Along the Rivers of Central Kalimantan. Cultural heritage of the Ngaju and Ot Danum Dayak

Dr Klokke’s focus upon images associated with the Tiwah ritual matches what one might expect of a society that was nearing the end of forty years of violent struggle in the era of decolonization between Indonesia and the Netherlands Indies, had just faced Japanese occupation and had virtually no formal medicine. However, the emphasis on imagery associated with the Tiwah death rituals more likely stems from the centrality of Tiwah and other life cycle rituals in the Kahringan religion of the Dayak peoples. Thus, in addition to the groundbreaking photographic work, one of the greatest contributions of Dr. Klokke’s book is the review of the Kahringan religion, as presented by an expert on Dayak culture: Dr Marko Mahin.

Kahringan: The religion of Life

Despite the fact that Kahringan is classified as a “Hindu” religion in contemporary Indonesian society as a result of the pancasila policy, Dr Marko Mahin argues that its roots extend even deeper, to a time before Hinduism was present in the archipelago. According to his account Kahringan, which means “life” in both the Sangiang priestly language and everyday Dayak, can also be referred to as the “primordial” or “ancient” religion as well as the “religion of the ancestors” (Agama Helo, Agama Huran or Agama Tato-Hiang) (p. 33). According to the Kahringan creation myth: Raning Hatala Langit created the universe, the first man was Manyamei and the first woman was Kameloh (or Putir Kahuhup Bungking Garing – who “originated in the knot of the tree of life,” p. 33). Thus, the soul of all people originates from Hatala Langit and enters the fetus in the womb after three months and ten days of gestation. When an individual dies, a Tiwah ritual is held.

After the Tiwah ritual is held the bones of the dead are put in a specially constructed ritual house known as a sandong. To the untrained observer, these sandong may appear to resemble the famous spirit houses popular throughout the mainland, and to a lesser extent, Insular Southeast Asia - and are frequently surrounded by hampatong or carved wooden protector statues that are either humanoid or animal in form. However, these constructions are quite different in that they are the eternal resting place of an individual’s remains, held in a burial pot (blanga) at the center of the house. Dr Klokke even found one example of a sandong where there was only a blanga with a roof and no walls. In other examples, the houses can appear quite ornate. In one from the village of Kampuri, the sandong is decorated with four mandibles of buffalo and features clearly recognizable male and female hampatong inside the house, whose white faces make them reminiscent of the statues of ancestral gods such as Po Klaong Car and his wife, worshiped amongst the Cham Balamon (Brahmanist influenced) peoples of Vietnam at the temple of Po Klaong Car in Palei Craok (Bầu Trúc , Ninh Thuận, Việt Nam).

In addition to the centrality of the Tiwah ritual and associated images in Dr Klokke’s photography, another popular image associated with the Kahringan Dayak religion is the sanggaran, or a representation of the “Total Deity.” The sanggaran is a pole with a pot (blanga) at the center of the pole. A naga snake that symbolizes the underworld of the goddess Jata runs horizontally across the pole. Then there are eight spears that protrude up, four on each side, and a hornbill (tingang) that symbolizes the upper-world of Mahatara. The imagery is almost too explicit to be accidental as the naga is reminiscent of the Indic creation narrative of the churning of the milk, also popularized by the iconography of Angkor Wat (Cambodia) and Suvannaphumi Airport (Bangkok, Thailand). Meanwhile, “the great” (Sanskrit: maha) Tara, or the individual who brought Siva back to life after he took the halalaha, is nevertheless generally associated with underworld-like figures in Hinduism (such as Kali) and jata harkens toward the Sanskrit term for “to be born” or “to be brought into existence.” Other potential associations for Mahatara could be seen in the Buddhist world, where Tara appears as a generally positive Bodhisattva and one might note that amongst the Cham people of mainland Southeast Asia the Cham Jat, another name for Cham Balamons, are often associated with being “original” or “pure.”

Despite the above discussion highlighting potential for Hindu-Buddhist influence , Dr Klokke managed to highlight other elements of Kahringan religion that are certainly local: The Batang Garing tree of life and Sangiang half-deities (note the term for half deities is the same as the name for the priestly language) such as Rawing Tempon Telon (Rawing, the owner of the slave Telong) and it is the emphasis on Dayak (rather than Hindu) identity that has led to an upsurge in the popularity of Kahringan in recent years, as Dr Marko Mahin cites that the greatest number of “Hindu” adherents outside of Bali is in Central Kalimantan, which had a total number of 223,349 adherents in 2007. Furthermore, the Kahringan religion has spread beyond the Ngaju Dayak (the most populous Dayak of the interior at 900,000) to the Luangan, Ma’anyan, Tuman and Siang Dayaks of Central Kalimantan; to the Merantus of South Kalimantan; to the Tunjung and Benuaq of East Kalimantan; and to the Ot (Oud) Danum (pop. 80,000 mostly in Kahayan and Kapuas) of West Kalimantan.

The narrative of increased unity amongst the Dayak population, perhaps surprisingly to some, begins during the era when colonial ethnographers were busy delineating the ethno-linguistic and socio-political differences between each Dayak group: with a 1904 treaty in an attempt to decrease the practice of head-hunting in the region. Subsequently, however, the Dayak community was caught in the midst of the struggle to decolonize the world. Thus, even when communal leaders pushed for the recognition of Kahringan in 1945, the religion was classified as a “spiritual grouping” (Agama suku) or “tradition” (adat) since it did not meet the full requirements of monotheism, a holy book, a prophet and worldwide adherence. Since Kahringan was not a religion, the Ngaju Dayak became the target of Islamic (mostly Malaya-Muslim) and Christian (German and later Swiss) missionaries. Consequentially it seems that Dayak leaders slowly merged their traditions with Hinduism until the “Agama Hindu Kahringan” was recognized as a religion in 1980.

History in Photographs

With the narrative of the recognition of the Kahringan religion and the rapid shifts that occurred throughout the 20th century in mind, it is clear that Dr Klokke’s collection provides an excellent window into the history of the Ngaju and Ot Danum Dayak, Indonesia and even the history of medicine. After Klokke graduated from medical school in 1949 and was sent to Kuala Kapuas he became part of a global effort to eradicate frambosia (yawas), which is not inherently deadly, but can be devastatingly debilitating as infections move through primary, secondary and tertiary cycles. Luckily UNICEF provided penicillin and, even though Dr Klokke faced an infection rate of 25%, the tropical skin disease can be treated quite easily. Nevertheless, the rivers were the only means of communication at the time in the interior; there was only one existing motorboat trader on the Kapuas river in 1951 and shallow sudur canoes were the only way to reach the hinterland rice fields at the time. Water had to be boiled and drunk as tea and traditional medicine was purely plant based. Nevertheless, the knowledge of plant medicine of the father of Dr Klokke’s head nurse, Emil Rabu (who was an old priest in Pujun), was collected in a notebook. Dr Klokke recently gave a copy to the resident of Kuala Kurun. Although Dr Klokke does not reveal the promising contents of that tome in this book, we are nonetheless left with a phenomenal collection of black and whites from Along the Rivers of Central Kalimantan.

William B. Noseworthy, University of Wisconsin-Madison