Sumatra (Indonesia) In The Eyes Of The World

TRANS-SUMATRA HIGHWAY

2015-03-08T03:00:00.001+07:00

The Great Traveling Road Show

The recently-completed Trans-Sumatra Highway runs the length of one of the world's largest islands-a distance of over 2,500 km. The journey from Bakauheni in the south to Banda Aceh in the north is truly one of Indonesia's great travel experiences, both for the stunning scenery you pass through and for the people you meet along the way.
However, the trip can equally become a nightmare of frustrations and uncomfortable conditions. Much depends on careful preparation, on having enough time, and on your response to the inevitable delays and minor irritations which all travelers experience in Indonesia. Patience and tolerance are invaluable qualities when traveling here, and will help ensure that your journey through some of the wildest and the least populated regions of the country will be an experience long remembered.
Only as a test of endurance should you take the highway straight through all the way from Jakarta to Banda Aceh. It is possible to do this-the journey takes about 60 hours and costs $70. The old days of untold delays caused by collapsed bridges and washedout roads are over. Today, the highway is paved, though your journey could come to a screeching halt if a landslide occurs, especially during the rainy season. But you will not be delayed for long. Maintenance crews show up promptly, as the highway is too important to the national economy for it to be closed more than a few hours.

Setting off: Lampung

Setting off from the shout, the first leg of the Trans-Sumatra Highway runs 99 km from the Java-Sumatra ferry landing at Bakauheni, on the island's southeastern tip, up to Bandar Lampung-the capital of Lampung Province. Leaving the ferry landing, the road climbs up around Mt. Rajabasa, giving fine views of island-strewn Lampung Bay. Strands of clove trees line the hillsides, distinctive clumps of conical light green foliage.
A little over 60 km from Bakauheni, the road drops down to the coast, giving a tantalizing glimpse of Lampung Bay, its bright blue surface broken by several steep-sided islands and fishing platforms hovering over the water like giant water-spiders. Houses on stilts line the water's edge, separated from the road by a thin strip of mangrove swamp. A rail head heralds your entry into the provincial capital, and in a short while you find yourself among huge warehouses and docks.
The next stage of your Trans-Sumatra journey northward takes you 385 km in 9 hours to Muaraenim, through foothil plains skirting the eastern edge of the Bukit Barisan mountain range. The road cuts through rubber and oil palm plantations and fields of corn. There are lots of river crossings-all rivers flow eastward from the Bukit Barisan to the sea.
Stunning emerald-green sawah by the roadside are dotted with huts where watchmen stay to keep wild animals at bay. Your bus might have to make several stops to let long "coal trains" by. The red-tiled raised wooden houses, some sitting on ironwood logs two meters off the ground, are traditional Lampung or South Sumatra rumah limas, formerly fastened with ropes, not nails.

South Sumatra and Jambi

The highway continues northwest out of Muaraenim, crossing the Lematang River several time before reaching Lahat. Just after Muaraenim, you get a panoramic view of the Lematang River againts a backdrop of a primary forest. In the early morning and late afternoon, heards of water buffalo and cattle compete for road space with buses and trucks. Look for an unusually shaped mountain, Bukit Serelo-a bare, finger-like projection on top of a steep-sided hill, standing apart from the foothills of the Bukit Barisan.

Lahat is the place to get off to explore the Pasemah Highlands. However, if you get off the bus here, getting a good seat for the next stage of your journey is a matter of luck. The highway nort of Lahat offers plenty of swaying curves and, if the weather is clear, glimpeses of the Bukit Barisan range to the west. This is landslide country during the rainy season, but bulldozers quickli clear the road. Coffee is grown on the steep hills and a rubber plantation stretches for several kilometers by the roadside. The next town is Tebing Tinggi ("high embankment"), which sits above the Musi River-one of the largest and most important rivers in Sumatra.

The highway the straightens out, and you speed along to Lubuklinggau, on the junction of the main road west Bengkulu. The tin-roofed houses whiz by your bus window with monotonous regularity for the next 248 km until you cross a bridge over the Merangin River, just outside Bangko. You are now in Jambi Province, and a sideroad to the west from Bangko leads you into the dense jungle and tea plantations of the Kerinci-Seblat National Park around Lake Kerinci.

The next stage , 92 km from Bangko to Muarabungo, seems to take no time at all. Muarabungo is the jumping-off point for Jambi, a long 212 km to the east.

Outside Muarabungo, the bridge over the Tebo River at Telukpanjang offers a view of a riverside mosque. Fifty km further on, the wide Batang Hari River provides irrigation for extensive sawah and you are now in West Sumatra. Along the roadside, you begin to see your first Minangkabau style roofs.

West Sumatra

After Kiliranjo the scenery at last improves as the highway winds up into the Bukit Barisan mountains. Here are stunning limestone formations (called "karst towers") and sawah which go right up to the edge of the jungle. The tall, white trunks of the primary forest match the pale white outcroppings of limestone. In places, the vegetation grows right from a vertical cliff! The first of the karst towers, small but impressive, rears up on your right at Sungai Langsat. There are five larger ones ahead-awesome oval, dome and stupashaped freaks of nature. During the rainy seasons there are frequent landslides, and your vehicle might have to stop for a couple of hours while bulldozers clear the way.

Having passed through the mountains, you enter a more hospitable landscape of rice fields, small Minang houses and hillsides covered in ferns, before entering a gorge leading into the busy commercial town of Solok.

The next stretch, 53 km from Solok to Padangpanjang, follows the banks of the Sumani River north to Lake Singkarak, a huge and immensely scenic crater lake. The highway hugs the eastern lakeshore all the way to a bridge over Umbilin River, which drains Lake Singkarak.

At the northern end the lake, the highway rises to offer some good views before cutting north and east through fertile rice fields to Padangpanjang. To your right is Mt. Merapi, an active volcano which sometime emits puffs of smoke, and Mt. Singgalang. Both are about the same height-just a bit under 2,900 m.

Break your journey at Bukittinggi; this is the place to spend a few days recuperating. It's about halfway up or or down the island, and there are lots of good hotels, restaurants and pleasant sidetrips to be made in the area (see WEST SUMATRA).

After Bukittinggi, the next leg of the Trans-Sumatra Highway is a grueling 500-km run up to Prapat-the gateway to Lake Toba and Samosir Island, in north Sumatra. It's a long trip, about 15 hours, and if you can afford the time, it is better to break the journey in Padangsidempuan or Sibolga, so as to cross over the Bukit Barisan mountains again in daylight.

The road is paved all the way, but it's narrow and there are lost of curves. Even with a good driver, the crossing can be hair-raising, as you twist and wind up the mountains pass, barely missing oncoming lorries and coaches. Fortunately, there's not much traffic on the road and the coach can't go much faster than 40 km per hour.

Try to be awake at the town of Bonjol, home of the famous Muslim leader of the Padri wars, Iman Bonjol. There's a large, sabre-wielding statue of him in town on a horse-look to the right. Just out of Bonjol, there's a monument marking the equator.

From Bonjol the road climbs up to Lubuksikaping, then descends into a long rive valley with rice fields to the right. There are no more steep descents but plenty of jungle-clad gorges as you wind your way down to Muarasipongi and Kotanopan, where your eyes are soothed by rice fields dotted with neat little huts and bridges by the river. You are now in North Sumatra.

Nort Sumatra

From Muarasipongi, the road follows the Batang Gadis River past Kotanopan. The Purba Baru village area here is the center of a huge pesantren or Islamic koranic school, the largest in Indonesia, with students from all over the country. Hundreds of tiny huts house boys, aged six to twelve, who spend their primary school years here.

Traditional Minangkabau houses are very few now since you are in Batakland. The people of this region are Mandailing Bataks, forcefully converted to Islam more than one and a half centuries ago.

Panyabungan is a crowded market town which bustles with activity on Monday, market day. Gaudy becaks,vegetable-laden housewives, and motorized becak mesin all add noise and color to the market scene. As you leave Panyabungan, you see tranquil white mosques set in the middle of rice fields. A stretch of brick factories follows, then the large town of Padangsidempuan greets you by nightfall. This is a good place for an overnight stay, or a change of bus for the one and a half hour drive to Sibolga.

Aside from a few hair-raising bends, the next stage, to Prapat and Lake Toba, is a pleasant 5-hour ride. The first part, to Tarutung, takes about 3 hours, past roadside markets and denude hills with isolated stands of pine. After an hour or so, a pass below Mt. Sibualbuali (with a large hotel) marks the division between the Muslim and Christian Bataklands, and churches begin to replace mosques along the roadside.

It's a short half-hour hop on a straight road from Tarutung to the busy market town of Siborongborong. A little way further on you start winding down to Lake Toba past spectacular rice fields and impressive graves crowned with figures of wide-eyed men on white stallions, elders in adat costume, and traditional Toba Batak houses-including one almost big enough to live in. The massive sepulchre on the right, a short way off the road past Balige, is that of the Batak ruler Raja Tano. From here the road winds around lakeside hills to emerge at Prapat.

From Prapat to Medan, the journey takes 4-5 hours. As the road climbs up from Prapat, there are magnificent views of Lake Toba. Then the road winds down through the mountains on a long, gentle slope to the sea via Pematangsiantar and Tebingtinggi. Lush rice fields and estates of rubber and oil palm line the road, while churches are gradually replaced again by mosques.

The final leg: Aceh

The long, 600-km ride from Medan to Banda Aceh takes 14 hours. There's plenty of good scenery, but the only logical place to break up the journey is at Bireuen, about two-thirds of the way up, for a side trip up to Lake Tawar. At Sabat, 17 km out Medan, the road crosses a wide river and the traffic starts to thin. The road now passes large oil palm plantations and ageing rubber estates. Keep an eye out for a superb mosque on the left just before Tanjungpura. The scenery alternates between broad rice fields (some stretching two km from the road), coconut groves, single and triple domed mosques, large rivers, bridges over estuaries overgrown with mangroves and nipah palms. Canoes, small boats and houses parched on stilts crowd around the estuary bridges. Further ahead are the grass-covered foothills of the hazy Bukit Barisan range.

The town of Lhokseumawe, which is set a couple of kilometers off the highway, boasts huge banks, government buildings, shopping centers, satelite dishes and five-star hotels and restaurants alongside small, prosperous "downstream" area of small open shops. Back on the highway heading out of town, you can see several large LNG storage tanks, and flares from oil wells.

Traveling further into the province of Aceh, you will see more the girls wearing the kerudung or jilbab, the Muslim head scarf which leaves only the face exposed. These girls attend Islamic schools. Mosques here are often roofed with ironwood shingles.

throughout much of Aceh, the Trans-Sumatra Highway follows the tracks of a long-abandoned Dutch railway. Though much of the tracks remain, most of the bridges have fallen into the river.

On the last leg the highway, the road leaves the rice fields and coastal towns to cut across the northernmost section of the Bukit Barisan mountains. There are lots of curves as you ride over hills covered with grass, scrub; and later you pass through tall, deserted pine forests. Then, mercifully, the bus stops swaying as the road straightens out to follow the river and fertile rice valley which leads to Banda Aceh at the northernmost tip of Sumatra.

FOOD

2015-03-06T23:36:00.000+07:00

The Art of Sumatran Cooking

As the 17th century traveler Sir John Chardin noted, religion-as well as history and geography-has always played an important role in determining a people's diet. And so it is in Sumatra. Pork is the major dietary barrier separating the island's Muslim majority from the Christian minority. Christian Bataks around Lake Toba and elsewhere in North Sumatra eat pork (sometimes also dog). and in their village settlements they often keep pigs. For Muslims, however, the pig is ritually unclean, and may only be eaten if one is faced with starvation.

Muslims nevertheless enjoy many other meats-including the flesh of buffaloes, goats, ducks, lambs, chickens and fish-as well as eggs, fruits and vegetables. Since the 1970s, however, many Sumatran Muslims have developed an additional concern for whether or not the meat they are served is halal-slaughtered according to Islamic law by cutting the animal's throat while uttering the name of Allah.

History and geography are also important, of course. After centuries of trading contacts, Sumatran cooking now reflects influences from all around the archipelago (Java, Manado, Bali) as well as from abroad (India, Middle East, China, Holland).In the North Sumatran capital of Medan, for example, you will find several dishes that show a distinct Indian and Arab influence alongside the usual Indonesia dishes. This can be seen in the use of dried seeds and aromatic spices such as coriander, cumin, fennel, cardamom and cinnamon in the preparation of goat dishes. Gulai kumah and gulai bagar are two goat curries which are rich in flavor, but unlike native Sumatran dishes not particularly spicy.
Near the coasts, seafood features prominently on most restaurant menus. One of the most popular dishes in Palembang, South Sumatra, is empek-empek-a fish dumpling (sometimes also stuffed with egg) served hot with a bowl of spicy sauce made of chili, garlic, dried prawns, palm sugar, soya sauce and vinegar. In addition, Palembang is known throughout Indonesia for the quality of its kerupuk (deep-fried tapioca crackers flavored with seafood and spices), since the kerupuk made here have a higher proportion of fish or prawn than those produced elsewhere in the archipelago.

Some like it hot!

Sumatra has many regional cooking styles, however the best-known is undoubtedly masakan padang-the fiery-hot cuisine of the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, named after the provincial capital of Padang. Padang-style restaurants are found throughout Indonesia, and a number of Padang dishes have achieved nationoal and even international popularity. Today, the famous meat dish known as rendang is served in restaurants as far afield as Tokyo, New York and London, and can be found in almost every Dutch town.

Rendang is usually made with beef, cut up into cubes and cooked in coconut cream with a spices mixture of garlic, shallots, chillies, turmeric, galangal, green ginger (all finely ground), lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, turmeric leaves and salt. Special care and attention are required during cooking so the mixture does not curdle or the pieces of meat disintegrate. One the coconut cream reaches boiling point, the heat is reduced and the cooking continues until the mixture thickens. When finished, the rendang sauce turns to a rich, dark brown residue, but the pieces of meat should still be intact and slightly crisp on the outside.
The prolonged cooking and the spices, especially the chilles, preserve the meat, and it is common for rendang to be taken along on long journeys, such the pilgrimage to Mecca, Rendang is then both reminder of home and a handy dish that saves time-as no cooking is needed apart from boiling the rice to eat with it! Solicitous Sumatran mothers cook, pack and send it to their children studying or working in the outer islands. If you eat rendang-and you should be sure not to miss it-be warned not to put a whole piece in your mouth at once. It is far too rich and spicy to be eaten whole. Break off a small part, then fold it into a spoonful of rice if you want to enjoy it. One should treat all spicy meat dishes with similar respect.
Padang restaurants, wherever you find them, have a unique way of serving their dishes which never fails to intrigue visitors from abroad. There is no need to order-soon after you sit down, the waiter arrives at your table with an array of small dishes precariously poised along both arms, and deposits them all on the table. You eat whatever you fancy from among these many dishes-sampling the curiied eggs, fish, vegetables, chicken and meat, knowing you will only be charged for the number of pieces of egg, fish, chicken or meat that you eat. The sauce is free, and there are stories of skinflints who take a spoonful of sauce from each dish to flavor their rice to have a cheap meal!
Experienced Padang restaurant-goers know exactly which dishes go well together, and make their choice accordingly. Those who are less experienced my find they end up with a plate full of clashing flavors. If in doubt, ask the proprietor for a nasi raes. This is a plate of white rice with several bits of meat and vegetable on top, sprinkled with gravy and serundeng (grated coconut, roasted with peanuts) and topped off with a kerupuk. It generally ends up being cheaper than getting the whole smorgasboard.
As is the custom throughout Indonesia, you eat with your right hand by compressing a bit of rice, meat and curry together with the tips of your fingers and pushing it into your mouth. Forks and spoons are also often provided now, but it is very bad form to stick the spoon you use for eating into the dishes of curry. Use a separate spoon for this!
The normal evening meal for a middle class family consists of four or five dishes and rice. These may include one or two meat dishes-say gulai ayam (curried chicken soup) and dendeng (sun-dried spicy beef)-as well as a vegetable dish, such as cucumber salad, and a selection of condiments such as sambal (chilli paste), pickles (acar) and kerupuk. The rice supplies the bulk of the meal, and its blandness is ideal for absorbing and combining the flavors of the various dishes.
Of course not all Padang cooking is hot. Try opor ayam (chicken simmered in corander and coconut cream), ayam goreng (crisp fried chicken), or-a dish that all foreigners like-pergedel (meat and potato croquettes). Other dishes are prepared with only small amounts of chilli, such as gado gado (vegetable salad with peanut sauce), and sate. The latter is found all over Indonesia and consits of pieces of meat marinated in spices and placed on bamboo skewers, then grilled over a bed of charcoal and served with sweet-spicy ground peanut sauce.
A special type of sate prepared in Padang needs a chapter all by itself. It consits of pieces of heart, tongue and tripe boiled in finely ground spices-coriander, cumin, galangal, turmeric, ginger, garlic, chili and shallots-plus kaffirlemon leaf, lemon grass and salt. The meat is then cut into small pieces and threaded onto skewers. The broth of the meat is thickened with rice flour to make a pale yellow sauce. Sprinkled with fried onions, sate padang is a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach!
Vegetarians will delight in the variety of tempe dishes found in West Sumatra. Tempe is a kind of soybean cake prepared from boiled beans which are allowed to ferment, a process that takes three days. The finished product is firm and compact-the beans tightly bound together and covered evenly with a light coating of white mold, with an aroma reminiscent of fresh mushrooms. Tempe is a very cheap source of high-quality protein and is crunchy and tasty when fried. It may also be curried or stir-fried with vegetables, potatoes and chilies.

Drinks and snacks

Beer goes very well with most Sumatran dishes-the high-quality Bir Bintang and Anker produced in Indonesia is brewed according to traditional Dutch methods. The religious prohibition against imbibing alcoholic beverages does not command universal observance in Sumatra, and foreigners drinking beer generally do not cause offense. Locals, however, usually prefer to drink weak plain tea or iced water with their meals.

There is, incidentally, one locally produced food which is mildly alcoholic. Sumatrans are very fond of between-meal snacks, and one of the favorites is tapai, sometimes spelled tape. Sumatran tapai is prepared from boiled or steamed black glutinous rice. Once the rice is cooled, it is sprinkled with a special yeast called ragi tape ; two tablets are needed each kilo of rice. The rice then is placed in a basin with a lid, and wrapped in cloth and left in a warn place for three or four days to ferment.

When it is ready, the mixture is slightly effervescent and has a port-like fragrance. It is usually served with lemang-white glutinous rice cooked in a bamboo container lined with young banana leaves in thick, salted coconut cream. (Surprisingly, tapaialso goes very well with vanilla ice cream!). It is available everyday in central Sumatra, but is especially popular during the fasting month, and around Idul Fitri (the fastive celebration of the end of the fasting month).

Another popular snack specific to the region is dadih (buffalo yoghurt). It is sold in a small bamboo container and served with emping-glutinous rice flakes rinsed with boiling water to soften them-topped with freshly grated coconut and brown palm sugar. It is very filling meal. Dadih is sold in almost every kedai or lepau (foodstall) all over the island.

On the road

When you travel by bus in Sumatra, foodseellers swarm around at every stop and bus terminal, calling out their wares. In their baskets are hard-boiled, salted duck eggs, tasty maize fritters, crispy fried banana slices (rakik), pieces of chopped sugarcane, and a variety of sweetmeats in banana leaves.
Practically every bus stop in Sumatra has one or two local specialities, and the same goes for train stations. Local women who are traveling on the buses will often buy a selection of these as gifts (oleh-oleh). When they visit relatives, it is unthinkable to arrive at a house empty-handed-one must have something to "open the door," as the say. There are always children around, and small gifts for them are always warmly welcomed.

The all-purpose banana leaf

Banana leaves, which can be found in abundance everywhere throughout the archipelago, are indispensable in all kinds of situations. They are tough, but when heated, are pliable and easily folded. They are mostly used to wrap food for steaming or cooking over charcoal, and as a wrapper for take-away food bought at a kedai or lepau. Small items and vegetables bought at the local market, such as tapai, bean sprouts or chillies, are usually wrapped up in banana leaves.

At a local lepau or kedai (foodstall), banana leaves may also serve as disposable plates or plate covers. They meet many needs for which we in the West use cling-wrap or aluminium foil. May they never give way to plastic which cannot be disposed of easily. Banana leaves are bio-degradable and a renewable resource!

LANGUAGE & LITERATURE

2015-03-03T00:07:00.000+07:00

Court Malay to Bahasa Indonesia

Sumatra’s great size and cultural diversity is reflected in its wealth of languages, which range from the elegant and elaborate court Malay still spoken in the former palace centers of Palembang and Riau, to the rapidly vanishing dialects spoken by a few coastal, boad-dwelling orang laut (sea nomads). Most of Sumatra's languages are closely related, and belong to the huge family of Austronesian languages which stretches in great island arc from Madagascar on the African coast to Easter Island in the easters Pacific.
northern Sumatra is dominated by the 1.5 milion speakers of Acehnese, who surround a much smaller pocket of Gayo speakers. To the south, around Lake Toba, lie the Batak heartlands, with their many Batak dialects, some to different as almost to constitute separate languanges. The most widely-spoken dialect is Toba Batak, followed by karo, Angkola, Mandailing, Dairi, Simalungun and Alas. Four million Minangkabau speakers the second largest linguistic group in the island are found in the fertile highlands of West Sumatera, while moving farther south, the provinces Riau, Jambi and South Sumatera are home to numerous dialects of Malay. Rejang is spoken in parts of Bengkulu, and Lampung is spoken on the southern tip of the island. Several distinct languages are found in the four island groups along the west coast of Sumatra-Simuelue, Nias, Mentawai and Enggano.

Attached like a single-hued lining to this linguistic coat of many colors is the Malay language-for centuries the lingua franca of the archipelago, and forerunner of the national language, Bahasa Indonesia. Spoken as a mother tongue by about 11 million Sumatrans, Malay is indigenous to the east of the island but has spread throughout the archipelago as the language of trade and islam, superseding local languages as a literary and courtly medium in the kingdoms of Aceh, West Sumatra And Riau.

When Sultan Iskandar Muda of Aceh coresponded with King James I of England in 1615, he wrote in Malay, not Acehnese. At the other end of the social scale, Malay has long served as the language of the market place in Sumatra's cosmopolitan port cities. the first Malay phrasebook for foreign merchants, printed in Amsterdam in 1603, contains sample conversations for purchasing provisions, weighing pepper and extracting funds from a recalcitran debtor, as well as colorful phrases for driving a hard bargain.

Traditional literature

Traditional Sumatran scripts can be divided into two types-those that trace their origin to a south India script, and those that derive from a Persian-Arabic script. The earliest example of the latter is an Old Malay stone inscription from 7th century Srivijaya (Palembang). The ravages of the tropical climate have left no traces of texts on more perishable materials from this period, but the Batak and Lampung scripts also belong to this indic group, and are still in occasional use. The arrival of Islam led to the development of a modified from of the Arabic script known as Jawi-used to write Malay, Acehnese and Minangkabau until the early decades of this century.

Manuscripts from Sumatra come in all shapes and sizes, and use bamboo, tree-bark, palm leaf and bone as well as paper. Sumatra's most important literature is written in the Malay language. Prose works include histories and romances; tales of the Prophet and Muslim heroes, like Alexander the Great (known in Malay as Iskandar Zulkarnain, the "two horned"); and theological, legal, moral treatises. The Hikayat Raja-raja Pasi, which relates the coming of Islam to the north coast of Sumatra in the 13th century, is the oldest known Malay history.

The two main genres of Malay poetry are the narrative syair and the pantun. The fourline stanzas of the syair with their a-a-a-a endrhyme are believed to be the creation of Hamzah Fansuri, a mystic poet who lived in Barus in the 16th century. The pantun is a quatrain with an a-b-a-b rhyme in which the first couplet contains a veiled allusion, the meaning of which is usually elaborated in the final couplet. Written literatures also exist in Acehnese-in prose (haba) and poetry (hikayat)-and in Minangkabau, where the most important epic is the Kaba Cindur Mata.

In Sumatra, as in many parts of Indonesia, the dividing line between written and oral literature is blurred, for in semi-literate societies texts were usually composed and written down to an audience. Professional Sijobang singers in West Sumatra are still in demand at weddings, circumcision ceremonies and other feasts, where recitations of the adventures of Prince Anggun Nan Tungga last all night. (Sijobang performances are now also marketed on cassettes.) Sumatran peoples have a rich stock of folklore, including proverbs, mantras and animal fables-the mousedeer being the hero.

One of the most intriguing written traditions of Sumatra are pustaha, the bark books of the Batak. These concertina-shaped books are concerned solely with magic, divination and medicine, and were used as aide-memoires by apprentice sorcerers during their period of study with a Batak priest or dato. Amongst their contents might be oracles for reading the entrails of a chiken, or for divining the portents of the time of day of a child's birth ("a boy-child born at a certain moment will die in war or of smallpox; if it is a girl, she may die of suicide," etc.) as well as recipes for love philtres and poisons.

Modern literature

By the beginning of the 20th century, increasing Western influence manifested itself in a growing popular literature in Malay. Medan became a center for the publishing of "penny dreadfuls;" the melodramatic romances, adventure detective booklets owing much to the stories of Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle.

In the 1920s, when Balai Pustaka-the Dutch colonial government publishing house in Batavia-began to issue novels in Malay, the earliest works were by Minangkabau writers. Many novels centered on the cultural clash between the modernizing influence of Western education and the strictures and arranged marriages of traditional Minang society. Both in the period before Independence and afterwards, Sumatran writers have been in the forefront of modern Indonesian literature.
Armijn Pane's Belenggu (Shackles), published in 1940, has been hailed as the first Indonesian psychological novel, and poets like Chairil Anwar and Rivai Apin were influenced by T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden. Yet the homeland of Sumatran writes often shines through their work-from the forests of Mochtar Lubis' childhood, which from the backdrop to his novel Harimau (tiger), to the images of Lake Toba which permeate the existentialist poetry of Sitor Situmorang.

ARCHITECTURE

2015-02-26T18:35:00.000+07:00

The House with Horns and a Tail

The island of Sumatra contains some of Indonesia’s richest and most fascinating traditions of vernacular, or domestic, architecture. Even the most casual observer can hardly fail to be impressed by the imposing scale of these buildings, by their ingenious nail-free construction and by the vigor and delicacy of their carved and painted decorations.

The diversity of traditional house styles found on the island is truly astounding. Around Lake Toba alone, for example, are to be found several distinctive styles belonging to the Toba, Karo and Simalungun Batak peoples-while the houseof the Mandailing Batak to the south are different again. The traditional homes of the Minangkabau of West Sumatra are equally renowned for their beautiful floral carving and elegant, soaring eaves.

The Gayo people to the north of Lake Toba formerly dwelt in large multifamily houses holding up to 60 people. Each family had an apartment in the center of the house, with a men’s gallery at the front and a women’s gallery at the back. Acehnese houses, found along the island’s north coast, are airy and well-ventilated, with large shuttered windows and elaborate woodcarving.

But perhaps the most breathtaking Sumatran architecture is found on the island of Nias. Houses stand in rows beside long, stone-paved streets, dominated-as in the famous village of Bawomataluo-by a massive chief’s house resting in vertical and diagonal pillars fashioned from the trunks of giant ironwood trees.

Ancient origins

The observer of this astonishing architectural heritage will ask why so many of these houses-particularly the Batak and the Minangkabau-appear stylistically related, not only to each other but to the houses of other Indonesian peoples, such as the Toraja of Sulawesi. The most notable shared features are the pile foundations, the extended or saddleshaped roof ridge, and decorative, horn shaped gable finials. What ancient historical link explains the origin and spread of this remarkable style?
The earliest surviving images of pile-built structures with saddle roofs are engraved on bronze drums found in the area of Dongson in what is now northern Vietnam. The culture associated with these drums dates from ca. 500 BC-AD 100, and Dongson drums were traded throughout the archipelago as prestige items. Early theories about "waves" of Dongson migration into Indonesia have now been discounted, however, and it is unlikely that an architectural style could have been spread simply by pictures on drums. Much more probable is that the style was already old when the drums were cast, and that the images are simply its earliest surviving representations.
House styles ancestral to those you see today in Sumatra were probably developed in ancient times by Austronesians-speaking migrants. The Austronesians-ancestors of most modern-day Indonesians-orginated from a homeland somewhere in southern China and began to migrate into these islands from Taiwan and the Philippines 6,000 years ago. Subsequently, they colonized the islands of the Pacific, and reached as far east Madagascar by AD 400, bringing with them their distinctive building style. Pile buildings with saddle roofs are found as far east as Micronesia, an area settled by Austronesians some time after 2000 BC, and saddle roofs, often of impressive porportions, are a feature of men's houses in New Guinea.
The survival of this ancient style of architecture seems to rest on its aesthetic or symbolic appeal, rather than a commitment to a particular mode of construction. Minangkabau and Batak houses, for example, both have pointed eaves and extended by quite different building techniques.
In the Toba Batak house, the living space is essentially created by the roof, which rests on top of very low walls. The rafters are angled outward to produce the projecting gable, and strengthened by means of diagonal ties. In the Minangkabau house, on the other hand, the living space is formed by the walls, which are much taller in proportion to the roof than in Batak houses. The roof sits on topof this space, supported by a truss and crossbeam structure and built up into tall points by means of many small rafters and battens.

Symbolic Acehnese houses

Acehnese homeoners are women. If they can afford it, the parents provide each of their daughters with a house when she marries-otherwise they simply present their own house to a married daughter and move into the kitchen. During the day the house is the woman's domain. Men spend most of their time in public places, or migrate (merantau) to earn a living through trade, returning home only at long intervals.

Though subdued in their outward form, Acehnese houses are rich in cosmological and symbolic significance. The front verandah is the most public and formal part. Here men sit. The rear is private, containing the kitchen and the women's entrance. Male and female are simbolically united in the central room, which has the highest floor level, and countains the two main house posts-called "prince" and "princess"-against which the bride and the groom are seated on their wedding day. This is also where the newly-married couple sleeps. At the top of the house, beneath the gable, is a platform for storing family valuables and heirlooms. Outside at floor level runs a skriting-board, often elaborately decorated. The wall separating the verandah from the inner part of the house may also be decorated with intricate woodcarving.

Monumental Nias villages

South Nias has produced some of Indonesia's most astonishing architecture. In the 19th century, the area was ruled by a warlike aristocracy which enriched itself by raiding outlying districts for slaves. The nobles staged elaborate feasts by which they raised their status on the social ladder. The greatest of such feasts entitled a chief to construct a great house (omo sebua).

A stunning example dating from 1863 survives today in Bawomataluo village in South Nias. It is 22.7 m tall, and is ornamented inside with carved ebony wall panels depicting ancestral thrones, male and female ornaments, animals and birds, and even a Dutch steamship mounted with cannons.

South Nias villages are remarkably large, with up to 6,000 inhabitants, as slave-raiding and headhunting made smaller communities too vulnerable. Most villages have a single main street paved with stone, sometimes crossed by a shorter street at the top forming a giant "T" Some settlements are approached by huge flights of stone stairs. The bowed fronts of the houses-reminiscent of Dutch galleons-from a continuous line on both sides. Stone monuments, commemorating past feasts and important funerals, stand before the houses of the nobility.
A distinctive feature of the houses are the massive ironwood foundation pillars both vertical and diagonal. The diagonal pillars give added stability to the tall house structure in this earthquake-prone region. The flexibility of the house in tremors is enhanced by the fact that the piles rest on top of their foundation stones, a feature also found else where in the archipelago.
The founding ancestors of South Nias communities originally came from central Nias. Here cam be seen houses of an older and plainer style, without the projecting curved front, as well as different kinds of worked stone monuments. You will need the help of a guide to visit this remote area, and you should check on the weather-rivers become impassable in the rainy season.
Houses of North Nias are unusual in having an oval plan. They are less monumental in scale, but share certain features such as the use of diagonal piles, and the cutting of flaps in the roof, which can be propped open to serve as windows. Graves, now Christian in style, continue to be located next to the houses in the traditional manner.

Batak houses

The countryside around lake Toba is dotted with traditional Toba, Karo and Simalungun Batak villages as well as elaborate concerete tombs in the form of houses. The tombs are built with great ceremony and expense to house the remains of the deceased ancestors of particular family. This traditional concern for the dead remains of great importance to the Toba, and has been integrated with Christian parctice. Older sarcophagi of carved stone may also be seen on Samosir Island in Lake Toba.

Toba house stand on foundations of piles braced with cross-beams, forming a space beneath the house where buffaloes were once stalled. The walls are covered with graceful flowing and spiral decorations-unbroken lines are thought to provide protection to the occupants. Friezes with figures may also be seen, and three-dimensional carved protective 'monsters" are found at the cornes and top of the facade.

On the northeastern shore of the lake stands Pematang Purba, site of the place of the former rajas of the Simalungun Batak, now a museum. The impressively long house has a realisticilly modelled buffalo-head on the front gable-end, and a tail made of the tough black fiber of the sugar-palm at the rear. Inside is the raja's private apartment, each formerly the domain of one of his wives. Nearby is a council house with an elaborately carved central pillar, against which the ruler used to sit while giving judgement.
The Karo people living on the north of the lake developed an interesting variation on the extended ridge line, with multiple decorative gables topped by realistically-modelled buffalo heads which protected the occupants from harm. Some fine examples survive in villages around Berastagi, such as lingga. Traditionally, houses were occupied by four or eight related families, each with own hearth. A distinctive structure is the geriten or "head-house," to store the skulss of revered ancestors.

The Minangkabau house

The Minangkabau people are well-known for their matrilineal kinship system. This means that houses and rice fields are passed down from mother to daughter. A typical Minangkabau compound will consist of an older, original house surrounded by others that have been added by married sisters and daughters of the parent family.

The elegant, sweeping eaves of traditional houses are a common sight amidst the lush green Minangkabau landscape. These pointed eaves, locals say, remind them of the legendary. "vitorious buffalo" (menang kerbau) from which their name is said to derive. On larger buildings the roof is tiered to form a series of four or six points, often with an additional peak over a porch set at right angles to the main structure. In the past, huge rumah gadang or "great houses" accommodated up to 100 people related to a single female ancestor. Inside was an open gallery with separate sleeping apartments off it. A surviving example-64 m long!-can be visited at the hilltop village of Sulitair, near Lake Singkarak.

Minangkabau rice barns and council houses (balairung or balai adat) are also built with pointed eaves, The ancestral village of Pariangan in the Tanahdatar valley, contains some very old examples, as does nearby Pagarruyung-site of the former palace of the Minangkabau rajas. The original palace unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1976, but it has now been rebuilt (on a somewhat enlarged scale) as a museum.

PEOPLES OF SUMATRA

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A Melange of Ethnic Groups and Religions

More than 40 million people live in Sumatra-one-fifth of Indonesia’s huge population-making this the second most populous island in the archipelago, after Java. Four large ethnic groups-the Malay, the Minangkabau, the Acehnese and the Batak-form the vast majority of the island’s indigenous population, but over a dozen smaller ethnic groups are also represented, each speaking a difference language and processing a distinct history and culture.

In recent centuries, there has been a significant influx of outsiders to Sumatra as well. The Japanese, who came by the thousand as plantation workers at the beginning of this century, continue to arrive through Indonesia’s ambitious transmigration program. The Chinese, who first came as debt-bonded plantation coolie and tin miners in the 29^th century, now dominate the wholesale and merchandising sectors of all major Sumatran towns. And a smattering of peoples from others island of Indonesia and abroad now live work in the booming oil industry.

Islamic strongholds

Sumatra is among the most thoroughly Islamic regions the archipelago. History states that Islam first came to Southeast Asia at a town on Sumatra’s northeast coast, variously referred to as Samudra or Pasai. From here, the religion spread around both coasts of Sumatra and across to neighboring islands and the Malay Peninsula-largely through an Islamic trading network established by Malay merchants oat Malacca in the 15^th century. For many centuries the term “Malay” was indeed synonymous throughout Indonesia with “Muslim”.

The Malays have a long and illustrious history dating back to the days when the Buddhist Malay kingdom of Sriwijaya dominated the straits from a base at what is now Palembang, in South Sumatra, from the late 7^th until the 11^th centuries. For many centuries thereafter, the figure of the Malay raja embodied the highest cultural ideals of gentility, grace, eloquence, learning and Muslim piety throughout the Malay World. While fishermen and farmers could never match the raja’s refinement, they modeled their best behavior on the ideals he represented.

Today the Malays are Sumatra’s largest ethnic group, numbering more than 13 million people and inhabiting most of the southern and eatern coasts and lowlands of the main island, as well as the smaller island offshore. Another 8 million people in neighboring Malaysia also consider themselves to be Malay-though many are descendasts of Minangkabau, Cham and Javanese migrants. Even in Sumatra itself, many people of Batak descent call themselves “Malay,” so that in fact a tremendous linguistic and cultural variety is encompassed by this ethnonym.

The second largest ethnic group in Sumatra, and the one most closely related to the Malays in terms of language and culture, are the Minangkabau of the western central hinglands. They now number about 5 million, and are known as staunch Muslims, while at the same time retaining vestiges of an unusual matrilineal kinship system that predates their conversion to Islam. This means that the traditional Minangkabau longhouses, fertile rositions ricelands, and positons of leadership within the clan are all transmitted to the next generation through women. While men hold public positions of leadership, they inherit these through their mothers-and when they retire they are replaced by their sister’s sons.

A third major Islamic group inhabits Sumatra’s strategic northern coast. The Acehnese, who number about 3 million today, also speak a language related to Malay, and are best known for their fierce resistence against the Dutch during a 30-year jihad (holy war) from 1873 to 1903.long before this, in the 17^th century, Aceh was in fact the most powerful Islamic kingdom in the region. Today, Islam still rules the hearts of the Acehnese, and on Fridays the faithful fill Banda Aceh’s stately Grand Mosque while the town’s shops are shuttered tight. Just as among the Minangkabau, and despite Islam’s favoring of males, Acehnese village life revolves around women. Upon marriage, a man usually moves to his wife’s village, where her family provides them a house.

In the highlands of central Aceh live the Gay, all of woman are Muslim. Their language, like that of the Acehnese, is remarkable for its many borrowings from Mon Khmer, a language group of mainland Southeast Asia. Unlike the Acehnese, however, the Gayo are patrilineal, and in the majority of cases, a bride moves to her hudband’s village. Gayo who live around the edges of Lake Tawar harvest carp and a minnow-like fist called depik from the lake; coffee and tea are other major products from this region.

The Gayo fight with words. Poetic duels, didong, were once performed at weddings between pairs of speakers representing the families of bride and groom. Later, didong helped defuse hostilities between villages, and more recently men have turned this verbal art into a completion between clubs or teams composed of lead singers supported by an encircling chorus.

Christian convert

While the coastal and urban areas of the island are predominantly Muslim, large areas of Sumatra are now mainly Christian, and in fact more Christian live on this island than any other in Indonesia. German Lutheran missionaries working with the Toba Batak enjoyed early and widespread success. Today, the Toba Batak church is the largest Christian body in Indonesia.

In contrast, the Dutch Reformed missionaries who worked in the nearby Karo Batak region met decades of resistance. As a result, the Christian Karo have become a majority only since the 1950s, when an indigenous church emerged. The Simalungun Batak, once part of the Toba church, have separated into their own ethnic denomination.

The hymns and the liturgy in all these ethnic Batak churches are in the vernacular languages, but just as throughout Indonesia, these ethnic churches face competition from Catholic and Pentecostal denominations which operate through the medium of Indonesian, and whose congregations are ethnically mixed.

About 10 percent of the Angkola Batak who live to the south of the Toba are also Christian, but the majority, like the Mandailing Batak to the south in South Tapanuli, are Muslim. Other pockets of Christianity include the islands of Nias and Mentawai off the west coast, and some of the original inhabitans of the island of Enggano.

A patchwork of peoples

While most of Sumatra’s people live as farmers, small groups such as the Kubu of Jambi Province and the Sakai of the Riau Islands live mainly by fishing and hunting along swampy southern rivers. Another group, the Orang Laut literally “sea people” but often called sea gypsies or oven sea pirates__live in boats among the hundreds of small island in the Riau Archipelago.

Lake Kerinci, surrounded by wet rice terraces in the highlands of western Jambi Province, is home to the Kerinci people. Lacustrine fishing and tea cultivation supplement a rice economy. Like the Minagkabau, the Kerinci are matrilineal and construct longhouses for matrilineally extended families, but their longhouses are unique in the archipelago for having no communal passage or gallery linking the family apartments. While a man attaches himself to his wife’s family, he retains membership in his natal family and lives partly at his own longhouse, where he helps to manage his lineage property and the affairs of his sister’s children.

Bengkulu Province is home to the Rejang, who call themselves “We the people of Jang.” Their mythical ancestor, Jang, was reputed to be of the royal family of Java’s Majapahit kingdom. He is said to have settled in Sumatra in the 14^th century, and had four sons who became the ancestors of the four patrillineal clans that today constitute Rejang society, a people numbering around 200,000. The Rejang region spans a diserve terrain, from the coast up gentle foothills to highland peaks convered in tropical rainforest.

Rejang was one of the last regions in Sumatra to accept Islam, so the pre-Islamic focus on ancestor spirits remains strong. Each of Rejang’s claims dominion over its own territory. The oldest village in each of these territories contains a sacred shrine associated with its founding ancestor. Villages and lineages also have their ancestral shrines, so pilgrimage to the principal clan shrine occur only for extremely important purposes.

To the west of Palembang, near the town of Lahat, the Pasemah Highlands contain meghalitic remains dated to AD 100. This statuary, the most extensive of its kind in the archipelago,consist of many animal and human figures as well as dplmens, menhirs and stone cist cist graves. Although the Pasemah people converted to Islam in the early 20^th century, they continue to visit these these shrines, and others on Mt. Dempo, to redeem ancestral vows. Although similar to the Rejang in their social organization and even their founding mythology, the Pasemah were bitter enemies of the Rejang, and the lowland Malays as well, in the precolonial.

The Lampung region at Sumatra’s southern tip contains several ethnic groups with different cultural histories, including many Javanese who have migrated here in large numbers, both spontaneously and through the government’s transmigration programs. One of the most numerous indigenous peoples of this region, the Abung, say the originated in the mountains to the west where, in the 15^th century, they maintained a megalithic culture similar to that of Nias. Headhunting and human sacrifice brought them into conflict with neighboring peoples, especially lowland Malays, who finally drove them into their current setting around 1450.

Abung society is composed of numerous patrilineal clans maintains a separate house, occupied most of the time by only a few elderly people. Villages contains as many as 3,000 people and 120 clan house, but working adults and children spend most of their time in small seasonal settlements outside the village, maintaining their swidden gardens. They return to the village for initiation ceremonies or other special events. Initiations usher men into a series of ranks that indicate their wealth, formerly, headhunting was a precondition for the highest rank, and initiates to this rank were enthroned on a dolmen of stone.

Although the Dutch attempted to stop their headhunting and human sacrifices, the Abung continued these practices surreptitiously into the 19^th century. Like all their neighbors in the region, the Abung are now Muslims. In their modern version of initiation rites, called papadon, dancing substitutes for headhunting, and a buffalo is sacrificed instead of a human.

Into the modern world

In the last 20 years, Sumatra’s natural resources__particularly oil and natural gas__have helped fuel Indonesia’s rapid economic growth. This growth has resulted in a new emphasis on education and on highway construction, which together with newspapers, films and television are increasingly drawing the peoples of Sumatra into a national community and into the word economy. Signs of this emphasis__from the newly-completed Trans-Sumatra Highway running the length of the island, to the puffing gas and oil refineries of Lhokseumawe and Palembang-are everywhere to be seen.

MODERN HISTORY

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Nationalisme, Revolution & Independence

The Dutch conquest in the development of a common education and administrative system throughout Sumatra. Together with Islam, this laid the foundation for the emergence of common national sentiment. This first made itself felt through the mass Muslim organization Sarekat Islam, which tapped the suppressed resentment at alien domination. Jambi witnessed a small rebellion in 1916. Aceh was disturbed by riots in 1918-1919, and the Minangkabau developed a radical Islamic movement in the same years. In 1926, the Indonesian Communist Party launched a quixotic revolution; paradoxically, it was some of the relatively commercialized Muslim of Minangkabau who fought hardest for it.

In 1917 the first generation of Sumatrans to have enjoyed Dutch education formed the Young Sumatrans League. Support came from Minangkabau clerks, teachers and traders all over Sumatra. Toba Batak students established their own organization in the 1920s, and by 1926 these groups had been incorporated into the National League of Indonesian Students. Sumatran figures such as Mohammad Hatta (later Vice-President) and Soetan Sjahrir (Indonesian’s first prime minister) contributed greatly to developing Indonesian’s national consciousness.

Sumatra’s role in developing a national literature was even more important. Malay had always been the principal written language for most Sumatra’s, and its adoption as Bahasa Indonesia, the language of nationalism, involved no linguistic conflict as it did for Javanese and Sundanese. Hence the first writers to adopt Malay to modern literary uses were virtually all Sumatran. In the early twenties, the political activists Mohammad Yamin, Sanisui Pane, and Mohammad Hatta were the first to write Malay poetry in a modern spirit, while the Langkat prince Amir Hamzah and the revolutionary Chairil Anwar wrote the finest Indonesian poetry of the 1930s and 1940s. The development of the modern Indonesian novel in the 1920s and 1930s was almost entirely a Minangkabau affair.

It is not surprising, considering this strong contribution to Indonesian nationalism, that Sumatra rejected all attempts to separate it from Java in the turbulent 1940s.TheJapanese invasion in March 1942 caused greater upheaval than in Java. In Aceh the Japanese were assisted by an armed rebellion against the retreating Dutch, whose leaders wanted to end the dominance of the uleebalang (district chiefs). The Japanese initially suppressed all these movements, and forbade any nationalist activity. However, the Japanese gave the nationalists access to the state-population for war purposes. When the war ended, two rival elites-nationalist and traditionalist-eyed each other with mistrust.

The Japanese belatedly fostered the idea of an independent Sumatra in 1945, establishing a powerless consultative council and a secretariat in Bukittinggi. In 1947, the returning Dutch set up federal states in the areasthey controlled in East Sumatra. The following year they encouraged a Sumatran umbrella organization for these and other states, but the idea gained little interest. Sumatrans had already decided in the 1920s that they could only bring together their diverse ethnic groups at a national level.

Independence was declared in Jakarta three days after Hiroshima, but the revolution in Sumatra did not begin until October, when allied troops arrived to accept the Japanese surrender. Young activists, some with Japanese military training, fought against the British who occupied parts of Medan, Padang, and Palembang, and finally against the Dutch forces which replaced the British at the end of 1946.

Most of the violence was internal. In Aceh the uleebalang were overthrown by a Muslim led coalition in December 1945, at the conclusion of a bloody civil war. Three months later, the east coast Malay sultans and Simalungun rajas were overthrown in what was dubbed a “social revolution.” These spontaneous movements led to a breakdown in central authority especially in East Sumatra, where semi military groups ot young men, became a law unto themselves funding themselves by selling the produce of the plantations they controlled to Singapore merchants. When the Dutch occupied the plantation area around Medan, and the oil installations of Palembang in mid-1947, these armed groups fought among themselves in Tapanuli.

The vast island was far from integrated politically or economically when the revolution ended with transfer of full sovereighty to Indonesian in 1950. Each former residency had its own battle-hardened military force reluctant to return to civilian life, and each felt it had earned the right to play a part in the Republic on its own terms. Moreover, the rewards of the smuggling trade to Singapore, which had seemed patriotic during both the Japanese occupation and the revolution, were not easy to give up to an impoverished central government in Jakarta which had little to offer in return.

The first post-independence crisis occurred in Aceh, when Muslims objected to being incorporated with Christian Bataks into the province of North Sumatra, and to the failure of the government to declare Indonesian a Muslim state. In 1953, Aceh revolted against Jakarta, and declare Aceh part of Dar al-Islam (the Islamic world). Troops sent from Java quickly re-occupied the Acehnese towns, but the hinterland remained largely in rebel hands until peace was eventually negotiated in 1959. Aceh was then granted autonomous status. Meanwhile Toba Batak and Minangkabau military leaders joined national politicians dissatisfied with the centralism, corruption and pro-communist policies of the central government, to form the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia (PRRI) in February 1958. The central government reacted by bombing Padang and Bukittinggi and sending a large force from Java. The fighting was over within six months, but it left West Sumatra feeling like an occupied province in which locals were no longer trusted with high military or civilian office. If Sumatrans had been over-represented in national leadership before these events, they were under-represented thereafter.

Under President Suharto’s New Order government which llook power in 1966, regional discontents have eased. Firstly, the government’s anti communist and free-market policies are those which the PRRI had advocated. Secondly, the central government has provided roads, electricity, schools, hospitals and other infrastructural facilities, which have helped transform the economy. Large multi-ethnic provinces were broken up until all except North Sumatra (pre-war East Sumatra plus Tapanuli) were back to the boundaries of the old Dutch residencies, and the army’s presence became less obvious. If one still hears grumbles about the pusat (center), these are now no different from those heard in every Indonesian province.

IMPACT OF THE WEST

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Gunboats, Garrisons and Guerrillas

By the 18^th century, the decline in world demand for pepper had deprived the rulers of sports such as Aceh and Palembang of the means to dominate their hinterlands. The biggest economic powers in Sumatra were now European-the Dutch established their headquarters at Padang in 1663, and the British at Bengkulu in 1685. Each became a center of rival networks of trade along the west coast, but they were militarily vulnerable. Local Sumatrans drove the British out in 1719 and held Bengkulu for many years. These lonely European outpost also attracted the attention of the French. Admiral Comte d’Estaing occupied Bengkulu for several months in 1760; Admiral Linois pillaged the fort and town in 1803. Dutch Padang was equally vulnerable, falling to the British in 1781-1784 and 1795-1816, and to a French privateer for two months in 1793. During this period Dutch influence was virtually eliminated from Sumatra.

British officials of the Bengkulu administration were the first to give detailed accounts of the Batak interior of northern Sumatra (Holloway and Miller, 1772), and the island of Nias (Jack and Prince, 1819). Raffles himself visited the Minangkabau capital of Pagarruyung in 1818. A great opponent of slavery, Raffles was nevertheless enthusiastic about Nias-“the finest people, without exception, that I have yet met with in the East.” He was outraged that the island was a major supplier of slaves to Aceh, the Dutch and the French colonies, and even to the British settlements in Bengkulu and Pinang. Raffles proclaimed British sovereignty over the island in 1820, but this was disallowed by London.

Pepper, coffee and tin

A new phase of commercial expansion affected Sumatra from about 1780. British and Tamil traders came from India, British and Chinese traders arrived from the new British port at Penang (founded 1786), and Americans from Salem, Providence and New London. The Americans found willing pepper suppliers in local chiefs on the west coast between Sibolga and Meulabuh, a frontier region beyond the reach of Acehnese authority in the north and the English Company in the south. More than 5,000 tons year were exported from this region alone in the early 19^th century, primarily by Americans. In the Minangkabau area, cassia (a substitute for cinnamon), gambir (used for tanning leather), and from 1790, coffee, became attractive new crops. At the beginning of the 18^th century, Chinese miners began to exploit the tin deposits in Bangka.

With the decline of authority, first of the Sumatran rulers, then of the Dutch Company, Sumatra became once again an economic frontier, as colonists from settled areas flocked to new regions to grow export crops. The absence of major powers suited foreign traders, but when commercial disputes for vengeance to their respective navies. The Americans began this gunboat diplomacy by destroying coastal Acehnese villages in 1826 and 1838, and then French fleets did the same in 1839 and 1840.

The Dutch had to start almost from scratch when their prewar possessions were returned by Britain after the Napoleonic Wars 1816. Economically on their knees and militarily tied down by the Java War (1825-1830), the Dutch were obliged to accept that others would dominate Sumatra’s trade. Meanwhile, they moved slowly, using their limited military force to annex one river port a time, trying to ensure that no other Europeans staked a political claim to any part of the island. Sumatrans did not accept the extension of Dutch authority without a fight.

Anglo-Dutch squabbling over their respective rights following the founding of Singapore was temporarily resolved in 1824, when the British whit drew all claims to Sumatra, in return for the Dutch doing the same on the Malay Peninsula. In 1825, the Dutch seized control of Palembang and the tin-bearing islands of Bangka and Belitung. The Dutch also inherited a British conflict with a militant Islamic movement known as “Paderi” in the Minangkabau heiglands, a conflict which dragged on until 1837, when the Paderi’sleader, Imam Bonjol was finally killed. (See “History” in WEST SUMATRA.)

Dutch conquests

The Paderi movement disturbed the Batak as well as thr Minangkabau areas. A conquest of the southern Batak areas in the 1820s was carried out from the Paderi commercial stronghold of Bonjol in northern Minagkabau. The key leader of the holy war to the north was Tuanku Rao, a Batak who had converted to milliant Islam. He led a Paderi force forcing most of the Mandailing and Angkola areas of Shout Tapanuli to accept Islam. Tuanku Rao appears to have taken his troops even farther north, and tried unsuccessfully to convert the Bataks around Lake Toba.

There is a story that Tuanku Rao invited the tenth Singamangaraja (Toba Batak priest-king who lived west of the lake) to meet him in the market place at Butar, and there killed him. Other Batak stories say that Tuanku Rao enjoyed extraordinary military success because he was the abandoned nephew of the magical Singamangaraja. European attempts to Christianize the Batak were less successful. It was not until the mid 19^th century that any real progress was made. (See “The Batak” in NORTH SUMATRA).

Over two decades, from 1820 to 1841, the Dutch gradually conquered the Minangkabau area and built a series of strategic forts in the highlands. This made the most densely-populated region of Sumatra also the principal dutch stronghold. The expenses of the garrisons were met by the forced delivery of coffe at fixed prices. There was however enough land to enable the enterprising Minangkabau to take advantage of improving communications and expanding markets to grow their own coffee, tobacco, sugar, cassia and gambir, giving rise to a prosperous, commercially-oriented middle class.

The same group responded enthusiasti-cally to the token efforts the Dutch made to provide modern secular school for Indonesians. In the 1840s they began funding their own ditrict schools. By 1872 there were almost 1,200 Minangkabau children in school-a proportion several times higher than in Java, where education was limited to the aris-tocracy. This first generation to be literate both in Jawi (Malay-Arabic) and Latin script provided Sumatra and the rest of Indonesia with a large number of its clerks, school teachers, journalist and political activist in the 20^th century.

Dutch progress on the east coast of Sumatra was hampered by constant protests by British merchants in Singapore and Penang. A Dutch expedition was sent to Siak in 1858 to throw out an English adventurer, and another to the small northern states of Langkat, Deli, Serdang and Asahan in 1865, to estab-lish Dutch rights against claims of Acehnese suzerainty and British commerce.

These small states proved a rich prize, thanks to the volcanic soil which proved ideal for growing tobacco. The pioneer Dutch planter, Jacobus Nienhuys,had to Deli (the region around medan ahead of dutch troops, in 1863, and within decade had estlablished its reputation for growing the world’s finest cigar wrapper-leaf. British objections were overcome by opportunities to provision this growing plantation economy.

In the 1870s and 1880s, 20,000 Chinese laborers brought in each year to cut down the forests and tend the tobacco plantations. Later, the planters turned to cheaper ang more tractable Javanese labor. In the 1920s, just before the system of indentured labor was ended, partly due to American pressure, a total 260.000 javanese worked on the plantations. Prosperous new town grew at a Medan, Binjai, Pematang Siantar and Tanjung Balai. The insignificant coastal rajas who controlled the river mouths became enormously wealthy on the royalties from plantation land and (in Langkat after 1980) from oil.

The Aceh wars

The biggest challenge to Dutch colonialism in Sumatra was Aceh, which never signed unequal treaties with the Dutch. It had wealth, arms and foreign contacts from its pepper and betelnut trade. Aceh also had a treaty of mutual defence with the British, arranged by Raffles in 1819, and a guarantee of Aceh’s in-dependence was incorporated in the 1824 Anglo-Dutch Treaty, which divided the Malay-speaking world into two halves. It was only in 1871 that British, arranged by Reffles in 1819, and a guarantee of Aceh’s in dependence was incorporated in the 1824 Anglo-Dutch treaty, which divided the Malay-speaking world into two helvest. It was on ly in 1871 that British objections were over come, clearning the way for a more vigorous Dutch apporoach.

The first Dutch attack was ill-prepared brought on hastily by energetic Acehnese attempts to form defensive alliances with Turkey, France and the United States. The US Consul in Singapore agreed to forward a draft Aceh-US Treaty to Washington, though in received no support from the State Department. A Dutch force of 3.000 men attacked the Acehnese capital in April 1873, but with drew three weeks later having lost its commander and 80 men. Humiliated , the Ducht recruited the largest force they had ever as sambled in the Indies, and landed 10.000 men the following December. The Acehnese citadel was taken six weeks later amidst a cholera epidemic that wiped out at least a thousand on each side. This was, however, only the first chapter in a war which was to last until 1903, tying up Dutch resources, men and money, and sapping morale for 20 years, leaving a legacy of bitterness in Aceh.

By the mid-1880s, the leardersip of Acehnese resistance passed to the ulama (religious scholars) who died of wounds or disease on the Dutch side. For the Acehnese, who lost at least 5 times as many, their enduring monument is the memory of countless dead heroes, some now officially recognized as Indonesia’s national heroes. Among these are the west coast uleebalang (district chief) Teuku Umar, who defected in 1896 after acting as the principal Dutch ally. Others include Teuku Umar’s gallant wife Cut Nyak Dien and ulama leader Cik di Tiro, who defiantly called on the Dutch governor to embrace Islam if he wished to avoid the inevitable destruction awaiting the infidels. Right to the end of Dutch rule, Aceh remained an occupied province. At the approach of the Japannese in 1942, the province rebelled and drove out the remaining Dutch forces.

On the Dutch side, the eventual success was credited to two men in particular. Colonel J.B. van Heutsz, military governor of Aceh from 1898 to 1904, adopted an uncompromising policy of relentless pursuit, and was rewarded by being named governor –general (1904-9). His invaluable key adviser was the Islamic specialist Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, author of a Dutch strategy of tolerating or even encouraging Islam in what was held to be the religious domain, but resolutely crushing any sign of Islamic political assertion. After 1904 the policies of these two men were extended throughout the Indies. Dutch troops penetrated every corner of Sumatra, and by 1910 the whole island was for the first time under a single authority; but one that did not enjoy much love from its people.

ISLAMIC KINGDOMS

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The Rise of Coastal Sultanates

The year AD 1300 saw the beginning of a shift in political cultural importance from the south to the north of Sumatra, linked with the arrival of a new religion-Islam. Until the 14th century, the great kingdoms of Sumatra had been located at Palembang or Jambi. Now a number of small Islamic kingdoms began to appear at the mouths of the short, fast-flowing rivers which disgorge into the Malay language, the Islamic religion and a literary tradition using the Arabic script were first elaborated. Yet in the interior of Sumatra, protected by the marshes to the east and the mountains to the west, people continued to speak a dozen mutually unintelligible languages and retained their own religious and cultural traditions.

Along the northern coasts of Sumatra are numerous small rivers where ships from India and the Middle East for food and water. In the 13^th and 14^th centuries, trading ports began to appear on the banks of these rivers, and it was in these ports that Islam first gained a foothold in the Indonesian archipelago.

Up to this time, the island of Sumatra had been called “Jawa” or Java Minor by travelers and traders, but now the whole island took on the name of the flourishing ports of the northeast, known as Samudra (Sanskrit for “ocean”)__or Sumatra.

In 1292, the Venetian traveler Marco Polo sojourned of Samudra for five months waiting for the monsoon to change before continuing his journey back to Europe. His expedition disembarked, and “for fear of these nasty and brutish folk who kill men for food we dug a big trench round our encampment, and with in these fortifications we lived for five months.” In Marco Polo’s time, Samudra was a small kingdom practicing the same shamanistic animism as the people of the interior. He reported, however, that the neighboring kingdom of Peurlak (near modern Langsa) had already become Muslim, “owing to contact with Saracen merchants, who continually resort here in their ships.

An Islamic trade network

Ibn Battuta, an Arab traveler, also visited Samudra in 1323. By then it had become a sophisticated Muslim sultanate, trading with places as distant as south India and China. Many south Indian Muslim traders made their home in the city. Inder is preferred Muslim name of Pasai, its rulers issued gold coins, and a system of writing Malay using the Arabic script was developed. Pasai was the earliest center of Islamic scholarship in lacca (on the Malay peninsula), Patani, Aceh and Johor, regarded it as a model of Islamic learning and behavior.

From Samudra-Pasai, Islam traveled with Muslim traders down the east and west coasts of Sumatra, as well as to the Malay Peninsula and to the trading ports of the north coast of Java. By the 16^th century, all the important Sumaatran ports were under Islami authority, and Islam had begun to make inroads in the Minangkabau region, the heavily-populated, gold-producing area in the central mountains where the halft-Javanese, half-Sumatran Adityavarman (1356-1375), claiming descent from both Majapahit and Sriwijaya, had established his own Tantric Buddhist kingdom.

Sumatra rulers eagerly accepted Islamic legends woven around Alexander the Great, who for Muslims was the world-conquering hero Iskandar Zulkarnain (or “Alexander the two-horned”). Soon after adopting Islam, the kings of Pagarruyung in the theory that Alexander had sent his three sons to rule the world-one in China,one in “Rum” (the Roman/Byzantine empire, and its heir in Ottoman Turkey), and the third in Minangkabau.

The Chinese imperial eunuch Cheng Ho (himself a Muslim!) visited Samudra with a huge fleet of ships in the early 15^th century, and it may have been the information suppliedny him regarding China’s needs which prompted Sumatrans to introduce the cultivation of pepper from India. By the late 15^th century, Sumatra was the main exporter of pepper to China. Pepper remained Sumatra’s principal export until the 19^th century, and for much of this periodit was the world’s major supplier.

The politics of pepper

Samudra-Pasai was just one of the kingdoms on the northern coast of Sumatra. When the Portuguese arrived in Southeast Asia in 1509, there were independent states at Barus, Daya and Lamri (near modern Banda Aceh), Pidie (near Sigli), Pasai and Aru (near Medan). After conquering Malacca and driving out its Muslim merchants, the Portuguese attempted to gain influence in Pasai and Pidie by intervening in their frequent succession disputes. The effect of this was to drive wealthy Muslim merchants to Aceh, where a new and virulently anti-Portuguese sultanate formed at the beginning of the 16^th century, on the ruins of the ancient kingdom of Lamri. With the wealth generated through trade, Sultan Ali Munghayat Syah-the first ruler of this new kingdom-was able to conquer Daya, Pidie and Pasai, drive the Portuguese out of northern Sumatra, and begin a century of bitter conflict with the Christian intruders.

Portuguese attacks against Muslim trade, and Aceh’s hostile respons, introduced an element of holy war into the expension of Islam in Sumatra. From 1540 to 1630, Aceh launched more than a dozen large expeditions against the Portuguese at Malacca. During on siege in 1547, St. Francis Xavier galvanized Malacca’s defenders and was credited with miraculously prophesying the Portuguese naval victory.

The las and greatest of the fleets sent against Malacca contributed to the decline of both powers. In 1629, the Aceh fleet of 19,000 men and several hundred ships was trapped and destroyed by a Portuguese fleet which arrived unexpectedly from Goa in India. Few of these ships returned after the fight and the hostile weather encountered on the way. Aceh never fully recovered from this blow.

Aceh’s golden age

During the latter half of the 16^th and early part of the 17^th century, Aceh supplying Europe with half its pepper. Venetian envoys in Cairo and Costantinople noted with satisfaction-and the Portuguese with dismay-that ships from “Assi” were arriving regurarly in Jiddah or Suez laden with pepper. Aceh was then known as the “doorstep to Mecca” (serambi Mekkah), because it was from all countries “below the winds” (i.e. Southeast Asia) embarked for their voyage to the Holy Land.

Because of Aceh’s abundant pepper, and its known aversion to the Catholic Portuguese, Protestants Europeans made the sultanate their first Asian port of call. The Dutch were welcomed in 1598 and the English in reception at the palace, they were honored with gifts of sarongs and krisses. However, relations between the Dutch and the Aceh-nese were not always smooth; as an example the first Malay dictionary and phrasebook was written during a year’s captivity in Aceh by the Dutch Admiral de Houtman.

Aceh reached its peak of power and wealth under the brilliant but ruthless Sultan Iskandar Muda (“the young Alexander,” 1607-1636). Throughout the first half of the 17^th century, Aceh’s court astonished visitors with its lavish feasts and public rituals. Hundreds of richly-caparisoned elephants and thousands of pikemen accompanied the Sultan in the weekly Friday procession from the palace feast days and at receptions for foreign guests, the processions were even grander-there were contests between pairs of fight-ing elephants, buffaloes and rams.

In the early 17^th century, Aceh was one of the major powers in Asia. Its effective authority stretched along the coast to Padang in the west and Tanjung Balai (on Karimun Island) in the east. Acehnese viceroys were appointed to rule over the Karo and Simalungun Batak and the Minagkabau. In the Malay peninsula, Aceh ruled Kedah and Perak, and conquered states as far away as Johor and Pahang. Victorious naval expeditions brought back thousands of captives to populate the city, man the war galleys, and carry out heavy contruction work in the capital. Three thousand woman waited on the sultan in his palace, and meals were served on plates of gold.

Warfare and the impermanence of building materials have left little trace of this former splendor. The city was never walled, a fact which an Acehnese chronicler attributed to the bravery of its people and the ferocity of its war elephants. In 1874, the palace complex was destroyed by the invading Dutch, and the great mosque, which was built of wood, was also destroyed. All that now remains is the curious limestone gunongan and pintu khob, ornaments built in the 1630s as part of the royal pleasure garden along the banks of the Krueng Daroy, just south of the palace. Today, the style of the parished great mosque can be seen in the mosque of Indrapuri, originally built in the period of Sultan Iskandar Muda, about 20 km upriver from Banda Aceh.

Iskandar Muda’s declining years were marked by signs of madness. He killied many of those closest to him, including his own son. His son-in-law, Iskandar Thani, succeeded him in 1636, but died in 1641. A violent succession dispute arose, and the leading men of the kingdom decided to place on the throne Iskandar Muda’s daughter (Iskandar Thani’s widow), Taj al-Alam (“Crown of the World,” 1641-75). During her reign, the stern personal autocracy intstituted by her father was relaxed. Traders enjoyed more predictable conditions in the capital, and local lords were able to establish hereditary lineages throughout the country.

Despite being at odds with Islamic law and tradition, to experiment with female rule was deemed so successful that three more queens were successively placed on the throne. As an English visitor explained, “the very name of a king is long since become nauseous to them through the Tyrannical Government of their last king.” Not until 1699, when one of the factions was able to produce a decree from Malacca judging female rule unacceptable to Islam, was a king again on the throne of Aceh.

After the defeat that destroyed its entire fleet at Malacca in 1629, Aceh went into a slow decline. The Dutch were able to prise from Aceh’s control both the pepper-growing areas on the west coast of Sumatra and the tin-producing areas on the Malay Peninsula. The major sources of Aceh’s continued wealth were then the items that had once been regarded as non-exportable royal treasures-gold and elephants.

Literature and theology

Malay was the language spoken in the cities of Aceh in the 17^th century, and it was here that much of the best classical Malay literature was written. Then earliest Muslim Malay syair (poetry in 4-line verses) still extant is the work of Hamzah Fansuri (Hamzah of Faansur, i.e. Barus) who lived and worked in the late 16^th century. Syech Syamsuddin of Pasai, who was the chief kadi (Muslim judge) of Aceh until his death iin 1630,was influential with Iskandar Muda. Both he and Hamzah were adherents of the wujuddiya school of mysticism, which in the eyes of its critics so emphasized union with God that it erased the distinction between God and man.

In the reign of Iskandar Than, a rigidly orthodox current of though gained the upper hand, the works of Hamzah and Syamsuddin were burned and several of their adherents were executed. This orthodox reaction was led by the most prolitic of classical Malay writers, Nuruddin ar-Raniri (of Ranir, in Gujerat), who wrote numerous theological works, and the greatest encyclopedic work of politics and history in Malay, the Bustan al-Salatin. He was unpopular with the people of Banda Aceh, and when his patron Iskandar Thani died, ar-Raniri was chased out of Aceh by an angry crowd.

The most influential religious scholar of the second half of the century, Abdur’rauf of Singkel, managed to combine orthodoxy with a tolerant approach to pre-Islamic beliefs and mystical ideas, and today he is revered as the mouth of Aceh river is still honored and he is remembered as Syech Kuala (the Syech of the river mouth). Aceh’s state university is named in his honor.

Economic decline

World demand for pepper reached peak in the middle of the 17^th century. From 1650 onwards, the port-states which had dominated Sumatra since the 15^th century began to decline along with the trade which had sustained them. Aceh embarked on a long period of internal conflict, and the uleebalang (local chiefs) who controlled the river mouths of Aceh coast became virtually independent of the capital. Acehnese gradually replaced Malay as the language of literature, and the weight of state authority was lightly felt by the majority of highland Sumatrans.

The lack of any major political authority encouraged adventures such as the Bugis from Soulth Sulawesi, the Arabs from West Sumatra to seize power by warfare, by marrying into the ruling families, or by strategic alliances. Increasingly, European and south Indian merchants were appointed as shahbandars or trade officials in the island sport. By the 18^th century the Europeans emerged as the biggest economic backwater.

EARLY HISTORY

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Svarnadvipa: The Ancient Island of Gold

Sumatra crept slowly and tentatively onto the historical stage. The Indian Ramayana epic (3rd century BC) mentions a Svarnadvipa or "Gold Island" which is probably Sumatra, for the island has rich gold deposits that have been mine since antiquity. A Greek scholar of the first century AD named Claudius Ptolemy wrote that cannibals lived on the five Barousai Island east of India. This is probably a reference to northwest Sumatra-the port of Barus on this coast was famous in later centuries as a source of camphor.
Until about AD 600, foreign writers thought of Sumatra as a forbidding wilderness, inhabited by fierce cannibalistic tribes and wild beasts, but enticingly rich in mineral and botanical wealth. One trading port, located somewhere in the southeast coast, stood out as an isolated outpost of civilization in a savage land. This port, know to the Chinese as Gantoli, maintained diplomatic relations with China between AD 441 and 563.
By the end of the 7th century, several Sumatran kingdoms had established contact with China. These Sumatran courts sent diplomatic missions to China. and Chinese Buddhist monks undertook the hazardous 40-day sea voyage to Sumatra en route to India, bringing back with them glowing descriptions of these kingdoms as flourishing centers of trade and scholarship.
The empire of Srivijaya
The greatest name in ancient Sumatra history is Srivijaya ("Glorious Victory"). In the late 7th century, this kingdom rapidly expanded from its capital near present-day Palembang in southeastern Sumatra, and gained control over the neighboring ports. For the next 400 years Sumatra's history is essentially the story of Srivijaya's golden age.
The name Srivijaya first appeared in AD 671, when a famous Chinese monk, I Ching (also known as Yijing) sojourned in Palembang for six months on his way to India. Palembang was then an active center of Buddhist learning and trade. Yijing states that there were more than 1,000 Buddhist monks in the city, and advised other Chinese monks to go to Srivijaya to study Sanskrit before proceeding to India. Yijing sailed from China to India and back on Srivijaya ships, which were the chief means of transport and communication over this vast distance.
Almost all our accounts of Srivijaya come from records left by foreign visitors. Srivijaya must have had written records, but these would have been written on strips of lontar palm leaves, and none has survived. Faint echoes of Srivijaya voices are recorded on a few stone inscriptions found around Palembang and other sites in South Sumatra. Most were written during a critical period between AD 682 and 686 when the kingdom was expanding fast and consolidating its power.
The Srivijaya inscriptions are all similar in content-containing oaths of loyalty to the king coupled with threats of divine retribution against rebels and troublemakers. One inscription from the island of Bangka mentions a military expedition about to depart for Java. Another from Talang Tuo, west of Palembang, commemorates the founding of a park by the ruler-a Buddhist act of virtue.
-this is that his inscriptions use an add language combining Old Malay with ungrammatical Sanskrit. This is a marked decline from the standard of composition which prevailed in 7th century Srivijaya. and demonstrates thet the ancient traditions of classical learning were on the wane.
The few inscriptions which have been studied do tell us, however, that Adityavarman tried to establish his court in a region which, to our knowledge, had no previous direct contact with the outside world, and no form of government above the level of a federation of neighboring villages. No doubt he struggled hard to recreate the glory of the court life in which he grew up in Java. Fragments of sculpture and architecture remain as mute testimony to his effort, and legends still popular in West Sumatra about contests between champions of autocracy and democracy may echo attempts to superimpose a Javanese-style system of aristocratic rule upon an egalitarian village society.
Adityavarman's last words were inscibed around 1374, when one of his monuments mentions a crown prince, Ananggavarman. After this, a veil of silence descends over West Sumatra, only to lift when Europeans penetrated the area some 300 years later. what happened to this prince? Perhaps he ascended the throne but could not keep alive the traditions his father had tried transplant. By the 17th century. the West Sumatra political system bore little resemblance to the court system depicted in the classical inscriptions of Srivijaya, Malayu and Java.
A Chinese pirates' nest
Even after its political eclipse in the 11th century, Palembang continued to be an important port. During the 14th century, its Malay subjects chafed under Javanese overlordship. In 1370 Palembang took advantage of the rise of the new Ming dynasty in China by sending a Mission to Beijing to request diplomatic recognition. The Ming emperor dispatched envoys to Palembang with documents recognizing Palembang as a Chinese vassal, but the envoys were waylaid and taken to Java, where they were murdered.
In 1392 the ruler of Palembang, a prince whom we know as Parameswara, tried to assert his independence, but a Javanese fleet destroyed the villages on Bangka which constituted his main source of naval strength. He fled to Singapore, where he tired to set up a new Malay stronghold, but he was driven out again in 1397 by an attack by the Siamese. In 1400 Parameswara finally succeeded in establishing a new base at Malacca, which in the 15th century became what Melayu and Palembang had been earlier-the focal point of a triangular trade between the Indonesian archipelago, China and India.
Even then Palembang did not die. According to accounts brought back to China by naval expeditions sent to Southeast Asia in the early 15th century, the Chinese inhabitants of Palembang, several thousand strong, remained behind when Parameswara fled. Left without a local ruler, they chose one from among themselves. Soon his position was usurped by a Chinese ruffian who turned Palembang into a pirates' nest. A Chinese naval expedition attacked Palembang and captured the pirate leader, who was taken back to Beijing and publicly strangled in the marketplace.
After 1430 China turned inward, and contact with Palembang was broken off. When we next glimpse the town, in the early 1500s, it was no longer a Chinese enclave but an important port dominated by Javanese culture. It would be fascinating to know how this transition took place, but unfortunately Sumatra's ancient history resembles less a continuous line than a series of brief dashes separated by broad, gaping spaces.

PREHISTORY

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From Flaked Glass to Iron and Bronze

We know of Sumatra's role in the evolution of modern humans. It's forested equatorial landscape has not preserved the same kinds of lake and river-laid deposits which have yielded so many early human fossils in the drier climatic zone of central and eastern Java. Early humans probably avoided the humid rainforests and instead occupied the fertile mountain valleys which run along Sumatra's mountainous spine. Perhaps one day their remains will be found, but so far the record is circumstantial.
-The earliest inhabitants
Sumatra, like Java, was joined by dry land to the Malay Peninsula for most of the past million years. Sea levels were generally lower, owing to the great volumes of water trapped in the Pleistocene glaciers. The western part of the Indonesian archipelago has only existed in its present form for the past 6,000 years and for brief intervals during the warmest interglacial periods; the previous interglacial occurred some 120,000 years ago.
Humans probably first entered Sumatra one million years ago across the land bridges of the Pleistocene era (1.6 million to thousand years ago). Archaeological evidence of human activity in Sumatra dates back only 10,000 years. Flake tools of a black volcanic glass called obsidian have been excavated from layers of this age in the cave of Tianko Panjang near Lake Kerinci.
But the most famous remains of the early, pre-agricultural period are gigantic middens of discarded marine shells, animal bones and stone tools once found (most are now destroyed) along the east coast plain between Lhokseumawe and Medan. Little is known of the people who made these mounds, but their skulls suggest that they were of Australomelanesian (similar to the native inhabitants of Australia and inland New Guine) instead of Mongoloid (East Asian) appearance. They hunted deer, pig, elephant, honey bear and rhinoceros and made their stone tools by flaking one side of a large oval river pebble. Their cultural re-mains are called "Hoabinhian." Similar materials dating back 4,000-13,000 years, but without such large shell middens, also occur in the Malay Peninsula, Thailand and vietnam.
-Austronesian agriculturalists
All the peoples of Sumatra speak Austronesian Lnguages. They are closely related biologically-all belonging to the "Southern Mongoloid" population which now occupies most of Southeast Asia. The Austronesian language family includes almost all indigenous languages of island Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands beyond the Solomons. Starting about 4,000 BC, Austronesian-speaking people began to spread southwards from Taiwan, reaching Sumatra around 2,500BC.
Most Sumatrans speak dialects of the Malay language, or very closely related languages such as Minangkabau. Languages outside this Malayic group include Gayo and Batak, and the languages spoken in the islands off Sumatra's west coast-Simeulue, Nias, Mentawai and Enggano.
Little archaeological research has been carried out in Sumatra-far too little to allow any useful statements to be made about the prehistoric relationships among these peoples. However, two important observations can be made. First, there is evidence from lakes and swamps in the highlands around Mt. Kerinci and Lake Toba that forest clearance, probably for agriculture, was underway at least 4,000 years ago-perhaps by as much as 7,000 years ago. The evidence comes from palynology: the study of pollens preserved in cores drilled from the ground. It is possible that this forest clearance reflects the arrival of Austronesian-speaking peoples in Sumatra, unless there were other (Austroasiatic-speaking?) agricultural peoples living there before them. This is still one of the big unknowns of the Sumatra past.
The second observation is that languages outside the Malayic group-Gayo and Batak, Simeulue, Nias, Mentawai and Enggano-probably represent localized descent from the initial Austronesian languages of southern Vietnam-may be an exception. But the Malayic languages, which also occur in Peninsular Malaysia and coastal Borneo, seem to reflect a later period of cultural and linguistic expansion, perhaps due to the rise of Srivijaya in the late 7th century. This Buddhist kingdom was focused around the area which is now Palembang in South Sumatra. The Malayic languages, therefore, may have replaced older Austronesian languages.
Malay is spoken along the entire eastern lowlands of the island south of Medan-even by the nomadic Kubu peoples. The Kubu foragers, who are of Southern Mongoloid origin, speak a language so closely related to their agricultural neighbors that it is possible that sometime in the recent past their ances tors turned from agriculture to foraging-a reverse of the most commonly-assumed direction of cultural development.
-The age of bronze and iron
Like Java, Sumatra has no detailed pre-Bronze Age archaeological record. Our picture for the island really only comes into focus from about 2,000 years ago, when knowledge of bronze casting and iron smelting arrived with the massive bronze drums of Vietnamese ("Dongson") origin.
These drums, with their elaborate surface decorations of boats, raised-floor houses, animals, birds and human warriors have been found at several places in Sumatra-some of these artifacts have been found near Lake Kerinci, in Lampung, in South Sumatra, and near Bengkulu.
The famous Batugajah stone in the Pasemah Highlands of South Sumatra shows a Dongson drum being carried on the back of a man who is apparently subduing an elephant. The BatuGajah stone was originally located near Pagaralam in West Sumatra, but is now kept in the museum in Palembang. This carved boulder is one of the fascinating complex of carved megalithic monuments found in the fields around Pagaralam. The bas-relief carvings on these stone monuments show men riding elephants or buffaloes, helmeted human heads, humans wrestling with snakes. There are also many stone mortars, which may have had ritual uses.
Massive underground tombs constructed of large slabs of rock have produced Metal Age artifacts such as glass beads and items made of bronze, iron, and even sometimes gold. Some were painted inside in red, black and white with schematic motifs of horned buffaloes, felines, monkey-like figures and humans. In one case two humans (or possibly a human and a giant cat) are shown holding a Dongson drum. Examples of these grave paintings can be seen in the National Museum in Jakarta. These megalithic carvings and slab stone graves were probably both made during the earlier part of the first millennium AD.

BIRDS

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Rare, Colorful Denizens of the Forest

Whit some 600 species, Sumatra is second only to Irian Jaya in the sheer variety of it's bird life. Fully three quarters of these birds are resident, though only 17 are unique. Sadly, many species are endangered by clearing of land for settlement, logging and hunting, and some are now sighted only rarely.
-Calls of the wild
Majestic hornbills attract your attention with their noisy wing beats and loud calls. Particularly spectacular is the Rhinoceros Hornbill Buceros rhinoceros. The male is 1.2 m long, with a huge reddish, up-turned casque and loud honking call. The call of the Long-tailed Helmeted Hornbill Rhinoplax vigil consists of a long series of "hoop" notes gradually quickening in tempo, then rapidly building to a crescendo, climaxing in a cackling laugh.
Another common call of the forest is the loud "ku-ow" of the great Argus Pheasant Argusianus argus. When its decorative wing and tail plumes are fully developed, the male pheasant reaches a length of nearly 2 m, like so many secretive forest birds, you must be very fortunate to see it in the wild.
The colorful kingfishers are mostly inconspicuous forest dwellers, but the White throated Kingfisher Halcyon smyrnensis lives in open country. This bird was first spotted in 1921 near Medan, but has subsequently spread throughout the island. Along swamps and rivers, watch out for the huge Stork billed Kingfisher Pelargopsis capensis-with its loud, wailing cries.
-Mixed dinner parties
If you are lucky enough to chance upon a fruiting fig tree, you will probably see a host of pigeons, hornbills and barbets-all so intent on gorging themselves that they ignore the observer standing below in a a shower of discarded fruit debris. Occasionally shattering the cathedral stillness of the noon-time forest, a flock of birds will sweep down upon you, excitedly searching for food. This "feeding party" ranges from woodpeckers, jays and trogons to drongos, bulbuls and babblers. Such parties are believed to be a spontaneous response to food shortages in the dry season. The birds' frenzied activity drives insects from every nook and cranny, to be gobbled up greedily. After just a few minutes, the flock moves on, leaving the equally frenzied birdwatcher frantically trying to remember each species as the last bird departs.
-Montane birds
Hill forest are the best birdwatching regions for the casual visitor. Many are accessible, the climate is comfortable, and the birds are less secretive. Here you will hear the rapid , monotonous, three-note call of the Black-browed Barbet Megalaima oorti and the curious buzzing note of the Fire-tufted Barbet Psilopogon pyrolophus. The lucky birdwatcher will also find the distinctive Yellow-naped Woodpeckers Picus flavinuchus and Picus chlorolophus, or a party of colorful but secretive Green Magpies Cissa chinensis.
Prominent calls are those of the large Cuckoo-dove Macropygia unchall, the Mountain Imperial Pigeon Ducula badia, and the White-crested Laughing Thrush Garrulax leucolophus, with its distinctive hopping gait and beautiful call, which builds to a maniacal climax. The Bronze-tailed Peacock Pheasant Polyplectron chalcurum and the Salvadori's Pheasant Lophura inornata are endemic to the mountains of Sumatra. The latter was not seen for several decades, but has been sighted recently on Mt. Kerinci in West Sumatra.
-Lowland forest
The most popular lowland area for birdwatching in Sumatra is Way Kambas Reserve in Lampung, easily accessible on a weekend trip from Jakarta. A majority of lowland forest species have been recorded here, including the hornbills. Further up the east coast are extensive expanses of swamp forest, but the remaining dryland forests here are greatly in demand for agriculture, and it is increasingly difficult to find good birdwatching localities within easy acces of the main roads. It is essential to reach the forest soon after dawn in order to catch the peak activity.
In Way Kambas, the birdwatcher may happen upon a party of Crested Fireback Pheasants Lophura ignita, or see the huge Whitebellied woodpecker Dryocopus javensis. The Black-and-yellow Broadbill Eurylaimus orchromalus is a common songster, with its trilled notes on one pitch that steadily gather speed to a cicada-like buzz.
The best songster of the lowland forest is undoubtedly the long-tailed, scarlet, black and white Shama Copsychus malabaricus, a secretive robin of the deep forest. The Eared Nightjar Eurostopodus temminckii is also a favorite, with its "tok-tedau" calls uttered in flight just above the canopy of trees precisely at dusk and dawn.
The lowland forests have the greatest variety, but even the brightly colored birds are not found easily. A dedicated birdwatcher requires not only skill and patience but also a considerable degree of luck to sight some of the birds mentioned.
-Wetlands
The remote and muddy east coast is a major wintering and transit zone for over 100,000 palaearctic waders from some 25 species. The 4,000 Asian Dowitchers Limnodromus semipalmatus sighted hee are most exciting, as they represent about half of the world's population of this rare bird.
The Asian Wetlands Bureau is anxiously trying to locate the breeding colonies of Sumatra's 3,000 Milky Storks Ibis cinereus, in order to protect this endangered species. The wetlands are also home to large numbers of egrets and herons, Lesser Adjutant Storks Leptoptilos javanicus, Black-headed Ibis Threskiornis melanocephalus, and a tiny relict population of spot-billed Pelicans Pelecanus philippensis.
Two wetland birds are high on the endangered list. Sumatra and Kalimantan are home to most of the world population of Storm's Stork Ciconia stormi-a forest bird of the swamps and rivers. Sumatra is also one of the main strongholds of the forest-dwelling White-winged Wood Duck, whose range formerly extended from Northeast India south to West Java. It is now confined to scattered relict populations. One such population lives in southeast Sumatra, but the wetlands here now possess only a fraction of their former wealth due to human population pressures.

WILDLIFE

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Beasts of the Tropical Jungle

Sumatra's wildlife is the stuff of adventure books. Huge elephants, large skulking cats and elusive rhinos inhabit dense tropical forests amidst a tangle of enormous trees, twisting lianas, and weird and wonderful flowers. Massive human-like apes and beautiful shimmering birds-glimpsed but for a moment-make Sumatra a truly exciting place for naturalists and natur-lovers.
One should not expect the drive-up-and-snap ecotourism of East Africa., however. Good sightings of animal are the result of patience and a considerable investment of time. The ideal way to go about it is to wander slowly through the forest, or find a suitable spot and sit quietly and wait-or rise before dawn and go into the forest with a flashlight.
Sumatra's remarkable biological wealth is partly due to the island's great size and diversity of habitats, and partly to its periodic connections with the Southeast Asian mainland during the past few hundred thousand years. The island has no fewer than 196 different species of mammals-nearly three times the number in Great Britain-20 of which are found nowhere else. These include several species of bats, five primates, the sumatran rabbit, various squirrels and the elegant Sumatran weasel.
The wide rivers of the east coast are home to dozens of large fish, including a giant cat fish that grows to 2 meters in length, and the world's most expensive aquarium fish-the golden arowana or dragon fish. Many types of fishes may be seen in the marketplaces in the early morning. Some air-breathing. "walking" species are kept damp and sold alive.
Smaller rivers yield many more species of aquarium fish-heavily striped tiger barbs, the pink-and-brown Kuhl's loach, the orange-and-black clown loach, silver "sharks," halfbeaks, gouramis and a variety of rasbora. The guppy was introduced to the region in 1929 by an aquarist in Bandung, West Java, when he accidentally let some escape . Today the guppy is found in ditches and rice fields in most rural areas.

-Regional variation

Excavations on java, where conditions for fossil preservation are better than on Sumatra, have revealed that about 70,000 years ago the Indonesia archipelago was home to many large mammals that are now extinct. Eight species of elephant, a giant pangolin, several pigs, wild dogs, saber-toothed cats, hyenas and a hippopotamus have all left their remains in the fossil record.

Several other species have disappeared more recently-the last confirmed shooting of a Javan rhinoceros on Sumatra was in 1982. The disappearance of the leopard, which still survives in Peninsular Malaysia and Java, is more of a mystery, at it is well adapted for mountains, forests or plains-with their abundance of monkey and deer.

Sumatra's wildlife is not uniformly distributed throughout its regions. The islands of Simeulue and Enggano-respectively at the top and bottom of the island chain west of Sumatra-have very impoverished wildlife. It is possible that neither has ever been connected to the mainland. Neither island has any species of squirrel (the main island has 24), but Simeulue has distinctive forms of the long-tailed macaque and forest pig, 3 endemic snakes and 20 endemic subspecies of birds.

The massive explosion of Lake Toba in North Sumatra (see "Geography") may have had and important influence on the distribution of animals in Sumatra, because it spread a broad barrier of dry volcanic material across thousands of square kilometers, forming a kind of barrier. There are clear differences between the mammals found to the north and south of this area. To the north live white-handed gibbons, Thomas' leaf-monkeys, orangutans, the Sumatran wren babbler, Schneider's pitta and the bronze-tailed peacock pheasant. to the south live the agile gibbon, banded leaf-monkey, tarsier, tapir and blue masked leafbird.

-A forgotten eden

More than half a million years have passed since the Mentawai Islands, which lie 100 km off the coast of West Sumatra, were connected with the main island of Sumatra, This long isolation has allowed the evolution of endemic species and the survival of primitive (or relict) species in this region.

Eighty percent of the Mentawai's mammals are endemic. These special Mentawai animals include three species of monkey and a gibbon. Two of the monkeys-the joja and the simakobu-are unique among monkeys in the Old World in thet they live (as the gibbons do) in small family units comprising the mother, father and offsprings.

The people of these islands have a story which tells how humans came into being. At a conference of the bilou gibbons, it was agreed that their trees were becoming too crowded. So half the gibbons left the trees to live on the ground, and in time became people. This kind of story represents the closeness felt by the traditional people for their land and its animal inhabitants.

-'Men-of-the-forest'

There is an awesomeness and splendor about the primary forest that is difficult to describe in words. The Sumatran forests are disappearing fast, and a walk in one of them should be one every traveler's itinerary.

The easiest forest to reach for the casual visitor is the one at Bukit Lawang on the edge of the Gunung Leuser National Park in North Sumatra, a two-hour ride from Medan. Here captured orangutans (literally meaning "men-of-the-forest") are trained to return to the wild, and it is possible to see these splendid, tousled, russet-colored beasts being educated to adopt a forest lifestyle, though occasionally the forest area near the rehabilitation station is closed to visitors during the time that feeding is stopped to encourage the young animals to find their own food.

other forest areas are quite easy to reach from Bengkulu, Banda Aceh, Blangkejeren, Kabanjahe, Sidikalang, Pematangsiantar, Bukittinggi, Tebing Tinggi and Padang. the basic principle in any of these places is simply to head for the hills.

-Mountains and parks

As one climbs a Sumatran mountain, the environment becomes cooler and more exposed. The trees and their leaves become smaller, the boughs and branches become covered in moss. Colorful rhododendrons and other familiar temperate zone plants grace the upper slopes. These plants are found only at the higher elevations, and some bird and other animal species are found only here too.

More adventurous and independent travelers could explore the mountains of Gunung Leuser National Park. Allow at least four days to climb Mt. Kemiri, one of the more accessible peaks, and plan your ascent well. Surprisingly, you will need a number of helpers, and do not forget that temperatures at the peak are only a degree or two above freezing at night.

The mountains are the place where you are most likely to see signs of rhinos and tigers. A world of warning-in this tiger country do not squat down at night to perform your ablutions; women are particularly vulnerable to attacks at night.

The clearance of large areas of lowland forest in recent years has led to conflicts between people and large forest animals such as pigs, long-tailed macaques, bears and elephants. Elephants, which cause the most local damage, have been confined to smaller and smaller areas of the forest as agricultural development and new roads have advanced. These roads often cross traditional elephant migration routes to and from areas with mineral-rich soils. Some populations of elephants are now living at higher densities in Sumatra than anywhere else in the world.

Elephants may be seen in spectacular concentrations in the Way Kambas National Park in Lampung province, and in the Air Sugihan Reserve. The reason for this is that elephant drives have been conducted-using helicopters blaring loud rock music, guns firing blank ammunition, and hordes of willing villagers-to persuade the elephants to move from agricultural areas into the reserves. these reserves consists largely of secondary forest, scrub and grasslands which elephants prefer, because their food plants are more abundant there.

The plight of the elephants symbolizes the plight facing much of Sumatra's wildlife-how to survive when even the forest areas set aside for conservation area facing constant attrition? An attempted solution to the elephant's plight is to take young elephants into "training schools" and to teach them to be economically productive. The oldest of the schools is in the Way Kambas National Park.

-Stinking giants

Among the records Sumatra can boast of is the possession of the largest and the tallest flowers in the world. The largest is the peculiar rafflesia, and its size is by no means its only unique feature. It is in fact a parasitic plant that has no leaves, no stem and no roots. It grows on the stump and roots of a particular climbing vine, and apart from the flower it consists only of a few strands of tissue inside the vine. Flower buds, looking like small red cabbages, emerge on the stem but develop slowly-a bud 10 cm in diameter will take about 5 months to open.

When the flower does eventually open there is a powerful smell of rotting meat. Singularly unpleasant to humans, the smell attracts flies and beetles that pollinate the flowers. Since the male and the female flowers may grow some distance apart and remain open for only a week, the odds are clearly stacked against successful pollination. After flowering they decompose and the very small, ripe fruit has to accidentally get caught in the feet of small forest animals so that some of the seeds may happen to be dropped on a vine stem where they can grow. Again, the odds are not exactly in its favor!

The small reserve of Batang Palupuh just outside Bukittinggi in West Sumatra is one of the best places to see this plant. While it is a seasonal plant, it is probably worth visiting at anytime of year-you may never get a chance to see even a Rafflesia bud again!

Another enormous flower with an impressive name is Amorphophallus titanum, a type of giant arum lily, of which generally only the leaves are seen. These leaves feed an underground tuber that, when large enough, produces a flower stalk as tall as a man. As with all other lilies, the blossoms are small and packed together on a central spathe.

Like the Rafflesia, the flowers smell of rotting meat and are pollinated by beetles and flies. You have to be lucky to see this plant in full flower, but chances are best in the forests around Mt. Kerinci. The local name is bunga bangkai, "corpse flower"-a name that is applied to the Raflesia arnoldi as well on account of the overpowering stench.

-And what of tomorrow?

In the forests of Sumatra, the echoing sounds of timber being chopped down at an amazing speed are now as common as the "ku-ow" calls of the Argus Pheasant or the drumming of the coucal. The shouts of timbermen are immediately followed by the rustling of a thousand leaves tearing through the forest canopy, and then the ground shudders as the trunk of a centuries-old tree slams to the ground, while the animals shriek with fear. Minor forest products such as rattan, tree gums, etc., are taken away with scant regard to replanting or to future harvests. Tigers, Sumatran rhinos and other game are still shot to provide pleasure for a few hunters, and to appease local villagers. The remaining patches of forest are dwindling fast.

So get out there and explore-climb the mountains, tramp the hills, and enjoy what remains. Take care not to add to the damage, and encourage others to do the same. Sumatra's wildlife is grand and very special, even though time, a certain determination, and a little bit of luck are required to see it. If you are patient and persistent, the rewards are great. But even if all that you can see is the blurred shapes of monkeys crashing through the canopy above you, you will have witnessed at least something of Sumatra's fast-disappearing wildlife.

GEOGRAPHY

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A Vast Island of Dramatic Contrasts

Sumatra is the fourth largest island in the world after Greenland, New Guinea and Borneo, with a land area of some 473,481 sq km-roughly the size of California or Spain. It is an island of enormous regional diversity, that for administrative purposes has been divided into eight large provinces. To some extent, these divisions have been made along ethnic, and not geographic lines. The provinces of Aceh and Lampung at Sumatra's northern and southern tips, for example, are home to the Acehnese and Lampung peoples, while North and West Sumatra are the Batak and Minangkabau homelands, respectively. Other provincial boundaries, however, have been determined more by the island's lofty central mountain range and the large river systems flowing eastward from it. Sumatra's largest province is South Sumatra, which encompasses a major slice of territory on the east coast and the large islands of Bangka and Belitung.

-migrating continents

Contrary to earlier beliefs, recent geological research has demonstrated that Sumatra once formed part of the great southern continent called Gondwanaland, and not part of Asia. About 160 million years ago it broke away and began to migrate northwards-eventually lodging, with Malaya, Thailand and Burma, againts what is now Indochina.

About 40 million years later, India started its own northward journey, crashing slowly but powerfully into Tibet some 80 million years later. The dense oceanic plate on top of which India rested then nudged eastward againts the relatively light and rigid Sunda Plate. This caused massive buckling, faulting and shearing-resulting in the formation of a series of small islands to the west of Sumatra, as well as of Sumatra's central Barisan Range and the valleys in between.

Today, part of the Indian Ocean plate continues to slide below the west of Sumatra, causing frequent but minor earthquakes, eruptions and landslides. The strees and shearing has been relived by a long rift valley stretching from Semangko Bay at the island's southern tip, north through Lake Kerinci, Bukittinggi's Ngarai Sianok Canyon.

All along its length, the rift has been filled in by some 65 volcanic peaks, several of which are still active. The fault countinues southward into the straits between Sumatra and Java, where it has created the most infamous of Indonesia's many volcanoes-the mighty Krakatau.

-parallel slices

The physical geography of Sumatra is best considered as a series of parallel longitudinal slices running northwest to southeast along the main axis of the island. In the extreme west is a sparsely inhabited chain of island-from Simeulue in the north to Enggano in the south-that is separated from Sumatra by of 2,000 meters.

The western fringe of Sumatra itself is a narrow but complex coastal strip, alternating between fertile alluvial soils where rice is grown, and inhospitable swamps that are gradually being drained for agriculture. Rugged foothills rise steeply from this coastal fringe to the mighty Barisan Mountains-several of which tower above 3,000meters. The highest non-volcanic peaks (about 3,400 meters) lie within The Gunung Leuser National Parks in the northern part of the island. Sumatra's highest volcano is Mt. Kerinci-at 3,800 meters, the highest Indonesia mountain outside of Irian Jaya.

Also found along this central axis is dramatic Lake Tujuh-a spectacular crater lake, 5 sq km in area, perched at an altitude of 2,000 meters atop Mt. Tujuh. It is best seen from the southern slopes of adjacent Mt. Kerinci, but can also found be reached directly from the town of Sungaipenuh. Impressive mountains are also found in the limestone areas around Bukittinggi and Payakumbuh in West Sumatra, and in the the Lhoknga area of Aceh. These are not particularly high, but the unusual karst formations with steep sides, often studded with caves, are very interesting.

East of the Barisan Range lie irregular foothills and broad, dry lowlands which have seen rapid development in this century as plantations and as urban and agricultural centers. These lowlands are now also the focus of industrial development based on food processing and fossil fuels.

As you approach the coast, particularly in the central and southern regions, the dry lands turns to various types of swamps-the largest extent of swamplands in indonesia outside of Irian Jaya. These swamps are crisscrossed by large, meandering rivers. Where the peat is not too thick, the land has been cleared for rice cultivation; where it is thicker, pineapples and coconuts grow. Where the peat is really thick-and it can reach an incredible 22 meters in parts of Riau-agricultural crops cannot be grown. Logging continues, however, and land drainage in other areas threatens to eliminate many of these magnificent raised swamps.

Further east, off the central and southern coasts, are the low-lying eastern island at the southern and of the Malacca Strait. Here, extensive areas are mined for bauxite and tin, but Batam Island is also being developed now as a leisure, business and industrial alternative to Singapore-with everything from industrial estates to luxury beach resorts.

Far out in the South China Sea about 500 km from the mainland are the Natuna Islands. These have little agricultural potential but are important strategically, as well as possessing important fishing grounds and rich reserves of oil and natural gas.

-Riches of the earth

Sumatra is extremely rich in fossil fuels-oil, gas and coal. Oil is found mainly in the east, from Riau to South Sumatra, both on land and offshore. New technologies had to be developed to tap this wealth, especially to facilitate drilling in the thick peat deposits of coastal Riau. Roads there are built on top of floating plastic carpets, and derricks perch atop tall piles reaching down to the bedrock below. Almost all of the oil from this central basin is pumped to the port of Dumai on the east coast. In southeast Aceh is the enormous Arun gas field , which ranks as one of the world's most productive. In South Sumatra, at Muaraenim, is a very large opent-cast coal mine. The coal is taken from here by rail south to Teluk Betung and thence to java.

Small amounts of gold are mined, though the important metals are aluminum (bauxite) and tin. Bauxite is mined on Bintan, one of the Riau Island, then shipped to Japan for processing into alumina, then back to Sumatra again, where it is smelted into aluminum at the Inalum plant on the coast of North Sumatra.

-Sumatra's 'big bang'

Huge Lake Toba in North Sumatra is Southeast Asia's largest lake, covering 1,146 sq km, and so far defying efforts to measure its depth-though it is known to be deeper than 450 m. It occupies the caldera of a massive volcano which exploded some 100,000 years ago in the most powerful volcanic eruption ever known. Early man was probably living in Sumatra at the time, and the scale of devastation caused by the explosion is hard for us to imagine-equivalent to hundreds of hydrogen bombs detonating simultaneously.

Shortly before the eruption, a giant boil of a mountain grew above the increasing quantities of molten material below. When the solid ground finally gave way, a searingly hot plume of ash was thrown into the sky-its remains can be traced today over an area of 20-30,000 sq km. Around the volcano the ash settled in a layer more than 600 m thick. This eruption set the world record for the quantity of material ejected-some 1,500-2,000 cubic km, compared with just 0,6 cubic km for the much-publicised eruptionof Mt. St. Helens in Washington State, USA. Because of the massive quantity of ejecta, the empty cone soon collapsed in on itself to form the world's largest caldera. This became an ancient lake, which was itself destroyed about 30,000 years ago when a second, much smaller eruption occurred. The island of Samosir in the center of the lake, and the lake's eastern shore-the main tourist centers today-are all that remain of the shattered cone.

The first Europeans to see Lake Toba were a pair of British missionaries, Messrs Burton and Ward, who traveled here in 1824. They were told that the lake level rose and fell like the sea. Although much of the area was already deforested and under rice cultivation, one area on the eastern shore was still covered with jungle. At the time, the lake's outlet was unknown, but eventually it became clear that the Asahan River flowed out through a "spirit-filled" forest at what is now Porsea on the southeastern shore.

One reason for the forest's mystique may have been the impressive 100-meter Sigura-gura waterfall, which races through a narrow gorge-now rendered somewhat less dramatic by the presence of a hydroelectric dam. A short distance downstream is the 150-meter Sampuran Harimau waterfall which cascades into a large natural amphitheater near Tangga. Tumbling into this spectacular gorge is Sumatra's highest waterfall, at a point where the small Ponot River drops 280 meters from the mountains above and joins up with the Asahan River below. Although the falls are now used for hydroelectric power to supply the massive Inalum plant, the natural beauty of the area has not been lost. On a clear day these falls can be seen from the windows of jets plying the Medan-Jakarta route.

The climate of Sumatra has changed dramatically over the past million years. During the ice ages, glaciers covered the higher peaks in the north, in what is now Gunung Leuser National park. The largest glacier on Mt. Leuser covered some 100 sq km.

Sea levels have also been as much as 50 meters higher and 180 meters lower than they are at present. As a result, the low lying eastern swamps and plains have been inundated and exposed several times. At times of low sea levels, land bridges connected Sumatra with Peninsular Malaysia, Borneo and Java, and the estuaries of large rivers such as the Musi, the Kampar and the Indragiri were situated some 700 km farther east from the present-day coastline, near what are now the Natuna Islands.

-Fierce tropical storms

The western parts of Sumatra are by far the wettest; few areas here receive less than 4,000 mm of rain per annum, quite evenly distributed throughout the year. The wettest spots are the hills behind Padang, which receive 5,000 mm, and the northern Bengkulu mountains, which are drenched with more than 6,000 mm (about 10 times the rainfall of London!). The driest places are on the east coast and in the central rift valley, but even most of these receive more than 2,000 mm.

Although the difference between seasons is not very distinct, dry periods often occur in the early part of the year and in June and July. During these periods, wild fires occur, often started by farmers clearing patches of land. The problem is growing worse because the changing world climate is prolonging the dry seasons. Logging has also opened up the moist forests, allowing forested areas to dry out-as have drainage schemes on the east coast, which dry out the peat deposits, causing them to burn out of control. It is not unusual for air traffic approaching Singapore to be re-routed because of the smoke from fires in southern Sumatra.

While there is considerable local variability, winds in Sumatra generally blow from the north between December and March, and from the south between May and September. Many of the seasonal winds are particularly fierce, and have been given names by the local residents. A stormy wind that occurs in the region of Lake Tawar, in Aceh, is given the name Angin Depok-after the depik fish that is easily caught in the lake around this time. There are also two warm, dry winds-the Angin Bohorok which flows eastwards from the mountains behind Bohorok (in North Sumatra) and the the Angin Padang Lawas which blows east of Padang Sidempuan (in West Sumatra)-which often damage crops and make agriculture in some regions almost impossible because the soils become so dry.

Island of Adventure

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Sumatra, fabled "Land of Gold" of the ancients, is unlike any other tropical on earth. It is neither the largest landmass in the Indonesian archipelago (Irian Jaya and Kalimantan are larger), nor the most populous (Java has three times as many people), but by most accounts it is the most varied and interesting island to visit. Sumatra indeed has something for everyone-lush rainforests, exotic flora and fauna, cascading rivers, sparkling crater lakes, shimmering white sand beaches and an incredibly diverse array of traditional ethnic groups who inhabit some of the most spectacular volcanic landscapes in the world.
Straddling vital waterways at the western end of an immense island chain, Sumatra is a kind of anchor for the rest of the archipelago. It is truly continental in scope: vast lowland rainforests and coastal wetlands are cut by a network of broad, silt-laden rivers that snake across the island for up to 800 km before emptying into the South China Sea. Unlike all the other islands of a similar scale, however, Sumatra is also volcanic-its lofty range of western peaks forming alongitudinal "spine" dotted with lakes and fertile upland valleys.
The island is extremely rich in natural re sources. Its coal, tin, bauxite, oil, gold, natural gas, timber, rubber, tea, palm oil, cacao and coffee together account for over half of Indonesia's export income, while its long coastline is dotted with harbors giving acces to seas teeming with tropical marine life.
As a result, Sumatra has played a major role in Indonesia history. The first large kingdom in these islands-the Buddhist state of Srivijaya-had its capital on the Musi River near what is now Palembang, and from here controlled a massive volume of trade passing through the Malacca and Sunda straits for over 300 years-conquering all other ports around the coasts and maintaining direct links with harbors in faraway India and China.
Indian civilzation, which was to have such a far-reaching cultural impact in the region, entered Indonesia through Sumatera ports in the first millenium Ad. In the second millenium the same story was repeated-as Islam arrived from the west along the trans-oceanic trade routes, established a foothold in the ports of northeastern Sumatra, and spread from here to the neighboring islands.
Sumatra was of course inhabited long before the arrival of these foreign priests and traders. Well over a dozen major ethnic groups live on the island, speaking more than 25 different languages and hundreds of dialects. Sumatra today supports 40 million people-over 20 percent of Indonesia's huge population-with a size and density similar to that of California, though far less urbanized.
Found here are some of Indonesia's most dynamic peoples. The Acehnese of the north, for example, are fervent Muslims renowned for their fierce resistance to Ducth rule. The Minangkabau of West Sumatra have migrated throughout Indonesia and today form the economic and intellectual elite in many areas. Sumatra's largest group, the Malays, were the great seafaring traders of Asia in pre-modern times, and their tongue forms the basis for the national languages of Indonesia and Malaysia. Last but not least, the Bataks of the northern highlands around Lake Toba are the nation's most resourceful and flamboyant group.
As a travel destination, Sumatra thus has few peers. Its natural habitats possess an unparalleled variety of wildlife-from elephants and rhinos to the world's largest flower (the foul-smelling rafflesia) and the most expensive aquarium fish (the golden arowana or "dragon fish")-while the island's traditional peoples are as fascinating as they are warm and hospitable. In short, Sumatra combines most of the incomparable attractions of the Indonesian island all rolled into one!