EFFIGY PORTRAIT OF A CHIEF (MEJAN)

Type: Stone Sculpture
Classification: Sculpture
Name: EFFIGY PORTRAIT OF A CHIEF (MEJAN)
Region: Insular South-East Asia
Where it was made: Indonesia. Sumatra, Barus region (coastal harbour in the Indian Ocean)
Culture: Batak, Toba subgroup
Time period: 19th Century
Materials: Stone
Dimension: 87 cm (height)
Object ID: INV. 3137

Acquired from Emile Deletaille in 1979

Collection:
BARBIER-MUELLER MUSEUM OF GENEVA
Rue Jean-Calvin, 10, 1204 Genève


Descriptions:

Effigies mejan of well-known figures, often with the joint roles of village chief (raja) and magician (datu) were sculpted only by the South Pakpak (who probably invented them), the western Toba (the rare ‘couples’ – horseman and seated woman – seen on Samosir Island are very late) and the Simalungun, where their appearance is very different to this one.

I did several field studies between 1974 and 1998 to identify certain styles specific to the magiciansculptors (datu panggana) of the Pakpak, Simsim, Pakpak Kalasan (previously unknown) and western Toba subgroups. Stone equestrian portraits (mejan) of chiefs are usually accompanied by portraits of their wives, depicted seated, nude or, later, wearing a sarong.

The man’s mount is often, as here, a singa, a mythological monster representing a god of the subterranean world, Raja Padoha (or Naga Padoha), a kind of giant horned snake. The flowing lines of this and the following sculpture (the wife of this raja, whose rank is attested by her armband) are specific to the mountainous region between the coast and Pusuk, where the benzoin and camphor, which once made the fortune of the Barus, was produced since Antiquity. The style of the highland Barus is incontestably derived from that of the Pakpak Kalasan, who are separated from the Pakpak Simsim by a mountain range and interspersed in the west Toba region. Their clans (less than a dozen) were all founded by a chief from a Toba clan.

Nevertheless, they claim (like the Pakpak Simsim) to have received, some fifty generations (four to five hundred years) ago, the teaching of an elderly sage from India called Guru Kalasan, who taught them to cremate their dead. Thus, instead of the large sarcophagi containing bones of the Toba and Simalungun, they have small urns for the ashes, which are placed in front of equestrian statues, many of which have disappeared. Sometimes the mount is a horse or an elephant. Here, it is a singa, recognisable by its long curved tongue, which some early travellers mistook for a trunk.

Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller
Arts of Africa and Oceania. Highlights from the Musée Barbier-Mueller, musée Barbier-Mueller & Hazan (eds.), 2007: p. 258.

EFFIGY PORTRAIT OF THE WIFE OF A CHIEF

Type: Stone Sculpture

Classification: Sculpture

Name: EFFIGY PORTRAIT OF THE WIFE OF A CHIEF
Region: Insular South-East Asia
Where it was made: Indonesia. Sumatra, Barus region (coastal harbour in the Indian Ocean)
Culture: Batak, Toba subgroup
Time period: 19th Century
Materials: Stone
Dimension: 92 cm (height)
Object ID: INV. 3138

Collection:

BARBIER-MUELLER MUSEUM OF GENEVA
Rue Jean-Calvin, 10, 1204 Genève

Descriptions:

The Batak Toba, Pakpak and Simalungun have two kinds of anthropomorphic statues: those depicting high-ranking men and women (sculpted during their lifetime or after death), and the pangulubalang, which have powerful defensive and offensive magic powers and were often sculpted to defend themselves from those of an enemy village.

The Batak Karo probably had small stonepangulubalang but no effigy of a chief has yet been seen. The same seems to be true of the two last Batak groups in the south, the Angkola and Mandailing, Islamised for almost two centuries.

The history of this portrait of a noblewoman is probably the same as the statue of Ronggur ni Ari, wife of Raja Ranjo Simanjuntak which I saw and photographed several times before 1988 at Huta Parik Sinombah, near Barus. It was sold by the villagers around 1990, reappeared on the international art market in 1993, when it was acquired by us, and is now in the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris.

This woman of Pakpak Simsim origin must indeed have been remarkable as her husband, who commissioned the work, did not have his equestrian statue sculpted. And, like this unknown woman, she is wearing her hair in a chignon with a hole in it. The first time I saw Ronggur ni Ari beneath her banyan tree, she had a bouquet of sacred leaves in her hair, placed in this hole, which was made for this precise purpose.

Both female statues were undoubtedly carved by two extremely gifted local datu panggana. We know of other sculptures within a limited radius, identical in style, without the squarer face and heavy jaw of the human depictions of the Pakpak and (later) Toba in the Lake Toba region. They have a characteristically very curved back, originally painted with symbolic motifs.

Over the last twenty years many Batak stone monuments have been destroyed due to lack of protection. They are seen as hindrances to the Islamisation of villages who still honour their ancestors and observe traditional customs.

Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller
Arts of Africa and Oceania. Highlights from the Musée Barbier-Mueller, musée Barbier-Mueller & Hazan (eds.), 2007: p. 261.

THE TEACHER AGASTYA

The teacher Agastya
Object ID: AK-MAK-238



Collection:
Rijksmuseum, The Masterpieces and Infocentre
(The New Rijksmuseum)
Jan Luijkenstraat 1, 1071 CJ Amsterdam

Type: Sculpture
Materials: Andesite
Measurements: 36 cm, 100 cm, 50 cm
Creator name: Anonymous
Where it was made: Indonesia; Central Java; the Kedu Plain
Time period: 09th Century
Function: Worship

Acquisition:
Long-term loan from the Association of Friends of Asian Art (VVAK), purchased from J.G. Huyser, a collector from The Hague, in 1936

Copyright Acknowledgements:
Owner Vereniging van Vrienden der Aziatische Kunst Museum Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Credit line

Why this is a masterpiece:
Assuming an upright pose and exuding calm and authority, this statue of Agastya is not daunting, as befits a teacher. Agastya is an old man, as can be seen by his beard and his thickset figure.

Details of this kind ensure that this delicately worked statue clearly conveys the hallmarks of the deity it represents to the worshipper. It is a convincing example of 9th-century Central Javanese sculpture.

History of the Object:
Statues of Agastya, the divine teacher, always stood in the southern alcove of temples dedicated to Shiva, who was the most important god during Indonesia’s Hindu-Buddhist period (8th-16th century). Temples to Shiva, and statues of Agasya, were found in abundance at the time.