Levirate and sororate: a mixed blessing and men’s convenience

Wooden shingles fall off the roof Wooden shingles replace them

Has the older brother/sister passed away A younger one replaces him or her⁵⁴

The death of a spouse was another rupture in conjugal life—yet after the funeral, life would go on. A widow would be married off as soon as possible to a close relative of her husband of the same marga, a custom known as the levirate.⁵⁵ A widower would be given a female relative of his wife, preferably a younger sister—a custom known as sororate. The levirate and sororate had the advantage that the bridegiving and bridetaking party could preserve their affinal relationship and there was no need to return the marriage payments once given, an arrangement convenient for both parties.⁵⁶

The decision about the future of a widow was usually taken after her parboru had ended her mourning period some time after the funeral by taking off her mourning shroud (tujung) and purifying her soul. On this occasion, the heir of her husband and the parboru would discuss which relative of the husband could marry her in levirate (mangabia). A marriage in levirate had to be concluded by the exchange of modest gifts in the presence of the rajas of the villages

54 Butarbutar mataktak, butarbutar maningikii; Molo mate hahana, angina maningkii (Patik 1899 [tr. Boer 1921:91). Both levirate and sororate were also designated with the expression singkat rere, the changing of the mat (ganti tikar in Malay).

55 The Batak terms for marrying a widow: mangabia, manghampi and pagodangon (Ypes 1932:218, 335, 362).

56 The discussion on widowhood, the sororate, and levirate are based on Meerwaldt (1894:537-8); Ruhut [tr.

Meerwaldt]1904/5:112-115); Vergouwen [1933] 1964:238-9; 239-47) unless stated otherwise.

KITLV (reproduced on request of the author from Vergouwen 1964 [1933]:274) 34. Women mourning the deceased (ca. 1930)

34. Women, heads wrapped in the tujung (cloth of mourning), dance and wail in the village centre. A puppet wearing a white neck cloth (sigalegale) and representing the deceased is made to perform a dancing movement. This ritual is staged for a man who has died childless, in order to rid the land of the curse which had been upon him.

of both parties and close relatives on both sides.⁵⁷

A younger brother of the deceased husband had the first right to marry the widow (Vergouwen ([1933] 1964:243). If he was not yet married, this had the additional advantage that the family no longer needed to amass a brideprice to give him a wife. If the deceased had no younger brother, other close relatives could marry her: an older brother, the father of the deceased husband, or a stepson of the latter by another wife.⁵⁸ Only if no close relative of the husband could marry the widow did one contemplate the option to marry her off to a man of the same lineage as that of her late husband, first a member of the same horja, then a member of the same bius community.⁵⁹ If the widow was still young and had children, it was not difficult to find a man within the marga of her husband who would like to marry her, as she was an attractive party: he did not have to pay a full brideprice for her, and her fertility was beyond doubt. The heir of the husband could also give the suitor a compensation for the upbringing of the children, paid out of the late husband’s inheritance. The parboru could also try to influence the choice of the new husband, encouraging the candidate he favoured by giving him an ulos. But it was not only young widows who were married in levirate. Missionary Van Asselt mentioned that a son was obliged to marry the older or even elderly co-wives of his father to safeguard them from destitution.⁶⁰

Van Asselt’s observation highlights that widows were willing to remarry with a close relative of their deceased husband because it provided them and their children with social and economic security. If the widow had under-age children, she could count on the affection of her new husband for her children, who were his nieces and nephews. She could also continue to live in the same house and work the same fields as before, as her second husband, who was also the guardian of her children, would leave her these fields to feed the family. She also needed his labour, in particular if her children were still too young to lend a hand. If a widow was older and her position in the household well established, her new husband would usually gave her the freedom to run her own affairs. Less attractive for the widow was remarriage with a distant relative of her husband, particularly if she had to move in with a new family in another village.

But this arrangement at least had the advantage that she could keep her children with her.⁶¹ If a widow married someone from another marga, the heir of the husband was usually not willing to grant her this favour.⁶² The desire of widows to be taken in levirate is also substantiated by the experience of missionaries during the first decades of conversion. They were confronted with widows who demanded that a married Christian relative of their late husband took them in levirate.⁶³

57 For a lawsuit demonstrating that if a widow followed a man of her husband’s lineage but the proper procedure was not followed, their union was not accepted as official and the man fined, see KITVL, Adatrechtstichting H1051, 80, I, Rapat Adat Lagoeboti no 9, 21 september 1928.

58 According to Brenner (1894:250), an older brother was free to decide whether he wanted to marry the widow or not; but if he did not, he had to support her and her children.

59 A horja member would give a piso gift to the spirit of the deceased husband, while a member of the bius community had to pay a quarter or half of the original brideprice to the heir of the deceased. If the widow had a son, he was entitled to receive this gift.

60 Van Asselt 1906:135. Henny (1869:20) implied the same.

61 Brenner (1894:250) reports that the widow could take her daughters with her after remarriage, but not her sons, who had to stay with the uaris.

62 For a relevant case of an agreement by which an uncle of the deceased husband allowed the latter’s widow to remarry with someone from another marga, but she had to leave her son (called his grandchild) with him, see Minnelijke schikkingen 1936:137-138.

63 Chapter 8, page 206.

A levirate marriage could be problematic, however, if the widow did not like her new spouse or if her new husband did not care for her. Missionary Bruch, who worked in Uluan around 1900, reported that young widows taken in levirate by their father-in-law often eloped with any man who was willing, usually a man too poor to avail himself of a wife in the regular way.⁶⁴ Missionary Van Asselt recalled the sad fate of a young widow married to her stepson, who soon neglected her and her child and left them destitute (Van Asselt 1906:204). Missionary Brakensiek reported two cases on Samosir that led to disputes. In the first case, the widow agreed to marry a man from Balige, who was interested in her because the stepson who had married her was absent and she had no desire to have him for a husband anyway. Yet her in-laws refused to consider this man’s marriage proposal, causing the couple to flee to Balige. The widow’s in-laws did not accept this, went to Balige, and pressed charges against the man for abducting the widow. The local rajas’ council subsequently turned the case over to the court in Pangururan on Samosir, which sentenced the man for langkup. In the end, nothing came of the marriage and the widow had to return to her husband’s family. In the second case, a widow, also married in levirate, fled with a man to Nainggolan, his native region. After a year and a half and the birth of a daughter, the couple trusted that the wife’s father would have relented and went to visit her family in Balige. Unfortunately her parboru was still angry and managed to have the man with whom his daughter cohabitated convicted for langkup. But fortunately for the couple, the Dutch Controller who presided over the case gave the man the opportunity to collect the money to pay the imposed fine in Nainggolan. The couple exploited this opportunity shrewdly: they took off to Uluan, a region still outside the jurisdiction of the colonial government at the time.⁶⁵ These two stories demonstrate that cases like this were dealt with as instances of abduction of a widow (anggi ni langkup), although the widow had fully cooperated with her abductor. The case of the widow from Samosir also shows that the rajas did not allow the abductor to marry the woman, even though he had paid the fine for his misdeed.⁶⁶

The levirate was thus a mixed blessing. It served the widow’s interests, but it could also cause hardship if the new marriage did not work out. Unfortunately it was practically impossible for a widow to evade a marriage in levirate (Ypes 1932:335, 362, 489). A prudent parboru, however, might be willing to take her back if she was still young and he could easily marry her off to someone else. This was not an attractive option if the widow was an older woman, whom he had to support in her old age if she returned. It was more convenient for him if his in-laws arranged her remarriage.

Although the marriage of a widow with someone outside the kin group of her husband was not regarded as the most proper and desirable solution, it was not prohibited: customary law included provisions for it. After her in-laws had formally returned her to her parboru, she was free to marry someone from another marga.⁶⁷ If she was young and had no children, the parboru had to return the full brideprice to the husband’s heir; but if she had given him children, it was less. The parboru might also decide to leave the rice field given to the daughter at the time

64 Bruch (1912:16) hints that a father-in-law was all too keen to have his former daughter in-law for a co-wife.

65 VEM, F/b 2,1, Ref. Brakensiek 1911:4-5.

66 Customary law on the ‘abduction’ of widows became a subject of debate in the 1920s, see Chapter 11. section 11.1.

67 The term for releasing a widow from her husband’s marga was pasaehon = the termination of the cycle of obligations between the hulahula and his boru. The same root ‘sae’ is found in the term sanggul saesae, the adornment a divorced woman wore to the market after the divorce had been formally settled. Junghuhn (1947:134) gave the term hadat seisei as the name for divorce.

of marriage, her pauseang, with the heir of the husband so he did not have to refund the entire brideprice.⁶⁸ According to missionary Meerwaldt (1894:538), remarriage of a widow with a man outside her late husband’s kin group was rare, which, considering the comparative advantages of a levirate marriage, makes sense.⁶⁹

If a wife died, her family was expected to help her bereaved husband by finding him a new wife from their lineage, preferably a younger sister of the deceased, otherwise another close female relative. The son-in-law had to give only a modest piso gift for his new spouse. The sororate was a custom adapted to the condition that a commoner could hardly ever muster the resources to pay a full brideprice more than once in a lifetime. The custom also exhibits the character of the brideprice as ‘childprice’. A wife without (male) offspring had to be replaced by another woman who could give her husband children. If the parboru was unable to fulfil this obligation, he had to refund the brideprice.⁷⁰ His son-in-law often needed this refund badly to find himself a wife elsewhere.

Even when the deceased wife left behind children, including a son, a parboru would often help out, particularly if the children were still small. The husband valued this, because he could expect a relative of his wife, in particular if she was his wife’s sister, to treat the children, who were her nephews and nieces, with more love and consideration than a stepmother who came from another family and marga. The folk saying ‘stepmother makes stepfather’ demonstrates that it was feared that a stepmother would cause estrangement between a father and the children he had by his first wife, in particular after she had children of her own.

A widower who was not attracted to marry his sister-in-law had no obligation to marry her and was free to look for another woman. ‘One says that if a man is widowed, he beautifies his headgear’, wrote the author of Ruhut (1898 [tr. Meerwaldt 1905:112).⁷¹ For his sister-in-law, on the other hand, it was difficult to refuse if her widowed brother-in-law insisted on marrying her. Her father might put pressure on her to accept him because he wanted his grandchildren to be well cared for and because he preferred to be free of the obligation to return part of the brideprice to his son-in-law.

On the frequency of the sororate the sources remain silent. Given the high incidence of maternal mortality in the pre- and early colonial period, one would expect it to have occurred frequently. On the other hand, girls normally married at a young age, so it is likely that a parboru often had no daughter who could replace her deceased sister. Moreover, the chance that a brother or other close relative would be willing to give him a daughter was probably small, as the girl would then not fetch a full brideprice. Despite the practical difficulties, however, the Toba Batak upheld the norm that it was best if a younger sister replaced her deceased sister.⁷²

68 As in the case of a divorced woman, a widow who was separated from her husband’s kin group and free to marry again would wear a hair adornment to the market; and if a man was interested in her, he would proceed according to the usual courtship customs (Ypes 1932:490).

69 For the earliest record of a court decision (1905) on the consequences of the separation of a widow from her husband’s patrilineage used by the commission for adat law to ‘trace’ the rules of customary law, see Adatvonnis 1913. The heir of the deceased husband sued the widow’s father to return the four children, two boys and two daughters (the latter because of the brideprice they would bring), as well as fifteen coconut trees.

70 The existence of this obligation is clear from article 22 of the Christian By-laws of 1885 which regulated its abolition.

Vergouwen ([1933] 1964:238) doubted whether a son-in-law ever sued his parboru for not replacing a deceased daughter, but in view of the conditions in the nineteenth century, which differed substantially from those in the late colonial period, this may have occurred,

71 Compare this behaviour of a widow, about whom the same author wrote: widowhood is more painful for a woman than for a man […]: if a woman is widowed, her head is worn down by the care for her children’.

72 Several of the elderly Batak women whom I interviewed mentioned cases of sororate in their family, most of these in the