ANCIENT TOBA BATAK VILLAGE, LAKE TOBA-SAMOSIR ISLAND

Simanindo is a small Toba Batak village on the northern part of Lake Toba, about 16 km from Ambarita. Tourists come here to view the restored house of the Toba Batak king. This house has since been turned into a museum. In front of the museum is a row of ancient Toba Batak tombs of the ancient Simanindo kings. Just as in Pematang Purba, the Batak kings of Simanindo are Christians. Hence there are Christian motifs in the design of their tombs.

Next to the Simanindo king's house is a replica of a traditional Simanindo Batak village. Here, traditional Batak dances are performed daily at 10:30am and 11:45am to a crowd that is almost always exclusively foreigners, and most likely Westerners. When I was there with a group of AsiaExplorers members, we were the only Asians watching the show.

I enjoy the visit to Simanindo as it provides an opportunity for visitors like myself to find out more about the unique Batak culture. We arrived here by boat from our hotel in Tuk Tuk. On our way here, we stopped over on tiny Tao Island. 

SAMOSIR ISLAND

Samosir Island , in the middle of Lake Toba is the size of Singapore. Lake toba is the largest and deepest crater lake in world.906 meter above sea level, a water surface area of 1,265 square km, 90 km long with a coastline of 285 km, and with an average depth of 450 meters. Samosir island is the home of Batak people. The population of Samosir Island is approximately 130.568, or 91 per square kilometer .

The island measures 45 by 20 km, and originally was a peninsula. It only became a peninsula after the Dutch arrived and dug a canal across the small piece of land of 200 metres in 1906. This action seemed to have a lot to do among the local population, because they thought the island would slip away towards the middle of the lake and simply dissappear. The eastern coast of the island rises steeply from a small bank towards a central plateau with an altitude of 780 metres. This gradually descends towards the southern and western coast of the island and is scattered with small villages which dangerously lean against the rock, and cross ravains.

The Samosir plateau mainly is clear rock, with some scattered forests, swamps and a small lake. There is a road parallel with the shores of the island, but this can be bad at certain points, with a number of bad bridges in the southwestern corner. From Pangururan, the kecamatan-centre at the western side, a bridge connects the island with mainland Sumatera. The road ascends to an altitude of 1800 metres after that. Here, the village of Tele offers a good view over the lake and the island. During the northeastern monsoon (September until January), a strong wind usually arrived from the high altitudes, the alogo bolong or 'big wind'. This produces waves of over one metre high, which can made traffic over water very hard. Local ferries, most of the time overloaded with freight and people, can be lost during these storms.

Earlier the Batak used big tree-trunk canoos (solu) made of a single tree to cross the lake. Noaways only very small canoos are used. F.M. Schnitget, author of 'Forgotten Kingdoms in Sumatera', visited Samosir in the 1930's and described the adathouses, stone graves and coffins of no less than 26 villages. Looking for these villages is hard, because many of the names have been changed since them; others were abandoned and some of the stone sarcofagusses were removed from their original location. Outside the paved roads time and patience are an important factor to find the graves. But for many people a visit to Samosir is no more than a quiet ferry fare to Tomok, where the most famous of all Toba Bakat sarcofasussus are just on a few minutes away from the pier.

Horas is the local greeting delivered with enthusiasm. The Batak people love their lake and island, and many traditional local songs are written about it. You are sure to hear some of these Batak songs on visit to Samosir island Lake Toba, singing is a strong part of the local culture walk past (or into) a toddy shop any evening after local men have consumed a few glasses of Tuak, or palm wine , and hear it for your self.

Lissoi is their saying for cheers. There are also some fine woodcarvers on Samosir Island, as a glance at any of the souvenir shops will verify.

TUK TUK (SAMOSIR ISLAND)

The visitor also could visit Tuk Tuk to look for accommodation (inns and hotels), 42 km from Pangururan to Tuk Tuk or one-hour trip on car. Approximately 50 inns and hotels in various classes are available in Tuk Tuk. There are also several high-class hotels here. From the positive aspect, clearly tourism supported the local business. On the other hand, the physical development practical ignored principles of the business and town planning when businessmen rushes to built hotels, guesthouses, etc.

Entered Tuk Tuk is like visiting Legian or Sanur Bali in the early stage. With several shops displayed clothes and art objects, followed by cafes, discos and hotels. At night, a lot of rejoicing tourists (mostly domestic) surrounded campfire while playing the musical instrument and the typical Batak song.

PARAPAT TOWN

Parapat town is the main tourist resort and lies on the very shore of Toba Lake. This lake is about 50 miles long and 16 miles across, with about 1,400 feet depth. In Parapat, live Batak Toba and Batak Simalungun tribes, and are happy and easygoing people. They are known for their lively and sentimental love songs. Recreational sports in Parapat are among others swimming, water skiing, motor boating, canoeing, and fishing.

Golf is at Sally golf course (19 holes), about 5 km from Parapat. Parapat is 176 from Medan and can be reached in 4 hours by bus. The climate in Parapat is cool and dry, making Parapat become an ideal place to relax. There are many hotels, bungalows, villas, and rest houses welcome visitors. Small shops sell souvenirs such as Ulos (local woven cloths) and specific fruits locally grown.

THE LAND OF BATAK

BATAK RELIGION is found among the Batak societies around Lake Toba in north Sumatra. It is ethnically diverse, syncretic, liable to change, and linked with village organisations and the monotheistic Indonesian culture.

Myths and rituals focus on rice cultivation and the local kinship system. These two spheres are integrated into a cosmological order represented in religious art forms, dance, oratory, and gift-giving ceremonies.

The kinship system is based on marriage alliances linking lineages of patrilineal clans called marga. There are holy ritually superior wife-providing lineages and mundane ritually inferior wife-receiving lineages. This marriage system is an important part of Batak religion and involves hours of ritual oratory.

There is an upper world inhabited by gods, a middle world lived in by men, and a lower world that is the home of a dragon. The creator is Mula Jati, who links the three worlds and is Lord of the Universe. Mula Jati is both good and evil, male and female.
Belief in complementary opposites such as life and death, humans and animals, masculinity and femininity, village and forest, warfare and farming, metal and cloth, permeate the religion and commonly occur in myths and rituals. These opposites are thought to have once been one and ritual attempts to unite the opposites for a moment to release power from the centre. For example, ritual gift exchanges at weddings between the bride-giving and bride-receiving factions increases fertility in the marriage.

There are extensive soul concepts. If a soul is startled it can escape from the head and wander in the countryside. Soul-capture ceremonies performed by datu or guru, diviner-sorcerers, bring the soul back to the body. These datu also protect the village during war, epidemic, and crop failure by means of sacrificial rituals, occult knowlege, and divination with the use of the Hindu zodiac and magic tables.

It is debated whether there was occasional ritual cannibalism. Marco Polo wrote in 1292 that the Batak ate their parents when they became too old for work, and Raffles in the nineteenth century stated that for certain crimes a criminal would be eaten alive.
Indian influence can be detected in the religion and its art. The Batak came into contact with both Hinduism and Buddhism.
Batak religion is bound up with Islam and Christianity and the majority of Batak are Muslim or Christian. Contact with the monotheistic religions differs greatly from one Batak society to another.

Origin myths of the Toba Batak are of Si Raja Batak, the first human, who was born on a holy mountain near Lake Toba. He had two sons, Guru Tateabulan and Raja Isumbaon, who were the fathers of the ancestors of the major Toba patrilineal clans. Other related myths are of the origin of farming and weaving, and clans are associated with certain valleys and uplands.
The Batak encountered Indian religions at an early period through trading colonies near Barus and a temple community near Portibi. There was also influence coming from the indianised ancient kingdoms of south Sumatra.
Batak religion practised before the early nineteenth century was related to the indigenous religions of the Dayaks in Kalimantan, highland societies in Sulawesi, and the people of eastern Indonesia.

Contact with Islam and Christianity varied considerably in the Batak societies. In the 1820′s Islam came to the southern Angkola and Mandailing homelands, and in the 1850′s and 1860′s Christianity arrived in the Angkola and Toba region with Dutch missionaries and the German Rheinische Mission Gesellschaft. The first German missionary, Nommensen, arrived in 1861 with only a Bible and a violin. Nommensen caused the Dutch to stop Batak communal sacrificial rituals and music, which was a major blow to the traditional religion. These early conversions included large numbers of slave descendents. Karo has many animists, with conversions only in the 1930′s. Dutch colonial policy favoured Christian villages. Such a background of conversion has left southern Batak Christianity filled with disputes by different factions. In 1965 the national government identified Indonesian patriotism with belief in a monotheistic religion. This has accelerated the number of converts to Islam and Christianity.

Pre-monotheistic Batak religion cannot be reconstructed in detail from available evidence since Islam and Christianity have thoroughly reshaped village ritual and folk memories.
At the time of the Suharto regime a number of class and ethnic based new denominations split from the parent church of the German-sponsored missionary church, the HKBP (Huria Kristen Batak Protestan). In areas with both Muslims and Christians, church members align with Muslims along class lines.

An important area of present and future dynamism is the meeting ground of adat, village custom, and monotheism. In Muslim Mandailing and Christian Toba, adat is seen as conflicting with monotheism, while in Angkola the common heritage of the adat is emphasised over monotheistic differences and the village ritual in adat leads to much syncretism.

The cosmological order is represented in religious art forms. The gable ends of traditional houses are richly decorated with the cosmic serpent Naga Padoha carved in wood or in mosaic, lizards, double spirals, female breasts, and the head of the singa, a monster with protruding eyes that is part human, part water buffalo, and part crocodile or lizard. Other wooden sculptures, dances, ritual speeches, and gift-giving ceremonies reflect this cosmological order. Even the layout of the village symbolises the Batak cosmos. Many of these symbols found in wooden sculptures are magic signs or fertility symbols, such as female breasts.

Other symbols of Batak mythology include the baringin or banyan tree as the cosmic tree uniting the levels of the Batak cosmos, the hornbill, aboriginal boy-girl twins, star constellations, magic numbers, and the magic colours red, white, and black.
Besides the traditional houses, these symbols are found on textiles, funerary masks, boats with hornbill figureheads, the wooden staffs of datu, and megalithic monuments.