Pagaruyung a reminder of Minangkabau's glorious past

Pagaruyung a reminder of Minangkabau's glorious past

By Simon Marcus Gower

BATUSANGKAR, West Sumatra (JP): Visitors to West Sumatra will
become familiar with the traditional architecture of the
Minangkabau home, updated for modern times.

A main house on wooden stilts will consistently be seen
accompanied by two smaller rice barns. The main house is a basic
single hall-like space with small bedrooms lined up against one
wall of this space. The main house and the two barns each have
the steeply sloping gabled roofs that end in needlepoint
pinnacles that point to the sky mimicking the horns of the
buffalo. (Many such buffalo work the abundance of rice fields in
this region)

These houses, although very traditional in their design, do
not always exhibit the use of traditional construction methods or
materials. Regrettably the predominant material used in their
construction seems to be corrugated metal sheeting that quickly
rusts to leave both walls and roofs alike an unattractive series
of shades of brown. Traditionally the walls of these houses would
have been covered with richly carved and painted wooden panels,
each being a veritable work of art in itself.

Today such colorfully and traditionally constructed houses can
still be seen but they are rare. To see an impressive, large-
scale example of this architecture an appropriate destination is
Pagaruyung, which is situated near to the small West Sumatran
town of Batusangkar.

A good way to travel from Batusangkar to Pagaruyung is by
motorbike because this allows you to take the smaller roads that
wind their way through the rising and falling land that undulates
through much of this upland plateau. As you ride between rice
fields and groves of palm trees houses are rarely seen and thus
to finally get to Pagaruyung and see the large example of
Minangkabau architecture that stands there is even more
surprising.

This large house rises up on a prominent high point of land
and, by comparison to the low-lying land around it and absence of
other buildings in the vicinity, it seems like a monumental
construction, almost having the scale of some European cathedral.
The house is monumental not only in scale but also purpose for it
is effectively a monument to the Minangkabau kingdom whose
sultans' palace once stood on this site.

The building is a reconstruction of that earlier palace;
guides will tell you how the retreating Dutch army destroyed the
original palace during World War II and how this present building
was completed in the mid-1970s. They will also take pleasure in
pointing out that the large and numerous columns that support the
structure stand at an angle (i.e. away from being perfectly 90
degrees vertical) because the traditional builders determined
that this was the best way to limit damage from earthquakes.

What the guides will neglect to tell you is that the columns
are not solid wood, as they appear to be. On closer inspection it
can be seen that the columns are wooden clad. The actual
structural column beneath the cladding is concrete and thus
modern technology is as much in evidence to defend against
earthquakes, as is traditional practice.

Pagaruyung does, however, illustrate how Minangkabau culture
places women in important, if not the primary, positions in
family life. In this palatial house the best bedrooms are those
for the female members of the family and it is the females of the
Minang tradition that lead households. Minangkabau women are the
holders of titles, family names, wealth and property, all of
these being passed down through the female lines.

Minang men may be entrusted to maintain the property but they
have no rights to make demands of the women other than expecting
them to be faithful in marriage. The women, meantime, may make
demands of the men and if misfortune should fall upon the
marriage it is the man who must leave, while the woman retains
property rights.

A local young woman recounted how she was expected to marry a
local young man. First her mother ordered that she marry the boy
(for at the age of 17 that is what he was). But the girl, at the
time only 15, refused, saying that she was neither old enough nor
sufficiently attracted to the boy to marry him. Her mother,
frustrated, called upon the girl's grandmother to convince the
teenager that the arrangement was for the best but the girl
remained adamant and today, three years on, she remains
unmarried. Here then three generations of Minangkabau women were
making decisions and not once was any mention made of
consultation with the male members of the family.

It is, perhaps, these prominent and headstrong women that we
must thank for the delights of Minangkabau food which is known
throughout Indonesia as makanan Padang after the provincial
capital. Throughout Sumatra, across Java and into Bali, there are
numerous restaurants specializing in such food. Thus one may
delight in having waiters bring the various food forms to your
table, carrying them in dishes precariously balanced up their
arms, often eight or nine dishes at a time.

The various culinary delights derived from the Minangkabau
region may be widely enjoyed but, as a local cook put it, there
is nothing better than experiencing the real and original cuisine
in its original setting.

The Minangkabau kingdom covered much of central Sumatra at the
height of its influence in the 14th century and 15th century.
Today, however, the extent of that long-lost kingdom's influence
is difficult to trace. Pagaruyung may be upheld as the center of
the kingdom but the impressive building that stands there is by
no means a working palace. It is a museum that represents the
Minangkabau kingdom and its culture.

The spread of the Muslim faith through the archipelago and the
violence of the Padri Wars in Sumatra in the first half of the
19th century ended the line of prominent Minangkabau families.
What is left of the kingdom and the culture is, then, an exotic
mix of the unusual and distinguished, (such as the decorative
architecture), and the familiar, (such as the widespread and
popular food from the region). Whether unusual or familiar there
is no denying that the Minangkabau lands are an intriguing and
colorful addition to the remarkable patchwork of peoples and
cultures that make up the Indonesian archipelago.