The changing Pakpak Batak
A.C. Viner and E.L. Kaplan published “The Changing Pakpak Batak” in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1981, presenting an ethnographic account of the smallest and least documented of the Batak societies, based on fieldwork conducted in Simsim, Dairi Regency, North Sumatra, in 1977 and early 1978. The article’s overarching thesis is that the Pakpak are undergoing a comprehensive cultural dissolution—material culture, language, calendrical systems, and social organization are all eroding simultaneously under the combined pressures of Indonesian state integration, Toba and Karo in-migration, and the younger generation’s active aspiration to abandon Pakpak identity altogether.
Summary
The Pakpak occupy a scattered territory spanning Dairi Regency in North Sumatra and fragments of Southern Aceh, divided into five kajangun that function as distinct linguistic-cultural areas. The authors situate the Pakpak within the theoretical framework of peasant studies, arguing that they were only recently transformed from a tribal society into a peasant one following Dutch penetration and development of the area. This recent transition is critical to the article’s argument: the older generation retains characteristics of the former tribal society and despises the cities, while the younger generation is more fully peasant in orientation, envying urban life and seeking to emulate its material markers. The article thus documents a society caught between two worlds, with the balance shifting decisively toward the latter.
The authors trace this dissolution across multiple domains simultaneously. In material culture, the last adat house has crumbled, the traditional writing system is known only to a handful of elderly men, bark books have been sold off for cash, and the few remaining constructed objects are rough and undecorated. The traditional calendar and its associated divination system have been replaced by the European calendar and the dukun, though residual observances persist. In language, a clear trend of replacement by Toba and Indo-Malay is evident, with a developing triglossia in which Bahasa Indonesia functions as the High variety, Toba as an intermediate register, and Pakpak as the Low variety confined to ordinary domestic interaction. In the social domain, Toba and Karo migration has altered the ethnic balance of formerly homogeneous villages, and the Pakpak’s own sense of inferiority—internalized from the characterizations of them by neighboring groups—drives a pattern in which educational and economic success effectively constitutes a departure from Pakpak identity.
The authors resist any romantic or diffusionist reading of the Pakpak past. The scattered stone equestrian statues and phallic figures found in Simsim are treated not as evidence of a grand lost civilization but as a metaphor for the totality of contemporary Pakpak culture: fragments, worn by weather, of a system of symbols and social organization that no longer coheres. Unlike the Toba, who have managed to create a new monumental art (concrete tombs) in the spirit of their past, the Pakpak lack the social structure and the skilled artisans necessary to generate any such replacement. The forces of cultural disintegration, the authors conclude, have been too strong.
Key Findings
- The Pakpak of North Sumatra number an estimated 60,000—less than one-fifth of the total Karo population and less than one-twentieth of the total Toba population (p. 102).
- The last Pakpak adat house crumbled in 1965; the traditional writing system of eighteen phonetic letters is known only to a small group of old men and will presumably disappear with their deaths (pp. 96–97).
- In Kepas and Pegagan, the Pakpak are outnumbered by outsiders two to one; nearly all school teachers in these areas are Toba, and the language of instruction for the first three years is Toba (p. 102).
- The Simsim subdistricts (Kerajaan and Salak) had a combined population of 23,545 in 1975; individual villages range from fewer than fifty to one thousand people, with a mean of perhaps three hundred (pp. 94–96).
- Bark books written in the Pakpak language command prices of 100,000 to 200,000 rupiah (US$250–500) in Medan, and most men have sold the books they inherited (p. 97).
- Dairi was officially annexed by the Dutch in 1908; the Pakpak are described as having “only recently become peasants following Dutch penetration” (p. 95, n. 7).
Conclusion
Viner and Kaplan’s definitive historical takeaway is that the Pakpak traditional society has been so thoroughly dismantled that no new art, new social structure, or new symbolic system can emerge from its remnants. The Pakpak differ from the Toba and Karo precisely because so little of their former tribal culture has been preserved; the fragments that remain are inoperable and meaningless to the living population. The younger generation’s unanimous desire to acquire wealth, learn English, and travel to the West is not a phase of development within a continuing Pakpak trajectory but a terminal condition: success means ceasing to be Pakpak. The authors present this not with lament but with the flat recognition that the forces of integration have outpaced the capacity for cultural regeneration.
Context
- The article is based on original fieldwork in Simsim (1977–1978) and brief visits to other kajangun; it fills a significant gap in the literature, as no social research had been conducted in the Pakpak areas since the Dutch-era monographs of Ypes (1907, 1932) and Kreemer (1916, 1922–23) (p. 94).
- The study contributes to the broader historiography of Batak cultural change by documenting a case of near-total dissolution, contrasting with the more commonly studied Toba and Karo, who have retained substantial adat institutions and material culture.