The origin of mankind and the creation of the earth

The myth of the origin of mankind as recorded in Niessen’s work (1985:16-33) opens with the visit of the bird or chicken Hulambu Jati to the highest god of the Batak pantheon, Mula Jadi Na Bolon. His name means ‘the great and powerful one, the origin of genesis’.¹³ The bird tells him that she has hatched three enormous eggs.¹⁴ In this miraculous way Mula Jadi Na Bolon receives his three sons: Batara Guru, Soripada and Mangalabulan. They are called ‘humans’ in the myth of origin, although they are generally regarded as deities—debata (from the Sanskrit word dewa)—in the old Toba Batak religion.¹⁵ When they have come of age, Mula Jadi Na Bolon gives each of them a wife, and each of the three couples produces children. Batara Guru has two sons and twin daughters, Si Boru Surbajati and Si Boru Deak Parujar.¹⁶ His brother Soripada has two sons, Tuan Sori Mangaraja and Si Raja Ilik, the latter also called Si Raja EndaEnda.¹⁷ His second brother Mangalabulan has one son, Tuan di Pampatinggi.

In the next episode Batara Guru is visited by his younger brother Soripada who proposes the betrothal of his son Si Raja EndaEnda with the eldest of the Batara Guru’s twin daughters, Si Boru Surbajati. Batara Guru is not immediately pleased with this proposal and objects to it:

‘How can that be, younger brother? Perhaps the union will be infertile if contracted that way’.

But Soripada tells him to go through with the betrothal, arguing that the girl and boy have no one else to marry. Si Boru Surbajati is urged to go to the village of her fiancé Si Raja EndaEnda, who puts her through various trials. When Si Boru Surbajati is finally allowed to see him, she is horrified: her groom has the skin of a chameleon, looks like a lizard, walks on four feet and has a pointed tail. Desperately she tries to postpone the marriage by various ruses, but to no avail. At dawn on the day the wedding is to take place in the village of her husband-to-be, she performs her farewell dance for her parents and siblings in the customary way.¹⁸ Suddenly she gives them a terrible surprise: she runs up the stairs of the house, throws herself off the balcony, and then sinks ‘seven times the height of the sugar palm’. She is never seen again. This episode ends with the narration that after a long time she grows into a sugar palm.¹⁹

11 Stöhr and Zoetmulder (1965:61) formulate this as follows: ‘[T]he idea about God and the creation of the Toba is entwined in extraordinary multiple ways with ritual and the social order.’

12 Not discussed are the possibility that Mula Jadi Na Bolon indicates a pre-existing Batak monotheism and the Hindu influence on Batak religion. Consult Stöhr and Zoetmulder 1965:47-60.

13 For a more elaborate description of the capacities of Mula Jadi Na Bolon as the supreme god and the various names by which he is known, see Tobing 1956:35-37.

14 The egg is well known as a symbol of potential life, the promise of fertility and the force of life. (Angeler 2009:181).

15 Perhaps in this myth they are presented as human because here they are the first to begin acting according to the adat that they will bequeath on humanity. For the realm each of them reigns and their main characteristics and attributes, see Tobing (1956:47-53) and Stöhr and Zoetmulder (1965:49).

16 In the version of Guru Sinangga, Si Boru Sorbajati and Si Boru Deang Parujar are also twins. In the version of the myth by Guru Ruben (Tobing 1956:59) Batara Guru has five sons and only one daughter, Si Boru Deak Parujar. In Hoetagaloeng’s version Batara Guru had six daughters, number four Boru Sorbajati and number six Boru Deak Parujar (Angeler 2009:238). For the different family trees of the pantheon see Angeler 2009:480-4. I have displayed the simple version by Niessen.

17 Ilik means lizard. In the Guru Sinangga version Soripada’s son also is called Si Raja Odong and Si Raja Endapati. The lizard is a symbol of the underworld (Angeler 2009:237).

18 I assume that she took her leave in the customary mourning style, see Chapter 7, page 180.

19 In the version of Guru Sinangga, certain plants also grew out of the corpse of her rejected fiancé, Raja Endapati: some

In the next episode Soripada, Si Raja EndaEnda’s father, visits Batara Guru and says to him:

Hey, what is going on, oh our Raja Ompu Tuan Batara Guru […]

what is one becomes two, what is three becomes six, the debt of wayward women.

The broken lengths of ruji, the finalization of the contract, the meal of appeasement Drumsticks of the gordang drum, the divorce20 will exacerbate the conflict, our dear Raja, To say nothing of the brideprice

Batara Guru answers:

When wooden shingles crack, wooden shingles replace them, when the elder sister dies, the younger sister replaces her.

And so Si Boru Deak Parujar is her replacement’

‘Fine, our Raja, persuade your daughter’, said Ompu Soripada.

(Niessen 1985:31)

Si Boru Deak Parujar, the younger twin sister, is subsequently put under pressure by her father and brothers to take the place of Si Boru Surbajati as the bride of the unbecoming Si Raja EndaEnda. After all, as Ompu Soripada says in the verse above, her father had already received the brideprice (tuhor ni boru) for her sister at the time Si Boru Surbajati was betrothed. So if

types of bamboo, grass, and rattan varieties (Angeler 2009:237).

20 With ‘divorce’ is meant the dissolution of the betrothal contract (sirang). See Chapter 5, page 122.

Niessen 1985:74 (scan). ∆ = male O=female.

Figure 1. Kinship relations of the characters in the myth of origin

Batara Guru wants to maintain good relations with him, he had better provide another bride.

But, like her sister, Si Boru Deak Parujar refuses to marry her ugly cousin. Even after her father warns her in his final argument to coax her into submission—‘you may not refuse, daughter, because we shall all be sold into slavery’—she does not budge. Again like her sister, after a long time, she pretends to consent to the marriage and performs her farewell dance, but then:

She threw herself down to the village square.

From there she ran to the connecting rock, to the hole of insight, to the observation point, she drove in the end of her thread,

she slipped down it to the gods below, she arrived in the middle of a sea to her spindle, on which she stood.

(Niessen 1985:33)

The myth subsequently mentions that after a while Si Raja EndaEnda died, and it closes with the moral that the whole process of arranging the marriage was faulty from the very beginning. It is not fitting for a woman to seek a man in marriage as in the case of Si Boru Surbajati and Si Boru Deak Parujar, who had been commanded by their father to go to Si Raja EndaEnda’s village. It is the man who must go to the village of his future bride and court her. This is expressed in the closing sentence of the myth: the sugar palm (a female symbol of fertility) is not to be brought to the ladder (symbolizing the male), but the ladder must be brought to the sugar-palm.

In the myth of the creation of the earth, we meet Si Boru Deak Parujar again. Once she has arrived in the middle world, she suffers, tossed by the waves of the sea into which she has fallen from the upper world. Through the mediation of a swallow and two bumblebees, she pleads with her grandfather, Mula Jadi Na Bolon, to help her. She asks him to give her a fistful of soil to create the earth. He has pity on his granddaughter and gives her what she wants. Several times she has to ask him the same favour again before she finally succeeds in subduing the dragon Naha Padoha and a dolphin²¹—creatures that live in the underworld and who destroy the earth she has shaped each time by shaking their bodies.²² After the earth is finally firm and stable, she requests water from her brother Datu Tantan Debata—and from the lord of nature, Ompunta Tuan di Rimba, all sorts of plants that support human life, including ‘golden’ rice to be planted in the earth. Finally she gets help again from Mula Jadi Na Bolon in choosing the place for the first settlement on earth and the first house to be built. After this, Si Boru Deak Parujar has finished her great work creating the world, which is now fit for human habitation. Here the myth as narrated by Raja Darius Sibarani ends.

In several other versions, however, there is a sequel. Some myths tell us that after Si Boru Deak Parujar finished creating the world, her father exiled her to the moon, because she refused

21 In the Guru Sinangga version, apart from the dragon and dolphin, other animals living both in water and on land (that is, creatures of the underworld) also make it difficult for Si Boru Deak Parujar: a crab, a tortoise, an otter. (Angeler:

2009:237).

22 Ködding (1885:405) gives a different twist to the myth, robbing Si Boru Deak Parujar of her role as creator of the earth.

An (unnamed) hero sent to her by her father Batara Guru succeeds in locking the dragon Naga Padoha in an iron block after Si Boru Deak Parujar has failed to subdue him. This hero, who reminds Ködding of the Hindu god Krishna, marries her, and together they beget the first human children. Perhaps this clear deviation from other versions, presenting Si Boru Deak Parujar as a ‘weak’ woman and the prize of a successful hero is due to Ködding’s male perspective.

to marry. One can still see her there at night, busy spinning and weaving to her heart’s content (Tobing 1956:61; Stöhr and Zoetmulder 1965:51). In another version, Si Boru Deak Parujar indeed marries a cousin—not the son of Soripada but of Mangalabulan. Her husband’s name in this myth is Tuan Rumauhir, who has the same physical characteristics as Raja EndaEnda.

Because of his ugliness, Si Boru Deak Parujar flees the house immediately after marriage and returns to her father’s village. Forced by her own family to return to her husband, she runs away and—as in the previously narrated version of the myth—descends to the middle world, sliding down a thread where she creates the earth. After that she does not retreat to the moon, but continues to dwell on earth. After a long time, Mula Jadi Na Bolon conveys the message to Mangalabulan to cut his own son, Tuan Rumauhir, into pieces and put the pieces of flesh in a bamboo container. The bamboo container is then thrown down through a hole in the upper world and lands on earth. The container bursts and miraculously Tuan Rumauhir arises, like a phoenix out of his ashes, reincarnated as a beautiful young man called Bulu Gading. One day, while chasing a bird, he passes the village where Si Boru Deak Parujar lives. She recognizes her husband, and the couple resolves to stay together. They produce seven sons, the last one of which is Si Raja Ihat Manisia, one of the forebears of Raja Batak, the ancestor of all the Batak (Tobing (1956:61,68).

There is a different story about Si Boru Deak Parujar’s offspring, in which her husband goes by the name of Siraja Uhum or Raja Odapodap (Stöhr and Zoetmulder 1965:53). Their marriage is blessed with male-female twins. The boy is called Raja Ihatmanisia, and the girl, Boru Itammanisia. When the children grow older, a great ceremony is held, attended by their divine ancestors who have come down from the upper world for the occasion. At the end of the ceremony Mula Jadi Na Bolon tells his great-grandchildren that they can maintain contact with the upper world through offerings, and he instructs them how to prepare them. After the ceremony, the gods, including the twins’ parents, retreat to the upper world, and the thread connecting the upper and middle world is cut.²³ The twins marry and become the ancestors of mankind, named after the couple ‘manisia’ (Malay: manusia). The couple founds a village—Si Anjur Mula-Mula—on the slope of the holy mountain Pusuk Bukit on the western shore of Lake Toba. After three generations Raja Batak is born.²⁴

Although the various versions of the origin of mankind and the creation of the earth contain many elements that differ rather substantially from each other, the myths have at least the following main points in common: Mula Jadi Na Bolon generates the gods; Si Boru Deak Parujar, his granddaughter, leaves the upper world to enter the middle world where she creates the earth, whether with the assistance of her reincarnated husband or not; and both of them become the divine ancestors of mankind for which the earth is created. The message conveyed is that the path of the woman Si Boru Deak Parujar in creating the world and procreating was long and arduous.

Procreation, another theme of this thesis, is given a specific dimension in one of the myths recorded by Tobing. In this story the bird Mandoangmandoing lays four eggs instead of three. As in the version of the myth presented above, out of the first three eggs come the gods Batara Guru, Soripada and Mangalabulan. Out of the fourth egg comes yet another god. Mula

23 The thread used by Si Boru Deak Parujar to slip down to the middle world?

24 Stöhr and Zoetmulder 1965:53-55. Here the authors also refer to other less well-known myths on the origin of mankind.

Jadi Na Bolon gives him the name Debata Asiasi or Hasi hasi, the god of compassion.²⁵ Mula Jadi Na Bolon tells Debata Asiasi that he is disadvantaged in many ways compared to his brothers Batara Guru, Soripada and Mangalabulan, because he is not entitled to particular and regular offerings like his three siblings. He is therefore truly to be pitied:

You have no share, no relations, no choice, […]. When there is somebody who is willing to give you something, you will not accept it. When you are willing to accept, there is nobody to offer you something. […] When there is somebody to eat food, you have no food; when there is food, there is nobody to eat it. […] When you have a mother, then you have no father: when you have a father, then you have no mother.’

(Tobing 1956:53)

Debata Asiasi, who is the only one among the gods who is not married and has no children, is displeased with his lot. But he is pacified when Mula Jadi Na Bolon tells him that the people

‘shall call on you every morning of the day’. Debata Asiasi may not be entitled to a share of meat, but—as Mula Jadi Na Bolon assures him—his share consists of ‘words’. He will always be remembered by the blind, the deaf, the crippled, the invalids, and the sick: they will either curse him or appeal to him. But foremost, Debata Asiasi will be called upon by those who desire offspring. Mula Jadi Na Bolon reminds him of this:

[...] when there is someone who has only one son, he shall tell you so in a melancholy voice and shall entreat you fervently to grant him more children. When, however, he has many descendants he shall tell you so, smiling. […] In short, all that shall happen to man later on, comes from you;

but (now) you must go into the midst of the angular branches of yonder tree. Just look at the young leaves of the banyan tree; as long as they are turned upwards, it is a sign that there are not any men yet. As soon as the leaves are turned to you, however, you will know that there are already men.

Look at the young leaves. As soon as they begin to curl up, […] men have already got sons and daughters. They shall give their sons and daughters in marriage, and on that occasion those who are born and have the good luck (to become husband and wife) shall call you by your name in the following terms: ‘Oh, Ompung, Debata Asiasi; Debata, on whom mankind has pity, Debata, who is invoked, Debata to whom nothing is given, Debata, to whom no sacrifices are made; it is you who makes the head round, who opens the eyes, who makes the ears and opens the mouth, who makes the liver large, the heart round, who intertwines the bowels, who splits up the fingers, who makes the crown of the head for us, humans […]. Give me sons and daughters that my husband over there may find ‘pleasure in me’. The husband will ask the same thing for his wife. Form my characters, the nineteen characters which are complete; look at the leaves which are curling up: as long as they are not yet withered, a woman shall get a first born, but when they are withered, then she shall lose her child, unperceived by other women; this shall be, in the future, a woman who loses the charm out of her hair knot (meaning a miscarriage).

(Tobing 1956:55-56)

Debata Asiasi thus resembles Mula Jadi Na Bolon in his capacity as the creator, in this case the creator of mankind. It is Debata Asiasi who receives the gratitude of couples who are blessed with many children and to whom people turn when their marriage has remained barren. Interestingly,

25 See for a list of historical references to this god and his characteristics Stöhr and Zoetmulder 1965:50.

there is a remarkable switch of perspective near the end of Mula Jadi Na Bolon’s speech, when he is suddenly replaced by a woman as the speaker. She begs to be blessed with children directly:

‘give me sons and daughters ...’. The fervent wish for children, by women in particular, will recur as a major theme throughout this study, for reasons explained below (section 2.8).

Angerler (2009:243) has underlined that although Si Boru Deak Parujar appears as the most prominent female personage in the myth, she does not figure prominently in Toba Batak rituals staged by the religious community, the bius. It is rather her sister, Si Boru Surbajati, who is revered. After she leaves the upper world, she becomes part of the underworld. As Boru Tindolok, she is the goddess associated with the herds roaming the fields, and with the fertility of cattle. As Boru Na Mora she is associated with wells and streams, providing water, the source of life. Si Boru Surbajati thus represents perhaps not so much the underworld, but rather nature or ‘the wild’, the world beyond the village and the cultivated land surrounding it. The ritual held

Angerler (2009:243) has underlined that although Si Boru Deak Parujar appears as the most prominent female personage in the myth, she does not figure prominently in Toba Batak rituals staged by the religious community, the bius. It is rather her sister, Si Boru Surbajati, who is revered. After she leaves the upper world, she becomes part of the underworld. As Boru Tindolok, she is the goddess associated with the herds roaming the fields, and with the fertility of cattle. As Boru Na Mora she is associated with wells and streams, providing water, the source of life. Si Boru Surbajati thus represents perhaps not so much the underworld, but rather nature or ‘the wild’, the world beyond the village and the cultivated land surrounding it. The ritual held