The Batak Mission’s aversion to the brideprice

As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, the negotiations between the missionaries and the Toba Batak rajas which took place between 1883 and 1885 focused not only on the contents of the Christian By-laws. The missionaries also proposed the abolition of the brideprice in the context of those negotiations. Why they chose to raise this issue at the same meetings in which the draft of the CBLs was discussed is a matter for speculation. They probably hoped that discussion of all the problems arising from the exchange of marriage payments would convince the rajas that a ‘shortcut’ might be a preferable alternative. After all, the abolition of the brideprice would make the Christian By-laws superfluous.

Why were the missionaries so keen on the abolition of the brideprice? The report of the missionaries in 1867 already revealed that they objected to it out of principle: they spoke of ‘the purchase of women’ (die Frauenkauf). In other words, they viewed the contract of Toba Batak marriage as a ‘business transaction’ (Handel)—a wife for a brideprice. G. Van Asselt (1906:134-35), for example, wrote that if one asked a Batak how many children he had, he would answer

‘so many children (sons = anak) and so many items for trade (daughters = boru)’.¹⁹ According

18 In view of the Batak holistic concept of adat, the dichotomy between a religious and secular realm was of course an alien concept to the Toba Batak. Schreiner (1872:138-9) wrote about this: ‘As clear and plausible the distinction between a religious and secular order may be from the point of view of European theology and worldview, this had to appear and function in the Batak kin-based culture as new and alien.

19 He used the Dutch word handelsartikelen. The differentiation between words for ‘son’ and ‘daughter’ reflects the lack of a general term for ‘child’ in the Batak language (note that the word anak in Batak is only used for sons, whereas in Malay

to the Van Asselt, the main question on a father’s mind was: ‘who will give the most for her?’

Missionaries also compared the negotiations about the brideprice with the haggling about the price of cattle in the market.²⁰

The missionaries rarely made note of the reciprocal character of the gifts and mutual duties of bridegiving and bridetaking parties, nor of the meaning of the gifts from the bridegiver to the bridetaker as spiritual blessings.Perhaps their own narrow ideas of what constituted ‘valuables’

induced them to look only at those items of substantial material value which constituted the brideprice given by the groom’s father (paranak) to the father of the bride (parboru): the cattle, the gold, the money. What may have limited their understanding is that these items were transferred at the time of the marriage ceremony and in public view, whereas the cloths bestowed on the bridetaker by the bridegiver appeared to them of little value, and the paddy field promised by the bride’s father as bridewealth was not a visible gift.²¹ The obligation to return the brideprice when a betrothal was broken off or a marriage ended in separation also fed their idea that marriage among the Batak was mainly a type of business affair. All this may explain why the missionaries continued to frame the debate solely in terms of the brideprice.

The missionaries’ perception of the brideprice as an economic transaction was not exceptional at the time: travellers and officials who wrote about Batak society in the nineteenth century described Batak marriage in similar terms.²² Missionaries working in other regions of the Indonesian archipelago and elsewhere held comparable views.²³

The missionaries were also against the brideprice because it led to a variety of consequences they found objectionable. These consequences, listed in the 1867 conference proceedings, were as follows: forced and child marriage; easy repudiation of women who had been unable to give birth to a son; the obligation to provide another daughter for a wife who had died without male offspring (singkat rere); and indebtedness. In contrast to their limited and therefore mistaken understanding of the exchange of marriage payments, the missionaries were correct in noting that these consequences were indeed offshoots of that custom.

There were also practical reasons why the missionaries wished to get rid of the brideprice:

the disputes about the refund of marriage payments were a financial burden for them and took a lot of their time. Such was their experience during the initial stage of missionization, when the first Christians had suffered from the demands of their affines after their conversion, as described in the previous chapter. Even though these problems occurred less frequently in the following years, the missionaries’ unpleasant memories of those early days must have intensified their already strong dislike of the brideprice and contributed to the persistence of their aversion to the practice in the long run. That aversion did not abate, because the Christians, once they

it covers children of both sexes). Which Batak term Van Asselt referred to when speaking of ‘items for trade’, I do not know.

20 ‘Most marriages target only profit […], the sale’s contract between the interested parties is made like one sells and purchases a piece of livestock’ (VEM F/m Ref. Volkmann 1893: 7). One haggles about the bride to be acquired even more than about a piece of livestock at the market...’ (Meerwaldt 1901b:86) .

21 Warneck (1909:116), for example, wrote: ‘Often the woman is given a bit of a bridewealth (Mitgift), usually a plot of land’.

Despite this observation, he still emphasized that the woman was bought and that because of the brideprice ‘in marriage the point of view of purchased property [of the wife] prevails’.

22 Marsden [1783] 1975:382; Junghuhn 1847:131; Henny 1869:20; Haan 1875:44.

23 See Boersema (1997:190-2; 197-200) about missionaries’ and indigenous views on the brideprice (belis), as well as the controversies on the subject and the policies of different churches on Sumba in colonial times and post-independence Indonesia. Prodolliet (1987:96-100) describes the rejection of marriage as a monetary transaction (either brideprice or dowry) by the Basler Mission, which had mission fields in southeast India, China (Canton), Africa (Cameroon, Gold Coast, and Togo), and British Borneo.

were integrated into society again, continued to involve the missionaries in their disputes. The missionaries considered it their Christian duty to assist them, but they were extremely wary of the ‘haggling’ over the repayment of marriage gifts, the unrest in the Christian community caused by marital problems of some of its members, and the demand their mediation made on their precious time.²⁴ The need for financial assistance to the Christians, however, ceased to be a problem.

In the sources on the first years of missionization, the practical reasons why the missionaries objected to the brideprice and their moral indignation about customary marriage as a sales contract are prevalent. Their own views on Christian marriage were left implicit. For example, the conference report of 1874, after summarizing missionary Mohri’s paper on relations in Toba Batak marriage, contained only the succinct statement: ‘Only mutual agreement can count as a condition of Christian marriage’.²⁵ Nearly twenty years later, W. Volkmann, a young and romantic missionary, elaborated on what that mutual agreement entails, in another treatise entitled ‘Christian Marriage’ (Die Christliche Ehe):

Christian marriage exists above all in devotion, in mutual love and care, and besides that is an excellent learning school for eternal life. […] How then should one seek a marriage according to the spirit of the Scripture? Above all through constant prayer and by heeding God’s guidance. […]

In addition, the fitting together by God cannot consist of any outward human act, but consists of a mutual attraction, the inclination of the heart to one another and the promises that follow it, or the betrothal. If I speak of an inclination of the heart, I by no means mean a sensual desire of the man towards the woman and the other way around […], but an inner impression often occurring at the spur of the moment, which the personality from a physical and mental aspect evokes in the other. […] That inner inclination does not come from human beings, but from God and is also generally the most natural and proper way leading to a union in marriage. Just as in eternity, God has planted love in the hearts of mankind.²⁶

Love at first sight! Of course one should proceed with caution and consider carefully whether mutual attraction was not a sensual impulse or a fleeting feeling of well-being, cautioned Volkmann, before one could say with Biblical Adam: ‘this is flesh from my flesh, bone from my bone.’²⁷

Not surprisingly, Volkmann also held the view that in general a truly Christian marriage was not yet found among the Toba Batak. Mutual attraction could be observed, but it was sexual attraction: ‘The animal in people, if I may say so, looks for his business and most people do not bring it any further’. He connected this animal lust with the Batak desire to have many children, in particular sons, adding that the Batak expected to gain eternal life through their male offspring. Of course sex for procreation was not the elevated form of attraction that should be the pillar of a Christian marriage. In its way also stood the right of a father to ‘sell’ his daughter without her consent, of which he gave a few heart-breaking examples encountered in his own

24 On the latter, the general conference of 1879 is outspoken: ‘The addiction of people to legal dispute is tiresome for the missionary and deprives him of a lot of time’ (Dem Missionar ist das Prossessinn des Volkes lästig und raubt ihm viel Zeit), VEM, F/b 1, 1879:279.

25 VEM, F/b 1 KP 1874:128.

26 VEM, F/d 2,1 Ref. H.W. Volkmann 1893:4-5.

27 VEM, F/d 2,1 Ref. H.W. Volkmann 1893: 6. Take note of the male perspective here.

congregation.²⁸

The other missionaries attending the conference found the picture Volkmann sketched too bleak for Silindung. Moreover, they considered love as the basis for marriage too high a standard for Batak Christian marriage.²⁹ Perhaps they did not even expect as much for themselves, their own marriages rarely being the result of a sentimental attraction followed by a period of courtship prior to marriage. The policy of the RMG was to dispatch young unmarried missionaries to their mission field, who could marry on the spot with his fiancée sent out no less than two years later.

Many managed to find a bride during their studies in Barmen. But sometimes the engagement was broken off or the RMG, which screened the fiancées, found the prospective bride unfit. In these cases the Missionsinspektor of the RMG chose the bride for the missionary, and the couple saw each other for the first time when she arrived.³⁰ This could sometimes lead to odd surprises:

Missionary Heine, for example, had asked for a tall blond woman, of whom he had received a photograph; but the bride who arrived was her sister, a short corpulent brunette (Van Asselt 1906: 121). Some marriages were happy, because husband and wife truly fell in love or came to love each other dearly during their marriage.³¹ It also helped that many firmly believed that they had been destined for each other and faithfully fulfilled the roles prescribed for each of them. If husband and wife did not get along very well, they tried to find satisfaction in their own work. A divorce was out of the question: it was not acceptable in the circle of the missionaries.

Moreover, where could a missionary wife go without independent means? Second marriages occurred fairly often. If a missionary wife died, colleagues helped the bereaved husband to find a new wife (and mother for his children).³² These marriages must often have been marriages of convenience rather than marriages of love.

In sum, the missionaries of the RMG were set against the Toba Batak practice of brideprice payment for the following reasons: the payment degraded women to things that could be bought; the appalling situations to which the practice gave rise; their own time-consuming involvement in disputes about marriage; and the belief that marriages of the Toba Batak were not based on the right kind of Christian love. Which of these reasons prevailed is difficult to say.

Their aversion was surely kept alive by the repeated demand of their flock to mediate in ‘disputes about women’ (hata boru) and the excesses they witnessed in their congregations, such as girls committing suicide because of a forced marriage, widows and girls left destitute by the patrikin of the husband, and so forth.