Kinship and affinal relations among the Karo of North Sumatra

Abstract

The anthropological study of the Indonesian peoples is far from complete. Compared with what has been done in other areas, namely Africa, India, Australia, Melanesia and Polynesia, the state of the ethnography of the Indonesian peoples in general has been described by the doyen Dutch anthropologist, Fischer (1952: 57-8), as 'embarrassing'. This, to a certain extent, holds also true for the Batak, especially for the Karo, Simelungun and Pakpak. In addition to the various general ethnographic accounts already in existence, a number of adat-law studies concerning the Batak peoples have been made, the most important of which are the works of Vergouwen (1933), Ypes (1932), Enda Boemi (1925), Nasoetion (1943) and Keuning (1948). Of these Vergouwen's book dealing with the jural life of the Toba Batak ranks as one of the best of comprehensive legal studies of an Indonesian people. Ter Haar (1948: 238) wrote of this book that 'it might well be first if the sequence were dependent of the manner in which a forceful description of the sphere of adat law is joined to a treatment of typical problems of the adat law'.