Order and Difference
An Ethnographic Study of Orang Lom of Bangka, West Indonesia
Originally published in the
series Oslo Occasional Papers in Social Anthropology, as Occasional Paper
No.19
Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, 1989 [ISSN 0333-2675]
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This work — which began its life as a thesis in 1988 and has enjoyed a long life on a shelf in a bookstore at the University of Oslo since its publication in 1989 — has now become available to the world of internet users. I have debated with myself if I should rewrite, reanalyse or amend the 1988/89 text. The debate was soon over; had I begun to revise at all I would soon have had to revise in a big way. Despite the occasional blush at reading my former ego's sometimes overeager prose I had to conclude that I have neither the time nor, really, the inclination to do so. Not seeing when more time and a different inclination would present themselves I decided to republish — on the whole — "as is".
Thus the changes that have been made are largely cosmetic. Sentence structure has in certain cases been improved, a few plain mistakes have been corrected and the entire text has been proofread. Numerous incidents of "which" have been changed to "that" (my grammar checker was rather insistent here) and I have tried to ensure that Latin names for a variety of species are now italicised.
The only major difference — and indeed a major attraction about giving Order and difference a second life — between the paper version and this one, is that a number of colour plates now accompany the text. The opportunity to include visual material in the low cost 1989 edition simply was not there, and I hope that by making images available now the reader will be aided in imagining more vividly what life was all about among the Lom in the early 1980s.
The diagrams showing relationships between people have all been reworked; the original line drawings — although computer generated — did not survive the conversion from one word processor to another. The few original ink drawings have simply been electronically scanned.
Obviously, in many cases the word "recent" about a book or an argument refers to books published or arguments advanced some 20 or even 30 years ago. To begin adjusting the text in such cases, or to introduce additional endnotes to update the information would be to step out on that slippery slope called "rewrite" that I have just explained that I step back from. But I want to announce just one such update right here. In note 15 I write, "Bangka Malay is hitherto practically uninvestigated." This is no longer true. The linguist, Professor Bernd Nothofer (University of Frankfurt) has published a book that will be of interest to anyone fascinated by the several Malay vernaculars spoken in Bangka: Dialek Melayu Bangka, Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 1997. With Nothofer's book the discussion over whether the Lom language is separate from or a variety of Malay should finally be laid to rest.
On a personal note: In the 1989 Preface and acknowledgements (below) I thank an old friend, Finn Sivert Nielsen "whose knowledge of computers was extremely useful to me". Little did we know then that by unselfishly investing enormous amounts of time (perhaps cash, too) to get anthrobase.com up and running I would be indebted to him once more, for roughly the same reason. Thank you, Finn and Kari Helene!
This is a slightly revised version of my dissertation for the Magister Artium degree in social anthropology at the University of Oslo entitled Orang Lom: Preliminary Findings on a Non-Muslim Malay group in Indonesia. The reader may wonder if the fruits of my 1983-84 fieldwork judged "preliminary" in 1988 have become less so in 1989. They have not. Order and Difference is my response to an editor's request that I find a title less self-consciously modest.
I first became interested in the Lom in 1982 at the suggestion of Dr. Øyvind Sandbukt, then Research Scholar at the Ethnographic Museum in Oslo, who generously shared his knowledge on Southeast Asian cultures with me — and later his lodgings in Copenhagen when I was on my way to Indonesia. Lecturer at the University of Oslo, Finngeir Hiorth, tried to teach me Indonesian before I left Norway. During the preparatory stage I also had the benefit of discussing my plans for research with my initial supervisors Professor Fredrik Barth and University Lecturer Knut Odner, both of whom warned me that what appears neatly ordered from one's desk is not likely to be similarly uncluttered in the field. I reported my fieldwork despair in letters to Sandbukt, Barth, and Odner who all promptly replied with kindness and insight.
The fieldwork on which this study is based was carried out between July 1983 and December 1984. Financial support was provided by grants from the Norwegian Council for Science and the Humanities (NAVF) and Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies (SIAS). The research was sponsored in Indonesia by LIPI (Lembaga Ilmu dan Pengetahuan Indonesia) and Universitas Sriwijaya, Palembang, Sumatra. For the support given by these institutions I am very grateful.
As anyone who has been to Indonesia will know Indonesians are an extremely friendly and hospitable people. As soon as I arrived in Belinyu I was fortunate to meet Mr Sulaiman Yusuf, Superintendent of Education and Culture in Kecamatan Belinyu. He arranged for me to move into the vacant teachers' lodgings both in Air Abik (where I spent the first three months of my fieldwork) and in Pejam. Sulaiman also gave me his typewriter and motorcycle to use for the entire period of my stay. For his extraordinary generosity, for his interest in my work, for his patient corrections of my faulty Indonesian, and for his friendship, I am extremely grateful. During the latter part of my stay on Bangka I discussed many aspects of Chinese/Malay relations with Budi, and he and his wife and children turned my visits to Belinyu into festive occasions.
But the Lom were the ones who had to put up with me. They fed me and taught me and took care of me and they did so with hospitality, warmth, and curiosity. In particular I want to thank Bujang, Wahab, Alit, Asin, Ayap, Gendud, Camék and Tedong. They — and many others — were far more patient with my endless questioning than I would have been in their place. They are all in this book, but under other names.
I began writing up in 1985. By the time I had committed enough to paper for my supervisors to comment on Professor Barth had resigned from his position at the Ethnographic Museum and University Lecturer Odner was abroad (although Odner saw my transcribed texts and some other linguistic material not incorporated in the present work and also took time to comment on an earlier version of chapter eight) and both were unable to continue as my supervisors. Soon afterwards, however, Dr. Signe Howell became Lecturer at the Department of Social Anthropology and agreed to take me on — mid-flight, as it were — as 'her' student. To the degree that this work has any coherence it is a result of her observing connective threads where I saw a bewildering mass of bits of information.
I also thank Alan Barnard and Arve Sørum, who both read and commented on a previous version of chapter eight as did Øyvind Sandbukt; Øyvind Jaer, who read a number of early drafts and offered interesting ideas; and Finn Sivert Nielsen, who likewise had ideas to share and whose knowledge of computers was extremely useful to me.
Berit Berge, Gunnvor Berge, Elisabeth Forseth, Randi Kaarhus, Lars Løvold and Espen Wæhle have provided a healthy blend of anthropological stimulation and social distraction.
Finally, I thank Eline Thornquist for her emotional support at the times when it was most needed.
MBK
'Native words', which have been italicised throughout, have not been spelled according to a fixed standard. During the first months of my fieldwork I spoke my own rudimentary version of Bahasa Indonesia and asked the Lom to do so too. I grew more familiar with the Lom vernacular later, although in conversations with me elder Lom would at times revert to the form of Malay more generally used on Bangka. My notes reflect this learning process, and it would have been a daunting and probably unnecessary task to attempt to translate all 'native words' to the Lom vernacular. I have noted some discrepancies between Standard Malay/Indonesian and the Lom vernacular directly in the text, but must refer linguistically interested readers to my "Wordlists" (Smedal 1987) for accurate information.
What I knew about the Lom/Mapur when I set out to do fieldwork on the island of Bangka in Indonesia in May/June 1983 was based primarily on field notes taken by Øyvind Sandbukt when he paid the group a visit in 1975 and can briefly be summarised in the following five points:
They are
The above, and the fact that the Lom/Mapur for all practical purposes were yet to be ethnographically documented, attracted my interest. A brief amplification of some of the points a) to e) will prepare the reader for some focal points of this book.
The Lom/Mapur (Orang Lom/Orang Mapur in Indonesian) are referred to — and refer to themselves — by both these designations. 'Orang' means 'human' or 'people'. 'Orang Mapur' is undoubtedly a toponym; the Mapur river is located a few kilometres southeast of the present-day Lom area. The meaning of the word 'Mapur' (sometimes spelled 'Mapor') itself is uncertain. Lom (or Lum) is a common Bangkanese form of the Malay/Indonesian word 'belum' meaning 'not yet'. Rather than meaning 'Those Who Have Not Yet Become People', 'Orang Lom' means 'Those Who Have Not Yet Embraced Religion'; in Indonesian: 'Orang Belum Beragama'. Thus 'Orang Lom' is a designation indicating point (b) above, viz. that they are unaffiliated to religion. I was puzzled by this information, as indeed I believe most anthropologists would be. An irreligious, possibly atheist Indonesian people?
My initial interest was augmented by the information that the Lom, until recently known as forest-dwelling swidden agriculturalists, some time ago split into two groups. One of these groups remains in the forest, the other has settled on the beach on the northeastern extremity of the island. Whereas the latter still practise swidden agriculture they have also taken up coconut growing, animal husbandry, and the exploitation of maritime resources. These factors made me speculate that the Lom/Mapur — lacking the cohesive qualities of a common religion — were possibly in the process of becoming two groups. Alternatively, and less severely, that they would exhibit certain inter-communal communication problems.
Before I left for the field I also learned that the Indonesian authorities had embarked on a village development scheme designed to reach the forest-dwelling Lom. By now it is common knowledge among those who have worked with, or studied, development projects, that however laudable the intent behind such projects, they often fail to reach their aims — or they reach their aims, but at social costs no-one had the imagination to anticipate. Bearing in mind the particular characteristics of the Lom briefly outlined above, it is perhaps not surprising that I was anxious to examine the impact the village project had had on them. As it turned out, not only had a project been implemented for the forest-dwellers; the beach-dwellers, too, had received such assistance from the authorities.
Published accounts on the Lom are scant and, as far as I know, have all been written by non-anthropologists. In the main they describe the material life of this 'heathen' population in the briefest of terms, stressing that the Lom eat indiscriminately, emphasising their laziness and low degree of metaphysical speculation and give some details of customs of marriage and divorce.(1) Insofar as earlier authors' descriptions of Lom 'metaphysics' shed some light on issues I shall discuss later these are summarised in appendix IV (cf. chapter three).
Bangka is situated east of South Sumatra at 1 30' — 37' southern latitude and 105 45' — 107 eastern longitude. The island is bordered to the north and northeast by the South China Sea, to the east by the Gaspar Strait (separating it from the island Belitung), to the west by the Bangka strait (separating it from Sumatra), and to the south and southeast by the Java Sea.
The population of the island totals nearly half a million of which approximately 200.000 are ethnic Chinese and 300.000 Malay, including the Lom population of some 800 individuals (1984). Total land mass is 11.614,125 square kilometres(2) including a few populated and a greater number of unpopulated islands, particularly off the southeastern coast.
Present and past tin-mines together with extensive marshlands comprise more than 20 % of the area and are deemed unfit for agricultural purposes unless massive capital investments are made. Another 6,4 % is covered by forest and the rest, almost two thirds of the island, consists of fields, gardens, houses, roads and recreational areas.
The Lom live within Belinyu district (kecamatan) which is situated on the north-eastern-most part of the island, covering 891,250 km2. The population of the district is 46.873 (January 1983). It is further subdivided into eight units: three kelurahan and five desa (the meaning of both designations is probably best approximated by 'villageship').
The Lom are fairly evenly distributed between two desa: Gunung Muda and Gunung Pelawan, with populations of 11.138 and 2.934, respectively. The Lom, who as I mentioned above number some 752 individuals (in 176 households), thus compose less than 6 % of the population in these two desa. I have calculated the size of their area to be approximately 225 km2.
To what degree this area really can be considered 'theirs' is a question to which answers should be qualified. There is, to be sure, a defined tract of land, bordered by certain rivers etc., which the Lom refer to as Tanah Mapur or Mapur Land. The question is what follows from it. First of all, Tanah Mapur is by no means recognised as a jural unit by the authorities. Secondly, the Lom have no communal property. Thirdly, having no fixed groups (other than conjugal families) such as clans and lineages they lack the notion of land having a genealogical complexion. They recognise private property, but as is common among swidden agriculturalists this is absolute only as regards the fruits of one's labour and merely temporal as regards land (for a further qualification on this issue cf. the section on coconut production in chapter six). All manners of productive activity can be, and are, freely taken up by outsiders (i.e. Malays and ethnic Chinese); be it agriculture, hunting, fishing, or gathering. Because I lack data on the use of resources by inhabitants of non-Lom settlements it is difficult to offer an accurate assessment of the population/land ratio. My impression is, however, that the non-Lom in the area (Muslim Malays employed in the tin mines and Chinese whose economy is based more on cash crops than subsistence agriculture) are not much engaged in swidden agriculture. For the purposes of land carrying capacity in terms of swiddens, therefore, the population density of 3.34 per km2 is probably a significant fact. What the Lom imply when they refer to Tanah Mapur is that within its borders, Adat Mapur ('Lom tradition') rules. What this means exactly is one of the core issues of the present work and one I shall return to repeatedly.
Administratively speaking, the Lom reside in either of two kampung (villages): Air Abik and Pejam. Residential practice, however, is far more complex than that. The spatial dispersion associated with the swidden agriculture they practice, combined with an exceptionally poor soil quality, account for a scattering of hamlets and single dwellings in which many households spend most of their time.
The geographical and administrative distribution of the Lom also corresponds to differing ecological adaptations. That is to say, the Lom in Gunung Muda — chiefly centred around the forest village Air Abik — grow dry rice, cassava, and other tubers as staples; banana, pepper and pineapple as typical cash crops. The Lom village in Gunung Pelawan; Pejam, is a rather recent seashore settlement (only 7 households were established in the early 1950s). Though the majority still grow dry rice in swiddens and every household grows tubers and fruits, the backbone of the shore economy is coconut production (plantations covering an estimated 150 hectares) and concomitant pig husbandry. Maritime resources are a vital concern to these villagers.
The language spoken by the Lom is a very distinct dialect of Malay (by some linguists held to constitute a separate language, cf. Holle's linguistic map (1893) and Salzner's work on Indo-Pacific languages (1960)) the principal features of which are a vocabulary largely consisting of local terms and an unusually rapid and syncopated speech-pattern (Smedal 1987). Malays from near-by Belinyu (less than ten kilometres from the Lom village Air Abik) assured me that they understand very little when overhearing Lom speakers in conversation with each other.
Importantly, over the last ten years each of the two Lom settlements have been subject to considerable attention and socio-economic assistance from the Indonesian government. Thus, in Air Abik a village housing scheme (Proyék PKMT)(3) was completed in 1976-77 and in Pejam a similar project was realised in 1982.
My chief desktop hypothesis when embarking on fieldwork was that since the two Lom settlements exploit differing ecological niches, chances would be that variant cognised models would develop and consequently either obviate intra- and inter-community discourse or gradually lead towards two culturally distinct communities.
Kampung Air Abik is situated about nine kilometres southeast of Belinyu on the northeastern promontory of Bangka. This village, the aforementioned housing scheme (in local parlance: the proyék) was built in 1977. The identically designed houses (identically designed all over Indonesia) lie exactly 24 metres apart and 19 metres from the road on either side of it. There are some 80 houses (including a school, teacher's lodgings and a house for local representatives of the Department for Social Affairs) for a nominal population of about 350 individuals. House design represents a break with tradition in several respects. They are placed squarely on the ground, built from wood, the roofs are tiled and, not least, they are small (approximately 30 m2). Traditionally built houses are stilted and raised from the ground by a metre or so, the walls are made from bark, the roof from palm leaves and they can easily be enlarged as needs arise. The single most important consequence of the novel design is probably that maintenance and repair (of the roof in particular) now costs money. The poor state of many of the houses may be the result of this, or of poor construction, or of both.
To my eyes the village, built seven years prior to my arrival, appears unkempt and far from prosperous. Some of the houses have been permanently abandoned, others temporarily so. Many households keep semi permanent houses near their swiddens and stay there (especially during labour-intensive sequences of the agricultural cycle). Thus the exact number of people actually residing in the village at any one time varies greatly. The road through the village (from Gunung Muda to Silip) constitutes an alternative route between Belinyu and the larger towns to the south (Sungailiat and Pangkal Pinang) much favoured by drivers when the main macadamised road becomes excessively potholed, particularly during and after the monsoon. Seasonally, therefore, there is an appreciable increase in the load of heavy traffic on what is basically a simple, unpaved forest-road.
The other Lom village, Pejam, consists primarily of Lom who settled on the beach stretching between Cape Samak and Cape Tengkalat some 20 kilometres north of Air Abik. This move came about rather gradually as people from the Air Abik area found it too time-consuming to plough through the jungle in order to tend their coconut plantations established some 80 years ago.
Pejam consists of two rather different settlements. The first of these comprises some 40 houses spread out the entire length of the 8 kilometres long beach stretching from Cape Samak to Cape Tengkalat. The other is the aforementioned proyék, situated 2 kilometres northwest of this beach, initiated by the authorities and provisionally completed in 1982. Houses here are of the same size and design as those in Air Abik except that here the roofs are made from corrugated iron. Like Air Abik it comprises some 80 houses: including a school, teachers' living quarters and a communal house (balai). Unlike Air Abik it appears (two years after its completion) inhabited and if not prosperous, less squalid.
Prior to the proyék construction period a new road was built to Pejam. Formerly the village was hard to reach by vehicles other than motorcycles and four-wheel-drive 'jeeps'. But there is still little traffic on the road, firstly because it ends at the village, secondly because none of the inhabitants have cars and only a few have motorcycles, and thirdly because there is no public transportation service. Thus, the fact that there now exists a well made road connecting Pejam to neighbouring villages appears — at least for the time being — to be of slight importance to the villagers themselves.
The proyék is intended to house all villagers and plans exist to expand the new village to a total of at least 90 houses. However, only one of the pondok (traditional house) spaced out in the coconut orchards on the beach has so far (1984) been permanently evacuated and many beach-dwellers spend only a couple of nights per month in their government-built houses.
The interweaving of adat (custom, 'belief' and an inventory of taboos), myth and history constitutes the backdrop against which the present-day situation of the Lom must be seen. I think it is opportune, therefore, now to sketch the background to the relative isolation in which the Lom of the past chose to live — indeed, to a considerable extent still choose — in spite of government commitments to educate and lead them towards becoming participating Indonesians. In important respects this fusion of history and ideas provides the context within which investigations of Lom attitudes should be situated.
The isolation of the Lom dates back at least to the late eighteenth century when Bangka was still ruled by the Sultan of Palembang.(4) For about eighty years, starting in 1785, the island was repeatedly and ruthlessly raided by pirates pursuing two commodities: tin and people.(5) Fields and dwellings were set on fire, and the part of the population that the pirates deemed unfit for sale at the slave-markets in the Riau-Lingga archipelago and elsewhere were killed. In the earliest part of the nineteenth century the already drastically decimated population suffered heavily from a series of smallpox epidemics. It is estimated that over a period of thirty years approximately ninety percent of the population were either abducted or dead (Horsfield, 1848: 336). The mid-nineteenth century saw a number of local rebellions against the Dutch colonial power after which a relatively calm period followed until the Japanese invasion in 1942. The subsequent couple of years are still vividly recalled by today's grand-parental generation as a period of terrible hunger; for over a year, rice — Southeast Asia's staple par excellence — was unavailable. The years following the Japanese capitulation were characterised by the renewed attempt by the Dutch to seize control over the Indonesian archipelago and were not altogether peaceful. Most recently, the aborted (alleged) coup and its aftermath of 1965 shook the island.
On this backdrop of violence — whether it be perpetrated by those in power or by those in opposition; by pirates, army commanders, rebels or indeed by non-discriminating epidemics — it is not surprising that the word most frequently employed by the Lom when they discuss encounters with strangers is 'fear' (takut). Neither can it be surprising that they behave in a guarded manner when an anthropologist attempts to elicit their ideational models; their adat.
While not wishing to exaggerate the nature of the obstacles to understanding the Adat Mapur it is germane to stress that an intrinsic aspect of Lom traditional custom is the general unwillingness — or perhaps more correctly, the inability — on the part of the villagers to discuss matters they consider sensitive. Outsiders (primarily Bangka Muslim Malays and to some degree ethnic Chinese) frequently refer to the Lom in derogatory terms such as 'primitive', 'lazy', 'ignorant', 'godless', 'dirty pork eaters' who, as if this were not sufficiently stigmatising, 'possess black magic'. As I just mentioned it is only to be expected, therefore, that the Lom are on their guard when confronted with an anthropologist attempting to investigate their way of thinking.
The particulars of the Lom cosmology, especially, presented problems — both in the field and afterwards. While I shall present this cosmology (in the detail I am finally able to) in a separate chapter I take the opportunity here to summarise parts of an argument spelled out more fully, and far more provocatively, elsewhere (Smedal n.d.). In important respects the view I shall suggest informs both data acquisition and interpretation and is to do with what I have called the problem of 'differential cultural competence'. The core of my concern is the general absence of anthropologists' concern regarding, to be blunt, the validity of informants' statements — whether they pertain to aspects of native culture that constitute High Knowledge, or to the 'imponderabilia of everyday life' which Malinowski alerted the profession to. Which informants' statements? Perhaps an anthropologist's account of any one cultural logic is potentially recognisable by just a few members of the society investigated, viz. the key informants. 'Folk models', for example, may, for all the readers know, be the models of a few specialists with knowledge somehow absent among the general public, the 'folk'. But if most members of a culture are content to leave the Big Questions to those who show a particular interest in them, if High Knowledge is not generally coveted, what then? What status do we, as social scientists, give to the restricted (profound, complex, ornate, complete) and the general (simple, incomplete) native models respectively?
My suspicion is that we, for obvious reasons (are we not, as Keesing (1987: 168) says, "dealers in exotica"?) are attracted to articulate and reflecting informants more than we are to the reticent and indifferent. After all, inchoate exotica are hardly the stuff monographs are made of. This is why, perhaps, that after reading anthropological monographs one may be left with the impression that somehow it is simpler to understand a simple society than it is a complex one. The 'natives' rarely come across to us as having problems understanding their own culture. What I am attempting to argue, therefore, is that specialist (reflected, elaborate) and 'common-folk' (indifferent, rudimentary) versions both be presented in the anthropologist's account. Or, alternatively, that it is made clear — if indeed it is the case, and it is the case in much of the present work — that the account is based on certain elite information (or interpretations) not generally circulating among the public.
I should also like to mention, on a more familiar note, that one's research may indicate that 'differential cultural competence' is co-variant with stratified control over information, interpretations and symbols; in a word: power. Keesing, for example, in the paper quoted above (which is a critical examination of the 'symbolic' or 'interpretive' anthropology usually associated with the writings of Clifford Geertz) has pointed out that
"... views of cultures as collective phenomena, of symbols and meanings as public and shared, need to be qualified by a view of knowledge as distributed and controlled. Even in classless societies, who knows what becomes a serious issue. ... An anthropology that takes cultures to be collective creations, that reifies them into texts and objectifies their meanings, disguises and even mystifies the dynamics of knowledge and its uses." (Keesing 1987: 161, original emphasis)
It is not my purpose here to discuss this important perspective at great length, I shall merely point out that whether or not power is relevant for a discussion on knowledge and competence is an empirical question. It is true that a disregard for the relationship between power and knowledge is tantamount to professional negligence. But no matter how precise one's conceptual apparatus for eliciting power relations or modes of domination may be there can be no a priori guarantee that reality will, as it were, succumb to finely tuned intellectual subtleties. What I am contending here is just that one cannot postulate that the competent, the ones 'in the know', wield more power than the incompetent. Whether they do or not depends on the adequacy of their competence as regards the manipulation of actual material or symbolic structures that are socially valued. In other words: We must accept that certain types of cultural competence — no matter how highly valued they may be in themselves — may be totally irrelevant as far as power or domination is concerned.(6) Contrary to what I have just claimed it seems that writers who have turned to the issue of differential distribution of knowledge (of whom Keesing is but one) take it for granted that when we speak of knowledge we imply ideology and therefore power. But as Bloch (1985) has argued this is an outcome of confusing cognition with ideology.
The above remarks are prompted by my problems to communicate with the Lom about those aspects of their life that I considered absolutely vital to their history and continued existence as a distinguishable group. Whenever I approached matters I hoped would cast some light on the way the Lom view the world, themselves, and their relation to other groups I seemed to get nowhere.
Initially (for a much longer period than I like to recollect, actually) I was puzzled by this. To reiterate, the Lom comprise a mere total of some 800 individuals, including infants. Before and during fieldwork I thought (probably naïvely, as I would think today) that such a small and possibly pressured society would be collectively — and verbally, when questioned — conscious of its place in cosmos, its historical (or mythical) origins, its relations to nature, animals, and human neighbours. Geertz, after all, has assured us that culture is a 'collective creation'. More than anything I was certain that the Lom, again collectively, would give a fair amount of consideration to the fact that they are the only non-Islamic Malay-speaking group remaining on Bangka, perhaps within the vast area including Belitung, the Lingga archipelago and the islands off the Sumatran east coast.(7) That they have withstood attempts by colonial and post-colonial governments at assimilation and somehow remained 'pure' (tulén) proved it, I thought.
My initial puzzled disappointment when I first began broaching the subject was soon to turn into dismay. Almost all prospective informants (i.e. people who had already willingly parted with essential information concerning their daily activities) became evasive or looked another way. The invariable answer I got to my probes was "nta:" ("I don't know"), or, when I asked about a cultural specific I had got wind of, "la: ilang" ("it doesn't exist anymore").
For a long time I blamed myself for this and thought that there had to be inroads I had overlooked, that I had inadvertently offended someone and word had got around warning people not to talk to me about 'important matters', that I had blatantly disqualified myself by having proved my incorrigible stupidity, etc. But I finally concluded that the Lom rarely talk about these issues and that they actually spent more time talking to me about them (in their guarded ways) than they did between themselves. I still have not totally convinced myself that my hunch for an explanation for their taciturnity is correct. In spite of this I submit, however tentatively, that most Lom have a somewhat vague knowledge of their own culture and that they fear, also somewhat vaguely, repercussions if they give inaccurate accounts of it. But I still harbour remnants of a nagging feeling that they may communicate about (what I take to be) 'important matters' in passing (and metaphorical) allusions undetected my me for, among others, linguistic reasons.
The above is simply a plea for anthropology as a humble and continuing quest for the substantive variation of human cultures rather than an academic laboratory exercise in the pursuit of order, cerebral or otherwise.(8) I hope that the present work will bear witness to this plea being more than mere lip service.
I am aware of recent academic trends postulating that ethnographies are false creations by virtue of their existence and that the only way to approach ... (I am not certain of what, perhaps some kind of Truth) is for the ethnographer to turn poetic and evoke in the reader's mind the culture s/he has worked in (e.g. Tyler 1987 for a bafflingly verbose version of this view). While these aspirations may be laudable in the most general sense possible there are, as I see it, at least two considerations that can be made as to why we ought to proceed with caution along these lines. First, I have not yet understood how we are to determine whose and what kind of mind (perhaps that of a Norwegian anthropologist in his thirties?) we are to evoke, and how. I should rather rely on conventional language (for which there are syntactical and other rules we can resort to, if need arises) as a means to get meaning across than on evocative metaphors (the rules for which must be fuzzy, to say the least) constructed by someone I don't know and who doesn't know me. Secondly, I fail to see how the 'writing culture' mode of presentation (at least in the form advocated by Tyler) can contribute to the body of knowledge of cultures accumulated in anthropology; to me, social anthropology is a documentary and comparative discipline. Comparison across cultural boundaries is inherently difficult and problematical in its own right, but it would become impossible were we to take the advice of the post-modernists.
What follows, then, is fairly traditionally 'boxed' and straightforward, although it is all (as they say) interconnected. Chapter two situates the Lom as an ethnic minority. Chapter three is the attempt I referred to above to explain as much as possible about the cosmological ideas of the Lom. Chapter four is an exploration of the rules that inform behaviour. Chapter five is an account of the rites performed at birth and (male) genital mutilation. In chapter six I describe the economically salient activities of the Lom, most thoroughly the agricultural ones, discuss whether or not the Lom have a multicentric economy (and if such an economy can be said to exist at all). Chapter seven is an account of Lom mortuary rites. Chapter eight is on relationships: affinal and consanguineal ones, and if the reader up to this point has received the impression that Lom society is amorphous and somewhat deficient as far as formal organisation goes this impression is likely to give way as the Lom rules on incest unfold.
In the previous chapter I briefly situated the Lom spatially and historically. The aim of the present chapter is to arrive at a clearer view of how the Lom are to be conceptualised in a social context. More specifically, to investigate to what degree they can be said to constitute an ethnic group. Largely, this is a question that can only be answered after a review of the actual empirical setting on Bangka, constantly bearing in mind the categorisations of the Lom themselves and their neighbours. As regards the Bangka natives' schemata for ethnic classification I should emphasise that while the class of Chinese contains only Chinese, the class of Malays contains both Malay Muslims and non-Muslims.
Are the Lom an ethnic group? While they acknowledge that they are Malay, and speak the Malay language, they simultaneously maintain that they are not Malay, but Lom, and do not speak real Malay, but pelicu (a dialect, or bahasa daerah, in Standard Malay/Indonesian). This apparent paradox, apart from neatly summing up the situation, begs for an investigation into what characterises the situations in which they refer to themselves (and are referred to by others) as Malay and Lom respectively.
The ethnic setting in which the Lom are situated is one that comprises, on one level, two classes: Chinese(9) and Malays. The Chinese constitute roughly 40 % of Bangka's total population of half a million; the remaining 60 % are Malays.(10) In this context the Lom are Malays; i.e. they are first and foremost not Chinese.
Thus, the ubiquitous middlemen, the economically successful entrepreneurs, the daring fishermen and accomplished cash-croppers whom the Lom encounter are, almost all of them, orang Cén (Chinese) who impress the Lom by their proficiency at coconut production and pig husbandry. In this (economic) context the Lom are acutely aware that they are if not 'inferior', at least less skilled, and have much to learn. But, importantly, so are the other non-Chinese (i.e. Malay) Bangkanese. The popularly proverbial diligence, stamina and business acumen of the Chinese is always, by Malays (including the Lom) and Chinese alike, contrasted to the (equally proverbial) incompetent laziness of the Malays. Neither Chinese actually living in the Lom villages nor those I happened to meet in surrounding areas distinguish between Lom and Malays in this respect. But while the Malays (excluding the Lom) more often than not are both contemptuous and envious of the Chinese and their relative wealth(11) the Lom are far less ambivalent in their assessment of the Chinese. The reason for this is partly to be found in the role played by Chinese as the professed 'saviours' of the Lom during WW II: Chinese from Belinyu and elsewhere brought rice and other edibles to Pejam to sell when far from sufficient amounts of rice were imported. Were it not for the Chinese in the surrounding communities, the Lom assured me, they would have starved to death because they were too poor (and timid) to go anywhere to buy consumer commodities. A further contributing factor is the place occupied by the Chinese in the Lom cosmology, a point I shall expand on in the next chapter.
The Malays (excluding the Lom) as well as Indonesians (i.e. the so-called pribumi or 'of the soil'(12) — i.e. the indigenous Indonesians) on the whole, as is my impression — generally hold that were it not for the Chinese the Malays would be better off. They maintain that the wealth of the Chinese (a frequent subject of discussion among Malays) would have been amassed by the Malays, had they only had the opportunity to do so. Contrary to this the Lom are of the opinion that they — and other Bangkanese Malays — would have been worse off were it not for the Chinese. In the terse words of one Lom: "If the Chinese leave Bangka the Malays will die." This is an opinion reflecting not primarily the conspicuous economic expertise I referred to above, however important in its various forms it may be to the Lom. Neither does it reflect the more recently established saviour role. More profoundly this attitude is rooted in Lom cosmology. But above all it mirrors the crucial role the Chinese have played in the extraction of the only important natural resource found on Bangka: tin.(13) The attitude of the Lom towards the Chinese is thus at great variance from that of the Bangka Muslim Malays.
But on another level the Lom are clearly distinguished from the Malays — though far more so by the Muslim Malays themselves than by the Chinese. While the Lom are not generally perceived to be much different from other Malays in the economic sense, they are so in other important ways: As far as the Malays are concerned the Lom are pagans; they rear pigs and eat indiscriminately (that they have their own sets of food-prohibitions is a fact the Muslims are either ignorant of or ignore), and they are (popularly held to be) accomplished sorcerers.
Furthermore, there are a large number of suku, or 'tribes'(14) scattered all over Bangka. Some of these are categorised by the authorities as suku terasing (literally 'isolated', or 'remote', with a tinge of 'estranged') as are the Lom, and plans to include them in settlement schemes (proyék) similar to the ones as have befallen the Lom over the past decade have been forwarded. What all these suku typically have in common is that their hamlets are situated far from the main roads and are accessible only by foot, bicycle, or motorcycle. Another trait they share is that they are acknowledged to speak dialects — some of which are mutually unintelligible.(15) That the specific linguistic and other cultural traits of these suku are generally little known not only to anthropologists but also to the island's inhabitants in general and its authorities in particular became evident during an interview I had with the former Bupati (the highest civilian authority) of Bangka, Arub S.H., and two other high-ranking civil servants (cf. appendix III).
In the following I shall concentrate on the distinguishing traits of Lom ethnicity in the capacity of the Lom as a suku, i.e. not in the sense that they are Malays.
When I asked the Air Abik headman: "What is the difference between Orang Lom and other Malays in Silip (a near-by Muslim Malay village) or in Belinyu (the town center)?" he answered that one difference is that the Lom bury their dead taking care to place the head of the deceased towards the east, another is that the Lom are alone in postponing the funeral ceremony proper for a number of years (see chapter seven). "Are there other differences?" He thought for a while and said, "No. We don't look different, our clothes aren't different, and we speak the same language."
The latter statement could be taken to mean that the Lom isolect is regarded merely as a topolect rather than an ethnolect (though not, of course, by such or similar terms). But when he refers to 'the same language' this must be understood as a language in the broader sense, i.e. they speak 'Malay'. As I have already noted all Lom are aware — indeed, they stress — that they speak a dialect (bahasa daerah, or pelicu in the Lom vernacular) which, when spoken between villagers at normal speed, is practically incomprehensible to people from near-by villages or from Belinyu, 9 kilometres away.(16)
Did the headman think that other differences would include that the Lom know a great number of pantun (traditional Malay rhymed verses) that other Malays may not know, that they are familiar with the local flora and fauna, are proficient at making a variety of traps, and so on? He immediately agreed to these suggestions, and pointed out that pantun are still being composed. Furthermore, although people in other villages, as well as the Chinese, know how to make and use lapun (the simplest of wire-traps: designed for mouse-deer) it is extremely unlikely, he said, that they know how to build a pejato (an elaborately constructed tortoise-trap).
Shame (being malu) is an important concept when the Lom discuss ethnic differences — and it is difficult to distinguish it from a wish to achieve superficial conformity; not to be recognised as 'other', as paling dalam (lit. 'deepest', but here meaning backward or 'hick-like').(17) Linguistically, the Lom attempt to conform to the different phonological peculiarities found in Belinyu, Pugul, Sungailiat etc. whenever they talk to inhabitants of these places. The Lom say that if they speak their own dialect when dealing with other Bangkanese these will point at them and say: "orang Air Abik". As regards dress and appearance, if one goes bare-footed to town carrying kerontong (a large plaited basket strapped to one's back with bark string), wearing seluar kulor (home-sewn fly-less trousers which are tied around one's waist and end just below one's knees), one is immediately recognisable as 'orang Air Abik'. This is the reason people nowadays wear sandals and trousers (of currently fashionable length) and leave their kerontong at home. According to many Lom there are only these two ethnic markers: language and artefacts/clothes.
One man opined that nowadays young people do not know the local dialect too well because they were malu (ashamed) to use it. Consequently the dialect was in the process of disappearing. The example he used was that if someone in Belinyu asks a Lom "ke mana?" ("where are you going?" — probably the most frequent greeting in the Malay-speaking parts of Indonesia) s/he could not answer "kemék" (local dialect for 'ke sini', or 'hereto'); for one thing they townsfolk might not understand it and, equally important, it would certainly make the Lom sound uneducated and backward.
I asked someone else about this later. He said that it was bohong (lies, nonsense) that young people do not know their own dialect. The man I had spoken to is not asli sini (originally from here) having been born and raised in a neighbouring village and he could not be trusted on all matters pertaining to local customs.
The Air Abik headman said that he did not think there was a 'common origin', as it were, of Orang Sekak, as they are called on Bangka, or Orang Laut (in English usually referred to as 'Sea Nomads'; cf. Sopher 1977) and Orang Lom.(18) The reasons he gave for this are that the language of the Sekak differs considerably from that of the Lom and that the funeral practices are dissimilar.(19) The Sekak attach no importance to the direction of the grave, nor do they postpone the ceremony proper. Bearing in mind the recurring reference, both in the scant literature on the Lom and in ordinary conversations among Malay Bangkanese to the funeral practices of the Lom as perhaps the most significant — or ethnically most distinctive — trait, this may well be a most important observation.
As far as commercially oriented culture and arts are concerned, the Lom have little affinity to the hypnotic qualities of gamelan, the music for which Java and Bali are world-famous. They neither understand nor appreciate that "Javanese music", they say. Having radios and tape recorders they far rather listen to 'mainstream' Indonesian pop music and the Malay music broadcasted from Singapore and Malaysia, lagu Melayu. Nor are they attracted to the various forms of wayang (epic Hindu plays) that are frequently televised.
A central issue to Lom ethnicity is the status of Adat Mapur. While adat (after ter Haar: 1948) has often been translated as 'customary law' it would be misleading to conceive of adat simply as a set of jural rules applicable to a (culturally) defined area or (ethnically self-contained) group of individuals. One reason why adat has been defined relatively to, or as local appendices to religious, statute, and European laws is of course that the vast majority of Malays are Muslims to whom adat has been just that: important in certain respects but adjunct. Contrary to this concept of adat Jensen, in his book on the religion of the Sarawak Iban, states that to the non-Muslim Iban, adat
"...involves the basic values of life, their system of agriculture, as well as the code according to which their society is ordered. It also concerns the 'correct' manner of behaviour.... [It is] designed to ensure a mutually satisfactory relation between men and the other inhabitants of the universe.... Adat exists to ensure harmony in this universe and to promote the well-being of all its inhabitants, among them the Iban." (Jensen 1974: 5, 112)
Jensen also quotes Schärer who writes (on the Ngaju in South Kalimantan):
"It is not only humanity that possesses hadat, but also every other creature or thing (animal, plant, river, etc.), every phenomenon (e.g. celestial phenomena), every period and every action for the entire cosmos is ordered by the total godhead, and has to live and act according to this ordained place." (Schärer 1963: 74-5)
Adat thus understood covers the concept well as it is used by the Lom, even when it includes the sacral element introduced by Schärer. I shall elaborate on this point in the next chapter. For the time being I note with interest that these extended definitions of adat are almost undistinguishable from prevailing anthropological definitions of 'culture'(20).
One Lom put the matter very succinctly when he said, "Selam cuma igamanya; adét lebih kuat." ("Islam is only (a) religion; adat is stronger".)
The Lom rarely need to pay much concern to their ethnic identity when they are in their own settlements. This is not so because Lom villages are populated exclusively by Lom. Both chief Lom settlements contain Muslim and Chinese households. But, apart from the trivial fact that in small villages people are familiar with each other and thus know who will eat what, for example, it appears that the strategy of non-involvement in external affairs (a strategy the Lom have developed almost to perfection) has been adopted by Muslim and Chinese minorities on Tanah Mapur to the effect that controversial or embarrassing matters are not raised. Because Adat Mapur emphasises that every other adat-possessing group must abide by their own adat ethnicity rarely, if at all, needs to be negotiated. Conflicts along ethno-religious lines are, to the best of my knowledge, virtually non-existent. I noted no ethnicity-related snide remarks between or about villagers.
However, from time to time the Lom naturally encounter persons they do not know — when they leave their homestead and when strangers arrive at their own village. These are times when ethnicity becomes an issue. Given the weight Islam places on dietary restrictions, the apparently total lack of food taboos among the Chinese and the personal and partly descent-related food prohibitions among the Lom it is only to be expected that when ethnicity becomes an issue it becomes one over food.(21) While I do not wish to question the religious sincerity of Bangka Muslims in general I witnessed Muslims — too often for it to be mere coincidence — eating pork. On the other hand, for a Lom to transgress a food-prohibition is almost unthinkable; the consequences are dire. When the Lom say, "Kami seperti Orang Cén: Makan terus!" ("We are like the Chinese: Eat on/regardless!"), the point is not that they eat anything anytime but that to them, as to the Chinese, no food is inherently 'bad'. One Lom said simply, "Malays who eat pork, that's us."
One example of ethnicity negotiation occurred when a man from Belinyu appeared in order to ask advice before he ventured into the forest to search for the much-coveted garu or agila wood. As it happened he arrived just before a sumptuous meal at the house of one of my neighbours, who had had a successful hunt the previous night. The food, stewed anteater, was placed on the table. Strictly speaking, anteater is not for Muslims to eat since it eats non-vegetable matter, apart from the fact that Muslims are not supposed to partake of meat that is not halal, i.e. slaughtered the prescribed way. When placing the bowl of cooked meat on the table the host asked, openly, if the guest ate this. The latter answered jokingly that if he came across (ketemu) it, he would eat it, if he didn't he wouldn't. His Lom host smilingly agreed. The same exchange took place when the arak (rice alcohol) was poured: if he encountered it he would drink it, otherwise not.
Having met the stranger briefly earlier the same day I had introduced the two men to each other. It turned out that the stranger's wife was a not too distant relative of the host's wife. This did not take long to establish; the guest, the host, and his wife all asking each other questions in order to try to verify the exact relationship (the particulars of the genealogies never became entirely clear to them). It took much food, many drinks of arak and far longer, however, for the two men to find out who was the older, i.e. who was to address whom kakak (elder brother) and adik (younger brother) respectively.(22)
Incidental to the village settlement schemes initiated by the authorities have been the introduction and partly governmental financing of cash crops (the aim of which is a greater incorporation of the Lom into the money economy and thus an improvement of their standard of living) and, above all, the frequent admonitions to discontinue swidden agriculture which in Indonesia is now prohibited by law. While these government interventions present the Lom with problems, partly arising from their adat, which they are ill equipped to solve, these initiatives and regulations are at least official and openly put forward. Those who have made their swiddens within the boundaries of the tin-mining company have to be extremely quiet about it and such swiddens can never be 'inherited'.(23) The Benak hamlet (about midway between Pejam and Air Abik) will soon have to be abandoned because large parts of the primary forest in that area has been cut down and the authorities now hope to save what is left of Indonesia's primary forests for commercial exploitation.
But a more difficult problem is presented by the fact that in Pejam people grow coconuts and raise pigs. Having moved into the proyék some Lom have brought their pigs with them — much to the dismay of the infrequently visiting local dignitaries. Thus Wakim, the village headman in Pejam, told me that he was obliged to build a new house because the Camat (Head of Subdistrict) had repeatedly told him that it just doesn't do to rear pigs right next to the road. Wakim laughed and shook his head at this and I sensed some exasperation: "Susah!" ("Difficult!") And another villager explained that he has moved his pigs from the enclosure behind his proyék house to one he has erected a hundred metres or so off the road in a small hollow — hardly visible from the road — because "Who knows, one day Orang Selam will come here and think it's dirty." This was said with a smile and a light shrug, as is almost always the case when the Lom discuss Islamic notions of purity and uncleanliness.
The predicament of the headman is an acute one. He is the only non-Muslim (or, at least, the only non-agama, i.e. 'Great Religion') member of the group of kepala desa when meeting, for example, the Camat. When it comes to lifestyle and public performance he is compelled to serve more than one master, as it were. Being headman entails not only that he is the appointed (not elected) spokesperson of the villagers vis-à-vis authorities on various levels, he is also supposed to act as the mouthpiece of the same authorities (who, somewhat regretfully, have admitted to me that though lazy as he is he is the best they've got). While all his superiors are (I am certain) Muslim, he is not. This fact is of no small consequence as it presents him with a profound role-dilemma to which, from his perspective, there can be no solutions without hazards — to give but one example: If his superiors pay him a visit he literally has to kick his pigs out of his house before he can invite his guests in. The most radical solution would be for him to opt out of his position as headman, but for various reasons it seems unlikely that this is going to happen within the next few years.
Firstly, although his role is a dilemmatic one it provides him with a uniquely prominent status among his fellow villagers. While the Lom in no way venerate their kepala kampung he is, after all, the only Lom with direct and regular access to local authorities and he is, after all, supposed to be somehow in charge of whatever goes on in the village. That he is sometimes also blamed for events he is not responsible for is another matter. Secondly, in spite of the official remunerations for his services being relatively negligible, his role as (constituted) Kepala Desa (Local Area Headman) puts him in almost daily touch with the considerable local population of Chinese.(24) Due to the inter-ethnically recognised social advantage of the Malays, this places him effectively in an opportunity situation from which it is all but impossible not to achieve economic gain. This is especially true as he is arguably the most fluent speaker of Chinese of all Lom. The fact that most Lom favour good relations with Chinese because they perceive such relations to be potentially gainful, means that they approve of their headman's trans-ethnic dealings, admire his effortless linguistic transitions (as I did myself) and perhaps hope that his somewhat prominent position might in turn help them some time in the future.
That there are exceptions to the shrug-and-smile attitude towards Malay Muslims described earlier (that curious blend of indulgence and submissiveness) is strikingly illustrated by some statements by Sulin, a Lom more quick-tempered than most. He explained how he had once slaughtered a pig, brought the carcass to the Belinyu pork-market (which, incidentally, is situated near the regular market but behind and to the side of it in order not to offend the Muslims) where he had sold it. On his way home he had stopped at a roadside shop where he treated a couple of locals to beer and snacks. Their conversation touched upon acquaintances and places they knew and Sulin asked them what the Lom were like. "Dirty, pig-eating forest-dwellers", they replied. Sulin then asked them what the smell of money belonging to such people was like. They were unable to answer this and he pointed to the beer and snacks and said: "That is what the money of the Lom is like. Terribly dirty, isn't it?" To me he said: "Malek benér, urang Selam itek!" ("Ashamed indeed, those Muslims!") He went on to tell me what his usual answer to people asking him about his food-habits was: "'Hati macan.' Takot, orang!" ("'Tiger's heart/liver.' That scares people!")
Ethnic identity, according to Barth in his Introduction to Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, is ascribed: Ethnic groups "are categories of ascription and identification by the actors themselves, and thus have the characteristic of organising interaction between people" (1969: 10). Ethnic categories classify the individual "in terms of his basic, most general identity, presumptively determined by his origin and background" (op. cit: 13). Even so, although the emergence and persistence of poly-ethnic systems
"...would seem to depend on a relatively high stability in the cultural features associated with ethnic groups — i.e. a high degree or (sic) rigidity in the interactional boundaries — they do not imply a similar rigidity in the patterns of recruitment or ascription to ethnic groups: on the contrary, the ethnic inter-relations that we observe frequently entail a variety of processes which effect changes in individual and group identity and modify the other demographic factors that obtain in the situation." (Op. cit: 21, original emphasis)
It would appear that Barth's general observation is confirmed, with one proviso, by my own findings: The Lom may in fact change their ethnic identity, but this is accepted without ensuing problems only under specific circumstances, viz. marriage.
One man said that he had almost been convinced to convert to Islam. At the time he and his then wife had just divorced. He had been staying with Muslim Malay friends from Gunung Muda who had told him it would be lebih senang (more congenial) if he converted. At first he had thought "why not", but later the thought had struck him that if he did convert, pork would become at least setengah haram (half-prohibited) and that eating it would have to be done maling-maling (in secret). The day he was supposed to 'sit down on top of a coconut'(25) (duduk diatas buah kelapa) he left Gunung Muda in a hurry and pulang Mapur with relief.
Another man had in fact converted to Islam at one point but he pulang Mapur some eight months later. His then wife was a Muslim and he had had no choice but to convert were he to marry her. But little by little she acquired the taste for pork — something to which he had no objection! (Said with a laugh.)
It seems that the fact that the Lom share a certain 'Malayness' with other Malay tribes on Bangka facilitates an ethnic 'conversion' — or, if 'facilitates' is too strong a word, at least does not completely rule it out as a possibility. The Lom term for such 'conversion' is pulang (lit. 'come home') — and while Muslims can and do pulang Mapur and Lom can and do pulang Selam neither Muslims nor Lom can pulang Cén, nor can a Chinese pulang Mapur or pulang Selam.(26)) Partly this must have to do with the fact that for a Lom to become Muslim not much else is required than a recitation of the chief article of the Muslim faith (la illaha il-allah),(27) although in the final analysis it seems that the conversions which are not related to marriage are extremely unstable. To change one's ethnic identity is only culturally legitimised by marriage. Perhaps because the Lom and other Malay Bangkanese are not visibly different from one another it is possible for them to change their ethnic identity.
What is in fact impossible is to change one's ethnic identity when this implies changing one's physical type as well: Then, as I intend to demonstrate in chapter three, a confusion of the divine order would ensue. (In order to forestall future disclaimers on this score it is perhaps necessary to say that I am concerned with the Lom conceptualisation. I am not discussing a jural impossibility imposed by Indonesian law. In fact, many Indonesian ethnic Chinese convert to Islam for reasons I shall not go into here.) The fact that an elder Lom emphasised that I could not "take a wife from here" must, I think, be interpreted as an expression of the same anathema.
Alternatively, of course, one could suggest that the 'conversion' in fact is just that — a change of religion and nothing else. Why introduce the problem of ethnicity here at all? Does not the whole issue have to do with faith — and not with ethnicity? This is a question that cannot remain unexamined and it is very pertinent as regards the Protestant following which, although minuscule, exists. Before going into the possible answers to this puzzle I should emphasise that the conversion of some Lom to Christianity was reported to me to have been a source of conflict — particularly among those Lom whose present or former household members were among the converted. The issue of religious/ethnic conversion is therefore one that is inherently contested among the Lom. Thus, while I cannot claim to have a solution to this problem, at least two answers are possible: Firstly, by becoming a Christian one does not simultaneously become a member of an ethnic category to whom the Lom are conceptually opposed. Christianity (though dimly perceived to be originally Belandé (Dutch) is not primarily an ethnic category: The Batak, the Moluccans, and many Chinese (and Westerners) are all Christian — what they have in common is faith, and not ethnicity. Secondly, by becoming Christian one does not commit oneself to alimentary proscriptions. Buddhist and Christian Chinese, as the Lom well know, do not have differing eating habits. Thus, a Lom converting to Christianity may eat tortoise, pork and anteater just as before. Possibly some Lom do not think of converting to Christianity as a change of adat.
A third factor that must enter the account is that the priest in the small church outside Air Abik is reported to offer 'baits' (in the expression of many Lom) to those who convert. Thus, around Christmas when rice is given away as presents the congregation of Christian Lom temporarily swells. A fourth point to note, which is pertinent both to Islam and Christianity, is that both prescribe (or, at least, strongly encourage) praying and followers of both religions congregate in houses designed for that purpose. The concept of prayer is totally foreign to orthodox Lom. One cannot talk to Orang Kuasé (God), they say, and they have a positive prohibition on erecting such buildings on Tanah Mapur.
Orthodox Lom deride present-day Muslims who do not take their food-and-drink proscriptions seriously: "If a Muslim eats pork and drinks arak, what is left of his Muslimness?" One Lom remarked on what he perceives as a growing number of pork-eating Muslims by saying, "Habis Selam (Islam is finished). Maybe Islam is no more at the turn of the century." Cultural assimilation (which is not conceived of as different from integration) is precisely what adat Mapur prohibits and according to the Lom the adat of other ethnic groups implicitly contain similar prohibitions.
Un-prescribed religious conversion and, as I shall attempt to demonstrate in later chapters, cross-generation marriage and irrigated agriculture are Lom equivalents to Islamic prohibitions against alcohol and unclean meat. Blending or, probably more aptly, confusing, the various adat is therefore considered by orthodox Lom to be a threat to order and stability — including the order arising from the exercise of recognised authority in accordance with pre-ordinance. That both Muslims and younger Lom have become slack in observing the dicta of their adat is therefore a source of concern to orthodox Lom.
In the first chapter I outlined my misgivings against establishing the Lom worldview. I based my reluctance to do so on — what I take to be — a healthy scepticism towards anthropological syntheses of statements by native experts. I hope, therefore, that the reader has been sufficiently warned: Much of what follows should not be taken as a cultural 'common denominator'. It is rather, as coherently as I have been able to collate it, a patchwork summary based on the views of very few individuals. How representative of 'the Lom worldview' (assuming for a moment that such an entity exists) this summary may be taken to be is a question I cannot address at this point; I simply do not know. It is of course possible that the views of these persons are in fact typical and it is also quite possible that the reason I did not find consensus is simply that most Lom somehow feel intimidated against garrulity, as I suggested in the first chapter.
A brief review of earlier writings on 'Lom cosmology' is pertinent — firstly because their authors concerned themselves precisely with matters central to the present work, viz. the unique status the Lom have occupied on Bangka in their capacity as non-Muslim Malays, and secondly, because at least one writer has recently complained that anthropologists too often disregard their predecessors in the field.(28) This review is found as appendix IV and in it my own comments appear in notes.
To provide a minimum of context for the remainder of the chapter I begin by referring briefly to the largest single body of information on the Lom hitherto published: the approximately 2000 words in Hagen's article (1908) of which a translation of the part devoted to the Lom can be found as appendix II. Hagen (or Kroon, rather, who wrote the manuscript that Hagen translated into German) was
"...only able to ascertain that they honour four gods whose names, excepting the last one, they would not tell me; only holding up the four fingers of the left hand."
About these gods we are told:
"The first of these gods, indicated by the forefinger, is unmarried and has no children. He has, however, the power to take a wife and without further intercourse have children by her, in other words, to have wife and children by faith, if he so pleases.
"The second and third gods are married and have children.
"The last, indicated by the little finger, is Baginda Alie (Mohammad's son-in-law, though they do not know, or do not want to know, this)... Baginda Alie is married, but the name of his wife is not mentioned. He is their God, not only an intermediary between the God-level and humanity, neither is he the son-in-law of the prophet of the Mohammedans and it is difficult to find the reason why this one in particular has been given such an exalted place by the pagans."
Rather than commenting on the above I shall proceed immediately to my own material and attempt to present, as coherently as I am able to, the cosmology and pantheon of the Lom as it is today. I should like to point out that the text contains inconsistencies. Some of them are undoubtedly the responsibility of the anthropologist, some of them probably that of the main narrator who is seldom, if ever, asked to give comprehensive lectures on cosmology. In this regard it is tempting to quote Hagen's (Kroon's) misgivings about the results of his investigations: they are mirrored by my own 'reflections on fieldwork' ninety years hence:
"I should like to make the reader aware that what several old Maporese related to me in this connection should be cautiously accepted. I thought I perceived that they were slightly frightened when answering my questions, asked as carefully as possible, about their religious practices. They were also somewhat helpless in expressing their obscure notions. In the following I shall attempt to convey what I learned... They were very reticent concerning their beliefs in certain gods and goddesses... (Hagen 1908, cf. appendix II)
I stress, once again, that most of the information was given by one person and that few others were willing or able to confirm his statements. Furthermore, the information was obtained over a long time and it proved difficult to pursue single themes systematically, partly because the individual(s) frequently broke off sessions and partly because certain themes are considered dangerous to even talk about. Consider, for example, the following statement:
"Keliling, lihat; kalok ikak tanya ko padé (roam about, look around; if you ask I will tell you). I can't speak carelessly about these things because nobody has seen them yet — and therefore people could become angry with me for spreading rumours. I can talk about the little things, but not the big ones. I don't dare to. I am afraid people will know and talk about this and that. And later they — and you — can return to me and say, "didn't you tell us so-and-so?"
The difficulties inherent to investigations of the Lom cosmology are thus perhaps not altogether dissimilar from those encountered by anthropologists pursuing kinship studies among peoples with name taboos. It is because the person whom I just quoted fortunately broke his self-imposed silence on a few occasions and told me at least some of what I like to think are the 'big things' that I am able to present a first approximation to the Lom worldview.
Gajah Mada (Orang/Roh Kuasé: 'The Mighty One/Soul') created the earth and the wind. There was earth, there were people. People existed in the sky (bang langit) before the earth was created, they 'held' (pegang) the earth and, bringing it with them, descended by rope to Singapore: the first 'land' to be created.(29)
Java was made by Aki Jio Singo(30) He is "older than Borobudur, how many tens of millions of years old? — not just a little while ago!"(31)
When Java and Sumatra had been created Bangka was created; Sumatra and Bangka were both created out of Java. Bangka was still flat, but both earth and water existed. A storm tore the island of Belitung loose from Bangka. No humans existed at this point but numerous fields and gardens of all kinds did, mysteriously made. The Bangkanese are from Java, just as Bangka itself is made from Java. This is expressed as 'one and the same people, one and the same soil/land' (suti orang, suti tanah). I was also told, "We may not quarrel/fight with the Javanese. That is one and the same blood" (Kita tidak boleh bekelai't dengan orang Jawa. Itek suti darah). Bangka is female, Java male (although within Bangka women are Javanese and men Buginese), and Bangka is cold (tanah Bangka tanah dingin). The fact that it is cold was 'explained' to me via the question "did you ever hit a woman?" "No", I answered. "There you are!" (Itulah!)
One male and one female survived the storm.(32)
Every seven hundred years or every seventh generation half of the population was killed (penduduk dibelah habis) by storms and floods. These disasters recurred many times. Gajah Mada feared that people might perish altogether, and thus returned (reincarnated?) to save them from destruction by giving them adat.
That Gajah Mada brought adat to people is understood by the Lom to be a crucial schism because it is precisely with reference to different adat that the division of the Bangkanese into Orang Selam (Muslims) and Orang Lom is conceptualised. The differentiations of adat are also understood as pre-requisites for social order. Before Gajah Mada there was no custom: "Gajah Mada brought order" (Gajah Mada membawa atur)." He also brought magic (aik lemu, or ilmu).
Everyone ate the same foods before the arrival of Gajah Mada and thus there were no distinctions between human groups. And not only did he bring different foods (pemaken) to the peoples of the world, he also instituted the incest taboos, pantang buyung. The very essence of ordered tradition (atur adat) is represented by precisely the incest rules (cf. chapter eight).
Gajah Mada was, according to my chief source, married twice; the first time to a Dutch female, the other time to a Malay. Their names are unknown. The following are his offspring, listed in order of birth (the eldest first). The information on each of them remains scanty. Indeed, on some of them I was unable to get any information at all. These seven males were Orang Sidik (?); none of them had navels.
Perhaps one of the most interesting points to note in the following list of Gajah Mada's children is that a number of the gods/prophets/spirits featured in most accounts of Peninsular Malay folk belief are missing. These include prominent figures such as the Prophet Elias, the Prophet David, the Batara Guru and Batara Guru di Laut, the God of Midcurrents, 'Grandsire Long-Claws', Ibnu Jan, Jimbalang Bumi, the Prophet Khizr (Khailir), Sang Gala Raja and the Prophet 'Tap; as well as more minor notabilities such as a number of hantu (h. bangkit, h. belian, h. bungkus, h. golek and h. kochong) and mati di bunoh, pelesit, and polong.(33)
1. Isa: She is considered Dutch and the only daughter fathered by Gajah Mada. Her Dutch mother's name is unknown. She is the eldest of a group of siblings (kakgat) and it is therefore appropriate (and obligatory?) to address Western males (referred to as Dutch, or orang Belandé) as tuan ('sir').
2. Nabi Rasul: He is Malay, as is his mother, and the prophet of the Lom. Like Isa he is considered kakgat, i.e. he is the eldest of his mother's children. He is the protector of gardens (kebun) and horticulture. He had two children, the names and sex of whom are unknown. One of his two grandchildren is a Chinese (!) male (name unknown), the other is Mak Per, also male. The latter, sometimes referred to as 'Nabi Mak Per', or 'Prophet Mak Per', had seven children by Nuk Dak, the first Lom/Mapur. These children 'constitute' (or, were the ancestors of) seven (unspecified) bangsa (ethnic groups). Mak Per is the protector of swiddens, planting and growing. According to one version of the events it is he who ordered the yearly village harvest feast (sedeka kampung).
3. Baginda Ali: A Malay whose two children became evil spirits (hantu). The first-born was his child by a Dutch female (name unknown), the child was therefore Dutch. The second-born was by a Malay female and consequently the child was Malay. After having fathered Baginda Ali, Gajah Mada rose to heaven. Later he returned.(34)
Baginda Ali "owns" or "holds" Singapore. Singapore is the centre of the earth. It is the centre and the primeval point and in it, significantly, is the navel of the world.(35) This navel is a lake that under no circumstances must close up (tekerapat) — if it does it is a sign that the world is coming to an end "by everything becoming water".
4. Berail is the commander of spectres (panglima hantu). His 'place' is Tanah Abasi (Abyssinia). It lies to the west. It is a spirit island (pulau hantu) inhabited by Malays whose function is to be the guardians of the world (tukang tunggun dunia). People come (originate?) from Tanah Abasi(36) and there are possibly people there till this day. Berail is one-eyed, his skin is black, and he has neither ears nor nose. His children, one of whom is Sabil, became evil spirits. His name must never be mentioned more than seven times during any one day or else he will devour us (makan kité). He must under no circumstances meet people from Tanah Berapi (cf. below: 6. Serapil), even if he wants to; if he does the world will be destroyed.
5. Adam. No one could tell me anything about Adam himself. But one of his children — who defecated near the upak jantung (unidentified) — is 'the maker' (tukang muét) and all things 'bad' or 'evil' (jiét) are made by him.
6. Serapil is the Raja Hantu (King of Spectres). He is blind and deaf. His 'place' is Tanah Berapi, a spirit island as is Tanah Abasi, where fire has its origin. This fire is invisible. Tanah Berapi lies to the east. There is no sand there. The population is Malay. Their function is to be informers/advisors (tukang padé).(37) The greatest office in the world lies in Tanah Berapi. It is not very likely that there are people in Tanah Berapi but if there are only they may behold it. If we err (kalau kita salah) both Berail and Serapil will leave their abodes and come to ours. If we mention their names seven times they will come, too. The only way we can protect ourselves in that case is to ask for the help of a shaman (dukun) who knows how to give an offering to evil spirits (meri:k ancak), otherwise the spirits will devour us.
7. Wahabi. "An evil/malevolent one!" (Jiét, itu!). He is considered half human and half hantu. No one knows where his abode is.
8. Mohammad, a Malay and Gajah Mada's lastborn. He is the prophet of the Malays. He had two children (names and sex unknown). One of his seven grandchildren is Sang Senaké who has a chapel (surau) in Mecca. He is in charge of, or 'holds', the stellar constellation known in English as the Southern Cross (bintang parak pari). He is also the protector of navigation and voyage.
Fatimah (called Pertima by the Lom) is a title rather than a name. Her real name is unknown.
Each of Gajah Mada's children was given an island (the names of which have been noted above when known) and — importantly — no boats. Thus they were precluded from coming in contact with each other. This presages a central concern of Adat Mapur: the separateness between peoples and their cultural sovereignty over tracts of land. (Large — and to the Lom unknown — tracts of land are usually referred to as 'islands'.)
I have mentioned that several of the aforementioned seven/ eight children had two children — in fact, according to one version, each of them had two children (by wives — and in Isa's case, a husband — unaccounted for) who in turn had seven children each.
Gajah Mada admonished all his children never to 'hold' or 'own' (pegang) anything. While the others abided by this order Berail did not, and every one of the eight siblings were 'afflicted with' (kena) the prohibitions, or taboos (pantang-pantangan) that consists of 44 kinds of evil spirits and diseases. There are 44 kinds of hantu and 44 kinds of iblis.(38) One significant point to note here is that although only Berail broke the rule his siblings — because they became jealous — were all punished. This is not unlike God's punishment of the original sin committed by Adam and Eve according to Biblical tradition and the transgression itself is not very dissimilar either. But the Lom version is somewhat more specific in its announcement of the consequences; first of all in enumerating the diseases and evil spirits, and secondly (although of this I am uncertain) in specifying that each of the siblings were to be afflicted with certain ones.
Order and traditions were thus disseminated by Gajah Mada in some infinitely distant past. Gajah Mada — say the Lom — brought order to the general chaos of human societies. Various peoples and ethnic groups already existed, but because order (atur) was wanting those were times of earthquakes, storms and floods. What Gajah Mada brought to the world was, in a word, adat. Adat is culture and represents order. Thus, to this day Dutch are Dutch, Malays are Malays, Chinese are Chinese — not primarily in a physico-racial sense, but in a socio-cultural one. Likewise, perhaps needless to say, Lom are Lom. To each of them their adat. What must be avoided is a blending of various ethno-social orders. Adat lost or confused spells catastrophe. What must be avoided are Dutch Muslims, Muslim pork-eaters, Chinese circumcisions and Lom who are no longer Lom. Difference is preserved through respect of order.
Singapore, as has already been mentioned, is the oldest/primeval land on earth. This is attested to by the fact that in the middle of the island there is a lake, the afore-mentioned 'navel of the world.(39) Singapore, as readers will know, is a cosmopolitan island state and it is precisely its cosmopolitan nature, I surmise, which has generated the idea among the Lom that it is the oldest tanah in the world. Down to this island, they say, the first people descended. Singapore is 'chocker-block full' (pekak benar) of ethnic groups (bangsa) — twenty-four of them, to be exact: all the bangsa of the world are found there and it is from Singapore that they have spread to populate the rest of the world.
Of the seven brothers the eldest, Nabi Rasul, is the ultimate nameable ancestor of the Lom in his capacity as 'grandfather' of Mak Per (who married Nuk Dak). Between Nabi Rasul and his youngest brother there are five brothers who are either spectres, fathers of spectres, or (in the case of Adam and Wahabi) beings the Lom fear but about whom they profess little knowledge. The youngest brother, Mohammad, is the ultimate ancestor of the Muslim Malays. He is also the 'grandfather' of Sang Senaké with whom Mak Per quarrelled over 'war things', an incident which led to the removal of these objects to the heavens in the form of seven stellar constellations to be the heirlooms of the Lom ('owned' by Mak Per), while Sang Senaké (the Malay cultural hero, as the Lom have it) 'owns' or 'controls' or 'guards' but one constellation: the Southern Cross.(40) Importantly, the brothers between Nabi Rasul and Muhammad are mostly considered evil beings — stressing, perhaps, the ideational separation between the Lom and the Malays. But the fact that they are separated clearly does not mean that they are not related. While the relationship between 'Dutch' (Westerners) and Malays is stated in terms of 'half siblingship' (of different mothers) the much closer uterine relationship between Malays, Lom and Chinese is unequivocally stated in terms of skin-colour: "all have black skin" (samé-samé kulit hitam) and cannot be doubted. Physical relatedness therefore unites, on one plane, what is later separated on the ideational.
Orang Kuasé (Gajah Mada) asked, "Who dares to hold it?" about tin, money, things or objects/valuables/resources in general.(41) Nobody had the courage to except the Chinese. (According to another version the Malays and the Dutch both tried to fetch tin for seven days, but without success.) Thus they became 'the holders' (tukang pegang) and since then they have been in charge of and controlled the economy. The Dutch, when asked, said, "We can make things out of this." Thus, by this 'divine agreement' the Chinese sell raw materials (i.e. they control natural resources) to the Dutch who process and distribute them. The Dutch are 'the makers', (tukang bikin) they share all around (bagi keliling); in that capacity they are also 'the traders'. The Malays extend their open hands and receive from the Dutch. It seems that the problem of how to account for the differential distribution power, control, labour, and riches is 'solved' through this reported agreement: With a big smile a Lom said, after having explained this to me, "then people are happy" (baru senang kité orang). It also informs Lom statements to the effect that it is not very strange (dék berapé ané) that the price of tin has fallen dramatically. The nationalisation of the tin industry, as the Lom see it, is simply against divine order: Malays are not supposed to control natural resources. This 'divine agreement' has status as an 'oath' (pesumpah), and the impetus to keep the oath lies, first, in the statement "whoever is crooked dies, whoever is straight lives" (mana bingkok mati, mana luro