lemonnier for New Guinea: ancestors are
successful dead, those whom the community for some reason wants to
remember (pers. comm. 1996). Even among the Chinese, true ancestors
are few among the multitude of dead (see Granet 1980: 65–79). Obviously,
not everybody becomes an ancestor.
It may be interesting to note that the semantic field of the proto-
Austronesian term PAN *e(m)pu for ‘ancestor’ and its various derived
forms (see Barnes 1979), covering also the meanings of ‘lord’, ‘master’ and
‘affine’, suggests respect shown to any person of superior status. (See also
comments by Fox 1988b.) In Borneo, most languages do not display a
specific term for ‘ancestor’. Terms or expressions used to refer to forebears
are alluding to either kinship (‘grandparent’, ‘great-grandparent’) or antiq-
uity of times or people (‘the ancient ones’).
The ritual installing of a spirit of the dead as an ancestor should not be
confused with funerary rituals. Ambiguous statements are found in the liter-
ature: ‘Death does not automatically turn a dead person into an ancestor. In
many societies, this transformation results from a ritualised passage, which
may occur in two stages, as the very widespread practice of double funerals
bears witness’ (Krauskopff 1991: 65; my translation). Such statements are
misleading. This particular one seems to suggest that any deceased for
whom funerary rituals have been performed will automatically become an
ancestor. Even elaborate secondary rituals do not, in my view, function as ‘a
kind of ancestor factory’—as Metcalf (1982: 23) phrases it, regarding the
nulang festival of the Berawan.
Whether there is a cult to these ancestors is another question. Funerary
rituals have often been called ‘cults of the dead’ (e.g. Stöhr & Zoetmulder
1968: 219) or ‘cult of the ancestors’ (e.g. Metcalf 1982: 243). A cult,
however, ‘is not just a set of ritual precautions that man must take in
certain circumstances; it is [rather] a system of rites, feasts, and various
ceremonies, which all display a character of periodicity' (Durkheim 1960:
89; my translation, emphasis in the original). Whatever contacts occur
between people and the spirits of their dead parents or forebears in only an
14 THE POTENT DEAD
occasional manner do not warrant the designation of a cult. Probably,

Stöhr and Zoetmulder (1968: 219) should have retained the expression
‘ritual of the dead’.
What distinguishes between a cult of the dead and a cult of the ancestors?
In Christian Europe, for example, the dead are honoured but do not inter-
fere in the affairs of the living. Some of them, the Catholic saints, are the
objects of a cult, and they do intervene in human affairs, if only to help find
lost property. In a cult of the ancestors, dead forebears, moreover, are
figures of authority, punishing transgressors (Krauskopff 1991: 66). The
Chinese distinguish between the cult of the ancestors and the cult of those
dead who are not, or are no longer, ancestors (Granet 1980: 79).
However, whether ancestors or the dead are in focus, the fundamental
purpose of a cult is for the living to obtain something—blessings, pros-
perity, or just guidance—in return for prayers or offerings. Thus, is the
‘figure of authority’ criterion the only one—and a valid one—to distinguish
a cult of the dead from a cult of the ancestors? Durkheim himself seems
to have used both expressions with the same meaning. And is there a real
difference between the cult of the dead described among the Ngaju (see
Schärer 1966) and the cult of the ancestors reported among the Lawangan
(see Mallinckrodt 1925), insofar as they qualify as cults?
It may be somehow more interesting, at least in the limited context of
Borneo, to envision this question of ancestors in terms of passages. I have
mentioned above the natural passage from the state of a living being to that
of a corpse, and the concomitant spiritual passage that terminates the exis-
tence of the soul of the living and permits the coming into existence of a
spirit of the dead.
Both the single- and double-staged funerals achieve the transfer of the
spirit of the dead from a transitional place—it remains roaming in this
world or is ritually settled in a temporary dwelling—to its final abode in
heaven. This transfer, once satisfactorily completed, is immediately
followed by a rite of separation, which severs definitively the links between
the living and the dead. This is the case among societies that do not have
ancestors.
Among certain societies, however, a distinct type of ritualised passage
must be held in order to turn some of these spirits of the dead into ances-
tors. The separation rite may make provisions for spirits of the dead to be
able occasionally to return to this world whenever summoned by the living,
while preventing them from dropping in unannounced. But would these
spirits qualify as ancestors? Rather, as Stöhr and Zoetmulder (1968:
222–3) report about some groups of western Borneo, like the Kendayan,9
there must be a special ritual establishing certain outstanding dead as
ancestors.
In short, in my view ancestors are only a selected few among the multi-
tude of ordinary deceased forebears. I presume that a special rite must be
held to install these selected few as ancestors, beyond the ordinary funerary
CASTRATED DEAD 15
rituals that transform a dead person into a spirit of the dead. In any case, it
appears clearly from the above that the Aoheng, and along with them, most
probably, the whole set of the Kayanic groups, do not know of ancestors, let
alone of a cult to the dead or the ancestors. Moreover, only a few groups of
western Borneo may indeed have ancestors, in a stricter sense.
I would suggest here that, among Borneo groups practising secondary
funerary rituals, the spirits of the dead are generally treated like, if not quite
viewed as, just another sort of spirit, that is, entities endowed with the
power to either harm or assist the living. With them, as with other types of
spirits, an ad hoc bargaining takes place, making use of offerings and
prayers, and aiming at both assuaging their potential ire and procuring
favours and services.
EPILOGUE: THE AOHENG IN THE OPEN WORLD

(ERA GLOBALISASI)
Some recent developments in Aoheng funerary practices are worth report-
ing briefly. The Aoheng converted massively to Catholicism in the 1930s,
and stopped interring their dead in caves as they had done for centuries, to
bury them in graveyards a short distance downstream from the village. In
the past 15 years the Aoheng have started to ‘cement’ (nyémen) the graves
of their dead. This operation most commonly consists in pouring a plain,
rectangular slab of cement (sémen), inscribed with a name and dates, above
the grave, and sometimes in erecting a roof structure to protect the slab
from weathering. It may be performed immediately at the end of the burial,
if the family is financially well off, or several years later, often on the
anniversary of death. In the latter case, a ritual is held at the time of nyémen,
consisting of Christian prayers. Although in these prayers the name of the
deceased is pronounced, its spirit is not believed to be present at the ritual.
Interestingly, this nyémen ritual fulfills several functions. First, it allows
the Aoheng to believe that they are better Christians, as they no longer leave
the markers of the graves of their dead to decay and disappear in the bushes.
Also, the relative permanence of a cement slab engraved with a name and
dates, as compared to the earlier shaky wooden structures erected above
the grave, seems to give them a sense of belonging to the mainstream of the
modern world. Moreover, in this brave new world where tribal lands are so
easily appropriated by outsiders, permanent ownership markers are always
welcome. A major social feature of nyémen, however, is that, just like
secondary funerals among other groups, it confers status and prestige on the
family holding the ritual, which is followed by a big feast.
In the modern melting pot of Kalimantan, certain features of one religion
tend to overlap with believers of others. For instance, some Christians fast
during Ramadan (ikut Puasa), and some Muslims celebrate Christmas (ikut
Natalan). Some Aoheng families have been known to follow Muslims in
celebrating the 40th- and 100th-day anniversaries of death.
16 THE POTENT DEAD
With the disintegration of social stratification and the emergence of indi-

vidualism in modern village society, the Aoheng tend to opt for strategies
of prestige-seeking. Aristocratic families, which did not need to seek
prestige, now do so in order to retain some of their vanishing privileges,
and commoner families, which could not seek prestige, now do so in order
to succeed in a more open, less constraining society.
Christianity (the missionaries) and later Islam (via the administration),
both of which played a major role in the evolution of traditional society,
now curiously provide with their rituals many opportunities for competi-
tive displays of wealth by an emerging new elite. Hence, the Aoheng’s
clear new inclination towards a social behaviour reminiscent of that of
Barito groups.
It would not be totally surprising if at some point in the future the
Aoheng started focusing their ethnocultural identity on some famous chief
of old, unconsciously installing him as an ancestor and at the same time
starting a cult to him. The recent Gengis Khan phenomenon in Mongolia
appears to be of this type. Ancestors, in the end, might not be so much a
religious as a social phenomenon. Not everybody will agree.
2
How to hold a tiwah: the potency of the
dead and deathways among Ngaju Dayaks
Anne Schiller
By early July 1996, the secondary mortuary ritual at Petak Putih, a Ngaju
Dayak village on the banks of the Katingan River in Central Kalimantan,
Indonesia was fast approaching its climax. Within days, the souls of 89 of
the village’s dead would be sent on a journey to the afterlife. Rosters were
scrutinised to guard against anyone being inadvertently left behind.
Physical remains would receive final treatment, too. Sponsors had begun to
arrange neat piles of dry bones alongside the ironwood ossuaries that would
be consecrated as final resting places. Each stack was perfumed and the
bones gleamed from generous dustings of talc. Hundred-rupiah notes were
tucked in every pile, slipped beneath femurs and anchored between ribs as
pocket money for the dead in their imminent travels. The conspicuous
‘ritual centerpiece’, of tiwah, the bundle of bamboo poles and pennants
called sangkaraya, had stood before the head sponsor’s door for nearly
three weeks. A towering bamboo fence at the river’s edge, the hantar
bajang, alerted the outside world that the tiwah was in progress.
Ossuaries, sangkaraya and hatar bajang are among the standard accou-
trements of tiwah. As an anthropologist who has carried out fieldwork
among the Ngaju over the course of 15 years, mostly on the neighbouring
Kahayan River, these structures were familiar sights to me. Thus I was
surprised by my hosts’ insistence that they had never been to a celebration
like this one. One participant told me that he had never seen so many trad-
itional priests gathered together. Several others claimed not to know when
they should perform the mortuary dances. Some were anxious because they
were unsure what to include in offerings for the supernatural beings who
would aid their enthusiastic, albeit perplexed group in bringing the ritual to
conclusion.
Despite the apparent air of confusion, this was not the village’s first
tiwah. According to local estimates, Petak Putih had been founded 500
17
18 THE POTENT DEAD
years earlier. The oldest remains of any structure there were from a bone
repository said to be 350 years old. Furthermore, all residents of Petak
Putih, past and present, were reportedly adherents of Ngaju traditional
religion, now known as Kaharingan or Hindu Kaharingan. Secondary
mortuary rituals are carried out on every adherent’s behalf. This tiwah was
different from those of the past, however. The difference was that although
Petak Putih is on the Katingan River, the tiwah was being enacted in the
‘Kahayan River’ style. Why an alternative format was chosen, and how
that choice articulates with broader issues concerning religion in Central
Kalimantan today, is the subject of this discussion.
This chapter examines the performance of the Petak Putih tiwah and
relates it to the regularisation of Ngaju indigenous rituals more generally.
The regularisation of Ngaju deathways can be traced to the growing influ-
ence of the Kaharingan administrative bureaucracy, headed by the Great
Council of the Hindu Kaharingan Religion (Majelis Besar Agama Hindu
Kaharingan), or MBAHK. In 1980 MBAHK won official sanction from the
Indonesian Department of Religion when that ministry recognised
Kaharingan as a variety of Hinduism.1 Although the council does have an
official mandate, it has limited autonomy and must make some decisions in
consultation with the leaders in the provincial office of the Council for
Hindu Religion (Parisada Hindu Dharma). As part of a larger program of
religious modernisation, MBAHK has sought to devise and popularise
generic death rituals (as well as other kinds of rituals) throughout the
province.2
In the past, the performance of tiwah in a manner so plainly characteris-
tic of another community would have been unlikely. Writing about a
celebration carried out in the 1960s, for example, Douglas Miles described
one Mentaya River Ngaju family’s quandary over whether to perform a
Katingan or Kahayan ritual for an elderly relative (1976: 80–1). To under-
stand why this group of Katingan River villagers agreed to carry out a
Kahayan-style celebration, we must attend to the relationship between
deathways, religious modernisation, and the evolving political conscious-
ness of many adherents of Kaharingan.
Kaharingan is a religion practised by one of the many minority peoples
composing the Republic’s citizenry. That citizenry is profoundly diverse,
with hundreds of ethnic groups and a population dispersed over 6000
inhabited islands. Much public debate in Indonesia surrounds the issue of
religious tolerance. The ideal of tolerance is delineated in the Pancasila or
‘Five Principles’, the nation’s ideological underpinnings. The first of the
Five Principles is ‘Belief in God’. That principle establishes Indonesia as a
religious state, but not as one based on a particular religion. There are five
official religions in Indonesia. Like the others, Hinduism has distinctive
regional inflections.
The ideal of the peaceful coexistence of religion notwithstanding, some
citizens have grown wary of what they perceive as their nation’s drift
HOW TO HOLD A TIWAH 19
towards ‘Islamisation’. Since the early 1980s, every Indonesian social

organisation, religious or otherwise, has been required to adopt Pancasila
as its ‘sole foundation’ (asas tunggal). Some leaders draw extensively on
Pancasila in their public discourse as a means to press for continued reli-
gious tolerance (Ramage 1995). MBAHK’s leadership is typical among
religious minorities in this regard. For example, in the organisation’s four-
year plan, adherents are instructed to combat elements that would incite
disturbances based on ethnicity, race, religion, or between classes or groups
(SARA), and reminded that although all social and political organisations
in the country have accepted Pancasila, the faithful must remain alert
against possible threats by extremist groups (MBAHK 1992: 3).
MBAHK’s stake in promoting religious tolerance and organising the
Kaharingan congregation to function as an interest group is clear. Among
the council’s strategies in this regard is to downplay longstanding ritual
differences between Ngaju speakers on different rivers and to promote tiwah
as a regional attraction. The latter in particular is problematic for some
non-Kaharingan Ngaju, however, who also accuse MBAHK of dissemi-
nating the idea that Kaharingan is a primordial constituent of Ngaju identity.
Thus, on the one hand, tiwah is a profoundly Ngaju expression of identity
and culture. On the other, not all Ngaju are agreeable to showcasing it.
This case illuminates the interplay of two notions of potency, both asso-
ciated with deathways. One is the potency of the ancestors, who are
expected to reward their children and grandchildren for performing tiwah
‘correctly’. The other is the political potency of the ritual itself. In asserting
control over the enactment of tiwah, MBAHK has made strategic claims on
the symbolic capital of local Dayak culture. In this way, MBAHK has
begun to solidify its authority as well as to call new attention to the circum-
stances of its congregation, which is mostly composed of the region’s
poorest, most isolated citizens.
THE KATINGAN RIVER NGAJU AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS

The Indonesian name for Borneo is Kalimantan, and approximately two-
thirds of the island are part of the Republic of Indonesia. Indonesian Kali-
mantan is divided into four provinces, one of which is Central Kalimantan
(Kalimantan Tengah), which comprises an area of nearly 154 000 km2 of
jungle, swamp, secondary forest and swidden fields (see Map 1). Eleven
major rivers and at least 80 small ones are located in the province. One of
the longest rivers is the Katingan, located in the East Kotawaringan
Regency (Kabupaten Kotawaringan Timur).3
The population of Central Kalimantan is ethnically diverse. It includes
transmigrants from Java, Madura and Bali, and civil servants from through-
out the archipelago. The majority of East Kotawaringan Regency’s 419 000
inhabitants, however, are Dayaks, the indigenous people of the region.
There are many kinds of Dayaks, and their customs and languages differ.4
20 THE POTENT DEAD
The indigenous peoples of the middle and upper-middle stretches of the

Katingan River are among those known as Ngaju Dayaks, and their
language and traditions are related to those of people on the Mentaya,
Kahayan, Rungan and Kapuas rivers and their tributaries. The Ngaju are the
largest linguistic/ethnic group in the region. The total number of Ngaju may
approach 800 000 in a province with a population estimated at about
1 600 000, but exact census figures are not available. The Ngaju language,
in particular the Kahayan dialect, is the lingua franca for a large part of
Central Kalimantan.
Although this chapter refers to Katingan River Ngaju and to the Ngaju
Dayaks generally, it must be emphasised that, for the most part, Dayak
identity traditionally centred on kin groups rather than on ‘tribes’ or ethnic
groups (Ind. suku). People on different rivers often considered their
geographical neighbours to be their enemies, and as such potential sources
of heads or of slaves. The word ‘ngaju’ itself originally had pejorative
connotations. It means ‘upriver’, and to some extent still carries connot-
ations of rusticity and backwardness (Schiller 1997a). In general, people
identify themselves with the river on which they live or an even more delim-
ited locale. They point to dialectical and ritual variation to underscore their
differentness from other Dayaks, including other Ngaju speakers. Katingan
River people, who refer to themselves as ‘uluh Katingan’, are no exception.
Katingan River Ngaju live in villages of several hundred inhabitants
called lewu. Most villages have a population of fewer than 500 (Rusan et al.
1986). The village of Petak Putih has about 300 residents. Villagers’
primary occupation is swidden horticulture, and families in Petak Putih
plant one rice crop each year. Many try to supplement their income by
growing cash crops such as rubber or rattan.
The residents of Petak Putih are adherents of Kaharingan, a decidedly
minority faith within the province and even among the Ngaju. According to
the Ministry of Religion’s recent census, 67.76% of the province’s inhabi-
tants are Muslim, 14.31% are Protestant, 2.25% are Catholic, 0.31% are
Buddhist, and 15.37% are Hindu, a category that includes Balinese Hindus
as well as practitioners of Kaharingan (Departemen Agama 1995). The
majority of the Ngaju are converts to Protestantism, although some have
become Muslims. Christian missionaries have been active among the
local peoples of the region for about 150 years, although in 1946 the local
church, known at the time as the Gereja Dayak Evangelis, became
autonomous (Ukur 1960: 60). Questions of ethnicity among the Ngaju are
complicated by the contested relationship between religious affiliation and
identity. In former times some converts to Islam or Christianity changed
their ethnic affiliations when they changed their faith, claiming that as a
result of conversion they were no longer Dayaks. This is not the case today.
Local estimates place the number of contemporary adherents of Ngaju
indigenous religion at 250 000. In the past, these indigenous religionists of
Central Kalimantan engaged in mostly private ecstatic rituals and an array
of kin group-centred rituals. By the mid-1950s, this indigenous configura-

tion of beliefs and practices had been given the name Kaharingan.
Kaharingan is characterised by the propitiation of supernatural tutelaries.
While most prayers and oblations are directed at ‘mid-range’ supernatural
beings, including the village guardian and other upper- or lowerworld
beings known as sangiang, there is also belief in a high god with male and
female aspects called Ranying Hatalla Langit-Jata Balawang Bulau.5 It is
widely recognised that the most involved and complex Kaharingan rituals
are associated with Kahayan River practice. Many require the participation
of ritual specialists known as basir. Basir traditionally learned their craft
through apprenticeships extending over many years. Only the most highly
skilled basir can serve as head specialists at Kahayan River tiwah, as only
they are said to understand how to transport souls to the afterlife.
According to adherents of Kaharingan, all that exists in the universe,
material and immaterial, has a sensate conscious essence called gana.
Everything therefore has an obligation to act in accordance with its hadat
(Ind. adat), that is, rules and expectations concerning the proper way to
live. At the same time, such a simple gloss fails to communicate fully the
many dimensions and complexities of the indigenous notion of hadat. For
example, most Kaharingan Dayaks would agree that hadat has a religious
dimension. Many Christian and Muslim Dayaks would not, nor would the
state. Adat or custom falls into the administrative ambit of the Department
of Education and Culture, whereas religious matters (agama) are adminis-
tered by the Department of Religion.
In 1980, in response to a campaign for some form of official religious
recognition that had been waged by core activists for decades, the Indone-
sian Department of Religion declared Kaharingan to be a variety of
Hinduism (Schiller 1996). One striking development in Hindu Kaharingan
today is the rapid growth of its administrative bureaucracy. Indigenous reli-
gious affairs are supervised by the aforementioned Great Council, MBAHK.
MBAHK maintains its headquarters in Palangka Raya, the capital of the
province, located on the Kahayan River. Yet its reach extends far beyond
that city. The Kaharingan bureaucracy includes regency (Majelis Daerah)
and subdistrict offices (Majelis Resort), as well as hundreds of representa-
tives at the village level (Majelis Kelompok). Many of the council’s efforts
are directed at the codification of doctrine and the regularisation of ritual
across Central Kalimantan, including primary and secondary funerals. The
latter are the most complex and lengthy of all Kaharingan celebrations.
Among Kahayan River villagers, tiwah may last up to 33 days and involve
expenditures totalling tens of thousands of dollars.6 While similarities
between tiwah as celebrated by Ngaju-speakers on various rivers are
obvious, Kahayan practice is widely held to be the most elaborate.
The decision to hold the Petak Putih’s tiwah in the Kahayan River style
was made by some of MBAHK’s highest-ranking members including the
head sponsor, a 39-year-old priest raised in the village but now affiliated
22 THE POTENT DEAD
with the council in Palangka Raya. The decision had special import, in that
this celebration was to be touted as the first tiwah promosi or ‘promotional
tiwah’ by the Tourism Development Office of East Kotawaringan Regency.
Although few if any tourists were actually expected to attend, the office
produced colour pamphlets in Indonesian and English featuring a narrative
outline of the ritual’s key moments, photographs of previous tiwah, and a
map including air routes from major cities. The decision was also signifi-
cant because of the media attention that the tiwah had attracted at home and
abroad.7 Sponsors hoped to use this opportunity to showcase their village
by inviting important dignitaries, including the regent (bupati), the sub-
district head (camat) and possibly even the Governor, to the celebration.
SECONDARY MORTUARY RITUALS IN CENTRAL KALIMANTAN

The inhabitants of Central Kalimantan are known in ethnological literatures
for their extraordinary mortuary rites. Within the past 30 years, anthropolo-
gists have produced accounts of the Ma'anyan ijambe, the Luangan wara,
and of course the Ngaju tiwah.8 A number of descriptive accounts are also
available from the pre-Independence period. This chapter follows common
practice in referring to tiwah as secondary treatment of the dead. In point of
fact, however, tiwah is the third set of rituals associated with death. Among
the Kahayan River Ngaju, the three stages of treatment of the dead are
burial, called mangubur, which provides primary treatment for the physical
remains; priestly chants that provide initial treatment for souls and cleanse
the survivors from part of the supernatural pollution of death called balian
tantulak matei mampisik liau; and finally tiwah.
The goals of tiwah are varied, but three have particular importance. The
first is to transport the souls of the dead to the ‘Prosperous Village’ located
near the zenith of a cosmological upperworld. But it is not only the souls of
ancestors that are removed to the upperworld by means of chants performed
by basir. The gana of repositories, sacrificial animals and even ‘servants’
are transported there.9 After the souls are gone, the bones are deposited
in permanent repositories called sandung. Once they have been relocated to
the Prosperous Villages, ancestors pass eternity in the comfortable
surroundings that their descendants have provided. Ancestors dwell
together in the animate essence of their bone repository that, in the upper-
world, transforms into a magnificent house. During subsequent tiwah,
sandung may be reopened and more remains added, thereby increasing the
size of the upperworld household.
The second goal of mortuary celebrations is to reunite the three souls of
the dead. According to Kaharingan doctrine, during life human beings have
just one soul, called hambaruan.10 At death the hambaruan trifurcates: it
becomes panyalumpuk liau or the soul of the intellect; liau balawang
panjang ganan bereng or the soul of the fleshy parts of the body; and liau
karahang tulang, silu, tuntang balau, or the soul of the bones, nails and
hair. During the second stage of mortuary ritual, chants performed by a

chorus of basir transport the soul of the intellect to the upperworld abode of
a particular supernatural being, where it awaits further treatment. For a
time, souls of the soft and hard body parts remain in the grave.11 During
tiwah, all three souls are transported to the Prosperous Village, and brought
together by means of chants performed by basir.12 In some cases a particu-
lar type of basir, called the duhung handepang telun, may be called on to
transport the soul of the intellect before the other souls are processed.
Whether sponsors employ a duhung handepang telun usually depends on
their resources and on the prior requests of the deceased.13
The third aim of tiwah is to secure blessings and benefits for the living.
Survivors expect to receive these as recompense from the dead, usually in
the form of material goods, for having attended to their funerals and
secondary mortuary rituals. The dead are considered a potential source of
karuhei tatau, a term which refers roughly to kinds of esoteric knowledge
that bring good fortune as well as to the actual riches themselves. It is in
this sense that Kaharingan ancestors are ‘potent’. During the Petak Putih
tiwah, for example, mourners discovered that the bones of the head
sponsor’s father, previously exhumed and stored temporarily in a makeshift
ossuary, had become infested with a variety of bees. As a result, the remains
were coated with honey. Some family members took this as an indication
that the dead man was satisfied with their efforts. The honey that dripped
from his bones augured the karuhei tatau that would accrue to his des-
cendants as a result of this tiwah.
Survivors sometimes directly address requests for karuhei tatau to their
deceased kin. In other cases they request that a basir or other intermediary
contact the dead on their behalf. The dead may also choose to visit the
living in dreams to make further demands or to announce gifts forthcoming
to their descendants. Prosperity following the enactment of a secondary
mortuary ritual is taken as evidence that the dead are content with their
celebrations. Good harvests, repaid debts, or success in endeavours as
diverse as trading or panning for gold, are taken as proof of ancestors’
potency. Likewise, misfortune, illness or behaviours attributed to spirit
possession may be interpreted as signs that either the dead or the various
supernatural beings involved in the performance of tiwah are displeased
with the ritual performance.
Among Kahayan River Ngaju, the enactment of a secondary mortuary
ritual may last for more than a month. Some of the key events in the cele-
bration are as follows. First, gongs and drums are carried to a specially
constructed hut, the balai garantung, in front of the head sponsor’s house.
The gongs and drums are sounded to mark the start of tiwah (muluh
gandang garantung) and the sangkaraya is erected (Figure 2.1). Sponsors
then travel to other villages to pick up the various specialists (basir and
duhung handepang telun) who will perform at tiwah. These specialists
invite upperworld beings, or sangiang, to take up residence in the balai
24 THE POTENT DEAD
Figure 2.1 The sangkaraya; Petak Putih, 1996. The village headman, Duhung
Handepang Telun, and head sponsor are in the foreground
garantung and request their permission to proceed. They petition them in

the course of chants, called balian mampunduk sahur. Having arrived in the
village, sangiang engage in projects that parallel sponsors’ own efforts to
ready their surroundings for tiwah. This work includes erecting mortuary
edifices, sweeping the village, gathering wood and so on. Chants known as
balian sangiang baramu and balian mangkang lewu huma describe these
activities. Next the bones of the dead are exhumed (nalampas) and prepared
for further treatment. While some villagers go to the graveyard, others stay
behind and busy themselves with the erection of posts to which larger sacri-
ficial animals will be tethered (mampendeng sapundu). A few days later,
offering ships (lanting laluhan) carrying rice, coconuts, animals and more
may arrive from neighbouring villages. If such a ship is sent, a mock battle
ensues between givers and receivers before its crew is permitted to tie up.
Animal sacrifices, tabuh, commence thereafter. They are soon followed by
chants (magah liau) that transport the soul of the intellect to the Prosperous
Village. Within the next day or two bones are deposited in repositories
(nyakean tulang) (Figure 2.2). The souls of the soft and hard body parts are
also transported to the upperworld by means of chants. Then the rituals on
behalf of the dead are finished. Those intended specifically to benefit the
living begin. All participants are subject to an ablution in the river (kangka-
hem) that is intended to wash away remaining supernatural pollution.
At balian patandak, specialists and sponsors receive honorific names in
M1.44402-ThePotentDead-F2 1 1/3/02, 1:01 PM

Figure 2.2 Preparing the bones for interment in the Sandung;

Petak Putih, 1996
recognition of their role in tiwah. During basarah and balian balaku

untung, sponsors request benefits from the supernatural beings whom they
have honoured alongside their dead.
PREPARATIONS FOR TIWAH IN PETAK PUTIH

Above I described some Petak Putih villagers as being unsure how to
perform tiwah. Most of their confusion could be traced to their unfamili-
arity with the Kahayan practices that were required on this particular

26 THE POTENT DEAD
occasion. At the same time, anxiety over how to enact tiwah properly is
characteristic of the Kaharingan approach to ritual generally. Participants’
desire to ‘get the ritual right’ is linked to the aforementioned ideas regard-
ing hadat. Hadat theoretically encompasses every aspect of human activity,
from how to speak to an elder or how to open a field, to how to carry out a
death ritual. All thoughts, behaviours and speech that are not in accordance
with hadat are ‘forbidden’. The term connoting this sense of the forbidden
is pali.14 Like hadat, pali extends to every sphere of human and non-human
activity. Transgression of pali may evoke supernatural reprisal, and a ritual
must be held to ‘sweep away’ (mapas) the supernatural pollution that is
caused by a transgression of hadat. Until restitution is made, the transgres-
sor, his or her kin and sometimes the entire village are potentially prey to
supernatural reprisal. One cannot predict who will be targeted and when.
Because the Petak Putih villagers were largely unacquainted with Kahayan
hadat, many worried that they might transgress it and anger their dead kin.
At the same time, according to some of the guests, by not performing tiwah
in the Katingan manner participants were already at risk of pali and apt to
face sanctions. A few potential sponsors had even gone so far as to
withdraw their dead when they learned that the head sponsor was planning
to host a Kahayan-style celebration.
Katingan River villagers describe their death rituals as shorter and
simpler than those of Kahayan peoples. At least in Petak Putih, balian
tantulak matei, or chants to transport the soul of the intellect to temporary
quarters on the journey to the Prosperous Village, are not always performed
prior to tiwah. On the Kahayan River, balian tantulak matei is usually
carried out on the seventh day following death. In Petak Putih, 12 of the
89 individuals on whose behalf the 1996 tiwah was performed had never
received balian tantulak matei.
Many insist that Katingan tiwah last no more than a week and do not
involve the participation of basir. Instead, the souls are transported by
means of chants performed by a tukang tawur, a kind of lesser skilled ritual
functionary. Indeed, there are far fewer basir among Katingan River people
than among their Kahayan and Kapuas River neighbours. A similar portrait
of Katingan practice emerges from older reports. According to Carl
Lumholtz in ‘Funeral Customs of Katingans’, the celebration ‘lasts for one
week, during which food and tuak [rice wine] are provided’ (1920: 362).
Then a blian, whom Lumholtz describes as a male or female priest-doctor,
‘inaugurates’ a kapatong, or carving of a servant for the deceased (1920:
365). Animal sacrifices are a part of Katingan as well as Kahayan tiwah, but
are more often limited to a pig and a few chickens rather than water buffalo
and cattle.
In Katingan River villages as elsewhere, sponsors of tiwah try to satisfy
the obligations imposed by their bereavement as best they know how, in
accordance with their tradition. But today the ancestors, the village
guardian and other sangiang are not the only ones to whom they must
answer for the quality of their performance. Sponsors must also contend
with a host of new official regulations pertaining to the celebration of
secondary mortuary rites that have been established by the members
of MBAHK. These rules have had a tremendous effect on how tiwah in
Petak Putih and in other Ngaju areas are now constructed.
In the past, for example, tiwah were held at sponsors’ discretion and
could take years to plan. Most begin after the harvest, in May, June or July,
when demands on participants’ time are fewer. There is enough rice to feed
the hundreds of family members and guests who will turn out for the
celebration, and family members who have moved away have more oppor-
tunities to make the journey home. The post-harvest season is also the time
of school holidays. But when planning tiwah today, sponsors must keep in
mind that it can take up to 12 months just to secure the requisite official
permissions. Approval must come from several sources, including the
subdistrict head (camat) and the police, who issue permits allowing
sponsors to hold public gatherings. Neither the police nor the subdistrict
head will consider an application unless it is accompanied by a formal
recommendation from MBAHK.
Before MBAHK will permit a group of villagers to hold tiwah, sponsors
must compile and submit several documents for inspection. One is a
registry with the names of the head sponsor and those who are serving as
that individual’s advisers. Another is a list of expenditures detailing the
number and kind of animals to be sacrificed, the number of bone reposit-
ories that will be constructed or refurbished, and the fee to be paid to ritual
specialists. The head sponsor must provide MBAHK with the names of all
the participating heads of family and their various ‘assignments’ (e.g. ‘head
of equipment’, ‘head of consumption’, ‘head of security’) and, when possi-
ble, the names of all the dead for whom the celebration will be held. He or
she must also disclose the names of the ritual specialists who will be
employed. The lists are subject to amendment as well as scrutiny. For
example, if the council is dissatisfied with the sponsor’s choice of special-
ists, those already contacted must be replaced. Finally, sponsors must
formulate a schedule detailing the ritual activities planned for each day of
the tiwah.
Of all the required documents, this schedule is usually the one most
difficult to prepare. Its contents clearly reveal participants’ level of knowl-
edge concerning the format of tiwah. Submission of the schedule opens the
way for their further ‘education’ in ‘correct practice’ by the council. In the
case of the Petak Putih tiwah, which was planned entirely in consultation
with basir and MBAHK, the schedule was extremely detailed. For
example, participants knew that on 27 June, from 4.00 pm to until
midnight, basir would travel from house to house to perform balian
mangkang lewu huma, and that on 3 July, at 6.00 am, everyone would
dance around the sacrificial animals that were already tied up to sapundu.
Not every sponsor had a copy of the schedule, however. In order to keep
28 THE POTENT DEAD
participants apprised of activities once the tiwah was in progress, the

duhung handepang telun and the head sponsor met with the heads of
participating families nearly every evening to review the next day’s events.
As the duhung handepang telun explained on the evening of 2 July to the
crowd that was assembled at the head sponsor’s house:
Tomorrow there will be a great deal to do for this tiwah. We will begin dancing
around the sacrificial animals promptly at 6:00 am. We will beginning stabbing
the water buffalo at 7:00 am. Listen to the directions that you will be given
about how to stab the sacrificial animals. There will be a loudspeaker so that
everyone will hear the directions and understand what to do. At 10:00 am we
are scheduled to dance around the shrine to the village guardian. At 2:00 pm I
will begin to transport (magah liau) all the panyalumpuk liau to the Prosperous
Village. At first we had planned to dance around the shrine to the village
guardian at 11:00 am, but as that would mean that I wouldn’t have a chance to
sleep before beginning [magah liau], I’m asking that we move the dance up to
10:00 am. When we dance around the water buffalo everyone may dance. Men
and women. But when we dance for the village guardian only men may dance.
And before I begin to escort the souls, you orphans will have to bring the
required offerings here. I will need rice, tobacco, the bristles of the pigs and
some of the skin of animals you have sacrificed, cooked meat [the list
continues at length]. Remember, widows and widowers must wear white.
When I begin at 2:00 pm, I will scatter the rice all over the room. No one who
is pregnant should let themselves get struck with that rice. Then I will transport
the souls.
A lively question-and-answer period followed, during which most of the

offerings that had to be delivered to the duhung handepang telun were
repeated, and sponsors looked for reassurances about their respective roles
in the sacrifices. The head sponsor reiterated most of this information and
reminded everyone that they shouldn’t be late in arriving at the site the next
day because they had to do everything correctly, and nothing could be done
twice. In accordance with MBAHK’s usual practice, lists of foods that were
proscribed for the duration of the tiwah (and which could not be carried
past the sangkaraya) and announcements concerning kinds of behaviour
that would not be tolerated (gambling, fighting, drinking, illicit sexual rela-
tions and elopements) were sent to Petak Putih and prominently posted near
the balai garantung.
THE POTENT RITUALS OF THE DEAD IN

CENTRAL KALIMANTAN
When Kaharingan was declared ‘Hindu’ 20 years ago, there were many
adherents and non-adherents who predicted that it would only be a short
while before its local cast disappeared entirely and that the rites of Ngaju
Dayaks would closely resemble those of Balinese Hindus. To the contrary,
however, Kaharingan has not disappeared. In fact, some Dayaks have even
decided to ‘return to Kaharingan’ (kembali Kaharingan), that is, to convert
to the old faith.
MBAHK has sought to foster Kaharingan’s continued dynamism in
various ways. For example, Indonesian students are required to take classes
in religion throughout every stage of their educational career. To ensure that
there are sufficient Kaharingan teachers for interested students, MBAHK
has established a college with a program in religious education (Sekolah
Tinggi Agama Hindu Kaharingan, or STAHK). That institution also offers a
certificate program in religious philosophy or, more specifically, a short
course in becoming a basir. Other innovations within Kaharingan have
included the introduction of weekly prayer meetings and the strategic posi-
tioning of an extensive bureaucracy with branches at every administrative
level. The organisation’s staff enforce adherence to council-sponsored
programs and oversee the regularisation of tiwah and other celebrations
through a system of written warnings and fines.
These successes notwithstanding, it remains to be seen whether Kahayan
ritual forms are destined to become widespread in other areas. As one group
of guests from a neighbouring village commented during their visit to Petak
Putih: ‘Next year we’ll perform our tiwah our way. Ours will be a Katingan
ritual. Kahayan people and Katingan people are different people, so we do
our rituals differently. That’s hadat’. It was noted earlier that several
sponsors withdrew their ancestors’ names rather than take part in a tiwah
performed in the Kahayan style. And some guests at the celebration pointed
out that they were not surprised to see a subdistrict representative of
MBAHK stumble and fall when he attempted to stab one of the sacrificial
animals, or that it rained at strange intervals throughout the celebration.
They interpreted these events as indications of the Katingan ancestors’
dissatisfaction at being subjected to the ritual of their former enemies.
Current efforts to regularise tiwah in the Kahayan style are in some sense
paradoxical. For example, adherents of indigenous religions in Central Kali-
mantan, as elsewhere in Indonesia, are sometimes accused of wasting money
by performing elaborate death rituals. In response to these criticisms,
members of MBAHK often opine that Kaharingan ‘need not be an expensive
religion’. Some privately criticise Christians, whom they suspect of providing
costly tiwah for their deceased Kaharingan parents in order to intimidate non-
Christians to convert to a more ‘affordable’ faith. As seven or nine basir and a
duhung hadepang telun are usually contracted to enact one of these celebra-
tions, Kahayan-style tiwah are indeed expensive. But given that one of the
sponsors’ goals is to accrue blessings and karuhei tatau from their spiritually
potent ancestors, some participants argue that Kahayan tiwah actually make
sense from an economic standpoint. The more elaborate the tiwah, the more
comfortable and inclined to be generous the deceased will be in the afterlife.
I have also noted that MBAHK seeks to publicise tiwah as a tourist
attraction. As the most visually exciting and lengthiest tiwah, Kahayan
30 THE POTENT DEAD
Figure 2.3 The Regent of East Kotawaringan Regency prepares to stab a water
buffalo at a tiwah; Petak Putih, 1996
celebrations are perhaps the easiest to promote in this manner. One sponsor
of the Petak Putih tiwah spoke for many Kaharingan religionists when he
remarked, ‘This province needs tiwah. The government knows it. So do
people who have converted [to other religions]. The government wants
tourists to come here. Tourism contributes to development. What will
tourists come to Central Kalimantan to see if not Tanjung Puting and
tiwah?’.15 By doing their part to facilitate tourism, the sponsors of tiwah
hope to reap the accompanying benefits of enhanced infrastructure. For
example, shortly after the head sponsor of Petak Putih’s tiwah applied to
MBAHK for permission to enact the celebration, he applied to the
Governor’s office for a grant that would help to fund it and assist in
the village’s ‘social development’. Part of the social development money
would be used for a generator, so that villagers could install electric lights
and use them throughout the tiwah and after. When the Regent of East
Kotawaringan Regency arrived in Petak Putih to behold the tiwah-in-
progress, he was accompanied by an entourage that included newspaper
reporters and cameramen from a national television station. The latter had
been sent to film him assisting in the sacrifice of a large water buffalo
(Figure 2.3). In the videotaped speeches that preceded the sacrifice, the
Regent pledged financial support for several village development initia-
tives. The head sponsor, who had issued the Regent’s invitation, seized the
occasion to announce that he hoped to apply for additional development

monies to finance building a hostel where tourists could stay overnight

while they visited the bone repositories and experienced ‘genuine Ngaju
culture’.
Earlier I described Indonesia as a profoundly diverse society where the
ideal of tolerance is a strategy for coexistence. By demanding adherence to
monotheistic religion and to a national model of religious practice, some
national leaders may hope to foster a milieu in which minority attachments
and primordialism decline. Indigenous religious activists in Central Kali-
mantan are discovering, however, that even as they operate within the
parameters set by the Department of Religion, their program of religious
reform has won positive publicity and economic benefits for adherents of
Central Kalimantan’s local faith, and assisted their efforts to objectify
Ngaju culture and religion as a resource for political mobilisation.16
Although the council’s totalising schemes have not yet met with complete
success, nor has its purported insistence on religion in the formulation and
representation of identity gone unchallenged by non-adherents, it is likely
that the potent dead and the powerful rituals performed on their behalf will
be the focus of attention among the Ngaju for some time to come.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research on which much of this article is based was supported by funds
from National Geographic Television (1996). My initial research in Central
Kalimantan (1982–84) was supported by a Fulbright-Hays Award for
Dissertation Research Abroad, a Wenner-Gren Foundation Grant-in-Aid,
and grants from Wellesley College and Sigma-Xi Scientific Society. Other
trips to the field were funded by the Association for Asian Studies (1991
and 1995), the Wenner-Gren Foundation (1991), and a North Carolina
State University Faculty Development Fund Award (1995). I thank all of
these institutions for their generous support. I also thank Mantikei R.
Hanyi, Duhung Handepang Telun Tian Agan and the villagers of Petak
Putih for their kind assistance and hospitality throughout my most recent
stay.
3
Witnessing the creation of ancestors in
Laboya (West Sumba, Eastern Indonesia)
Danielle C. Geirnaert
The purpose of my chapter is to draw attention to the fact that in Sumba,

Eastern Indonesia, ancestors still play an important role today. This is so, in
spite of the growing pressure from many local government and religious
institutions on the people to abandon their traditional beliefs in the powers
of their forefathers, for one of the religions that are officially recognised in
Indonesia. I present a recent funeral ceremony that I witnessed, as it may
show part of the Sumbanese response to a changing situation experienced
as coercive and even dangerous by some, because the extent of the wrath of
ancestors is unpredictable.
I have already described social organisation among the Laboya of West
Sumba and written on the traditional way in which the dead are slowly
transformed into venerated ancestors. In the present study of Laboya
funerary rites, I am obliged to recapitulate part of these earlier analyses.1
THE LIVING AND THE ANCESTORS, THE MARAPU

As in many parts of Eastern Indonesia, in Sumba funerals are the most
important rituals of the human life cycle. The Laboya, a community of
about 14 000 members who live on the southern coast of the island, have
developed elaborate funerary rites. Even today, the better-off organise large
ceremonies to help the recent dead to depart to the realm of the ancestors,
and the success of this perilous journey is a prerequisite for the wellbeing of
society. The dead have to be fed regularly, and it is the task of the descen-
dants to make the proper food offerings to them.
The care for the dead as well as preparing one’s own death are then the
main concerns of the living. During his life, a wealthy man will often build
his own gravestone, a ritual requiring much manpower to pull together
the megalithic stones that make up the tomb. This is an occasion to show the
32
WITNESSING THE CREATION OF ANCESTORS IN LABOYA 33
extent of one’s authority as well as one’s riches ostentatiously so that one

may acquire prestige and hence a big ‘name’ (Laboya: ngara). Funerals are
part of the system of competitive feasting that characterise Sumbanese
social life.
Wealth, prestige and the quality of being a nobleman all contribute to the
achievement of the status of marapu, or an ‘ancestor’. For the Laboya,
ideally, a marapu is someone who died long ago, and above all is remem-
bered as having been a particularly powerful and rich person. A marapu is a
man who acquired a ‘big name’ during his lifetime. The Dutch forbade
headhunting at the end of the first decade of the 20th century, but the
warriors of great repute of those bygone days are still considered by
the Laboya as either having reached the status of marapu or being on their
way to do so. Women can acquire a ‘big name’ and become marapu also,
not as warriors but as mothers who gave birth to many children.
All founding ancestors are marapu, but not everybody becomes a marapu
after death, and some deceased take longer than others to reach this stage. It
depends for a great part on the status that the deceased had in life and on the
capacity of his descendants to make the proper funerals for him, that is, to
sacrifice enough buffaloes and pigs to honour him. If they are well fed and
addressed regularly in prayers, the deceased—and especially the most
powerful among them, the marapu—bestow their blessings on the living,
particularly in the form of life-giving rains that ensure good harvests of rice,
maize and tubers. Blessings come from the ancestors and are conceived as
being acts of ‘cooling down’ (Laboya maringi: to cool down, to refresh; to
bless). Dissatisfied ancestors, on the other hand, who may feel that they are
abandoned by their descendants, feel ‘hot’ and send diseases on man, cattle
and crops. Angry ancestors strike the living with premature, violent, acci-
dental death that is considered to be a ‘hot death’. This is associated with the
sun, unlike normal death, which is ‘cool’ and related to the refreshing and
life-giving rains (Geirnaert 1989, 1992). The link between the living and the
dead is one of the basic social relationships of Laboya society, and the well-
being of the people depends on the quality of this relationship.
When asked about their religious belief, the Laboya, like all Sumbanese
who have not yet adopted one of the major religions of Indonesia, answer
that they belong to the ‘marapu religion’. The introduction of Christianity
in Laboya in the first quarter of the 20th century and recent Christian pros-
elytisation do not seem, so far, to have substantially influenced the nature of
the relationship between the living and the dead. As is shown below, even
when they become Christians the Laboya still need, and hence create,
ancestors.
Life between house and tomb

The configuration of a Laboya settlement reveals the importance of the link
between the living and their ancestors. The core of a traditional Laboya
34 THE POTENT DEAD
Figure 3.1 Traditional Sumba village of Wujimate
village consists of a circle of houses (uma) built around a central square

(natara) on which rise large gravestones. The front side and the main doors
of the dwellings face the tombs, so that the living members of each house
live opposite their buried ancestors. Laboya has a few main ancestral
villages, that is, settlements which according to myth were created by the
first founding ancestors, the eldest marapu, who were immigrants to the
region. In these oldest villages in particular, the spatial arrangement of
house and tomb to face each other represents the link that binds the
founding ancestors to their descendants. Also, this territorial relationship
expresses the idea of origin as all descendants of the founding ancestors
who have migrated out to build new settlements elsewhere remain the
‘children’ (ana) of the ‘eldest’ or the first house built in the oldest village.
The village of Hodana, now considered to be the origin of all other settle-
ments in Laboya, is situated at the top of a hill. It consists of a conglomerate
of houses and central squares. Most Laboya villages are situated lower than
Hodana (Figure 3.1) and are considered to be the ‘younger siblings’ or
‘children’ of Hodana. Territorially, a relative position on higher or lower
ground represents ongoing life through successive generations. This ‘flow
of life’ (Fox 1980) is associated with the water that flows from the water
springs to the sea as well as with the downpouring rains.
The spatial order in a village is closely related to the social organisation
of the Laboya. Laboya society is divided into kabihu and uma. The terms
kabihu (kabisu in other regions of Sumba) and uma are often translated as

‘clan’ and ‘lineage’ respectively. Elsewhere I have argued that these transla-
tions are misleading (Geirneart 1992: 16–17). Indeed, although kabihu and
uma have a strong patrilineal connotation, they are not exclusively defined
in relation to a male founding ancestor. The founding members of a kabihu
consist of a man as well as his wife (or wives). All prayers start with an
address to the ancestral couples, who are referred to as ‘Mother, Father’
(Inya, Ama). An Uma (literally ‘House’2) is a subdivision of a kabihu but it
is also created by a male ancestor and his wife or wives and consists of their
descendants—that is, all sons with their wives as well as their unmarried
daughters (Geirnaert 1992:18):
. . . a kabihu encompasses a number of smaller units called Uma. The

relationship between Uma are conceived of in terms of patrilineal descent.
The ranking order of the ‘Houses’ is determined by the mythical order of birth
of their founding fathers. A kabihu consists of an ‘elder House’ (Uma pa kaya)
and of several ‘younger houses’ (Uma pa ali) . . . A kabihu consists of a set of
founding male siblings and their wives; Uma indicates the siblings’ order of
birth within each kabihu.
Brothers and sons remain members of their father’s kabihu and Uma,
whereas sisters and daughters leave their father’s village and social unit on
marrying to become part of their husband’s graves. Hence a tomb repre-
sents not only patrilineal descent but also past and present affinal ties with
the kabihu and Uma, who are wife-givers, that is, classificatory mothers’
brothers. In marriage, women bring new life to a ‘House’. As they gave
birth to children, they enable male members of a ‘House’ to ensure the
continuity of that particular ‘House’ through descending generations. I have
argued that during their lifetime men accumulate prestige and wealth and
strive to acquire the ‘big name’ or ngara which protects the life-giving
capacity of all male and female members of a ‘House’. Formerly, a man
increased his name mainly by becoming a great headhunter. Nowadays, to a
certain extent, feasting has replaced war as a prestige-making activity. The
number of animals that are sacrificed proclaims a man’s ability to monopo-
lise his wife-givers’ and wife-takers’ willingness to partake in the ostent-
atious slaughtering of buffaloes and pigs. In this way, a man shows off the
extent of his social relationships and the strength of his authority. The
increase in the number of animals slaughtered emphasises the competitive
aspect of feasting.
In order to understand the nature of the spatial and social link between a
house and a tomb, it is essential to recall what is a person according to
Laboya’s belief and what happens after a normal, ‘cool’ death or ‘mate ta
we’, or literally ‘death to the water’.3 A person consists of a body and
of two components called mawo and dewa. With the growing process of
36 THE POTENT DEAD
Christianisation, dewa and mawo are increasingly interpreted as being one

and the same thing, translated into Indonesian as ‘nyawa’ (soul). I have
insisted on the fact that they should not be mistaken for one another,
because they play a crucial role in the traditional beliefs of the Laboya.
Mawo can be understood as ‘shadow, reflection and breath’. Before death,
mawo is contained in the breath and in the body fluids. The shadow of
one’s silhouette in the sun is mawo, so is one’s reflection in the water.
Mawo may have a smell, and the presence of the deceased of certain
kabihu can be recognised by their good or bad scent. In the fetus, that is in
the future body, mawo is joined to dewa; but at death, mawo separates
itself from dewa and rots away. Mawo induces the rotting away of the
body. Mawo becomes the putrefied fluids of the dead that flow back to
the water springs where the ancestors wait for the deceased. Mawo then
evaporates from the water springs and from the earth and rises into clouds
to become fertilising rains. The ancestors lead the recent dead back to the
land of origin that is situated, for the Sumbanese, beyond the northern
coast of the island, at Cape Sasar in West Sumba, where the first immi-
grants landed. The dead go back to the origin to accomplish their transfor-
mation into marapu. Mawo is associated with breath, mist, clouds and,
incidentally, the fluffy form of raw cotton. After death, the individual
mawo melts into impersonalised, collective vapour which eventually turns
into life-giving rains.
Dewa contrasts strongly with mawo. It is associated with the reputation
and hence with the name of a person. Dewa is imputrescible and its path
after death is entirely different from that of mawo. During his lifetime, a
person may increase his reputation and hence his dewa by being successful.
For men, success consists essentially in being able to have large harvests of
rice and maize and increasing substantially the number of cattle herds,
particularly the count of buffalo. These basic resources will be exploited
during feasting in order to proclaim one’s success and hence the greatness
of one’s name. Also, men should be able to procreate in large measure. For
women, to give birth to many healthy children is the prerequisite for
increasing prestige during one’s lifetime and an honourable reputation after
death to build up the status of the marapu.
After death, after the separation from mawo, part of the dewa, mainly
that part that is linked to the name, is called back by the living descendants
and invited to come and dwell in the attic of the house. Dewa is essentially
a social, domestic quality that is inherited through the patrilineal line, just
as is the name. Dewa can be considered as a pool of ancestral ‘big names’
residing in the attic of the house, and whose reputation protects the living
descendants. At birth, a child inherits some dewa from his House: that is,
he receives a small amount of the collective, ancestral ‘Big Name’ of his
Uma. A child’s dewa increases as he obtains the protective name of
an ancestor during a name-giving ceremony. Yet throughout his life he
will have to increase his dewa through valorous deeds. His success will
contribute to the increase of the ancestral, protective pool of the dewa of

his House.
The path of dewa after death is essentially a social one. Dewa is for a
large part reintegrated into the social realm when it is called by its name and
requested to live among the other ancestral dewa of the house. In contrast to
this, mawo is part of a cosmological cycle that involves the passage from
the protected social realm into the fearful domain of the ancestors and back
again. Mawo is recycled into beneficial life-giving rains for the community.
Only the dry bones buried in front of the house remain of the body of the
deceased, while the other components, mawo and dewa, go on to the realm
of the ancestors where they stay for a long time, the time that is required for
the dead to become an ancestor. After that, mawo and dewa are recycled,
the former in the universe in the form of rain, the latter in the social realm
as a protective name for the descending generations. It is believed that the
more powerful—the ‘bigger’—the name of the deceased, the more benefi-
cial his blessings for Laboya society as a whole.
The bones that are buried in the tombs in front of the dwellings are the
dry, imputrescible remains of the deceased. They should be rid of all rotting
flesh, of all mawo. The dry bones in the tomb facing the houses in the
central square testify that mawo and dewa have separated appropriately and
that the deceased is on his way to the realm of the ancestors, and not able to
disturb the living any more. On the contrary, from now on the deceased is
expected increasingly to send his blessing.
The ancestors are active at night and sleep during the daytime, but
otherwise they live as the living do, with the advantage that they possess
everything in abundance. They have large numbers of buffaloes and pigs
and plenty of rice. They are divided just as the living, in kabihu and
Uma, and they organise feasts for their pleasure. They partake in the
festive activity of their descendants as they come to share food with the
living. Also, each day they receive several mouthfuls of rice placed by
their male descendants on the top of one of the main pillars of a house.
However, they differ from the living in one important respect: they
cannot copulate and hence cannot reproduce themselves. Ancestral dewa
can and do wish to enter another life cycle, but this will never be an exact
replica of a forefather.
What makes an individual unique is his personal combination of mawo
and dewa. From childhood and through adulthood, his deeds will increase
his name and hence consolidate the strength of the link that binds his mawo
to his dewa. Someone with a weak dewa is apt to lose his mawo, and this is
a characteristic of low-status people. It is important to stress that never
again will an individual live another life under the same combination of
mawo and dewa. Yet part of his mawo and his dewa will be transmitted to
the descendants of his Uma. Part of his dewa will be inherited by one of his
descendants who will be given his name during the name-giving ceremony.
One generation at least must be skipped before the name of a dead person
38 THE POTENT DEAD
can be given to a child. In Laboya, apparently, this is the minimum amount

of time for a particular combination of dewa and mawo to disintegrate
completely and to become ancestral, collective mawo and dewa. Some
comments of informants suggest that the disintegration of the link between
mawo and dewa of noblemen of repute may require more time than for
commoners.
Within a particular kabihu, there are only a small number of personal
names available. Even when the rule according to which one has to skip one
generation before giving the name of a deceased to a child is respected, one
finds that a small pool of names is repeated from generation to generation.
In fact, these names constitute part of the pool of ancestral, protective dewa
that is continuously transmitted downwards. The process of name transmis-
sion ensures the continuity of the life of a kabihu and of its constitutive
Uma. The name represents the first social link inherited by a child, that is,
his relation to his father and to his mother. The latter includes his relation-
ship to his mother’s brother, the person who in the past made a gift of life to
his father by giving him a bride. The growth of the individual’s name and
hence of his dewa throughout his life will depend on his ability to consoli-
date these original relationships.
Tombs are identified by the names of the famous ancestors whose bones
have been buried in them. The protective powers of the ancestors are
contained not only in the attic of a house. The space between house and
tomb reminds the living of the eternal bond that must exist between the
buried forefathers of repute with their wives and their descendants. This
link is a prerequisite for the continuation of society. To build a tomb for a
well-known man proclaims and strengthens the reputation of an Uma. At
times, it may also be a device to create a new Uma, as it has been in the past.
THE STATUS OF HOGA BORA

In January 1996 I went back to Laboya as a member of an audiovisual
team.4 With the exception of a short stay in the summer of 1993, it had been
10 years since I had last lived among the Laboya. The children I remem-
bered as toddlers had now become teenagers, and many more had been
born. Unfortunately, many older people I had known well were either in
poor health or had died. It was particularly distressing for me to meet again
in his home Mr Hoga Bora, the gentleman who had been my first host and
informant when I started my fieldwork in 1982, as it was clear that he
would not recover from his serious illness. He and his wife, Ibu Julie, were
now courageously preparing the funerary rites.5
Special circumstances made his death, at the end of February, all the
more sad and dramatic. His eldest brother, Lero Bora, the eldest son of the
former Raja of Laboya, had died six weeks before him (Figure 3.2). People
clearly remembered the lavish ceremonies, which included the sacrifice of
many buffaloes and pigs, that had been organised for Lero’s funeral. As
Raja Laboya
R = 1 = 2 = 3
= = = =
Wawo Lero Maradi Julie Hoga Bela Kole
Bora
= = =
Dorkas David Bora Juile Tina David Bintang Camat
Octapianus Kole
Figure 3.2 Family of Raja Laboya, Eda Bora (David)
weeks went by, the size and beauty of the animals were recalled and
perhaps embellished in their memories. The people who had taken part in
the ritual exchange of buffaloes and pigs spoke proudly of the animals they
had been able to give away.
The exchange of gifts at funerals follows the rules that govern the
Laboya marriage system, according to which a man should marry his real or
classificatory mother’s brother’s daughter. At funerals, wife-givers and
wife-takers must bring buffaloes and pigs to be killed ostentatiously on the
village square. Also, wife-takers bring golden jewellery and weapons in
exchange for textiles, the gift of wife-givers. A relative, either a wife-giver
or a wife-taker who is unable to provide an appropriate animal, may prefer
to decline the invitation to attend a funeral, but he will then suffer a loss of
prestige and feel shame for himself and the members of his household.
From a classificatory point of view, Lero and Bora had many wife-givers
and wife-takers in common. The question, never discussed in public but
often commented on in private, was whether the number of animals to
be sacrificed for Hoga would equal that for Lero. The acuteness of the
situation was intensified by the fact that, traditionally, the funerals of
younger brothers were ideally held in the house of their elder brother. If
a younger brother was not able to erect a gravestone for himself during his
lifetime, his body was buried in the tomb that stood in front of the dwelling
of his eldest male sibling. At the time of his death, Hoga Bora had not yet
built his own megalith, and some people speculated whether he would be
inhumed in the same grave as his brother, Lero. Yet just before he died
Hoga expressed the wish to be put in a new tomb that was to be built in
front of his own house (Figures 3.3 and 3.4). He told his wife that the
40 THE POTENT DEAD
Figure 3.3 Layout of houses and graves
‘Raja’s grave was too crowded’. Indeed, apart from the Raja and Lero, the
tomb contained the remains of two of the Raja’s wives. The funerary rites
would be carried out partly in Hoga’s house and partly at that of his brother.
In due course, Hoga wanted Ibu Julie to join him in the new grave facing the
house where they had lived for all their married life.
For the second time in a few weeks, the central square in front of
the house of the former Raja would witness the number and the size of the
animals to be killed in honour of a deceased of high rank.6 Long talks were
taking place between wife-givers and wife-takers in order to solve the
problems arising from the fact that two important men had died in such a
short time. The main part of the ceremonies—that is, the slaughtering of the
animals during the last phase of the rites at the secondary funeral—would
take place on the large grass field lying between Lero’s house and the
former Raja’s grave, in which Lero himself was buried.
During their lifetime the two brothers had been on good terms and lived
next to each other (Figure 3.3), so that their wives and children often helped
one another, as they still do. They were both the sons of the former Raja’s
first wife (see Figure 3.2) and belonged to the kabihu Marapate, considered
to be one of the oldest kabihu in Laboya. Before Indonesian Independence,
Sumba was divided into regencies administered by local men, who were
appointed ‘raja’ by the Dutch. Laboya was just such a regency until
the Indonesian government took over and deposed all rajas, including the
father of Lero and Hoga. But even today local people are respectful towards
the members of the families of former rajas. Traditionally in Laboya
nobility is inherited through the mother’s line only, but in the present case
Figure 3.4 New tomb built for Hoga Bora in front of his house
the descendants of the raja are considered to be noblemen as well, because

of their father’s former status. Under the Dutch the rajas and their families
became Protestant Christians and their children were encouraged to go to
school. Hence, to this day local Sumbanese administrators belong mostly
to the influential former rajas’ families.
This was also the case for Lero and Hoga: Lero became a Kepala Desa,
and Hoga, Laboya’s tax collector. However, the lives of the two men had
taken a slightly different course. While Lero stayed in Sumba and married a
noble Laboya girl, Ibu Wawo, Hoga went to study in Java and chose a
Javanese partner, Ibu Julie, who came to live with him on Sumba. At first
the Laboya community had difficulty in accepting this choice. Not only was

42 THE POTENT DEAD
Ibu Julie a foreigner, she was a Roman Catholic as well. Later, as she raised
many healthy children—a prerequisite for female prestige in Laboya—and
worked relentlessly running a small food stall, she earned the respect of all,
and by the time of Hoga’s death she had long been fully accepted. But
according to her own account the beginnings had been difficult. One may
remark that her ‘foreign’ origin must have contributed to the fact that
visitors came and stayed at Hoga’s house and not at Lero’s. While Lero had
stuck to the traditional high-peaked, thatched Sumbanese house on pillars,
Hoga had chosen a one-storey modern-style dwelling with a corrugated
iron roof. Hoga and his wife became the semi-official hosts of visiting
government people and foreigners of all kinds in the village of Kabukarudi,
the modern administrative centre of Laboya. In the eyes of many people,
Laboya people as well as outsiders, Lero stood for the traditional way of
life and Hoga for an acceptance of change and the outside world. Both were
highly respected as noble and powerful men, and were sometimes feared,
but they were perceived differently. It is noteworthy to remark that Lero’s
widow, Ibu Wawo, a Protestant, regularly insisted on the fact that the rains
had been plentiful since Lero’s death. In the eyes of many, Lero had already
become a marapu, able to bestow his cooling blessings on the society at
large. The question was, what would become of Hoga?
Hoga had been particularly successful in his job. As a tax collector he
had often taken in more money than the amount fixed by the government.
He had succeeded in filling the coffers of the state, and at his death govern-
ment officials decided that he should have a funeral in which the local
representatives of the Indonesian government took an active part. This
public recognition of his work greatly increased his prestige and status. It
also gave some emphasis to Hoga’s wish to be inhumed in a new grave in
front of his own house (as we see below).
The decision to stress the participation of the government at Hoga’s
funeral must be seen as an effort on the part of the local administration, at
the level of the kecamatan or district and with the permission of the Bupati,
to boost the status of civil servants and government initiatives in the desa of
Laboya. Laboya is now part of the kecamatan Walakaka, which includes
other linguistic and territorial units.7 Laboya is considered to be one of the
most ‘backward’ or ‘traditional’ regions of West Sumba by government
authorities, as well as by most of its neighbours. Great efforts are being
made to improve school attendance, to build roads and to promote national
consciousness. And although one can hardly speak of tourism yet, plans for
its development are strongly promoted for the near future. From a religious
point of view, Laboya’s population is divided into roughly three categories.
The first consists of a small influential group of descendants of high-
ranking noblemen who were educated and converted to Christianity by the
Dutch, mostly Protestants. The second is represented by a slowly growing
number of newly converted Christians, both Protestants and Catholics. The
third and by far the largest category includes the unchristianised marapu
people, who highly repect the authority of the traditional religious practi-
tioners as the mediators between the ancestors and the living. Tension
between the groups is latent and sometimes leads to subdued conflicts, for
instance when the dates for the yearly rituals have to be fixed. These yearly
ceremonies tend to attract foreign visitors, and the local government repre-
sentatives are eager to fix an exact date so as to be able to report beforehand
to officials working in the West Sumbanese department of tourism.
At the local level the Camat, Mr Octapianus Kole, is a Laboya man and
holds a key position. His father, Mr Kole, belongs to the group of the first
generation of Christian Sumbanese educated at school by the Dutch. Octapi-
anus Kole acts as a coordinator between the three categories of people I have
identified in Laboya as far as religious behaviour is concerned. Moreover, as
an important classificatory wife-taker of Hoga and Lero (see Figure 3.2), he
played an important part in Hoga’s funeral. Although he himself lives with
his family in a government building, his parents now live in a small house
built next to Hoga’s on the other side of Lero’s.
It is difficult for me as yet to assess the extent of Octapianus Kole’s role
in the decision to involve official government participation during Hoga’s
funeral. He did, however, take an active part during the ceremonies (and I
return to this point later).
While we were in Laboya, several teachers told us that the government
wished to build a special cemetary in Waingapu, where civil servants would
be buried. In Sumba, one has to be particularly careful with hearsay, and
there was too little time left for me to verify these rumours. But even if such
news was a misinterpretation and a distortion of more general trends to
come, they represent the climate in which the funeral took place. People
seemed to be aware that their strong relationship with the ancestors was
not always understood and accepted by the more development-minded
members of society at large.
HOGA’S FUNERAL
Funerals in Laboya consist of two main ceremonies. The first, which
involves the washing and the wrapping of the corpse in many layers of
textiles, takes place in the house. Then the wrapped body is put into the
tomb. Some time later the most important ritual takes place, and consists of
the slaughtering of large animals, buffalo in particular. Both rituals require
that many relatives be invited: members of the deceased’s own Uma, his
main wife-takers and wife-givers. On each occasion the main part of the
ritual is the sacrifice of the animals and the communal meal that follows.
Eating together re-establishes and strengthens existing social relationships;
in the process the dead are not forgotten, for they are given food as well.
Within each kabihu, and consequently each Uma, the ancestors will divide
the offerings among the recent dead—that is, all the forefathers that have
not yet reached the status of marapu. In other parts of Sumba, several years
44 THE POTENT DEAD
can go by between the two ceremonies. This is not the case in Laboya,
where an average of only 10 days separates them. It is unthinkable that the
second ceremony, which could be regarded as a secondary funeral, would
not take place. As I have described the ceremonies for the dead earlier
(Geirnaert 1992), here I present the main sequence of the first and second
funerals as far as they are significant to the argumentation of the case of
Hoga.
Traditionally, during the time lapse separating the two funerals the body
is left to rot away, so that the mawo may separate from the dewa. The smell
of the rotting body testifies to the fact that mawo and dewa are separating in
order to start their voyage to the realm of the ancestors. The malodorous
bodily fluids contain the mawo. Mawo is supposed to flow back to the water
spring that belongs to the kabihu of the deceased. There it will be met by
the more recent dead who will take it to the ancestors. Thus the mawo starts
its process of transformation in order to return ultimately as rain or fluvial
water to feed plants, animal and human beings.
The dewa is called back into the attic of the house many years later,
during a special third funerary ritual that is omitted in Christian families.
Yet before the dewa can be recalled it has to leave the village and the house
to meet the ancestors. Without the sacrifices of animals, this journey of the
dewa to the land of the ancestors cannot start. For as long as the secondary
funerals are not held, the deceased cannot leave his house; he is seen at
night, roaming between his home and the tomb. When speaking Indonesian,
the Laboya call the putting of the body in the grave ‘penguburan resmi’, or
‘official burial’. In Mr Hoga’s case, a large gravestone of concrete cast in
the traditional megalithic shape of tombs was built on the orders of Ibu Julie
in the month of February, and the finishings on it lasted up to the day
preceding the ‘official burial’. After Hoga’s death, Ibu Julie told me that at
twilight she could see him wandering around the house, watching as the
construction of the tomb was proceeding. She saw him bending over to look
inside the tomb. As soon as the ‘official funeral’ took place, she stopped
seeing him.
The first funeral lasts two days. On the first day, Hoga’s body was
wrapped in several lengths of textiles and put into a casket on which a cross
was set as a sign that he was a Christian. The rest of the textiles were hung
over ropes above the casket. In the evening, gongs were played and the
tunes reminded people of the fact that he was still roaming about while
male relatives were on their way to come and meet him for the last time.
Animals were killed to feed the relatives who had come for the wake. All
night people come to pay their respect to the widow, and the women cried
loudly.
Next day the casket was to be put into the grave. At around 3 pm, Ibu
Julie and her children dressed up. They and the guests sat down to listen
first to the Protestant priest, who recalled the life of Mr Hoga and his
involvement in Church activities. Then a government official took over, to
trace the life of Mr Hoga as a civil servant and to list the official rewards he
had obtained for his activities in service of the state.
Next, the family of the deceased, and especially his eldest son who had
flown in from Jakarta for the occasion, carried the casket out of the house
and laid it down on chairs that were standing before the grave. The Camat,
Mr Octapianus Kole, surveyed this process, and saluted as the family
members retreated and civil servants lifted the casket to carry it into the
grave. It was said that the casket with the body of Hoga had now been
handed over by his widow and children to the government. The official (and
not the family, as should have been the case according to custom) laid the
casket in the megalithic grave.
The official funeral lasted two days as well. On the evening of the first day,
people usually remember the deceased and often cry. On the second day, as
the sun sinks, a far more joyous atmosphere prevails. The deceased, follow-
ing the sacrifice of the animals, is expected to leave the world of the living as
he begins his journey to the land of the ancestors. One may wonder what the
role played by the sacrificed animals is in this process. According to some
informants who are Christians, a minimum of three large buffalo are to be
slaughtered, each performing a special function. Any subsequent buffaloes
killed do not have a particular function except for the purpose of ostentation.
The first buffalo is dedicated to the marapu, the named ancestors of the
deceased who will take his ‘soul’. Here, the distinction between mawo and
dewa is not made and the Indonesian word ‘nyawa’ is used. The second
buffalo is intended as a gift to the departed father and mother of the deceased.
The third buffalo may be claimed by the mother’s brother of the deceased as
a ‘replacement for his body’.
These sacrifices retrace the original social relationships that a person
obtains at birth, as I have shown above. In other words, without reference to
these primary relationships the dead person cannot become an ancestor and
is doomed to roam among the living, bringing them evil out of wrath. It is
the task of the forefathers and mothers and ultimately of those who have
attained the stage of marapu to transform the deceased into life-giving
components. This process can be accomplished only by the gift of large,
suitable animals by the living to their ancestors. The continuation of a
kabihu or of an Uma depends ultimately on these gifts. Once the dead has
been handed over to the ancestors, the living may rejoice.
According to Kole senior, before the Raja of Laboya was appointed by
the Dutch the sacrifice of three large animals was considered to be enough.
It appears that the Raja considerably increased the number of animals to be
slaughtered in honour of the dead, in an attempt to gain prestige and power
over men of other kabihu who were in competition with him for recognition
by the Dutch.
The obligation to kill a large number of animals at the funerals of Lero
and Hoga was certainly dictated by this recent history. It is noteworthy that,
in the case of Hoga, it was often said a few weeks after his funeral that ‘had
46 THE POTENT DEAD
he not been a Christian, Hoga would already become marapu'. This was
said of Hoga and not of Lero, probably because Hoga’s funeral had been
unexpectedly lavish and the government’s participation had lent extra lustre
to his name. Hoga was not the only person to have gained prestige in the
process. The Camat, Octapianus Kole, Hoga’s classificatory wife-taker,
seems to have increased his reputation as well.
As I have argued elsewhere (Geirnaert 1992), if wife-givers are life-givers
in the Laboya system of exchange, then wife-takers provide their wife-givers
with the means to acquire and increase their prestige. Indeed, wife-givers, in
exchange for brides, receive weapons, horses and dogs with which to hunt
and make war. It is reasonable to conclude that the Camat’s role in Hoga’s
funeral fits in with this underlying pattern for wife-takers.
After the funerals, Ibu Julie commented that her husband had been buried
with all the honours she could have expected and that from now on, every
evening, she would walk from the house to the tomb where her husband
expected her to come in the end. The Camat’s help had been an asset to her.
The path from the house to the tomb represented the link between the
deceased who was powerful during his lifetime and his descendants. All
the conditions for the creation of a new Uma were present.
CONCLUSION
Hoga’s words that ‘the tomb of the Raja was too crowded’ may be inter-
preted as a wish to create a new ‘House’, the social unit of which he himself
and his wife would be the founding father and mother. The building of a
new tomb is a common means of scission for a kabihu, and it seems that
Hoga wanted to differentiate himself and his Uma from that of his brother
Lero, perhaps positioning himself as a younger but fully recognised branch
of the kabihu Marapate. The mingling of the government as well as the
Protestant church increased Hoga’s prestige and served his purpose for
creating a new Uma. No doubt in the minds of many people he and his wife
are on their way to become founding ancestors of his future descendants.
So far, it is too early to analyse how the relationships will develop over time
between the two families.
Funerals are an occasion for all the chief participants to increase their
prestige, their ‘name’ and to contribute to the renown of their Uma. The
funeral of Hoga demonstrates how in Laboya society the mingling of state
and church are put to use to increase prestige. The Camat skillfully
strengthened his local, genealogically determined authority as well as
the power he derived from his position as a civil servant. For Hoga Bora the
funeral was an occasion to mark his difference from his brother and create
potentially a new Uma. It also gave him the possibility to integrate his
foreign wife and their children fully into Laboya society.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank Ibu Julie, and posthumously Mr Hoga Bora, for their
kindness and hospitality. With the agreement of Ibu Julie and her family,
we were permitted to record the funerals of Hoga Bora on videotape. Also,
I am greatly indebted to Bapak Kole whom I first met in 1982 and to his
son, Bapak Octovius Kole, the Camat of the kecamatan Walakaka, who
gave his time and help to our project wherever it was necessary. Through-
out these years, the comments and explanations of Bapak Kole senior have
allowed me to understand part of Laboya society. I met Ibu Wawo, Lero’s
widow, the first time I went to Kabukarudi, the modern, main village of
Laboya. Her help too has been invaluable, and I thank her for her contribu-
tion to our wellbeing.
4
Reciprocity, death and the regeneration
of life and plants in Nusa Penida (Bali)*
Rodolfo A. Giambelli
The events surrounding death and the role of the ancestors in Nusa Penida
are deeply interwoven into the issue of reciprocity, for reciprocity encom-
passes a cycle of complementary obligations not only between humans, but
also among humans, their natural environment, their ancestors and the
gods. Reciprocity between these agents relies heavily on issues associated
with death and regeneration of life, as in this society the death of human
beings is related to the growth of plants and produce as well as to social
reproduction and the establishment of divine ancestorship. Central to these
themes is the local perception of wild plants and cultigens, as in this agri-
cultural society these items are essential for material reproduction and for
human and natural fertility. In the context of the large corpus of writings
dealing with Balinese anthropology, none of which has seriously dealt with
Nusa Penida, the emergence of this set of themes outlines the presence of a
Balinese culture distant from Brahmanical issues and more attuned to the
cultural issues central to Austronesian cultures.
Nusa Penida lies in the Lombok Strait between Bali and Lombok
(Map 2). The island was traditionally used as a place of confinement by all
Balinese rajas before the Dutch conquest. Nusa Penida is inhabited by
about 46 000 persons (1990), the majority of whom are subsistence farmers
growing maize and cassava as their staple foods, and only marginally dry
rice, which is mainly reserved for ritual purposes. Locals consider them-
selves to be common Balinese (sudra) outside the three traditional Balinese
estates (triwangsa). In the island there is no significant presence of high-
caste Balinese; nor of Balinese (Bali Aga) who ascribe to themselves an
origin and an identity rooted in Bali and different from those descending
from the Javanese conquerors of Bali. The language spoken is Balinese with
some local variations; high Balinese is rarely spoken. In some central areas
of the island Brahmana priests (pedandas) are forbidden to officiate, and
48
RECIPROCITY, DEATH AND REGENERATION OF LIFE AND PLANTS 49
BALI Singaraja
JAVA
BULELENG BANGLI
JEMBRANA
Ba Negara KARANGASEM
EM
li
St TABANAN Bangli
ra Am
Amlapura
it
it
tra
Taban
banan Klung
Klungkung
Gianyar
KLUNGKUNG
Denpas
pasar
Lo
BADUNG G Nusa
GIANYAR Penida
LOMBOK
0 20 40 km
Map 2 Bali administrative divisions (Kabupaten); Nusa Penida is enclosed within

Kapupaten Klungkung
major emphasis is placed on village ritual specialists (pamangku). In

Balinese lore the island is considered to be a source of evil, dangers and
illnesses, for on the north coast of Nusa Penida lies the temple of Ratu Gede
Macaling, the great fanged god to whom eastern Balinese impute the
coming to Bali of cholera.
In the perception of the people of Nusa Penida the natural and social
orders are linked, as both are part of a single continuous domain where a
feature peculiar to the former becomes a metaphor for the latter, and vice
versa. This assumption appears consistent with Ingold’s (1992) suggestion
that humans and non-humans form a single social world, as well as Rival’s
(1993) argument that human beings and natural objects form a single social
field. This chapter explores these issues from the perspective of the
human–plant relationship and the role plants have in Nusa Penida.
According to the people of Nusa Penida, life-giving processes, such as
those involving the growth of plants and cultigens, cannot be left to chance
and must be constantly encouraged and regulated. These processes carry
strong associations with particular aspects of death ceremonies which are
transformed into life-promoting ones. The issue evokes Hertz’s analysis of
the double-burial practice and the subsequent investigation of these themes
by Huntington and Metcalf (1979) and Bloch and Parry (1982). My
approach diverges from the more recent authors, as I argue that the sexual
aspects involved in the reproductive cycle must be understood with refer-
ence to the local cultural context and not merely to biological reproduction.
I examine the belief that cultigens sprang from the dead body of a young
50 THE POTENT DEAD
woman, from the yearly agricultural cycle in the village of Sakti, and the
role that corpse exhumation, flesh and bones, fertility and ancestors play in
the regeneration of plants and cultigens. All are part of an exchange circuit
based on a paradigm in which the idiom of flesh and bones is used to
express different types of fertility concerns. Finally, I reflect on the trans-
formation of ancestors and ancestor worship at village level.
MYTHS AND IDEAS RELATED TO THE GROWTH OF TREES

AND CULTIGENS
As Stöhr and Zoetmulder (1968: 182) have pointed out in a myth they
called ‘the appearance of useful plants and of death’ (after Jensen 1948,
1963; Jensen & Niggemeyer 1939), the growth of domestic plants through-
out large parts of Indonesia is held to have originated from the violent death
of a human being. More precisely, plants and cultigens used for everyday
consumption are believed to have arisen from the sacrificed body and blood
of a young woman, or of a child. The myth with its variation is well known
in Indonesia, and could be considered a common theme in most eastern
Indonesian cultures.1
In Bali and Nusa Penida a variation of this myth concerns the appearance
of rice, as I was told in Sakti. The story runs as follows:
A kingdom of old was affected by a sustained drought that dried up all its
rivers, springs and wells, desiccated forests and cultivated land and led animals
as well as humans to the verge of starvation. The raja of the realm was unable
to deal with the problem. He therefore decided to ask the gods and his
ancestors for advice. He was told that the drought ought to be attributed to his
subjects as they had misbehaved towards the gods and their ancestors. As a
condition for ending the drought the gods required the sacrifice of a human
being, for only the blood of a human sacrifice shed on earth would end the
drought. The raja brought the news to his people only to realize that no one
was willing to be sacrificed for the sake of the kingdom. Sri, one of the raja’s
daughters, heard about this and offered herself as the sacrificial victim. The
father did not welcome the news. Nonetheless he was compelled to accept it
because of the gravity of the situation. It is said that the young lady walked to
her death with a smile on her lips. She was sacrificed in a public place. Her
blood, which was then shed on the earth is said to have been sweet-smelling.
Immediately after her death the sky became dark and heavy rain set in. It
rained all the night and the water replenished the rivers and wells. The next
day, after the rain had stopped, the raja visited the grave of his daughter and
there he found that on the grave a green plant had grown, bearing small golden
grains. This was the rice plant. People believe that the soul of the princess is
reincarnated in the plant. She became the goddess Sri (Dewi Sri), the symbol
of rice, prosperity and of floral as well as human fertility.2
This myth focuses on rice. However, one of the elements that it brings to the
fore, and which it has in common with all other myths of this type, is the
emphasis on the fertilising nature of a dead body from which cultigens are
obtained to feed other humans. In the myth a startling inversion of the
meaning of death occurs. What appears to be a useless body becomes, in
reality, the primaeval source of fertility and food for humanity.
DRY AND WET SEASONS: DEATH AND

THE AGRICULTURAL CYCLE
Although rice is no longer cultivated in Sakti, because the decrease in
rainfall has shifted the main subsistence crop to maize, this myth is still
believed and recognised as relevant to the growth of maize and other crops.
In the perception of people from Nusa Penida, in the first phase of death
rituals death, corpses, fertility, earth (conceived as Ibu Pretiwi, the Hindu
goddess representing mother earth) and plant growth are all interrelated.
The relationship between plant reproduction and human death begins with
the understanding of the different emphasis locals place on the division of
the year into two halves, the hot season (masan panes) and the rainy season
(masan ujan). The hot season is held to run from the March equinox to the
September equinox. This period is marked by the end of the harvesting
season and a post-harvest feast (in Sakti called Maprani), by the beginning
of the new year and by the performance of death rituals. The wet season runs
from the September to the March equinox,3 and is characterised by agricul-
tural work, from land preparation and sowing to the harvesting season.
For the whole of the desa Sakti the agricultural season is focused on
maize cultivation, with a ripening time of between three and four months;
in the centre of Nusa Penida dry rice is still grown, with a maturation period
of between six and seven months. In both cases, however, only a single crop
per year is grown and harvested; in the island maize or dry rice culture there
are no cases of multiple annual crops as in Balinese wet rice culture. Dry
rice and maize agricultural cycles, although they may differ in length, are
completed within a rainy season. On the full moon of the tenth Balinese
lunar month, the thanksgiving festival Maprani is held in Sakti. It
announces the end of the corn agricultural season. During the feast, which
is centred on a collective meal held by the men in the village communal
pavillon (balé banjar), thanks and offerings are given to Ibu Pretiwi for the
crop she has bestowed on the people, and then to the ancestors who have
helped the community sustain the growth of the crops from sowing to
harvest.4
It is said that all major life crisis rituals (e.g. tooth-filing or death rituals)
should be concentrated during the dry season, while during the wet season
attention is devoted principally to agricultural work. Thus the growth of
plants and cultigens is preceded by, and stands in complementary opposi-
tion to, life crisis and funerary ceremonies. Just as one section of the year is
distinguished by its association with green, moisture and growth, the other
is marked by its association with dryness, rest and death.
52 THE POTENT DEAD
NGEBÉT: FLESH, BONES, FERTILITY

AND PLANT REPRODUCTION
Just as the dry season precedes the wet, death rituals prepare the way for the
agricultural season and, in the perception of the locals, are directly related
to the growth of trees and cultigens.
In Nusa Penida most people bury their dead while waiting for the time of
cremation. We are thus, even though with long delays, dealing with a
secondary treatment of the corpse. Burial and subsequent cremation are also
common in Bali. According to Hertz (1960), death rituals among Proto-
Malay and Austronesian peoples are conceived in a tripartite structure of a
preliminary burial, a liminal period and a final ceremony, all marked by the
care given to the corpse from the moment of death to its final disposal. In
order to appreciate the development between the primary and secondary
treatment it is important to analyse the events that take place in the liminal
phase, as this represents the core of the whole process. Hertz perceives the
fate of the corpse as a paradigm for the fate of the soul. Thus, in the liminal
period, while the corpse rots until the flesh is definitively separated from the
bones, the soul wanders restlessly in the world of the living. It is only after
the corpse has completely decomposed and the clean dry bones appear that
the soul can be called on and dispatched in a final ceremony.
The treatment of the corpse and the separation between flesh and bones
is the key to an understanding of the whole process and is based on the
fundamental fact that, while flesh is perishable, bones are not. Fox (1988a:
189) maintains that Hertz’s argument is constructed on the widespread view
held in the Austronesian world that life results from the union of blood and
semen, which respectively create flesh and bones. This belief, with some
variants, is shared in Nusa Penida, where a human being is assumed to be
made up of the union of white male semen (kama petak) and a red female
semen (kama bang). The female semen is associated with blood, as
menstruation is understood to be the loss of the blood contained in the
broken female semen. However, I have not found a simple, direct causal
link between the origin of bones and kama petak, and the origin of flesh and
kama bang. In Balinese thought these elements are part of large exegetic
schemes that interpret creation as a cosmogenic effort brought about by the
male and female union, which is held to be analogous to the union of the
gods Ratih and Asmara. All the elements of the body of a growing fetus
(thus, not only blood and bones), as they are thought to reproduce the
creation of the whole world, are associated in complex schemes with Hindu
gods, demons, spirits, cardinal directions, colours, natural features and
moral qualities.5
In Nusa Penida very few people are immediately cremated, and the treat-
ment of a dead person involves a tripartite structure similar to that outlined
by Hertz: corpse preparation and burial; liminal period; exhumation and
subsequent cremation rituals.
I argue here that in the perception of local people:

• Relations between humans and their environment at large are based on
a model of reciprocity that includes all living creatures, plants as well
as human beings.
• The growth of plants—as an expression of agricultural fertility—
depends on the gods as well as human beings, and is understood to be
analogous to human growth and fertility.
• Plant growth (as a food source and thus material reproduction) and
ancestor worship (as a guarantee of the origins of the group and thus a
source of social reproduction) are built on and depend on a number of
symbolic relations that are also worked out in this context, and which
are particularly evident during the exhumation of corpses which
precedes all cremation rituals.
• The process of burial and exhumation is the common way to deal with
human death and, with the exception of cremation, is seen as the
precondition for the creation of properly purified ancestors.
In developing this argument I do not deal explicitly with cremation, as it
relates only marginally to this context. Cremation (ngabén) has been held
by a number of anthropologists as the quintessence of Balinese rituals and
one of the keys for the assertion of political power (e.g. Geertz 1980: 117),
mainly because of its spectacular, elaborate setting when performed for a
king or a high-caste Balinese. While its use as a symbolic means to claim
and maintain status is indisputable, I contend that focusing on cremation
alone and its spectacular events has been done at the expense of under-
standing it and has made it a unique event detached from a whole ritual
complex when it is clearly not so. Cremation merely ends the work that
began with exhumation (ngebét), for it refines the bones by transforming
them—as a corpse—into the first stage of a purified ancestor. Thus it logi-
cally follows on the work that began with the separation of flesh and bones.
Cremation does not change the issue at stake—the creation of purified
ancestors—but extends it to a different level. Ngabén is in fact only one step
in the process of creation of a purified ancestor that begins with death and
ends only after the newly purified ancestor is placed among the others inside
the ancestor’s shrine (sanggah kemulan) with the completion of a deifica-
tion ceremony (nganteg linggih), which is the last of the death rituals. The
creation of a purified god-like ancestor is a long process in which every
ritual has its place, as it concludes a phase and leads to a new one.
BURIAL: MENDEM OR NANEM SAWA

After someone dies the corpse (sawa) is washed and ritually prepared for the
burial. In Sakti the burial is conducted by a special ritual specialist known
as jero dukuh sakti, who is also in charge of all the rituals that may affect
the working of the land, the clearing of the forest and the communication
54 THE POTENT DEAD
with the spirits of the wild. In his role he is also able to converse with Ibu
Pretiwi and all the spirits inhabiting the earth. In Sakti on this occasion, a pit
is made in the graveyard (in other areas of Nusa Penida in the gardens); the
corpse, wrapped in mats tied together by a bamboo frame and laid in the
grave oriented towards the highest mountain of Bali, the most auspicious
direction (kaja) of the Balinese compass, is then covered with earth. After
the prescribed rituals have been performed the jero dukuh sakti strikes the
earth three times with his hand and, handing over the corpse to the goddess,
asks her to take care of it.
This ritual is called makingsan sawa (literally ‘to entrust with a corpse’).
With this action the corpse is temporarily handed over to Ibu Pretiwi, who
from then on is considered to be responsible for its fate until exhumation. The
grave is then marked with three stones, one placed in the position of the head,
one in the centre of the body and one on the site corresponding to the feet of
the dead person. Over the grave, as protection from dogs and witches (léak),
thorny branches (dui) of the bekul tree (Zizyphus jujuba Lamk.) are laid.
THE LIMINAL PERIOD: FIRST EXAMPLE OF RECIPROCITY

The events and ideas associated with the liminal period between burial and
exhumation indicate that, in the perception of the people of Nusa Penida,
the relations between humans and the earth are built on reciprocity based on
the dissolution of flesh and the growth of plants. Elsewhere I have
discussed the significance of reciprocity in Nusa Penida, and its principles
of inherent asymmetry (Giambelli 1995: ch. V). That discussion is extended
here to matters of fertility and ancestral relations.
After a corpse has been buried it is said that a period of at least one year
should elapse before it is exhumed for cremation, which is to say the
combination of a full agricultural cycle and the following dry season. It is
also stated that time is needed to allow the flesh to rot and dissolve properly.
In a corpse considered ready for cremation the bones must be clean of all
flesh (Figure 4.1). The corpse is then defined as tasak (ripe). If at the time
of exhumation the flesh is still clinging to the bones, the corpse is consid-
ered matah (raw). If cremation is then still carried out, the bones must be
cleaned and the flesh cut off. The flesh taken away is laid back in the pit,
which is then closed and covered with soil. It is in fact believed that just as
bones belong to the descendants of the deceased, flesh and blood belong to
Ibu Pretiwi and indeed feed her. Local people plainly state that ‘as Ibu
Pretiwi feeds us, we feed her’. Human flesh and blood are the elements that
enhance fertility and contribute to the growth of plants.
The relation between humans, earth and plants is thus worked out in a
reproductive cycle as follows: as Ibu Pretiwi provides food for humans
through plants and cultigens that spring from her body, so human beings
must reciprocate and feed her, as they do, through the flesh and blood of
their dead bodies.6
Figure 4.1 Collective washing of the ancestor’s bones after

exhumation; Pendukaha Kelod, Nusa Penida, 1990
Ibu Pretiwi gives birth to plants and crops that feed human beings
providing the corpses that feed human beings reciprocate
Outline of the cycle of reciprocity between Ibu Pretiwi, plants and human beings as
understood in Sakti

56 THE POTENT DEAD
This cycle is based on an asymmetric cycle of reciprocity in which corpses

are exchanged for plants and cultigens between Ibu Pretiwi and human
beings. Plants and corpses are then ideally considered similar in value.
However, the fundamental principle on which this cycle is based, and which
was constantly brought home to me, is that humans cannot take away crops
from the earth without giving something back to Ibu Pretiwi. A sort of
reciprocal balance must be maintained in these relations if crops and plants
are to grow and prosper equally on earth.7
In this model it is Ibu Pretiwi—as simultaneously Mother Earth and
Mother Goddess—who is entrusted with the ability to provide cultigens to
humans. The example should not be interpreted as a denial of the previous
myth explaining, although differently, how rice sprang from the dead body
of Dewi Sri. The two goddesses are complementary and represent two
aspects of the feminine, and as expressions of fertility and regeneration they
symbolise the growth of plants on earth. The pattern of reciprocity expressed
by the relationship between Ibu Pretiwi and human beings precedes and
foreshadows the myth of Dewi Sri. The relationship between Ibu Pretiwi
and Dewi Sri is of crucial importance and dealt with later in the context of
the place sexuality, women and fertility have in Nusa Penida and Bali.
NGEBÉT: SECOND EXAMPLE OF RECIPROCITY

Just as the corpse is entrusted to Ibu Pretiwi by striking the soil three times,
the jero dukuh sakti awakens it in the same way before exhumation takes
place. In the meantime the ritual specialist informs Ibu Pretiwi, the spirit
who rules over the graveyard and the grave, and the Lord of the dead who
dwells in the Pura Dalem (see below), that the remains of the buried person
will be recovered from the earth. In this instance the jero dukuh sakti
requests Ibu Pretiwi to return the remains of the deceased.
The opening of the grave is a collective task in which all the relatives of
the deceased take part. After the remains have been recovered the empty pit
must not be immediately filled. The corpse taken away must be replaced
with something that stands for it, and that has a similar value in the eyes of
the locals and Ibu Pretiwi. Balinese believe that if the exhumed remains are
not replaced with something else, Ibu Pretiwi will ask for another corpse to
fill the empty grave. A grave cannot be left empty or someone else will have
to die in order to occupy it. To avoid this, the corpse is exchanged for certain
natural elements which are thought to symbolise a human body. The replace-
ment, which occurs during exhumation (ngebét), is called silur bangbang
(literally: ‘to exchange the grave’). After the remains have been exhumed, a
sprouting coconut is laid in the place where the corpse’s head formerly was,
a green banana sucker is put in the spot where the feet were, and a live black
chick and other offerings are placed in the centre of the grave.
What commonly happens, when the pit begins to be filled with earth, is
that someone who is not a relative of the deceased jumps into the grave and
grasps the coconut, someone else takes the banana sucker, and the chick too
is caught or flies away in the confusion. In the end, only the offerings
(peras panyeneng), the shroud and whatever belonged to the former dead
person remaining from the exhumation are covered with earth. The sprout-
ing coconut and the banana sucker will later be planted in the gardens of
those who have taken them, while the chicken is generally reared. The
black chicken (siap panampeh) is supposed to incarnate the soul of the
deceased. It is freed before the pit is filled again and its flight enacts the
liberation of the soul from the close embrace of earth.
The events surrounding ngebét further reinforce the analogy between
human beings and plants, as one is substituted for the other. On the other
hand, they stress the relevance of reciprocity in the relationship between
human beings and Ibu Pretiwi, as whatever is taken from her must be
replaced with something else of similar value.8 Relatives of the deceased
may not take away the coconut, the banana or the chicken exchanged for the
remains of their beloved, as this would not be interpreted as proper reci-
procity, vis-à-vis Ibu Pretiwi, for her restitution of the corpse. In this
respect, even though the majority of symbols exchanged for the body are
seized and taken away by those present at the event, the public is allowed to
do so only after the offerings have been blessed and ritually presented to the
goddess.
THE REGENERATION OF LIFE: HUMAN AND PLANT FERTILITY

The death process, as it relates to the cycle of plant growth, comes to be
associated with life-giving situations. As it generates new lives it denies the
finality of death and reconverts it into life. The transformation of death into
life is a theme common to a number of ethnographies, and this process has
been associated in different ways with sexuality, women and fertility.9
In the case of Nusa Penida and Bali it is argued that practices of exhuma-
tion and fertility, in its widest meaning, bear: (a) direct references to human
intercourse, as the ideal model of ‘natural’ productiveness (which of course
includes plant growth); and (b) close relationships to the theme of female
sexuality, as expressed by the ideal of reproduction within the context of
marriage, and by the non-ideal of sexual lust outside marriage to be
overcome if proper fertility is to be achieved.
Burial and intercourse positions may indicate something about human
fertility as well as soil fertility. A man in Nusa Penida is considered to have
a socially higher position than a woman, and he is supposed to retain this
position physically also during sexual intercourse. Man’s prone position
during intercourse is indicated by the term malingeb. The reverse position is
considered to be proper to a woman, and is defined by the term malumah
(from lumah: fragile, weak), indicating a supine posture.
In the context of natural events this relation is transposed in the relation-
ship between Akasa, as simultaneously the sky and father, and Ibu Pretiwi,
58 THE POTENT DEAD
as earth and mother. Plants and, more generally, flora are also understood to
be the product of the intercourse between Akasa and Pretiwi. Water, in the
form of rain, is paralleled with the male semen that fertilises earth, allowing
for the growth of seeds hosted in the depths of Ibu Pretiwi.
Man and woman, Akasa and Pretiwi, are respectively associated with a
number of different elements which, whenever combined, produce life.
Thus, ideally, the growth of plants is made ideologically similar to the
growth of a human being. Just as a human being is the product of the inter-
course between a superior (malingeb) husband and his wife, in the same
way plants are conceived to be the product of the intercourse between the
higher Akasa (malingeb) and Pretiwi. Natural fertility is conceived of as
being homologous to human fertility.
In a number of villages in Nusa Penida, such as Jungutbatu, Pundukaha
and formerly Sakti, the burial positions of men and women conform to the
position a married couple adopt during intercourse. Thus, a man is buried in
a malingeb position, while a woman is buried in a malumah position. The
relationship between the symbolism associated with Akasa and Pretiwi, and
these human burial postures, transform death into a direct analogy of the
reproductive process.
In most parts of Nusa Penida people bury the dead in their gardens, with
great emphasis being placed on the procurement of soil fertility, growth of
edible cultigens and plant reproduction via ancestors’ bodies. Corpses
enveloped in a deathly embrace by Ibu Pretiwi become sources of fertility.
Ancestors, via the association of their souls with specific plants, are
believed to be reincarnated as cultigens, as is the case with rice, while
plants become living symbols of their forefathers. Within this perspective
ancestors fully contribute to the feeding of new generations. These percep-
tions, and the set of relations expressed by them, are congruent with a
number of Balinese themes related to the growth of rice and the relationship
rice has to farmers and their ancestors.10
SEXUALITY, WOMEN AND FERTILITY

In Nusa Penida and Bali the manifestation of the feminine is represented by
three goddesses, which relate to different aspects of sexuality and fertility
and which enshrine three prototypes of female behaviour and stages of life.
The unmarried woman is represented by Dewi Sri, the married woman by
Ibu Pretiwi, and the widow by Rangda. These conditions delineate three
stages in the life of a woman, each characterised by different paradigms of
fertility.
The condition of the unmarried woman as portrayed by Dewi Sri repre-
sents the example of the daughter. As no reproductive sex is allowed in such
a context, fertility is achieved through sacrifice and the destruction of Dewi
Sri, whose buried body is transformed into crops. The unmarried woman
enshrines a fertility potential, as she can generate future progeny. However,
in the myth of Dewi Sri this potential is not developed, as she chooses to be
sacrificed. This is a positive example of filial obedience but a negative one
for fertility, as the goddess pays for it with her life. Sexuality is absent,
corruption is present, and the progeny is here ideally transformed by the
decay of the flesh into crops and food for the people.
The condition of Ibu Pretiwi represents the ideal of the married woman
who is made fertile by her husband. It is the ideal of a marriage that
produces progeny and a goddess who produces crops jointly with her
husband. In this prototype sexual activities are associated with marriage.
These are socially approved and emphasise the public role of the couple.
Intercourse must be accomplished and its aim is procreation. Sexuality in
this context is inherently positive and is embodied by the married woman,
from whom at the time of her marriage fertility and progeny are desired.
The condition of the widow as personified by Rangda represents the
model of untamed fertility that becomes dangerous. In this context sexual
activities are associated with lust and represented by Rangda, whose
unkempt hair (magambahan) indicates her wildness and her sexual drive.
Rangda is the widow who, as a witch, dances over graves and feeds herself
with corpses; she lives in the burial ground and is associated with the Hindu
goddess Durga. Rangda is an expression of a form of sexuality that threat-
ens married male and female stereotypes, for Rangda’s sexuality is lust—
not aimed at reproduction, and associated with the degenerative process of
the flesh of the corpses. Femininity is here above and beyond male control.
Just as these aspects are different facets of the feminine and the condition
of womanhood, the ascetic model expressed by Dewi Sri and the wild unre-
strained lust expressed by Rangda come to be encompassed and embodied
in the figure of Ibu Pretiwi as Earth, wife of Akasa, and Mother Goddess. In
fact, in Nusa Penida it is said that the embodiment of Rangda in the garden
is precisely that of Dewi Sri, the goddess of rice and fertility. Rangda
becomes fertile when she abandons her name and all associations she has
with sexuality and is sacrificed as Dewi Sri.
As further evidence that these manifestations are mutually inclusive
aspects of the same goddess, it should be pointed out that while Rangda is
associated with graveyards and Dewi Sri with cultivated gardens, in most of
Nusa Penida gardens and graveyards tend to coincide. Thus, both Dewi Sri
and Rangda relate to death and burial. In Dewi Sri, however, fertility is the
result of sacrifice—rather than sexuality—and the shedding of blood and
the dissolution of flesh is the precondition for the origin of plants and culti-
gens. In this image the feminine role is reconfirmed as Dewi Sri—although
detached from a marriage context—is subordinate to her father.
Both these forms of sexuality and fertility are present and embodied in
the figure of Ibu Pretiwi, as emerges from the picture I have drawn in the
context of the plant reproductive cycle. Pretiwi combines in her image
the ideal of wife and mother as well as that of the dangerous lover, for she
relates to Akasa as a wife, she feeds humanity as a mother, she gives rise
60 THE POTENT DEAD
to plants as Dewi Sri and, last but not least, as Rangda she is a devouring
lover who feeds on corpses.
FLESH AND BONES AS PLANTS AND ANCESTORS

The idea of fertility in Nusa Penida, as it emerges from all the relationships
expressed so far, comprises human and plant fertility to an equal degree,
although these aspects are based on separate grounds and through different
associations. Fertility in the first of these paradigms is associated with
women, and expresses concern over the material means of reproduction; in
the second through the creation of the ancestors it is linked to the whole
community, and addresses its concern with origin, identity and the means of
social reproduction. This pattern diverges from the model put forward by
Bloch and Parry (1982: 18–21), with its exclusive emphasis on the tomb
and male bones as the primary expression of true fertility. If it is true that
the dissolution of flesh is the condition for the appearance of bones and the
origin of imperishable ancestors—and thus Bloch and Parry speak about
the victory over flesh—it is also true that in the case of Nusa Penida flesh is
not lost but believed to feed Ibu Pretiwi and thus is instrumental in creating
plants and cultigens.
To return then to Hertz’s assumption concerning flesh and bones, in Nusa
Penida the ideas associated with these elements, as expressed through the
events of ngebét and silur bangbang, and the concepts related to them via
malumah and malingeb indicate, first, that body elements are made analo-
gous to natural elements such as plants and cultigens and, second, that
biological processes associated with flesh and bones stand as models for
natural processes as well as social ones. Thus flesh, as the perishable
element of the body, is the medium through which is expressed the cycle of
production and reproduction of plants and cultigens, and in this context it
becomes the source of food and material reproduction. Likewise, bones, as
the imperishable elements of the body, are the matter which ancestors are
understood to be made of, as during exhumation bones are used physically
to re-produce the already dead, and in the subsequent funerary rituals they
are transformed into purified ancestors. Bones are a guarantee of continuity,
standing for the origin of the lineage group, and are thus the source of social
reproduction.
The association of the themes of flesh and bones with issues of gender,
sexuality and reproduction, as represented by the themes linked to Ibu
Pretiwi and Akasa, provide the means for the formulation of the two para-
digms in which concerns of fertility are expressed in Nusa Penida.
However, while flesh in this context is directly associated with women,
bones and ancestors are not exclusively identified with maleness but with
the whole community as composed of men and women. For, if is true that
males have a dominant role in Balinese social organisation, it is also true
that the shrine that stands as the abode of the ancestors in the sanggah
kemulan (see below) comprises both a male and a female figure represent-
ing the purified ancestors from whom the lineage sprang, sometimes identi-
fied in their higher form as Bhatara and Bhatari Guru. Male and female
aspects are hierarchically related, but both are present at the same time.
The two paradigms are condensed in the following diagram.
First paradigm: plants and these are:

Flesh is transformed into plants. cultigens •means of material reproduction;
The perishable elements of the •expression of femininity in Dewi
body, the flesh and blood, Sri;
(a) by way of Dewi Sri produce: •associated with Ibu Pretiwi as
(b) in the hands of Ibu Pretiwi are mother and female goddess;
transformed and via a sexual union •linked to the unpurified
with Akasa produce: ancestors buried in the gardens
and graveyards.
Second paradigm: purified these are:

Bones are transformed into ancestors •expression of the identit y and
ancestors. origin of the community;
The imperishable elements of the •means of spiritual reproduction
body, the bones, in the hands of the and social order;
living community are transformed •expression of maleness when
and via death rituals produce: associated with Akasa as father
and male god.
Outline of two fertility paradigms
In this process flesh and bones come to symbolise two types of fertility,
respectively associated with plants and ancestors. Thus natural elements
become paradigmatic of social ones. Ideas related to fertility and its ex-
pression in a traditional society such as that of Nusa Penida link indissolubly
the natural order to the social organisation.
THE PURA DALEM, THE SANGGAH KEMULAN AND

THE TRANSFORMATION OF ANCESTORS
The transformation of ancestors is another theme of the transformation of
death into life for, as flesh is made into crops, in a similar process dead
bones are made into purified ancestors.
Although in Nusa Penida and Bali ancestors can be called on in virtually
any place of worship, the two main temples in which they are specifically
invoked are the Pura Dalem and the sanggah kemulan. The Pura Dalem, a
large temple which serves all village purposes, is generally located in the
proximity of the main graveyard (sema pakingsan) and is associated with
the unpurified dead. The sanggah kemulan is a small shrine erected inside
62 THE POTENT DEAD
Figure 4.2 The sanggah kemulan during a family festival, at

Karangdawa, Nusa Penida
the house compound and serves exclusively the aim of the family who built
it. The difference between these temples concerns both the sacred domain
peculiar to each and the characteristics of the people who visit the temples
to pray.
Within banjar Sakti the Pura Dalem is held to be the most important
pura. Not only is it associated with the cult of the dead, but it hosts a mask
of Rangda (Durga), locally called Ratu Gedé, which stands as the banjar’s

most important deity. The divinity is not associated exclusively with death
but also with regeneration, and has an overall protective function for the
whole village. The holy water (tirta) from this temple is required for all
types of rituals held in the banjar.
The sanggah kemulan is a small shrine present in each household temple
(Figure 4.2). The shrine, divided into three open or closed sections, is
understood to be the abode of an apical pair of ancestors plus a supreme
deity which dwells in the central section. While the ancestors may be
referred to as Ida Yang or Ida Kompiang, the central deity can be referred to
as Akase, Bhatara Siwa, or may more simply be indicated as Bhatara
Guru. Both terms composing this designation are Sanskrit and can be
found also in Balinese.11 In particular, Guru is a Sanskrit term which
contemporarily refers to a venerable person, a preceptor or a teacher.12 In
popular exegesis in Nusa Penida, Bhatara Guru is conceived as expressing
the unifying spirits of the ancestors as ideal progenitors and lineage
mentors. As an extension to this concept, thus emphasising their leading
role, the whole group of deities abiding in the shrine are commonly
referred to as Bhatara Guru. Occasionally the whole group can also be
called Bhatara kemulan.
Contrary to what happens in the case of the Pura Dalem, the holy water
(tirta) from the sanggah kemulan is required for all types of rituals held
exclusively by the descendants of the apical pair of ancestors.
In the Pura Dalem of Sakti, all village rituals which concern the gods
associated with the dead (e.g. the main temple festival odalan, the ritual
associated with Durga or Rangda) or collective propitiations in the event of
pestilence, as well as rituals that immediately follow somebody’s death or
cremation, are performed. More generally within Sakti the lustral water
from this temple is required for all collective rituals as well as all major
individual rituals.13 In particular it must be used in all ceremonies concern-
ing the dead or the relationship between the dead and the living. In contrast
to the Pura Dalem, the ancestor-gods abiding in the sanggah kemulan are
the object of a more domestic worshipping: they are presented with food
offerings (ngejot) every day, and more elaborate offerings on particular
days or ritual occasions. The holy water from this shrine is a prerequisite
for the implementation of all life crisis rituals and death rituals of the
members of sanggah kemulan lineage, and will not be used by members of
other lineages.
Thus the sacred domain emphasised by the Pura Dalem, through its
association with Durga, concerns primarily death and regeneration as an
individual or collective undertaking, while the sanggah kemulan, through
its association with Bhatara Guru, is given a role of guidance in the sphere
of the lineage and its problems.
As far as the differences of the people who visit the temples to pray are
concerned, while all villagers may worship within the Pura Dalem, only
those who recognise themselves as direct descendants of the apical pair of
64 THE POTENT DEAD
ancestors honoured in the sanggah kemulan, as the abode of specific

ancestor-gods, are willing to worship there. Furthermore, while the Pura
Dalem, through its association with superior gods, eschews ranking, and
thus members of Balinese higher castes as well as inferior ones may equally
pray there, the sanggah kemulan is associated with ranking for it is tied to
specific lineages and thus to the individual identities of the ancestors who
were founders and members of that lineage. This condition means that
members of other lineages, particularly those deemed to be superior, avoid
worshipping there as that would mean the lowering of their status.
The principle of the collective versus the individual equally applies to the
groups (seka) that support and care for the two temples, for while members
of the seka Pura Dalem are drawn from the whole village, members of any
seka kemulan are drawn only from the lineage that founded it. However, the
distinction Pura Dalem as collective versus sanggah kemulan as lineage-
oriented is principally a matter of domains, as the sanggah kemulan also
represents, although in more limited terms, the collective identity of all its
descendants.
The sanggah kemulan is the final abode of a purified ancestor, and while
the process of transformation into purified god-like ancestors should be the
outcome of the death rituals, not all the dead come to be transformed into
purified ancestors. To be more specific, according to Balinese religious
tenets the process of transformation must be undertaken only for the people
who have died after they have lost their milk teeth. Children who die before
the age of teeth change cannot be considered ancestors: they are thought to
be pure, and after death are believed immediately to re-enter the process of
reincarnation, without the need for any lengthy cleansing process. Crucial
evidence of this status is that during Galungan, a Balinese festival celebra-
ting the return of the ancestors that is performed every six Balinese months,
the graves of the young children are not presented offerings, while graves
belonging to all other dead ancestors are. This distinction in age and status
is reflected in the different allocations of graveyards within the banjar area.
For instance, banjar Sakti, besides its cremation ground, owns two grave-
yards: the first, known as sema cenik, is the burial ground destined to host
children who have died before losing their milk teeth; the second, known as
sema pakingsan, is for the remaining banjar members. However, although
the cleansing process enacted through the death rituals must be performed
for all persons who have died after they have lost their milk teeth, for
economic reasons only few are actually cremated. Sometimes this crucial
passage is relinquished altogether and substituted with other types of
rituals, which are less expensive and may equally lead to the final elevation
ritual of nganteg linggih.
According to Balinese thought, the main distinction that concerns the
ancestor status relates to two basic issues: namely their purified or non-
purified condition, and the relative age status of an ancestor vis-à-vis other
ancestors. As a Balinese death ritual is a long process of cleansing and
refinement, in popular ranking ancestors are considered as having lower

status if only the immediate after-burial ceremonies have been performed for
them. In such cases they are still considered as maintaining an unpurified
status and are referred to by the term pirata. An intermediate purification
stage is represented by the process of cremation, which is understood to be
the midpoint, the watershed between the status of impurity at death and the
status of pure god in the sanggah kemulan. Once the bones, or the body,
have been completely destroyed through cremation the ancestor is consid-
ered to be purged of his transient remains, though the soul is retained and not
yet completely purified. At this stage the ancestor is called pitara or pitra.
The whole sequence of the death ritual is called pitra yadnya.
Complete purification and higher status is achieved only with the final
elevation ritual (nganteg linggih). After this ceremony the forebear is
considered fully pure and made into a god. The forefathers who have
reached this superior status, according to ritual context and the social
standing of their lineage, may be called Ida Yang, Ida Kompiang, as well as
Dewata, Niewata or Bhatara. As indicated earlier, Balinese commoner
ancestors abiding in the sanggah kemulan are generally referred to as Ida
Yang, Ida Kompiang in or as a category that merges ancestors and higher
gods as Bhatara Guru, while a king’s ancestors who are considered
superior and raised to become gods of the Balinese pantheon are called
Bhatara (e.g. Bhatara Maspahit). Furthermore, in a social model that
values highly position and relative age status, the recently dead tend to have
a lower status than distant ancestors, who are considered forefathers.
The transformation from the status of deceased to that of god is a lengthy
undertaking and involves costly rites of which those described above are
only one step. Once an ancestor reaches a purified status, and is indicated as
Ida Yang, Ida Kompiang, the proper name is rarely used. An individual
ancestor tends to lose specific identity once honoured and worshipped as
god, for the individual identity is dissolved into that of the previous
ancestor already abiding in the sanggah kemulan. The rite of elevation to
the sanggah kemulan, besides being regularly performed at the family level,
in the establishment of an ancestor through the nganteg linggih ceremony,
was also common in the deification process of former Balinese kings.
Royal ancestors were regularly worshipped in temples called Pura
Penataran by their family members, as well as by their subjects.
Ancestors, particularly apical ones, are always thought of in terms of a
paired married couple, for it is from a couple that the descent began. In this
respect those who have not married in their lifetime, although all cleansing
rituals are performed and in the same way they are brought to the status of
purified ones, tend to be forgotten earlier because the responsibility for
their care does not fall on identifiable and immediate progeny.
The individual identity of ancestors is in Bali a relative issue, for
although someone who died recently tends to be remembered more vividly
and although each family or lineage tends to keep records of the lineage
66 THE POTENT DEAD
tree from the apical pair of ancestors, in the majority of cases after three or
four generations ancestors’ names and identities are forgotten, and all iden-
tities seem to merge with the deified ancestors whose abode is in the
sanggah kemulan.
This contrasts with what happens in the Javanese context of the cult
of saints and the worship of distinguished ancestors. Balinese ideas of
ancestorship seem to lack the category of a set of distinguished ancestors
endowed with special powers to whom are ascribed peculiar influences
on the living, like the Javanese graves of famous dukun, dalang, notorious
criminals or prostitutes (see chapters on Java in this book, and Koentjaran-
ingrat 1989: 331). Balinese ancestors have a generalised and wholesome
bearing on the life of the living, embracing every aspect of the life of the
individual and the lineage.
I believe there are at least four reasons for this difference. First, in Bali a
dead person, at least in principle, should be cremated; thus a grave, as the
repository of an identified dead person, is divested of any transcendent and
ultimate significance as a permanent abode for the dead. Furthermore, as
I have shown above, it is regarded merely as an impermanent and functional
repository for the body.
Second, all recent dead, with the exception of children, are considered
impure. Although the degree of impurity may vary according to whether or
not someone belongs to one of the Balinese estates, the status of impurity of
all ancestors and their need to pass through cleansing rituals is a concept
shared throughout Bali. Thus all dead are ideally placed on the same level.
Brahmana may frown at this distinction and would object to it, saying that
because of their inherent purer status their corpses should be considered
less polluted and polluting than those of commoners. Although this is
debatable and may not be recognised by some Balinese, what matters is that
a Brahmana, just as any other Balinese, needs the whole sequence of
acknowledged ritual before he or she can be acknowledged as an ancestor-
god and placed inside the family sanggah kemulan.
The third reason relates to the highly factional structure of Balinese
society, which is divided into estate groups (Triwangsa) and innumerable
lineage groups, tying gods to their origin groups and determining their
relative importance vis-à-vis other ancestor-gods or the whole Balinese
pantheon. With the exception of a king’s forefathers, the ancestor-god-like
status is important exclusively for the family of the deceased, as indeed it is
a family commitment to undertake all cleansing rituals for their ancestors.
Unpurified or purified ancestors have a bearing only on the individual who
belongs to their own lineage, being considered forefathers of a specific
lineage or family. In Bali no-one would venerate or make offerings to
ancestors belonging to another lineage, irrespective of their pure or god-like
status; the act of reverence to another lineage would amount to a statement
of submission and be judged by the group as a betrayal of the original
worshipper’s lineage.
As indicated above, the classic exception to this third example refers

to the Balinese kings. These were considered as living gods, and royal
ancestors were believed to be of higher standing than common ones. Thus,
without losing their proper lineage identity, subjects could pray to and
honour their royal forefathers who equally represented the founders and the
paramount ancestors of the whole kingdom. Moreover, as a political state-
ment of supremacy, a subject was requested to help in rituals involving the
worship of royal ancestors and pay homage to them. Until recently royal
forefathers were considered to stand above all living subjects and their
ancestors. Finally, Balinese gods do not abide in their temple permanently
but visit it from time to time. This is a very different concept from that of
the Muslim grave.
Although there may be some exceptions, in Bali generally there is no
individual recognition of supremacy similar to the sainthood accorded in a
monotheistic belief system such as Islam or Christianity. The recognition of
an individuality after death, as an identity detached from lineage member-
ship, is rarely conceived. Instead of sainthood, ancestors are raised to god
status, where they tend to lose their original identity. The only generalised
recognition of superiority is given to former kings, who however are never
worshipped as such but as gods (e.g. Bhatara Maspahit). The tendency is to
shift from a recognisable identity to a god status, distinguished by its attrib-
utes (e.g. fertility) and not by its former individuality. The reason for this
shift seems to be that gods are superpartes beings and available to all those
willing to worship them, while distinguished ancestors, although purified
and powerful, cannot be superpartes as they belong to a given lineage and
tend to be evoked almost exclusively by the members of that lineage or,
occasionally, by members of lineages that are considered inferior and have
a relation of dependency on them. Members of equal or superior lineages
would never accept to worship them.
CONCLUSION
This chapter has delineated issues central to the relationship between the
people of Nusa Penida their environment, ancestors and gods. These recip-
rocal relations in Nusa Penida show parallels with a number of Indonesian
societies, which are organised around similar concerns. My analysis
outlines the logic of the relationship between humans and plants in the
specific context of Nusa Penida, but focuses on three issues of general
anthropological relevance, and one peculiar to Balinese anthropology:
1. In traditional societies, such as Nusa Penida, there is no apparent
separation between humans and their natural environment, as we are
dealing with a holistic view that sees human beings, their gods and
ancestors as an essential part of that environment. This is confirmed by
the evidence that humans can be exchanged for plants, and that both
68 THE POTENT DEAD
elements enter the same ‘natural’ cycle, as expressed by the assumed

link between Ibu Pretiwi and the growth of plants. In Nusa Penida, as
a society dependent on agriculture, humans and their natural environ-
ment are thought to lie on the same plane, as the former heavily
depend on the latter for their survival, and each partakes of the same
ideal order, because both rely on ancestors for their functioning.
2. In agricultural societies similar to Nusa Penida, the relation between
the living community and its natural environment is conceived of and
structured on the basis of reciprocity, which seems to conform to a
more general pattern of asymmetry expressed by rules of proper
behaviour among human beings and between humans and gods.14
3. This chapter questions the validity—common to many Balinese
scholars—of continuing to analyse Balinese culture from what is
essentially a Hindu perspective, complacent about the uniqueness of
the island’s cultural expressions standing alone between the Western
Islamic threat and the vast array of the animistic religions of
Indonesia. The material presented here on the birth of plants and culti-
gens and the nature of the reciprocity cycles that tie together the living
and the dead, plants and earth links Nusa Penida to themes that are
central to the cultures of Indonesia.
Nusa Penida, as an expression of Balinese culture, thus appears to retain
strong affinities with eastern Indonesia, as both these societies are a mani-
festation of an Austronesian culture based on reciprocal obligations, still
centred on the fertilising role of ancestors and dependent on the crucial
importance of cultivated plants for the sustenance of human life.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This article is based on fieldwork conducted in Nusa Penida and Bali
between September 1989 and January 1992 under the sponsorship of LIPI
(Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia) and the local supervision of the
Udayana University. The research was supported by an Australian National
University Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies PhD scholarship.
My special thanks go to the people of Nusa Penida. In particular I owe a
debt of gratitude to the members of banjar and desa Sakti who hosted me
during my stay in Nusa Penida.
5
Remembering our dead: the care of the
ancestors in Tana Toraja
Elizabeth Coville
At the house of the princess, at midnight a few days after her entombment,
the little company of her kin feasted on a black boar. For the last time meat
was offered to her, and as the hour of dawn drew near it was time for her soul
to make its journey to Puya, the homeland of souls. So the door was opened,
and as the spirit left its earthly home the Puang and the others called their last
farewells.
‘Carefully! Carefully!’ they cried. ‘Go carefully!’
‘Don’t fall!’
‘Oh, watch for thorns!’
‘Lose not your way!’
And then the old primitive fear came over them. Like friends seeing off a
traveler on a liner who fear it may sail before they can get ashore again, the
nobles feared lest, having accompanied the soul so far along its road, they
should get drawn all the way to Puya and die. So they changed their cries.
‘Close that gate behind you!’
‘Ah, break down that bridge!’
‘Bar the fence! Bar the way when you have passed!’
And so her soul traveled on to Puya, along the dark road, alone.
So writes Harry Wilcox, who left the British army at the end of World War
II to escape from the grimness of the modern world in the Toraja highlands.
Wilcox published an account of his adventure as White Stranger. The work
of this amateur ethnographer would probably garner condescending smiles
now for its sentimentality and romantic perspective on the Other.1 Fifty
years later, ‘the modern world’ is very much in evidence in the kabupaten
(administrative district) of Tana Toraja in the province of South Sulawesi
through such influential institutions as the Christian church, the Indonesian
nation–state, the global economy, and international and domestic tourism.
Yet, not unlike Wilcox, researchers continue to puzzle over the powerful
69
70 THE POTENT DEAD
and ambiguous role played by the dead in contemporary Tana Toraja, for
the spirits of the dead are avoided in most situations but embraced in others;
they are sent away, only to be invited back. It is through this alternation, I
argue, that the dead are transformed into ancestral spirits.
It is widely reported that among the Toraja the spirits of high-ranking
persons (for whom large-scale funerals of five or seven nights’ duration
have been held) become divinised ancestors, thereby joining the heavenly
bodies that are worshipped as deities and that provide the agricultural
calendar with a spiritual foundation. Less interest has been shown in the
treatment of the dead who were not of the highest status. And, although
much has been written about Torajan funerals, not so much attention has
been paid to the secondary mortuary ritual known as ma'nene' (or ma'to-
mate), in which the remains of the dead are removed from their rock graves
and rewrapped before being returned to their resting places (but see Koubi
1982a; Nooy-Palm 1986: 170–1, 202–7; Volkman 1985: 142–7; Waterson
1984b: 53–9; Wellenkamp 1991: 118; 1992: 198, 211). What we know
about ma'nene' is that it involves cleaning the rock graves, weeping over the
dead, wrapping the corpses, offering betel and tobacco, sacrificing animals,
and sometimes conducting voluntary rituals that upgrade or add to the
previous funerals. Ma'nene' can certainly be considered a form of second-
ary burial (Huntington & Metcalf 1979). We also know that ma'nene' varies
from locale to locale: in the south, it is performed by specific groups of kin
for an individual dead person, while in the northern areas of Sesean,
Baruppu' and Pangala', ma'nene' is ‘celebrated annually by the whole
community to honor those who have died during the preceding year’
(Nooy-Palm 1986: 170).2 In other words, it varies according to whether it is
collective or individual and whether it is held annually, every seven years,
or whenever the organisers chose.
In this chapter I describe and interpret ma'nene' as conducted annually
and collectively in a northwestern village in Tana Toraja in the 1980s. My
aim is to gain access to lived social experience as represented in ritual
practice and everyday discourse. In the daily lives of Torajan families, Chris-
tian as well as aluk to dolo (‘ritual of those who came before’), the dead
continue to have influence over the lives of their descendants, and ma'nene'
is one time and place where the influence is strongly felt. My argument is
that, through the symbolic actions of seeing and holding the remains of the
dead, the Toraja engage in a process of dismantling the deceased as a person
and transforming it, over time, into a generalised ancestral spirit. In order to
understand this process in its entirety, we must integrate cosmological,
ritual, social and ethnopsychological data into the analysis.
THE SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The people who now think of themselves as Toraja (or Sa’dan Toraja) live
in the highland interior of the outer Indonesian island of Sulawesi (known
REMEMBERING OUR DEAD 71
during the colonial period as the Celebes) around the valleys of the
Sa’dan River and its tributaries (Map 3). This area of approximately
3000 km2 is home to about 350 000 Toraja. Cultivating rice in irrigated
fields and raising livestock for the purpose of sacrifice, Torajans ‘feed the
ancestral and divine spirits’ (umpakande nene', umpakande deata) by
making offerings and sacrifices designed to foster a continuous give-and-
take between living people and the unseen world. In this ritual exchange,
humans adhere to a very explicit binary opposition between the domain of
ancestral spirits or nene' (associated with death and, in the past, head-
hunting) and the domain of deities or deata (associated with life and agri-
culture). Thus there is a division between rituals of the West-side
(funerals and secondary burial), on the one hand, and rituals of the East-
side (celebrations of life, fertility and prosperity). Similarly, the Toraja
reckon kinship bilaterally and express ties of consanguinity through the
construction and upkeep of ancestral houses (tongkonan). Their tradi-
tional social system (especially in the southern, Bugis-influenced part of
the district) is based on three hereditary ranks: nobles (to makaka),
commoners (to buda or to biasa) and slaves (to kaunan). Some men of
high rank become ritual specialists (to minaa), renowned for their knowl-
edge of offerings and their mastery of ritual speech, who officiate in the
many, complex rituals constituting aluk to dolo. Of life cycle transitions,
death is the only one ritually elaborated, with lengthy and often spectacu-
lar feasts centring on the presentation of livestock, the distribution of
meat, and the provisioning of the spirits of the dead on their journey to
Puya, the afterworld.
With the religious, political and economic changes set in motion by the
arrival of the Dutch in the first decade of the 20th century, achieved status
(often based on education, Christianity and/or income earned during out-
migration) has challenged inherited rank as a source of prestige and success.
While wealth and status interact in a dynamic way and generate competitive
displays of honour and shame (both conveyed by the concept siri'), Torajans
also exhibit, in certain contexts, a concern for collectively promoting
prosperity and sharing it equally (e.g. see Coville 1988; Waterson 1984a).
Christianity is the world religion that has taken hold in the Toraja highlands
since the arrival of the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Mission in the second
decade of the 20th century. Today about 80–90% of the district’s population
is Christian (mostly Protestant, some Catholic, and a few Pentecostal). Since
the New Order from 1966, when affiliation with an official religion became a
prerequisite for education and citizenship, the indigenous way of life has
been reinterpreted and formalised as aluk to dolo (‘the ritual of those who
came before’), and is generally capitalised as Aluk to Dolo or Alukta (‘our
[inclusive] ritual’). Tourism, promoted by the national government, has
expanded rapidly since the 1970s and made the Toraja more ethnically self-
conscious at the very time they are looking more and more beyond their local
communities for their livelihoods and identities.3
72 THE POTENT DEAD
CENTRAL
SULAWESI
SOUTH
SULAWESI
TANA Wotu
LUWU
TORAJA
Patimang
Rantepao
Makale
SOUTH-EAST
SULAWESI
Sa'adan Gulf
River
SIDÉNRÉNG Laerung
Suppa' Massépé
N Paré- WAJO
Bacukiki of
Paré
Cen
r
Riv ana
er
Pammana
SOPPÉNG (Cina)
Bone
Waiennae
River
BONÉ
Lamuru'
Tallo' Sinjai
Ujung Pandang
(Makassar) Tiro
Kajang
0 50
kilometres
Map 3 South Sulawesi: Toraja and Bugis
The past century has seen the emergence of a sense of collective ethnic
identity among a population that formerly lived relatively isolated from
each other in the rugged Sulawesi highlands and united politically only
briefly and against outsiders (see Bigalke 1981). In the Toraja case, as else-
where in Indonesia, a modern sense of ethnic identity goes hand in hand
with the rationalisation of religion (for Indonesia in general, see Geertz
1973a; Atkinson 1983; Kipp & Rodgers 1987; for Toraja in particular, see
e.g. Bigalke 1981; Coville 1982; Waterson 1984b; Volkman 1987; Hollan
1988; Adams 1995).
Although even a cursory history of the mission in the Toraja highlands is
beyond the scope of this chapter, several points are worth stressing. First,
much of the change in the meanings of ritual practices from the traditional
to the Christian can be considered a change in the illocutionary or perfor-
mative force of ritual acts. Thus, for instance, according to the Church it
was not acceptable to sacrifice water buffalo or pigs in order to feed the
spirits of the ancestors, but the memory of the dead could be honoured by
means of a communal meal featuring buffalo meat. The effigies were not
acceptable if they were considered to house the spirit of the dead, but they
were permitted if they were considered to be a memorial to the dead. The
spirits of the rice could not be asked for fertility by means of offerings, but
a harvest ritual (thanksgiving or ma'kurre sumanga') could be held to give
thanks after the harvest was in.
Second, in the years since the first conversions to Christianity, the West-
side rituals have flourished while the East-side rituals have diminished.
This seems to be due partly to deliberate mission policies to encourage the
preservation of mortuary ritual recognised by missionaries as central to the
social order and to discourage rice rituals (the foundation of the East-side
complex). Thus, for Christian Torajans, attendance at and participation in
rice ritual that involved offerings was prohibited and new rituals (e.g.
thanksgiving) were put in their place, while the funerals were retained and
simply reinterpreted. Furthermore, the East-side ritual complex, where the
focus was on fertility-bestowing divine spirits, which moreover sometimes
made ritual participants fall into trance, posed a greater threat. Perhaps, too,
the funerals, as these were centred around the exchange networks of a
deceased individual, were more resilient in that people would participate
despite religious differences between Christians and traditionalists. Christ-
ian and aluk to dolo funerals differ in some key ritual details, yet these
technical differences tend to be less salient to—and less contested by—
participants themselves than are the social dynamics, which are features
shared by Christian and aluk performances alike, and thus mortuary ritual
seems to be able to continue to function socially in a way that rice
ritual does not.
Third, the reinterpretation of Torajan custom according to Christian
principles was accompanied by a systematisation of Torajan customary
practices and beliefs by aluk to dolo spokespersons across villages and
subdistricts. What had been local practice (attributed locally to the fact that
the specifics of aluk came to people from different ancestors) came to be
seen as variation within a single system of aluk to dolo. In terms of this
ongoing rationalisation of traditional religous practice, Toraja resembles
Bali (see Geertz 1973a). The salience of this rationalisation has not been
evenhanded throughout the district and, in everyday village life, what might
be called a vernacular form of aluk works to ‘insure that the stream of
74 THE POTENT DEAD
everyday existence continues to flow steadily within a fixed and firmly

outlined course’ (Geertz 1973a: 171).
When considered together, these three aspects of religious and social
change suggest that Christianity and Torajan customary belief and
practice have, over the years, both clashed and blended. Whether the
relationship between the two is one of conflict or of continuity, it is in
day-to-day practice that we can best see the relationship unfold. Two
areas in which this negotiation of meaning have been worked out are rice
ritual (see Coville 1989) and mortuary ritual. The fieldwork on which this
chapter is based was conducted in Kalimbuang (a pseudonym), a village
in the northwestern part of Tana Toraja. Although the original subject of
the research was the intersection between ritual (aluk) and medicine
(pedampi), rice ritual emerged as a central focus; it was in the context of
investigating this annual cycle that I became interested in the way that
ma'nene' shaped memory and relationships between the living and the
ancestors.
MORTUARY RITUAL: THREE APPROACHES

Unlike other groups of Southeast Asia with longer histories of representa-
tion in the West, the people of the Sa'dan highlands have been written about
by Europeans and English-speakers for less than a century. The ‘prior texts’
(Becker 1995) and expectations that outsiders (from missionaries to adven-
turers to anthropologists) have carried to the field as well as the agendas
and issues that our respondents have brought to the encounter have all
emerged within a fairly short time frame. In order to account for the power
of the ancestors and ancestor spirits in Tana Toraja, I have drawn on three
types of studies—cosmology, ritual and society and ethnopsychology—
which I review briefly before showing how these can be combined to better
understand the role of the potent dead in the lives of the Toraja.
Several rich accounts of cosmology and symbolism pertaining to the
role of the dead are found in van der Veen (1966), Nooy Palm (1979,
1986) and Koubi (1982a). Rich in texts and exegesis and full of local vari-
ation, these works present relatively systematised views of traditional
Toraja cosmology and descriptions of traditional rituals, both witnessed
and second-hand, mainly from the perspective of ritual specialists and
other knowledgeable commentators. These accounts combined demon-
strate that for the Toraja cosmology and ritual practice are firmly inter-
twined, that the sense of cultural order is highly elaborated, that there is a
rich tradition of symbolism and exegesis, and that praxis is more impor-
tant than doxa (see Geertz 1973a; Bourdieu 1977).4 More generally still,
sacrifice and exchange are key to their cosmology and ritual system
(Waterson 1995).
Complementing this focus on cosmology are a group of studies that
seek to explain, from more sociological, interpretive and empirical
perspectives, specific types of mortuary rituals and objects and the role of
the ancestors in contemporary Tana Toraja (see Crystal 1974; Zerner
1981; Waterson 1984b, 1988; Volkman 1985, 1990; Adams 1988, 1993a,
1993b). These researchers reveal that despite increasing economic
involvement in a cash economy and participation in programs of
economic development, notably tourism, mortuary rituals continue to
foreground matters of siri' (‘honor’ and ‘shame’). The traditional elites
use ritual to fulfil their hereditary obligations towards society, while the
nouveau-riche use ritual to display and thereby consolidate their earned
social standing. Even when this emphasis on displaying social standing
has taken relatively new forms, such as the building of museums by local
elites (Adams 1995), the idiom is much the same. Torajans use ritual
practice and ritual objects commemorating the dead to generate and
sustain honour.5
If the potency of the dead is displayed outwardly in idioms of siri', it
is also contained and circulated as wealth and prosperity. It has often
been noted that the Toraja express an unabashed appreciation for riches,
but it is more important to look at the specifics of the local construction
of wealth. The metaphors found in ritual speech offer the best insight
into the Torajan view of wealth, and investigation of the ritual expres-
sions has led one commentator to the insightful claim: ‘the native’s
concept of wealth [or] value [consist] of three main elements: rice
(fields), animals (chickens, pig, and buffalo) and children. These three
elements are arranged in a logical order from low to high, and thus a
person having many rice fields and animals but no children is tradition-
ally considered incomplete and valueless’ (Sandarupa 1989: 52–3,
emphasis in the original).6 Symbolically and ideologically, the role of the
dead as bearers of wealth is expressed in the cultural view that the living
feed the ancestors and deities, who in turn bestow the blessing of fertility
on the living. Socially, the same idea is expressed in the fact that the
hosts or sponsors of rituals take on the role of feeding the guests—thus
of redistributing wealth (see Volkman 1979b). Therefore, one way of
accounting for the power of the dead in Tana Toraja is to investigate the
economic relationships created by rituals commemorating the dead.7
In spite of deep social and cultural changes, the idea that wealth and
prosperity are signs of morally correct ritual conduct persists (see
Anderson 1972).8 The dead continue to be important because they are
the idiom through which the links between status, wealth and power
are articulated.
Both of the preceding categories share an interest in social meanings, in
what is shared, whether the focus is more on the socioeconomic or the
cultural and symbolic side of the continuum. The goal has been to
document and account for the shared cultural values or orientations
(although these accounts are not without their share of attention to individ-
uals and how individuals use the systems given them by culture).
76 THE POTENT DEAD
A third kind of evidence for the potency of the dead is in the personal
experience of actors in which the dead cause illness or distress (e.g. see
Waterson 1984b: 53–9; Adams 1993b: 64). Dreams are another common
way in which the dead communicate directly with the living and foretell the
future (see Hollan & Wellenkamp 1994: 101–7, 182–9 and passim; Hollan
1989, 1995). In these accounts as well as my own research, the way the
dead are personally experienced typically involves gift exchange: either
spirits give objects, such as food, livestock, clothing, wealth or medicine to
the dreamer or the inverse, they demand or appropriate things belonging
to the dreamer. (I return later to a discussion of dreams.) The personal ex-
perience of grief and loss has been addressed from an ethnopsychological
perspective by Wellenkamp (1988, 1991, 1992; see also relevant sections of
Hollan & Wellenkamp 1994, 1996).
Whether we consider cosmology, the social and economic dimensions of
ritual, or personal experience, it is clear that the dead retain a social and
moral significance in the lives of many Torajans. Yet despite considerable
research into Toraja mortuary ritual, researchers have not yet fully
accounted for the persistence of the potent dead for a range of Torajans,
both followers of Christianity and adherents to aluk to dolo, and for indi-
viduals who differ by rank, wealth, denomination and degree of emotional
and social commitment to ritual. To remedy the situation I propose that we
consider the common themes that link all three dimensions that have pre-
viously been treated as separate types of analysis.9
A BIFURCATED WORLD: KEEPING EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE

Both social life and psychological experience are permeated by a sense
that the realm of the divine spirits and the realm of ancestral spirits, like
oil and water, do not mix. The cosmological and ritual bifurcation that
shapes the cosmology and ritual permeates everyday practice as well,
yielding a human condition in which people make a concerted effort to
keep anything to do with death isolated from the rest of life. Rituals are
carefully performed in sequence, so that ‘smoke-rising’ or East-side and
‘smoke-descending’ or West-side rituals never overlap in time. Many of
the optional ‘smoke-rising’ rituals require a series of steps over more than
a year, but whenever a death or a funeral intervenes the sequence is inter-
rupted and the progression delayed. Thus the timing of ritual events is of
great social importance. From a more mundane perspective, what people
do and when they do it is governed in large part by the bifurcation
between divine and ancestral spirits. If one has eaten ‘bad meat’, that is,
meat from a mortuary ritual (du'ku kadake), one must avoid working with
or eating rice. Even gestures associated with death rituals (such as placing
one’s chin in one’s palm while one’s elbow is resting on a horizontal
surface) are prohibited at times that are not associated with death.
To make such a gesture when no funeral is being performed will elicit a
sharp ‘Don’t! That’s prohibited or taboo! (pemali itu)’. As an anthropolo-

gist transcribing and discussing tapes of an East-side ritual, I was advised
to put this project on hold for the duration of a West-side ritual. Dreams
are interpreted differently according to whether they happen during
periods of East-side or West-side ritual time, whether they are considered
auspicious or inauspicious.10
It is true that at an abstract level, articulated by ritual specialists, the
cycles of death and the cycles of life intersect and the bifurcation yields a
unified totality. One way in which this mediation takes place is through
the idea that high-ranking ancestors are transformed through proper ritual
into divine spirits, which are then visible as stars. Such an overarching
unity does not, however, belie the fact that, at least for those who adhere
strongly to aluk to dolo, ordinary experience provides ample evidence
that it is foolhardy not to make a serious effort to keep life and death each
in its own place. And for ordinary people, I think, the ancestral spirits are
seen more as guides for humans in relation to deities and as mediators
between the contemporary world (lino totemo) and the spiritually
powerful world of long ago (lino to dolo).11 In other words, not all spirits
but only those of high-ranking people which are sufficiently cared for by
their descendants can potentially become divinised. At least ideally then
there is closure to the cycle linking the dead and the living. Thus we have,
on the one hand, an abstract and idealised system that links the dead and
the living and, on the other, a system of practical common sense that
separates the dead from the living. Ritual specialists and cultural explic-
ators will talk about the overall unity of the cycle (even while they expli-
cate and justify the carefully choreographed ‘turnings’ from one sphere to
the other), but in everyday life people are more concerned to maintain the
proper opposition between the two dimensions of reality. Furthermore,
this bifurcation implies that what people think about and talk about (i.e.
social discourse) is shaped by this quite thoroughgoing spatial and
temporal ordering of social experience. There is a time and place for
everything, and even if this does not match private experience one would
think that it would affect it.12
MA’NENE’: A TIME TO REMEMBER THE DEAD

According to this opposition, West-side rituals can be subdivided into
two types of ritual: mortuary ritual (aluk or pesta to mate) and the ritual
of cleaning the rock tombs, rewrapping the corpses, and demonstrating
love to one’s deceased relatives (ma'nene').13 In Kalimbuang the latter
involves an annual period of a fortnight or more when words are
addressed to the dead and kinsfolk pay them devoted attention by
cleaning the tombs and rewrapping the corpses. As villagers were fond of
telling the belanda researcher from a land where the dead are buried or
cremated, ‘How could you? How do you love (kaboro') and remember
78 THE POTENT DEAD
(kilala) your forebears if you cannot hold (toe) them and see (tiro) them
as we do?’.
During this period, which falls between harvest and ma'maro (the annual
ritual invoking the divine spirits), people may conduct various rituals
involving the dead whose funerals have already been conducted. Potentially
they can hold a ritual in which past funerals are upgraded by sacrificing
additional buffalo, or a ritual to mark the death of one who died elsewhere
or whose body could not be recovered. Commonly people perform the
rewrapping of the remains of the deceased (maputu-putu), in which corpses
are rewrapped after having been in the rock graves for more than one year,
or else they simply visit the graves, clean them and make offerings of betel,
tobacco or cookies at the entrance. Thus the range of possible rituals is
quite broad, variable and conditional.14 The commonest activity engaged in
by the villagers were the expeditions to the graves of their ancestors and
deceased relatives.
Certain prohibitions go into effect during ma'nene', just as is the case
during a funeral. On days when people go to the graves, they cannot eat,
cook, pound or bring from the granary any rice, nor can they work in the
seedbeds or rice fields. Symbolically, cold foods made from cassava, yams
and corn are eaten.15 Other foods that are prohibited during this period are
chicken eggs (in fact, they are not often eaten anyway, preferably being
hatched, but during ma'nene' they are prohibited). This prohibition is based
on the association of eggs with life (eggs are eaten for strength during child-
birth and times of illness).16
In addition to foods, other activities are restricted. The sound of ‘long
wooden mortar and pestle’ (issong kalando) is forbidden. Typically
groups of two or more gather at this canoe- or coffin-like structure to do
the first step of pound rice-threshing in a steady, lively rhythm. Due to
the prohibition, this characteristic beat is not heard in the house yards
during ma'nene'. Sewing is also forbidden unless the cloth being sewn is
for the dead. The reason given for this taboo is that the dead would think
that the clothing was intended for them and would be upset to find it
being given to someone else. This view reflects the human emotions
attributed to the deceased—like the living, they feel envy, jealousy and
desire (see below).
The spatial choreographing of ma'nene' is significant. The dead are
entombed in high rock cliff graves (liang) located at some distance from
both the clusters of houses and the irrigated rice fields. For most of the
year these graves—‘houses without a fireplace’—are avoided and feared.
One of the trails entering the village passes beneath one of these high
graves, and, although hidden by underbrush, the graves make residents
uneasy as they pass by. To approach the grave from the trail or even to
linger at that section of the path would be thought foolish. The rapid rate
of vegetative growth contributes to the grave’s inaccessibility. When a
group of kin prepare to rewrap a corpse they must first cut away the
undergrowth. Not only does the undergrowth block the way to the graves
but the doors are often heavy and stuck and the corpses difficult to
remove.
Once the path has been cleared and the tomb opened, the remains of the
dead are typically approached with loud shouting on the part of men and
weeping on the part of women. Together the hollering and the wailing
mark the situation with noisiness, which is associated with liveliness,
busyness and sociability (marua' in Torajan; ramai in Indonesian).
Although informants did not use these words, it was as though, after 11
months of silence and neglect, the dead were awakened by a noisy display
of emotion and sociability on the part of their visitors. To the observer, it
seems they are domesticating a forested area—cutting away the growth,
resurrecting the path, introducing new store-bought objects and domesti-
cating the space.
What emotions are attributed to the spirits of the dead? Like living
people, they seem to feel envy and hurt, hence they often ask their descen-
dants for things or feel offended when they are not given what they want or
what they consider their fair share. In this respect the spirits of the dead
closely resemble those of the living, who are forever asking for (palaku)
things or feeling indignant that they did not receive their fair share. This
ongoing negotiating over how to distribute wealth and how to share
the common good is a pervasive cultural theme.17 Another emotion that the
dead are commonly thought to express is a feeling of missing or longing for
the living, thus taking the living with them (see Adams 1993b: 64 for an
example surrounding a funeral). By providing gifts (e.g. of sacrificed
animals, tobacco, food or cloth), the living try to make the dead satisfied
with these safe substitutes for their still-living kin.18
If the dead are thought to miss the living, so too are the living thought to
miss or long for the dead. One woman said to me in explanation for
performing an optional ritual held during ma'nene' in which additional
buffalo are given to the deceased, ‘our hearts are not yet satisfied (tosso)
unless we give this’. During these weeks devoted to the dead, people’s
attention turns to their dead relatives—seeing them, touching them, remem-
bering them, heeding their messages in dreams, putting things right with
them, giving them gifts—all, in a sense, paying them back for the gift of
life. Informants say that we love (pakaboro') our parents because they gave
us life, and we try to return or repay (membalas) them by means of the
things we do for them at ma'nene'.
These ritual practices show that the senses of vision and touch are cultur-
ally elaborated. Opening up the graves, looking at and holding the physical
remains (bateng dikalena) of the dead constitutes care of the ancestors.
Giving visual and concrete representation to the dead, as in the construction
of monuments and statues, is one expression of cultural memory. Elsewhere
in Tana Toraja, wooden effigies (tau-tau) are constructed and decorated as
both portrayals of the deceased and receptacles for their souls (see Volkman
80 THE POTENT DEAD
1979a; Adams 1993a). In Kalimbuang, although no permanent effigies are

built, we nonetheless find the same symbolic and social processes at work
in the temporary construction of effigies and the yearly rewrapping of
corpses.
TOWARDS A TORAJAN SEMIOTICS: SIGHT AND TOUCH

A pervasive and well-documented theme in Toraja is the importance of
visibility in social and ritual conduct. For instance, wealth demands to be
displayed publicly and visibly (in tongkonan houses, in ritual contribu-
tions, and in being physically present). Thus, as reported by Volkman,
‘self-worth is only there if other people see it. Through rituals it is made
visible’ (1979b: 9). This concern with self-worth or honour (masiri') is
significant in many ways: of course, it shapes the lively status-competi-
tion of mortuary ritual, but the importance of visibility also plays a role in
the more collective aspects of social life. In the treatment of both the
physical and non-physical remains of the dead, people desire to see their
forebears. The aversion to burial in the ground and especially to crema-
tion as a method of disposing of the dead derives from this desire for
visual remains.19
Watching a public event is not conceived as a passive activity but rather
as akin to witnessing. People attend a meat-divide at a funeral and watch
the meat-divider perform the public distribution of buffalo or pork meat to
the guests. People feel that because the type and quantity of the meat
represent the social order (conceived, in this case, as a hierarchy), they are
seeing a physical representation of society. Watching the meat being
passed out, the audience attends to whether the distribution is performed
correctly, whether each person receives a share appropriate to his or her
place in society. At the maro ritual, the spectators—‘those who watch’ (to
mengkita)—are enjoined to behave cautiously so as to make the ritual
efficacious (see Coville 1988). The idea of errors or mistakes (sala) as
hidden and in need of being ‘searched for’ (mandaka') also implies the
importance of seeing. Visibility appears to operate in the homeland rather
than in migration destinations (see Volkman 1985; Waterson 1984a,
1984b).20
Thus the importance of visibility is not just a matter for the high-ranking.
Those who say they value the holding and seeing of their deceased family
members after entombment are not saying that they thereby display honour
and status but rather that they thereby try to ‘love’ (pakaboro') and ‘repay’
(membalas) their parents and grandparents. Thus the theme of visibility is
not in this instance a matter of status but one of collective affiliation. Just as
the effigy (the tau-tau is also known as bombo dikita or ‘the spirit of the
dead that is seen’) is the spirit made visible, so too is the importance of
taking care of the dead to make them—their bodies rather than their
spirits—remain visible.
A second pervasive theme in the discourse about ma'nene' is that of

holding (toe). Not only are the bones, like the effigy, visible—they are also,
unlike the effigy, tangible. In semiotic terms, the effigy is an icon of the
dead: the symbolic connection based on resemblance, similarity, likeness.
The bones are, in contrast, indices of the dead: the symbolic connection is
based on an actual physical relationship between the symbol and what it
stands for. The ability to hold the remains of their ancestors is meaningful
to people in Kalimbuang. They would request family portraits after
the corpse had been rewrapped as all the kin gathered around, touching the
bundle of bones wrapped in cloth and looking into the camera.
Furthermore, one person commented to me on this reversal of life
processes when gathering up the far-decomposed bones of a dead forebear:
‘now we are holding [in our lap] our parent [like an infant]’. Holding like
this in the lap or cradling (riwa) is an emotionally charged posture because
it is how one holds both infants and persons who are on the verge of death.
It is also a way of expressing the relationship of the living to the world of
ancestral and divine spirits: nariwaki aluk is a phrase in the ritual style of
speaking that is glossed as ‘we [humans] are held in the lap of aluk' or ‘we
are cradled by aluk'.
Holding the dead requires that the remains be contained by cloth. In an
interesting inversion, at the end of the funeral the temporary tau-tau
is ‘opened’ or ‘undressed’ (dibuka), while during ma'nene' the corpse is
enclosed or dressed (see Volkman 1979a: 28). New, manufactured cotton
cloth is purchased and used to rewrap the remains of the deceased. Some-
times, as with the construction during funerals of the temporary effigies of
the dead (bayo-bayo or tau-tau), shirts and other articles of clothing are
placed on top of the body before the whole thing is bundled up again and
returned to the grave. At death the cloth wrapping the body is sewn
together, creating the cylindrical tube of material (Ind. sarong) common
throughout Indonesia. The prohibition against sewing for reasons other than
the ancestral shrouds suggests the significance of sewing as joining
together, connecting and containing. But, as Jane Schneider and Annette
Weiner point out (Weiner & Schneider 1989: 2, 6):
cloth as a metaphor for society, thread for social relations, express more than
connectedness, however. The softness and ultimate fragility of these materials
capture the vulnerability of humans, whose every relationship is transient,
subject to the degenerative processes of illness, death, and decay . . .
[P]recisely because it wears thin and disintegrates, cloth becomes an apt
medium for communicating a central problem of power: social and political
relationships are necessarily fragile in an impermanent, ever-changing world.
For the Toraja too the perishability of cloth is significant. They emphasise
the periodic rewrapping of the remains of the dead and how the clean, new,
intact cloth improves the condition of the remains. With decomposition
82 THE POTENT DEAD
culturally constituted by the Toraja as polluting, cloth counters that process

of degeneration, containing the decay (bossi) and keeping it safely apart
from life.21 But cloth is not permanent and does not have a long lifespan, so
it must be replenished. Hence the emphasis on the periodic rewrapping.
What is lost in terms of permanence is restored through the care and
tending of the corpse.
Thus perishable cloth is combined with enduring bones, but eventually
only bones and bone fragments remain. It is then, when the remains of a
person are no longer recognisable but are commingled with the other bones,
that the wrapping ceases. The wrapping in cloth perpetuates the individual-
ity of the deceased until it is no longer important.22 And during this time that
the physical remains are periodically handled, the spirit of the dead is liable
to engage the living through dreams or imagined encounters. The physical
remains and collected bones function as a kind of indexical monument
of the dead. There is some element of iconicity, as when people take note of
the fact that the wrapped remains resemble (in size and perhaps also in
shape) an infant. But the main connection between the sign and what it
stands for is indexical. Like other relics, the bones were once part of the
person for whom they now stand, and it is this, rather than their likeness to
the deceased, that gives them meaning. This indexical relationship is main-
tained in the ongoing care the remains receive from the descendants. If the
effigy gets its power from being a likeness, the bones get their power from
having been connected to the deceased.
A MATTER OF TIMING: PROCESSES OF DEATH AND

CYCLES OF LIFE
Ma'nene' then articulates the gradual process by which the essence of the
deceased is stripped of the specific associations and memories carried by
those who still remember him or her. When only the bones remain, the
deceased has joined the ranks of impersonal, anonymous ancestral spirits.
In wrapping the bones of a deceased relative in cloth and holding the
newly clothed remains, people say they remember (kilalai) the person who
has died. I think they remember them as they were in life—as human
beings with desires expressed in their requests and as people who related
to them in certain culturally constituted roles (e.g. as mother to child, or
elder sibling to younger sibling). Eventually, however, only bone frag-
ments remain, and finally even these fragments are scattered, intermingled
with the remains of other individuals and unrecognisable as belonging to a
specific person. At this point the remains are no longer wrapped in cloth,
and the individual is no longer intensely mourned. It seems that the
cloth—a quintessentially domestic material and symbol—marks the
deceased as one who was related to others in certain relationships, for it is
others who wrap him or her (just as it is others’ shirts which are lent to
clothe the temporary effigy at a funeral). The mourners over years and
decades use cloth to recall those relationships in their emotional intensity.

With the passage of time, the remains decompose and cloth no longer
plays a part in remembering the dead. Eventually, once the personal
memories have worn away and the body is no longer recognisable as
belonging to an individual, the dead person has become an ancestral spirit.
To become an ancestral spirit—able to bestow collective blessings of pros-
perity and wellbeing—requires cleaning the bones of the feelings and
memories associated with the particular person. The personal dimensions
of the deceased are increasingly forgotten while simultaneously the imper-
sonal dimensions are increasingly attended to. An interesting line of
research would be to look closely at the changing nature of requests. There
are differences, I suggest, between the ways in which the Toraja make
requests of the living, the near-death, the recently dead, the long-dead, and
the ancestral spirits, because these are understood as different categories of
being. I would also suggest that the fear of spirits of the recently dead
(bombo) is related to the fact that people do not know how to request
things of them or communicate with them.23
In remembering, mourners at ma'nene' are separating out two sides of
the remembered person—the enduring from the perishable, the permanent
from the dynamic, and the impersonal from the personal. What endures is
the essence of the dead-as-grandparent-ancestor (cultural guide and mentor
to the living). But it is what perishes that people take care of by weeping,
wrapping, holding and seeing—this experienced memory of the dead
person. And it is this that eventually disappears. The process of death and
decay is thus isolated from the cycle of life and death symbolised by ances-
tral and divine spiritual power. Once the physical process of living and
dying has been socially tended, the enduring dimension can enter the cycles
of reciprocity linking the spiritual realm with the human realm.
LOCAL VARIATION, GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

In Kalimbuang, three local variations in aluk to dolo intersect, distinguish-
ing this village from most of what has been reported in the ethnographic
literature on the Toraja: ma'nene' is performed annually and collectively;
funerals are not postponed until after the harvest, as they are in most of the
rest of Tana Toraja (during what is known as the funeral season), but rather
must be conducted within three days of physical death; and there are no
permanent wooden effigies of the dead (only temporary bamboo ones
constructed and dismantled during the funeral and known as bayo-bayo,
literally ‘shadow’). Clearly there is a connection between the first and
second practices, for the hastened immediate funeral can be upgraded
during the season devoted to the dead. Both rules are based on exactly the
same rationale—to keep death from contaminating the growing rice, but
one achieves this goal by waiting until the land is empty, while the other
does so by speeding up the social process of performing ritual so that the
84 THE POTENT DEAD
natural process of decay does not have time to affect the rice growing in the
land (see Coville 1988). In practice, the most common pattern—of waiting
until after harvest—allows more room for economic and social negotiation
of mortuary ritual. As residents of Kalimbuang liked to explain (in para-
phrase), ‘unlike those people to the south, we don’t wait until we can call
everyone home and hold a big fancy funeral, we are not so wealthy, and we
prefer not to show off our wealth’.
While effigies and other memorials to the dead display the status, reputa-
tion and fame of the deceased, they do not articulate the process of
mourning and undoing of the social self that the institution of ma'nene'
expresses. The combination of hastened funerals (the three-day rule),
secondary mortuary ritual and exclusively temporary effigies seems to fit in
with a cultural pattern in which permanent status differences are not deeply
entrenched. In the northwestern sections of what is administratively Tana
Toraja, status and prestige is of concern, but compared to the south it is fluid
and dynamic; it is something to renew through ongoing social relations.
Yet, ultimately, it is not local variation per se but rather underlying prin-
ciples that are shown by the ritual practice of ma'nene' from which we can
conclude the following.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF MEMORY

By considering the rewrapping of the remains of the dead in its sociocul-
tural context, we have been able to make connections among seemingly
opposed theoretical and methodological approaches. A local semiotics—an
implicit sense of how things mean—has guided our efforts to link self and
society, folk psychology and social structure. Thus we have shown the
cultural significance of seeing: that honour and shame are conceived of as
something that should be seen publicly in the homeland, the visible signs of
right behaviour are wealth and fertility, witnessing ritual contributes to its
efficacy, and seeing the physical remains of the dead brings them back into
contact with the living. We have seen too that cradling and wrapping in
cloth are forms of praxis that have both personal and cultural meaning.
With this attention to the symbolic meaning of seeing and holding, I have
argued that ma'nene' reveals how, within an oral tradition, memory and
forgetting interact. This form of secondary mortuary practice functions as a
ritual process of gradual amnesia, whereby the personal and individual
dimensions of the deceased are physically contacted and brought to mind.
That is, this ritual process involves a transitional period of gathering up the
remains of the dead while simultaneously, I would argue, calling to mind
memories of the dead person through thinking, talking and dreaming.24
Eventually those pieces of the person can no longer be gathered up and
made whole, but by that time the people who remembered the dead person
as a living person are no longer thinking, talking or dreaming about him or
her. Over the years survivors and descendants move from re-membering the
dead (in the sense of putting the pieces the body back together) to engaging
the generalised ancestral spirits through words and offerings.
THE REMEMBERING OF ‘OUR DEAD’

In ma'nene', it is the members of a common descent group (to marapu) who
gather together and gather the remains of their kin. When, standing together
and holding the freshly wrapped corpse, they pose for the camera, they
stand as a group of related people, people who share the same substance,
the same ‘blood and bones’ (rara buku). The dead that are cared for during
ma'nene' are, therefore, our dead, meaning our relatives. Hence too the fear
of being placed in the wrong grave and the fear of having one’s remains
mixed up with those of others.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF ‘ANCESTORS OF RENOWN’

Although the focus of this chapter has not been the dead as heroes, saints or
divinised ancestors, it can suggest ways in which such specially remem-
bered dead may come into being. Just as what Waterson (1984b: 54) calls
‘ancestors of renown’ are made and not born, they are made not only before
death but also posthumously and even after the initial mortuary ritual. Ad-
ditional sacrifices made during ma'nene' can not only recognise but also
enhance their status. But one wants to know what considerations determine,
in practice, whether and how such upgrading occurs, just as one wonders
how people decide to visit graves and rewrap the dead. How do discourse
and social action affect each other? What is the interaction among discourse
about great men and women, dreams attributed to them, and ritual attention
paid to them?
THE ENACTMENT OF COMPASSION AND SOCIAL SENTIMENT

One of the vexing questions in the study of the Toraja is the issue of hierar-
chy and competition versus equality and cooperation. Waterson points out
that for most Toraja participation in funerals is ‘the truest expression of
social sentiment [and] sympathy’ (1988: 57). Similarly Wellenkamp (1992:
201ff ) argues that, for the Toraja, expressions of sadness generate com-
passion and empathy. When talking with people about ma'nene' and about
weeping, I learned that they emphasised (positively) that weeping for
others’ losses reminded them of their own losses. They recognised, in other
words, that mortuary ritual is a form of memory, and memory that ties them
to others. So long as the season of re-membering the dead remains annual
and collective, it is likely that it expresses ‘compassion’ and ‘sympathy’ as
well. But one wonders about the effects of religious conflicts (such as that
between Christian rules against feeding the ancestors and aluk to dolo rules
against neglecting them) on the shared expression of ‘social sentiment’.
86 THE POTENT DEAD
MOURNING THE PASSING OF AN ERA

Outsiders know Tana Toraja as a place where the ancestors are
worshipped and celebrated. Many of the marketable symbols of Toraja
culture—the effigies, the houses, the funerals—are interpreted (by
researchers, tourists and local people alike) as representations of the
power of the ancestors. I have tried in this chapter to focus less on
the ways in which the powerful dead are represented and more on the
ways in which they are enacted—in how people interact with the dead by
means of symbols. But there is a further ambiguity in all this: the term
nene' denotes both the living (literally, ‘grandparent’) and the dead (in
the sense of ‘ancestor’). For a long time, presumably, and thanks to the
complex and intricate ritual work performed by the Toraja, grandparents
died and eventually became ancestors who were then fed by their descen-
dants. Today, thanks to external demographic and historical forces far
beyond exclusive Toraja control, grandparents become ancestors but
ancestors are not ritually cared for by their descendants. In a way, this
fact makes sense of the transformation to modernity. Because such expe-
riences as attending school, migrating to other parts of Indonesia, and
working as civil servants all more or less imply conversion to Christian-
ity, most remaining adherents to aluk to dolo are in fact the elderly who
have not left the homeland. They are often, in fact, described as ‘not yet
having religion’ (Indonesian, belum beragama) or ‘still (down) with the
ancestors’ (diongpa nene'). It seems to be expected by many in Tana
Toraja that when this generation dies there will be no more people left
to care for the ancestors; the death of this elderly generation thus marks
a transition between ages, from ‘the old world’ or ‘the world of those
who came before’ (lino to dolo) to the ‘present world’ (lino totemo)
(see McKinley 1979).
AFTERWORD
Nevertheless 20 years later, ma'nene', with its precise scheduling and
choreography, continues to draw younger Torajans home to the highlands.
On a return visit in 2001, I was able to participate in the ritual of rewrap-
ping for several recently deceased kin. As in the past, it was emphasised to
me that to hear the ritualised weeping of ma'nene' is to remember not only
those specific individuals who are being mourned but all our kin who have
died. Since I had not contributed to several funerals in the intervening
years, I was given the chance to sacrifice a pig or a water-buffalo for those
who had died. The social construction of memory and shared social senti-
ment thus continue to play a central role in ma'nene'. The semiotics of
the dead still contain many layers: the framed photographs, like the tradi-
tional effigies, act as icons of the deceased; the corpse, including the face
and particularly the eyes, retains its influence as an index of the person;
the objects in which the mortal remains are contained—the wrapping

cloth, the coffins and the mausoleum—are expressively handled by ritual
participants. Even though much has changed, remembering the ancestors
continues to be performed as a persuasive collective ritual that eloquently
expresses the tangible and compelling power of the dead.
6
Island of the Dead. Why do
Bataks erect tugu?
Anthony Reid
Batak history over the past century can be read as a case study of rapid
modernisation—‘from cannibalism to computer science’. Having been rela-
tively isolated from external impacts until the coming of the Rhenish
Mission and Dutch colonial control in the last decades of the 19th century,
the Toba Batak embraced Christianity, education, progress, the money
economy and urbanisation more wholeheartedly than most Indonesian
peoples who had been exposed to all of these over a much longer time. Until
the 1960s it appeared to most observers that the old culture of sipelebegu—
the veneration and manipulation of spirits—was headed for extinction
(Bartlett 1928: 236).
The only evidence of any new flowering, or even survival, of native art in the
Toba region was shown a few years ago [Bartlett’s 1927 visit] in the
construction of a considerable number of stone sarcophagi by the natives. They
followed their own art forms exclusively, which seems remarkable in view of
the complete collapse of their material culture, which has quickly followed
contact with the white race. Toba, the former centre of Batak culture, is fast
becoming utterly and depressingly nondescript, as the remaining Batak houses
fall into ruin and are replaced by atrocious stylless imitations of European
buildings.
Though gratified by this uncharacteristic survival of mortuary architecture,

the American anthropologist Bartlett believed in the 1920s that ‘the forces
bringing about cultural disentegration are too strong’, so that these tombs
would soon be of only ‘antiquarian interest’ (Bartlett 1928: 237).
Writing a few years later, the Dutch adat specialist Vergouwen (1933: 71)
had the same impression. After describing the mangongkal holi-holi ritual
in which the bones of a revered ancestor were exhumed and replaced in a
88
ISLAND OF THE DEAD 89
MALAYSIA
Medan
Lake
Toba
Toba
Batak SINGAPORE
S Pekanbaru
U
Padang
M
A
T
N
R
A
Palembang
Muara Enim
Gumai Lahat
Pagaralam
Toba Batak Pematang
Siantar
Simarmata Parapat
Pangururang
Lake Toba
SAMOSIR
Tarutung 0 200
kilometres
0 50
kilometres
Map 4 Sumatra: Toba Batak and Gumai
tomb amid great feasting, he added in parenthesis: ‘Here one must speak in
the past tense since Christianity has spread everywhere’. The Rhenish
Mission was firmly set against rituals conducted by the old religious
specialists (datu) at which the spirits of the dead were honoured and
invoked, and these ceremonies were therefore retreating to the margins of
Batak social life.
90 THE POTENT DEAD
Figure 6.1 Simarmata tugu in the shape of a lighthouse, northern

Samosir
When Edward Bruner conducted his fieldwork in a Batak village near

Lake Toba (Map 4) in 1957, reburials still played a role in holding Toba
Batak society together but there was ‘a feeling of cultural malaise, even
disorganisation. The Toba social system, I thought, could not last another
generation’ (Bruner 1983: 17). He shared Bartlett’s earlier impression that
the system was collapsing, although it was outmigration, indigenised Chris-
tianity and urban-based nationalism, rather than colonial officials and
missionaries, which had become the agents of change.
In 1973, however, Bruner found the region dotted with new tombs to clan
ancestors, mostly constructed in the 1960s and entirely on the initiative and
with the wealth of urban Bataks. Bruner conceded he had in his 1957
reporting underestimated ‘the complex interdependencies between the rural
and the urban communities, especially those which took place on a ritual-
moral rather than a purely social-economic plane’ (Bruner 1983: 17).
By the early 21st century the transformation which began in the 1960s
has produced a Toba countryside in which monuments to lineage founders
and other revered ancestors are the dominant features. The Toba Batak

P
Figure 6.2 Manihuruk tugu, built in 1993 to house the bones of hundreds of
descendants
homeland of Tapanuli Utara is poor, ranking 15th of North Sumatra’s 17

kabupaten in per-capita GDP, above only remote Nias and Dairi (SUDA
1993: 731–4). Its historic core, the island of Samosir, is dirt-poor even in
this context, with a declining population, exhausted soils, and no industry
except tourism. In this impoverished landscape the magnificence of the
ancestral monuments (tugu) stands out dramatically, making Samosir seem
an island of the dead. The majority of the children of Samosir who now live
more comfortably in the cities of Indonesia seek to return only to feast—
and to be reburied. As government officials are quick to complain, the
graves and monuments to the dead are the only sign of investment by
migrant Bataks in their ancestral homeland.
In the prosperous decade 1985–95, some of the tugu reached remarkable
proportions. They are now typically erected by the joint efforts of hundreds
or thousands of urban Bataks, usually led by a particularly wealthy and
ambitious individual. Of the dozens dotted along the 20 km of road from
Simanindo to Pangururan on the western side of Samosir, two of the more
striking examples are illustrated.
The fine white tugu in the form of a lighthouse (Figure 6.1) was inaug-
urated on 27 June 1990, during a feast of the Simarmata marga (patrilineage)
and their hula-hula (wife-givers) which the caretaker generously estimated
had drawn 100 000 people! The two statues before the monument are the
reputed founders of the lineage: Ompu Simarmata Raja Simarmata, and his
wife Dohot Ompu Beru Limbong Sihole. Beneath the statues is a plaque

92 THE POTENT DEAD
expressing in Indonesian the purpose of the monument in sufficiently vague

terms as not to upset anyone: ‘To the coming generations, that they may
continue to guard, look after and preserve the cultural values radiating from
this tugu’. The committee responsible for fund-raising and construction was
headed by a Jakarta contractor, with one of the tourist hotel owners of
Ambarita as his deputy and a Siantar schoolteacher as treasurer.
The huge honeycomb tomb of Manihuruk marga (Figure 6.2) was
somewhat different, combining the functions of monument to the ancestors
and collective tomb for the bones of the whole marga. The interior wall is
lined with about 300 niches, the topmost ones already filled with the bones
of ancestors, while the more recently exhumed will have to await another
ceremony several years hence to be placed in their allotted niches. This tugu
was erected in 1993, on the initiative of a retired Police General in Jakarta,
unusual in that he moved physically back to his native village on Samosir,
built a palace by the lakeside there for himself, and had the tugu erected
with his own funds. When I visited, a commemorative communal meal was
being held inside, with offerings left for the dead on a mushroom-shaped
central altar. The very absence of commemorative plaques suggested an
openness to pre-Christian ritual.
Today the ritual of mangongkal holi-holi, for the collective reburial of the
bones of members of a particular descent group in a large concrete tomb
(tambak) usually associated with a tugu, is the central activity linking urban
Bataks to their Tapanuli homeland. One festival I attended in July 1995
reburied the bones of about 20 members of the Malau marga in a village
near Aeklan, some of whom had died as long as 50 years before. The hosts
(suhut) who bore most of the expense were all from Medan, though those
members of the lineage who remained in the village gained valuable
employment in building the tomb, restoring the village houses for guests
and preparing the feast. After a communal meal in the evening, most of the
following day was occupied with receiving gifts of cloth (ulos) from
various groups of hula-hula or wife-givers. The Batak orchestra (gondang)
was installed in its traditional place in the open eave of the best-preserved
traditional-style house in the village, as is now normal practice despite the
lengthy period when it was banned by the mission. Each incoming group
danced their way forward and put one or more ulos around the neck of the
host team. Most churches (except Pentecostalists) have now established an
uneasy truce with the ritual, and the porganger (lay reader) and three
members of the youth group of the village Catholic church had their
moment in the late afternoon. They did their own dance (tortor) around the
host group, sang a couple of hymns, and read Batak prayers over the boxes
of bones, as prescribed for this mangongkal holi-holi in the most recent
Catholic Batak prayerbook. After further prayers were said at the top of the
hill, and most had joined in singing the Lord’s Prayer in Batak, the adat
chief of the hamlet (raja huta) commenced a lengthy speech on the other
side of the tomb. The theatre suggested conflict, but the participants saw the
two elements as complementary. Finally the boxes were passed up to the

top of the tomb, and the contents in plastic bags were placed one by one in
the topmost chamber.
This ritual procedure is a compromise between church, the power of the
dead, and family pride which has not come easily. As all must participate in
funerary rituals of this sort, compromise was necessary. The revival of
rituals to the dead since the 1960s have all been opposed by the churches
initially, and many are still condemned by all the churches. One example I
attended in a nearby village was the hoda debata (horse of the gods) ritual,
which appeared to have died out in the 1930s and 1940s, though described
by Vergouwen (1933: 100–1) in a markedly different form. Those members
of a branch of the Simbolon marga who sponsored it were all nominally
Christian, living in cities such as Medan, Batam and Kuala Lumpur. As
explained to me by one of the ritual specialists (panuturi) who had deter-
mined its form, it had been decided to hold this ritual after a series of
consultations with ancestral spirits through mediums and in dreams. These
revealed that the founder of the lineage had made an agreement that if he
recovered from an illness he and his descendants would hold this ritual of
sacrificing a horse. But for past three generations the ceremony had not
been held, and members of the lineage who recovered from illnesses
became sick again. A number of wealthy members of the clan had therefore
decided to hold the ritual, despite Church opposition. The presence of a
very new collective tomb in the same hamlet suggested that these perantau
had already gathered on a previous occasion to rebury the bones of their
forebears. As a nearby village had very recently also held this same ritual,
there seemed clearly to be an element of competitive emulation in the
revival.
Unlike the participants in the mangongkal holi-holi, there was a marked
differentiation at this ritual between degrees of involvement. About 150
members of the lineage attended, but the majority declined to take part in
the ritual meal, and marked their token involvement by playing cards
around the periphery. No Christian prayers were said, and those who
claimed expertise in the old rituals appeared able to determine how things
had to be done. Prayers were said and offerings made before the new tomb,
and the bamboo pole (borotan) always erected at the centre of such feasts
was explained not as decoration or tradition, but as the means whereby the
spirit of the sacrificed horse would rise to appease the gods. Those
conducting the ritual were eager to explain Batak religion as not so much
compatible with Christianity as equivalent to it.
Does this revival of rituals and expenditures in honour of ancestral
figures represent a process of de-Christianisation and secularisation, a
return to older Batak traditions, or a wholly modern way for an urban
middle class to express Batak or lineage solidarity? Let me try to disen-
tangle the elements of modernity and tradition in the process by tracing its
development historically.
94 THE POTENT DEAD
CHRISTIANISATION
The Christianisation of the Batak was a relatively rapid process, beginning
with Nommensen’s conversion of the influential Raja Pontas Lumbanto-
bing in 1865, but becoming rapid only after the viability of the old religious
order was dramatically undermined by the defeat of Singamangaraja XII
in 1883. By 1920 there were over 200 000 Toba Batak Christians, still a
minority but with the education and leadership to establish Christianity as
part of the route to Batak modernisation. In 1930, the year the Batak
Protestant Christian Church (HKBP) was established as Indonesia’s first
self-governing church, Hendrik Kraemer declared it among ‘the finest
results of missionary activity in modern times’ (Kraemer 1930: 43). The
German missionaries had insisted that Christians should abandon their
funerary rites and rituals to the ancestors. At Christian feasts the gondang
was strictly forbidden as an inherent invocation of the spirits, and replaced
by brass bands and hymn-singing with Western tunes. Many of the datu
who had mediated with the spirit world were given positions of responsi-
bility as church elders (Pederson 1970: 63–4). To the missionaries and to
many Toba Batak converts it appeared that escaping the magical world in
which success and failure depended on the whims of the begu (spirits) was
the first step towards that individual moral responsibility required by both
Christianity and modernisation.
Yet even the best of the missionaries still found the Bataks ‘a psychologi-
cal riddle, mainly because of the great discrepancy between dogmatics and
ethics in their mental makeup. Everywhere behind the Christian forms,
terms and customs, he discovers the pagan’ (Kraemer 1930: 51, citing
Marcks). The Batak Christian developed a vigorous church life and avoided
ceremonies overtly in conflict with it, but remained convinced that, in the
ceaseless quest to strengthen his tondi (inner spiritual potency), his ancestral
spirits remained a potent source of strength and danger. In particular it was
essential, even in the 1920s when the Church’s line against the spirits was at
its hardest, not to lose contact with the lineage, living and dead, by absenting
oneself wholly from its collective rituals (1930: 50–5; Castles 1974).
FORMATION OF AN URBAN BATAK IDENTITY

Such was the equation of ‘Batak’ with ‘savage’ that Bataks of any descrip-
tion who moved to the cities kept their identity secret until about 1920.
Either they became Muslim and joined the urban high culture, or passed
themselves off as some kind of already accepted Sumatran migrants. But
around 1920 the first Batak churches became established in both Batavia
and Medan, and self-help clubs, newspapers and football clubs soon
followed. Parada Harahap tells a story about the first Batak football club in
Batavia in 1921, which at first was received with derision when it put up its
sign at matches. But eventually ‘they saw that people who had pretended to
be orang Padang, whom they had regarded as clean and educated, turned
out [to be Bataks], and spoke Dutch too’ (cited in Castles 1972: 181–2).
Because of their early and enthusiastic response to education, Bataks in
the 1920s were overrepresented in the plethora of new newspapers. As well
as editing several nationalist newspapers for a broader public, they set up
the successful Soara Batak (Tarutung, 1919–30) and Bintang Batak
(Balige, later Sibolga, 1928–41) as explicit vehicles of Batakness (habata-
hon). The 1920s were also marked by numerous publications in Batak and
Malay dealing with adat, traditions and genealogy. The Batak Institute,
founded in Leiden as early as 1908, lent respectability to the idea of a Batak
civilisation through its publications (Castles 1972: 183–4).
A turning point came in 1922, when a dispute over rights of access to a
Mandailing-dominated cemetery in Medan caused a bitter polemic between
those who considered ‘Batak’ the appropriate inclusive term for all the
highlanders of Tapanuli and those who considered the term offensive. As
Lance Castles (1972: 189) puts it, Medan in the 1920s ‘was changing from
a “melting-pot”, in which immigrants were expected to conform to Malayo–
Muslim culture, to a region of lasting ethnic diversity and competition’.
Toba Bataks have long understood their identity in terms of genealogical
relationships, as the relations between the marga of their father and mother
will determine their ritual and social obligations and opportunities.
Vergouwen (1933: 17) noted of the 1920s:
Anyone whose forefather was not snatched from the bond of his kinship group
. . . during the turbulent Pidari [militant Islamic Padri movement] time that
preceded the coming of the Dutch Government, and who knows something of
the facts, can enumerate without fault six, eight or even ten or more
generations of his ascending line of agnates. Within the narrower kinship
group . . . everyone knows precisely the relationship of its members.
Because this was oral information, and the heirs to a particular genealogy
might be spread all over Tapanuli, there was however great variety and
frequent disputation about the origins and relations of different lines. Dutch
officials noted that margas that had dispersed began to lose their sense of
origin in the late 19th century, and substituted legend.
In the 1920s this knowledge began to be written and uniform, initially as
a result of the interaction of Dutch and Batak officials working in the field
of Batak customary law. A huge chart was compiled linking all Toba and
most Angkola and Mandailing margas with each other by tracing each back
to branchings out from parent margas until reaching the ultimate source in
Si Raja Batak. It was published in Batak in a 1926 book by a Batak govern-
ment prosecutor (jaksa), Waldemar Hoeta Galoeng—Poestaha taringot toe
tarombo ni halak Batak (Castles 1972: 184). The weighty tome of the
Dutch official Ypes, who must have known Hoeta Galoeng well from their
work together in adat courts, did not come out in Dutch until 1932, though
96 THE POTENT DEAD
he says that he compiled the information in 1926 by travelling around the

Batak area recording information from elderly informants (Ypes 1932:
1–4). From the date of Hoeta Galoeng’s publication, in any event, educated
Bataks had access to a universal schema of their relationships. This has
been enormously influential in shifting from an oral and varied to a modern
and fixed definition of identity through origins.
For example, the Hasibuans of Padang Lawas, an area where Islam had
made some gains, told Neumann in the 1880s that they were descended
from ‘one of the distinguished families of the retinue of Alexander the
Great’. But in 1929, after the publication of Waldemar Hoeta Galoeng’s
genealogy, this branch was convinced (rightly, in Vergouwen’s understand-
ing) that they were sprung from the extended marga of Huta Galung, and
‘participated with zest’ in the great festival where, ‘for the first time in
history, the entire Huta Galung marga assembled in . . . the small territory
of its origin in the middle of the Silindung valley; a gathering that made all
the other Bataks envious’ (Vergouwen 1933: 18–19). The opening of roads
and the circulation of newspapers made it possible for gatherings such as
this to take place, and for them to be reported in uniform printed form
throughout the Batak world. The Soara Batak, for example, carried a fasci-
nating story in 1930 about a massive feast at which peace was restored to
the bitterly divided marga Silitonga in east Humbang. Thousands of people
participated, including of course the hula-hula or wife-givers, and when
harmony had been established through the poetic device of exchanged
umpama (couplets), everybody had to dance in their prescribed order.
Permission had been sought from the Head (Ephorus) of the Batak church
to use the gondang for this purpose. Although the newspaper reported that
permission had been granted, it also noted that all the clergy and church
school teachers stayed away (translated in 1933: 429–33).
The postwar concept of marga as less a descent category than a social
group (Bruner 1987: 135), which could symbolise its unity collectively
through a statue of a founding ancestor, may have its origin in this period
when modern-educated semi-urban Bataks began to see their identity
through Hoeta Galoeng’s published chart. The first recorded tugu for a
marga founder was erected by the Tampubolon marga of Balige in 1934
(1987: 136). While there was an older tradition of funerary statues, still
witnessed on many stone sarcophogi and village protective megaliths today,
the bulk of early observers of precolonial Tapanuli insisted that these did
not represent a specific ancestor but rather the spiritual power (sahala)
accumulated during the ritual, including that of the human sacrifice that
sometimes took place there (Barbier 1987: 47–9).
In the last decade of colonial rule and a mission-dominated church, the
ancient role of ancestors as sources of spiritual power and blessing was
beginning to shift to that of symbols of collective identity.
WHY THE TUGU?

The turbulence of the 1940s and 1950s brought great change to Batak
society. The HKBP had learned to cope without expatriate missionaries
during the war, and did not welcome them back except in a teaching
capacity after Independence. While few holdouts of overt sipelebegu
practice remained, the Christian Batak scene became more diverse and
open. Two schismatic churches separated from the HKBP, the Huria
Kristen Indonesia (HKI) in 1927 (reformed 1946) and Gereja Kristen
Protestan Indonesia (GKPI) in 1963, while there were major advances by
the Catholic church especially in Samosir, and by Adventists and a range of
Pentecostal groups. The HKBP was no longer as convincing or powerful as
the channel to a modern Batak identity. Bataks in general welcomed
Indonesian independence in 1945 and the subsequent social revolution that
swept away the Malay monarchies of East Sumatra. The revolution offered
opportunities to occupy former plantation land in the eastern lowlands, and
Bataks responded by beginning a mass outmigration from their empover-
ished homeland (Reid 1979; Cunningham 1958).
There were many who grew sceptical about the claims of Christianity
during this period, but they tended to be drawn into radical politics rather
than revivals of older Batak ritual. But as leadership within the HKBP was
broadened and contested, the Church lost the ability and perhaps the will to
enforce the old strictures against rituals once associated with the spirits.
The period 1963–65 was a particularly turbulent time in church affairs as in
national politics, as the textile magnate T.D. Pardede managed to dismiss
the prestigious rector of Nommensen University and later install himself as
rector. The dismissed rector eventually accepted the leadership of the GKPI
splinter church formed by those who lost what was essentially a power
struggle within the HKBP (Pederson 1970: 173–8). During this troubled
time the hard line could not be held against ceremonies that honoured the
ancestors and used the gondang.
Not until 1967 was there a major church conference to consider theologi-
cally the changes to the older missionary hard line that had already begun to
be made on the ground. The ‘Church and Society’ conference at Parapat
looked at areas of conflict, and set the Church on a path of uneasily accept-
ing a role in consecrating the mangongkal holi-holi ritual.
The same conference raised the new question of what attitude to take to
the lavish expenditure beginning to be made on tugu. The American
missionary worker Paul Pederson (1970: 86) well expressed the unease of
many Christian leaders at that time and since:
The practice of erecting large concrete representations of marga founders has

become particularly popular the last few years. Many marga have erected such
monuments in the name of carrying out the commandment ‘to honour thy
father and mother’, while solidifying loyalties to the clan. Besides costing
millions of rupiah these practices have led Bataks to revive ancient practices of
98 THE POTENT DEAD
traditional religion, causing many disturbances in the Batak community. It is

not infrequent for a childless wife to bring an offering to the monument of her
marga ancestor asking his help in securing children.
Most observers see this phenomenon as a new one in the 1960s, though
building on older ideas about the honouring of powerful lineage ancestors.
The new structures incorporating a modern painted statue were universally
called tugu, which is a modern Indonesian word, not Batak, and that term
has now even spread to what would once have been called tambak—
elevated house-like structures where bones were placed in secondary
burials (Figure 6.3). Two major factors help to explain why this change took
place in the 1960s:
1. Bataks began to be a numerous and wealthy urban community in the
1960s, but at the same time a somewhat insecure one. Judging by
HKBP church membership, the Toba Bataks in Jakarta probably rose
from about 15 000 in 1959 to 50 000 in 1969 and 200 000 in 1982
(Bruner 1972: 212; Reid 1995).1 In Medan there were fewer than 900
Toba Bataks at the 1930 census but 183 000 by 1981 (Pelly 1994: 81;
Reid 1998: 72–7), the major influx having begun around 1950. Yet
despite these growing numbers, the defeat of the PRRI Rebellion in
1958–59 shook much of the confidence born of the prominent Toba
Batak role in North Sumatra’s military. The withdrawal of the rebel
forces under the Toba Batak Colonel Simbolon from Medan to Tapanuli
at the beginning of the rebellion symbolically underlined the impor-
tance of a ‘homeland’ as some kind of bastion of security for Toba
Bataks in the Republic, however urban most of their lives had become.
Figure 6.3 1940s cement grave and 1980s tugu in northern Samosir

2. During the Guided Democracy period (1959–65) the development of a

cult of officially designated nationalist heroes, together with
Soekarno’s enthusiasm for erecting heroic monuments in Jakarta and
other cities, turned a private, declining cult of belief in the magical
powers of Singamangaraja XII into a movement to have him recog-
nised as an official national hero, which goal was achieved in
November 1961. This campaign in turn prompted a number of tugu of
Singamangaraja, beginning with a 1953 statue at Soposurung above
Balige, and culminating in 1985 with a huge edifice in Medan (Bruner
1987: 136–7). The movement to raise Singamangaraja to heroic stature
was flamboyantly led by G.M. Panggabean through his Medan news-
paper, Sinar Indonesia Baru, and his Si Singamangaraja XII League
(Rodgers 1987: 198–213; Cunningham 1989; Pardede 1987: 244–5).
Panggabean was also a major supporter of the GKPI schism in 1963,
and his movement had less a unifying effect than one of arousing
critics and competitors. Other marga took the view that Singaman-
garaja was a hero only for the Sinambela marga or at most the Sumba
group of marga, and proceeded to erect statues of their own founders.
MODERN BATAK EXPLANATIONS

These factors may provide the context in which the building of ambitious
tugu began in the 1960s. They do not explain why Toba Batak today
continue to carry their dead to their ancestral villages, to spend enormous
sums travelling there for lavish marga feasts, and erect giant monuments to
lineage ancestors, when in other respects their lives are urban, Indonesian
and modern. I often asked Batak informants and observers to explain this
phenomenon, much as Edward Bruner (1987) did a decade earlier. I will
end by setting out my reading of the alternative possibilities raised by both
the literature and contemporary informants:
1. Status competition is clearly a factor in the splendour of the tugu and
the opulence of the feasting that accompanies its erection. The tugu
erected by one marga provokes jealousy in other margas until they
themselves can outdo it. The many critics who oppose the tugu and
attendant feasting on Christian, traditional or pragmatic developmental
grounds usually stress this factor: ‘People who had made good in
Medan or Jakarta wanted to show off their success back at home. The
motive is pride or conceit [congkak]’ (Samosir informant; also Bruner
1987: 139). More positively put, ‘the [lineage] group do it to raise their
prestige [martabat]. It is a question of asserting who we are, of knowing
ourselves as a group and a lineage’ (Samosir/Jakarta informant).
2. Tugu are erected, and mangongkal holi-holi feasts held, ‘so that the
elders are respected [asa sangap natuatua i]’. It is merely the Batak
way of carrying out the Christian injunction to ‘honour thy father and
100 THE POTENT DEAD
mother’, and the universal respect for the dead (Simanjuntak 1995).
Though this is among the most frequently cited defences of the
practice, most of those who use it and perhaps genuinely attend feasts
in this spirit are aware that current Toba Batak practice is different
from that of most other Christians and of their fellow urban Indo-
nesians. There remains much to be explained.
3. Tugu-building represents a kind of contract between richer and poorer,
urban and rural, younger and older members of a lineage. The idea of
erecting a tugu or holding a feast, though paid for by urban migrants,
often originates with the poor older people remaining in the village
(Simanjuntak 1995). The construction and feasting does of course
transfer wealth from rich to poor and city to village, perhaps enabling
some marginal villages to survive and certainly aiding the refurbish-
ment of houses. More fundamentally, rich and poor are all able to
honour their dead with unprecedented grandeur. Whereas the older
reburials in sarcophagi were only for the lionised founder of a lineage
(ompu parsadaan), the modern mangongkal holi-holi caters for the
whole descent group.
One Samosir educator explained that Bataks would regard
somebody who built schools and hospitals as simply big-noting
himself selfishly. But if he stages a tugu ceremony he is raising his
whole lineage. All will be grateful to him.
4. The tugu, and particularly the ritual feasting that accompanies it,
consolidates and strengthens the lineage and the identity within it
which would otherwise be eroded. Edward Bruner (1987: 145) has
expressed in Turneresque language what the experience means for the
urban Toba Batak:
It helps to bridge the perceived discrepancy between the ideal image of

Batak society and the way that society is actually experienced. It relieves
the tension between Batak talk about their adat as sacred and timeless, and
the inner experience of estrangement. The tugu, as all monuments, are a
bridge between the past and the present … The tugu ceremony recaptures
time as the Batak returns to a former aspect of his own or his family’s
historical experience. The tugu ritual becomes a mirror of his former self
… He goes from the secular urban world to the magical adat world of his
kinsmen, and together with his clansmen and affines he performs his
genealogy.
If this has profound psychological value for urban Bataks, it has

concrete ones for village-dwellers. As virtually all aspire to have their
children achieve higher education and employment in the cities, they
need the contacts who can provide city accommodation and contacts.
Most Batak informants, especially the rural ones who tend to set the
agenda of feasting, would express the point of solidarity in terms they
believe derive from the tradition itself. They refer to the strength
obtained from the dalihan na tolu, or the tripartite relationship between

the indwelling marga and its affines, wife-givers (hula-hula) and
wife-takers (boru). The hula-hula are the natural element to transfer
spiritual strength (sahala) to their boru: ‘If the hula-hula are strong in
sahala, then they will help the boru also to be strong’ (Samosir inform-
ants). Festivals that bring a lineage together with its hula-hula, as all
Batak feasts do, thereby strengthen the lineage by transferring the
blessings of the hula-hula to it (Vergouwen 1933: 44–53, 78–87;
Tobing 1956: 81–9). Committed Christians who support this view will
say that it is the blessing of God which comes to a person and his
lineage through the hula-hula.
5. Finally, what is the role of the ancestral spirits themselves in this
process? Many informants (especially rural ones) attest that the
original purpose of reburying ancestors in beautiful tomb monuments
is still a powerful one, even though those reviving the practice are now
urban, affluent, Christian and educated.
As expressed by Vergouwen (1933: 70), the pre-Christian idea was
that in the spirit world
the spirits of deceased ancestors occupy a particular place, especially the

spirits of those who, in their lifetime, became rich, had power and material
goods and whose descendants are many. These spirits, the sumangot ni
ompu = the revered spirits of the ancestors, desire to be worshipped and
honoured with offerings in order to continue to be active in promoting the
welfare of the descendants of these ancestors.
For many rural people the spirits of the dead, the begu, are capable of
doing much harm to the living, especially their close descendants, unless the
correct rituals are carried out and the bones properly placed in a fine tambak.
Continued prayers and offerings to the dead, especially to those who have
had abundant children, land and other assets, will increase the sahala of these
potent forebears, and enable them to shower their blessings on the living.
The chief evidence for this as a continuing motive is the role played by
ritual specialists who explain infertility, illness and other misfortunes in
terms of dissatisfied spirits. There are numerous stories attributing the
reason for a feast to this—like the one I was told at the hoda debata ritual
(above). Frequently something unusual happens at such rituals to indicate
the presence of the spirits, such as a dancer becoming possessed while the
music of the gondang is at its most intense. Almost all participants accept
these phenomena as deriving from the spirit world, though differing as to
whether they should be seen as a sign of continued blessing or a sinister
throwback to animism. As one Toba Catholic brother said to me, ‘the spirits
are not a belief; they are facts’. Like other religious presences, they come
and go, are seen to some but not to others, but serve as signs of connection
with a world of power, a world beyond death.
102 THE POTENT DEAD
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The fieldwork behind this paper was done in Medan and Samosir in
July–November 1995. Though my informants were too numerous to list, I
should acknowledge some particularly helpful fellow analysts: Dr Amudi
Pasaribu, Dr Andar Lumbantobing, Dr B.A. Simanjuntak, Fr Leo Joosten,
Fr Philippus Manala and Dr Budi Santoso SJ.
7
Modernising sacred sites in South
Sumatra: Islamisation of Gumai
ancestral places
Minako Sakai
For Austronesians, a consciousness of social origins orients the way of life.

The ethnographic literature demonstrates that origins are often conceptually
linked to particular places or to people known as ancestors (Fox 1993, 1995,
1997a; Fox & Sather 1996; Lewis 1988). How has integration into the
Indonesian nation state influenced the way ethnic groups deal with ancestors
and associated places? This question is particularly interesting in view of the
fact that the official interpretation of the Indonesian state ideology, Panca
Sila, requires every Indonesian citizen to adopt one of the state-recognised
world religions. Traditional belief systems and associated rituals thus have
come to be regarded as backward, primitive and even antigovernment.
People whose traditional religions do not easily fit one of the government
categories of religions need to reinterpret them (Forth 1994; Graham 1994;
Kipp 1993; Kipp & Rodgers 1987; Steedly 1989). It is this interplay between
the local and global dimensions of Islam that I aim to explore.
This chapter intends to show how modern developments in Indonesia are
affecting ancestral cults with a focus on change in ‘sacred sites’. I use this
term according to Carmichael et al. (1994: 3), who argue: ‘To say that a
specific place is a sacred place is not simply to describe a piece of land, or
locate it in a certain position in the landscape . . . [It] implies a set of beliefs
to do with the more remote or powerful gods or spirits’. I aim to articulate
what constitutes sacred places and what is affecting them in modern
Indonesia, focusing particularly on the way pre-Islamic rituals have been
reinterpreted in an Islamic mode, a question that has attracted academic
attention to recent discussions about Islam as a discursive field (Bowen 1993;
Kim 1996; Eickelman 1982; Hefner 1983; 1987; Nakamura 1979;
Woodward 1993, 1996).
The data presented here came from my fieldwork between 1994 and
1996 among the Gumai, a Malay-speaking group who live in the upland of
103
104 THE POTENT DEAD
Map 5 Research sites in South Sumatra
South Sumatra province. Major concentrations of Gumai villages are

located in the subdistricts of Lahat town, Pulau Pinang of Lahat district and
in the subdistrict of Rambang Dangku of Muara Enim district as indicated
in Map 5. The major sources of livelihood in the research sites are from
shifting rice agriculture, coffee and rubber.1
PERSONS AND PLACES

The Gumai adhere to Islam and perform their life cycle rituals in accord-
ance with Islamic teaching, yet it is crucial for the Gumai to remember
their origins. As I have elsewhere detailed (Sakai 1997), for the Gumai
remembering origins includes (a) having a genealogical successor; (b)
maintaining linkage with the origin place; and (c) holding a gathering at
the origin place to confirm this linkage. Forgetting one’s origin could bring
about a fatal disaster. In this section I outline how Gumai concern with
origins operates in everyday life and the ways in which relevant ritual
offices are inherited.
An individual Gumai shows great concern about whether he or she has
offspring. A couple suffering infertility without any medical reason
consider that it is due to the wrath of their ancestors that they are not
MODERNISING SACRED SITES IN SOUTH SUMATRA 105
blessed with children, and would seek any advice to appease the angered
ancestors. Putus jurai, or having no children, is most feared and despised
among the Gumai.
Parents encourage one of their children to inherit the parental house and
to reside within their village as the family successor (petunggu dusun).
Other children are free to leave the village and settle somewhere else. They
are, however, expected to return to their origin house occasionally to show
that they remember their origin and hold a gathering. The house inherited
by a successor is thus not individual property but a communal place for
other children to return to.
A Gumai village is traditionally a territorial unit, consisting of residents
who can trace their origin affinally or lineally to the founding ancestor of
the village.2 Those who cannot prove their connection to the village
founding ancestors are not allowed to live or to be buried in a Gumai
village.3 The custom of petunggu dusun serves to retain a homogeneous
community. Each village has a graveyard where only the villagers are
allowed to be buried.4 Therefore, a traditional Gumai village is a space that
contains both the dead and the living who can trace their origin to their
village founders.
Generations above grandparents constitute ancestors, generally referred to
as puyang. Despite their concern about their origin, individual Gumai
memories of their genealogy do not reach beyond grandparents. To fill this
gap, the Gumai recognise two points of origin, one based on their village
locality and the other traced through the descendants of the founding ances-
tors. There exists a ritual specialist, who can trace his origin back to the
founder as the legitimate successor and acts as a ritual specialist in a partic-
ular site. Each site is a place of popular visit (ziarah) and becomes a ritual
site among the Gumai descendants. Failure to visit these sites is considered
to be evidence of forgetting one’s origin—misconduct towards the ancestors.
Let me illustrate how village origins are remembered. In each village
there are several families with the title jungkuk who are responsible for
keeping a record of their genealogy, leading back to the first ancestor of the
village, who is called puyang ketunggalan dusun. The title of jungkuk was
given to the children of the village founding ancestor, and has been passed
down to one of the children irrespective of sex. It is this successor who
becomes the petunggu dusun and is expected to remain in the village.
A village ritual specialist, Jurai Tue, is one of these children of the
founding ancestors. The person who acts as the Jurai Tue is considered to
be the most legitimate heir to the village founder. He is expected to attend
to rituals and customs related to the village founding ancestor. The office of
Jurai Tue can be transmitted to a daughter, but the role itself needs to be
activated by her husband. Due to this form of succession, the genealogy of
a jungkuk and Jurai Tue is not patrilineal nor matrilineal but is a succession
of male and female ancestral names associated with the locality, the village
(dusun). Village founding ancestors have putative genealogical connections
106 THE POTENT DEAD
with the descendants of the founding ancestor of the Gumai but the exact
genealogical linkage is rarely known.
Contrary to the Jurai Tue, whose genealogy traces back to the village
founding ancestor, the Jurai Kebali'an is regarded as the most authentic
heir to the ultimate origin point. His genealogy goes back to the founding
ancestor of the Gumai, called Diwe Gumai. He is responsible for producing
a male heir to succeed him and for attending to Gumai adat or local
customs. The following is an abbreviated origin story of the Gumai accord-
ing to the Jurai Kebali'an.5
Origin story of the Gumai
The founding ancestor Diwe Gumai descended to earth from the sky on one
night before the full moon with the intention of populating the uninhabited
land. He arrived on the hill called Bukit Siguntang, which was the only piece
of land above water at that time. It is currently located in Palembang, South
Sumatra. After his descent to Bukit Siguntang, he fought a war with Aceh to
save the kingdom of Bangka Hulu (presently known as Bengkulu). After this
victory he married a princess of Bangka Hulu (Bengkulu). This couple was
then blessed with two sons.
After some time, Diwe Gumai had to return to the sky and asked his elder
son, Ratu Iskandar Alam (Segentar Alam), to replace him. He gave his son the
title Jurai Kebali'an and made him responsible for holding a monthly ritual to
pray for the well-being of the Gumai descendants by invoking the spirit of his
father, Diwe Gumai. Since then, the title of Jurai Kebali'an has been inherited
by one of the sons of the Jurai Kebali'an, who is responsible for holding this
monthly ritual called Sedekah Malam Empatbelas at his house. This house is
regarded as the one for all Gumai descendants to return to.
During the course of time, as the water level decreased, the Jurai Kebali'an
moved from Bukit Siguntang along rivers to look for a new land. This Jurai
Kebali'an, Ratu Kebuyutan, married a local princess and became the local king
of the new region. The next Jurai Kebali'an, Puyang Suka Milung, had nine
sons and one daughter out of his two marriages and his sons went along nine
big rivers in South Sumatra in order to set up a new village. Thereafter,
grandchildren of Puyang Suka Milung also went to look for a new place and
settled there. Through this process of proliferation, the Gumai spread over
South Sumatra. The title of Jurai Kebali'an was inherited by one of the sons of
the Jurai Kebali'an without fail and the current successor of the Jurai
Kebali'an is the 26th successor from the founding ancestor, Diwe Gumai.
As this account shows, the genealogy of the Jurai Kebali'an is patrilineal

and exclusive, and traces back to the ultimate origin point of the founding
ancestor, Diwe Gumai.
The role of the Jurai Kebali'an can be activated only when the present
heir to this title stays within the house of the Jurai Kebali'an. When out of
the compound, he is just an ordinary individual who can no longer deal
with Gumai ancestors. The ancestral rituals he needs to perform cannot be
practised elsewhere. Every day someone comes to his house in order to

discuss issues related to Gumai adat. When the Jurai Kebali'an is out
of this compound, the guest reports the issue to the wife of the Jurai
Kebali'an, who usually stays home and receives guests. The role of the
Jurai Kebali'an is thus always associated with his house.
The house of the Jurai Kebali'an is not regarded as a private residence
but as a communal house for all the Gumai descendants. To illustrate this
belief, during my period of fieldwork several men and women who were in
difficulties stayed there while helping with household work.6 The family of
the Jurai Kebali'an is not allowed to refuse them, as they admit that their
house is open to any Gumai descendants. The only restriction is made
on the room of the Jurai Kebali'an, where heirlooms are kept in the attic
and invocation of the ancestral spirits takes place. The wife of the Jurai
Kebali'an owns her own bedroom, which is shared by her husband.
SEDEKAH: GUMAI ANCESTRAL RITUALS

Thus Gumai concern with origin is associated with a particular ritual
specialist and a particular locality. It is not complete without the perform-
ance of a ritual feast, sedekah, at the associated origin place. While this is
an occasion for Gumai descendants to contact the Gumai ancestral spirits,
sedekah is commonly used to refer to any ritual feast among the Gumai, and
may be performed in association with either ancestral spirits and/or Islam.
Indeed, Islamic prayers are often uttered.7
Gumai ancestral spirits are believed to be benevolent and to help their
descendants achieve their goals in life.8 When a person makes a serious
wish, he or she promises to sacrifice animals. A water buffalo, which is at
least five times as expensive as a goat, is sometimes chosen as a sacrificial
animal as evidence of the seriousness of the intent. Once the wish has come
true, the person is under an obligation to fulfil the promise. If the promise
should be neglected, the anger of the ancestors will cause all sorts of
misfortune among their family members. Promises to ancestors are there-
fore reciprocal in nature.
The sacrificial ritual is termed mbayar sangi or mbayar nazar (paying off
a vow). It can be performed by itself but, in practice, in order to economise
on costs and save sacrificial animals for festivities, it is often performed
jointly with a marriage or the celebration of the birth of a child. A popular
sacrificial animal is a brown male goat,9 and when a goat is sacrificed at
least one chicken needs to be slaughtered as well.
Sacrificial animals are slaughtered in the name of Allah by men, and the
internal organs and feathers are removed immediately. The men are also in
charge of cooking rice and boiling drinking water. Then the women start
cooking the meat as an offering for ancestral spirits, as well as dishes such
as vegetables for the coming feast. The legs of a whole chicken, without the
head, are crossed and tied with a thread. A goat is cut into pieces. Its
108 THE POTENT DEAD
internal organs are threaded together on a string because after cooking, the
head, legs, offal and other principal parts are placed together as offerings.10
When all the cooking is done, it is time to organise the set of offerings. A
plate of chicken is placed next to a plate of goat or water buffalo. There are
also plates of rice porridge (bubur), soft rice cakes (apam) and water, all of
which are covered with banana leaves and placed on a mat. When all are set
in order, a senior male member or a village ritual specialist burns benzoin as
incense by thinly slicing it with a knife and tossing it over a fire to invoke
the ancestral spirits. A typical invocation includes:
selam alaikum seram special greeting to ancestral

spirits11
memanggil arwah maq bapaq I invoke spirits of mother and
father
nenek lanang, nenek betine grandpa and grandma
puyang lanang puyang betine male and female ancestors
langsung terus ke pucoq and those ancestors above
kamu duduk belinap kindly sit there quietly
belunngohlah disini kindly gather here
aku maseh besebut I still call you
bepantau pule I still invoke you to come here
minta tolong sampaika nga kamu I need your assistance, I need
to report
Messages to ancestral spirits need to be delivered through the burning of

the benzoin. Then all the ancestral spirits are kindly required to leave after
enjoying the offerings dedicated to them:
abes kamu merejiki after you have enjoyed eating

merejikilah kamu kindly enjoy the meal
sude kamu merejiki after you have enjoyed
kamu narik mambu kindly sniff the meal
narik mambullaha kamu kindly sniff the meal
lah sude kamu menginag after you eat betel nuts
menuci kumur as the last part
kamu balik ke pindan tinggi kindly return to your high
place
ke pindan tinggilah kamu return to your high place
kamu ke balik ke pidanan endap kindly return to the low place
balik ke pindan endaplah kamu to your low place
After this invocation, the human participants can take part in the feast.
Offerings are divided and served together with other dishes and rice.
Usually a senior male member of the family, who represents the host,
makes a succinct speech regarding the purpose of this feast. The number of
sacrificial animals and the objective are reported to the guests, who are
mostly senior male members of the village. After communal Islamic
prayers, guests who are senior in age or status are invited to eat first,
followed by younger men and eventually by women.
The outline of the sedekah here illustrates the core activity and the
relationship between ancestors and Gumai descendants. Ancestors are
benevolent, and they assist their descendants by fulfilling their wishes.
However, if a promise to ancestral spirits is neglected, enraged ancestral
spirits will cause a series of misfortunes.
CONFLICT WITH OFFICIAL RELIGION

Before its 19th-century demise, the Gumai engaged in trade with the
Sultanate of Palembang, like the other upstream peoples described by
Andaya (1993). Located at the periphery of the Palembang Sultanate, they
were in contact with the Sultan and Islam for centuries without being much
affected by either.12 Dutch documents and narratives by Gumai informants
suggest that Reformist Islam movements at the beginning of the 20th century
spread Islamic belief to the interior of the Southern Sumatran highlands.
Since then, Gumai life cycle rituals such as circumcision, marriage, divorce
and death have been performed in accordance with Islamic teachings. Today
an Islamic prayer house, or mosque, is built in most Gumai villages in Gumai
Talang, and the Friday communal prayers are led by an Imam, the leader
of Muslim prayer. Idul Fitri, which marks the end of the fasting month of
Ramadan, is celebrated as an important religious day.
Since the enforcement of Panca Sila in the New Order, traditional belief
in ancestral spirits and rituals have begun to be considered as animistic and
‘anti-progress’, yet difficult to discard in the social life of the Gumai. This
ambiguity is orienting traditional rituals towards more Islamic interpret-
ations. The following case illustrates the dilemma between official religion
and local customs and how people came to use the term adat, local custom,
to justify their practice of pre-Islamic rituals.
Case: religion or custom
Bapak Tasin (pseudonym) is a retired ABRI officer who was born in Gelinam,
Rambang Dangku, and lived in Palembang. He was one of the lucky
landholders who received a large sum of money (Rp 39 million, AS$25 000) as
compensation for his land in Banu Ayu. It was rezeki (fortune) for him because
that land was fallow and had been left unused for a long time. Thanks to this
compensation money, he made the pilgrimage to Mecca with his wife in 1995.13
Prior to the commencement of his journey, Tasin went back to the graves of
his deceased parents. He also thought about going to an ancestral graveyard
which he had not visited for 16 years. However, the site had become a forest
and was difficult for him to find. So he did not bother and went to Mecca.
Ten days after their return home from the successful pilgrimage, Tasin and
110 THE POTENT DEAD
his wife held a gathering to thank God for their safe journey. While they were
reciting the Surah Yasin, suddenly the face of one of his sons became paralysed
and he could not speak. He was taken to the best private hospital in Palembang,
but in vain. The doctor could not cure nor detect the cause of the paralysed face.
Tasin went back to his origin village and asked for help from a ritual
specialist in the area, who explained that the paralysis was kejang kesalahan
(because of misbehaviour towards the ancestors). Having become a Haji, it
was initially difficult for Tasin to accept this interpretation. Taking care of
ancestral spirits was ‘animistic’, carried out by people ‘who do not have a
religion yet’, and against his own religious practice. Yet, once he had promised
to go to his ancestors’ graveyard to apologise for his misbehaviour, his son
recovered and his face was no longer paralysed. Tasin remembered that his
daughter had been in a car accident near Muara Enim just before he and his
wife went to Mecca. Her car had been badly damaged, but she was unhurt. He
came to regard this as a sign (tande) of his ancestors’ wrath, because he had
neglected them for 16 years.
Tasin looked for the graveyard of his ancestors near Lubuk Raman, but he
was not able to find it. The area was overgrown with trees and bushes. By
consulting the ritual specialist, he decided to make a new tomb near his
parents’ graves and to perform a ritual to ask the ancestral spirits to move from
the previous tomb to this newly constructed one. He now considers that it is
important to uphold his local custom as well as pursuing his religion.
Thus, despite mounting pressure to promote belief in state-recognised

world religions and to discard ‘animistic’ ancestral rituals, ancestral spirits
are still believed to exert a strong influence on their Gumai descendants.
Gumai ritual specialists I spoke to often used a traditional idiom to express
their adherence to their adat, ‘peanuts cannot forget their skin’ (kacang dide
Figure 7.1 Renovation of an ancestral grave in Lubuk Raman village

112 THE POTENT DEAD
of gathering while the core part of the ritual is performed privately by the
Jurai Kebali'an.
Most of the Gumai participants of this ritual explained to me that the
Jurai Kebali'an is close to God and thus his prayer will easily be heard by
Allah.14 The ritual is generally considered to be a part of their local custom,
which would not transgress the territory of their religion. This separation of
the communal and private parts of a traditional ritual thus enables the
Gumai to retain traditional knowledge about ancestors while acquiring
Islamic modes (Sakai 1997).
REMEMBERING VILLAGE FOUNDERS

Tombs of village founders
Tombs of village founders or descendants of village founders constitute
another favourite pilgrimage site. These ancestral graves are visited when
the Gumai experience some great need. In distress, the Gumai fast and
meditate at the ancestor’s tomb. Some useful advice from the ancestors in
the form of a dream might be obtained while sleeping on the tomb. A
person whose wish has been granted returns to the tomb with his or her
family and holds a gathering near the ancestral grave in the old village site.
For children this is an opportunity for recreation, as they enjoy walking
through the forests, bathing in natural streams and the feasting afterwards.
Due to a series of relocations of village sites, the majority of the village
founders’ tombs are located in deserted village sites. The Gumai have been
relocating their villages over time in order to have better access to roads,
and most of the old village sites are now surrounded by forest.15 Because of
their isolated location, there are usually no guardians to attend to these
graves.
The basic type of grave is a mound of earth, sometimes with a roof above
it or a spot marked by a chain of big stones. Frequent visits are indicated by
a blackened fire pot lying on the ground. Another common form of grave is
a patch of land which is elevated and marked by a rectangle of cement. A
good example is the grave of Puyang Muke Arahan in the subdistrict of
Pulau Pinang, Lahat district. His grave is situated between the steep bank of
the Lematang River and the main road between Lahat and Pagaralam. The
grave seems to have been renovated by a Gumai descendant to show grati-
tude for the assistance given by this ancestor. There are about 10 pieces of
stone lying in the centre of a rectangular elevated tomb. Next to this
cemented square is a roofed space which is used to sacrifice animals and to
prepare offerings.
Most recently renovated ancestral graves tend to take the shape of an
elevated rectangle made of cement. It is difficult to differentiate ancestral
graves from those of recently deceased wealthy family members, which have
the same appearance. If funds are available, the sides of the rectangular tomb
pacak lupe kulit), meaning that Gumai adat, represented by a belief in

ancestral spirits, existed well before the national official religion and legal
system and should not be forgotten. On the contrary, remembering ances-
tors and attending to ancestral rituals is clearly considered to be a must for
the Gumai.
REMEMBERING THE FOUNDING ANCESTOR: THE HOUSE OF

THE JURAI KEBALI’AN
The house of the Jurai Kebali'an has been one of the most popular pilgrim-
age sites among the Gumai. His house was relocated during the course of
time, and the current one is located in Endikat Ilir village of Lahat district
along the Trans-Sumatra Highway, which runs between North Sumatra and
Jakarta. It is a wooden house elevated on posts, with a spacious yard. This
yard becomes parking space for the vehicles bringing participants to the
monthly ritual, Sedekah Malam Empatbelas, which constitutes the most
popular time for a visit to the house of the Jurai Kebali'an.
As the name of this ritual shows, it is held every month, one night before
the full moon, to commemorate the mythical time of the descent by Diwe
Gumai on Bukit Seguntang. People who claim to be Gumai descendants
gather to report their petitions to the Jurai Kebali'an. Those whose wishes
have been fulfilled also participate in this ritual to ‘pay off’ their promise
with sacrificial animals, and people who have been suffering from infertility
gather to undergo a specific treatment. An average of 250 people gathered
every month at the house of the Jurai Kebali'an during my fieldwork period
and about 20 goats were sacrificed each month in fulfilment of promises
made.
The recent change of the Sedekah Malam Empatbelas lies in its seem-
ingly Islamic forms. The core part of this ritual consists of two invocations,
Sedekah Khusus (restricted and special ritual) and Sedekah Umum (open or
public ritual). The first is staged by the Jurai Kebali'an in his room, out of
the sight of the guests. The Jurai Kebali'an invokes ancestral spirits in his
genealogy to ask that the wishes of the participants be granted and the world
of the Gumai be free from misfortunes. This invocation is neither audible or
visible. On the other hand, the communal part of these rituals, which is
experienced by all participants, is carried out in Islamic ways led by the
Imam of a local mosque: participants pray together in the hall at sunset, and
donations to renovate the local mosque are collected among participants.
Islamic prayers are uttered before the commencement of the feast.
The Jurai Tue of Mandi Angin village normally acts as master of
ceremonies during these rituals. He explains that all the wishes of the
participants were transmitted through the prayer of the Jurai Kebali'an,
but he makes no reference to ancestral spirits in public. Thereafter, the
Imam of a local mosque takes over and leads the Islamic prayer prior to
the feast. Due to this procedure, participants experience an Islamic mode
are decorated with colourful tiles. The central part of this rectangle is filled
with soil and sometimes a pole (nisan) stands at each end. The large number
of such renovations illustrates how common it is among the Gumai to make a
vow to improve an ancestral tomb when a wish comes true.
Yet this promise has become not only a transaction between an individual
and the ancestor but also an act with a public administrative nature. A
village head often insists on being informed before anyone starts a project
to renovate a village ancestral grave. The head of an administration,
selected by villagers every eight years and recognised officially by the state,
did not traditionally have any business with ancestral rituals. This was the
responsibility of the Jurai Tue in a village, who was in charge of ancestor-
related affairs.
In May 1995 I observed a dispute about the endorsement of the renovation
of an ancestor’s grave in Lubuk Sepang. A man of this village made a vow
that he would renovate the grave of Puyang Lemanjang Sakti, which was
then only marked by a ring of stones. He did not consult with fellow
members of the village and made his intention known only to the Jurai Tue,
who usually resided in Palembang. Prior to the renovation of the ancestral
tomb, a small-scale sedekah was held to announce his intention. A set of
offerings consisting of apam and betel nuts was prepared. The village head
was invited to this ritual, but he did not hide his resentment that the appro-
priate procedure had not been followed.16 He emphasised that a village
meeting should have been convened and that the project needed to be
endorsed by the village head. After this dispute, the village ritual specialist
was eventually able to invoke the ancestral spirit of the grave, informing it of
the plans for renovation by burning benzoin according to tradition. Yet the
actual date of commencement of the renovation remained undecided.
This case demonstrates that a purely traditional procedure is no longer
sufficient to authorise the custodianship of a village sacred site or ancestral
rituals. Today the village head is always invited to village purifying rituals
and ancestral rituals as an official witness. Any ritual without this witness is
considered to be invalid. The village head, and the state itself, seeks to
exercise power in the supernatural field as well.
Ancestral monuments in a village

Because of the frequency of village relocations away from the original
ancestral graves, it is common to find a memorial altar or ancestor-related
site within a current village location. These monuments are referred to as
tapak (site). A typical tapak is an ancestral tomb recreated in the current
village location, the ancestral spirits having been kindly asked to move
from the old sites to a new site by a village ritual specialist. Villagers oc-
casionally visit a tapak, clearing grass and sprinkling water around the altar.
Some bring a set of offerings consisting of rice cakes and betel nuts and
recite Yasin, the 36th surah of the Qur'an.
114 THE POTENT DEAD
Whether these tapak function as sites of reverence varies according to

location. In Sungai Medang village, located in Rambang Lubai subdistrict
of the district of Muara Enim, villagers prepare a set of offerings on the
tapak of the founding ancestor of the village, known as Tuan Mangku
Bumi, located in the centre of their village. This tapak consists of a mound
of land protected by a white net and a roof. This mound is believed to be
continually rising, sure evidence of a sacred place. Every Thursday evening
or malam Juma'at, which is regarded as an auspicious time by Muslims,
people visit this site with offerings of rice and sometimes with chickens.
People whose wish has been granted slaughter sacrificial animals.
What is of interest is that recently, in many Gumai villages located in
Lahat town subdistrict (Kecamatan Kota Lahat) of Lahat district, there has
been an ongoing Islamisation of the times and places associated with
Gumai ancestral rituals. Rituals to invoke village ancestral spirits are no
longer performed at an ancestral altar or the house of the Jurai Tue, but in
the village mosque (Sakai 1999: 145–85).
Traditionally, a series of village rituals, Sedekah Petunggu Dusun and
Sedekah Peliare Dusun, took place according to rice-planting cycles—prior
to clearing a forest, three months after rice planting and at the time of
a harvest. The first ritual is performed to seek protection from the ancestral
spirits associated with their village, to ask for wellbeing and fortune. The
second ritual is to ward off any coming misfortune from the village.
The house of Jurai Tue was a traditional ritual venue. Male members of
each household representing their respective household members came to
participate in this ritual.
During my fieldwork, no village rituals were held according to rice-
planting cycles. The timing of these rituals has been Islamised: Idul Fitri
and Idul Adha, two major Islamic holidays separated only by two months,
have been the occasions for them since the 1950s. In the case of Mandi
Angin village, the new timing was chosen in a village meeting in 1957, as
the majority of the villagers were expected to return to their village at these
important Islamic occasions. Since then, Sedekah Petunggu Dusun has been
held on Idul Fitri and Sedekah Paliare on Idul Adha in the village mosque.
Following Islamic prayers to commemorate Islamic occasions, ancestral
rituals take place at the same village mosque. At the time of both rituals, all
the ancestral spirits related to the village founding ancestors are invoked at
their village mosque and offered a set of offerings. The burning of incense
has been replaced by Islamic prayers.
In addition to these two communal rituals, another time to hold a ritual
for village ancestral spirits is Bulan Ruwah (the month of spirits), as the
Islamic month of Syahban, prior to the fasting month of Ramadan, is
widely known in Indonesia. This month is popularly believed to be the time
when the destinies of human beings are decided, inducing many people to
take to prayer (Federspiel 1995: 250). Gumai informants explained that the
ancestral spirits are believed to return to their origin places in the month of
Ruwah, and that it is appropriate to hold a ritual devoted to ancestral spirits

returning to the village.
An individual with resources holds a Sedekah Ruwah at home, inviting
neighbours. This ritual feast is held beginning around 7.30 at night, at the
time when the Isya prayer can be made. Men representing their household
participate in this ritual. Sometimes more than one ritual feast takes place in
a village and men visit each place hurriedly.
As is common in every sedekah, the purpose of the gathering is announced
to guests by the host. In many cases, hosts express their wishes for the well-
being of household members, their wish to complete the coming fast as a
Muslim obligation, together with their intention to remember the ancestors.
Sometimes incense is burned while the host is making the announcements.
Rice puddings and betel nuts are usually placed in the centre of dishes.
Before the feast, Islamic prayers are uttered.
In addition to individual sedekah, a communally organised sedekah
ruwah by the whole village at a village mosque is becoming common
practice.17 Men and women gather at the mosque at the time of Isya prayer.
Some pray at the mosque while others appear a little later. They engage in
both Islamic prayer and ancestral rites. After prayer, dishes cooked in each
household are placed in the middle of the mosque. A village head and a
village ritual specialist, Jurai Tue, make a short speech regarding the nature
of this sedekah and Ruwah month. After Islamic prayers, the dishes are
shared at the feast.
This association of ancestral spirits and Islamic tradition is regarded as
coherent because they represent local custom and religion respectively: the
complementarity of adat and Islam has become internalised. One might
wonder why the village mosque has been chosen as the appropriate place to
perform these rituals. Does it mean that the association with a particular
ancestral place has been discarded? Before the establishment of the Islamic
prayer house, a lunjuk, an ancestral altar, had existed in each Gumai village
and was taken care of by a village ritual specialist, Jurai Tue. Due to the
pressure of reformist Islamic movements, however, the majority of lunjuk
were abolished in the 1950s and replaced by mosques on their sites.18
Elder informants explain that the lunjuk was a place to welcome a Gumai
female ancestor from Java, who was married to one of the Gumai ancestors
and had brought a heirloom for making rain. She stopped her journey
halfway to this upstream society and asked her husband to make a place for
her to visit occasionally. A lunjuk was originally set up in each village for
her stay. A village mosque is thus perceived to be still the appropriate place
to invoke the spirits, due to its connection with the site of the lunjuk.
CONCLUSION
Social origins hold great importance for the Gumai. Places and rituals asso-
ciated originally with ancestral spirits are now given Islamic interpretations
116 THE POTENT DEAD
and modified in line with Islam. More and more, the legitimacy of a ritual
or a sacred site is determined by the state and its representatives.
However, the fundamental concern with origins and origin places
remains crucial among the Gumai. Gumai descendants continue to visit
sacred sites and to perform rituals to remember their ancestors within a
new mode of Islam. Despite the influence of Islamisation and institutional-
isation in the modernising process of Indonesia, these sacred sites continue
to exert their influence among most of the Gumai.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research was conducted for my PhD research under the auspices of
LIPI as a research associate of Sriwijaya University, Palembang. I am
grateful to Prof. Amran Halim for his sponsorship. I am also grateful for
financial assistance I received at various stages of this research from the
Daiwa Foundation for Asia and Oceania, the Matsushita International and
an Australian National University PhD scholarship.
8
Ancestors’ blood: genealogical memory,
genealogical amnesia and hierarchy
among the Bugis
Christian Pelras
The Bugis are a cognatic society whose hierarchical system is based on

inherited status. We cannot thus deal with Bugis ancestors without delving
into both descent and hierarchy. Indeed, the relationship with their ances-
tors is different for the nobles, who keep the memory of those from whom
they inherited their ‘white blood’ (dara puté) or ‘euphorbia blood’ (dara
takku'), which however can sometimes be blended with the blood of less
elevated ancestors, and for the ‘red-blooded’ commoners, who look back to
an undifferentiated ancestorship. There are not only ancestors stricto sensu,
from whom somebody really descends, but also the forerunners who
founded the domain or polity to which one belongs, and the potent persons
who once lived there and have remained its protectors ever since. We must
also consider the sacred place where the ancients or ‘people of long ago’
(to-riolo) are worshipped and how this worship is performed, often in the
same way as for other invisible beings who are not ancestors.
Although the Bugis have been regarded as staunch Muslims since the
beginning of the 17th century, some of their pre-Islamic rituals survive in
what can be called the ‘practical religion’ of quite a number of people of all
milieus.1 These are specifically cultivated by the bissu (i.e. what remains of
their former pagan clergy). We can gain some idea of pre-Islamic represen-
tations through the texts that constitute the oldest Bugis literary tradition,
that known as the La Galigo cycle. There was also a body of esoteric trad-
itions, a number of which are probably still kept secret but a few of which
were brought to the knowledge of myself and Gilbert Hamonic (Hamonic
1983) by initiated informants.2 According to those ancient Bugis views,
on which non-Islamic rituals are still based, the visible world where
humankind lives is sandwiched between two invisible, spiritual worlds: a
celestial one (langi'), and one in the abyss (buri' liung, also called pérétiwi);
these are considered to be inhabited by déwata or pre-Islamic deities whom
117
118 THE POTENT DEAD
Bugis of a more orthodox Islamic bent consider as jinn. The visible, human
world, lino, is also viewed as coexisting with an invisible, parallel world
inhabited by diverse spirits, to-tenrita (‘those who are not seen’) or to-
hâlusu' (‘the tenuous ones’). This parallel world seems, according to the
practical belief of many Bugis, to be also the world of the dead.
WORSHIP OF THE DEAD

As is well known, Islam allows no worship of the dead, and followers of
Indonesian reformist movements such as Muhammadiyah consider visits to
graves as heresy (bid'a), to be condemned. However, most Bugis, following
Shafi'i practice, usually visit family graves (kûburu') in token of devotion
on the occasion of Idul Adha (the festival of sacrifice during the month of
the pilgrimage to Mecca), Idul Fitri (the festival ending the fasting month
of Ramadan), the ‘Ashura’ (10th day of the month of Muharram), and when
a marriage takes place in their family. But they also go, at any time, on
pilgrimage to the graves of people considered as sacred or potent
(makerre'), whether these are said to have been religious (saleh) during
their lifetime, are known as important persons in local history, were anony-
mous pioneers to whom a particular settlement owes its origin, or even
graves of completely unknown persons. The visits are for most Bugis
pilgrims the occasion to ask favours from those buried there, to make vows
and to perform rites and sacrifices.
Older, pre-Islamic graves were not exactly burials, because for several
centuries before Islamisation the Bugis cremated their dead. One can still
find cremation places (pa’tunuang) near the older settlements. These were
also used for the sacrifice of animals, which were roasted there (the word
for roasting, tunu, being the same as for cremation). The ashes were buried
in jars in places marked by large, upright stones. Islamic graves are marked
by steles of wood or stone. Both pre-Islamic and Islamic graves visited by
pilgrims are often surmounted by a small roof on four wooden pillars,
under which a mosquito-net is usually hung.
People who visit the graves of their family pour some water on it from a
ewer after having prayed there. Those coming on pilgrimage to sacred graves
anoint the stone or the stele with perfumed oil and ask the grave-keeper to
pronounce, usually inaudibly, the appropriate formulas while burning
incense. When they come to make a vow, they tie a thread, a cord or a rattan
strap around the stone or the stele, according to the importance of the vow
they have made and the animal they have promised to sacrifice, or of the gift
they have promised to give when their prayer is answered. When they return
for the thanksgiving ceremony (a'baca doang) they remove whatever they
had tied on and sit near the grave to take their thanksgiving meal, which
includes the meat of the sacrificed animal (fowl, goat, cow or even buffalo)
with rice, vegetables, curry and diverse delicacies brought from home. Gifts
often consist of miniature houses symbolising the whole household.
ANCESTORS’ BLOOD 119
Such practices are deemed by more orthodox Muslims to be acts of

superstition or ‘polytheism’ (shirk). Most nevertheless accept pilgrimages
to the graves of Islamic saints, which may include the recitation of prayers,
burning of incense, scattering of petals and the making of gifts, usually of
money or cloth, to an attached foundation for redistribution to the poor
( fakir miskin). One of the most-visited Islamic graves in South Sulawesi,
drawing pilgrims from all over the province, is probably the grave in
Lakiung near Ujung Pandang of Syeikh Yusuf, an ulama of the 17th century
and staunch opponent of the Dutch, who introduced the Khalwatiyah
school of mysticism. Other much-visited Islamic graves are those of the
three Dato' who brought Islam, probably from Sumatra; these three saints
are commonly named after the places of their respective burials: Patimang
in Luwu', Bandang in Tallo' (now a part of Makessan city) and Tiro between
Sinjai and Kajang.
Except among the most orthodox Muslims, Bugis worship of the graves
seems generally based on ideas that differ greatly from Islamic teachings
but are never made explicit. When asked about his/her conception of the
hereafter, the average Bugis usually answers rather vaguely. All are aware
of the common Islamic view according to which, having been questioned
by the angels of death Munkar and Nakir, the souls of the dead will remain
in their tomb (the infidels and the sinners receiving punishment there daily)
until the Day of Judgement, when they will be allocated either to Paradise
or to Hell. However, in performing the same kind of rituals when they visit
sacred graves as when they visit other sacred spots, many Bugis behave as
though for them these dead whom they worship are living in the same invis-
ible, parallel world as other spirits (to-tenrita). Graves are a gate of access
to that world, in the same way as are sacred boulders or sacred trees. In fact,
many sacred spots where spirits of the soil are worshipped are disguised as
graves, this apparently making their worship more acceptable to traditional-
ist Muslims.
It seems that some dead are (or were) thought of as having particular
destinies in the afterworld, and that there was a belief that some of them
were reincarnated as animals. One of my informants said that he had had
the revelation in a dream that his late father had become a pa'deng'eng,
that is, one of the spirit hunters mounted on spirit horses who cause
epidemic deaths by catching people’s souls with their lasso (tado'). As
well, there was a general belief that those who had perished by violent
death became wandering ghosts (bombo), while women who died in child-
birth became the dangerous female spirit called puntiana'.
All these conceptions may be linked to but are quite different from those
to be found in the La Galigo literature. In these texts, average people had
after their death to undertake a difficult voyage to the abode of the dead,
a place situated to the west of the Western Sea; on arrival they had to
pass through several stages, probably linked to the successive stages of
the funeral rituals, before they were admitted to the Waliala.3 Princes of the
120 THE POTENT DEAD
highest rank, being pure descendants of the gods, did not have to follow
such a process but were to go back to the spiritual worlds of Heaven and the
abyss, where they belonged.
THE DIVINE ANCESTORS OF THE NOBILITY

The 12 main gods of the pre-Islamic pantheon formed six couples (three
celestial, three from the abyss). They were born of the same parents, a solar
and a lunar deity, in turn emanating from a paramount, undifferentiated,
divine entity. Among these six divine couples, the main one was formed by
Datu (or Aji) Patoto' (‘the Prince who allocates destinies’) and his spouse
Datu Palingé'; of their nine children, seven ruled over the seven sky levels
and one ruled over the ‘world’s navel’, while the elder one, La Toge Langi,
bearing the title of ‘Batara Guru’, had been sent down in order to organise
the earthly world and to found an ordered human society able to worship
the gods; for, so said Datu Patoto', ‘one is no god when one has no
worshippers’. Batara Guru is also called La Mula Tau (‘the one who started
humanity’), which does not make him humankind’s common ancestor—
only that of the first Bugis princely dynasty. Descended in the northeastern
part of South Sulawesi, Batara Guru founded there the first dynasty of
Luwu' by marrying Wé Nyili' Timo', a daughter of the main divine couple
of the abyss, who had arisen amid the spume of the waves in the Gulf
of Boné. Other similar couples of to-manurung (‘descended beings’) and
to-tompo' (‘arisen beings’) appeared somewhat later in other places, in
Sulawesi and elsewhere, as founders of other dynasties. There were both
male and female to-manurung and to-tompo'; couples not always formed by
the union of a to-manurung with a to-tompo—to-tompo' sometimes also
united with to-tompo' or to-manurung with to-manurung'.4
Then, according to the myth, after five generations all these semi-divine
couples and their descendants returned to their invisible worlds and left this
world’s inhabitants without anybody to rule over them, although a few
high-ranking Bugis nobles claim to descend from the only couple of divine
origin left to govern in Luwu'. The older Bugis polities (wanua) claimed,
like the kingdoms of the mythic times, to have been founded by to-
manurung and/or to-tompo' who had come to rule over the country, riven by
anarchy during several generations after the departure of their first semi-
divine rulers (i.e. those mentioned in the La Galigo texts). Some of these
wanua, like Boné, Soppéng ri Aja' or Soppéng ri Lau' became the nuclei of
major kingdoms; other, such as Pammana, Suppa' or Bacukiki', have never
in historical times before the Dutch takeover known any status other than
either autonomy without vassals or vassalage to major kingdoms.
So historically, from approximately the 14th century to the implement-
ation in South Sulawesi of the colonial system, Bugis society was divided
into a great number of small polities that were, in turn, federated or confed-
erated into a number of larger units, which might be termed principalities or
kingdoms. The smaller polities were definitely not egalitarian, democratic,

village communities, but they were different from the purely autocratic
kingdoms described by the La Galigo texts. From the smaller polities to the
bigger kingdoms, power in historical times was exerted by rulers elected
from among members of the nobility and, if need be, dismissed by specific
hierarchical bodies. The foundation myths of most of these political units
described how the first ruler of divine origin (a to-manurung or a to-tompo')
had been welcomed and installed by the people already living there, on the
basis of a contract stipulating each other’s rights and duties. The same
contract was renewed, in the same words, every time a new ruler was
installed, until the Bugis traditional system of government was ended in the
1950s.
A typical oral to-manurung story is told about Pammana’s origin.5 This
wanua, so say its inhabitants, was formerly known as Cina—the same Cina
as appears in La Galigo texts—left without ruler after the disappearance of
the La Galigo heroes and since then riven by anarchy during seven epochs
(pariama).6 One day a terrible storm broke out, which lasted seven days and
seven nights. When it abated people saw, standing on top of the hill called
Bulu' Tellettu, a man clad in white whom they approached with awe, taking
him for a to-manurung prince sent by the gods to rule over them. One
matoa (commoner headman), speaking in the name of all, began to make
obeisance to him; but the man in white rebuked them, saying that he was
just a servant of the to-manurung. He then led them to a glade where they
found the real to-manurung, clad in yellow, sitting on a flat stone under a
state umbrella, surrounded by female servants who were fanning him. His
name was Simpurusiang7 and he agreed to become Cina’s datu, or ruler.
Later a female to-tompo' called Da Lakumaé arose from the Cénrana river
in Tampangeng.8 Simpurusiang married her, and they begot a girl called I
Jangke' Wanua, and bearing the title Batari Toja (‘divine princess of the
waves’). She in turn married a prince of the oceanic underworld called La
Tuppu' Solo' (who could change his appearance to that of a crocodile), and
they begot a child called La Ma'lala'-é.
A written version of the Cina genealogy published by Caldwell (1988:
81–97) ascribes to Simpurusiang a to-manurung wife from Luwu' but gives
for their daughter, son-in-law and grandson the names Wé Jangke' Wanua,
La Tuppu'solo' (son of Linrung Talaga), and La Ma'lala'-é. These are the
ancestors of the dynasty. Later, one of their descendants called La Sangaji
To Aji Pammana asked that after his death his name be given to the country,
which was thus henceforth called Pammana (a teknonym).
As a matter of comparison, the story regarding the origins of Soppéng
(Caldwell 1988: 106–12) tells that its people had originally been living on
the hills Gattareng and Séwo before they came down and settled in the
valley. Those coming from Gattareng established 10 settlements, constitut-
ing east (in fact southeast) Soppéng (Soppéng ri Lau'); those coming from
Séwo established also 10 settlements, constituting west (in fact northwest)
122 THE POTENT DEAD
Soppéng (Soppéng ri Aja').9 In Soppéng as a whole there were 60 ‘chief-

doms’ (pamatoangeng). For seven generations (lapi') the Soppéng people
were without master (dé' puwanna to-Soppéng-é); only the 60 matoa were
there to rule (paoto' paléwu'-i tana-é: ‘to raise and to lay out’) over the
country.
One day came the news that a to-manurung had appeared at Sekkanyili'.
The matoa then decided to go there as a delegation to ask him to become their
master, in order, so they told him, to ‘protect our fields from the birds so that
we are not without food, cover us with your blanket so that we are not cold,
bind our rice sheaves so that we are not empty and lead us near and far’.
The 60 matoa promised in return to build him a house and to feed his
future family. Then they brought him, in a procession accompanied by the
rituals of the bissu, to the settlement of Tinco where the arung’s residence
was to be built. A storm, which lasted seven days and seven nights, uprooted
the great trees needed for the construction and a flood carried them downhill
to the place where it was to be built. Later, the to-manurung informed the
people that a cousin of his had descended from heaven in a jar at Goari-é, in
Libureng.10 The matoa went there to ask her to become datu in Soppéng ri
Lau' while the first to-manurung was to become datu in Soppéng ri Aja'.
Thus, these and other to-manurung stories, by marking the historical period
with a mythical start which re-enacts the model of the primaeval period as
it is portrayed in the La Galigo texts, stress markedly the supernatural origin
of the princely dynasties. The descent of these dynasties can be traced
down to the present day through their genealogies, the to-manurung and
to-tompo', founders of most of the Bugis wanua, are considered to be ances-
tors of the whole present-day Bugis nobility.11 They thereby also stress the
latter’s precedence over commoner leaders. However, that second batch of
to-manurung and to-tompo' are not said to descend, like the La Galigo
dynasties, from the six main divine couples of the ancient pantheon.
According to a number of esoteric texts (Pelras 1983: 66–7; Hamonic 1983:
41–2), it appears that they had for their common ancestor a deity called La
Mapéca' or La Makkulau, god of the celestial (cooked) rice, whom Datu
Patoto' had fathered from his semen alone, as against the six pairs of
children born of intercourse with his consort.
KINSHIP AND DESCENT

One cannot understand the kind of relationship that exists between Bugis
nobility and commoners without saying a few words about the Bugis kinship
and descent system, because the main feature of this system is that, being
cognatic, it does not give precedence to one side over the other and status
is inherited from both the father’s and mother’s side. Moreover, marriage is
possible between Bugis noblemen and commoner women.
Bugis kinship terminology is of the ‘generational’ type: all your relatives
(be they male or female) of the same generation as yourself (including
brothers, sisters and cousins) fall into the category of sibling (séajing, ‘of
one origin’). Descent being acknowledged from the mother’s as well as
father’s side, the system’s most important feature is a tree structure, where
‘branching off’ is accounted from each pair of Ego’s ancestors; this produces
successive circles of cousins (‘first’, ‘second’, ‘third’ and ‘fourth cousins’, or
sapo siseng, sapo wékka dua, wékka tellu and wékka eppa'), who respec-
tively descend from both Ego’s parents’ parents, from Ego’s four couples of
parents’ grandparents, from Ego’s eight couples of grandparents’ grandpar-
ents, and from Ego’s 16 couples of grandparents’ grandparents’ parents. On
that basis, somebody can be seen as surrounded, on both the father’s
and mother’s side, by successive layers of collateral kin, from the closest
(brothers, nephews, grandnephews), branching off from his parents, to the
most remote, branching off from his ancestors at the fifth generation down-
wards. The nested kinship units so established are usually called a'séajin-
geng (‘those having the same origin’), and are given more or less importance
according to which common ancestor is taken into consideration.
Somebody’s kindred as opposed to ‘other people’ (tau laéng) is thus
composed of a set of such ancestor-based units of both father’s and
mother’s sides; and marriage ideally takes place inside that Ego-centred
kindred, at the same generational level. Opinions differ, among the Bugis
themselves, as to which degree of collaterality is the best for marriage: for
some of them third cousins, for others second cousins, are to be preferred;
first cousins are usually considered too ‘hot’, and marriage between them
mostly occurs among the high nobility.
NOBLE GENEALOGIES: CHAINS OF TRANSMISSION

OF THE ANCESTORS’ WHITE BLOOD
In Bugis noble genealogies as in any genealogy, personal names serve not
only to identify specific individuals but also to show them, as well as those
who preceded and followed them, as constituting links in the chain of trans-
mission of a heritage, namely the ‘white blood’ obtained from their divine
ancestors, by which they and their descendants distinguish themselves from
the rest of society.
It is commonly held that cognatic societies have little or no genealogical
memory. Indeed, if one wanted to trace back somebody’s complete ancestry
by taking into account every genealogical line, one would have to cope—if
there were no marriages between related persons—with eight ancestors at the
third generation, 16 at the fourth, 32 at the fifth, and more than 1000 at the
tenth. It seems almost impossible for pre-computer societies to manage such
genealogies, the more so if one wants to take into account all bilateral cousins
to the fourth degree. Yet all Bugis who claim a noble ancestry possess
complex genealogical tables written on large sheets of paper which, for the
highest-titled families, often extend 24 generations backwards, showing the
intricate alliance relationships interwoven, generation after generation,
124 THE POTENT DEAD
between the ruling dynasties, not only of the larger kingdoms but even of the
tiniest polities. They usually take as starting points a limited number of
founding ancestors (to-manurung or to-tompo') whose descendants have
often been allied to each other, and they end up in chosen, bilaterally interre-
lated groups of their present-day descendants. Thus, not all possible descent
lines are mentioned: a choice has been made in accordance with the will to
establish links between a limited number of ancestors and a limited number
of their descendants. However, knowledgeable genealogists would possess
quite a number of such genealogies, which they would borrow and copy from
each other to complete their genealogies.
Most of the above-mentioned genealogical tables are probably not older
than the first decades of the 20th century. Their establishment became gener-
alised at the beginning of the institution of Dutch order, when the Bugis
nobility had to prove their degrees of noble lineage in order to be exempted
from the taxes and compulsory labour which the commoners had been made
liable to by the colonists. Earlier, the genealogies had probably been given, in
oral or written form, according to two different methods. One, which I might
call ‘arborescent’ as it is reminiscent of our Western family trees, is focused
on one individual whose status is to be ascertained; it consists in starting, in
turn, from a number of original couples, and retaining among their descent
lines only those which converge towards that particular individual.12 The
other method, which I might call ‘linear’, takes as its main axis the succession
line of a given kingdom or seignory, starting from its founding original
couple and mentioning other lines only insofar as one of the successive rulers
has taken one of their descendants as his or her marriage partner.13 Modern,
complex genealogical tables result from the combination of both methods.
The Bugis nobility has its own ‘space-time’, different from that of
commoners. Its temporal dimension is the one along which the inheritance
of blood and of political office takes place, while the specific kind of
discontinuous space in which it is inscribed is one made of several networks
of matrimonial alliances, which not only cover the whole Bugis country but
have progressively extended themselves to include the Makassar, Mandar
and even Toraja country. Except for the first, mythical or almost mythical
generations, such genealogies are quite reliable because they can be
checked against each other, as all of them are more or less interconnected
through the mention of alliances with different lines of descent—and such
cross-checking was in fact done by traditional Bugis genealogists. Some
manipulation in order to enhance one’s high status remained possible, by
not giving the full particulars of somebody’s spouse’s parents of a lower
degree of nobility; or by falsely attributing to one of one’s ancestors a high-
status father through an unrecorded secondary wife; or by claiming, when
overseas, to stem from some important Bugis ruler not fully specified by
name. Such manipulations were rare, at least for the higher-ranking
nobility, because each time a matrimonial alliance had to be concluded each
party’s genealogy would be cross-checked.
THE ANONYMOUS ANCESTORS OF THE COMMONERS

Different from that of the nobility, the commoners’ ‘space-time’ has little
temporal depth, and the names of dead ancestors are quickly forgotten, the
more so as people of the older generations are usually called by their
teknonyms. This may seem the more strange because, as the Bugis favour
marriage between third cousins as well as, to a lesser extent, second
cousins, one should know who one’s four couples of great-grand-parents
and eight couples of great-great-grandparents were. In fact, commoners do
not seem to trace back their filiation to that point in a precise manner, but
usually content themselves with recording who their grandparents’ and
parents’ first cousins were—people they themselves knew, either as neigh-
bours or co-villagers, or those they have often seen participating in family
gatherings.
For the commoners, the main dimension is spatial; their social space is
continuous and consists mainly in several concentric social circles: the
neighbourhood, grouping together mostly kin or affines (tennia tau laéng,
‘not other people’); the settlement and its surrounding, both place of resi-
dence and daily working space; the domain (wanua), at the lower political
and economic level, formerly a seignory, nowadays an administrative
village (desa) or sometimes a subdistrict (kecamatan); and above these, the
‘land’, formerly a kingdom like Boné, Wajo' or Soppéng with its dialectal
peculiarities, nowadays often a district (kabupatèn), where Bugis abroad
claim to belong when they meet each other, usually gathering together
according to their respective land of origin, while to other people they stress
their ‘common Bugisness’ (sempugi').
To my knowledge, there is no explicit Bugis pre-Islamic written tradition
claiming common ancestors for Bugis commoners, except, in syncretic
texts, those common to all humankind according to both the Bible and the
Koran—Nabi Adam and Sitti Hawah (Adam and Eve). The La Galigo
cycle is not explicit on the origin of ordinary villagers who served the first
rulers. We are just left to suppose that they originated from the servants
who had followed their masters when they descended from the divine
worlds, respectively from Heaven and from the abyss. There does seem to
have been an oral tradition, quite widespread (although now ignored by
most people), which has been retold to me in broad lines only. According to
this tradition, in the beginning the Earth was covered by waters; then a
number of places emerged which later became, in the South Sulawesi
peninsula, high mountains (Mt Latimojong to the north, Mt Bawakaraéng
to the south) but also much lower hills (Gojéng in Sinjai, Tombolo' in
Kajang), from which people came out through holes beneath and progres-
sively occupied the lower slopes and the plain as the sea receded. This
might establish the commoners as ‘children of the soil’ as opposed to the
noble newcomers.
126 THE POTENT DEAD
WORSHIP OF COMMONER ANCESTORS

Although they lack mythical, named, original ancestors and genealogies
linking them to the latter, and although their genealogical memory is rather
short, there are various ways for commoners to worship their forebears as
an undifferentiated whole. In many houses, offerings of cooked rice are put
for them on plaited trays (ance') hanging in the front part of the loft, just
behind the gable.14 This may be done on the same occasions as offerings are
presented, at the main post and the post holding the staircase, to the spirit
guardians of the house (at house inaugurations and anniversaries, at the
welcoming ceremony of the rice harvest into the house, at marriage or post-
birth rituals, etc.). I also witnessed a couple who were taking part in a ritual
meal on entering their new house for the first time, putting aside four dishes
of glutinous rice intended, they said, for their ancestors (represented by
both father’s and mother’s sides of both spouses). I also once saw the ritual
practitioner invited by a family during an ‘Ashura’ celebration praying
silently in front of eight dishes of the traditional ‘Ashura’ porridge intended
in a similar way for the inviting couple’s ancestors, here represented by the
eight grandparents’ families. But such practices are not very conspicuous
and may no longer be widespread. In more general use, on the occasion of
the presentation of full-fledged offerings, is the practice of placing offer-
ings for local ‘ancients’ (to-riolo) on the same tray as the offerings intended
for the déwata or for the subordinate spirits in Heaven or the abyss, or for
the local to-manurung and to-tompo'. Indeed, many commoners worship
such so-called ‘ancients’ whose graves they regularly visit, although they
do not claim to descend from them or, when they consider them as their
ancestors, they do not really know through which chain of generations they
are linked to them. For them the certainty is enough that they are among the
favoured ones benefiting from the blessings of the protectors, whose name,
often, they do not even know.
Such a case among thousands of similar ones is that of a protector of the
village of Laérung, whom his adepts know only under the nickname of
Petta ri Duni (‘our lord in the coffin’). Local oral tradition identifies him as
one of the first pioneers who cleared the land of that village and who has
been worshipped ever since by the villagers as one of their main protectors.
Sometimes, however, the local protector did nothing in his or her life to
deserve to be considered as such. Take, for instance, the case of a group
of graves that was found in the early 1970s on the southern outskirts
of Paré-paré. According to its keeper, the first burial there was that of an
unknown human leg which a fisherman had once found in his net, which he
had thrown back to the sea and caught again and again. He saw in this a
supernatural sign. He respectfully picked out the leg and arranged for it the
same burial as for a complete body. Thereupon, people started to come on
pilgrimage to its grave, and as their vows were answered more and more
came; a neighbouring villager, who also happened to be a ritual healer
(sanro), appointed himself the grave’s keeper. When the latter’s young
daughter died, he decided to bury her on this sacred spot (onrong makerre')
in order that she benefit from its benediction (baraka'). Other people in the
vicinity followed suit so that it developed into a complete grave complex
surrounding a sacred grave, which, after several generations, will perhaps
come to be considered as an ancestor’s grave.
Not all pilgrims to such graves are inhabitants of the village or its neigh-
bours. Some come from much farther afield, whether in accordance with a
family tradition, inherited perhaps from some forebear who used to live
there; or because having heard once from someone that the ‘saint’ wor-
shipped there was very potent, they tested it by making a vow and had their
prayer answered; or else because, through a dream or another means, they
received a personal revelation about particular links existing between them
and the person buried there. This occurred for instance when a teenage
daughter of one of my informants in Paré-paré became possessed by a croc-
odile spirit which at times put her into undesirable fits. The father was
informed by a spirit medium that these attacks were caused by an ancestor,
until then unknown to him, whose grave lay about 100 km to the south in
the princely cemetery of Lamuru, and whom, through ignorance of his exis-
tence, he had failed to duly worship. Once informed of this, he went on
pilgrimage there with his daughter; they sacrificed a goat on the grave, and
the daughter was released from her illness. After that, he kept visiting the
grave when possible. This also enhanced his status, as by so doing he
stressed that, although a commoner, he could claim to possess in his veins
an invaluable although infinitesimal portion of ‘white blood’.
WORSHIP OF NOBLE ANCESTORS

We can distinguish two kinds of sacred places of worship with regard to the
nobility’s ancestors, namely those of ‘ordinary’ ancestors and those of
‘original’ ancestors.
‘Ordinary’ ancestors may have been very important and even ‘extraordi-
nary’ persons in their time, but they are only a link in the genealogical chain
of noble families. Their graves are not very different from other graves,
except that most are more ornate, having, for instance, sculpted steles
(mésang) and being grouped in burial complexes ( jéra' lompo') together
with the graves of other members of the local dynasty. Some of them are
surmounted by a pyramidal or possibly a cubic building (ku'bang). If some
of these graves are considered as the burial places of potent persons, rituals
performed there have an individual character, being the work of people who
have come in order to accomplish a vow, as they might do at any other
sacred grave. On the contrary, ‘original’ ancestors are those (to-manurung
and to-tompo') who initiated genealogical chains; they are those who
brought from their divine forebears the ‘white blood’ which has been
passed on to all their descendants. According to myth they did not die—
128 THE POTENT DEAD
Figure 8.1 The fake grave of Pua Sanro, at Wotu in Luwu', set at a sacred spot
said to be the place where Batara Guru, the mythic founder of Luwu' (son of Dati
Patoto', the main god of the Bugis pantheon and Sawerigading's grandfather)
ascended back to Heaven
they simply ‘disappeared’ (ma'lajang) (see Figure 8.1). The sites in which
they are worshipped are thus not exactly graves but places arranged as
graves, and simple ones at that, with just a small roof, sometimes a
surrounding fence and often a white or yellow mosquito-net. They are
considered to mark the spot where the ancestors returned to the divine
worlds whence they came. The sites may also be part of a complex of
sacred places, often including a flat stone—said to be the stone where the
to-manurung descended from Heaven, or at least where they were discov-
ered for the first time by the people—which ever since has been used as
installation stone when a new ruler is chosen. As part of the complex there
may also be a spot, marked by a hole, a stone or a tree called posi' tana, ‘the
land’s navel’. These sacred places thus do not concern noble families as
private families but with regard to their political functions.
Rituals performed there (e.g. before the opening and the closing of the
agricultural year, or in case of war or an epidemic), which require complete
offerings of glutinous rice in four colours, do not concern the ancestors
alone, but the whole polity, whether a small one (a wanua) or a kingdom.
These rituals had perhaps as their model those performed in Luwu', around
the sacred spots still marking Batara Guru’s descent from Heaven (in
Cérékang, Ussu’) and his return to Heaven (in Wotu).
Like their predecessors of primaeval times, the original ancestors of the
dynasties and founders of the polities were thus important not only for their

own direct descendants but also for the whole people. And as we know from
Portuguese sources (Pelras 1981: 170–1) as well as from La Galigo texts,
Bugis funerals in pre-Islamic times were in many respects similar to those
observable among the Toraja today. It seems possible that the pre-Islamic
Bugis likewise knew an opposite set of ‘ceremonies of the rising sun’
linking the fertility of the land and the deification of noble ancestors, which
may survive in some way in the thanksgiving rituals still performed at the
end of the agricultural year by the bissu of Ségéri. After Islamisation, Bugis
ulama have of course been striving to efface these residual traces of
paganism, but as the myth of the original ancestors of the nobility was so
important for the preservation of Bugis traditional social order, it resisted
until this century. Only now, in modern Indonesia, with the nobility’s loss
of prominent political and economic position, is this myth finally becoming
a thing of the past.
REASONS FOR THE WORSHIPPING OF POTENT DEAD

AND ANCESTORS
Why do the Bugis worship the potent dead, be they noble or commoners, and
specifically ancestors, whether they can precisely trace their genealogical links
with them or not? There are three interrelated reasons: genealogical duty
(and the fear of undesirable consequences in cases of neglect); the ensuring
of collective protection, fertility and welfare; and the pursuit of specific
individual favours.
For those who still adhere to these traditions, it is a duty (e.g. when inau-
gurating a new house, or before a wedding takes place and even on the
occasion of Muslim festivals like the ‘Ashura’) to worship one’s dead close
forebears in one way or another.
For the nobility, the founding ancestors of their dynasty require homage,
and sometimes also—among the nobility and the commoners alike—one
specific ancestor with whom, through personal relation or family tradition,
one knows one has a specific relationship. This duty falls only on the indi-
vidual descendants (including their households) of these ancestors. It does
not necessarily involve the intervention of a ritual practitioner (sanro),
although people may ask a knowledgeable and experienced person to
perform the rites for them and in their presence. Inobservance, oversight or
even sheer ignorance of this duty, as well as carelessness in fulfilling it,
might result in illness, miscarriages among women, accidents, fires and so
forth.
In former times the highest (‘white-blooded’) nobility probably also
worshipped, through the intermediary of their bissu priests, not only
their to-manurung and to-tompo' ancestors but also the latter’s divine fore-
bears—that is to say the gods whose names are cited in the La Galigo
literature—and possibly also the primaeval sun/moon divine couple.
Although this cannot yet be categorically asserted, it can be inferred from
130 THE POTENT DEAD
diverse allusions in Portuguese 16th-century and French 17th-century texts

to the worship of the rising sun and moon by the Bugis (Sà 1954: 460–1;
Gervaise 1688: 150), or in writings by Goedhardt (1933: 158, 174) and
Gervaise from reference to sun and moon effigies kept in certain families or
domains as sacred objects. In addition, some informants’ accounts mention
members of the high nobility who were not real Muslims but still ‘prayed to
the sun’ in the 1940s. There are also hints of a lunar cult in a number of
bissu hymns.
Another kind of duty is the worship of the to-manurung and to-tompo',
not as genealogical ancestors but as founders of a domain or a polity, in
exactly the same manner as certain first settlers (noble or not) of a second-
ary domain or village are worshipped by the present-day inhabitants of that
domain or village. Such worship of founding ancestors is not so very differ-
ent from the worship of the spirit guardians of all kinds of places; it is
primarily intended for the common benefit and welfare of the land and its
crops, as well as of the whole community living there. In this case, rites are
performed by sanro wanua (‘sanro of the land’) who formerly, for the main
polities, were always bissu priests. The worship of these founders was
generally associated with the worship of sacred, named objects (arajang)
such as flags, swords or ploughs, and of certain sacred parts of the land-
scape, such as boulders or wells, whose links to the founders are accounted
for by their respective stories of origin.
A still different case is the worship performed by pilgrims coming by
individual choice to a particular sacred place or grave in order to ask a
particular favour. The rites here are most often entrusted to the keeper of the
place, and the favours requested are similar to those asked by pilgrims in
other religious contexts—healing, child bearing, success, money. There
seems, however, to be no specialisation in relation to whom (be they
famous persons of the past, unknown dead or spirit guardians) this worship
is addressed. This contrasts with, for example, Western popular Catholi-
cism, where a particular saint is invoked against sterility, another to find lost
property, another to resolve desperate cases.
Generally speaking, to whomever worship is addressed, the same general
schemes are observed. While the tombstones of ordinary graves are lustrated
with simple water, those of sacred ones are anointed with fragrant oil, and
this includes false ones erected on sacred sites pertaining to the to-manurung
or guardian spirits, which are presumed to contain no human remains.
With regard to offerings, fully fledged ones (those devoted to the to-
manurung, to-tompo', and spiritual entities of the upper- and netherworld)
include rice of four or eight colours, the flesh of a sacrificed animal, raw or
boiled eggs, specific kinds of bananas and unboiled, natural or coconut
water. On the same occasions, rice in arrangements of different shapes and
colours is offered to diverse local figures of ancient times, and sometimes
white glutinous rice is presented to the Prophet Muhammad. But the food
brought by pilgrims to sacred graves includes no multicoloured rice. If the
offerings are made at a life cycle ritual (after a birth, before a wedding) the
person concerned is given a mouthful of each kind of offering by the sanro.
A portion is also deposited for the family’s ancestors in the ance' of the
loft, if there is one. Then, when the ancestors and spirits alike have
consummated the essence of the offerings, the human participants in the
ceremony consume their substance.15
All these practices were still in common use in the early 1980s. Consid-
ering the rapid pace at which South Sulawesi societies are changing, both
towards modern ways of life and towards a more orthodox brand of Islam,
they seem bound to recede progressively into the background; yet it is just
possible that they will survive, unnoticed, in the secrecy of the most trad-
itionally minded families.16
9
Saints and ancestors: the cult of
Muslim saints in Java1
Henri Chambert-Loir
Except in a few places where it is sumptuously displayed (as in Gunung Jati

and Gunung Kawi), the cult of Muslim saints in Indonesia remains behind
the screen of everyday life. It is performed in small cemeteries, in village
holy places, on remote hills or inside modest shrines, and it certainly does
not have the ostentatious ubiquity of the ever-multiplying mosques. As soon
as one looks for it, however, it seems to be present everywhere and to
pervade the life of the majority of the population.
The cult of saints is the cult of Muslim holy graves, but this in fact
encompasses practices and beliefs of many kinds. I attempt here to define
(or at least exemplify) those various types of veneration, some of which
are only superficially Islamic. Then I draw attention to the permanent
Islamisation process of the cult and its link with the cult of ancestors.
DEFINITIONS: SAINTS, KRAMATS, PUNDHEN

A saint is an individual who, by birth, by talent, through science or spiritual
exercise, is endowed with supernatural powers. These powers were concen-
trated in his being and are now lying in his grave (his or her grave, but female
saints are a small minority). This is why, with very few exceptions, the cult of
a saint is performed in one place only: at his grave. One does not pray to the
saint at home, or in another place where he would be represented by some
kind of symbol. One has to make the trip to the grave, in order to be in the
presence of the saint. There are of course no images; even relics are rare.
This is a definition apparently broad enough to encompass all kinds of
Muslim saints, be they men of religion, men of science, men of power, or
even men of madness. However, when visiting graves of so-called Muslim
saints in Java, one realises that in a great number of cases the ‘saint’ has no
name, nothing is known about his life and deeds, the grave sometimes is
notoriously empty, and it even happens that the site is not a real grave but
132
SAINTS AND ANCESTORS 133
something shaped into a grave. Still, as long as these places are locally
regarded as ‘Muslim sacred graves’, they have to be taken into consideration.
A saint’s grave is named a kramat. But the word also designates various
kinds of sacred places and objects, which have nothing to do with saints,
with human beings or even with Islam. The grave of a ‘saint’ is kramat, just
like a place where the netherworld emerges in this one. A number of graves
are obviously pundhen (i.e. sites where guardian spririts are worshipped)
dressed up in an Islamic form. Others are dubious: perhaps pundhen trans-
formed into graves, perhaps genuine graves invested with supernatural
powers, or graves intentionally located on a sacred site. It has been
remarked that guardian spirits (dhanyang) and founding ancestors of a
village (cikal bakal) often merge. Furthermore, the rituals performed on
sacred sites, as well as the motives for visiting such sites, may be the same
on pundhen and kramat. One of the most important rebutan (part of a
ceremony, where people struggle over ritual food) mentioned by John
Pemberton (1994) in his discussion of bersih desa (cleansing of the village)
and selametan, is the one performed on the grave of Ki Ageng Gribig, in
Jatinom, that is to say on an indisputable Muslim saint’s grave.
In other words, there is an obvious continuity between pundhen and
kramat, and it is unclear where one stops and the other begins. Therefore,
when studying the cult of saints, drawing a line between the two would
mean limiting oneself to a number of sites according to a preimposed defi-
nition of what a saint is. It seems more rewarding to take into consideration
the totality of the Muslim sacred graves, to observe it as a continuum, and
then to draw conclusions on the origin, nature and typology of this cult.
IMPORTANCE OF THE PHENOMENON

The cult of saints is not immediately apparent in Java—at least, to the casual
observer, it may seem strictly localised. It is not publicly exposed; there is no
seminar about it, no book in Indonesian, and it is seldom mentioned in the
national media. The phenomenon is easily and commonly underestimated. It
seems to me that neither Clifford Geertz (1960) nor Koentjaraningrat (1984)
pays due attention to it. Geertz deals with it in his section on abangan
(syncretic or Javanist Muslims), which is debatable as many local saints and
even a national one like Sunan Ampel are visited by santri (the stricter
Muslims whom Geertz distinguishes from abangan). Geertz discusses visits
to tombs very briefly, on two occasions: first in his paragraph on demit and
dhanyang spirits living in pundhen or graves; second on the rituals
performed during the ceremony of bersih desa, when representatives of the
village visit the tomb of the dhanyang desa. He fails (as does Koentjaran-
ingrat) to give even a faint idea of the number of tombs concerned, the
number of visits paid to them and the complexity of the beliefs involved.
More recently, John Pemberton (1994) has given an interesting and more
detailed account of such rituals, although from a restricted point of view.
134 THE POTENT DEAD
Java Sea
Banten
Jakarta
Muria
Cirebon
Pati
Tuban
Demak
Gresik
Garut Tasikmalaya JAVA Djatinom
Ciamis Madiun
Wates Jombang
Yogyakarta Malang
Parangtritis Blitar
N
0 200
kilometres
Map 6 Java
There do not seem to be any statistics about the cult of saints in Indonesia,
or in Java (Map 6) for that matter. Even in the most popular places, when
visitors are supposed to fill in a registration book (buku tamu), it is clear that
only some do, and that awkward calculations make the results most unreliable.
It is also impossible to evaluate the number of sites. There are tens of
thousands of sacred graves in Java, but the frequency of visits to them is
extremely diverse. Some, the most numerous, are visited by people from
one village only, either sporadically by individuals or once a year by the
community at large. The most popular sites, however, may be visited by
pilgrims from the whole island of Java or even by people from all parts of
Indonesia. The mausoleums of the Wali Songo (the Nine Saints to whom
the first Islamisation of Java is ascribed) are visited all year long by indi-
viduals and groups alike, and by crowds during the month of Rabiulawal, at
the time of the celebration of the Prophet’s birth (Maulud). In Demak, for
instance, thousands of people flow in every day. In Gunung Jati (near
Cirebon) as well as in Gunung Kawi (near Malang), there are probably up
to 150 000 visitors during that month. The pilgrims who flock to Sunan
Muria’s mausoleum (Gunung Colo, near Kudus) are so numerous that they
are allowed only four minutes to pray on the grave itself.
ZIARAH
There are various ways to make a pilgrimage, or ziarah, to a grave. First the
individual one: individuals, sometimes with their family, visit a grave in
order to perform a specific rite. Most ask for something, say prayers, make
offerings (flower petals, perfumed oil, incense), and take back something
with them (water, earth, rice, ashes, pebbles); they will come back for a
thanksgiving ceremony (selametan) when their request has been granted.
Others meditate (semadi, tapa, tirakat, nyepi), and their petition is not for a
specific reward (money, marriage, position) but for some progress in their
spiritual life. Some even stay a few days beside the grave; they usually
spend the nights praying. Moreover, some walk from one grave to another,
in order to visit various places linked to one specific saint. These individual
pilgrims tend to visit regularly one or a few places only because of a special
spiritual affinity they have with the saint.
A second kind of pilgrimage is in a group touring a few sites at the same
time. This type of pilgrimage has become more and more important during
the past decade, partly due to the economic development of the country
(more money to spend and better roads), partly to a revival of pilgrimages.
A number of bus companies all over Java have specialised in this kind of
tour and offer various possibilities. The participants are usually villagers
who are not used to travelling outside their home, and who follow their
leader obediently (often the village kyai). They visit a few of the Wali
Songo graves (see Fox 1991; Guillot & Chambert-Loir 1996) and often
some other site, which can be a lesser-known saint’s grave (Habib Husain
al-Aydrus in Luar Batang, North Jakarta), or the grave of President
Soekarno in Blitar, or a non-Islamic sacred site (the stone Parangkusuma in
Parangtritis) or even a merely tourist site, like Madiun airport. The schedule
of these tours is so tight that the pilgrims spend only the minimum time on
each site, praying together and hurrying to buy some souvenir before
leaving for the next place. They usually sleep inside one kramat or under
the verandah of a mosque, and live through those few days under great
stress. Because of this type of tour pilgrimage, sites like Gunung Muria
have recently acquired unprecedented popularity.
A third kind of pilgrimage is attendance at festivals held on the most
important sites: at the time of the Maulud in Gunung Jati (ceremony of
Panjang Jimat); on the 10th of Dzulhijjah (Lebaran Haji) in Demak; on the
25th of Ramadhan (Lailat al-Qadar) at the mausoleum of Sunan Giri
(Gresik); for the anniversary (khol) of the saint’s death.
Finally, pilgrims attend the annual ceremony held on the grave of a
village founder (cikal bakal). The ceremony takes place usually during
the month of Dzulhijah (Sela), and aims at the ‘cleansing’ of the village
(bersih desa) by way of an ‘offering to the earth’ (sedekah bumi), that is,
seeking the blessing of the local spirits for the sake of the prosperity of
the village at large. Various rites are performed, including a visit to the
sacred grave of the first ancestor. (An interesting evocation of this
ceremony is to be found in Ahmad Tohari’s novel Ronggeng Dukuh
Paruk). In modern days the ceremony may take place in some public
building (mosque, school, balai desa), but offerings still have to be made
on the grave. In some cases, when the ancestor of a village is linked to
136 THE POTENT DEAD
that of a village nearby by some kind of superiority, the ‘superior’ village

has the privilege of holding its ceremony first (e.g. the village of
Bejagung Kidul, in Tuban, holds its bersih desa before any other village
in the same kecamatan).
SAINTS AND HEROES

The most frequent type of grave is that which is found inside a village or on
its immediate outskirts. In spite of the increasing orthodoxy (witnessed by
the construction of many new mosques and public attendance at the Friday
prayer), those graves represent one of the main centres of the religious life
of the village. There the population goes for individual prayers or
communal festivals. The place is usually marked by the presence of big
trees (often banyan, Ficus benjamina), which are themselves sacred as they
are the domain of the spirits.
Another type of grave refers clearly to a cult of tutelary spirits. These are
isolated graves found near some natural curiosity, like a spring, a cave, a big
rock or the meeting of two rivers—wherever nature seems to show a mani-
festation of the supernatural world.
Yet another grave type is that linked to some historical remains. These
might be Hindu or Buddhist temples: in Leles, near Garut, the grave of one
Syekh Dalem Arif Muhammad stands on the remains of a Hindu temple; in
Banyubiru a Muslim grave on the top of the ruins of a Saivite temple is
supposed to be that of Brawijaya V, the legendary last king of Majapahit; in
Bagelen the ‘grave’ (or rather petilasan) of Putri Bagelen is nothing other
than a Buddhist stupa. They may be the remains of a palace (Plered, Karta);
a canon (Banten) and so forth. The power of the place is still revered but
somehow legitimised by the veneration of a Muslim grave. This is also the
case with the many graves of the so-called Syekh Abdul Rahman and Syekh
Abdul Rahim, usually said to be of Arabic origin and to have Islamised one
area. These two characters seem fictitious, their name being derived from
the basmala (bi'smillah al-Rahman al-Rahim), and furthermore their
‘grave’ being set on an existing sacred place.
Some kramat are called petilasan, or ‘traces’; these are not graves proper
but places where some well-known character has passed through or has
spent some time. We find, too, the so-called graves of mythical or legendary
figures: Gatotkaca in Demak until recently; Joko Tarub, in desa Taruban
near Wates, Yogyakarta; Roro Mendut in desa Gandu, Yogyakarta; Semar’s
footprint near Gunung Jati. These places are certainly not graves either. In
some cases the kramat may materialise a sacred place; in others it may be
the means to revere a sacred mythical figure.
The most important saints in Java (the ones whose sanctity no-one would
deny) are the agents of the Islamisation of the island. In the first place are the
‘Nine Saints’ (Wali Songo). Most of them are considered as being of foreign
origin, which is historically probable. According to popular tradition, some
came from the Middle East and are descendants of the Prophet. Others came
from Champa and China (see Rinkes 1996).
These historical characters were often both men of religion who became
famous through their teachings (Sunan Bonang, Sunan Kalijaga, Sunan
Ampel) and men of action who contributed to the Islamisation by the sword
(Sunan Gunung Jati, Sunan Kudus) and created the Muslim kingdoms of
the north coast of Java (Demak, Cirebon, Banten).
Ulamas of a later period belong to this category too: those who Islamised
one particular region (Dato ri Bandang in Makasar, Syekh Jangkung
in Kayen, Pati) and often had a political role as well (Ki Ageng Gribig in
Jatinom), or those who were renowned for their science and piety (Abdul
Rauf al-Singkili alias Syiah Kuala near Banda Aceh, and his two pupils
Syekh Burhanuddin in Ulakan, West Sumatra, and Syekh Abdul Muhyi
in Pamijahan, near Tasik Malaya, or his colleague Syekh Yusuf Taj al-
Khalwatiyah in Makasar). Or we find some contemporary ulamas who are
revered by the pupils of the Koranic schools (pesantren) they have founded
(Hashim Ashari and Wahid Hashim in Tebu Ireng, Jombang).
Ulamas and men of religion are the most obvious candidates for sanctity.
In this respect, Java does not differ from other countries of the Muslim
world. However, Java offers two peculiarities in this same category of saints.
First, there is to my knowledge no tomb in Java, and not even a cenotaph or
a residing place (petilasan) of any Islamic prophet (Ibrahim, Nuh, Isa,
Khidir) or prominent theologian (Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, Muhammad
al-Samman, Ibrahim ibn Adham). They never visited Indonesia of course,
but this may not be a satisfactory reason of itself. After all, one finds graves
of Abdulkadir al-Jailani and Nabi Khidir in Pakistan (see Matringe in
Chambert-Loir & Guillot 1995), and there is a grave of Iskandar
Zul-Karnain in Sumatra; the Catholics managed to have a grave of Jesus in
Larantuka (Flores), as well as a replica of Lourdes’ cave near Borobudur.
The second and far more striking peculiarity regards the tarekat in
Indonesia. Syekh Burhanuddin and Syekh Yusuf, mentioned above, were
leaders (khalifah) of different brotherhoods or mystical paths (tarekat).
There are a few other examples of such mystical leaders being revered.
How few however is striking, in comparison with almost all the other
Muslim countries in the world, particularly the Middle East, Central Asia
and the Indian subcontinent.2
Some kings and sultans are also revered, although their sanctity is some-
times far from evident. The founder of Banten Muslim dynasty, Molana
Hasanudin (son of Sunan Gunung Jati), and his son Molana Yusuf were
both kings and religious leaders. But this is not the case with Senopati
(Kota Gede) and Sultan Agung (Imogiri). Similarly, a very recent grave is
revered in the same way as a kramat—that of President Soekarno in Blitar.
Some people even say that a deceased king is more powerful (i.e. has more
supernatural power) than a wali, because during their lifetime the wali was
a subject of the king.
138 THE POTENT DEAD
Here again Java differs from other Muslim countries. Some political
figures may be revered elsewhere, but it seems that nowhere else does this
cult of deceased kings have such amplitude, and that royal cemeteries like
those of Gunung Jati and Imogiri are peculiar to Java. The veneration of
kings or political leaders may be the result of two traditions: on the one
hand some great kings were supposedly endowed with special powers,
which they retain after death; on the other, the Hindu–Buddhist tradition of
divinised kings in Indonesia may have merged with the cult of saints.
THE ISLAMISATION PROCESS

Historical documents about the veneration of saints are scanty (see Jansen
& De Jonge 1991), so it is almost impossible to trace the history of most
sites, or the evolution of the phenomenon at large during the past five
centuries. However, it seems probable that the cult of Muslim saints was
introduced into Java together with Islam. Some of the mausoleums of the
Wali Songo, which are architecturally similar to the so-called classical
Javanese style, clearly date from the 15th or 16th century and must have
been built at the time of the saints’ death (Sunan Giri, Sendang Duwur [see
Tjandrasasmita 1975], Sunan Bayat, Sunan Bonang, Sunan Gunung Jati,
Sunan Kudus, Sunan Drajat). The magnificence of these monuments attests
to the veneration of the saints in the earliest days. Later in history, beginning
in the early 17th century, we have some testimonies of such a veneration.
This Islamisation process of sacred places is still at work now. Trad-
itional kramat untouched by Islam are still numerous. Others have the
appearance of a Muslim grave and their cult is integrated in Muslim prac-
tices, although it is not related to any saint. Still others are devoted to the
veneration of a Muslim saint. These various places are part of a continuum;
they illustrate the process of Islamisation that took place over several
centuries, as can be observed in the following examples.
In the village of Rengel, some 30 km to the south of Tuban, is a resting
place near a spring called Sumber Ngerong. The water flows from a cave.
White turtles (ikan bulus) and fish live in a pool in the cave. The water
flows through a small canal where people come to wash and bathe. The
place is sacred; offerings are made at the entrance to the cave, which is
under the authority of a guardian. It is strictly forbidden to disturb the
turtles and fish. A traveller visiting the place in 1822 reported that snakes
and monkeys were equally sacred there at that time. This site has obviously
nothing to do with Islam.
In Karangkendal, a village near Cirebon, lies an important Muslim
mausoleum, which is a very active pilgrimage site. A nearby small arrange-
ment of bricks is said to be a grave by a mere play on words: it is a puser (a
‘navel’ or ‘centre’ of the space, as there are many in Java), which is now
called a pusara, a ‘grave’. In this way a pre-Islamic sacred site is assimilated
in a grave. Similarly at Gunung Payung, also in the Cirebon region, some
allegedly ‘prehistorically’ erected stones near a pool are venerated. This site
has been partly and artificially Islamised by renaming the pool as belonging
to the Nine Saints (Balong Wali Songo) and by rearranging some of the
stones to look like a grave.
In other places, pre-Islamic historical remains are venerated in an Islamic
way. For example, in Karangkamulyan (between Ciamis and Banjar),
where one can visit the few remains of the Old Sundanese kingdom of
Galuh, the stand of a Hindu statue, said to be the throne of Galuh kings, has
been set at the head of what looks like a Muslim grave, under a cungkup, or
roof similar to those of graves.
Yet another example in Central Java shows a further step in the Islamisation
of historical remains. In the village of Prawoto, east of Demak, what used
probably to be a country house of the Sultan of Demak in the 16th century is
now totally in ruins. In 1979 part of the base of a building was accidentally
unearthed, and as it happened to be oriented north–south (like an Islamic
grave) it was isolated, placed under a cungkup, and declared to be the grave of
Sunan Prawoto, one of the Demak sultans. The village had discovered a
‘saint’, and it started being visited by pilgrims coming from a large area. Here
not only is the stone revered as a grave, but a new cult is created which is
devoted to a historical character. The site is fictitious but the character is real.
Finally, on a complex site like that of Sunan Gunung Jati, where the
grave of a historical saint is revered together with that of more dubious
characters, as well as empty graves (the Wali Songo), the ‘trace’ (petilasan)
of mythical heroes (Semar) and a ‘navel’ (puser), or the point of contact
between the natural and the supernatural worlds, various layers of belief are
interwoven, but the rites are Islamic.
In some cases it is easy to discover the way a sacred place is artificially
given a Muslim colour while staying basically unchanged. The reality is
more complex though, because the Islamisation of a site, however super-
ficial it may appear, goes in many cases together with new rites and the
transfer of the supernatural power from a place to a man. Parallel to this are
Pemberton’s remarks (1994) regarding the recent evolution of the bersih
desa ceremonies: many of them have now a Muslim appellation (Rasulan),
and are explained as a thanksgiving ceremony addressed to God (Allah).
SAINTS AND ANCESTORS

The cult of saints is universal in Islam. It is a subject of fierce debate
between the partisans of a strict interpretation of the scriptures and the
exponents of a local, ‘traditional’ way of being Muslim (these two tenden-
cies being represented in Indonesia by the Muhammadiyah and the
Nahdatul Ulama respectively), nevertheless it is known in every Islamic
country and is everywhere extremely popular.
In Java this cult is clearly an imported practice, and it is more or less
identical in form to other parts of the Muslim world. Some differences are
140 THE POTENT DEAD
meaningful, however, as they are related to Javanese religion before the

coming of Islam. Reminiscences of the Hindu-Buddhist past, for instance,
can be seen in the veneration of divinised kings, in the practice of visiting
one’s parents’ graves during the month preceding that of Ramadhan, in the
spatial structure of some sites, as well as in the organisation of the ‘clergy’
who attend them.
More importantly, this cult shows the heritage of the Javanese
autochthonous substratum prior to the coming of the great religions. We
have seen that the most numerous graves are those of the founding ances-
tors of villages. Those graves are most often the place where both the
ancestor and the local guardian spirit are revered. Founding ancestors
(cikal bakal), when opening a new settlement, did not only have to rule
over their small community and to clear the forest; their most important
task was to conquer the right to settle there from the local spirit of the land.
This process is often depicted in the oral tradition as a physical fight
between the ancestor and the spirit, represented as a composite animal.
However, this physical wrestling might better be interpreted as the symbol
of a spiritual contest. The aim of the ancestor was not to kill the spirit, but
rather to make a pact with it and to obtain the right for his community to
live in peace on the land they had elected.
The veneration of traditional (pre-Islamic) sacred places under an
Islamic form, that is, transformed into tombs, is known in other parts of the
Muslim world, such as in the Arabic countries of North Africa (see
Dermenghem 1954). However, the quasi-systematic veneration of both
local spirits and founding ancestors, as well as the annual communal
ceremony held in their honour, seem to be peculiar to Java.
The cikal bakal is an exceptional human being who was able to contend
with the forces of the invisible world and to make an alliance with them.
He is revered on his grave, but he is undoubtedly alive among the spiritual
beings, and he still protects and takes care of his ‘descendants’. The
Islamic saint is an exceptional man who is sitting on God’s side after
having experienced the frightening stage of death. He is the natural inter-
cessor between man and God. In other words, the cult of saints was one of
the most accessible bridges between the extremely different spiritual
concepts of Islam and Javanese traditional religion. In Java to this day, the
cult of Muslim saints is largely also a cult of ancestors.
10
The Tembayat hill: clergy and royal
power in Central Java from the 15th
to the 17th century
Claude Guillot
(Translated by Jean Couteau)
In the historiography of the Islamisation of Java, Sunan Pandan Arang
occupies a peculiar position. He was the first missionary to try to introduce
Islam into rural Java and therefore the first to confront the Javanese tradition
as it had been shaped by 1000 years of Hindu-Buddhist influences in its very
heartland. His life history also illustrates the fundamental opposition existing
between the ‘Western’ (Islamic) and Javanese cultures, while showing how
doctrinal compromises—conscious or not—may also bridge the differences
between these two mental frameworks. For this reason, a study of the
ambiguous relations existing between the Javanese central royalty and the
Tembayat hill, where the saint’s mausoleum stands (Figure 10.1), may well
provide interesting information about Javanese society and mentality during
the all-important phase of transition from Hinduism to Islam.
The Wedi area, Tembayat hill included, is located in Central Java to the
southeast of Mount Merapi, a few kilometres off the Yogyakarta–Surakarta
highway. Located on the fringe of the great volcanic and fertile plain, it
takes in the first hills of the arid limestone range running parallel to the
southern coast of the island.
The case of Tembayat has long caught scholars’ attention. In this chapter
we mainly and abundantly refer to two important studies: D.A. Rinkes’
article on the saint Pandan Arang (1910–13: 435–510),1 and H.J. de Graaf’s
article on the Kajoran clan (1940: 273–328).
The personality of the saint can be viewed from different angles through
Javanese legends and literary references.
THE LEGENDARY CHARACTER

In the various legends collected by Rinkes, Pandan Arang is most
commonly depicted as being the last king of Majapahit, Brawijaya, after he
141
142 THE POTENT DEAD
Figure 10.1 Entrance to the mausoleum of Kajoran
was expelled from his kingdom by Muslim troops. After a short stay in the
northern coastal area, he eventually headed south ‘in order to settle in his
ancestors’ land’, (i.e. in the region of the ancient kingdoms of the 8th and
9th century). On his way he met the great saint Sunan Kali Jaga and entered
with the latter into a debate on the respective merits of the Hindu-Javanese
and Islamic religions. The two retainers of Brawijaya drew the conclu-
sion—with which everyone seemed at the time to agree—that the two
religions basically taught the same message and differed only in their termi-
nology. Brawijaya then stayed in Semarang under the identity of Pandan
Arang; he was appointed ‘governor’ (Adipati) of the city and accumulated
great wealth.
Sunan Kali Jaga had a clear idea of the spiritual destiny of Pandan Arang
and visited him several times in various guises, always performing one
marvel or another. Little by little he made him discern the true finality of
human existence and convinced him as to the ultimate vanity of the
temporal world. The Adipati then abandoned wealth, position and family
and headed south. On reaching Wedi, near Klaten, he entered the service of
villagers trading in rice. His stay was marked by a series of miracles, which
drew the villagers’ attention to him.
Accompanied by several disciples, he left for the nearby mountain of
Jabalqat (Arabic: Jabal al-Qaf, the cosmic mountain which encircles the
earth), where he took to converting ‘Hindu’ men of religion (ajar) who
were living in the surrounding area under the leadership of one Prawira
Sakti. Prawira Sakti steadily refused to embrace Islam, in spite of efforts by
Pandan Arang’s disciples. Pandan Arang therefore decided to enter into a

THE TEMBAYAT HILL 143
mystical tournament with the leader of the ajar. Each of the two heroes was
to try to demonstrate the superiority of his mystical powers. Pandan Arang
got the upper hand and demonstrated the superiority of Islam to Prawira
Sakti, who then embraced Islam.
Pandan Arang later received enlightenment and thus achieved the
ultimate degree of knowledge. He then became a wali or saint. A strange
episode brought him up against the Sultan of Demak, who was jealous of
his title of wali and of his prestige. Evocatively told, the story goes that the
Sultan of Demak was upset by the noise of the call to prayer coming from
the mosque which the saint had built on top of the hill. The saint was
compelled to transfer the mosque to the foot of the hill so as to restore the
sovereign’s peace and quiet. On his death, Pandan Arang was buried on
Mount Gunung Malang on the slopes of Mount Jabalkat.
THE RELIGIOUS FIGURE

Pandan Arang was governor (Adipati) of the city of Semarang, at that time
a modest port city, and was engaged in trading activities as well. Owing to
his extraordinary powers, Sunan Kali Jaga, Wali Panutupingrat (‘seal of the
saints’), could see in this man a future authentic follower of the Faith, even
though he was an infidel and a man drawn to money. He visited Pandan
Arang several times incognito, assuming the appearance of a man of
humble means, by his miracles making him understand the futility of the
things of this world, and the fact that: ‘One must not rule over worldly
matters, for idolaters shall not inherit heaven’.
Convinced of the truth of the saint’s words, Pandan Arang gave up every-
thing and left Semarang for Tembayat hill. Some time later, Sunan Kali
Jaga visited him in his retreat and, on his disciple’s request, agreed to
‘initiate him into the secret of mystic knowledge’, if Pandan Arang
promised not to divulge it to anyone. The essence of this secret is summed
up in two sentences: ‘As one sees in a mirror the reflection of a man who
looks at himself, so are shape (rupa) and feeling (rasa) related. The reflec-
tion in the glass is Thine own self having the position of a servant: he who
looks into the mirror is the Supreme immaterial’. In other words, every man
is inhabited by a godly presence which is the very essence of his self.
Through meditation and by casting away the deceptions of the senses, he
should endeavour to isolate this godly presence and thus discover God.
Being thus endowed with pure inspiration, Pandan Arang began to teach
the true religion in the surrounding area. He did not try to convert the
infidels by debating with them, using rational arguments, but by performing
miracles that persuaded them to embrace the new faith. They were then
taught the principles of Islamic law (sharia), which, according to mystical
teaching (tasawuf), represents the first stage of true knowledge. This means
that religion can be taught only when there is evidence of pre-existing grace
in the hearer, through a certain response to the miracles.
144 THE POTENT DEAD
This presumably late version of the saint’s legend focuses on the awak-
ening to spirituality and the conscious conversion of a man who until then
had been engaged in worldly matters. By emphasising the mystical aspect
of Islam and the pre-existing grace assumed to be found in every human
being, it also fills in the gap between Islam and Javanese tradition, which
believes that God’s power is present in all manifestations of reality, be it
human, animal or even mineral.
THE HISTORICAL FIGURE

The only available sources tracing the biography of the saint are Javanese,
especially the Serat Kanda (see Rinkes 1996) and the Babad Tanah Jawi
(see Olthof 1941). In his study on Sunan Tembayat, Rinkes attempted to
reconstruct the life of the saint. He faced the usual difficulties inherent in
any attempt to give coherence to different traditions. He reached the follow-
ing conclusions:
1. The great-grandfather of Pandan Arang was the Adipati of Bintara
(Demak). His religion is not known. He was succeeded by his two
sons, Sabrang Lor and Sultan Trenggana. Their sister gave birth to a
son, who later took the name of Pangeran Pandan Arang and, according
to the Serat Kanda, led an attack against Majapahit with 300 of his
men in Saka 1398 (1476 AD). As reward for this feat he was sent to
Semarang as Adipati with a mission to Islamise the city, which
certainly meant subjecting it to the domination of Demak. He died in
Saka in 1418 (1496 AD).
2. This Pangeran Pandan Arang cum Adipati of Semarang had two sons.
On his death, the elder was chosen by Demak as his father’s successor
to rule over the kadipaten of Semarang with the title of Adipati
Mangkubumi, and his younger brother was appointed Patih of the
same city. Under the influence of a religious man, Sunan Kali Jaga, this
Adipati Mangkubumi decided in Saka 1434 (1512 AD) to give up his
post as Governor of Semarang. He handed it over to his younger
brother and left for Tembayat on the request of Sunan Kali Jaga, who
had entrusted him with the task of Islamising this hinterland area. As
he is known to have stayed around 25 years in Tembayat, we can guess
that he died around 1537.
We must now attempt to compare this reconstructed biography of the saint
with the reconstruction of the political history of Demak made by the great
Javanologists de Graaf and Pigeaud (1974: ch. II). Rinkes could not
possibly have known of this synthesis.
It seems clear that the saint’s great-grandfather, the Adipati of Bintara,
was none other than Raden Patah, a peranakan Chinese from Gresik. His
son, Sabrang Lor, the Rodim Senior mentioned by Tomé Pires, could well
be the first to have embraced Islam in the family. He subdued Palembang
and was rewarded by being appointed as tandha (head of the customs

office) of Bintara (Demak). It was certainly he who made Demak an inde-
pendent state. He subdued Jepara and implemented a successful policy of
matrimonial alliances with the leading families of the harbours of the
northern coast (pesisir). When he died he was succeeded by his younger
brother Sultan Trenggana, who was born around 1480 and died in 1546. As
is well known, the latter’s reign corresponds to the greatest period of
Islamic expansion and the peak of Demak’s power.
This comparison shows that both reconstructions agree perfectly as
regards dates and events. The 1476 attack on Majapahit by Pandan Arang’s
father with his 300 men corresponds to an event related in the Sajarah
Banten (Djajadiningrat 1913: 25), where it is written that Sabrang Lor led a
surprise attack in which the king of Majapahit was assassinated. This
comparison also underlines the social origin of Pandan Arang who could
have been the grandnephew, through his mother, of Sabrang Lor and Treng-
gana. This may account for his appointment as Adipati of Semarang, an
important administrative function which he inherited from his father, and
which he temporarily occupied.
However, the comparison is especially useful for a good understanding
of the context of the uncommon life of this great-grandson of a Gresik
Chinese, who first became an administrator and then dedicated his life to
religion. It shows in particular that the political power of this family of
homines novi from Demak had not yet been fully established during the life
of the saint’s father. The territory they controlled was still very narrow. As a
reward for his attack against the king of Majapahit, Sabrang Lor could
bestow on Pandan Arang’s father only the administration of a harbour close
to Demak which did not have any real importance. Furthermore, and
perhaps on account of a desired ambiguity between Islamisation and politi-
cal expansion, it is implicit in the sources that he first had to conquer that
harbour.
If we accept the validity of the dates given by the Serat Kanda, we can
reach the conclusion that the saint of Tembayat spent his youth under the
reign of Sabrang Lor in an atmosphere of Islamic triumphalism. He must
have witnessed the Islamic takeover of Demak, as it is generally thought
that it was under Sabrang Lor’s reign that the city was released from
vassalage. He must also have spent the rest of his life under the reign of
Trenggana, in a climate of Islamic conquest, as it was Trenggana, notori-
ously, who boosted the power of Demak by victoriously launching his
troops against the Javanese Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms. The traditional
narratives also show the wheeler-dealer atmosphere that permeated the
pesisir. Characteristically, most of the miracles surrounding the life of the
saint before his arrival at Tembayat relate to trade, money or gold.
Pandan Arang’s life story is perfectly adapted to its historical context. It
comes as no surprise that, born in a small Muslim minority eager to fulfill a
great destiny, the future saint would try, in going to Tembayat, to participate
146 THE POTENT DEAD
in the process of Islamisation and political expansion that was then

encroaching on Javanese hinterland. Trade and politics both used the new
religion as their flag.
The originality of Pandan Arang lies in the deep spiritual dimension of
his commitment. It is all but certain that Sultan Trenggana, whom Tomé
Pires describes as a frivolous youth living a life of pleasure, used Islam as a
pretext to establish his power and domination through the military
campaigns he launched during his mature years. Obviously the future saint
was not satisfied with this social religion, and, as we saw above, the atten-
tion he displayed towards tasawuf shows clearly enough that he went
through an authentic conversion. To him spiritual questioning took the
upper hand over the worldly matters of such importance to the ruling elite
of Demak. Undoubtedly this spirituality also helped him in the peculiar
context of his teaching.
THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN THE TEMBAYAT AREA AT

THE TIME OF PANDAN ARANG’S ARRIVAL
In the Serat Kandha (see Rinkes 1996), Pandan Arang is reported to have
left Semarang for Tembayat in 1512. At the time of his arrival, the village
was included within the small kingdom of Pengging, then ruled by one
Andayaningrat who was a vassal of the Majapahit king. The capital of
Pengging was close to Tembayat, as it was located on the southeast slopes
of Mount Merapi. Dependency on the great Javanese kingdom was already
long established, as, according to the Nagarakertagama, King Hayam
Wuruk visited the Pajang area, including Pengging, during the 14th century.
As in most of the non-Islamised part of the island, the local religion was a
brand of Hindu-Buddhism greatly modified under the influence of Javanese
beliefs. We know from writings such as the Tantu Panggelaran (Pigeaud
1924) that during the 15th century and by the beginning of the 16th century,
most of the island’s religious figures had taken refuge in the numerous reli-
gious communities called mandala, which had mushroomed all over the
island. It seems that these communities were centred not around temples as
previously but around local deities more or less assimilated to deities of
Indian origin. It should be noted though that Islam could well have pene-
trated Pengging in the guise of a monist mysticism, as some Javanese
sources mention the influence of the heterodox saint Seh Siti Jenar in the
area of our study. If the religious version of the life of the Tembayat saint is
to be believed, he was not far from this ‘heretical doctrine’.
The small kingdom of Pengging, which had probably existed since the
second half of the 15th century, remained faithful to Majapahit and stub-
bornly opposed to Demak. According to the Sajarah Banten, Pengging
provided support to the Majapahit army during the final attack of the
Muslim troops led by Sunan Kudus in 1527. The king of Pengging,
Andayaningrat, is even reported to have perished during this battle.
His younger son, Kebo Kenanga, succeeded him on the throne of

Pengging. When he refused to make his submission to Demak and embrace
Islam, Trenggana sent an embassy to try to persuade him, but it met with
failure. Two years later, probably at the beginning of the 1530s, the ener-
getic Sunan Kudus was sent to Pengging at the head of an army. Pengging
was attacked and its king, Kebo Kenanga, was killed (de Graaf & Pigeaud
1974: ch. XIX). These events marked the end of the independence of
Pengging, the last non-Muslim state of Central Java, which became a
dependency of the Muslim kingdom of Demak.
As he is reported to have lived in Tembayat between 1512 and 1537, the
saint must have witnessed the shift of power in the area from Hindu-
Buddhist to Muslim rule under the suzerainty of Demak.
It is worthwhile asking what might have been Pandan Arang’s role in this
transformation, considering that Sunan Kali Jaga had sent him to the
Pengging area to Islamise it. De Graaf and Pigeaud remark that, surpris-
ingly enough, the Javanese chronicles do not establish any link between the
Demak onslaught on Pengging and the saint’s missionary action in the same
area. In any case the concomitance of the two events is striking.
Unfortunately, the paucity of the sources does not enable us to ascertain
whether Pandan Arang was a simple missionary (mubaligh) interested only
in the propagation of the new faith, or a sort of agent working for the king of
Demak, and thus entrusted with the mission of preparing the takeover of
Pengging by the Muslim kingdom. In any case, the answer to this question
may well be found in the reason underlying Pandan Arang’s decision to take
up residence in Tembayat and not in any other place. Rinkes grasped the
importance of the question and suggested two answers to it: the proximity of
religious sites such as ‘Kajoran, Jimbun, Banyu Biru’, and the setting up,
after the Muslim conquest, of agrarian monastic centres designed to diffuse
the faith such as existed in mediaeval Europe during the period of expansion
of Christianity (he may have meant the pesantrens). Aware that these reasons
were insufficient, Rinkes added: ‘Later I may have the opportunity to return
to this extraordinary matter and to publish more positive statements about it’.
TEMBAYAT AFTER PANDAN ARANG

To better understand the reasons underlying the choice of this site, we should
analyse the events that took place in Tembayat after the death of the saint.
According to Fernão Mendes Pinto, Trenggana was killed in 1546 while
attacking Eastern Java at the head of the forces of Demak. His successor,
Sunan Prawata, was killed three years later in 1549 by Arya Penangsang of
Jipang, who was himself slain by Jaka Tingkir, grandson of Andayaningrat,
the King of Pengging and son-in-law of Trenggana. Following this event,
Jaka Tingkir was proclaimed king under the name of Sultan Adiwijaya, and
took residence in Pajang. This marked the end of the kingdom of Demak and
the beginning of that of Pajang. Two points should be underlined at this stage:
148 THE POTENT DEAD
the capital of the new kingdom was located some 30 km from Tembayat, and
the sovereign of Pajang saw himself as heir to both Demak and Pengging.
Adiwijaya had a close connection to the site of Tembayat. We know from
epigraphic inscriptions that some 30 years after Pandan Arang’s death in
1488 A.J (1566 AD), that is, in the reign of Adiwijaya, the saint’s mausoleum
was renovated. Considering the importance of the embellishments under-
taken, the commission must have originated from the king himself.
The greatest part of the king’s reign was dedicated to the expansion
of Pajang’s influence over Java. During a sort of congress of Javanese
potentates held in Giri under Sunan Prapen’s leadership, Adiwijaya was
recognised as the suzerain of the states of Eastern Java and the Pesisir.
Several years later though, perhaps because the king was ageing, the winds
of revolt began to blow over the northern part of Central Java. In 1587 the
heads of several southern districts, and in particular the young and ambitious
Senopati, ruler of Mataram, refused to swear submission (sowan) to the
court, a refusal amounting to an act of rebellion. Adiwijaya then launched a
military expedition against them. As the attacking troops reached the Pram-
banan area, Mount Merapi erupted and the Pajang army disbanded. The old
Adiwijaya (he had been ruling for 40 years) turned back home. The Javanese
chronicles from Mataram like to emphasise this particular episode, as it
legitimises spiritually the power bestowed on the new dynasty. Abandoned
by his army and his followers, the Sultan of Pajang decided to go to
Tembayat. He rode there on his elephant to find the mausoleum closed. The
guardian (juru kunci) of this sacred site could not open the gate. A dialogue
followed: ‘Guardian, why can’t the door of the tomb be opened?’ asked the
king, to which the guardian replied: ‘Providence does not permit His
Majesty to retain His rank. The sign of that is that the Watcher (Penunggu)
has rejected His Majesty . . . The light of royalty has passed from His
Majesty to the ruler of Mataram’ (quoted in Rinkes 1996: 106–7).
Exhausted, the old sovereign spent the night outside the mausoleum fence,
and the following morning left for Pajang where he died a few days later.
It was Arya Pangiri, a nephew of this sovereign, who ascended the
throne. To this end he had brushed aside the son of King Pangeran Benawa.
The latter seized back power the following year (i.e. in 1588) by toppling
his cousin with the help of Senapati from Mataram. Thanks to this strata-
gem, Pajang was submitted to Mataram and Senapati became the supreme
ruler of the whole of Central Java.
Senapati’s expansion into East Java led to a counterattack by the princes
of the region between 1593 and 1595. The troops of Mataram were headed
by Senapati Kediri, who managed to contain the advances of the enemy
before being killed in Uter, perhaps near Wonogiri, to the South of Solo. He
was buried in Wedi (Meinsma, quoted in de Graaf & Pigeaud 1974: ch. XI).
Senapati, King of Mataram, died in 1601.
After the short reign of Seda-ing-Krapyak (1601–13), Sultan Agung
ascended to the throne (1613–46). We know that during the early years of
his reign, between 1617 and 1618, a great revolt broke out ‘in the Pajang
area’, which was supported by a dissident party from the court of Mataram.
The Mataram armies crushed the revolt and laid waste the area. The inhab-
itants were taken to Karta to take part in the construction of the new capital
of Sultan Agung. Unfortunately, we know neither the reasons for the insur-
rection nor the names of its leaders.
In 1630 an insurrectional plot was discovered by the Mataram authorities
in 27 villages. Under the pretext of begging, the plotters were entering the
houses of the inhabitants and stirring them up against the king. The inhabi-
tants of these villages were deported to the village of Taji on the fringe of
the capital city. Invoking some very good reasons which cannot all be
reported here, such as the fact that the origin of this religious-grounded
rebellion was in the Wedi region, de Graaf considers himself entitled to
identify the rebels as men of religion (he compares them to ‘beggar
monks’) from Tembayat (de Graaf 1958: ch. XI).
In 1633 Sunan Agung went on a pilgrimage to the tomb of the Tembayat
saint, while he had gathered a large army which he intended to use against
Batavia and Blambangan. Even though this episode is narrated in the Babad
Nitik (see Rinkes), nothing is known of his reason for taking this pilgrimage
to a mausoleum—a thing few sovereigns do, as de Graaf is quick to point
out. According to the Javanese chronicle, after completing his pilgrimage
Sultan Agung decided to renovate the mausoleum, just as Adiwijaya, the
last king of Pajang, had done before him. Wishing to show the highest
homage to the saint he ordered that the stones, instead of simply being
transported from Mataram to Tembayat, be passed from hand to hand
by men sitting cross-legged (sila) in such a way as to make an immense
line between the two sites. To this day it is possible to see in Tembayat a
monumental, lintelless gate (candi bentar) with an inscription dated 1633,
saying that the king received a revelation on the site.
We learn from one witness, Rijklof van Goens, that in 1656 Sultan
Agung’s successor, Amangkurat Tegalwangi, summoned ‘between 5000
and 6000 religious chiefs’, whom he then killed ‘in half hour’ cannonade,
and although this massacre cannot be directly related to Tembayat, it helps
us to understand what ensued (de Graaf 1956: 248–50).
Between 1670 and 1682 a long civil war set Prince Trunojoyo in opposi-
tion to King Amangkurat. A leading family of Wedi, the Kajorans, played
an important role on the side of the rebel, who was the son-in-law of Raden
Kajoran, also called Ambalik. The cradle of this clan was the village of
Kajoran, which was destroyed in 1677.
TEMBAYAT AND KAJORAN

De Graaf has the merit of having been the first to reveal the role played by
this Kajoran family in Mataram. It takes its name from a village located
in the immediate vicinity of Tembayat (see Figure 10.1). According to
150 THE POTENT DEAD
tradition, the family acknowledges Said Kalkum ing Wotgaleh, also called
Panembahan Mas ing Kajoran, as its great ancestor. With the second gener-
ation, marriages take place in religious circles. The two known sons of Said
Kalkum married the first two of Sunan Tembayat’s daughters, and the
second a daughter of the priest-king of Giri.
The third generation entered into a web of matrimonial alliances with the
royal families of the area. A granddaughter of Said Kalkum married the son
of Pajang’s prince Adiwijaya, another became the wife of Senapati, while a
third married Ki Ageng Mataram. This policy of matrimonial alliances
remained in force (see the genealogical tree of the Kajorans in de Graaf
1940). De Graaf also underlines the numerous pretexts that such alliances
gave the Kajorans to play the prominent political role which they eventually
enjoyed.
Later on, in his famous studies on the history of Mataram during the 16th
and 17th centuries, from the kingdom’s foundation to Amangkurat II’s
death, as well as in his book about the first Muslim kingdoms of Java co-
authored with Th. Pigeaud, de Graaf, without underestimating the role of
these princely alliances, insists on the fact that the Kajorans were essen-
tially a family of religious, or ‘priesterlijk familie’, which drew its legiti-
macy from the Tembayat saint. This opinion rests on a quote from the only
letter of Raden Kajoran kept to this day. He wrote to his cousin in 1677,
invoking ‘the help of their ancestors and that of the negeri of Zambayat,
Cadjoran and Samarangh’ (de Graaf 1940: 328).
The texts leave no doubt about the fact that the Kajoran family consisted
of men of religion. However, one might expect such a clan, which appears
‘religious’ in nature and claims descent from a great saint-cum-Islamiser, to
display, on the surface at least, some special attachment towards the great
ancestor’s religion. Actually, no such sentiment appears. ‘In fact’, writes de
Graaf himself, ‘Wedi was an ancient center of the pre-Islam tradition, and
Dr. Pigeaud told me that the Wedi kiayi could in no way be considered
orthodox followers of the faith, but that they should rather be viewed as
followers of a Javanese mysticism impregnated by pre-Muslim popular
beliefs. Wedi was also a center of the mask theater [Pigeaud 1938: ch. 23,
54, 63, 73]’ (de Graaf 1958: ch. XI). The close relationship between mask
dance and pre-Muslim beliefs is well known.2 One should also mention the
1630 revolt during which the Kajorans, if they are really the same ones,
appear to de Graaf himself as beggar monks (bedelmonniken), a tradition
that smacks more of Indian religions than Islam; a strange ‘offspring’ for a
great Muslim saint!
Both genealogies of the Kajoran and Tembayat families published by
de Graaf concur about the marriage of two daughters of Pandan Arang
with Panembahan Agung ing Kajoran. However, only the Tembayat
genealogy mentions that the saint and Said Kalkum were brothers, on this
point—this should be emphasised—contradicting all other chronicles. It
is strange, to say the least, that the Kajorans should have forgotten to
mention this important bond with the saint they claim as ancestor.
Besides, it is well known that mausoleum guardians are usually selected
from among a saint’s descendants. This is indeed the case in Tembayat.3
The descendants of the two families I interviewed all insist that no
Kajoran has ever been the juru kunci of Tembayat. This is more evidence
that the two clans, although they were allied, were distinct from each
other. This genealogical comparison also shows that it is the Tembayat
clan that tried to ally itself to Kajoran, rather than the other way round. It
was the saint’s family which gave its women to the Kajorans—an implicit
token of the latter’s seniority and respectability. Rinkes concurs with this,
and although he does not give any reference to substantiate his assertion,
he does say that Pandan Arang decided to take residence in Tembayat
because the sacred site of Kajoran was nearby (Rinkes 1996: 104). Let us
put forward one final argument demonstrating that the Kajoran may not
be considered as a religious family descended from the Tembayat saint.
De Graaf insists on the fact that the Kajorans were allies of the
Wanakusuma of Gunung Kidul during a civil war and that these two
families were allied through marriage to the saint of Tembayat who
became, as he sees it, the kernel of the rebellion: ‘We have seen already
that between these rebels [the Kajorans and the Wanakusumas] existed a
strong genealogical link, namely their common descendance from Kjai
Ageng Pandhan Arang of Tembayat’ (emphasis in the original) (de Graaf
1940: 309). One knows the role given to ‘ancestors’ by the Javanese.
Before taking any important decision, they always visit ancestral tombs to
ask for blessing and instructions. A Dutch document tells us that, faced
with a worsening military situation, some chiefs of the Wanakusuma
family made a pilgrimage to the tomb of their forefathers (voorvaderen,
de Graaf’s emphasis) which was not in Tembayat but in Kajoran (de
Graaf 1940: 309).
Based on all this information, the following conclusions can be drawn.
The Kajoran and Tembayat families are distinct. The Kajorans are older
and thus ‘superior’ to the Tembayats who tried to make an alliance with
them, and not the other way round. The religious character of the Kajoran
clan does not originate in Islam and thus predates the saint’s arrival in
Tembayat. On the other hand, the two families were allied through
marriage, and this may be what induced Raden Kajoran, in the letter quoted
by de Graaf, to refer not only to the ancestors of the Kajoran clan but also
to those of Tembayat and Semarang (i.e. to the saint’s lineage). It is
probable that Raden Kajoran had a high regard for this great saint who was
also one of his forebears, and we can surmise that as he was in a difficult
phase of his struggle it was in his interest to broaden the range of his ances-
tors as much as he could to obtain the support he expected. Therefore the
kernel of the rebellion, instead of being Tembayat, was Kajoran. The all-
important role of this family in the area is also demonstrated in the web of
alliances it wove with the families of local potentates in the southern part
152 THE POTENT DEAD
of Central Java, Pajang and Mataram, which is not the case with the
Tembayat family.
In short, when Pandan Arang arrived in the Wedi region, which had not
yet been Islamised and thus followed the Hindu-Buddhist tradition, there
was in Kajoran a powerful family residing near a sacred site. Pandan Arang,
who was unrelated to them as he came from Semarang, chose to settle in
their vicinity. He managed to establish a good relationship with this family,
as shown by the fact that he gave his two daughters to the clan’s chief,
Pangeran Mas ing Kajoran. This seems to demonstrate that the latter
converted to Islam (through the entreaties of the saint?), because no infidel
may marry a Muslim woman.
THE NATURE OF THE KAJORAN CLAN

As the Kajorans have not left any trace of their early history, we are forced
to refer to Sunan Tembayat’s history. According to the Javanese chronicles
the latter wished to escape from the world. He left the city, and one would
expect him to have chosen an uninhabited area in which to live as a hermit.
Instead, he headed for Tembayat on the slopes of Mount Jabalkat, which
were already occupied by non-Muslim religious, the ajar (Rinkes 1996:
87). The chronicles then dwell lengthily on several episodes in which the
saint opposed these religious men and eventually succeeded in converting
them by displaying supernatural powers superior to theirs. Although such
episodes are commonly found in the narratives on great Muslim mission-
aries, this information should not be dismissed.
One should at this point raise the question of the meaning of the word
ajar. First it means ‘the one who has knowledge’, as in the Arabic ulama.
All scholars agree that it applies to a man of religion, and it is generally
translated as ‘hermit’. This translation correctly conveys the idea of a man
of religion living in isolation as it appears in the texts. It may however be
misleading, as the word ‘hermit’ implies not only the idea of isolation but
also that of solitude. In the Javanese texts the word ajar might indeed apply
to genuine hermits, but it is also used to designate men of religion who live
communally in remote places. In such cases the texts often mention the
head of the ajar. These communities of ajar call to mind the mandala,
whose origin is related in the Tantu Panggelaran (Pigeaud 1924).
Unfortunately, this text does not give any description of the life
inside such an institution. In his commentaries on the Nagarakertagama,
Pigeaud translates the word mandala as ‘sacred ring community’, and
adds: ‘Most probable seems the supposition of the existence of sacred,
tabooed rings being the central sanctuaries of the communities of this
group. The Tantric sacred ring made by learned Court priests [. . .] and the
ancient rural worship of the mandala people might have more in common
than meets the eye . . .’ (Pigeaud 1962: 247–9). And on another occasion
(Pigeaud 1962: 485–6):
The shiwaitic character of the mandala communities is apparent from the

Tantu Panggelaran tales. They suggest the existence of a popular cult of Shiwa
and Uma. The probability of a substratum of ancient native Javanese worship
of mountain deities and chthonic powers is great . . . Probably the mandala
people, men, women and children, as a rule lived in remote districts in the
wooded hills of the interior of the country, engaged in agriculture.
COMPARISON
At this stage of our demonstration it is necessary to make some compar-
isons. The Banten chronicle Sajarah Banten relates a similar episode which
took place during the Islamisation of Banten, a process attributed to Sunan
Gunung Jati and still more to his son Hasanudin, who became the first
Muslim sovereign of this kingdom. The story can be summed up as follows:
before launching a military attack against the ‘pagan’ kingdom of Banten
Girang, Sunan Gunung Jati and his son travelled from Demak to the
harbour of Banten and then to the capital city of Banten Girang. However,
the real purpose of their journey was to go to Mount Pulasari, located to the
south of Banten, next to the Sunda Strait. In order to convert the ‘800’ ajar
(ajar domas) who were living there, Hasanudin took residence among them
for several years. The success of his endeavour is alluded to in the cock-
fighting story in which he was set against the ajar. Hasanudin eventually
left Mount Pulasari after addressing this enigmatic sentence to the hermits:
‘You must stay here otherwise you will cause the ruin of Java’. It is obvious
that this Mount Pulasari was an important sacred site in the kingdom of
Banten.
I have tried on another occasion (Guillot et al. 1994) to demonstrate that
this apparent legend is based on some very real information. A shiwaite
temple was built on Mount Pulasari, probably as early as the 10th century,
which is something quite rare in the westernmost part of Java. In the Tantu
Panggelaran Mount Pulasari is Mount Kailasha, Shiva’s residence. It is
an established fact that important changes took place in the cult between the
10th and the 15th century. The fact that Mount Pulasari is mentioned in
the Tantu Panggelaran suggests that there might have been a mandala on the
slopes of this mountain. It happens that an interesting piece of information
has come down to us through the testimony of Dutch travellers during their
first journey to Asia at the end of the 16th century. They noticed at the market
of Banten the presence of people wearing the standard dress of Hindu-
Javanese men of religion, namely clothes made of a bark fabric, or
dhluwang. They call them by the name ‘pythagoricians’, meaning ‘Hindus’.
This demonstrates that some 70 years after Banten’s fall to Islam in 1526–27,
these religious had still not converted to Islam. Moreover, they were granted
the authorisation to settle in the kingdom by its Muslim ruler, no small token
of tolerance from an Islamiser. The Dutch tell us that their village was called
‘Sura’ and located at the foot of the ‘Gonon besar’ to the south of Banten.
This ‘Gonon besar’ may correspond only to the volcanic massif that
154 THE POTENT DEAD
comprises the three volcanoes Karang, Pulasari and Asepan. To the foot of
Pulasari there still exist today two villages with the names Mandalasari (‘the
pure Mandala’) and Mandalawangi (‘the perfumed Mandala’). It seems
reasonable to assume, then that the ‘Sura’ (a corruption of Sari?) mentioned
by the Dutch travellers is the whole area of these two villages. If this guess is
correct, it could well be that the ‘religious’ people whom the Dutch caught
sight of were none other than ajar living in a mandala.
The path followed by Pandan Arang and that of Sunan Gunung Jati and
his son present so many similarities that one is strongly tempted to
conclude, based on Banten alone, that Pandan Arang chose to settle in the
Tembayat area because there existed in this place an influential ‘religious
village’ or mandala, where lived the ajar mentioned by the Javanese trad-
ition. It is wiser at this stage, though, to add new information before
confirming this hypothesis.
MANDALA AND JERO

The etymology of the name Kajoran is not evident at first sight. None of the
studies referred to above have given it any attention. An etymological key is
given in the Daghregister, that mentions the presence of a regiment called
either ‘Kajoran’ or ‘Kajeroan’ in Banten, West Java. Thus the word Kajoran
might well come from the word jero transformed through a metathesis. The
word kajeroan is well known, as it is often used to refer to those among
the Orang Kanekes—better known as Baduy—who live within the limits of the
most sacred zone of their territory, and thus the area subjected to
the greatest number of taboos. As is well known, it is these men from the
‘inside’ who perform the rites in their sanctuary, Arca doma, where nobody
else is authorised to enter. It is also public knowledge that these ‘men of
religion’ have to this day not converted to Islam. It is believed that these
Orang Kanekes are a rare example of a mandala still extant.
The fact that the Daghregister attributes military functions to such men
of religion should come as no surprise. To remain with the Baduys, Ahmad
Djajadiningrat asserted his Baduy origin in his memoirs (not an easy
acknowledgement for such a high dignitary) and claimed to be descended
from the son of a kajeroan chief (pu'un) who served in the army of the king
of Banten in the 17th century and lost an arm during a battle in Lampung,
hence his nickname ‘Astapati’, or ‘deadhand’ (Djajadiningrat 1936: 4). One
can still see his tomb in the cemetery of the Djajadiningrat family at Odel to
the south of Banten.
The tradition of calling up ‘a regiment of men of religion’ continued well
into the Muslim period: we know of the existence of such a regiment, called
Suranata, in Demak as early as the 16th century, and in Yogyakarta and
Surakarta up to the 19th century (van den Berg 1882: 1–190). We also know
that in Banten, in the 17th century, the men of religion in that regiment were
not Muslims. The contemporary Dutch documents insist on the fact that the
members of these regiments were long-haired (langhaar), while the people

who had converted to Islam were characterised by their cropped hair
(geschorven). Nothing indicates that this regiment was composed exclu-
sively of members from the Baduy kajeroan. It is even probable that it was
not the case, as, following an ancient tradition, the Baduy kajeroan may not
consist of more than 40 families.
The name jero is still in use among the Baduy. This people has preserved
almost unchanged its ancient traditions, and has therefore been the object of
early attention from scholars. Such resilience, though, is far from unique.
During several long periods of field research, my colleague H. Chambert-
Loir and I observed that there are remnants of jeros all over the island of
Java, although small in number. Generally these jeros have kept only a few
of their specific features, the meaning of which is usually forgotten. Most
are located in the Sunda area of West Java, which has long remained cut off
from the principal routes of communication and has therefore better
conserved its ancient traditions than the Javanese part of the island.
However, traces of jeros are also found, even today, in the outskirts of great
cities such as Tuban or Cirebon. Without going into detail, it is possible to
establish the main features of a typical jero such as it still exists today:
1. It corresponds to a physical space precisely delineated. In one
instance the inhabitants remember that this space used to be delin-
eated by a circle (see the description of the mandala by Pigeaud
1962).
2. This space is sacred and until today is exempted from taxation, as it
has the status of ‘tanah GG’ (state land) granted to all the ancient
‘religious’ foundations, a status continuing that of the perdikan of
the Muslim period and the sima of the Hindu-Buddhist period. As a
reminder of this ancient time, the civil servants of the republic
remain, even today, reluctant to enter a land benefiting from such a
status. This reluctance may well hark back to the ancient prohibition
which forbade the ‘royal tax-collectors’ (mangilala drwya haji) to
enter these ‘free’ lands.
3. The sanctuary is located within the jero itself, even if in one or two
cases it has over time been clearly separated from it.
4. It is inhabited by a fixed number of nuclear families, each corre-
sponding to an individual house. The number of such families may
vary considerably. It goes from 40 among the Baduys to six in Leles
in the Sunda region. It should be remembered that this village has
undergone deep transformation during the restoration of the temple.
5. These inhabitants are all bound to respect a number of ancestral
traditions. For example, the use of ‘modern’ implements (tiles, nails,
lighting means other than the oil lamp, etc.) is prohibited. They also
have to abide by various alimentary taboos; in some places they are
not allowed to cook, and have to ‘beg’ for their food.
156 THE POTENT DEAD
6. These inhabitants consider themselves the descendants of the

founding father (cikal bakal) of the village. As this ancestor is
usually confused with the deity worshipped in the sanctuary, they are
entrusted with the privilege of officiating in this sanctuary.
Obviously the jeros that have been preserved until today on account of their
sacredness are the last remnants of the mandala of yore. We can confidently
affirm that in all probability there were as many kajeroan as there were
mandala, and therefore our Kajorans of Wedi were actually the leading
family of such a mandala. It is because there was such a large number of
these kajeroan that there are so many ‘religious’ people mentioned in the
sources from the 16th and 17th centuries.
TEMBAYAT, AN ISLAMISED ROYAL MANDALA?

The history of Central Java between the time of the disappearance of the
Hindu–Buddhist kingdoms in the 10th century and the coming of Islam
remains largely obscure. We shall simply record that Tembayat is located a
mere 10 km from Prambanan, which must for some time have been the
capital of the old Central Javanese kingdom. It is difficult to know whether
the memory of this kingdom had been preserved during these five centuries
and whether the religious centre of Tembayat goes back to this period.
Without wishing to brush aside such an hypothesis definitively, we are
inclined to think that this was not the case. The Tantu Panggelaran seems to
point to the fact that, beginning at the end of the 14th century, at the time of
declining political power, there was a great movement to found mandala
which branched out from older mandala, as is still the case today with the
Muslim religious schools (pesantren). The Ponorogo area seems to occupy
a peculiar position in the history of Tembayat. It is there that the ancestor of
the Kajorans is reported to be buried (see the genealogy in de Graaf) and
where Sunan Tembayat seems to have converted to Islam Batara Katong,
whose big mausoleum is in Setono near Ponorogo (Rinkes 1996: 96–8). It
is a pity that the Tantu Panggelaran does not provide any further infor-
mation on this point.
Whatever the origin and the foundation date of the mandala of
Tembayat, it must have had modest beginnings, at least as long as no strong
political power dominated the area. The main sanctuary seems to have
consisted of the small Tembayat hill transformed into a pyramid with
levels—a type of religious architectural structure abundantly found in
Java—whose traces have been surveyed by archeologists (Lombard 1990:
115). In this region, formerly called Bobodo, the religious foundation and
its leading family probably gained local prominence. Its destiny changed
with the rise to political power of the Pengging family, from which the
kingdom of Pajang later issued. Unfortunately we do not have any data on
the type of relationship existing between the mandala of Tembayat and the
House of Pengging. However, the proximity of the two centres—one a

centre of political power, the other of religious activity—allows us to guess
that the mandala of Tembayat at the time was already considered a site of
special importance to the House of Pengging. The latter might well have
made it its favourite sanctuary, thus considerably enhancing the position
of the leading family of the mandala, the Kajorans. The importance of
Tembayat for the rulers of Pajang, originating from Pengging, cannot be
explained otherwise. We have seen above that the ruler of Pajang, Adiwi-
jaya, had had several buildings constructed on Tembayat hill and that he
had married his daughter off to a Kajoran. More importantly, it was at the
sanctuary of Tembayat, where he had come to pray after having lost a
battle, that he received a ‘divine’ revelation, telling him that he should put
an end to his reign and to the dynasty of Pengging. It is clear that Pandan
Arang did not settle in Tembayat by chance but because of the important
role played by its religious centre and its leaders.
In the light of this hypothesis it appears that the principal merit of Pandan
Arang would have been to Islamise the religious centre of the Pengging
kingdom by converting the Kajoran family, to which he allied himself by
giving to its head his two daughters in marriage. It can be argued that it was
the Muslim saint and not the mandala deity who was worshipped at
Tembayat at the time of Pajang. But it is obvious that the sacredness of the
site was more paramount than the dogma, as is also implicit in the fact that
the daughter of the King of Pajang was given in marriage not to a descen-
dant of the Muslim saint but to a Kajoran.
The dynastic change that took place with Senopati of Mataram did not
greatly modify the ‘royal’ character assumed by the sanctuary of Tembayat,
in spite of Senapati’s efforts to transfer the sacred centre of his kingdom to
the south by giving a privileged place to the Goddess of the Southern Sea
(Nyai Roro Kidul). Senapati pragmatically took a woman from the Kajoran
family as one of his wives, which enabled him to obtain the support of this
influential family while covering up the coup he had masterminded. By
displaying respect towards Tembayat he was highlighting his claimed
membership of the House of Pengging.
Clergy and political power

Sultan Agung also had a privileged relationship with Tembayat. Although a
rare event for a king, he made a pilgrimage to this sacred site. The local
chronicles record that he had a revelation, and on return to his capital he
ordered the construction of several buildings, apparently as a votive
offering to the sanctuary.
De Graaf, apparently with good reason, links this display of attention to
Tembayat to the rebellion that had broken out three years earlier in 1630 in
the Wedi region and had been crushed by the king (1958: ch. XI). De Graaf
also thinks that the centre of the rebellion was in Kajoran because of the
158 THE POTENT DEAD
religious characteristics of its chiefs, whom he compares to ‘beggar

monks’.
If de Graaf’s assumption is borne out by facts, this episode has to be clas-
sified as a sign of an important social change—the suppression by Mataram
of all the feudalities and other intermediary powers in a push to unify Java.
It is a well-known historical fact that Sultan Agung made a determined
effort to crush by military means all the states and powers of Java, which
until then had enjoyed total, partial or nominal independence, and to put
them under his direct administration.
We have good reason to think that one of the autonomous forces he had to
fight was distributed throughout society: it was the clergy which represented
real power in Java at the turn of the 16th century. The Tantu Panggelaran
describes the multiplication of mandala across the island. At the same time
the monk Manik was on a long tour of the religious centres of the island
(Noorduyn 1982: 413–42). Tomé Pires estimated the number of these
religious people at 50 000 in Java (Pires 1944: 177). Many other examples
could be mentioned. It is all but certain that this traditional clergy, very
numerous and more or less Islamised, represented an important social force
which had to be taken into account by the state. This must have been the
principal reason why the kings were so eager to enrol them into special
regiments or, to remain within the framework of Tembayat, to enter into
matrimonial alliances with the family of Kajoran ‘men of religion’.
The desire to subdue this class of clergymen is clearly visible in Sultan
Agung’s crushing of the two ‘theocracies’ of Cirebon and Giri, and later in
the horrendous massacre by Amangkurat of 5000–6000 men of religion, by
means of deadly cannon fire.
This traditional clergy had enjoyed a great degree of autonomy in the
15th and 16th centuries and had good reason to be opposed to the power of
the state. In spite of the scarcity of data on the internal history of Mataram
in the 17th century, we know that there were three rebellions against it
during the span of 60 years, in 1617–18, in 1630, and at the end of the
1670s. It is possible that these three rebellions were led from Kajoran. The
highly combative spirit of this clan might be related to the status it had
acquired as warden of the royal sanctuary.
As a sign of the times, during the last rebellion at the end of the 17th
century, the Kajorans seem to have given up their clergy-related demands
and become part of a general political opposition to the central power.
In 1677 the village of Kajoran, the cradle of the great Tembayat family,
was destroyed. All those who continued fighting found themselves on the
side of the defeated. The end of Mataram brought about the end of Kajoran.
During the great civil wars (gègèr pacinan) of the middle of the 18th
century, rebels tried to create a centre of resistance in Tembayat (Rinkes
1996: 115–20). They failed in their attempt, as the Kajorans had long lost
their power. From this time onwards, Tembayat did not mean much to the
ancient royal houses of Central Java. In the 1804 list of tombs and other
sanctuaries where the Sultanate of Yogyakarta presented official offerings,

the Tembayat mausoleum is found among dozens of other sites, and the
amount offered seems quite small (4 reales) compared to the offerings
given to the tombs of Tegalwangi (40 reales) or Ermata, Giri and Demak
(10 reales each) (Carey 1980: 171).
On the site itself, few people are now aware of the existing relationship
between the Kajoran clan and Tembayat hill. Since the remote events we
have just related, this hill has lost its singularity. Even if it still enjoys a
certain aura among the local people, today it is nothing more than a simple
place of pilgrimage.
11
Interpreting the historical significance
of tombs and chronicles in
contemporary Java
James J. Fox
Tombs on Java—whether the mausoleums of great personages, such as the

saints or rulers of Java, or the simpler graves of village founders, local
dignitaries or religious teachers—these resting places (pasarean) provide
references to the past. Tombs embody an authority from the past, and
through this embodiment offer a source of power. Approaching this author-
ity to seek power is by no means a simple act. What is required is guidance,
mediation and interpretation. At most tombs it is the custodian—the juru
kunci, or ‘keeper of the key’—who provides this assistance to individuals
visiting the sacred place.
Individuals on Java visit tombs with their special intentions, often at
times of personal crisis, in order to place themselves in relationship to a
personage of the past. It is the custodian who assists in this relationship: he
offers access, prepares the visitor, guides the visit and then interprets the
outcome. Quite literally, he holds the key to what is considered to be, for
that tomb, the proper form of visitation. Although there is a general pattern
for such visits, each tomb has its own particularities to which the juru kunci
alone may alert the visitor. Over each tomb, the juru kunci holds unique
authority.
Most juru kunci are related to the personage in the tomb at which they
serve. They may be the descendants of that personage, in which case it is
not unusual to have the genealogy of the juru kunci displayed in or near the
tomb as evidence of his authority. Or they may be the descendants of
the servants (or followers) of that personage and thus perpetuate a close
relationship that once existed. For all royal tombs, court servants (abdi
dalem) are specially appointed as custodians. These positions were once,
and in some cases still are, hereditary. Where tombs are considered under
the purvey of a particular village, only a local resident, born in the village,
may be appointed as juru kunci.1
160
INTERPRETING THE HISTORICAL TOMBS 161
At many tombs there is more than one juru kunci. For some tombs, such
as Gunung Jati or Imogiri, a hierarchy of custodians cares for the grave
complex. Duties are distributed by rank and seniority, and the seniormost
juru kunci is considered to hold the greatest knowledge of the place.
I argue in this chapter that juru kunci throughout Java play an extra-
ordinarily important—though often overlooked—role in interpreting and
disseminating views of Java’s past. More than this—they have a special
interpretive role because they are continually involved in relating the past to
the present for their visitors. Visitors seek them out, rely on their assistance
to conduct them through their visit, and often accept their interpretation of
what they personally experience during the course of their visit.
The practice of ziarah (tomb visitation) involves millions of Javanese on
a regular basis. All the evidence would suggest that this practice is still
growing, especially with the improvement in transportation. It is common
now for a group of villagers to rent one or more buses to carry out a tour of
ziarah sites or a visit to one particular tomb. This gives juru kunci an ever
more important role in providing popular interpretations of the past.
The timing of a ziarah visit is critical, and each tomb has its own temporal
conjunctions for optimal visitation—on a weekly, monthly (35-day), annual
and often longer time cycle. These propitious conjunctions are referred to in
Javanese by the term tumbuk, and their significance grows in importance
depending on the length of the cycles involved and the number of days in
different cycles that ‘meet’ one another. At times of such important conjunc-
tions I have been to tombs so crowded that they were approachable only in
slow single file, which proceeded through the night. At these gatherings the
juru kunci have no time to expound their perspectives on the past, and can
manage only to direct visitors in and out of the tomb as quickly as possible.
But I have visited the same tomb on a lesser weekly cycle, when the juru
kunci were readily available to instruct and guide visitors on a personal
basis.
At many tombs, and certainly at major ones, stalls are set up in and
around the tomb to sell a great variety of pamphlets and other items that
relate to the history of the place. These pamphlets, in Indonesian, Javanese
or Sundanese, expound a diversity of excerpts and summaries of different
chronicles (babad). At some tombs juru kunci provide, sometimes only on
request, their own stencilled accounts.
In addition to this plethora of popular written sources, every tomb has its
oral traditions. In the long hours of the night, tales about the tomb are
recounted with visitors to the place. Frequent visitors often enlighten
newcomers or share tales with other frequent visitors. Unlike written
sources, these tales often intermingle past events with current happenings
and present new versions of longstanding oral traditions (see Jamhari 1995).
Ultimately, it is the word of the juru kunci that establishes the most
authoritative account of each tomb and all the figures associated with it.
As Rinkes (1910–13) found in his investigation of various tombs at the
162 THE POTENT DEAD
beginning of the century, a juru kunci may draw on recognised babad

accounts, but what he actually transmits to visitors forms part of an oral
tradition that has greater authority than any written account.
In my own experience of speaking to juru kunci, they have always
insisted on their rightful authority to reveal the ‘true’ version of the tomb’s
history. One juru kunci asked me whether I had read one of the more
popular accounts of his tomb’s personage; when I said I had, he insisted
that it was wrong and that I must disregard it if I was to understand the real
history of the tomb. At tombs where practices deviate from orthodox norms,
stencilled accounts given out at the tomb provide an acceptable ‘cover’ to
disguise a deeper history of the place.
In all my talks with juru kunci, discussions were in a kind of ‘revelatory’
mode consisting of hints, allusions and returned questions rather than any
direct exposition. Knowledge can be given only in stages, and further
knowledge can be revealed only when there exists a capacity to understand.
Thus traditional knowledge, at tomb sites, has many layers and is largely
personal. It depends as much on the visitor (and his or her experience) as on
the juru kunci.
I would like to recount some of my own experiences with juru kunci and
what I have managed to derive from these encounters. All the tombs I wish
to discuss can be related to one another. I start in East Java at the tombs of
Majapahit and move by various ways to the tomb of Senapati, one of the
early founders of Mataram. The personages in all these tombs can be placed
on one large genealogy, although it is not a genealogy to be found in any
babad or in any history of Java. In the course of the presentation I refer to
an account of Java’s history, which is implied in this genealogy.
THE TOMB OF BRAWIJAYA IN TROWULAN

In the mid-1980s I was doing research in a rice-growing village in Jombang
in East Java. One evening, at the propitious time of Jum'at Legi (the conjunc-
tion of Friday in the seven-day cycle with Legi in the five-day cycle), I and a
group of my Javanese friends decided to visit the tombs at Trowulan, the site
of ancient Majapahit, which was less than 20 km away. The head of the
household in which I was living had decided, quite independently, that he
and one of his friends would visit the tombs on the same night.
At Trowulan is the grave of Putri Cempa, the Muslim wife of Brawijaya,
the last ruler of Majapahit. When I arrived at the tomb site, I was surprised
to discover that there is also a tomb for Brawijaya. According to the Babad
Tanah Jawi tradition, Brawijaya disappeared (moksa) as his kraton was
being invaded, rather than do battle with his son, Raden Patah. A tomb for
Brawijaya was neither necessary nor possible, if one accepted this babad
tradition.
As Putri Cempa’s tomb already had a good number of visitors around it,
my friends and I found a place next to Brawijaya’s grave. Some time after
midnight, the juru kunci approached us and sat down beside me. Soon the
questioning began, but with the juru kunci questioning me:
Did I know whose grave I was sitting beside?
Yes, it was Brawijaya’s grave. I paused and then asked the question
that had bothered me from the time I arrived. I said that I thought Brawijaya
had disappeared at the fall of Majapahit. Why, then, was there a tomb for
Brawijaya?
The juru kunci explained that the tomb was a form to be in harmony
(rukun) with Islamic beliefs, but it was only a form, an empty tomb.
Again it was my turn to ask a question and so I said that I had understood
that, according to the prophecy of Jayabaya, Brawijaya was supposed to
return to Java 500 years after the fall of Majapahit. If this was correct,
didn’t it mean that Brawajiya had already come back?
The juru kunci replied that the Jayabaya prophecy was indeed correct
and that Brawijaya had returned. He had entered President Soekarno, who
became in his lifetime the new Brawijaya.
I then pressed the juru kunci further by asking him what had happened
when Soekarno died.
The juru kunci went on, at length, to give me an eye witness account of
how, after his death, Soekarno had come in a cavalcade of Mercedes to
deliver Brawijaya’s spirit back to his grave at Trowulan.
Having been given such an animated account from the juru kunci, I felt I
could ask one more question, for which I thought I knew the answer. After
Brawijaya’s spirit had returned, whom did it enter next?
Expecting to hear that Brawijaya’s spirit had passed to President
Soeharto, I was stunned to hear the juru kunci’s reply: ‘Ibu Tien’. Having
revealed this much, the juru kunci got up and went off to talk with other
visitors.
The juru kunci’s reply made sense of what I had seen around Trowulan.
I had visited the site during the day and had repeatedly heard local villagers
say that all of the reconstruction work that was going on, particularly the
reconstruction of the women’s bathing place, was being carried out at
the behest and through the benefaction of the President’s wife. The juru
kunci’s statement would imply that with the death of the President’s wife,
there would have to occur another ceremonial return of Brawijaya’s spirit to
Trowulan to allow this spirit to prepare to enter a new contemporary vessel.
The juru kunci of Trowulan’s revelation belongs to a long tradition of
accounts of Brawijaya. In the Javanese babad tradition, Brawijaya serves as
a ‘source figure’ from whom subsequent historical figures derive their royal
genealogical link. His disappearance from his kraton has also provided a
basis for numerous folk traditions about his wanderings and adventures in
Java; and his unwillingness to accept Islam has produced a body of tales
about his eventual conversion.
I would like to offer two ways of interpreting the early history of Java:
the one follows the babad tradition and looks especially at this history
164 THE POTENT DEAD
according to the Babad Tanah Jawi; the other looks at figures and events in
this same history as revealed by juru kunci at different tombs. These two
versions of historical events are not at variance with one another. Rather, it
would seem that accounts of events by juru kunci assume a knowledge of
the babad tradition and then go beyond it to explain what is left unex-
plained and to amplify what is merely mentioned in the babad tradition.
One must therefore begin with an outline of a portion of the Babad Tanah
Jawi as background.
GENEALOGIES AND DYNASTIES IN THE BABAD TANAH JAWI

In one paper (Fox 1997) I considered the Babad Tanah Jawi as a ‘genealog-
ical narrative’. This reading concentrated in detail on the genealogies of the
chief actors in the early part of the Babad and on their relations among each
by marriage and adoption. What may, at first reading, appear to be a diverse
compilation of events by different actors is, I would argue, ordered by a
single comprehensive genealogy. The earliest sections of the Babad sketch
a genealogy that leads to Brawijaya; after Brawijaya, the narrative recounts
the struggles and disputes of his descendants to re-establish and maintain
rule on Java.
The principal genealogy of the Babad Tanah Jawi from Adam to Brawijaya
Adam
Sis
Nurcahya
Nurrasa
Wening
Tunggal
Batara Guru
Brama
Bramani
Tritrusta
Parikenan
Manumanasa
Sakutrem
Sakri
Palasara
Abiasa
Pandu Dewanata
Arjuna
Abimanyu
Parikesit
Yudayana
Gendrayana
Jayabaya
Jayamijaya
Jayamisena
Kusuma Wicitra
Citrasoma
Pancadriya
Anglingdriya
Sawelacala
Mahapunggung
Kandiawan
Resi Gatayu
Lembu Amiluhur
Panji
Kuda Laleyan
Banjararan Sari
Munding Sari
Munding Wangi
Pemekas
Susuruh
Prabu Anom
Adiningkung
Ayam Wuruk
Lembu Amisani
Bratanjung
Brawijaya
The second part of the genealogy becomes far more complicated. Accord-
ing to the Babad Tanah Jawi, Brawijaya marries several times. These
marriages give rise to distinct genealogical lines, each of which produces,
in succession, a different ruling dynasty (Fox 1997b).
Brawijaya’s first marriage is with a princess from Cempa. Brawijaya
dreams that he is to marry this princess and sends his patih, Gajah Mada, to
request her and bring her back to Majapahit. After his marriage with the
princess from Cempa, Brawijaya marries a Chinese princess, but his wife
from Cempa objects to this marriage; he then grants the Chinese princess to
Arya Damar but forbids him to take her as his wife until she has given birth
to Brawijaya’s child. When Brawijaya’s son is born, he is given the name
Raden Patah. When Raden Patah grows up he returns to Java, studies Islam
at Ampel Denta under the tutelage of Sunan Ngampel, and becomes a
Muslim. He marries a granddaughter of Sunan Ngampel and, in time, leads
the Muslim army that overthrows his father’s rule at Majapahit. From
Raden Patah comes the dynastic line of Demak.
A second dynastic line emanating from Brawijaya gives rise to the
dynasty of Pajang. This line derives from Brawijaya’s daughter, who is
given in marriage to Dipati Jayaningrat, whose son, Ki Kebo Kenanga,
establishes himself in Pengging and becomes known as Ki Ageng
166 THE POTENT DEAD
Pengging. His son, Jaka Tingkir, marries the daughter of Sultan Trenggana
of Demak, and becomes the first ruler of Pajang. Thus Pajang succeeds
Demak.
Another of Brawijaya’s unions leads to the founding of Mataram. Brawi-
jaya asks his court diviners whether after his demise there will come a
successor whose power will be as great as his own. His diviners tell him
that there will indeed be such a successor from among his descendants, but
that successor will move his court to Mataram and from there rule over all
the inhabitants of Java. Soon thereafter Brawijaya is afflicted with venereal
disease and no cure can be found. In his sleep a voice tells him that he can
be cured only by sleeping with a Wandhan woman whose skin is yellow.
His wife from Cempa has brought such a woman with her, and so Brawi-
jaya sleeps with her and is cured.
The Wandhan woman becomes pregnant and bears a beautiful child.
Because of the diviners’ claim that this child will put an end to Brawijaya’s
rule, Brawijaya orders that the child, Raden Bondhan Kajawan, be given to
Kyai Buyut Masahar to be killed when he is one windu (or 8 years) old. The
child, however, is not killed. Kyai Buyut simply reports his death to Brawi-
jaya. Later, when Raden Bondhan Kejawan is older, he returns to the kraton
and Brawijaya is so taken with him that he orders Kyai Buyut Masahar to
entrust the boy to Kyai Ageng Tarub whose daughter the boy marries, and
so begins the line that leads to the Mataram dynasty.
The struggles of these dynastic lines occupy the next critical stage in the
narrative of the Babad Tanah Jawi. As background to the founding of
Mataram as revealed by the juru kunci, I begin by considering the particular
events associated with Ki Ageng Pamanahan, the father of Senapati and
great-grandfather of Sultan Agung. Ki Ageng Pamanahan is also referred to
as Ki Ageng Mataram because he was the first of his line to move to the terri-
tory of Mataram.
The three dynastic lines that emanate from Brawijaya

according to the Babad Tanah Jawi
Brawijaya
DEMAK PAJANG MATARAM

Raden Patah -Daughter- Bondan Kejawan
Raden Sabrang Ler (e) Kebo Kananga Getas Pandhawa
Raden Trenggana (y) Jaka Tinggir Ageng Sela
Raden Prawata Pangeran Benawa Ageng Nis
Ageng Pamanahan
Senapati-ing-Alaga
KI AGENG PAMANAHAN AND KI AGENG GIRING

In the Babad Tanah Jawi, the Sultan of Pajang grants the territory of
Mataram to Ki Ageng Pamanahan who moves with his family, including his
son Senapati, and his followers to take up residence in his domain. Shortly
after he has established himself, the Babad introduces the figure of Ki
Ageng Giring, who lives at Padèrèsan in Gunung Kidul. The Babad
explains only that Pamanahan and Giring were close friends. Giring is a
powerful ascetic who lives from palm-tapping. One morning while he is
tapping he hears a voice that comes from within a young coconut: ‘Ki
Ageng Giring, you should know that the descendants of whoever drinks all
the water of this young coconut will become powerful lords and will rule
over all of Java’. On hearing this voice, Giring climbs down from the tree
he is tapping, climbs up the coconut tree, plucks the coconut and takes it
home with him. Since the voice said that he must drink all of the water at
one go, he sets the coconut inside his house and goes off to cut wood to
make himself thirsty. At this point, Pamanahan arrives and, having come a
long way, is terribly thirsty. He goes into Giring’s house, finds the coconut,
and drinks it empty in one go.
When Giring returns and discovers what has happened, he realises it is
God’s will that Pamanahan’s descendants are destined to become rulers of
Java; he tells Pamanahan about the voice and what it said; and he pleads
with Pamanahan that, after Pamanahan’s descendants have ruled over Java,
his descendants too may rule over Java. Pamanahan refuses. Giring contin-
ues to plead for a descendant of his, even in the seventh generation, to
become ruler. Pamanahan’s reply is that God may know whether this may
happen, but he, Pamanahan, does not.
The Babad has seemingly nothing more to say of Ki Ageng Giring or of
his descendants. The account in the Babad stands on its own and appears to
be unrelated to any other events in Mataram’s history. The fact, however,
that Giring was on the verge of being the founder of a dynasty of Javanese
rulers implies, by Javanese reckoning, that he must have been of proper
descent. His position must therefore be of some greater significance.
Many of these questions are provided with answers if one visits the tomb
of Ki Ageng Giring in Wanasari. The tomb is not an impressive structure.
What is impressive is the prominence given to the framed genealogical
charts concerning Ki Ageng Giring (Figure 11.1). There are two such
charts: they provide the same genealogy. The one is an older handscript, the
other a typed script. Each has been similarly annotated to identify individ-
uals and their particular significance in the history of Mataram. As the
genealogy drawn from these charts shows, Ki Ageng Giring is also a
descendant of Brawijaya. Instead of deriving from Brawijaya V, Giring’s
line derives from Brawijaya IV, from a sister of Brawijaya V. The Ki Ageng
Giring, who, according to the chart, was designated to receive the ‘Wahyu
Mataram’, was Ki Ageng Giring III. Moreover, Ki Ageng Giring III is
168 THE POTENT DEAD
Brawijaya IV
R. Mundi A. Pandoyo (Pengging) P. Brawijaya V
Andayaning I.R. Pembayun Bondah Kejawan

(K. A. Tarub III)
K.A. Wuking II
K.A. Getas Pandowo
K.A. Giring I
S. Tembayat K.A. Sela
K.A. Giring II
K.A. Anis (Lawiyan)
K.A. Giring III

K.A. Pemanahan
Rara Subur
A. Lawanu R. Suroso
K.A. Giring IV Rara Lembayung P. Senapati
K.A. Wonokusomo I
Radan Umbaram Wiromenggolo Anyokrowati
P. Puruboyo I (Seda Krapyak)
Wonokusomo II Sultan Agung

P. Puruboyo II
P. Kajoran
P. Mangkurat
(Sumare Tegalarum)
Ratu Kulon
Pakubuwono I
Prabu Mangkurat
Jawi Kartosuro
Pakubuwono II Hamengku Buwono I

Surakarta Hadiningrat Ngayogyokarto Hadiningrat
Figure 11.1 Genealogy of Ki Ageng Giring

represented as the grandson of Sunan Tembayat (who, according to folk

tradition, is either Brawijaya or a descendant of Brawijaya).
From Figure 11.1 it is clear that Ki Ageng Giring’s descendants continue
to play an important role in Mataram’s history. In particular Pangeran
Kajoran, who is described in the Babad as a powerful ascetic (with the same
terms used to describe Giring), is a major figure and plotter in the wars that
led to the overthrow of Mangkurat I and the succession of his grandson,
Mangkurat II (Pakubuwono I).
What is most remarkable is that in the Babad, Mangkurat I on his
deathbed drinks from a fresh coconut and prophesies the future of his
descendants. Dipati Anom who succeeds his father is, according to the juru
kunci’s chart, the seventh generation from Ki Ageng Giring. Mangkurat I’s
prophesy, after drinking from the coconut, can thus be read in reference to
what occurred between Ki Ageng Pamanahan and Ki Ageng Giring. The
tradition preserved at the tomb of Giring provides this interpretation.
KI AGENG MATARAM AND ARYA JAYAPRANA

When Ki Ageng Pamanahan established himself at Mataram, he became
known as Ki Ageng Mataram. He was succeeded by his son Senapati, who
also became the successor to the Sultan of Pajang and thus the first Lord of
Mataram to be a ruler of Java. When Senapati died, he was buried in a tomb
in Kota Gedhe which is generally referred to as Makam Senapati (the
tomb of Senapati). In fact, however, this tomb is a large mortuary complex
with hundreds of graves.
I have visited Senapati’s tomb on a number of occasions. When for the
first time I entered the main mausoleum, what I found remarkable was that
Senapati’s grave was not given the most prominent position among the
graves.
The graves are set out in an ordered fashion, according to generations,
almost like a kinship chart. Senapati’s grave is third in line with the graves
of his brothers; in the next row above his grave are the graves of his father,
Ki Ageng Mataram, and his mother, Nyai Ageng Mataram, and in the row
above that of his father and mother are the three most honoured graves,
which are set at a higher elevation than all of the rest. One of these graves is
that of Senapati’s grandmother, Nyai Ageng Nis, and the other is assigned
to the Sultan of Pajang. In the middle of these two graves, in the most
honoured position in the entire mausoleum, is the grave of Arya Jayaprana.
(See the plate of the royal graves at Kota Gedhe in Olthof’s Dutch trans-
lation of the Babad Tanah Jawi, 1941: 124; see also Figure 11.2 and Fox
1997b.) Relying on the Babad Tanah Jawi, it is possible to identify all of
the prominent graves in the mausoleum at Kota Gedhe. The Babad,
however, is silent about Arya Jayaprana.
Senapati’s tomb has a large number of juru kunci. All of them are court
servants (abdi dalem). When one does ziarah, one is escorted into the
170 THE POTENT DEAD
Figure 11.2 The tombs of Senopati and his Mataram ancestors at

Pasareyan Kota Gede
mausoleum by one or more juru kunci. Inside the mausoleum, there are at
least a half-dozen other juru kunci seated strategically among the graves to
provide explanations about particular personages and to assist visitors in
making offerings. A visit to the darkened tomb, crammed with graves and
smoky with incense, provides the opportunity for a long lesson on the
history of Mataram, but in my experience the juru kunci make no effort to
explain the grave of Arya Jayaprana to visitors. The single most importantly
placed grave in the mausoleum is left without comment.
Intrigued by the silence surrounding Arya Jayaprana, I resolved to visit
Senapati’s tomb again and question the juru kunci directly about him. At
the time of my visit, a group of villagers from Jepara were about to do
ziarah and I therefore joined them. As expected, Arya Jayaprana’s grave
was bypassed without explanation. On leaving the mausoleum I returned to
the staging pendopo, where a half-dozen of what seemed to me to be the
oldest of the juru kunci were seated. I explained my puzzlement, and in
response one of the juru kunci got up and went across the courtyard,
unlocked a storeroom and went in. He returned with a simple stencilled
pamphlet, Sejarahipun Panembahan Jayaprana (compiled by K.P.H.
Mandayakusuma from a document of K.P.H. Purwodiningrat), and instead
of expounding on Arya Jayaprana gave it to me to read.
The document describes an encounter between Ki Ageng Pamanahan
and Arya Jayaprana. Pamanahan speaks to Jayaprana with high forms
of address as ‘Sang Tapa’ (‘Honourable Ascetic’), whereas Jayaprana
addresses Pamanahan as a child (anak). Jayaprana has long preceded
Pamanahan in Mataram and has lived there before the Sultan of Pajang,
who has granted Mataram to Pamanahan, began his rule. As such,
Jayaprana is the lord of the land of Mataram.
The two engage in a discussion of what is right and wrong and Jayaprana
tells Pamanahan that if he will follow Jayaprana’s guidance, he will grant
Mataram to him and his descendants. Pamanahan agrees to carry out
Jayaprana’s advice on proper rule. But Jayaprana then makes one last
request: Pamanahan must carry (gendong) Jayaprana a certain distance (10
honjotan) to another place; but after only two honjotan Pamanahan falls.
He admits that he can not carry Jayaprana and that therefore he himself will
search for another place to reside. Jayaprana, however, relents and grants
Mataram to Pamanahan, taking for himself only the village of Jayapranan.
Pamanahan and his descendants must henceforth look after those of
Jayaprana. Jayaprana remains as kapundhi-pundhi and becomes known as
Panembahan Jayaprana. When he dies he is buried under one roof
(sacungkup) beside Nyai Ageng Ngenis, the grandmother of Pamanahan.
In almost all such documents, genealogies are an important feature. As
far as I can discern, Jayaprana appears to be the son of Raden Prawata of
Demak, and his grant of Mataram to Pamanahan can be interpreted as an
enhancement of the new dynasty. Why the main babad tradition should be
silent on this subject remains a mystery to me.
172 THE POTENT DEAD
If, as I would argue, tombs in Java function as popular ‘broadcast

centres’ for the historical traditions of Java, then it is the juru kunci who
keep these traditions alive and relevant to contemporary Javanese. All that
can be said then of Arya Jayaprana is that the traditions surrounding his
personage are not forgotten—it is only that they are no longer broadcast.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The first version of this paper was given at Leiden University on 14 May
1997, as part of a ‘double lecture’ with Professor Ben Arps in the Center
for Non-Western Studies (CNWS) Conference on the Intercultural Study
of Literature and Society. I would like to express my particular thanks to
Professor Arps for the honour he accorded me in inviting me to join him for
the Leiden Double Lecture. I would also like to thank Drs Jamhari for his
assistance in translating the Giring genealogy and Drs Bambang Hudayana
for his assistance in helping me with the translation of Sejarahipun Panem-
bahan Jayaprana.
12
The role of a Javanese burial ground
in local government
George Quinn
The story of the foundation of Banyumas, a kabupaten1 in the western part

of the present-day province of Central Java, seems to be well known to the
people of the area. In a variety of recensions it appears in written histories
like the Babad Pasir and the Babad Banyumas. Ordinary people who have
never heard of these written histories are familiar with at least fragments of
the story. Modern recensions of the story, drawing on oral and written
sources, have appeared in the mass media.2 The story has been adopted as
the basis of a brief, contemporary ‘official’ history of the kabupaten in
publications of the kabupaten government, and is read out on certain cere-
monial occasions.
The popular story of Banyumas begins (like many local histories in the
Javanese culture area) in the court of Majapahit.3 The king of Majapahit,
Sultan Hardiwijaya, had a dispute with his younger brother, Raden Baribin,
and expelled him from the palace. Raden Baribin wandered westwards,
eventually arriving at the court of Pajajaran in the Sundanese lands of West
Java. There he married Dyah Retna Pamekas, a princess of Pajajaran. They
had four children: Raden Katuhu (also Raden Kaduhu), Raden Banyak-
sasra, Raden Banyakkumara, and a girl (not named).
On reaching adulthood Raden Katuhu left the Pajajaran palace, wander-
ing east to the adjacent region of Wirasaba.4 There he was adopted first by a
villager, Ki Gede Buwara, then later by the local regent or adipati5 of
Wirasaba, Paguwan III. Raden Katuhu succeeded his adoptive father as
adipati of Wirasaba and assumed the name Adipati Margautama. Margau-
tama had two sons, Raden Warga and Ki Toyareka. Raden Warga succeeded
his father as regent of Wirasaba with the name Adipati Wargautama.
Meanwhile the second son of Raden Baribin, Raden Banyaksasra, had
also left the Pajajaran palace, wandering east to Pasirluhur,6 an area like
Wirasaba adjacent to the Sundanese lands but today usually thought to be
173
174 THE POTENT DEAD
located in the southern part of the island, perhaps along the Serayu river.
There he married a princess of Pasirluhur and they had a son, Bagus Mangun.
Bagus Mangun was adopted and brought up by a childless couple, Ki
Mranggi and Ni Mranggi, who lived in the village of Kejawar on the banks
of the Serayu river. On reaching adulthood Bagus Mangun left home, and
went to the court of Wirasaba where he was accepted into the service of
Adipati Wargautama. He changed his name from Bagus Mangun to Jaka
Kaiman. Jaka Kaiman married the eldest daughter of Wargautama and was
thereby incorporated into the ruling family of Wirasaba as the son-in-law of
the adipati.
At this time, Wirasaba was under the suzerainty of Sultan Adiwijaya
(also known by the names of his youth, Mas Karebet and Jaka Tingkir).
Wargautama made his customary annual visit to the palace of Pajang,
taking with him one of his daughters as a tributary gift to the monarch.
While there he became the victim of a slander. A disaffected member of his
family told Sultan Adiwijaya that Wargautama’s daughter was not a virgin
but had already been married once. Sultan Adiwijaya was incensed and
ordered the execution of Wargautama. In a memorable incident, evidently
still widely remembered today by the people of Banyumas, Adipati
Wargautama was assassinated at the village of Bener in the vicinity of
Kebumen, Central Java, on his way home from Pajang.
Almost immediately after ordering the execution the Sultan realised he
had made a mistake. He invited Wargautama’s family to send a successor to
Pajang for inauguration. The members of the family were afraid they would
meet the same fate as Wargautama and declined to present themselves.
Only Wargautama’s son-in-law Jaka Kaiman dared to make the journey to
Pajang. There he was received favourably by Sultan Adiwijaya, who inau-
gurated him as the new bupati of Wirasaba. On his return to Wirasaba, Jaka
Kaiman (now known as Adipati Wargautama II) demonstrated his generos-
ity of spirit by dividing the realm into four domains and allocating three of
them to members of the Wargautama family.
Jaka Kaiman took for himself the region of Banyumas, centred on
Kejawar on the banks of the Serayu river, where he had been brought up.
There he cleared the Mangli forest and established a thriving community.
On his death he was buried in the nearby village of Dawuhan, and became
known by his postmortem name of Adipati Mrapat.7 Dawuhan (as its name
suggests8) was declared a desa perdikan, a special-status village, free of
taxes and dedicated to the function of maintaining the burial ground of the
bupatis of Banyumas.
Around 400 years later, in August 1988, Infantry Colonel Djoko Sudantoko
was installed as the 28th bupati of Banyumas.9 One of his first acts after inau-
guration was to set up a taskforce (pansus), charged with the brief of officially
determining the date on which his predecessor had founded the kabupaten.
The taskforce was chaired by Mr Karsidi, a local official, other members
being Drs M. Soekarto Kartoatmodjo from Gadjah Mada University and the
JAVANESE BURIAL GROUND IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT 175
Yogyakarta Centre for Archeological Research (Balai Arkeologi Yogyakarta),

Drs Soesanto (an expert on archeology), Sujono Wiwoho SH (an expert on
Javanese culture) and Dr Sudarmadji, chairman of the Dawuhan Burial
Ground Foundation of Banyumas (Yayasan Pasarehan Dawuhan Banyumas)
(Koderi & Ahmad Tohari 1991: 4; Soem Soeyadi 1990: 108).
The findings of the taskforce were presented to Bupati Djoko in 1989.
They were released to public scrutiny on 14 November 1989 in an open
seminar attended by about 250 people in the kabupaten capital of Purwok-
erto.10 The taskforce found that Jaka Kaiman had been inaugurated as
bupati of Wirasaba on 12th of Rabiulawal in the Hijriyyah year of 990,
coinciding with 6 April 1582. In determining this date, the taskforce began
with the death of Sultan Adiwijaya, which they took to have occurred
in 1583. The normal practice in the courts of Java at the time was for
bupatis from outlying regions to attend at the palace during the month of
Rabiulawal and for inaugurations to be conducted during the garebeg cele-
brations of that month commemorating the birth of the prophet
Muhammad. The taskforce apparently arrived at the precise date of the
foundation day by assuming that, in accordance with normal practice, Jaka
Kaiman must have been inaugurated at the height of a garebeg celebration.
They then counted back from the presumed year of Sultan Adiwijaya’s
death to the most immediately preceding garebeg.
The taskforce admitted that the evidence for the date of the foundation
day was not wholly convincing. They acknowledged, for example, that
other opinions put the demise of Sultan Adiwijaya some years after 1583.11
They also noted that, in the opinion of some, Jaka Kaiman had himself died
in 1583, and that if this was true he would not have had enough time
between his inauguration and his death to have done the various remarkable
things he is reputed to have done while he was bupati. The taskforce added
a caveat to their report to the effect that, should new information come to
light, the date of the foundation day could be ‘corrected’. Despite these
doubts, the public meeting endorsed the taskforce’s findings, and the date
of the foundation day was accepted by Bupati Djoko (Soemarno 1994:
pt 10, 32; Soem Soeyadi 1990: 108).
Today, the tomb of the founding bupati is in the official burial ground of
the bupatis of Banyumas in the village of Dawuhan, about 6 km from the
town of Banyumas and some 35 km from Purwokerto. The burial ground is
located on sloping ground on the upper side of the village. At the lower
(village) end of the burial ground lies a small mosque (langgar). On the
shallow slope above the mosque are the graves of 12 of the 28 bupatis of
Banyumas, plus the graves of several bupatis of Purwokerto and Purbal-
ingga together with other kabupaten officials and citizens, and even a
number of revered local figures who lived before the time of Jaka Kaiman
(Thojib Djumadi 1976). A road runs up the length of the burial ground to
one side of it, culminating in a parking area adjacent to Jaka Kaiman’s tomb
at the upper end.
176 THE POTENT DEAD
Prior to the appointment of Bupati Djoko Sudantoko, Jaka Kaiman’s

tomb had taken the form of a cracked and dilapidated tombstone (batu
nisan) under a somewhat neglected low roof (cungkup), open at the sides
(Thojib Djumadi 1976: 30). Early in his period of office Djoko Sudantoko
ordered the rebuilding of the site, and the work was completed in 1990.
Today the tomb takes the form of a small, unadorned building consisting of
a single chamber about 7 × 3 metres in area with a grey tiled floor, white-
washed plaster walls, and a porch at the front running the width of the
building. Inside the chamber (which is well lit, with several windows
embellished with iron trelliswork) are two tombstones (batu nisan). The one
on the right is that of Jaka Kaiman. It is not clear who lies under the tomb-
stone on the left.12 When I visited the tomb in 1992 and 1994, I found flower
offerings and ash from the burning of incense at the foot of both tombstones
(see Figures 12.1 and 12.2).
A large bronze plaque is fixed to the rear wall. The following Javanese
inscription appears on it, cast in Javanese script on the upper half of the
plaque and repeated in Roman script on the lower half.
The Resting Place

Of Kyai Adipati Warga Utama the second, the first Bupati of Banyumas. His
name when young was Raden Jaka Kaiman. He was appointed seventh Adipati
of Wirasaba by His Majesty Sultan Adiwijaya of Pajang on Friday Kliwon,
6 April 1582 in the Christian era, coinciding with 12th of Rabiulawal 990 in
the Hijriyyah era. The late Bupati divided Wirasaba into four territories, and
was thereafter known as Adipati Mrapat.13
Figure 12.1 The mausoleum of Jaka Kaiman (Adipati Mrapout) in Dawuhan,

Banyumas, Central Java

According to Thojib Djumadi (1976: 30) and Sutarjo, custodian of the

site in 1992 when I visited it, descendants of the bupatis buried there come
regularly to pay their respects to their forebears. In the month of Ruwah
(also called Sya’ban) there are informal assemblies (silaturahmi) of
pilgrims at the site, and there is a ‘bathing of heirlooms’ ceremony on 12th
of Rabiulawal. Petitioners come to the site at other times too, especially on
the night before Friday Kliwon. They come to ‘ask for safety’ (nyuwun
slamet) or to ask for promotion. According to Sutarjo, from time to time the
bupati of Banyumas himself undertakes night-long austerities (tirakatan) at
the site, beginning by walking the 6 km from Banyumas.
Following the public seminar of November 1989, Bupati Djoko issued a
local ordinance (peraturan daerah or perda) officially designating 6 April
1582 as the Foundation Day (Hari Jadi) of Banyumas and declaring that it
should be commemorated every 6 April. The first commemoration was held
in 1990. In the years since, the commemoration has assumed a regularised
format, the four main components being a ‘pilgrimage’ (ziarah), a proces-
sion (kirab) through the streets of Purwokerto, a mass commemorative
ceremony (upacara peringatan) in the main common of Purwokerto, and a
cultural night (malam kesenian).14 In each of these events Jaka Kaiman is
the central figure, and in each of them his presence is linked to, or mediated
by, the current bupati, Djoko Sudantoko.
When I observed the commemoration in 1994, it began (as it has every
year since 1990) with a ‘pilgrimage’ to Jaka Kaiman’s tomb. At 8 am on
5 April, Bupati Djoko, members of the local MUSPIDA,15 the heads of
institutions of higher education, the heads of departments and offices, the
bupati’s staff and the heads of village-level administrative regions (keca-
matan) assembled at the tomb. Those in attendance were men (wives were
not to accompany their husbands) and all were required to wear traditional
Javanese dress in the Banyumas style. Sitting crossed-legged beside Jaka
Kaiman’s tombstone (Figure 12.2), Bupati Djoko led the observances,
offering a prayer of thanks to the kabupaten’s founder and asking that he
grant the kabupaten wellbeing and slamet (security, a smooth run and
freedom from the unexpected). The prayers were accompanied by the scat-
tering of flower offerings on the tombstone (nyekar). There followed a
brief, ritualised exchange of views (sarasehan) between the bupati and
local officials about progress and issues in local development programs.16
The same day, beginning around mid-afternoon, there was a procession
through the centre of Purwokerto from the mayor’s office at one end of
town to the bupati’s office at the other. Required to participate in the
procession were local officials, members of the local parliament, armed
forces personnel, academics and teachers. Wives accompanied their
husbands and all wore Banyumas-style Javanese dress. Cultural troupes
from various parts of the kabupaten participated, performing as they
walked. Thousands of people lined the streets to watch.
Carried at the head of the procession were duplicates of the official
178 THE POTENT DEAD
Figure 12.2 Jaka Kaiman's tomb
heirlooms (pusaka) of the kabupaten, the spear Kyai Genjring, the kris Kyai
Nala Praja, the kris Kyai Gajah Endra, and a manuscript heirloom called
Stambul. Duplicates were also carried of a number of national awards won by
the kabupaten.17 Following the heirlooms and awards, riding in an open,
horse-drawn carriage and clearly occupying pride of place in the procession,
came two actors in costume representing Jaka Kaiman and his wife (Figure
12.3). Next came a succession of big portraits of previous bupatis held aloft
by costumed bearers (Figure 12.4). These started from bupati number 17 and
ran through to Djoko Sudantoko’s immediate predecessor, the 27th Bupati,
Colonel R.G. Roedjito. Behind the portrait of Colonel Roedjito walked
Bupati Djoko and his wife. Ranks of officials, members of parliament,
academics, village functionaries and others followed, and after them the
musicians and performers.
The following day, 6 April at 8 am, there was a commemorative ceremony
on the common in front of the bupati’s office. It was attended by several

Figure 12.3 Actors play the roles of Jaka Kuiman and his wife in the Foundation
Day procession, Purwokerto, 6 April 1994
Figure 12.4 Portraits of previous bupatis precede Bupati Djoko though the streets
of Purwokerto, 6 April 1974
thousand rank-and-file public servants, military personnel, students and

school children, all in uniform. The ceremony started with a formal reading
of a brief, official account of the foundation of Banyumas. The narrative

180 THE POTENT DEAD
gave special prominence to Jaka Kaiman’s heroic qualities. He was said to

have had an altruistic outlook and did not put his personal interests first. He
was a determined fighter for economic development (pembangunan) and
embodied a spirit of unity. The account concluded by exhorting the people of
Banyumas to take these noble qualities as a guide and inspiration ‘to be built
upon and adapted to current circumstances’ (Buku Petunjuk 1974: 13–14).
On the evening of the same day a ‘cultural night’ was held in the front
portico (pendopo) of the bupati’s office. Before a jam-packed audience of
invited dignitaries and excited local people a comedy performance was
given in Javanese by the popular Didik Nini Thowok troupe from
Yogyakarta. At the beginning of the performance actors representing Jaka
Kaiman, his wife and one of his officials appeared on stage and were intro-
duced to the audience. Reference was made to the current commemorative
celebrations. During most of the two hours of antics that followed, the three
remained on stage, assuming a somewhat stiff pose and standing to one
side. From time to time they were drawn into the on-stage action, appearing
as rather solemn but hilarious anachronisms in the midst of the comic
mayhem around them.
The official rationale for the annual commemoration appears in the
printed guidelines for the celebration of the Foundation Day (e.g. see Buku
Petunjuk) as well as in the innumerable speeches made over the two days of
the commemoration. The Foundation Day commemoration is intended to
help forge a stronger sense of pride in local identity and, by appealing to
that pride, produce more enthusiastic participation in various government
development projects and campaigns. The celebrations are always linked to
certain slogans or campaigns. In 1994, for example, the official slogan
accompanying the commemoration made reference to the kabupaten
government’s current one-year campaign to focus on the raising of living
standards. The somewhat lengthy slogan, which appeared on banners
throughout Purwokerto and was referred to in speeches, was ‘[t]hrough
commemoration of the 412th anniversary of the Foundation Day of the
Kabupaten of Banyumas let us get motivated to make a success of the Year
of Improving the Quality of Life’.18 One domain of economic development
to which the commemoration was supposed to contribute directly was that
of tourism. Bupati Djoko expressed the hope19 that the annual procession
through town, with its colour and its focus on the remarkable first bupati,
would become an income-generating exercise that would complement the
nearby hill resort of Baturaden as an attraction for domestic and foreign
visitors.
There can be little doubt that the commemoration also has a more
directly political function—that of legitimising the appointment of Djoko
Sudantoko to the office of bupati and enhancing his status. Bupati
Djoko appears to have been at pains to cultivate and emphasise various
associations between himself and Jaka Kaiman. In his public references to
Jaka Kaiman, Bupati Djoko seems to have avoided referring to him by any
of his other names, thereby drawing attention to the similarity between his
own name and that of his distant predecessor. As the visually memorable
procession of portraits in the commemoration procession vividly demon-
strated, he has carefully and publicly stressed his ‘lineage’ as the latest in a
line of bupatis traceable in unbroken sequence over a period of more than
400 years back to Jaka Kaiman. Bupati Djoko has also represented Jaka
Kaiman as a sort of hero of economic development. The first bupati was a
practical-minded ‘builder’: when he established Banyumas. Following the
Javanese mbabad alas20 convention he went into the forest, cut it down
and established a new, prosperous community that attracted people from
neighbouring areas. Jaka Kaiman then is reconstructed as a model adminis-
trator—obedient and loyal to his superiors, courageous, selfless, generous
and full of initiative. By identifying himself with the mythologised image
of his predecessor, the modern bupati evidently seeks to enhance his own
image. Indeed it would appear that in a subtle way Bupati Djoko has
suggested that Jaka Kaiman is a not only a patron of contemporary
economic development in Banyumas but a real source of inspiration, and
even of practical advice. According to the custodian of the Dawuhan burial
ground, Djoko Sudantoko and other officials ‘commune’ with the founding
bupati at his graveside in order to seek his advice and guidance.21
Just as Jaka Kaiman was an ‘outsider’ to the court of Wirasaba, deriving
his authority at least in part from his Majapahit and Pajajaran ancestry,
so too did Djoko Sudantoko come to Banyumas as an outsider whose
authority, at least initially, originated in the distant centres of Semarang and
Jakarta. By aligning himself with his predecessor in the way described it is
conceivable (though not easy to demonstrate conclusively) that this has
helped him to engineer acceptance by the notoriously parochial and
identity-conscious community of Banyumas.22 It may also have helped him
assume a conciliatory role vis-à-vis outside authority. The death of Adipati
Wargautama I, unjustly executed by a capricious distant monarch, is
an incident that still lives vividly in the memory of many people in
Banyumas.23 It seems to embody something of the enduring ambivalence
they feel towards outside authority, especially that of the old court centres
of Yogyakarta and Solo.24 Jaka Kaiman, who, like Sultan Adiwijayawas of
Majapahit descent, proved himself capable of courageously confronting his
sovereign and winning favour. Again, I think it conceivable that Bupati
Djoko may have been able to identify himself with this image of courage
and initiative towards distant authority, thereby strengthening the symbolic
edifice that supports him.
The power of the Indonesian state, of nationalist ideology and national
history, has tended to obscure the continuing vitality of local history. This
history lives in oral anecdote, in place names and nicknames, in prohibi-
tions, in popular song and drama, in popular literature, magazines and
comics, in mosque sermons, and above all in the narratives of origin
and narratives of validation25 that are preserved and handed on in Java’s
182 THE POTENT DEAD
innumerable grave sites, burial grounds and places of pilgrimage. In

Banyumas, Bupati Djoko has succeeded in appropriating elements of local
history to legitimise and sustain his position and give impetus to the
programs of his administration. To do this he has had to give local history a
revitalised public profile and a new aura of official respectability. Like
many other local administrators across Java, he has achieved this by
making use of a symbol and an institution hitherto unknown in local
practice in Banyumas—the Foundation Day and its commemoration.
Foundation Day commemorations, Indonesia’s Independence Day being
the biggest, have become integral parts of the bureaucratic life of the
Indonesian state. They ritually recapture a moment of unsullied creativity
and energy, a moment of perfection before the degradation that inevitably
follows. Where the beginning point of an enterprise is not recorded, it must
be retrospectively created. The Indonesian bureaucracy is a community
that endlessly celebrates its beginnings, seeks legitimacy in its beginnings,
and even tries to renew itself through ritual connection with its beginnings.
And it is this practice, at the local level, that has brought Jaka Kaiman into
the streets and offices of Purwokerto, and has brought officials and the
public in considerable numbers to his renovated grave site.
13
‘National ancestors’: the ritual
construction of nationhood
Klaus H. Schreiner
The fallen of the many ‘great’, ‘patriotic’ and ‘world’ wars in Europe and in
Northern America have been subject to scholarly investigation for a long time.
Authors like George L. Mosse (1990) and William L. Warner (1959) thor-
oughly examined the significance of dead soldiers for the collective memory
and the shaping of national consciousness in Europe and the USA. Other
scholars pointed out spatial representations of the collective memory as visu-
alised in war memorials, monuments and cemeteries, stressing their impor-
tance for national assertion and identity (see Koselleck & Jeismann 1994).1
Their common point of departure is the interest in the potency of the
dead as shapers of solidarity and symbols of national unity and identity.
Dead citizens, and dead soldiers in particular, present and re-presented in
memorials and cemeteries, personify in a unique way national engagement
and the fulfilment of duties. The ‘unknown soldier’ becomes the epitome of
national commitment and sacrifice and therefore the crystallising point
of national memory and the formation of a national identity (Koselleck
1994: 15).
What has been demonstrated for France and Germany holds true for
other countries and nations, be they the former Soviet Union, in its effort to
utilise the experience of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ (Kämpfer 1994), or
modern Japan trying to cope with two disparate memories of the dead:
soldiers fallen in a war of aggression, and victims of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki (Shimada 1997). Thus it cannot come as a surprise to find similar
phenomena in those countries still in the process of nation-building after
gaining independence from European colonial rule. One of the most
exciting case studies is Indonesia, where we find an intricate system of
national self-invention through the veneration of ‘national’ forebears.
Three aspects of the Indonesians’ way of memorialising their history
in general, and remembering their dead from the various anticolonial
uprisings in particular, deserve special attention. First, there is a spatial
183
184 THE POTENT DEAD
dimension visible in the numerous graves and specially designated ceme-

teries. The second aspect deals with the ritual activities that are regularly
carried out on these sites, culminating in the rites of ‘Heroes’ Day’ (Hari
Pahlawan, 10 November) and of the ‘Remembrance Day of Pancasila’s
Spiritual Power’ (Hari Peringatan Kesaktian Pancasila, 1 October), the
two most important political holidays besides Proclamation Day (Hari
Proklamasi, 17 August).
The third dimension refers to the personified essence of hero worship.
Clearly defined and carefully selected sets of historic personages represent
the objects of veneration on these holy days.
REVOLUTIONARY GRAVES AND HERO CEMETERIES

The peoples of Indonesia endured one of the bloodiest independence strug-
gles in Southeast Asia. In December 1949 the Netherlands agreed to accept
the sovereignty of her former colony, only after four years of fierce fighting.
One can find the traces of this revolution, as Indonesian historians usually
label the period, everywhere. All provincial capitals, many cities, and even
villages possess and maintain a monument to their independence fighters.
Symbolically even more important are the well-kept graves and cemeteries,
where these people are buried.
Independence fighters of informal militias and regular army units who
fell during the war years were often buried only very hastily on or near the
spot where they met their death. These graves were rarely pretentious or
exaggerated. One of the first of these funerals took place in Surabaya in
October 1945. Indonesian victims of combat against withdrawing Japanese
troops were collectively buried on a site that soon became known as Taman
Bahagia (Garden of Happiness). It quickly became a focus for growing
national sentiment (Frederick 1988: 16). The many skirmishes taking place
all over the country resulted in a host of similar burial grounds. Following
the Surabaya example, the Indonesians called them Taman Bahagia, or
created new names like Taman Syuhada (Garden of the Martyrs) or Taman
Kusuma Bangsa (Garden of the Nation’s Heroes, lit. ‘blossoms of the
nation’) (e.g. see Mertoyoso 1981).
In smaller towns and villages one usually finds only a few scattered
graves or small burial grounds that nevertheless are a centre for self-esteem
and pride. They represent the evidence of an active and self-sacrificing
involvement in the common national cause. In larger cities and provincial
capitals, the state authorities did not leave activities of veneration and rever-
ence to private commitment but took the initiative.
Soon after gaining control over the whole country the central government
in Jakarta began to reorganise the many cemeteries and integrate scattered
graves into neatly marshalled and, most importantly, centralised grave-
yards. They were then officially named Taman Makam Pahlawan (TMP,
‘heroes’ cemetery’) and put under the administration of the Ministry of
NATIONAL ANCESTORS 185
Defence until 1974, when the Ministry of Social Affairs acquired the
responsibility for the maintenance of the installations. In the beginning
each provincial capital was provided with such an official cemetery.
Varying in size and design, they were usually located on the fringes of
the city centres, bearing sometimes very poetic names like the one in
Purwokerto, which became known as Tanjung Nirwana (Cape Nirwana).
The theatres of important combats or other historic incidents were
favourite localities for such cemeteries. Thus, many of the modest graves
that had been there since the war became part of an official heroes’
cemetery, such as the battlefield of Margarana, South Bali, where Balinese
pemuda under I Gusti Ngurah Rai fought the Dutch. This battle is usually
referred to as Puputan Margarana, linking it to the ritual collective suicide
(puputan) of the Raja Badung and his court facing Dutch colonial occu-
pation in 1906.
The dominant feature of the hero commemoration’s spatial dimension is
not the individual grave, but the collective monument, the ‘heroes’
cemetery’. There is one significant exception among the many newly laid
out cemeteries: pemuda (youth fighters) and others killed in Jakarta and its
vicinity were buried on the Eerveld, the former Dutch cemetery for promi-
nent and well-to-do members of Batavian society situated at Ancol, on the
shore of Jakarta Bay. Initially the Indonesian government, seeing no
contradiction in burying anticolonial independence fighters side by side
with outstanding members of the colonial society, continued the tradition
of honorary burial in Ancol.2 Very soon, however, the old Dutch cemetery
proved too small to take in all the graves of honourable persons. In 1953 a
new Taman Makam Pahlawan was established at Kalibata, a kampung on
the southern fringes of Jakarta. After a further enlargement in 1974 the
Heroes’ Cemetery in Jakarta is now the largest in Indonesia, covering an
area of 23 hectares and providing space for 15 000 graves. Moreover,
Kalibata became one of the most important ritual sites for Indonesian hero
worship when President Soeharto declared it to be the ‘National Hero
Cemetery’ (Keputusan 1976: 310). The erection of the memorial for the
‘unknown hero’ (Pahlawan tak dikenal) further emphasised this position,
(see later).
According to the history of the independence struggle one can distin-
guish various groups of persons entitled to a burial in one of these large
heroes’ cemeteries. First, there are all the independence fighters killed in
action. They were either members of regular army units or belonged to one
of the many militias (lasykar rakyat), which carried the main burden of
combat. Besides military merit, excellence in civilian fields could serve as
justification for an honourable burial. Many of these posthumously
received the title of a ‘pioneer of independence’ (perintis kemerdekaan),
which was combined with the award of the Guerrilla Medal (Bintang
Gerilya). The details of the criteria were meticulously defined in the many
decrees issued during the 1950s and early 60s.
186 THE POTENT DEAD
A second group comprises those Indonesian citizens who were involved

in military actions or excelled in the political or social field, but died some
time after the war of independence. These people had usually been
members of the national veterans’ organisation. As they had also usually
received at least one Bintang Gerilya, they had an automatic claim to burial
in a TMP. That is the main reason why there are still funerals taking place at
these cemeteries and the number of graves is growing.
Besides these pemuda fighters, another important set of historic persons
exists. Indonesian governments have built up a national ‘pantheon’ of more
than 100 carefully chosen ‘National Heroes’ (Pahlawan Nasional) over the
past 40 years.3 Both Soekarno and Soeharto selected and honoured famous
figures in the history of Indonesian societies from the 17th century to the
most recent past, side by side with less prominent persons of the independ-
ence struggle.4 Soekarno’s various decrees (see Schreiner 1995: Appendix)
elaborated the criteria for eligibility to the pantheon. Although the wording is
not always clear, one can gather the main stipulations: the potential hero must
have excelled in military or civilian activities. Unless he met his death in
combat, he must be able to prove an untarnished record in his later life,
including unquestionable loyalty to the ruling regime. Interestingly, death is
not a prerequisite for becoming a hero. However, until today no Indonesian
has received the title Pahlawan Nasional during his or her lifetime.
It was not by chance that the beginnings of formalised hero veneration
coincided with the establishment of Guided Democracy. Presenting
outstanding persons from the past as models for individual commitment
and as objects of collective identification were the means Soekarno chose to
support his concepts of NASAKOM and gotong-royong. He selected his
heroes from the immediate past of the young republic. Most of them had
lived in the first half of the 20th century, although there are figures from the
19th century, such as Pakubuwono VI, who do not fit the historical frame of
reference.
They fought as early regional anticolonial resistance leaders, belonged to
the nationalist movement of the first half of the 20th century, or somehow
became famous during the war of independence. Thus the historical linkage
between their individual biographies and the history of independent
Indonesia is clearly perceptible. Their political struggle and their military
engagement in one way or another contributed to the achievement of inde-
pendence. Historically, they were the progenitors of the independent
Indonesia.
Soeharto continued the practice of hero declarations. However, the source
of legitimisation for all Indonesian politicians, the independence struggle,
had already been occupied by his predecessor. Therefore, founding a new
order meant for him finding new heroes. Consequently he avoided the
figures of the very recent past and turned to more distant history. He
bypassed those prominent in the nascent national movement and went back
to the leaders of regional anticolonial revolts such as Diponegoro, Imam
Bonjol and Antasari. In comparison to the pantheon created by Soekarno,

Soeharto’s selection resulted in a much greater heterogeneity concerning
regional origin and historical context. We can find Sultan Agung next to
Marta Tiahahu and Ibu Tien Soeharto among the heroes of the New Order
period. It is nevertheless notable that Soeharto’s selection stressed the
regional and ethnic balance within the pantheon, thus evening out the
Javanese predominance of Soekarno’s pantheon. In retrospect one can
recognise a certain intersection in the late 1970s. Since that time hero
decrees have occurred only sporadically, although the governments of
B.J. Habibie and Abdurrahman Wahid continued to issue such hero decrees.
No distinctive pattern is detectable concerning the burials and the graves’
locations of the officially decreed heroes. The historic figures from earlier
centuries were buried according to the prevailing circumstances. Dipone-
goro, Cut Nyak Dien and Imam Bonjol, for example, were interred at their
respective places of exile; Sultan Agung was the first ruler to be buried at
Imogiri, which later became the central mausoleum for the dynasty of
Yogyakarta. Depending on the charisma of the dead, these graves have
attracted visitors and worshippers ever since. Some burial sites of well-
known historic figures such as Kartini, Diponegoro or Imam Bonjol exerted
such an attraction that they became places of regular pilgrimages. Many
people visited them as magic or sacred places (tempat kramat) well before
these figures received official recognition as national heroes. The graves of
long-established heroes generally did not serve as locations for state rituals;
they were visited only by individuals or small groups of worshippers. For
example, people of Minangkabau (Sumatran) descent regularly gather for
prayer at Imam Bonjol’s exile grave near Manado (North Sulawesi) during
the fasting month of Ramadan.
I know of no case where the Soeharto government has attempted to move
such a well-established site to an official heroes’ cemetery. One obvious
reason is the supposed magic character of these places, which even the
government respects. Another is that the ritual significance these ‘old
heroes’ can claim is only secondary compared to the primary role the
martyrs of Lubang Buaya have as the progenitors of the New Order. Another
conspicuous example is the mausoleum for Soekarno at Blitar (see later).
Rather than attempting to examine the entire pantheon, I focus on three
case studies of the New Order period to explain my point: a monument, a
heroes’ cemetery and a particular person. Before elaborating these examples,
I will deal with the ritual dimension of ‘national ancestor’ worship.
RITUALS AND ANCESTORS

Rituals5
The Indonesian public has visited the graves and cemeteries of their dead
since the first years of the Republic. The anniversary of the Battle of
188 THE POTENT DEAD
Surabaya on 10 November 1945, when pemuda and militias fought against

British troops of the Allied Forces (see Frederick 1988), initially served
only as the commemoration of this single event. In 1957, however, when
Soekarno began to establish the entire system of hero veneration, the
anniversary of the Surabaya battle became a national holiday to commem-
orate the souls of all Indonesian heroes (peringatan arwah para pahlawan).
Until today, 10 November is observed all over the archipelago as one of the
most sacred political holidays in Indonesia.
During the early years private activities dominated the ceremonies on
Heroes’ Day. While Soekarno established the formal system of declaring
heroes, he started to influence hero worship too by centralising its ritual
dimension. He developed an intricate set of rituals and activities to honour
these political forebears, so as to enhance the legitimacy of his regime. The
sudden transfer of power in 1966, however, did not result in a significant
change of the policy concerning heroes. Soeharto proved to be a faithful
successor in that respect; he changed the ideological content but left the
original ritual setup of Heroes’ Day untouched. Nevertheless, the new
government introduced some more streamlined and modernised activities.
Comparing Guided Democracy’s ceremonials6 with those of the New Order
one can see a growth in variety, as the new regime adapted the ritual forms
to the changes in Indonesian society. Medals, prizes and money became
an increasingly common means to attract popular participation. The results
were commercialised competitions and public merry-making. Material
rewards of the New Order pembangunan strategy replaced enthusiasm
(semangat), the characteristic feature of Guided Democracy rituals (see
Schreiner 1997: 275–81).
The ceremonies described below, with their highly formal and repetitive
character, are an integral part of state worship. Participation was usually
obligatory. A roll-call of honour (apel kehormatan) is usually conducted in
connection with quiet reflection (renungan suci), the raising of the flag
(apel/upacara bendera), the observance of a moment of silence (menghen-
ingkan cipta), pilgrimage to the heroes’ cemetery (ziarah ke Taman Makam
Pahlawan), reburial or transfer of the hero’s bones (pemakaman kembali or
pemindahan kerangka pahlawan), including the rite of repurification of the
bones (penyucian kembali) and a ritual communal meal (selametan). These
last two deserve special attention, as they are directly linked to the potent
dead in the national arena.
The roll-call of honour (apel kehormatan) opens the ceremonial cycle of
Heroes’ Day. It takes place at the heroes’ cemeteries at midnight. In
Javanese popular belief the hours after midnight are the most appropriate
and potent for visits to graves and tombs of important dead (Fox 1991: 20).
Units of the armed forces, groups of workers, civil servants, employees,
boy scouts and other civilians usually attend the ceremony. Torches illumi-
nate the scene, creating a solemn and emotive atmosphere. Hoisting the
national flag, Sang Merah Putih, belongs to the core of the ceremony,
followed by a short address from the event’s ceremonial leader. A compari-

son with contemporary accounts shows that the arrangements have not
changed significantly over the years.
The observance of silence (mengheningkan cipta) is another central
ceremony of Hari Pahlawan, intended to create a sense of unity. In 1958, for
example, President Soekarno spent Heroes’ Day in Ambon in order to revi-
talise the fervour of the West Irian campaign. He presided over the festivities
and gave the signal to start the observance of silence by way of a nationwide
broadcast. A singing of the national anthem concluded the ceremony. The
entire Indonesian population was united in listening to the national transmis-
sion of the presidential address. Jointly observing the silence and singing the
anthem turned the nation into a worshipping congregation.
In later years Indonesians have observed the ceremonial without signifi-
cant alterations, except for some differences in duration. Sometimes the
authorities have organised the observance of silence in a more elaborate and
strict manner, with police stopping the traffic on the main roads, urging the
public to observe the ritual. All employees in offices of the government and
private enterprises—with a few exceptions in emergency services—as well
as the public in general were obliged to comply with the ordinance. A
government speaker pointed out that the nationwide observance of state
rituals had to be considered as a training in national discipline and loyalty
in which the entire population should participate (Pelita, 5–11–1985).
The principal political goal is the creation of national unity. It is
achieved through popular participation which in turn is a result of the
implementation of state authority. While roll-call and the observance
of silence are not attached to particular locations, the pilgrimage and the
reburial are inseparably linked to the sacred site of a heroes’ cemetery.
The essence of these ceremonies is the joint visitation (ziarah) of these
sacred places by government and army representatives.
During the years of Guided Democracy, Soekarno rarely missed these
opportunities to deliver one of his well-known speeches. The places for
such performances were chosen for political and propagandistic reasons
and intentions. Soeharto, whose charisma and rhetoric were much less
impressive than Soekarno’s, used Heroes’ Day ceremonials for demon-
strative public appearances inaugurating, for example, memorials for
deceased heroes. In doing so he succeeded in publicly placing himself into
the legitimising tradition, by diligently observing the prescribed rituals.
In 1969 he unveiled a memorial statue for the late Lt. Gen. Pandjaitan; in
1970 he inaugurated five monuments in Surabaya at places with particular
significance during the ‘Battle of Surabaya’ (10 November); in 1974 he
used Heroes’ Day to celebrate the inauguration of the highly symbolic
memorial for the ‘unknown hero’ at Kalibata.
During the period of the transfer of power through 1965/66, the
rhetorical features of Soekarno’s speeches faded away and the formalised
ritual character of the ceremonies became more important. The addresses
190 THE POTENT DEAD
given by the New Order regime on these occasions showed unvarying

content, differing only in their wording. The speeches usually retold the
history of Heroes’ Day and recounted the merits and the sacrifices
of the fallen heroes. Moreover, the speakers appealed to all citizens to
follow the examples given by the heroes who had devoted themselves
to the common cause. Speeches were usually delivered by governors or
bupati (district heads). Central events in Jakarta were often led by minis-
ters or by the President himself.
Other parts of the ceremony underline the liturgical character of such
services. In addition to reciting prayers, there may be readings from liturgi-
cal texts such as the Pancasila, the preamble of the Constitution, the words
of the Declaration of Independence on 17 August, and a certain text that is
considered to be the legacy of Gen. A. Yani, who was killed on 1 October
1965 (see below). The whole ceremony is called ziarah, an Arabic word
meaning ‘pilgrimage’ or ‘visit to a holy place’.
The various influences and concepts produce a syncretic cult of the
heroes, reflecting the broad cultural variety in Indonesia. The concept of
sacrifice and martyrdom strongly resembles the Islamic concept of syuhada
(martyrdom) and refers to most of the fallen independence fighters during
the years 1945–49. The regular visits to graves and cemeteries are not only
rooted in the Javanese tradition of nyekar (Koentjaraningrat 1989: 345,
365–6), but might according to Mertoyoso (1981) also hint at remnants of
ceremonies to venerate the Emperor, which the Japanese military adminis-
tration introduced during their occupation. He explains the origins of the
observance of silence in similar terms. A Western, Christian influence may
be detected in the custom of laying out hero cemeteries. Autochthonous
concepts and traditional religious beliefs and practices are perceivable in
the customs of reburial as a variety of secondary burials, in the erection of
monuments (tugu), in activities such as visitations of graves and holy sites
around midnight, the holding of selametan and performing rites to achieve
ritual purity. The multiform ritual elements aim at attracting as many people
and groups within Indonesian society as possible.
Reburials
Reburials are the solemn relocation of deceased persons’ bones. From the
very beginning, reburials constituted an integral element of ritual activities
carried out around heroes’ day. The inauguration of the new heroes’
cemetery at Kalibata was celebrated by transferring some independence
fighters’ mortal remains from Ancol to the new location (Figure 13.1). After
the installation of official cemeteries, state authorities constantly tried to
unite the scattered graves of the many fallen fighters who had been only
hastily interred during the fighting. The reinterment of independence
fighters’ mortal remains is usually performed on the occasion of Heroes’
Day, though there are exceptions.
Figure 13.1 Monumen Pancasila at Taman Makam Pahlawan Nasional

(below the Garuda, the tomb of the ‘unknown hero’)
©Klaus H. Schreiner 1996
Prosaic necessities (road repairs, opening industrial areas etc.) frequently

offer an opportunity to accomplish a grave’s removal. However, the authori-
ties in charge, district heads or officers of the Ministry for Social Affairs,
sometimes tended to turn the opening of a grave into a political manifestation
by staging a solemn ceremony. In most instances a large number of remains
were jointly reburied. The numbers of the dead concerned could vary between
a few and some hundreds. There are only few cases of single reinterments,
which then normally involved the remains of a more famous person.

192 THE POTENT DEAD
The bones are escorted to the new grave and interred to the recitation
of suras of the Holy Koran and prayers. If the ceremony of reburial needs
more time, the coffin is taken to the town hall of the respective city,
where it remains overnight in the custody of a guard of honour, while
believers recite texts from the Koran and pronounce the shahada (Islamic
creed). The following morning the military guard of honour escorts the
coffin to the heroes’ cemetery, sometimes accompanied by the local
population. High-ranking politicians, military officers, representatives of
various paramilitary units and, in some cases, relatives of the deceased
attend the ceremony. If the names of the reburied fighters have been iden-
tified, a representative of the veterans’ association usually addresses the
audience, stressing the merits and exemplary deeds and the obligation
which the young generation should derive from the sacrifices of their
forebears. The presence of other than Islamic religious elements is
reported only for the big ceremonies on Heroes’ Day. But this fact does
not rule out the participation of Christian ministers or other religious
communities’ representatives.
The execution of two auxiliary rituals still enhances the religious charac-
ter of such reburials. Many accounts emphasise the fact that the organisers
held a selametan, a communal meal intended to strengthen the social
harmony and to avert evil spirits, before they started the exhumation. After
rescuing the bones, their ritual purity needed to be re-established by
carrying out the rite of penyucian kembali tulang-tulang. Only then could
the bones be transferred to the new grave and reinterred.
Although such reinterments were common during the 1950s and early
1960s, one finds an increasing frequency of such activities after 1965. This
fact indicates not only the growing significance of reburial in the cult; it is
also an expression of the general tendency in New Order politics to
centralise all political arenas and to dominate the relevant symbols. Many
Indonesians have noted the implications of this growing centralisation.
Local communities perceive the removal of a venerated grave as the severe
loss of a potent symbol. Though officially intended to strengthen the
region’s ties with the centre, the transfer of a grave often results in
the population’s increasing indifference towards the holiday. A complemen-
tary aspect of centralisation is the extension of control over all aspects of
political life. Spontaneous participation and private initiative are increas-
ingly less appreciated and replaced by demands for an orderly observance
of prescribed ceremonies. Observing New Order rituals of Proclamation
Day and comparing them to the practice under Soekarno, Sekimoto (1990)
notes a change from ‘the rituals of a fighting community to state rituals’
(1990: 72) as the ‘rituals of the society’ have become the ‘rituals of the
state’. This change is marked by a ‘transition from the mass ceremonies
of the Soekarno period to the more strongly state-regulated ceremonies of
the present system’ (1990: 62). Discussing the emergence and meaning
of the term ‘upacara’ as a translation for ‘ritual’, Pemberton corroborates
this observation: ‘The emergence of upacara thus signaled a certain shift in

knowledge/power formation, a shift from local sites and practises disclos-
ing empowered specifics to the authority of a singular logic that claims
diversity while arranging its subjects as variously constituted instances of
uniform types’ (1994: 193). This change in ritual presents just another
aspect of the increasingly centralised and uniform tendencies of New Order
politics.
Reburials (pemakaman kembali) represent that type of hero worship that
most strongly resembles the distinctive ritual activity of ancestor worship.
It is best understood in the framework of secondary burials, which form a
common practice in a number of Indonesian societies. Secondary burials
are part of the ritual by which a community ritually upgrades its deceased.
This specific form of secondary burial integrates the fallen independence
fighters into the national worship performed on Heroes’ Day.
Reburials aim at strengthening the ritual position of a deceased by trans-
ferring his or her remains to a site of higher and more appropriate dignity.
This goal can be achieved only if the intended location is already ritually
prominent and generally acknowledged as a ‘sacred’ site. Therefore, only a
heroes’ cemetery or a specially designed memorial can secure the efficacy
of such a reburial.
The reburial of a meritorious person or even a decreed hero in the heroes’
cemetery appears to be seen as an act not only of piety but also of political
decency. Newspaper reports note regretfully that national heroes are not yet
reburied on central ‘sites of memory’, to use the term of Pierre Nora (1984).
For example, it was noted in 1986 that the family of the prewar Sumatran
poet, Amir Hamzah, still refused the reburial of his remains at one of the
TMP. The same source complained that 3000 ‘heroes’ in North Sumatra
were still buried outside a TMP (Merdeka, 8/11/1986). I know only of one
official ‘Pahlawan Nasional’, Dr W.Z. Yohannes, a leading member of the
Parkindo from Rote, who was transferred to a TMP after being officially
canonised in 1978 (Purdy 1984: 339).
Nevertheless, it is always a sensitive political issue that can stir up
public debate. A prominent case was the last will of former vice-president
Mohammad Hatta. He asked in his testament to be buried at Tanah Kusir,
one of Jakarta’s many public cemeteries, rather than at Kalibata’s Hero
Cemetery. The Soeharto government reluctantly bowed to the last will of
one of its at that time most authoritative critics. In an attempt to compen-
sate for this moral defeat, Soeharto commissioned a huge tomb to be
erected on the occasion of Hatta’s 80th birthday. Arching over the origi-
nally modest grave, it was designed to resemble Soekarno’s grave at
Blitar (Sinar Pagi, 14/8/1981). Obviously the regime posthumously
sought to become Hatta’s legitimate descendant by organising a burial
deemed proper and decent for the former vice-president and coproclaimer
of independence.
194 THE POTENT DEAD
ANCESTORS
Ancestor worship, as one way to communicate with deceased members of
the community, is a characteristic feature of the religious practice of many
traditional societies, not only in Indonesia. Such forms of communication
and veneration do occur in modern societies too, as Kearl and Rinaldi
(1983) have argued. Speaking about the veneration of a certain commu-
nity’s forebears, one has to distinguish the treatment of the deceased from
the worship of ancestors. The first term includes ‘all concepts, actions and
forms of behaviour pertaining to death and the particular dead’ (Stöhr 1965:
187). Every deceased is entitled to these ‘mortuary rituals’, according to the
manner of death he or she suffered. In contradistinction to this earthly
dimension, ancestor worship refers to the transcendent aspects of the
relation between the dead and the living.
Although the survivors will treat and honour every deceased member of
their community, they will not automatically worship the relative as an
ancestor. The most important stipulations to achieve this status are a
proper burial and the continuing presence of the descendants (see Newell
1976: 19). Ritual correctness often demands a second burial or an equiva-
lent ceremony. The Batak in North Sumatra present a striking example for
this first provision. Disinterment and reburial of a person’s bones indicate
the elevation of a deceased’s soul (begu) to the state of an ancestor
(sumangot). The descendants place their forebear’s bones into a specially
erected and highly decorated tomb (tugu) to visualise his or her new status
(Schreiner 1972: 236).7
The second prerequisite is the existence of descendants. The deceased’s
moral character or decent behaviour during his or her lifetime is of only
minor relevance. Fortes (1976: 16), similar to Newell (1976: 20) and
Palmisano (1988), notes that ‘If he [the deceased] leaves the right descen-
dants, he must be worshipped, even if he is lacking in moral virtue, though
he will be more desultorily attended perhaps than an upright person would
be’.8 It is the existence of descendants who are both capable and entitled to
perform the prescribed rituals that define a deceased’s status as an ancestor.
While Fortes (1976) names them ‘identified, responsible descendants’,
Palmisano (1988: 420) even stipulates the existence of a ‘legitimate
descendant’: ‘Thus it [ancestor worship] differs from mere veneration of
the deceased, because the ancestors receive recognition from descendants
that are legitimate and designated as such. The absence of legitimate
descendants . . . is preventing a person from becoming an object of
ancestor worship’ because there must be ‘someone who is living to identify
and to worship him’ (Newell 1976: 20).
Palmisano’s conclusion refers to two modes of interaction with the dead.
One can speak of ancestor worship only if one can identify legitimate
performers of the prescribed rituals. A relation of mutual dependence exists
between descendant and ancestor. An ancestor without legitimate heirs is
no ancestor. But what is more important, a descendant without ancestors

does not possess legitimacy. In this respect, Stöhr’s observation about the
origins of a genealogical connection is noteworthy. He states that it does not
have a particular significance whether or not the lineage of common
descent an ethnic group bases its identity on is factual or fictitious (Stöhr
1965: 193). Thus it is possible to become a legitimate heir and descendant
of a venerable and powerful ancestor by construing or inventing this neces-
sary genealogical linkage by means of, for example, genealogical literature,
as did the the Balinese dynasty of Mengwi with the Babad Mengwi (History
of Mengwi) (Schulte Nordholt 1994).
Ancestor worship is the manifestation of a society’s correlation and soli-
darity based on the consciousness of common descent. An individual in a
social group owes her/his existence to the common progenitor being
considered to own the merit of the primordial cosmological event. The
conviction about belonging to such a lineage can be effective even though
the supposed genealogical correlation is not factual but is only an
‘imagined community’, to borrow Benedict Anderson’s term.
Two features of ancestor worship seem to be most significant in the context
of hero worship: the legitimising function of the performance of rituals, and
the reburial of venerable people’s mortal remains. There is also an uncondi-
tional reciprocity between the legitimacy of the descendant and the ritual’s
efficacy. If the heir is legitimate the rituals will be effective in the desired way.
If somebody is capable of carrying out the rituals in the prescribed and effi-
cient manner, he will prove his claim on the ancestors’ legitimacy.
By elaborating an intricate agenda of commemorative activities, both the
Guided Democracy and the New Order governments substantiated—in
different ways and to a different degree—their respective claims to being
the legitimate heir. By successfully establishing this link, they were able
to utilise the independence fighters’ legitimacy for their own political
aims. Soekarno pretended to continue the Indonesian Revolution, whereas
Soeharto claimed to complete the independence struggle successfully by
achieving the ‘Era of Development’ (era pembangunan).
Cases: Lubang Buaya—Founding a New Order

Two groups of deceased persons belong to the most potent dead in recent
Indonesian history. Only one of them enjoys official worship, whereas the
other is being politically utilised in a completely different way. The first
group includes the seven military men who were murdered in the early
morning hours of 1 October 1965.9 The other group consists of hundreds of
thousands of Indonesians killed for their (alleged) involvement in or attach-
ment to the Communist movement. The traumatic experience of these mass
killings functions as a menacing ordeal until the present day.
Before those six generals and one aide-de-camp could become the
founding fathers or ‘saints’ of a new order in Indonesia, Soekarno and
196 THE POTENT DEAD
Figure 13.2 Monument Pancasila Sakti, Jakarta, Lubang Buaya:

a giant Garuda overshadows the statues of seven slain generals
© Klaus H. Schreiner, 1996
the ascending Soeharto had to struggle for the enormous symbolic potency
of the generals’ death. At first Soekarno attempted to salvage his powers
and to refute any suspicion of being involved or even having masterminded
the plot. In an effort to strengthen his position, he claimed the dead soldiers
to be martyrs of the Indonesian Revolution, of which he was the Great
Leader. On the eve of their funerals Soekarno hastily issued the decree
awarding the victims the title ‘Pahlawan Revolusi’ and thus circumventing,

as he often did, the lengthy bureaucratic process of screening and selecting

national heroes.
However, his rhetoric of Guided Democracy claiming Yani and the others
for his and the revolution’s cause did not succeed in convincing his enemies
within the army. Soeharto continued to strengthen his power base within the
armed forces and was soon able to wrest the crucial executive powers from
the ailing president. At a time when Soekarno officially still held his
position as President and commander of the armed forces, Soeharto had
already begun to exploit the murdered generals for his purposes. In 1966 he
commissioned a memorial to be erected on the exact spot where the victims
had been found dumped in a well. Lubang Buaya (crocodile hole) became
the sanctuary of the New Order.
The memorial initially consisted of only three main elements. There is a
spacious plaza to hold ceremonies (lapangan upacara). Not far from the
square a memorial features giant statues of seven soldiers overshadowed by
a huge Garuda (Figure 13.2). A bas-relief visualising the story of the events
leading up to the actual murder covers the massive pentagonal pedestal,
itself a symbol for Pancasila’s invincible strength (Leclerc 1997). A few
metres away from this ‘Monument of the Seven Heroes’ (Monumen Tujuh
Pahlawan) one finds a modest structure resembling a Javanese pendopo. At
its centre there is a simple hole in the ground, the famous well. Some time
after the official opening of the monument two educational elements were
added. A life-sized diorama is now located close to the well, plainly depict-
ing the generals being tortured and humiliated by Communist youths,
despite the official autopsy report which asserts that no traces of torture or
maltreatment could be found on the corpses of the soldiers (Anderson
1987). The false accounts of torture and sexual orgies were an important
element in the mythologisation of Lubang Buaya (Leclerc 1997: 295–303).
Finally, a museum about the ‘Treason of the Communist Party’ (Museum
Pengkhianatan PKI [Kommunis]) displays and explains the official inter-
pretation of Indonesian history since Madiun 1948 (Cohen 1991).
From the second anniversary of the bloody events in 1967, Soeharto and
representatives of the New Order annually performed the rituals of the
‘Remembrance Day of Pancasila’s Spiritual Power’ (Hari Peringatan
Kesaktian Pancasila) to commemorate the birth of the New Order (see
Purdy 1984: 230). The rituals performed were simple. They mainly
consisted of the recitation of the ideologically most important texts of the
New Order: the Pancasila itself, the preamble of the Constitution of 1945,
and the ‘oath of resoluteness to defend the Pancasila and carry it out with
devotion’ (Berita Yudha, 2/10/1969). In 1996 the only change was more in
terms than in substance, in that the ‘oath of resoluteness’ was replaced by
the ‘oath of allegiance’ (Media Indonesia, 2/10/1996).
The rituals remain unchanged; the same words and sentences were
repeated like a mantra. Though the ceremonial itself appeared to be rather
unpretentious, it gained ritual importance, as Purdy notes in her analysis of
198 THE POTENT DEAD
this memorial day. Over the years of the New Order an increasing number
of government functionaries and high-ranking generals took part in the
event. The authorities commanded representatives of an expanding
spectrum of societal groups (parties, scouts, women’s and veterans’ associ-
ations etc.) to participate in the ceremony at Kalibata (Purdy 1984: 239).
The fall of Soeharto brought about a significant change. While his immedi-
ate successor B.J. Habibie still attended the ceremony in 1998, the newly
elected President Abdurrahman Wahid refused to go to Lubang Buaya on 1
October 1999. However, Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri payed her
homage to the dead generals in an assessment of the prevailing power rela-
tions in post-Soeharto Indonesia.
The ‘Monument for the Seven Heroes’ had a twofold purpose according
to the double role the soldiers played in history. On the one hand Yani and
his comrades were a sacrifice that had to be made to salvage the foundation
of the state, the Pancasila. They heroically gave their life for the common
cause. Thus the monument was a constant reminder of the threat originating
from Communism and of the strength and invincibility of Pancasila. The
annually shown film ‘Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI’ directed by Arifin C. Noer
was probably a more efficient medium for popular reception. The incanta-
tion of the Communist danger (bahaya komunis), however, has deeply
influenced the consciousness of a whole generation of Indonesian politi-
cians that cannot easily be changed again. Abdurrahman Wahid’s move in
early 2000 to have the ban on Communism lifted provoked a fierce public
debate over whether Communism was still to be considered a menace to
national security and unity.
The meaningfulness of the generals’ sacrifice does not end, though, with
the salvation of Pancasila from the chaos of the Old Order. They are
actually considered to be the progenitors of a new order, as they are the
acting ancestors in the New Order’s myth of origin, as Leclerc (1991)
rightly notes. The ‘Monument of the Seven Heroes’ represents the founda-
tion of the New Order. Moreover, it is erected on the very site of the
mythologised events of 1 October. As such it necessarily becomes
the theatre of a newly conceived ritual that is indispensable for maintaining
and strengthening the new authority (see Kertzer 1983: 63).
KALIBATA: SEIZING SYMBOLS

On the inauguration of the ‘Monument of the Unknown Hero’ an extraordi-
nary reburial was carried out at the Kalibata Heroes’ Cemetery on 10 Nov-
ember 1974. President Soeharto and many of his high-ranking officials
attended the central activity of that year’s Heroes’ Day ceremonial. The
core event of the inauguration was the re-entombment of the remains of an
anonymous pemuda fighter. He had been killed on the first day of the Battle
of Surabaya and consequently buried in a cemetery in the East Javanese
capital. After 30 years, the relics were now exhumed and a military guard of
honour escorted them to Jakarta. The committee had the coffin placed on a
bier in the parliament building to provide an opportunity for the population
to pay their homage. On the next day the guard convoyed the coffin in a
procession to the memorial, where civil and military authorities entombed
it in the prepared sepulchre underneath the memorial’s five rectangular
concrete pillars of different height, symbolising Pancasila’s five principles.
The reburial of a deceased person’s remains has, as I pointed out, a
high symbolic value. The interment of the bones creates a direct relation
between their place of origin and their place of destination. In Europe,
Christian theology developed from the original idea that death rituals can
be performed exclusively at the locale where death occurred into the
concept of the ‘translation of relics’. The presence of a saint’s relics facil-
itates her/his ubiquity for ritual purposes. Now the believers could
worship the saint wherever there were relics. Examining Soviet war
memorials, Kämpfer (1994: 337) concludes that a similar conceptual
change resulted in the erection of memorials to the ‘unknown soldier’:
beyond the actual theatres of war, they enabled the public to worship and
pay homage to the war victims. Although unlike European war memor-
ials, which are empty, the monument at Kalibata combines in a unique
manner elements of a secondary burial with those of a translation of
relics. The memorial of the unknown hero serves simultaneously as an
ancestral tugu and as a reliquary.
A clear instance for such a translation of a relic took place in Solo: soil
from the grave in Ambon of Slamet Riyadi, who fell there commanding the
troops against the secessionist Republik Maluku Selatan in 1950, was
brought to his native town Solo and buried at the local TMP, (Suara Karya,
23/10/1981). Thus the local population was able to venerate Riyadi at a
grave that is actually a reliquary. Riyadi was decreed National Hero in
1960, on the 10th anniversary of the abortive secession of the South
Moluccan Republic and on the eve of the militarisation of the West Irian
campaign.
The monument of Kalibata symbolises and celebrates both the state
ideology Pancasila and the Battle of Surabaya. Thereby the Soeharto regime
appropriates the legitimate power of the ‘Myth of Surabaya’ as the founding
myth of independent Indonesia. Myth has two purposes: to narrate the
coming into existence of a society and the story of its forebears, and to
present how and why the order of any given society is established. Thus, a
myth describes the fundamental beginnings and the normative foundations
of a society. The translation of the unknown pemuda fighter’s mortal
remains transforms the memorial at Kalibata into the ritual centre of the
state cult. The presidential decree formally approved this factual status as
the most important centre of New Order civil religion, by declaring Kalibata
the national heroes’ cemetery (Keputusan 1976). Thus, the decree estab-
lished a new ritual hierarchy among the sacred sites, depriving Surabaya and
other historic locales of their symbolic power and their ritual significance.
200 THE POTENT DEAD
SOEKARNO: ‘ARWAH LELUHUR’ OR ‘LELEMBUT’?

One of the most potent dead in Indonesian history, at least in the 20th century,
was the first president of independent Indonesia, Soekarno. He played a
crucial part as a leading politician both before and after gaining national
sovereignty. He is indisputable as the proclaimer of independence and he
formulated the Pancasila as ideological basis of the state. However, these
circumstances alone do not explain his continuing role in Indonesian politics
well after his death. The decline of the Indonesian state and the circumstances
of his overthrow, the so-called Untung coup and his final dismissal in 1967,
add to the ambivalence of the late president’s place in history.
The Soeharto government considered even the dead Soekarno such a
powerful and dangerous symbol that it took 16 years after his death before
it permitted the use of his name and portrait in Indonesian public life. The
timing is interesting, too, for it was not only carried out exactly 16 years
(approximately two windu of Javanese chronology) after the death—it was
promulgated after the final adoption of legislation on mass organisations in
1985, which made the government’s authoritative interpretation of the
Pancasila the basic principle of all political and social organisations. The
formal adoption of these laws was an essential element of the stabilisation
of the New Order regime, which now felt secure enough to make some
minor concessions to its opponents. Soeharto needed the Pancasila to
solidify his claim to power. As it was, however, identified with his prede-
cessor, there was an urgent need for a reinterpretation of the history. The
new president therefore commissioned the army historiographer Nugroho
Notosusanto to diminish Soekarno’s role in formulating the state ideology
by rewriting history. The third notable circumstance refers to the moment
when the rehabilitation took place. It occurred half a year before the 1987
general elections, at the same time as the new international airport at
Cengkareng was officially named ‘Soekarno-Hatta Airport’.
The main move towards Soekarno’s rehabilitation, however, was the
formal hero declaration in the same year. Soeharto proceeded very carefully
and sought to check his predecessor’s charisma by a simultaneous decree
for Soekarno and Mohammad Hatta. Moreover, he did not choose one of
the commonly used hero categories but had a new one created. The title
Pahlawan Proklamasi could exclusively be awarded to these two persons
and only in commemoration of one particular historic event: the dwitunggal
Soekarno–Hatta proclaiming Indonesia’s independence. Although this
seems at first sight to be a plausible measure, a closer look at Soeharto’s
moves can reveal the underlying political objectives.
Soekarno was honoured, as decreed, only for his merits on 17 August
1945. Neither his political activities within the nationalist movement of the
1920s and 1930s nor his political career in independent Indonesia, let alone
his famous Pancasila speech, were acknowledged. This was clearly an effort
to locate him, together with Hatta, at a fixed and narrowly defined point in
the past and to limit his historical role. Integration into the pantheon also
meant exerting control. Thus, once the symbol was firmly under state
authority, public veneration of Soekarno—with Hatta as historical
‘watchdog’—was permissible.
The mausoleum erected in Blitar for the late Soekarno opens yet another
perspective on Soeharto’s strategy. In the first place, Soeharto rejected
Soekarno’s last will to be buried in Bogor, close to the presidential palace
and thus close to the centre of power in Jakarta. The tomb in Blitar, origi-
nally just a modest grave for Soekarno’s parents, was consequently
expanded into a huge construction that nowadays attracts thousands of
pilgrims every day (see Lindsey 1993).
It is also striking that the government itself started to perform annual
ziarah ceremonies to Soekarno’s mausoleum on the date of his proclam-
ation as Pahlawan Proklamasi (Kedaulatan Rakyat, 13/11/1986). The then
chairman of the parliament, Kharis Suhud, but not Soeharto himself, led the
first delegation from Jakarta to pay his respects at Blitar. Thus the regime in
Jakarta succeeded in incorporating the unofficial cult that had developed
around the grave over the years into the accepted frame of state rituals.
Soekarno’s followers were satisfied that their cult was finally accepted. On
the other hand, Soeharto could present himself as the loyal and pious
descendant of the Republic’s founder that he had always claimed to be. As
he could not bypass Soekarno, either politically or ritually, Soeharto always
stressed his recognition of his predecessor and defined his role towards
him—in accordance with Javanese tradition—as a son towards his father.
This may have been all the more necessary because the way he wrested
power from Soekarno is an issue of open controversy. Soeharto always
claimed that he seized power in accordance with the constitution. It is,
however, well known, particularly after a public debate on the issue in early
1997, that the members of the MPRS refusing Soekarno’s justification and
finally electing Soeharto as acting president were carefully chosen by
Soeharto himself. The reproach of unconstitutional actions has always been
a sensitive issue for Soeharto’s rule and was always perceived as an attack
against ‘national stability’.
As Soekarno’s historical role was reduced to the proclamation of inde-
pendence and the following war, Soeharto could easily identify himself
with his predecessor’s merits. In so doing he could enhance his prestige,
especially in the eyes of the Javanese electorate and those of the Soekarno
followers, and thus try to win their votes in the general elections of 1987.
Even today Soekarno figures as an ambivalent and potent symbol in the
political process in Indonesia. A rallying point for opposition groups and
potential menace to the present regime, he figures as a lelembut, a malevo-
lent ghost haunting the living as long as he is not properly treated by them.
The rehabilitation and incorporation into the official pantheon was an effort
to still and satisfy this ancestor so that he could become an benign ancestral
spirit (arwah leluhur).
202 THE POTENT DEAD
CONCLUSION
In the various modes by which Indonesians commemorate their dead, one
can distinguish two phases of memorial activities. In the very first years of
independent Indonesia it was a popular practice to remember and to
venerate the fallen of the independence war. These activities did not depend
on a particular place, for the graves of the deceased were in nearly every
local community. Every grave and every monument, erected to recall a
certain person or event, conveyed its specific message as representation of
the common cause. Though not relics in the proper sense, as they did not
represent a part of an entity, the graves fulfilled the function of reliquaries.
Every tomb symbolically represented one element of the common tradition.
Thus the graves had the innate capability to link the local community’s
memory and memorial activities to the national sphere.
By establishing Guided Democracy, Soekarno began to exert a stronger
influence on the commemorative activities. His main objective was not,
however, to dominate the private sphere of commemoration, but to push
forward national unification by installing a new set of symbols. The inclu-
sion of soldiers fallen in the struggle against the Darul Islam movement, for
example in Southeast Sulawesi (Terbit, 10/7/1981), and the veneration
for Slamet Riyadi (see above) show the importance placed on national unity,
though it has to be admitted that since Riyadi no-one who became prominent
in crushing one of the later secessionist movements has yet been included in
the national pantheon.
The heroes’ pantheon recalled the past and presented it anew in contem-
porary circumstances as the personification of Soekarno’s NASAKOM
doctrine. Assmann explained this process very clearly: ‘A community
ensures itself of its identity in a recollection of their dead. The commitment
to certain names [of the deceased] always comprises a profession of a
certain socio-political identity’ (1997: 63). Soekarno attempted to ascribe
a binding character to his personal choice of historic persons to embody his
political program for Indonesia. He tried to prevent the remembrance of
important people from eventually fading away and to integrate them into
daily political life.
What is valid for the pantheon on a national level is also true for the local
sphere. As Soekarno’s memorial policies stressed the participatory aspects,
the many reburials taking place in the 1950s should be considered mainly in
their ritual implications rather than their political consequences. Reburials
were necessary steps to upgrade the ritual status of the hastily buried
fighters. Consequently a second burial was inevitable to guarantee the
ritually proper entombment at a specially designated place. A reburial was
the appropriate measure for promoting the dead to their deserved status as
worshipped ancestors.
Although the memorial activities of the Soeharto era phenomenologically
resembled those of the preceding era, the political objectives were quite
different. As I illustrated in the case studies, Soeharto aimed to dominate the

powerful symbols. He succeeded at Lubang Buaya and at Kalibata. In the
former case the symbols were essential for founding the New Order, in
the latter for reinforcing the claim to the tradition that preceded it. At Lubang
Buaya he established a new sanctuary at the very site where the mythologised
events took place. In Kalibata the New Order took possession of the symbols
of the independence struggle’s decentralised and participatory aspects and
incorporated their innate legitimacy. The inauguration of the Monument of
the Unknown Hero in 1974 demonstrated on a symbolic level what had
already been achieved in the political sphere: the completion of the New
Order’s consolidation. The symbols that originally stood for the revolutionary
period and his outstanding protagonist Soekarno were finally usurped by the
new ruler. Soeharto made a last move to reaffirm his historical linkage to
the revolutionary period by erecting the ‘Monumen Yogya Kembali’ at
Yogyakarta on the 40th anniversary of the Republican attack on Dutch-
occupied Yogyakarta on 1 March 1949. This is the only documented event
during the independence war in which Soeharto played a remotely prominent
role as one of the unit leaders.
Jan Assmann has rightly noted that veneration of the dead—and, it may
be added here, ancestor worship in particular—occupies a central place in a
‘culture of remembering’. In addition, he argues that the remembrance of
the dead in a paradigmatic way represents a mode of memory that creates a
sense of community (Assmann 1997: 63).
Hero worship as a means of politics is rooted in the fields of historical
consciousness, religious practices and political legitimisation. It belongs to
the sphere of history because it deals with historical persons and their
function as meaningful objects of identification. The political dimension of
hero worship is derived from its function within the government’s endeav-
our to maintain national unity and to vindicate its rule. The practical forms
utilise well-established traditional religious patterns to become politically
efficient. Therefore they can be defined as a variant of political religion.
Besides these legitimising aspects one has to take into account the
constructive aspects of the national rituals. Hero worship is a means
to create and to maintain national cohesion. The pantheon is an attempt to
hold together the disparate and even centrifugal traditions of Indonesian
history. The hero decrees for leading Papuan politicians demonstrate the
intended representative character of the pantheon to serve as a ‘family
album’ (Taufik Abdullah, pers. comm. 1991) in which the whole nation is
portrayed. However far-fetched the links between Sultan Agung and Silas
Papare or Frans Kaisiepo may be, the Indonesian nation is constituted not
only through the centuries but also across the entire archipelago, by ideo-
logically fitting its parts into the invented frame of common anticolonial
experience. Hero worship, with its various features, was construed to
provide the Indonesian nation with the necessary ritual forms to reassure
itself of its identity and unity by invoking the symbolic potency of its
204 THE POTENT DEAD
political forebears. Under the conditions of authoritarian rule they have

proven effective. Since the fall of Soeharto a new political culture has
emerged in Indonesia that has to create new symbols and rituals. This new
culture must take into account hitherto collectively suppressed events in
the recent history to be viable and supportive to a democratic Indonesia.
Notes
Introduction
1 The official figures of the 1980 census, the last to report the controversial
matter of religious affiliation, made the proportions Muslim 88%, Catholic 3%,
other Christians 5.8%, Hindu 2% and Buddhist 1%.
2 Sakai (1997b) dwells more precisely on the importance of genealogy in Gumai
society.
3 Steedly (1993: 58) draws a totally different picture of Karo Batak society,
where people who have died by violence or accident, as well as young dead
children and women who died in childbirth, are included among the family
dibatas (ancestors) and have special shrines together with persons of the
highest status.
4 Surprisingly, Metcalf and Huntington (1991: 74), who review meticulously
Hertz’s and Van Gennep’s theories, minimise the repulsion caused by that
smell among a Bornean ethnic group.
5 Verheijen (1991: 218–20) insists on the role of ancestors as intercessors
between the living and God in Manggarai religion, but this seems likely to
reflect Christian influence.
6 Pemberton (1994: 272, 279, 293) mentions sites in Java particularly favoured by
thieves (and police alike). He also notes that ‘dedicated largely to nonaccidental
coincidence, kramat practices have been converted into a sort of otherworldly
lottery with winning lottery numbers themselves being one of the most
frequently sought blessings’ (1994: 286).
7 The Indonesian title eventually became Abangan, Santri, Priyayi dalam
Masyarakat Jawa. The irony is that the original title was not deemed accept-
able in the USA either, as Geertz relates in his recent ‘professional memoir’:
‘I wanted to call the book I wrote about all this Religions in Java. But the
publisher, a believer, apparently, in ethnographical kinds, natural labels, and
programmed audiences, wouldn’t have it, and it emerged, suitably normalized
and against its argument, as The Religion of Java’. (Geertz 1996: 55).
205
206 NOTES: CHAPTER 2
Chapter 1 – Castrated dead
1 See for instance Stöhr et al. (1981), Barbier (1984), Sumnik-Dekovich (1985),
Barbier and Newton (1988), Taylor and Aragon (1991), Feldman (1994), van
Brakel et al. (1996); see also Sellato (1995).
2 E.g. Wagner (1960), Bodrogi (1972).
3 P = parent; PP = grandparent; etc.
4 On the Tiger character, its identification, attributes and functions, see Sellato
(1983; 1986: 316–20).
5 On death rituals in Borneo, see Stöhr (1959) and a critical review of Stöhr by
Harrisson (1962).
6 See Schärer (1966) and Schiller (1987) on the Ngaju, Mallinckrodt (1925) on
the Lawangan.
7 For a description of a similar phenomenon in Java, see Guillot and Chambert-
Loir (1995: 240).
8 For a discussion of headhunting in Indonesia, see e.g. Downs (1955), Needham
(1976), Hoskins (1996).
9 For a recent study of Kendayan rituals, see Yohanes (1990).
Chapter 2 – How to hold a tiwah
1 Although the council does have an official mandate, it has limited autonomy
and must make some decisions in consultation with the leaders in the provin-
cial office of the Council for Hindu Religion (Parisada Hindu Dharma).
2 At the time it was recognised, MBAHK was known as ‘The Council of
Scholars of Indonesian Kaharingan’ (Majelis Alim Ulama Kaharingan
Indonesia, or MAUKI).
3 On some maps, the Katingan River is referred to as the Mendawai River.
4 The largest of the Dayak groups found in Central Kalimantan are the Ot
Danum, the Ngaju, the Ma'anyan and the Luangan. Attempts to make conclu-
sive claims about the name and number of Dayak groups are problematic, and
no real consensus has been reached. Many scholars have found it useful to
classify Dayak societies in linguistic terms, with reference to language families
rather than broad ethnic classification. Of course, both these schemes are
related. (See Hudson 1967 on this topic.)
5 Various written versions of Kaharingan doctrine have been available for some
time. The contents are often the subject of disputes. Lately, as part of
MBAHK’s efforts at religious regularisation, several versions of the doctrine of
Kaharingan have been published. The most recent, released in 1996, entitled
Panataran, replaces earlier versions (Simpei, B. & M. Hanyi 1996).
6 The official estimate of the cost of the Petak Putih tiwah was Rp. 74 700 000,
then about US$32 500.
7 A lengthy article on the tiwah at Petak Putih appeared in the Indonesian news
magazine GATRA in July 1996 (see ‘Menuju Surga di Petak Putih’, GATRA
NOTES: CHAPTER 3 207
2(37): 51–62). A film about the tiwah, entitled ‘Borneo Beyond the Grave’,
was made by the National Geographic Society based in Washington, DC, USA.
For a discussion of the media coverage of this celebration, see Schiller ‘Talking
Heads: Capturing Dayak Deathways on Film’ (2001).
8 Readers interested in extended discussions of these ritual forms are referred to
Alfred Hudson’s account of the Padju Epat Ma'anyan (1972), Joseph Wein-
stock’s essay on the Luangan (1987), and my own monograph on Ngaju death-
ways (1997b).
9 During tiwah, basir also transport to the upper world the animate essence of
the posts (sapundu) to which some varieties of sacrificial animals are tethered.
These posts are usually carved to resemble humans, and the ganan sapundu is
said to become the deceased’s servant in the Prosperous Village. In the past,
some Dayaks also sacrificed captives or slaves for this same purpose.
10 While only humans are considered to possess hambaruan, individual body
parts also possess the coarse animate essence called gana. Hence it is as correct
to refer to the ganan daha, the animate essence of blood, as it is to speak of the
ganan hadangan, the animate essence of a water buffalo.
11 Adherents disagree among themselves on this point. With regard to the fate
of panyalumpuk liau, it is usually said that it awaits subsequent treatment in an
upperworld village called Lewu Bukit Nalian Lanting Rundung Kerang
Naliwu Rahan/Batang Baras Bulau, home of the sangiang Balu Indu
Rangkang. With regard to the other souls, some adherents claim that liau
karahang tulang waits in the upperworld village Lewu Bukit Pasahan Raung
Rundung Kereng Daharin Penda Lunuk Tarung, and liau balawang panjang in
Lewu Tinggi Mama Hanyi (Andung 1991). Whether survivors claim that their
ancestor’s souls are waiting in the grave or in the upperworld usually depends
on their knowledge of eschatology. As one would expect, basir and other
Ngaju with religious expertise espouse considerably more elaborate eschato-
logical understandings than lay adherents of Kaharingan.
12 The three souls are said to be escorted on their journey by two sangiang asso-
ciated with treatment of the dead. Panyalumpuk liau is escorted by the
sangiang Rawing Tempun Telun. Liau balawang panjang and liau karahang
tulang are escorted by the sangiang Raja Duhung Mama Tandang.
13 The duhung handepang telun is sometimes called the tukang hanteran.
14 This is only one dimension of the meaning of pali. For another, see Schiller
1997b.
15 Tanjung Puting is the location of an orangutan rehabilitation and research
centre in the western part of the province.
16 For related discussions of religious regularisation and its implications else-
where in Indonesia, see also Volkman 1985 and Vickers 1996.
Chapter 3 – Witnessing the creation of ancestors in Laboya
1 For more details on Laboya society, see Geirnaert 1987, 1989, 1992 and 1996.
2 From now on, I shall write Uma or ‘House’ when I refer to the social unit and
uma when I designate the ‘house’ as a building.
3 I shall not handle violent, accidental ‘hot’ death. For that particular case, see
Geirnaert 1989.
4 The video project that lasted from the end of January to mid-April 1996 was
sponsored by the Institut Kesenian in Jakarta, by Leiden University and
WOTRO in the Netherlands, and by the University of Paris X in France.
5 Their advice had been invaluable at the beginning of my research and before
his illness he had kept writing, keeping me informed on the proper date of the
yearly rituals that start traditionally the rice planting season in February. In this
article, in respect to Mr Hoga Bora and his family, I use real names, in keeping
with the visual recording.
6 Lately, the government has fixed the number of animals to be sacrificed to a
maximum of five. However, particularly in the case of powerful nobleman, this
injunction is not yet followed by the Laboya.
7 The kecamatan of Walakaka consists of Wanokaka, Laboya, Gaura and Rua.
Chapter 4 – Reciprocity, death and the regeneration of life and plants

in Nusa Penida
* Spelling in this chapter conforms to the following conventions:
• All the Balinese words in the text have been written in italics, (e.g. banten).
• Terms peculiar to the Balinese spoken in Nusa Penida have been charac-
terised by the code [NP] (e.g. lenger [NP]).
• Local floral terminology is glossed parenthetically in the text with botan-
ical terms in, e.g. ambengan (Imperata cylindrica).
• Occasional Indonesian terms such as Pancasila or Camat are in italics.
1 Similar myths are reported in Evans (1953: 15–16), Fox (1993: 78), Jensen and
Niggemeyer (1939), Jensen (1948, 1963: 166ff), Boulan (1988: 31ff), Schulte
Nordholt (1971: 271). For its importance in the western and central Austrone-
sian context and its relation to other common myths in the same linguistic area,
see Ottino (1986: 62ff). For a variation of this myth in which the sacrificial
victim is a male burned ancestor, see Friedberg (1989: 552).
2 For other versions of the myth of Dewi Sri, see Sukawati (1924, 1926),
Schaareman (1986: 58), Wirtz (1927). Wessing (1990) stresses the Western—
Indian—link of Sri through its association with Rama and its epic in Java.
However, as the evidence of eastern Indonesia suggests (see note 1), I suspect
that the mythological theme of the sacrifice of a young woman and the appear-
ance of plants is older than the Hindu influence in western Indonesia.
3 Due to global warming and the induced climatic changes, the arrival of rain
in Nusa Penida is no longer so predictable and the two seasons are not so
sharply distinguished by the two equinoxes. However, for the Balinese ritual
and festival calendar, the March equinox remains crucial as it is related to the
beginning of the new year and its rituals.
4 For further details on Maprani, see Giambelli (1995: ch. XIII).

5 On this subject, see Weck (1986) and Hooykaas (1974).
6 For a comparison on the fertilising nature of the ‘rotting fluids of the dead’ who
bring life to all animals and plants, in an eastern Indonesian context, see Geir-
naert (1989: 447ff).
7 Additionally, at different levels the whole exchange circuit could be equally
interpreted as steps in the passage of pramana—the life force—between
plants, humans and earth. This, however, was never made explicit to me.
8 The need to replace the bones with some offerings, which included a young
banana plant and a live chicken, had already been noted by Mershon (1971:
215) who, however, does not report the name of the ritual or appear to have
understood the full extent and significance of the reciprocal exchanges
involved in silur bangbang.
9 On these issues, see Bloch and Parry (1982) and Huntington and Metcalf
(1979).
10 See for instance the meaning and symbolism associated with rice planting as
‘pitra ketemu’ in Filloux (1991: 351ff). She indicates that in Piling the growth of
rice can also be seen as the ‘symbolic impregnation’ of the field by the man
acting as farmer. Although at a different level, this relation appears analogous to
those found in Nusa Penida concerning the role of Akasa and Pretiwi in the
growth of plants and cultigens.
11 Bhatara is a Sanskrit borrowing which, according to Zoetmulder and Robson
(1982: 224), refers to great lord, venerable person, gods and great god. The
term is usually used before the name of a god, although used alone it may refer
to the highest gods, such as Siwa or Buddha.
12 On this issue, see Zoetmulder and Robson (1982: 561).
13 This may be peculiar to Sakti, for in Bali the lustral water of the Pura Dalem
has not such an extensive use.
14 In a different context, Guermonprez (1990: 57) had already noticed that
Balinese communities should be considered as a partnership between the gods,
ancestors and dead villagers.
Chapter 5 – Remembering our dead
1 Although, to his credit, Wilcox admitted ‘I could not attempt the full ethno-
graphical account we ought to have. This is just a portrait-sketch, the result of
my idle, amateur exploration of their lives and character. The portrait is not very
good, but the subject matter is so attractive that I believe it may please even
those who have never imagined that happiness might be found off the map or
sweetness and light among people whom we—with our atom bombs—still call
savages’ (1989 [1949]: 10).
2 Nooy-Palm (1986: 170) indicates that she is reporting (and agreeing with)
remarks of Van Wouden from a lecture he delivered in 1948 to the Ethnolo-
genkring.
3 For a short, comprehensive background article, see Nooy-Palm (1975); for a

historically informed ethnography, see Volkman (1985); and for a good recent
overview of the literature, see Adams (1995). The rich historical work of
Bigalke (1981) has been indispensable to my understanding of change in the
Toraja highlands.
4 For a suggestive account of some ethnolinguistic implications of this ortho-
praxy, see Koubi (1982b).
5 In relation to siri', it would be interesting to look at what Waterson (1984b)
has termed the value of ‘boldness’ (probably berani) in ritual performance.
Similarly, in describing a grand 1985 funeral attended by several dignitaries
as well as groups of tourists, Volkman suggests that this ‘spectacular perform-
ance . . . demonstrated . . . [the sponsoring] family’s willingness to defy the
former (aluk) prohibition on lavish funerals for non-nobility, and to ignore a
contemporary movement to reduce ritual extravaganzas’—another example of
‘boldness’ (1990: 106–7). And Adams (1995) shows how tourism and anthro-
pology have been appropriated in local competitions over power and prestige.
6 Sandarupa here argues that reproductive fertility is the highest in a hierarchy of
desirables. Although claiming a person without children is considered ‘value-
less’ seems excessive, I would agree that he, or especially she, is considered
‘incomplete’. Confirming the connection between conceptions of wealth and
conceptions of fertility, childlessness elicits disapprobation as well as pity.
I have heard people link female infertility to stinginess.
7 Here it may be the fact that a certain kind of wealth can be distributed (and
redistributed) that lends it its cultural value. Thus while processions of cars and
motorbikes in Ujung Pandang (Waterson 1984b: 64) can express prestige, they
do not lend themselves to distributions like pieces of meat or even cups of
coffee and cakes.
8 Thus, a further aspect of the role of the dead in the highlands has to do with
the possible connection between rates of conversion and shifting levels of
material wellbeing. Bigalke (1981: 254) has suggested that there is some
evidence to show that when harvests were poor conversion to Christianity
declined, due to accusations that the infertility of the land was caused by
violations by new Christians of aluk to dolo prohibitions. At first glance this is
counterintuitive, because one would expect Christianity to be attractive during
times of misfortune. If the correlation mentioned by Bigalke is in fact signifi-
cant, it shows the strength of the links between conceptions of wealth and
spiritual power.
9 One way of rectifying the situation is to contextualise mortuary ritual in the
wider cultural context. As Waterson has suggested, ‘most visitors to Toraja
(whether tourists or researchers) have been captivated by the funeral rites
which punctuate Torajan life in such a spectacular fashion. But I suggest that
the significance of these occasions can only be properly understood when
viewed within the framework of the pattern of rituals, both of East and West,
taken as a whole. It then becomes possible to see that mortuary rites are just
one part of a symbolic system which, while it endorses status-seeking in the
one context, in the other celebrates different principles [of cooperation and
community], transcending the limits of social competition’ (1984a: 23).
10 The two forms of dream interpretation are called sapan, literally ‘to dam up’,
and bori, literally ‘to block’ (see Hollan & Wellenkamp 1994: 106; Tammu &
van der Veen 1972).
11 The separation of death and decay from life and growth is a governing princi-
ple, pollution an ever-present risk. In thinking about the meaning of this ritual
process that moves spiritual power from one spatiotemporal domain to another,
a helpful source is H.M. Nooy-Palm, whose exhaustive account of Torajan
rituals of the east and the west includes a full chapter on what she calls
‘conversion rituals’ (or aluk pembalikan, from ma'balik', ‘to turn’). According
to Nooy-Palm, the conversion of spiritual power from the ‘sphere of death’ to
the ‘sphere of life’ happens as follows: ‘Through the care of his descendants,
the deceased, above all if he is of noble birth, is able to achieve a higher status,
that of deata . . . The dead becomes a divinity able to pour out his blessings on
his offspring, a to mebali puang, someone who has become a lord in the upper-
world’ (1986: 152).
12 I take issue here with Hollan (e.g. 1995), and Wellenkamp (e.g. 1991), who say
that private, personal meaning is often at odds with public, cultural meaning,
without considering the social context in which meaning is expressed.
13 There is reported to be some ambiguity among Toraja people as to whether
ma'nene' should be properly considered an East-side or a West-side ritual (see
Volkman 1985: 144), but in Kalimbuang it was definitely treated as a ritual of the
West or as one in which the ancestors rather than the divine spirits were ‘fed’.
14 As is often the case in situations of religious change, people declared that
ma'nene' used to be more lively and elaborated in bygone days. People said that
in the past more optional rituals were performed and that they were bigger and
better.
15 Refraining from the consumption of rice or fasting is quintessentially associ-
ated with death and the dead. In fact, one of the considerations in conversion to
Christianity is the giving up of this prohibition; elderly adherents to aluk to
dolo often express a strong aversion to eating cooked rice or working in the
rice fields in conjunction with mortuary ritual, and some Christians even defer
to their aluk to dolo neighbours and avoid rice themselves at times of death.
16 Eggs are associated with chickens, which are linked to the funerals of infants,
because at the funeral for such a ‘wilted child’ (pia' malayu) a white chick is let
loose at the grave. Sometimes such chicks survive and continue to live near the
graves, which are isolated and not very accessible.
17 It is noteworthy that although public sacrifice is spoken about in terms of status
and honour (siri'), meeting these requests of the dead is more often discussed
in terms of love (pakaboro and kamase) and reciprocity (membalas). This
lends support to Waterson (1984a: 31), who claims that ancestral spirits in
general are ‘beyond social divisions’, and Volkman (1985: 144), who reports
that the cost of a small buffalo sacrificed at ma'nene' is shared evenly by all
members of the meat-sharing, labour group.
18 This is the same principle behind giving a gift to make amends for an absence
(bringing home a gift to a child after leaving the child). I received many requests
for possessions that were considered sonda kale (‘substitutes for the self’).
19 Wellenkamp confirms the importance of the viewing of the body, and says ‘it is
not clear to me precisely why, from a Toraja perspective, viewing the
deceased’s body is important’, suggesting that it has to do with providing ‘a
tangible link with the deceased’ (1991: 124–5). This ties in with the importance
of holding and the indexicality of the bones (see below). But it is not always
the case that seeing the remains is desired, as revealed by one aluk to dolo
woman who was afraid to look at the bodily remains (Hollan & Wellenkamp
1996: 177). There is probably ambivalence about seeing the dead: the decay
(bossi) is disconcerting, but as long as it can be contained and concealed, the
desire to see and hold the remains outweighs the aversion (see also note 26).
20 Hollan and Wellenkamp (1994: 107) also emphasise touch and sight in a short
section on ‘sense perception’.
21 Hollan and Wellenkamp quote a woman who describes the aversion to decay as
follows: ‘[After death] I don’t want to be placed with other people. Because in
a vault, the dead people are always stacked on top of one another . . . She
didn’t want to get soiled. Because, she said, if a dead person is placed on top
(of her), later the decay (from the body) will be emitted, and it will come in
contact with her (body)’ (1996: 179). This passage seems to support the idea
that it is important to contain the body’s decay. It also suggests that it is consid-
ered significant to stay with one’s own kin (sola instead of others, to senga'),
which is supported by Waterson when she reports a cultural fear of being
placed in the ‘wrong’ grave and suggests that ‘while during life, a web of ties is
thrown out between houses . . . there seems to be some tendency to pull them
back in after death’ (1984b: 55).
22 It would be interesting to explore this transformation in terms of the distinction
between predecessors and consociates (see Geertz 1973b). Also see
Wellenkamp (1991: 130–1) for a discussion of the downplaying of specific
memories of the deceased in favour of generalised ones.
23 In support of this point about the differences in ways of requesting,
Wellenkamp comments in a footnote that ‘skillful wailing at a funeral was
described as being able to “explain” one’s painful, sad feelings. Skillful
wailing at the ma'nene', however, has more to do with ability in requesting
goods and blessings . . . wailing at the ma'nene' . . . is called mepare lapu'
(literally, “to harvest rice that is full of contents”)’ (1992: 211).
24 To fully support this assertion would require further research, but it is worth
noting that dream interpretation is culturally and temporally shaped. Interpreta-
tion can depend on whether the dream takes places during a time of East-side
ritual performance or West-side ritual performance. Hollan mentions that some-
times ‘a “bad” dream is reinterpreted [i.e. dibori] . . . by a dream specialist so
that its original, ominous meaning is neutralized or reversed’ and adds that ‘[i]ll
omens of all sorts may be interpreted in this way, especially during rituals that
promote the prosperity and well-being of the community [East-side rituals]’
(1989: 172, 184, fn 9; see also Hollan & Wellenkamp 1994: 102–6). That is to
say, the interpretation of a dream—and whether it is considered to have auspi-
cious or inauspicious consequences—depends on when in the ritual calendar
the dream happens. The ‘personal’ meaning of dreams, then, depends on the
social context, and specifically on the situation with respect to the ritual
calendar.
Chapter 6 – Island of the Dead
1 Bruner extrapolated from the 23 000 members of the HKBP listed for the
Jakarta classis in 1969, to an estimated total Jakarta Batak population of just
over double that. My subsequent research showed 91 645 HKBP members in
the same Jakarta classis in 1982, and 166 829 in 1993. Given the steadily more
fragmented religious loyalties of urban Toba Bataks, we should probably
estimate a total Toba Batak population in Jakarta of at least 200 000 in 1982
and 400 000 in 1993.
Chapter 7 – Modernising sacred sites in South Sumatra

1 Rice agriculture is of long standing. Cultivating coffee, rubber and fruit
gardens started during the Dutch colonisation at the beginning of the 20th
century (Purwanto 1996). Coconut oil plantations are a recent phenomenon.
2 A change of Indonesian administrative regulations in 1979 made the adminis-
trative village (desa) the lowest unit of administration in the country. This had
the effect of replacing the marga system in South Sumatra.
3 Previously, the Gumai practised a form of marriage designed to determine resi-
dential patterns and the affiliation of the children of the couple (see Moyer
1984).
4 It is not uncommon to transport a dead body from the place where he or she
died to his/her native village despite any costly expenses.
5 The version collected by Collins (1979) tells that three founding ancestors
called diwe descended to Bukit Siguntang one after another.
6 They were in difficulties due to their own personal problems, and they were
exploring ways to solve them while staying at ‘their’ house of origin.
7 A secular feast such as a wedding is referred to as pesta and differentiated from
sedekah. Sedekah has much in common with other Islamic ritual feasts, known
as kenduri, hajatan and selamatan, practised among Muslim Indonesians in
other localities.
8 Therefore, when they are in difficulties, the Gumai often make a mental vow
(masang niat). ‘Ancestors, I really need your assistance. If my wish comes true,
I will slaughter a goat for you’ is a common phrase.
9 Colours of the sacrificial animals such as goats and chicken are believed to
have meanings. For instance, a black goat is sacrificed only when sexual rela-
tions have occurred outside marriage.
10 In Rambang areas, salt is not used for the cooking of offerings.
11 This phrase is used only for ancestral spirits, and is differentiated from assalam
alaykum, an Islamic greeting meaning ‘Peace be upon you’.
12 The main Gumai communities in the District of Lahat were located in an area
called Sindang. At Sindang, the only duties to the Sultan were border-watching
and regular tribute in exchange for cloth and other items unavailable in the high-
lands (for details of Sindang, see Suzuki 1996).
13 Muslim pilgrimages are organised by the Indonesian government through the
Department of Religion, which makes a package tour. It cost around Rp 7 000 000
for a single person for the ordinary class in 1995. For luxury class, which includes
more comfortable accommodation and amenities, it cost Rp 10 000 000 per
person (see Abdurrahman 1996).
14 Some claim that he is a wali, a steward of God. Contrary to explanations given
by participants of Sedekah Malam Empatbelas, the Jurai Kebali'an himself does
not claim any association with Islam. He does not pray to Allah in these rituals.
He emphasises that it is a local custom to perform this ritual and he has to
continue the practice. Otherwise, he believes, he will be penalised by ancestors.
15 Some of the old village sites where ancestral graves are located are deserted
and have become overgown with forest which there is a taboo on clearing.
Descendants are free to collect forest products here, but must refrain from
deforesting.
16 Before endorsing this renovation, the village head is urged to have a village
meeting among senior members of the village to consider the plan. When it is
approved, the renovation is allowed to proceed.
17 There is no definite way to determine the date of this ritual: one day in Ruwah
month which is convenient to the village head and others is chosen.
18 Kalan Dalam village in the subdistrict of Pulau Pinang still preserves a lunjuk.
It is no longer used as an altar for ancestral rituals but instead has been
assigned as a cultural heritage by the local government. It resembles a small
house supported by four tall pillars (3 metres high).
Chapter 8 – Ancestors’ blood
1 In South Sulawesi one cannot use such clearcut and mutually exclusive cate-
gories as abangan and santri, current in Java, to characterise respectively the
syncretic and orthodox attitudes to Islam. There exists in fact a whole range of
religious shades among the Bugis, from that of the utterly ‘pagan’ To-Lotang to
that of the most staunchly orthodox Moslems, implying various blends—not
always appropriately qualified as syncretisms—of different elements from the
complex pre-Islamic and Islamic heritages. This is a quite different concept
from an imposition of a thin layer of Islam on a substratum of original religion.
2 I have summarised a number of these esoteric traditions in a still unpublished
paper (Pelras 1987).
3 For a description and analysis of this voyage and of the ‘geography’ of the
abode of the dead, see Pelras 1992: 240–56.
4 The La Galigo texts record three cases where a male to-manurung is united
with a female to-tompo' (in Cina, Tompo' Tikka' and Sunra) against four
exactly opposite cases (in Wéwang Riwu', Tompo' Tikka' and Gima), whereas
two couples are formed by two to-manurung (in Posi' Tana and Tompo' Tikka
Timpa' Laja'). The only couple which consists in to-tompo' only (La
Bulisa'/Wé Patunerreng) is based on a forbidden alliance and as such stricken
by divine punishment (see Pelras 1983: 93).
5 I collected an oral version of it in 1967 in Maroanging from the then kali
(kadhi) of Pammana, Haji Muhammad bin Ali. Ian Caldwell has recently
published and annotated a written version of it (Caldwell 1988).
6 There is disagreement among Bugis specialists about the length of a pariama,
which some say corresponds to seven, eight or 12 years, and others to one
generation.
7 As this name is the same as for the Luwu' to-manurung, Caldwell thinks that
the Pammana story is merely inspired by the Luwu' story. He is of the opinion
(different from mine) that the wanua Pammana has actually nothing to do with
La Galigo’s Cina.
8 A landing place next to Amessangeng, southwards and not far from Singkang.
9 When this text was written, rilau' and riaja had already lost their original
meanings of ‘towards the sea’ and ‘towards the mountain’ respectively, as
Soppéng rilau' was upriver, Soppéng riaja downriver with regard to the
Walennaé River.
10 In his translation, Caldwell assumes this to-manurung to be male; however, all
palontara' who told me this story said that it was a female to-manurung and
that she married the Sekkanyili' to-manurung.
11 Except for a few cases, including Goa, the tu-manurung of the Makassar
country are usually not considered as the direct ancestors of the ruling families,
but as supernatural persons who came on earth to teach the people the social
rules they had to follow, chose the first rulers from among the people, organ-
ised the political territories and established their political institutions.
12 An example of genealogical recitation of the ‘arborescent’ kind is to be found,
in the La Galigo cycle, when the hero, Sawérigading, being stopped in his
navigation to the Abode of the Dead, implores the main heavenly deity Datu
Patoto' by stressing his own divine ancestry, starting from his eight great-
grandparents.
13 Many examples of ‘linear’ genealogical expositions are to be found in Bugis
historical manuscripts. For instance, the chronicle of Cina (an ancient polity to
the south of Wajo') starts from a to-manurung, Simpurusiang, and his to-
tompo' wife from Luwu'. Of their two daughters, one becomes datu in Luwu',
the other one perpetuates the line in Cina by marrying her mother’s sister’s son.
In general, for subsequent generations, named (male and female) individuals
are either those who have remained in Cina or those who, having married else-
where, have fostered children or grandchildren who have later become
marriage partners of first or second cousins in Cina (see Caldwell 1988: 88–9
for the Bugis transcription and 92–3 for the translation).
14 This is also the place where, in some families, the afterbirths and umbilical
cords of the children born in the house are hung in a pot.
15 For a detailed presentation of Bugis offerings and of the ritual performances
that accompany them, see Pelras 1985.
16 Both attachment to tradition (‘the ancestors’ way’) and forms of behaviour that
would nowadays be attributed to ‘modernity’ have coexisted in Bugis culture
since well before any Western influence without real dichotomy (see Pelras
1996). Here, ‘traditionally minded’ refers to people who, although considering
themselves Moslems, stick to whatever religious creeds or rites they regard as
an ancestral heritage, even though more orthodox or reformist/modernist
Moslems may oppose them as either ‘unorthodox’ or even ‘pagan’.
Chapter 9 – Saints and ancestors
1 Where no other reference is given, data derive from my lengthy periods of resi-
dence and research in Java in the 1980s and 90s.
2 See the relevant chapters in Chambert-Loir and Guillot (1995).
Chapter 10 – The Tembayat hill
1 Hereafter I refer to the English translation: Rinkes (1996).

2 In the 1970s some amateurs of Javanese traditional arts in Jakarta attempted to
give new life to this dying form of art by producing and commercialising
masks in the capital. I do not know the outcome of that initiative.
3 See Tembayat’s geneology in Rinkes (1996: 82).
Chapter 11 – Interpreting the historical significance of tombs and

chronicles in contemporary Java
1 During the colonial period, deciding who were the rightful juru kunci for
important tombs was a task that fell to the Dutch authorities. There was
probably no tomb more troublesome in colonial times than that of Sunan
Kalijaga, on which the Dutch were called on to adjudicate among competing
branches of the juru kunci of Adilangu.
Chapter 12 – The role of a Javanese burial ground in local government
1 In modern Indonesia a kabupaten is an administrative district one tier below

the level of a province. It is headed by a chief administrator called a bupati,
who is appointed by the Minister of Internal Affairs (Menteri Dalam Negeri)
on the recommendation of the provincial governor concerned. In premodern
times, a Javanese bupati was a local official with considerable autonomy,
second in authority only to the paramount ruler.
2 See for example Any Asmara (1984), Sapto Priyoko (1990) and Soemarno
(1994). The summary of the popular history of Banyumas that follows is based
mostly on these three sources.
3 A powerful Javanese state from the late 13th century until the early 16th
century, centred on Majapahit near the modern town of Mojokerto in East Java.
4 Wirasaba (not to be confused with another region bearing the same name further
to the east in the vicinity of modern Mojokerto, East Java) seems to have encom-
passed a large portion of the ethnic Javanese hinterland adjacent to the
Sundanese-speaking regions of West Java. Another name for the area (or at least
part of the area) was Pasir or Pasirluhur.
5 An office and title similar to that of bupati.
6 Also called Pasir. The meaning of Pasir seems to be ‘edge’ or ‘periphery’, indi-
cating its position at the western extremity of the ethnic Javanese area.
7 The name Mrapat commemorates the bupati’s action in dividing Wirasaba into
four realms. Mrapat means literally ‘to divide into four’ and derives from the
Javanese word prapat, ‘one-fourth’.
8 The name Dawuhan is derived from the Javanese word dhawuh, ‘an instruc-
tion, a statement (from someone of high status)’.
9 Colonel Djoko was born in Madiun, East Java, in 1945. Until his appointment
as Bupati of Banyumas he had pursued a career in the army. His early military
training was undertaken at the Military Academy (Akmil) in Magelang, after
which he spent time in various locations including Kalimantan. Subsequently
he wrote an internally circulated manual on security strategies in border areas.
In 1985 he graduated from the Land Forces Officer Training School (Seskoad)
in Bandung and in 1986 was appointed Commander (Dandim) of Military
District 0733 in Semarang. In 1987 he moved to the headquarters of the
Diponegoro Division in Semarang, where he took up the post of Deputy Terri-
torial Assistant to the Head of Staff of the Diponegoro Division (Waaster
Kasdam). My main sources of biographical details on Djoko Sudantoko are
Sy (1994: 248) and Soemarno (1993: 5).
10 Purwokerto was made capital of the kabupaten of Banyumas in 1936 during an
administrative reorganisation. The kabupaten of Purwokerto was incorporated
into the kabupaten of Banyumas, but the capital of the new district was shifted
from the town of Banyumas to Purwokerto on the grounds that Banyumas was
too subject to flooding.
11 See for example Ricklefs (1981: 37), who suggests that Adiwijaya may have
died in 1587.
12 When I visited the tomb in 1992 the custodian (juru kunci) told me that the
tombstone on the left was ‘empty’ and was there only ‘for the sake of
symmetry’ (untuk melengkapi), but it is probably that of Joko Kaiman’s wife.
13 My translation. The Javanese runs: ‘Pasareyan Kyai Adipati Warga Utama
kaping II Bupati Banyumas kaping sepisan, asma timur Raden Jaka Kaiman
winisuda dening Kanjeng Sultan Adiwijaya ing Pajang angasta Adipati
Wirasaba kaping 7 ing Ari Jemuah Kliwon surya kaping 6 April 1582 Masehi,
kaleres dhawah 12 Rabiulawal 990 Hijriah. Swargi kapareng ambagi Wirasaba
dados sekawan wilayah lajeng kasebat Adipati Mrapat’.
14 Other activities include ceremonies commissioning development projects

(peresmian), a special commemorative plenary sitting of the kabupaten
parliament (sidang paripurna DPRD) plus a cleanup of Purwokerto. In the
days leading up to the commemoration the streets and buildings of the city
are festooned with banners that hail the Foundation Day celebration and
proclaim various development slogans.
15 MUSPIDA is an abbreviation of Musyawarah Pimpinan Daerah. The
MUSPIDA is a council of high-ranking officials from local, provincial and
central government, the military, and city administration charged with coordi-
nating and advising local governments and the military on development and
security issues.
16 According to the custodian of the Dawuhan burial ground (in conversation
with me on 28 December 1992), in the early years of the annual commemor-
ation, the bupati and his followers spent the whole night of 5 April at the tomb,
and the discussions with middle-level and village-level officials went on all
night.
17 The originals of these heirlooms and awards are regarded as too rare, powerful
or valuable to be carried in a public procession.
18 The Indonesian reads: ‘Dgn Hari Jadi Kabupaten Banyumas ke 412 kita
jadikan motivasi utk mensukseskan Tahun Peningkatan Kwalitas Hidup’.
19 In conversation with me, 6 April 1994.
20 Literally ‘to chop down the forest’. In Javanese history writing the estab-
lishment of a new polity is conventionally represented, both literally and
metaphorically, as an act of clearing an ordered space in the midst of wildness.
So strong is this convention that the very word for the genre of writing called
‘history’ is babad.
21 Whether it is literally true or not that Bupati Djoko seeks advice and guidance
from his predecessor is not, of course, the point. What is significant is that he is
perceived by the people of Banyumas to be doing this.
22 In 1993 Djoko Sudantoko was reappointed for a second (and final) five-year
term as bupati, gaining overwhelming support in the local nomination process.
See ‘Daerah Sekilas’ (1997).
23 It appears that even today some people in Banyumas preserve prohibitions
(wewaler), the rationale for which can be traced back to the death of Adipati
Wargautama I. For example, because Wargautama was murdered on a Saturday
Paing while consuming a meal of goose flesh, there are remnants of a prohibi-
tion on eating goose flesh and travelling on Saturday Paing. See Koderi &
Ahmad Tohari (1991: 106).
24 The folk hero of Banyumas is Ca Blaka, an earthy figure who always bluntly
speaks his mind (the word blaka in Javanese means ‘frank, candid’). On many
occasions people in Banyumas have proudly pointed out to me that it is their
capacity to be blunt and forthright that distinguishes them from the ‘devious’
people of Yogyakarta and Solo.
25 By narratives of validation I mean the narratives of pilgrims or petitioners that
provide proof of the efficacious power of a pilgrimage site.
Chapter 13 – ‘National ancestors’
1 Inglis (1993) examines the topic, and the ‘Tomb of the Unknown Soldier’ in
particular, in a broader, non-European frame.
2 The Acehnese felt quite differently. Although ‘Kerkhof’, the burial ground for
those members of the colonial army fallen in the Aceh wars, is well main-
tained, the authorities in Banda Aceh laid out a new TMP for their own dead on
the other side of the city, and probably not only for religious reasons.
3 Among the six hero categories, the most often used are Pahlawan
Kemerdekaan Nasional (‘Hero of National Independence’, by the Soekarno
administration) and Pahlawan Nasional (‘National Hero’, by the Soeharto
administration). For a detailed analysis, see Schreiner (1995: 189–231).
4 See the chronological list of National Heroes up until 1996 in Schreiner
(1997); in the meantime a few others have been named heroes, among them Ibu
Tien Soeharto, the late wife of former president Soeharto.
5 This study’s concept of ‘ritual’ is based on Kertzer (1983, 1988) and Moore
and Myerhoff (1977: 3–24); for a detailed discussion, see Schreiner (1995:
40–5). Pemberton has pointed out that the Javanese/Indonesian term upacara
as a translation for ‘ritual’ has emerged only relatively recently. Originally
denoting only regalia and other objects in the king’s possessions at the begin-
ning of the 20th century, the term came into use for prescribed patterns of
behaviour. Pemberton (1994: 20) concludes that the term was ‘an epistemolog-
ical construct that enframed certain events as a form of symbolic behavior’.
6 In Kertzer’s (1983: 56) discussion of the term ‘political ritual’ the aspects of
‘providing legitimacy’ and ‘fostering a particular cognitive world-view’ are of
particular relevance to this study.
7 See also Chapter 6, this volume.
8 Stöhr (1965: 191) and Schreiner (1972: 230), however, emphasise the rele-
vance of the deceased’s merits, wealth and political status to become eligible
for the new qualifications.
9 Lt Gen. M. Tirtodarmo Harjono, Maj. Gen. Donald Ignatius Pand-
jaitan, Lt Gen. Siswondo Parman, Maj. Gen. Sutojo Siswomihardjo,
Lt Gen. Suprapto, Capt. Pierre Tendean and Gen. Ahmad Yani. Police Captain
Karel Sadsuit Tubun was also killed that night, but is not included. Brig. Gen.
Katamso Dharmokusumo and Col. Sugijono Mangunwidjoto, belonging to the
Yogyakarta command, were killed the same night. Their corpses were found
only on 22 October and interred in Central Java.
Bibliography
Abbreviations used in Bibliography
ANU Australian National University (Canberra)

ASEMI Asië du Sud-est et Monde
Insulindien (Paris)
BEFEO Bulletin de l'Ecole Français
d'Éxtrême Orient (Paris)
BKI Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-,
en Volkenkunde (published by
KITLV, Leiden)
EFEO École Française d’Extrême Orient
(Paris)
EHESS École des Hautes Études en
Sciences Sociales (Paris)
KITLV Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal,
Land-, en Volkenkunde (Leiden)
MBRAS Malaysian Branch, Royal Asiatic Society
(Kuala Lumpur)
OUP Oxford University Press
RIMA Review of Indonesian and Malaysian
Affairs (Sydney)
TBG Tijdschiift van het Bataviaasch
Genootsehap
UMI University Microfilms International
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I
Index
adat (custom), xxv Laboya concept of, xix, 33, 36–8,

complementarity of Islam with, 43–6
109–11, 114–15 ‘memory specialists’, xix, 105–6,
ancestor worship, xvii, xviii, 194 160, 169–72
Bugis, 118–20, 126–31 purification process, 53, 60–1, 61–6
Christianisation, 71, 73–4 reincarnation as plants, 58
and ‘culture of remembering’, 203 relations between the living and, xxi,
of founding ancestors, 127–30 33–5
Gumai, 107–12, 114–15 rituals to create, 13–15, 33, 53,
Islamisation of, 109–12, 114 60–1, 64–5, 70, 194
Java, 133, 135, 140 symbols of collective identity, 95–6
legitimising aspects, 203–4 village founders (cikal bakal) as,
national hero worship as, 193, 195 xxii, 133, 135, 140, 156
reasons, 129–31 see also ancestor worship; National
social solidarity through, 195 Heroes
state’s involvement, 113 ancestral rituals, Bugis, 126–7
see also Heroes; National Heroes ancestral spirits
ancestors Batak, 94, 101
Aohengs’ neglect of, xxi, 15 Gumai, 107, 110–12
Balinese concept of, 65–6 Toraja, 71, 83
of Bugis commoners, 125 animal sacrifices, 35, 45–6, 107–9, 111
of Bugis nobility, 120–2, 123–4 animism, 4
cults of, 13–14, 140 Aoheng
definitions and meanings, xix, 1–2, ‘bad’ deaths, 10–11
12–13, 14–15, 33, 194 funerary practices, 6–11, 15
distinguished from forebears, 13 non-recognition of ancestors, xxi, 15
founding ancestors, 127–9 social organisation, 3–4
individual identity, 65–7, 83 spirits, gods, souls, 5–6, 9–11
238 THE POTENT DEAD
Arya Jayaprana, 169–71 kinship and descent system, 122–3

traditional polities, 120–1
Babad Tanah Jawi, 164–9 worship of the dead, 118–20
Bali burial rituals, see funerary rituals;
ancestor status, 64–7 reburial rituals
death and agricultural cycle, 51
distinctive culture, 48, 68 Christianity
fertility and sexuality, 52–3, 57–61 and Batak reburial rites, 92–4, 97,
funerary rituals, 52–7, 64–5 99–101
kings, 65, 67 impact on ancestor worship, 33, 71,
plant/human reciprocity, 50–1, 54, 56 73–4, 89
sacred places, 61–4 impact on funerary practices, 15, 44
social structure, 66–7 cikal bakal, xxii, 133, 135, 140, 156
transformation of ancestors, 61–5 cloth, ritual uses of, 81–3
Banyumas (Java) cognatic kinship, 4, 122–3
Foundation Day commemorations, communism, 195, 197
177–82 conversion, xvi–xvii, xxiii–xxvi
founders’ tomb, 175–7 see also Christianity; Islamisation
story of the founding, 173–5 cosmology
Bataks Aoheng, 6
ancestral spirits, 94, 101 Balinese, 52
Christianisation, 88–9, 94 Bugis, 117–18, 119, 125
explanations for tugu-building, Toraja, 74, 76
97–101 cremation (ngabén), 53
lineage identity and solidarity, 93, cults
95–6, 99–101 of the dead, 13–14, 140
reburial rites, 92–3, 97, 99–100 of Heroes, 99, 186, 188, 193, 195,
urban/rural connections, 90, 92, 202, 203
94–5, 100 of Islamic saints, xxii, 132–40
bersih desa, 133, 139 of places, 11–12
Bloch, M., 49, 60 custom (adat), xxv
bones
separation of flesh from, 37, 52 Dayaks, 19–20
transformation into ancestors, 60–1 see also Aoheng; Ngaju Dayaks
washing of, 55 de Graaf, H.J., 141, 147, 149
wrapping and cradling, 81–2 the dead
see also reburial rituals cults versus rituals of, 13–14
Brawijaya importance of seeing and touching,
as genealogical source figure, 163 79–81
tomb of, 162–3 impurity of, 66
Bruner, Edward, 90 potency of, xvii, 74–6
Bugis people relations with the living, xxi, 33–8, 77
ancestor worship, 119, 126–31 respect for, 99–100
divine ancestors of the nobility, ritual remembering (ma’nene’),
120–2, 123–4 77–85
INDEX 239
spirits and souls of, xix–xx, 6, 9–11, Laboya (West Sumba), 32, 36–8,
14, 22–4, 36, 45, 67, 76–7, 79, 39–40, 42–6
119 Nusa Penida (Bali), 52–7, 64–5
see also ancestor worship; ancestors; prestige-seeking aspects, 33, 46, 75
funerary rituals prohibitions and taboos, 76–7, 78, 81
death, xx, 2 ritual uses of cloth, 81–3
and agricultural cycle, 51, 58 scholarly approaches, 73–6
bad deaths, 10 seasons and agricultural cycle, 51
cool versus hot, 33 and sexuality, 57–8
ritual separation from life, 77 Toraja, 70, 73–6, 129
see also funerary rituals
Demak, 144–7, 166 Geertz, Clifford, xxv, 133
descendants gender, 57–61
factual versus fictitious, 194–5 genealogy
as prerequisite for ancestor status, 194 Bataks, 95–6
dewa (reputation, name), 36–8, 44 of Brawijaya, 164–5
Dewi Sri, 50, 58–60 Bugis nobility and commoners, 123–5
Djoko Sudantoko, 174–82 Gumai people, 104–5
of Ki Ageng Giring, 167–8
exhumation (ngebét), 53 Giring, Ki Ageng, 167–8
see also reburial rituals gods
ancestors’ transformation into, 65–7
femaleness, 58–60 versus ancestral spirits, 71
fertility Aoheng, 5
ideas of, 58, 60–1 Bugis, 120, 122
rituals, 73 graves
flesh Aohengs’ cementing of, 15
and plant growth, 54–6, 60–1 of Brawijaya, 162–3
separation from bones, 52–4 Bugis, 127, 129–31
forebears, see ancestors as embodiment of Javanese historical
Foundation Day commemorations traditions, 160–72
Banyumas (Java), 177–82 guardians (juru kunci), 160, 169,
Independence Day, 182 171–2
funerary rituals, xx Gumai, 112–13
among Ngaju Dayaks, 22–5 of independence fighters, 184–5
Aoheng, 6–11, 15 of Jaka Kaiman, 175–6
Barito versus Kayanic in Kalimantan, of Ki Ageng Giring, 167–9
7–9, 10 Laboya, 34–5, 38, 41, 65–7
Batak, 92–3, 97, 99–100 pilgrimages to, 112, 118–19, 126–7,
Bugis, 129 130–1
Christian churches and, 15, 44, 73, as reliquaries, 202
93–4, 97, 101 as sacred sites, 119, 126–8
importance of seeing and touching, of Senapati, 169–71
79–81 visits to, 78–9, 118, 130, 133–4, 160
240 THE POTENT DEAD
see also tapak; tugu ways of memorialising history, 183–4

guardians of sacred sites, see juru Islam
kunci conversion to, xxiii–xxiv
Guided Democracy and worship of the dead, 118–19
hero veneration under, 99, 186, 188, Islamic saints
202 cult of, in Java, xxii, 132–40
Gumai people, 103–5 definition and types, xxii, 132–3,
ancestral graves as pilgrimage sites, 136–7
112–14 links with village founders, xxii
ancestral rituals, 107–9, 113–15 Nine Saints (Wali Songo), 134–5,
136–7
Hatta, Mohammad, 193, 200 pilgrimages to graves of, 119, 134–6
headhunting, 12, 71 see also Sunan Pandan Arang
Heroes (pahlawan) Islamisation
cemeteries, 184–6 of ancestral rituals, 109–12, 114–16,
cult of, 99, 186, 188, 193, 195, 202, 129
203 of Java, 141, 144–6
Heroes’ Day, 184, 187–90 of sacred places, 138–9
political purposes, 188–9, 203–4
rituals and ceremonies, 187–90 Jaka Kaiman, 175–6
see also National Heroes Java
Hertz, Robert, xx, 49, 52 cult of Muslim saints, 132–40
Hindu Kaharingan Religion, see royalty and the power of the clergy,
Kaharingan religion 157–9
Hoga Bora tombs as centres for historical
funeral, 43–6 dissemination, 160–72 passim
status, 38–43 veneration of kings and political
leaders, 138–9
Ibu Pretewi Jurai Kebali’an, 106–7, 111–12
entrusting corpses to, 56–7 juru kunci (guardians), xix, 160, 169,
and plant/human being reciprocity, 171–2
54–5, 59–60
indigenous religions, xvii–xviii Kaharingan religion, 18–21, 28–9
ancestor rituals, xxiii Kajoran clan
Christianisation, 33 etymology of name, 154–5
Islamisation, 109–12 links with Tembayat family, 149–52
Javanese ajar, 152–3 as religious ajar, 152–6
Kaharingan, 18–21, 28–9 Kalibata National Heroes’ Cemetery,
of the Laboya, 33 185, 198–9, 202
of the Ngaju Dayaks, 20–1 Kalimantan
rationalisation of, 72–4 funerary rites, 7–11, 22–31
of Toraja people, 71 map, 3
transformation of, xxv–xxvi overlapping religious observances, 15
Indonesia see also Aoheng; Ngaju Dayaks
founding myth, 199–200 Katingan River, 19–20
INDEX 241
kings memory
Balinese deification of, 65 ancestral origins, 104
Javanese veneration of, 137–8 construction of, 84–5
kinship remembering the dead (ma’nene’),
Aoheng, 4 77–85
Bugis, 122–3 Metcalf, P., 49
cognatic, 4, 122–3 migrants (perantau), xxvi, 94–5, 98, 99
kramat (sacred grave), 11–12, 133, ‘modernity’, xxv, 86
136, 138 monuments
ancestral, 113–15
Laboya (West Sumba) to independence fighters, 184–5
ancestors and ancestor creation, xix, Seven Heroes, 196, 197–8
33, 36–8, 43–6 Unknown Hero, 198–9
funerary rites, 32, 36–8, 39–40, 42–6 war memorials, 183
links between living and dead, 33–8 see also tugu
religions, 43–4 mortuary rituals, see funerary rituals
social organisation, 33–5, 37–8, 40–1 Muslim saints, see Islamic saints
Lera Bora, 38–42, 46
liminal period, xx, 54–6 Nage (Flores), xix, xx
local government names and name-giving, 36–8
and Banyuman Foundation Day, National Heroes, xxii–xxiii, 99, 186–7
173–82 passim cemeteries, 184–6, 185, 198–9, 202
involvement in funerary rites, 42–3, Monument of the Unknown Hero,
45, 46 198–9
Lubang Buaya reburial, 188, 190–3, 198–9, 202
Monument Pancasila Sakti, 196 role of commemoration ceremonies,
symbolism of soldiers’ martyrdom, 189, 202–4
195–8, 202 the seven slain soldiers, 195–8
see also Heroes
mandala, 146, 152–3, 156 New Order
of Tembayat, 156–7 hero veneration under, 186–8, 203
ma’nene’ (remembering the dead), myth of origin, 197–8, 200
77–85 symbolism of the seven slain
Mataram dynasty, 166–7, 169, 171 soldiers for, 195–8, 203
mausoleums Ngaju Dayaks
collective, 9 identity and ethnicity, 19–20
Nine Saints (Wali Songo), 134 indigenous religion, 20–1
Pandan Arang, 148–9 secondary mortuary rituals (tiwak),
Soekarno, xxvi, 137, 187, 201 17–18, 21–8
mawo (‘shadow, reflection and nobility
breath’), 36–8, 44 Bugis, 120–2, 123–4, 127–9
MBAHK (Majelis Besar Agama Hindu see also kings
Kaharingan), see Kaharingan Nusa Penida (Bali), 48–68 passim
religion nyawa (soul), 36, 45
mediums (basir), 21, 23 Pamanahan, Ki Ageng, 167, 169, 171
242 THE POTENT DEAD
Pancasila versus belief systems, xviii

invincibility, 198 Islamisation of, 109–12
New Order and, 200 official recognition, xvi–xvii, xxv
recognition of religion, xvii, xxv, see also Christianity; indigenous
18–19 religions; Islam; Islamisation
Remembrance Day, 184, 197 religious tolerance, 18–19
Pandan Arang, see Sunan Pandan Arang remembering, see memory
Parry, J., 49, 60 Remembrance Day of the Pancasila’s
Pengging kingdom, 146–7 Spiritual Power, 184, 197
pilgrimages reproduction
to graves, 112, 118–19, 126–7, 130, plant/human cycle, 54–6
134–6 rice
to house of the Jurai Kebali’an, ancestors reincarnated as, 58
111–12 origins, 50
plants and cultigens rituals, 73
fertility, 58, 60–1 Rinkes, D.A., 141, 144, 147, 161
human death and growth of, 50–1, Rites of Passage (Van Gennep), xx
53, 54, 56–7, 61 ritual specialists, 21, 23, 53–4, 93,
prestige seeking, 16, 33, 35, 36, 46, 75, 105–6, 110, 113
99 rituals
Pura Dalem, 61–4 impact of modernity on, xxv
legitimising function, 195
Rangda, 59–60 in national hero veneration, 187–93
reburial rituals, xx, 22–5, 43–4, 193 see also funerary rituals; reburial
Aoheng, 7 rituals
attitude of Christian church, 92–4
Bali, 56–7 sacred graves
Batak, 92–3, 97, 99–100 Bugis, 126–8
for National Heroes, 188, 190–3, Java, 133–4, 136, 138–9
198–9, 202 pilgrimages to (ziarah), 134–6
remembering the dead (ma’nene’), worship of, xvii, 11–12
77–85 sacred objects, 11–12
rewrapping corpses, 77–8, 81–3 sacred sites and places, 11–12, 103,
symbolism, 199 113–15, 133
for Unknown Hero, 198–9 Bali, 61–4
see also cremation; tiwah Bugis, 119, 127
reciprocity custodians (juru kunci), xix, 160,
between humans and plants, 48, 54, 169, 171–2
56–7, 61 Islamisation of, 138–9
between the living and the dead, Muslim sacred graves, 133, 136
xxi, 71 sacrifices (animal), 35, 45–6
reincarnation, 119 secondary burials, see reburial rituals
relics and reliquaries, 199 sedekah (ritual feasts), 107–9, 111, 115
religion Senapati, tomb of, 169–70
agama, xxv separation rites, 9–11
INDEX 243
sexual intercourse, 57–8 links with Kajoran clan, 149–52

sexuality, 57, 58–60 tiwah
Singamangaraja XII, 99 goals, 22–5
Slamet Riyadi, 199 Katingan versus Kahayan rituals, 17,
social status, xxii, xxi, xxvi, 33–6, 21–2, 25–6, 29
38–43 and Ngaju identity, 19
see also prestige seeking official rules and permits, 27–8
Soeharto, xxvi photographs, 24, 25, 30
regime, xxii–xxiii, xxvi potency of ancestors and ritual, 19
relationship to Soekarno, 200–1 as tourist promotion, 19, 22, 29–30
see also Guided Democracy; villagers’ anxiety and confusion,
New Order 25–7
Soekarno Toraja people
as embodiment of Brawijaya, 163 ancestral spirits, 71
mausoleum, xxvi, 137, 187, 201 aversion to burial and cremation, 80
status as national hero, 200–1 cosmology, 74, 76–7
stipulations for National Heroes, secondary funerary rituals
186, 202 (ma’nene’), 70, 77–85
system of hero veneration, 188 social system, 71
soul (nyawa), 36, 45 tourist promotion, 19, 22, 29–30
spirits (of the dead), xxi, 6, 9–11, 14, traditional rituals
22–4, 67, 76–7, 79, 119 Bugis, 117
Sulawesi, see Toraja people influence of Christianity on, 71, 73–4
Sumatra, see Bataks; Gumai people tugu (monuments), 88, 90–2
Sumba, see Laboya explanations for, 97–101
Sunan Pandan Arang, 169 photographs, 90, 91, 98
legend of, 141–6, 152
life of, 144–7 ulamas, 137
mausoleum, 141, 148–9 uma (‘House’), 35, 37–8, 46
Surabaya
Battle of, 198 van Gennep, Arnold, xx
Taman Bahagia, 184 Vergouwen, J.C., 88–9
village cleansing rituals (bersih desa),
Tana Toraja (South Sulawesi), see 133, 139
Toraja people village founders (cikal bakal), xxii,
tapak, 113–15 105–6, 112–13, 133, 135, 140, 156
tarekat, 137
Tembayat Wahid, Abdurrahman, xv–xvi, 198
Kajoran clan and, 152–6 war memorials, 183, 199
mandala of, 156–7 worship, see ancestor worship; Heroes:
mausoleum, 141, 148–9, 159 cult of
at Pandan Arang’s arrival, 146–7
royal character, 156–7 ziarah (tomb visiting), 134–6, 160,
see also Sunan Pandan Arang 190, 201
Tembayat family

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ThePotentDead 10/1/02 2:36 PM Page i

ASIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA

ASIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA

Dr Tony Day Dr Howard Dick

Dr Jane Drakard Professor Kevin Hewison

Professor Anthony Milner Professor Graeme Hugo

Professor Rey Ileto Professor John Ingleson

Professor Lenore Manderson Dr Milton Osborne

Professor Anthony Reid Dr Krishna Sen

Professor Carl Thayer Dr John Butcher

THE POTENT DEAD

Ancestors, saints and heroes in contemporary Indonesia

Asian Studies Association of Australia

First published in 2002

The potent dead: ancestors, saints and heroes in

1. Dead. 2. Death. 3. Ethnology—Indonesia 4. Ancestor

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The potent dead: ancestors, saints, and heroes in contemporary Indonesia /

GT3280.A2 P68 2002

Set in 10/11 Times by Midland Typesetters, Maryborough, Victoria

Maps and illustrations vii

1 Castrated dead: the making of un-ancestors among the Aoheng,

vi THE POTENT DEAD

10 The Tembayat hill: clergy and royal power in Central Java

Maps and illustrations

viii THE POTENT DEAD

Figure 11.1 Genealogy of Ki Ageng Giring 168

HENRI CHAMBERT-LOIR is a senior research fellow at the Ecole Française

ELIZABETH COVILLE is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Anthropology

JAMES J. FOX is Director of the Research School of Pacific and Asian

x THE POTENT DEAD

Islam in the Indonesian Social Context (Clayton, 1991), ‘Sunan Kalijaga

DANIELLE C. GEIRNAERT studied social anthropology in the Netherlands and

RODOLFO A. GIAMBELLI currently works as a Social Forestry and Rural

CLAUDE GUILLOT is Directeur de Recherche at the CNRS and Directeur

CHRISTIAN PELRAS recently retired from his position of senior research

ANNE SCHILLER is Associate Professor of Anthropology at North Carolina

KLAUS H. SCHREINER is currently head of the European Liaison Office of

BERNARD SELLATO has been working in and on Borneo since 1973. He is

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xiv THE POTENT DEAD

The editors thank Clare Guenther, Jude Shanahan, Wendy Mukherjee

— NU cleric Attabik Ali, quoted Jakarta Post 16.6.2001

Abdurrahman Wahid, the first democratically elected President of the

xvi THE POTENT DEAD

Kroya, where he arrived after nightfall to pray at the tomb of Haji

THE INDONESIAN NATION

xviii THE POTENT DEAD

phenomena in contemporary Indonesia. Ancestor or saint worship is never

xx THE POTENT DEAD

dead under the guidance of ancestors already living there, or of special

xxii THE POTENT DEAD

CONVERSION AND THE POTENT DEAD

xxiv THE POTENT DEAD

popular word for prayer in Indonesia, including the prescribed Islamic

worship of mythical founding ancestors started to decline when the nobility

xxvi THE POTENT DEAD