Tunggal panaluan
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A Tunggal panaluan is the ceremonial staff of a Datu , a magician of the Batak people in the north of the Indonesian island of Sumatra . Such a staff, to which magical powers are assigned, is used in numerous ceremonies of the Datu and is at the same time its badge of rank.
Purpose and application
The Datu of the Toba-Batak (called Guru by the Karo-Batak) is a medicine man who is said to be endowed with magical powers and abilities, well versed in "white magic ", who has the task of preventing and curing diseases. According to the Batak, illness is triggered by the loss of the soul (tondi), which is caused by the work of evil spirits, the moodiness of a patient's tondi or the influence of an evil sorcerer. The datu can bring the soul back into the body. In addition to his function as a magical healer, he is also a fortune teller, oracle and clairvoyant, rainmaker and storm repeller. He knows the occult chants and formulas and makes magical remedies and medicines. Although the tasks of a Datu differ somewhat in detail among the individual Batak peoples, he ensures the well-being of the social grouping and is therefore always a person of great respect and great dignity.
The Tunggal panaluan is one of the most important ritual objects of a Datu, at the same time an outward sign of his office, which is used in almost all rites practiced by the Datu, for example in the production of the Pupuk , a magical medicine. During the magical acts, the Datu goes into a ritual trance and dances with the Tunggal panaluan in hand. The staff serves as a kind of antenna to bundle the supernatural power of the gods and demons and to transfer it to the magician.
description
For his rites, the Datu uses a variety of magical objects: amulets (often labeled), containers to produce and store medicines and substances, as well as magical calendars ( Porhalaan ) and magic books in ciphertext ( Pustaha ). The most striking objects, however, are the ceremonial bars. The Batak have two types of ritual staff: Tunggal panaluan and Tunggal malehat. They differ significantly in appearance, but whether they also differ in their magical function is not entirely clear.
Tunggal panaluan are 110 to 180 cm long rods made of hardwood, the upper part of which is richly carved over ¾ of its length (with the Tunggal malehat only the upper end is carved). The motifs, human and animal figures as well as hybrid creatures, stand on top of each other and partially merge into one another. The staff is crowned by a free-standing figure or a human head. The carving follows a uniform scheme, but is different in the arrangement of the motifs, in the details and in the execution, because each rod is specially made for a date. The upper end of the stick is wrapped with strips of fabric that form a kind of turban. The prepared brain of a sacrificed enemy child - the Batak were headhunters - is said to have been wrapped in this “turban” . Investigations of Tunggal panaluan in European ethnological museums have not yet been able to confirm this. A long bundle of human hair protrudes from the “turban”.
legend
The Dutch missionary JH Meerwaldt, who worked for the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft in the Toba region at the end of the 19th century , recorded the mythical background on which the origin of the Tunggal panaluan is based (several locally different versions have been passed down):
According to legend, a king was once born a pair of twins, the boy Si Adji Douda Hatakutan and the girl Si Tapi Radja Na Uasan at each other after puberty in incestuous were inclined to love. When their relationship was revealed, they fled into the dense jungle. They found the great magic tree Pio-Pio-Tang Gukan, which was richly draped with juicy fruits. Since the girl was hungry and thirsty, she asked her brother to climb the tree and pick some fruit. The boy did as he was told and climbed to the top. The magical tree turned him into wood and the boy joined the trunk. When the girl saw what was happening to her brother, she also climbed up, hugged her beloved brother and both became one with the magic tree. When the king finally discovered his enchanted children, he hired five Datu to break the spell and set the twins free. They turned into animal creatures and climbed the tree, but their magical powers were not powerful enough and they also merged with the trunk. A sixth Datu called in told the king that his children were forever imprisoned in the tree because they had been punished by the gods for their love. He therefore advised cutting the tree to make particularly powerful wands out of its wood.
Collection objects
As particularly decorative objects of folk art, Tunggal panaluan were coveted collection objects, so that there are still numerous examples, mainly from the 19th and early 20th centuries, in the ethnographic collections of Europe and North America.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Juara Ginting: Pa Surdam, a Karo Batak guru; in Achim Sibeth: Living with Ancestors - The Batak, peoples of the Island of Sumatra , London 1991, pp. 85-98
- ↑ Heinz Reschke: Tunggal panaluan - The Holy Staff of the Batak, published by the Anthropological Society, Berlin 1936
- ↑ Frits A. Wagner: Indonesia , from the series "Art of the World" by Holle-Verlag, Baden-Baden 1979, p. 64
- ^ JH Meerwaldt, JH: De Bataksche Tooverstaf. In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, Volume 54, The Hague 1902, pp. 297-310 ( online )
- ^ Michael Prager & Pieter Ter Keurs: WH Rassers and the Batak Magic Staff. In: Medelingen van het Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden 1998, pp. 11–30
- ^ Erik Kjellgren: Oceania: Art of the Pacific Islands in the Metropolitan Museum of Art . Yale University Press, New Haven 2007, pp. 208 ISBN 978-0-300-12030-1