Great Pustaha

Did You Know?

• The pustaha was nearly destroyed during World War II but survived, partly because the Ordnungspolizei was based inside the Colonial Institute's office.
• In 1923, before the Tropenmuseum officially opened, the Great Pustaha was displayed at the Anniversary Exhibition for Queen Wilhelmina's 25 years of reign.

Form

When closed, the pustaha resembles a beast standing on four hooves. The top panel is carved with a serpent-like animal bearing the head of a singa, while the bottom panel has four legs or hooves. Achim Sibeth, author of The Batak, identified this figure as the Naga Padoha, a primordial water serpent that rules the underworld in Batak creation myth; according to the myth, the serpent stirred up sand from the ocean bed to form the first islands of Indonesia.

Other experts consider the figure to represent the singa, a word borrowed from Sanskrit meaning "lion," though in Batak culture the singa is a complex mythical creature related to the female serpent. An example of a singa representation appears in a wooden animal head collected by Tassilo Adam. Between the cover-panels are 56 pages folded like the book music of a mechanical street organ, made from the bark of agarwood (Aquilaria malaccensis). Unfolded, the bark reaches 17 meters in length.

The ink consists of boiled tree resin mixed with other ingredients, and writing implements include bamboo skewers, buffalo horn, or the grain of a sugar palm leaf. The Great Pustaha contains spells and incantations for a datu, such as formulas to destroy villages, eliminate opponents, inspire love, and stories about the world's creation. A rattan cord attached to the front legs and through a hole in the abdomen allows the pustaha to be carried like a bag. The museum always displays it unopened, emphasizing its animal-like form.

History

The Great Pustaha was collected in the 1850s, though its true age may be older. Its content was translated into Dutch by Father H.J.A. Promes in 1968. The pustaha records the names of priests and their villages; study of these villages suggests the knowledge was transmitted from west of Lake Toba to the southwest, eventually reaching Lobu Siregar villages in Siborong-Borong. The datu who wrote and owned the pustaha, Guru Tumurun Hata ni adji, namora Simandjuntak, lived in that village.

The pustaha was brought to the Netherlands by linguist Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk. Born in Malacca in 1824, van der Tuuk was sent to the Netherlands for education at age 12. He traveled to Sumatra on assignment for the Netherlands Bible Society to translate the Bible into Batak, arriving in North Sumatra in 1851. In 1852 he moved to Barus on the west coast, then journeyed inland to Batak territory, where he encountered the Batak language in its purest form and likely became the first European to see Lake Toba.

Between 1851 and 1857 he collected various Batak crafts, including the Great Pustaha. In 1857, after nearly being killed by the Sisingamangaraja, the holy priest-king of the Toba Batak, van der Tuuk returned to Barus and then to the Netherlands, never returning to Sumatra. There he completed a four-volume Batak-Nederduitsch dictionary and translated several Bible books. Missing the East Indies, he later resided in Bali.

He died of dysentery in 1894 at age 70 in a military hospital in Surabaya, East Java. In 1862, before going to Bali, van der Tuuk donated his collection to the Ethnographic Museum of the Zoological Society of Natura Artis Magistra (now Artis Zoo, Amsterdam), where it was common for zoos to display ethnographic items acquired from private collectors, administrators, and others.