The male strategy to reach the pinnacle of life 68

Men did not always resort to bigamy to cope with a childless marriage or the lack of male issue.⁶⁹ Marrying two or more wives could also serve the very different purpose of siring as many

promised him a niece of his wife because the latter had not conceived, had failed to keep the promise (KITLV H 1051, 87. Advice Vergouwen 12 April 1928 on Civiel vonnis Kleine Rapat Parsoboeran no: 49/1927, 13 December).

65 Warneck (1977:276) mentions in his dictionary only that tungkot means stick or staff, but not that the term was also used for a subservient co-wife.

66 This was a common reason for polygyny in other societies as well (Kloos 1981:81-82).

67 In the 1920s this custom was still practiced in the areas Toba and Humbang (Vergouwen [1933] 1964:225-6).

68 Based on Vergouwen [1933] 1964:232-7, unless indicated otherwise.

69 The correct term is ‘polygyny’, the practice of a man having more than two wives, its opposite being polyandry, the practice of a woman married to more than one man. In the following, the more colloquial term polygamy is used. For detailed Batak terms for different types of polygyny, see Verslag dari pembitjaraan tentang perkara adat2 dan marga jang diadakan di Pangoeroeran (Samosir) pada tanggal 3 juni 1919, dihadapan segala radja2 dan orang2 toea dari negeri Boehit (KITL,V Korn Or. 435.453).

children as possible for political and economic reasons. Bigamy could also be the strategy of a man to neutralize a less harmonious marriage with a cantankerous wife. Or he just loved women and sex (roha daging, literally ‘a lust for flesh’). These reasons were not mutually exclusive, but the desire to have many children was probably the most important.

In the sources, polygamy is attributed mainly to the Toba Batak rajas. Monogamy was said to be normal for commoners, because they could not afford the brideprice for more than one wife.⁷⁰ The sources vary, however, about the number and status of wives kept by rajas. Marsden ([1783] 1975:381) and Junghuhn (1847:133) mention that the rajas had about half a dozen wives, the latter adding that all had the same rights. In the region west of Silindung, the rajas had up to twenty or thirty consorts, according to Controller W.A. Henny (1869:20), who toured that region in 1859. The most prominent rajas north of Lake Toba had as many as fifty or more, but the majority had the status of a slave, according to Warneck (1909:117).

The rajas probably furthered their political interests best by marrying women of other prominent families. Their wives had an equal position in the household and referred to each other as imbang (Malay for equal).⁷¹ Contrary to a subservient or tungkot wife, the imbang was not a relative of the first wife, but had to come from another marga.⁷² The equivalent status of her family probably entailed each marriage with a new imbang wife being contracted with the payment of considerable reciprocal marriage gifts and being celebrated with a large feast.⁷³ A polygamous household where women were each other’s equal was more prone to tension than was the case when the co-wife was a subservient wife (tungkot) or of slave descent. To keep the peace between his wives, the husband often gave them a separate section in the house, where they had their own cooking hearth.⁷⁴ He also allotted them their own fields to till.⁷⁵ Sometimes a co-wife preferred to stay with her own family in another village (Bruch 1912:19). The wisdom of these arrangements is expressed in the Batak proverb (umpama): it is no disgrace that each of the different wives of a man toils for herself.⁷⁶

The equal status of imbang also concerned their children, who were not regarded as the children of the first wife, as in the case of the children of a subservient wife (tungkot). Each wife had the responsibility of taking care of only her own children. If one of the wives died, the husband faced the possibility that none of his other consorts would want to take care of the motherless children. He would then be ‘forced’ to marry yet another woman to take care

70 Schreiber 1876:267; Brenner 1894:249; Warneck 1909:117.

71 Polygamy of this kind was called parimbangon (Patik 1899 [tr. De Boer 1921:371]). In Warneck’s dictionary (1977:127) the only translation given for imbang is co-wife (Nebenfrau), adding that this word was used only by the first wife for her co-wife.

72 According to Niessen (1985:90) a man was not allowed to marry two women from the same marga, as that would make a redundant alliance (unless the first wife had died).

73 I doubt the statement of Vergouwen ([1933]1964:237) that second marriages were usually contracted without the detailed marriage formalities of the first marriage. This may have been the case if the second wife came from the first wife’s marga and of tungkot status, but not if she was of imbang status. See the example described by Van Asselt in the next chapter (page 9). Perhaps Vergouwen says so because in his time, if Christians took a second wife of imbang status, they may have refrained from contracting a marriage without many formalities out of shame.

74 A Batak house usually consisted of one large room, separated in three sections over the length of the house. The section in the middle was a neutral space, the sections left and right divided in four equal parts, allotted to different wives or families (Patik [tr. De Boer] 1921:371, footnote).

75 Brenner (1894:249) wrote that each woman worked on her own plot, but that they helped each other out. If, however, a woman could not feed her children with the yield of her own plot, she was not supported by her imbang, but received money from their husband.

76 Indang tihas na morimbang masiula di ibana (Ruhut 1898 [tr. Meerwaldt 1905:115].

of them.⁷⁷ Each wife also had the responsibility of contributing to the brideprice for her own son(s), and was entitled to the benefits of the brideprice given for her own daughter(s). The sons of these co-wives had equal rights to the estate of their father. In only one aspect did the first wife have a privilege over the other women: her husband had to consult her on the allocation of land and anything else he wanted to give his co-wives or her children. The first wife was in no way to be put in a less favourable position than the others.⁷⁸

The custom of the levirate—a man marrying the widow of a deceased brother or other member of his clan—also contributed significantly to instances of bigamy and polygamy in the nineteenth century. A survey of the Batak Mission on bigamy conducted in 1926 revealed that a quarter to half of the cases could still be traced to this custom in areas where the majority had not yet converted to Christianity. The position of a wife married in levirate differed from that of a tungkot or imbang, because she continued to occupy the part of the house which had belonged to her deceased husband, and she retained the usufruct of the fields formerly allocated to him. The children by her first marriage continued to be acknowledged as the children of her first husband; and if she had a son, the latter inherited his father’s estate. Only children born of the second marriage were counted as the children of the second husband. The composition of polygamous households in the pre- and early colonial periods is hardly touched upon in the available literature and sources.⁷⁹ This can be attributed to the following: the missionaries’

prior concern was to eradicate the custom, whereas colonial officials investigated domestic arrangements only if needed for the adjudication of a lawsuit. The most extended polygamous households probably consisted of women who were each other’s imbang, widows taken in levirate, an occasional subservient wife (tungkot) for a childless woman, and female slaves.⁸⁰

The attitude and feelings of Toba Batak women about polygamy must have varied. If a woman had no children or no son, it was in her interest to find her husband a second wife and try to make the best of their ménage à trois. A first wife who had given her husband sons and daughters, on the other hand, may have been dismayed when her husband planned to take another wife. But she had no other choice than to put up with the co-wife, for reasons explained in the next chapter. Why did a woman agree to become a co-wife? Nineteenth-century sources remain silent on this point. Perhaps they just went along with an arranged marriage, which may even have appealed to her if the husband was a prominent and wealthy raja. As will also be discussed in the next chapter, widows had their own reasons for marrying a kinsman of their husband, even if he already had a wife.

Becoming a co-wife could bring a woman and her children the advantage of social standing and economic security in the marriage, but this was not always ensured after her husband had passed away. The first wife, with the backing of her grown-up sons, might try to pester her and

77 Missionary Metzler came across such a case in his congregation (VEM, F/b 2 Ref. Metzler 1897:6). According to the author of Ruhut, a man would not dare to ask one of his other wives to take care of the children of a deceased wife (Ruhut 1898 [tr. Meerwaldt 1905:116]).

78 Perhaps the first wife of a religious leader (parbaringin) also played a more prominent role in rituals? Angerler (2009:102-4) on female religious leaders (paniaran) does not give information on this. The woman a man married first might not have been the head wife if she was of slave descent.

79 Vergouwen was not specific about polygamous households, merely stating that men rarely had more than one wife (which reflects the situation in the 1920s when polygamy had already decreased due to Christianity.

80 A family tree attached to the record of a lawsuit involving a pagan family of the marga Butar-Butar from the district Porsea in Toba demonstrates how complex the relations could be (KITLV, Adatrechtstichting H 1051, 87, Civielvonnis Groote Rapat Balige no. 49, 29 April 1927).

her children out of the house. This happened to Sarah, co-wife of a chief in Sipoholon.⁸¹ Or the widow was deprived of the usufruct of the inheritance by a stepson.⁸² Sons with the backing of their mothers might also quarrel about the inheritance and title of their deceased father, causing tension in the family.⁸³