“Jaraik: Origin and Uses of an Ancient Mentawaian Design” by Dr. Reimar Schefold
Jaraik
Origin and Uses of an
Ancient Mentawaian Design
by Dr. Reimar Schefold
In the old community houses on Siberut in the Mentawai archipelago, the uma, an artistic openwork carving with a monkey skull was mounted, a so-called jaraik. The place of the carving was always above the door to the rearmost of the two inner rooms of the uma. This was the room where the women slept with the small children and where the religious center of the house was located.
Because of the strong magical powers attributed to the jaraik, its production always involved an elaborate ritual. This great and costly effort had the consequence that in the wake of current developments, in which the majority of Mentawaians have adopted a modern Indonesian way of life, even the few groups in the interior who want to stick to their traditions no longer make jaraik. Of the old examples, most have been lost under the duress of the modernization campaigns of the Sukarno and Suharto periods; many were even actively destroyed. Only a handful of original jaraik have survived. Most of them are now in western museums.
I have reported elsewhere that the futile search for undiscovered relics has recently resulted in a lively production of forgeries.
In the course of the last few years, a countervailing movement has come into this tradition-hostile development. The government's attitude towards ethnic cultural expressions has become more liberal. Many young Mentawaians today are reflecting on their cultural roots and repeatedly lament on Facebook the imminent losses in modern times. In the search for means to express their identity, tattooing is often revived. Tattooing was forbidden and severely punished until a few years ago. Nowadays, the almost forgotten old patterns are being recovered and thus saved from extinction.
Another such example is the jaraik. Its artistic form is currently used in Mentawai almost as a kind of trademark: It appears as a logo for associations, as a decoration on objects, and sometimes even as a new tattoo design. The jaraik's striking appearance makes it particularly suitable for marking the identity of the producers.
In view of this new appreciation, the question arises as to the origin of the form of the jaraik itself. The term jaraik does not refer to anything else. It is used only to designate the carving as such, and also to identify its pattern whenever it appears as an ornament, such as on the prow drops of hunting canoes as a decorative painted element on house walls or in the modern examples just mentioned.
The manufacture of a jaraik is considered especially difficult and was connected with an elaborate collective ritual, which ensured its outstanding magical efficacy. In evoking tradition, people tell that the possession of a jaraik is a means of excelling in the constant agonistic rivalry between groups. A new jaraik has to be made in connection with a newly-built uma and the ceremonies surrounding the moving into it. However, if the jaraik from the former house had remained intact, it would be brought to the new building and no new one is made. The adding of a new amulet (gaut) would be considered sufficient.
Before starting with the creation of a new jaraik, some of the hunting trophies from the previous uma are brought to the new house and the souls of animals in the jungle are enticed to join the trophies for future success in hunting. Then, the men of the group, along with the helpers and guests invited to the festivities, go on a monkey hunt. In contrast with all other hunting expeditions, this one has a specific target- an adult male bokkoi macaque. With its mighty incisors, this animal’s skull is the most visually impressive of all the monkey species in Mentawai. If the hunt is successful in obtaining the right bokkoi, the animal is consumed on the same day.
The next day, the creation of the jaraik begins. The material for it is a buttress root of the relatively soft wood of a large tree called gite. The plank that is hewn from it is first scorched on both sides in order to dry it, and then it is scraped down to an evenly-smoothed board of uniform thickness using an adze blade affixed to a long straight handle. As guides for the outlining, rattan lianas are temporarily arranged in the desired patterns and attached to the surface using wax as an adhesive. The new carving should resemble the one in the former uma as closely as possible, but owing to the speed with which wood deteriorates in the tropics, the precise form of the original may be difficult to ascertain. A carving knife is now used to incise the outline along the edges of the rattan lianas, and the wood is removed with a chisel. The surfaces and edges are smoothed again with the knife. The finished carving is laid out in the sun for several hours, followed by painting, the application of pieces of mother-of-pearl or glass, and decoration with tufts of feathers and dyed plant fibers. The whole process takes several days of communal work.
When the carving is completed, it is placed on the floor of the uma, and pieces of strictly secret magical objects, intended to keep all harmful and evil influences away, are glued with wax to its center. A large piece of mother-of-pearl is often affixed over it. Together, these ingredients constitute an amulet (gaut) that is the cause of the extraordinary protective powers of a jaraik. Its placement over the entrance to the uma’s innermost room makes it the last barrier against evil forces before the most central shrine, a bunch of magical leaves called bakkat katsaila, is reached. The jaraik is now hung in its place, and the bokkoi skull is attached to it, decorated with mother-of-pearl pieces as eyes and with various ornamental bindings and tufts of fiber. Consistent with the functioning of other magical objects in Mentawai, the skull attracts good forces, bringing a positive component to the jaraik, in addition to its deterrent functions. One after the other, each family father brings offerings to the skull and invokes it to attract game, success in hunting is regarded as a symbol of success in life. A religious ceremony follows the next day, and dancing continues through the night. To complete the ritual, a hunt is again undertaken on the following day, this time with the intent of catching any available game. A sacrificial offering of the meat is made to the jaraik, as it will be on all ceremonial occasions henceforth.
The form of the jaraik appears to be purely ornamental and intended to give the amulet and the skull trophy an aesthetic setting. The Mentawaians do not have a representational model for its design. According to them, the word jaraik means no more than the overall appearance of the object itself. However, if the jaraik is put into a larger context, it seems that its complex form can actually be explained as derived from realistic origins. While its design has survived in Mentawai, the knowledge of its actual roots has been lost, as often happens with traditional ornamental patterns.
In North Siberut, the jaraik has a second name: kerebau. This word is used in connection with the uma’s wooden frame where the kerebau appears as an additional, lower crossbeam between two poles which supports the vertical king post attached to it, and thus prohibits the whole roof structure, from listing. The Mentawaians associate their word for ‘prohibiting’ (kera) with the word kerebau. The term kerebau, however, also occurs in another connection. In Southeast Siberut, the central bakkat katsaila shrine is called batu kerebau, and the word has a similar meaning on the southern islands. The ‘prohibiting’ in this case refers to the first of the sacred shrine’s magical functions, which is to keep anything evil away from the uma. The word batu, which means “stone,” is, according to the Mentawaians, added because the shrine also contains hard materials like glass beads, small pieces of lead, etc., which are supposed to “harden” the souls of the house's inhabitants against danger.
Among the Batak and the Toraja, the execution of the design is often altered in many different ways. Sometimes the horns are doubled in a manner that we also find on some jaraik which can depict two pairs of upwardly extending arms, one atop the other. Scrolls are frequently seen sprouting from the horns on Batak examples, as well as on Mentawaian ones. One example has a star incised and painted onto its central element. Such a star design is usually seen at the center of the head of drums of the Southeast Asian bronze age (Dongson) that has influenced all the regions under discussion here. Indeed, there is little doubt that the jaraik design, with its characteristic sprouting projections and regular curvilinear shapes, is rooted in the artistic traditions of the Early Metal Age. Evidence suggests that this is when the water buffalo arrived in Indonesia.
Detail of star motif on sacred carving (jaraik) for attracting blessings and expelling evil influences. Wood, bokkoi monkey skull, mother-of-pearl, red and black pigments, 138 x 93 cm, from the entrance to the rear room of the former Maileppet uma, East Siberut, ca. 1920. NMVW 7085-1
The meaning of the central vertical element in this formal derivation remains to be explained. Among the Batak, it is often rendered anthropomorphically or as a vegetal representation. There is some indication that this rendering relates to ancient Indonesian cosmological conceptions in which Early Metal Age traditions live on, and according to which the universe is divided into three parts: an upper world, a middle world which people inhabit, and an underworld. A similar tripartite concept prevails in Mentawai. In various myths, the three-partite entity appears symbolized by a cosmic tree whose roots lie in the underworld, growing up through the human world with its top branches reaching the upper sky world.
In Indonesian cultures with an Early Metal Age heritage, many things and phenomena are associated with the three levels of the cosmological whole. Pile houses are a comprehensive image of the concept: the space between the posts represents the underworld, the floor space is the middle world, and the roof is the upper world. The space between the posts is often where the buffalo reside at night, and myths describe them as being part of the underworld. It is said that a mighty buffalo carries the earth; when the beast is angry, it causes earthquakes. This idea correlates to the placement of buffalo head sculptures (singa) on Toba Batak houses, where they are attached at the right and left corners of the façade at floor level, and thus 'carry' the middle world.
The representations of either vegetal matter, i.e. the trunk of the cosmic tree, (cf. Sibeth, 1990, p. 119) or of a figure between the horns (the middle world's inhabitants) further symbolizes the middle world. Similar representations are also seen beneath thresholds at the entrances to houses, but there, the central anthropomorphic or vegetal element is absent; the human entering between the horns and standing between the buffalo underworld and the roof's upper world completes the picture of the cosmos.
In connection with the derivation of the motif, another artistic composition in Mentawai also appears in a new light: the deer skull with a bird carved from wood set on top of a staff between the antlers. This composition, reminiscent of the vision of St Hubert, is the usual way in which the skull trophy of a stag is decorated and preserved in Mentawai. From its location on a crossbeam in the front part of the uma, the beautiful form is meant to entice new deer to let itself also be shot for the purpose of a similar enticing destination. An additional magical function is not attributed to the composition, in contrast to the jaraik, but the formal correspondence is clear. The Toraja from Sulawesi again provide a striking counterpart for the carved avian finial: in front of the façade of their communal houses, there is a sculpture of a buffalo's head at floor level as a guardian, carrying the head of a mythical bird on a stake between its horns.
The designations of kerebau for jaraik and batu kerebau for the sacred shrine in certain parts of Siberut can now be interpreted in a way that the Mentawaians themselves have long since forgotten. The term batu does not actually mean “stone” in this case, but rather derives from the term bat, the Mentawai designation for “antlers”. Kerebau derives directly from the Indonesian word for water buffalo, which is kerbau. Originally, the term thus meant, “buffalo horns”. The Mentawaians appropriated the form and terminology from their prehistoric Dongson contacts, and, in the absence of a buffalo head, substituted a monkey's skull to complete the design.
Over time, the ancient representational meaning of the design fell into oblivion. Perhaps this came about as Mentawaians were not familiar with real buffalos, with its mythical underworldly associations, that otherwise should have stood in the way of its replacement with a monkey skull. But while the form eventually became purely ornamental, the design’s religious function endured. The ornamental object was intended to ward off evil and attract good forces into the uma, just as the buffalo mask of the Batak functioned in their houses (Ydema, 1966, p. 7). Among the Mentawaians, any realistic origins of the design were eventually lost, and the name underwent an etymological folk reinterpretation: bat (antlers) became batu (stone) and kerbau (buffalo) was translated into kerebau (prohibited). In some parts of the Mentawai archipelago, this designation was carried over to the uma’s central sacred object, while on Siberut the new term jaraik came to be used to describe the buffalo horn design in its ornamental form, including its modern derivations mentioned at the outset.
2 Investigations into the appearance of this design in older Asian Early Metal Age cultures outside of Indonesia (Mohenjo Daro, Shang Dynasty) is beyond our purview here and can only be hinted at.
Bibliography
Schefold, R.
2002 ‘Stylistic canon, imitation and faking; Authenticity in Mentawai art in Western Indonesia', Anthropology Today 18-2:10-15.
2017 Toys for the Souls. Life and Art on the Mentawai Islands. Bornival: Primedia sprl.
Sibeth, A.
1990 Mit den Ahnen leben: Batak - Menschen in Indonesien. Stuttgart: Mayer.
Ydema, J.M.
1929/30 ‘Aantekeningen bij het Toba-Batakse huismasker en andere Batakse voorwerpen, hoofdzakelijk in verband met de hagedis’. Kultuurpatronen, 8.
Dr. Reimar Schefold
Dr. Reimar Schefold is Professor Emeritus Cultural Anthropology and Sociology of Indonesia at Leiden University. He has a long-standing interest in material culture, art, and vernacular architecture, particularly that of Southeast Asia, which has been the subject of many of his scholarly publications and Museum exhibitions. He has conducted several extensive periods of fieldwork in Indonesia, notably among the Sakuddei of Siberut, Mentawai Islands, where he spent two years from 1967 to 1969 and several shorter stays later; the Batak of Sumatra, and the Sa’dan Toraja of Sulawesi.
He is, with Steven G. Alpert, editor and one of the authors of Eyes of the Ancestors: The Arts of Island Southeast Asia at the Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art; New Haven etcetera: Yale University Press. 2013) and, with Han F. Vermeulen, of Treasure Hunting? Collectors and Collections of Indonesian Artefacts (Leiden: Research School CNWS/National Museum of Ethnology. 2002). His most recent publication is Toys for the Souls: Life and Art on the Mentawai Islands (Belgium : Primedia sprl. 2017) where in the Bibliography more of his writings on Mentawai can be found.
Articles
Colophon
Author | Dr. Reimar Schefold
Date of Publication | April 2021
Publication Website | www.artoftheancestors.com
Hornbill Figure with Human Shaped Leg | Inv #: IIC2678
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