Getting Closer to the Friendly Cannibals (3)

How rich the Toba Batak cultural heritage is. You'll always love it.

Last week's excerpt

Besides farming paddy in the rice field, Toba Batak residents also tillage cassava and corn. In the meantime, men, as previously described, worked to carve parts of the houses. The images of the sculptures were usually spooky, especially those attached in front of the house.

On the contrary, the sculptures that put beside the house, often displaying intimate images, mostly about animals.

Final Series

Speaking of the Toba Batak traditional musical instruments, the people also paid attention to its usage in the daily lives, in particular when it deals with massive ceremonies or rituals where hundreds even thousands of people gathered and involved. They played Taganing (Batak's drum), Garantung (Batak's gamelan), Hasapi (Batak's traditional guitar), and Suling (Batak's flute).

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That's about Batak's traditional musical instruments. How about its kitchen utensils? The Toba Batak people carve the woods to create many kinds of kitchen utensils accordingly. They made those equipment based on the necessities, either for personal use or ceremonies and rituals need.

For the sake of life, the Toba Batak ancestors reminded their offspring to learn any skills needed in life as a way to survive in any situation and condition. Those skills, such as farming, gardening, carving, etc., would be essential to use once they settled in a new location. Moreover, the other talent that also important to know was the ability to make clay-based tools. All skills were useful for daily needs and traditional ceremonies and rituals.

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In connection to wood carving, the community also carved stones. They usually cut the rocks to make a set of chairs, statues, and stone crates. They used the chairs and the sculptures for the ceremonies-related activities and custom meeting.

Meanwhile, the stone crates were for the dead people. To make the stone crates, they collected all the stones from around their living hood.

By the way, regarding the ceremonies, the Toba Batak family had Mangalahat Horbo, a Batak's traditional celebration of sacrificing buffaloes accompanied by Batak dancing, Tor Tor. The other was Mangokal Holi. It was associated with death procession and funeral.

In the Toba Batak society, some of the deaths were put into the stone crates (sarcophagus) or Tambak (concrete tombs). In the past, only the royal family members and the noblemen corpse were buried in the stone crates (sarcophagus).

Concurrently, ordinary people buried the deaths directly in the soil. After a couple of times, the relatives of the deaths conducted a ceremony to dig and take the bonds from the ground and placed them into a new container at Tambak. It was an essential death ceremony for the Toba Batak family. 

Now, we carry on to the other aspects of the Toba Batak cultural heritage at Samosir island. This time connected to music and art. It's Sigale-gale. It was a dancing wooden statue that was played by someone in the ceremony. It was a famous art creation made by the Toba Batak tribe.

At the current time, people play Sigale-gale to welcome any guests coming to Lake Toba and Samosir Island.

Last but not least, the Toba Batak community also popular with its Ulos, the traditional weaving of the Toba Batak tribe wore in the ceremonies, rituals, and a variety of activities linked to Batak's culture. There are many varieties of ulos, say, Ulos Pasamot, Hela, Ragi Hotang, Mangiring, Bintang Maratur, Pinunsaan Simarinjam Sisi, Lobu-lobu and, of course, they served different functions and needs as reflected by the names given.

You may also read the first and the second edition here.