To reach Kerinci you get on one of the half dozen or so daily buses which ply the 277 kms. between Padang and Sungai Penuh and you take the coast road down as far as Tapan, a journey which takes on a good day about eight or nine hours. At Tapan the road divides. One can carry on parallel to the coast in the direction of Moko-Moko or one can branch off into the mountains beginning the climb to reach Kerinci. It takes another three or four hours, if the going is good and there have not been any landslips, to arrive at Koto Limau Sering, the pass 1500m. above sea-level from which one begins the descent into the Kerinci valley.
On a clear day in the early morning, which is when the buses usually reach Kerinci, as suddenly a bend in the road brings it into view, one gets every now and again impressive glimpses of the panorama of the valley. At the northern end of it the peak of the volcanic Gunung Kerinci dominates the landscape and at the southern end about 50 kms. away lies the expanse of Lake Kerinci. From high up in the mountains it is easy to discern the clusters of villages down in the plain, houses set closely together with corrugated zinc roofs, some of them partly hidden by clumps of coconut trees, one village separated from another by areas of rice-field, lush green or golden yellow depending on the time of year one comes.
The valley was formed by a subsidence in the Bukit Barisan range of mountains which stretches the length of the west coast of Sumatra and thus lies in a cleft between two watersheds: on the western side the streams and rivers run down to the nearby west coast, and the waters of the mountains along the eastern perimeter of the valley including the outlet of the lake, flow into the tributaries of the Batang Hari which after a long course debouches into the Straits of Malacca. The valley is 700 m. above sea-level so that although it lies only 1 degree 30' - 2 degrees 30' south of the equator the climate is pleasant. The favourable climates within the region combined with the extremely fertile soils of the alluvial plain and the accumulated humus of the hillsides, as well as an average annual rainfall of 2000 mm. distributed among wet and dry months, make Kerinci an agriculturally rich area ideally suited for the cultivation of a variety of crops. Rice is grown in the valley and average yields are relatively high: 4 tonnes. (padi). per hectare from traditional varieties. On the neighbouring hillsides the principal crops are coffee (Robusta), cloves and cinnamon, all of which at one time or another in the last sixty years have commanded high prices on the export market. A variety of vegetables and fruit is also grown, but mainly for the local market.
The people who reside in the valley appear to have migrated there over the centuries from the surrounding areas. Isolated as it is, and difficult of access, it is the ideal place of refuge for communities and individuals seeking a haven. Historical traditions related in oral accounts and in documents written down in an indigenous Indic script speak of migrants from Minangkabau coming there from the north and residing in settlements north of the lake. In south Kerinci different traditions describe origins in South Sumatra. This mixing of different peoples in the area has led, as one might expect, to a heterogeneity in the culture of the region, which is sometimes belied by the accounts of observers who tend to simplification in their descriptions and speak of Kerinci as though it were a culturally homogeneous region. This has led some writers (van Vollenhoven) to say that it lies within the adatrechtskring (adat law sphere) of South Sumatra, while others (Willinck) speak of it as part of the Minangkabau rantau area. To avoid being misled it is important to bear in mind the diversity which exists within the region.
One mark of that diversity is the large number of local dialects which flourish in Kerinci and which differ considerably from village to village. The basic language of all the dialects is Malay, but there is evidence of borrowings from Minangkabau and Javanese. The borrowed Minangkabau lexical items predominate in the north and the Javanese in the south as one would expect. To one coming from outside Kerinci it is very difficult to pick up any of the dialects, and although one's ear gets attuned to it after a long period of residence, it remains very hard to use a dialect actively in conversation. Thus, speaking to outsiders, Kerinci people will use either Minangkabau, the language of the market place, or Malay Indonesian which many still call Bahasa Melayu Tinggi (High Malay). When Kerinci people from different villages converse they try to imitate the dialect and accent of the person whom they are addressing and this frequently leads to highly comical results (Karimi (1969) gives some amusing examples.). The peculiarities of dialects, with special mention made of the unintelligibility of that spoken in Pulau Tengah, are in fact a perennial topic of conversation of the people, who delight in word play, discussion of language and the use of allusive metaphor in everyday speech. Those who find it difficult to conceive that a Malay dialect can be as complex as I make out may care to consult the thorough phonological analysis of the Sungai Penuh dialect carried out by Usman and Prentice (1978).
Despite this diversity of culture, however, there have in the last hundred years or so been various unifying features of development which have brought the people of the region to be conscious of a Kerinci identity which unites them. Perhaps the most important of these has been the universal acceptance of Islam. Reports suggest that even as late as the middle of the nineteenth century there were still villages which had not been converted to Islam. Furthermore, of the converted villages some, it appears, were more religious than others and there is some slight evidence of there having been some inter-village skirmishes concerning religion at about that period. By the turn of the century, however, the whole region seems to have been converted and people from Kerinci were at that time regularly making the pilgrimage to Mecca, sometimes stopping over in Malaya for long periods to earn enough for their fares.
The second common experience to unite the people of Kerinci in their sentiments was the imposition of Dutch rule and the administrative unification of the area. Before the Dutch entered Kerinci in 1903 the region was divided into a number of loose confederations each comprising several villages. Although there existed a nominal bond between these confederations which were all in theory subject to the suzerainity of the court of Jambi, in practice not only do confederations appear to have had little to do with one another, even villages within confederations were more intent on preserving their own individuality than on combining in any joint action. When the Dutch did send an expeditionary force into the region on the advice of Snouck Hurgronje (see 1965:2015-2031) the consequence was that, although there was some attempt to present a united front, this was very half-hearted. In fact it seems that while some villages were fighting the Dutch with the fervour of religious enthusiasm others were welcoming the Europeans as a stabilising force in the region. These hoped the Dutch would bring an end to inter-village disputes and introduce law and order into the area which was renowned for its lawlessness.
Although the Dutch recognised the differences of cultural traditions within the region and acknowledged this by creating sub-districts distinguishing north (Ulu) and south (Hilir) Kerinci, the effect of the colonial administration was to create a sense of ethnic Kerinci identity. This was reinforced in the following years when, in the wake of the Dutch, people from other ethnic groups came into the region as soldiers, administrators and traders. Thus people in Kerinci began to distinguish themselves from Minangkabau, Chinese, Batak, Ambonese etc.
One thing which surprised the Dutch when they arrived was the size of the population. Relying on reports which had reached their administrators on the West Coast they had estimated the population to be roundabout 200,000. In fact, they found that it was nearer 50,000 which in an area they calculated to be c.4300 sq.km. worked out to be a population density of 13 per sq.km. Some idea of the rapid population growth which has occurred since then can be acquired by a comparison with some recent figures. According to the national census conducted in 1971 the population had by then reached 187,074 and calculating on the basis of a rate of natural increase of 2.3% it was reckoned this figure would have reached 246,255 by 1981. The population doubling time is about 33 years. (This is based on using the base year of 1913 when the exact figure for the population according to a Dutch census was 59,886). The density of the population differs markedly, however, from area to area within the region and to see the position in perspective it is necessary to look at a more detailed breakdown of the statistics.
Kerinci is now one of six kabupaten (residencies, districts) in the province of Jambi, and within Kerinci there are six kecamatan (administrative units). The population densities by kecamatan are as follows:
Table 1 : Population Density in Kerinci by Kecamatan
_ Kecamatan Population Total Area (sq.km) Density (per sq.km) _ Gunung Kerinci 44,637 1,000 44 Air Hangat 38,103 722 51 Sungai Penuh 44,939 520 85 Sitinjau Laut 19,871 355 50 Danau Kerinci 29,779 768 38 Gunung Raya 18,960 835 23 Total 196,289 4,000 49 _Source: Official kabupaten statistics for 1973 (July)
Since figures for population density in isolation are not very useful for giving one an impression of the pressure on land it is necessary to complete the picture with some statistics on land use.
The most prosperous kecamatan is Gunung Raya which has the lowest population density and the largest amount of upland per inhabitant. This kecamatan lies in the extreme south of Kerinci beyond the main valley. The lowland area available for rice cultivation is limited but the prosperity of the people derives from the extensive coffee gardens and cinnamon plantations which they cultivate. The poorest area lies in the kecamatan of Sungai Penuh.
Table 2 : Population Density in Kerinci in Relation to Types of Land
_
Kecamatan Area (ha) Settlement Agr.Used Lowland per Upland per
Area(ha) Area(ha)* inhab.(ha) inhab.(ha)
_
G.Kerinci 123,408 1,300 24,727 0.09 0.45
Air Hangat 36,296 1,235 12,433 0.15 0.19
Sungai P. 37,386 1,195 8,291 0.06 0.13
S. Laut 12,340 650 4,350 0.11 0.14
D.Kerinci 60,253 1,370 21,937 0.28 0.49
G. Raya 93,284 611 12,887 0.06 0.62
Total 362,967 6,362 84,625 0.12 0.32
_
Source: Adapted from Sumatra Regional Planning Study 1973
Notes: There is some reason to doubt the figure for lowland per inhabitant in the kecamatan of Danau Kerinci where the compilers of the statistics seem to have confused swamp with rice-fields. The upland area refers to permanently cultivated gardens. Contrary to what is found in most Southeast Asian mountain-dwelling communities there is no shifting cultivation in Kerinci.
*The agriculturally used area refers entirely to smallholdings. There is a large tea estate nationally owned in the kecamatan of Gunung Kerinci in the Kayu Aro region but this (size: 3000 ha.) has not been shown in the above statistics.
Because of the great potential for agricultural diversification in the region Kerinci has always been in recent times a relatively prosperous area. Obsidian flakes frequently found on the hillsides and evidence of a neolithic settlement in Muak just south of the lake (see a report on some excavations by van der Hoop) suggest that the earliest inhabitants of the area resided in the mountains rather than down in the valley and archaeological remains of a much later date, c.l2th century (Bronson et al. 1973), found at Benik some thousand feet above the lake, give the impression that it must only have been in recent times that people began to clear the valley for rice cultivation. My impression from trying to make sense of oral accounts of the settling of villages in north Kerinci is that lowland rice cultivation was introduced into the area about five hundred years ago by migrants from the Minangkabau Highlands but I have no hard evidence to support this.
Sporadic references to Kerinci in European records throughout the latter half of the seventeenth century right up to the beginning of the nineteenth describe it as a region to which political refugees escaped after being defeated in power struggles in neighbouring sultanates, and secondly as an area renowned for its gold. This last fact made it a place of great interest to European trading companies whose appetite was perhaps whetted by Valentijn's statement (Valentijn 1726:6) that the best gold in Sumatra in fact came from Kerinci. British officers stationed at some of the trading posts on the west coast also mentioned the presence of Kerinci traders there who brought down jungle products from the hills, in particular cinnamon. At one stage in 1766 there was even some talk about establishing a post in Kerinci itself for the collection of cinnamon (SFR 1766:vo1.74:22 Feb., 18 Oct and 15 Nov.) but there were problems of staffing and the venture never came off.
The documents kept as pusaka (heirlooms) in villages in Kerinci also give us some idea of the society of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Fortunately, a Dutch scholar, Dr.P.Voorhoeve, was given access to all these documents in 1941 and was able to transcribe them. The transcriptions remained lost for a number of years but turned up again in 1975. (For the history of what happened see Voorhoeve 1970 and Watson 1976.) A number of the documents consist of letters of instruction from royal princes in Jambi and Indrapura. The rulers of the latter appear to have valued the connection with Kerinci because of the possibilities of trade which it opened up, and letters exist, for example, from the Sultan of Indrapura requesting the people of Kerinci to bring gold and rope and jungle products down to the coast where they can trade with men from the Company who have brought special cloths ( Tambo Kerinci 1941:136). The Jambi princes, on the other hand, appear to have been concerned with the settlement of inter-village disputes, the regular payment of tribute and the establishment of Islam. Taken as a whole these records present a picture of a region consisting of a number of autonomous confederations, with a prosperous people accustomed to regular trading relations on the coast, and living in organised settlements, who were just beginning to come into contact with Islam at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The first detailed accounts of Kerinci date from the beginning of the nineteenth century and were written by the leaders of two British expeditions which had set out from Bencoolen with the intention of finding out more about the interior of the island. (Barnes 1818; and Campbell as reported by Marsden 1811). Their descriptions, which deal principally with south Kerinci, show us a society of small village settlements comprising long-houses in the vicinity of which were small gardens where maize and various vegetables were grown. Much time seems to have been spent trading, the chief items which the mountain communities sought being salt, cloth and iron, for which they exchanged jungle products. Barnes also says that Kerinci people acted as middlemen in the opium trade getting the opium from Jambi and then taking it down to the west coast.
Fifty years later in the first Dutch reports on Kerinci ( Koloniale Verslagen 1876, 1878, 1880; and Netscher 1880; and TNAG 1876 Bijlage I) we find that the trading pattern has changed slightly in so far as, although it is the same items which are being sought at the coast, now Kerinci traders are bringing down coffee and tobacco. The characteristic pattern of socio-economic organisation which emerged at that time consisted of two complementary types of agricultural economy: the rice economy where the rice-crop was intended for subsistence and the cultivation of the crop was conducted according to various techniques and ritual practices established by tradition; and the cash-crop economy carried out as a secondary activity for the acquisition of goods obtainable through trade at the coast. One other important item of trade was cattle, reared in Kerinci and then driven to the coast or down to south Sumatra on journeys which took several weeks.
As a consequence of their observation of the prosperity of Kerinci traders at the coast and the accounts of the latter of their homeland the Dutch became intrigued by what they referred to as the secret valley of Kerinci. Although they tried to lead expeditions there in the nineteenth century - the famous Midden-Sumatra expedition was in fact originally intended for an exploration of Kerinci (TNAG 1876) - it was, however not until 1903 that a Dutch military force entered the valley and took it over, in the words of the military commander, in order to add another pearl to the crown of the Dutch queen. (For the Kerinci version of this war with the Dutch see Watson 1978; for a potted Dutch version see Mededeelingen 1915:46-58).
Accounts of Kerinci written either by occasional visitors to the area (C.L. 1912, Witkamp 1923, Lamster 1930, Adams 1942) or by officials in their reports ( Memories van Overgave ) show that during the colonial period the people of Kerinci came very quickly to accept the new socio-economic institutions introduced by the colonial regime. The adaptations of indigenous legal and political institutions at a local level, which the Dutch brought about in pursuance of a policy of indirect rule, were, it appears, highly successful. Even the introduction of a system of taxation seems to have been accepted without any of the troubles which accompanied this step in West Sumatra. The reason why colonial rule was welcomed was that it brought stability to the area which, to judge from several accounts ( Koloniale Verslagen ), had been plagued by a certain amount of banditry and intervillage disputes which had made trading difficult and had been obstacles to the economic expansion of the region. By improving the whole infra-structure of the society, and in particular by building a road which in 1922 at last brought Kerinci within relatively easy reach of the coast, the Dutch laid a firm foundation for the very rapid growth of the economy which brought instant prosperity to a community rich in natural resources.
Despite attempts by the Dutch to make rice a market commodity it continued to be tree crops which attracted the people of the region as cash-crops. The replacing of Arabica coffee with the more high yielding and disease resistant Robusta round about 1918 heralded a period of economic boom in Kerinci from which people in north Kerinci, in particular, benefited, and which lasted until the depression years in the thirties. In fact this period of twenty years prior to the Japanese occupation proved to be a gentle induction of Kerinci into dependency on the international market economy. When the depression occurred, however, because rice was still at that time very important in the socio-economic vision of the villagers, the reversion to what was more or less a subsistence economy for a number of years until the international economy recovered did not bring all that much hardship. There was still a surplus of rice in the granaries.
The experience of these years - of a period of boom followed by depression as a result of external economic and political factors - became characteristic of the economy of the region as Kerinci became more closely linked to the outside world. The recovery of the late thirties preceded the Japanese occupation during which the emphasis was on food production. Then followed the Revolutionary years between 1945 - 1950 when periodic shortages of essential items such as salt led to a return of the quasi-barter economy of the pre-colonial era with villagers taking rice over the mountains to Jambi and exchanging it for cloth. The fifties saw a resurgence of activity in the coffee market and this led to a rehabilitation of the small-holdings up in the hills. The outbreak of the PRRI1 rebellion brought another check to the development of the region which only began to grow once more in the late sixties as a consequence of an unprecedented sharp rise in the price of cinnamon. Almost 50% of the world's cinnamon comes from Kerinci and the upward trend of prices made fortunes overnight for those who had planted cinnamon trees years previously without ever expecting such a windfall. After a period of three or four years of high prices, however, as a result of what appears to have been manipulation by the buyers, prices dropped dramatically to about a tenth of what they had been.
Fortunately, at about the same time, coffee and clove prices rose equally dramatically, and although this was no help to farmers who had incautiously banked everything on cinnamon, the economy of the region as a whole expanded very rapidly. This recent expansion of the regional economy has run parallel to the development of the national economy as a whole which in the last ten years has opened its doors wide to foreign imports. The people of Kerinci have thus been able to use their new wealth not only for the expenses of the pilgrimage, but also for the purchase of a variety of consumer goods of which the most conspicuous have been in recent years: building materials, televisions and Japanese motor-bikes.
It would, however, be wrong to give the impression that the development of Kerinci over the last seventy five years has led only to the creation of a community of rich but ignorant farmers, which is often the image which their Minangkabau neighbours have of Kerinci people. From the earliest years of colonial rule there was always a great interest in education, perhaps engendered by a prior Islamic tradition of seeking religious knowledge by discipleship to Islamic teachers. The families who were first to take advantage of the educational opportunities which the Dutch introduced were those who lived in the villages around the town of Sungai Penuh who came into frequent contact not only with the Dutch but also with the immigrant Minangkabau. The status of civil servants in the community was very high and it was with the desire to enter their ranks that boys were eager to get a formal education. Although it was some time before the idea of an academic education and the career in the civil service captured the imagination of all, the pioneering steps taken by one or two individuals in the twenties and thirties meant that in the fifties there was a steady stream of young men and women anxious to go into higher education and pursue their studies in universities in Padang and in towns in Java. Consequently, there is today an impressive list of people from Kerinci who have made successful careers in the civil service and in the professions.
The research on which this thesis is based was carried out in the village of Pondok Tinggi. It lies on the edge of the township of Sungai Penuh which is the administrative and commercial centre of Kerinci. The central position of the village has meant that its development over the past sixty years has brought it increasingly into the orbit of the town into which it has been geographically and socially incorporated. Many migrant traders who have settled with their families in Kerinci have bought houses in Pondok Tinggi. A number of school children from other villages in Kerinci who have come to Sungai Penuh to continue their high-school education board in houses in the village. Several senior civil servants from other regions in Indonesia who have been posted to Kerinci also rent houses there. The village is therefore much more than a community of farmers following their traditional agricultural pursuits. There are to be found traders, civil servants, teachers, artisans, market-sellers, mechanics, casual labourers and others, and the village is the hub of numerous and diverse activities combining typical patterns of organisation of both urban and rural communities.
In the Dutch census of 1913 the population of Pondok Tinggi was given as follows:
_ Men Women Children total 437 488 608 1533 _Source: Mededeelingen .
In 1976 according to village records the population was:
_ Males Females Total 4412 4881 9293 _
Unfortunately the 1976 statistics do not distinguish between the immigrant and native populations. Rough surveys of the twenty two neighbourhoods (known as RT) into which the village is divided for administrative purposes suggest that between a third and a half of the population comprises immigrant families who have settled in Kerinci over the last sixty years. Most of them are Minangkabau coming from the Pariaman area of the north coast of West Sumatra and from areas in the Minangkabau Highlands around Batu Sangkar and Solok.
The centre of the village is the site of the location of the original settlement and lies about 800 yards uphill in a south-westerly direction from the market centre of Sungai Penuh. The original buildings of the village were long-houses belonging to the matrilineal descent groups which came and settled there. The dwelling area of the long-house is on the first storey reached by steps which is above a ground level space used for storage and sometimes for housing domestic animals. The long-house consists of individual sections belonging to separate households each having private access to their homes, but with a small door in the common partition between sections which can be opened to connect the households. In the centre of the village known as the dusun there are several rows of these long-houses called larik some of which are dilapidated, but some of which have been attractively modernised in the past few years with electricity installed but no running water. Formerly, people went to one of the many nearby streams for water, but since the village has grown so rapidly the running water is foully polluted and in the last six years wells have been sunk at strategic points in the village. On the edges of the dusun individual houses of a more modern type have been built, but little thought has been given to spacing between houses and as a consequence houses are far too close to one another and conditions are cramped and unhygienic.
The most important building of the village is the Mesjid Agung, the Great Mosque, which is deservedly Pondok Tinggi's pride. It was completed in 1902 and is a monument to the skills of the villagers of pre-colonial times. The structure about 100 ft. high is tiered like the famous mosque of Demak in Java and was constructed entirely of wood without nails being used. The inside of the mosque consists of a frame of huge upright timbers and beams which have been beautifully carved with floral designs which appear to be pre-Islamic. These designs are also found on some of the long-houses in the village.
There are four named descent groups in Pondok Tinggi known as lurah :2 Rio Sangaro, Rio Mandaro, Rio Pati and Rio Temenggung. These names are clearly Javanese titles of the kind honorifically bestowed by the Jambi royal family on village elders in Kerinci, and presumably they refer to eponymous ancestors, but the significance of this is now lost, and for the people today these are simply the names of the four lurah . It is difficult to know what conventional anthropological label to attach to these lurah . None of the terms clan, lineage or phratry seems entirely appropriate. The groups can be further segmented into perut , each lurah comprising three perut , except Rio Temenggung which contains only two. Perut may be further sub-divided into pintu , but the number and composition of the latter is uncertain to villagers. Older people will usually know, not always, who is a member of their pintu . In other words people do not know how they are related to each other at the level of lurah , nor perut , nor even at the pintu level. Marriage prohibitions appear only to prevent those who are said to be close from marrying, and as far as common membership of a matrilineal descent group goes, this seems only to refer to those who share a MMM.
Nevertheless, these are corporate descent groups. They act corporately and hold corporate property. There are elected officials who are responsible for the day to day running of the lurah and the most important of these is the nenek-mamak , the representative of the lurah , who is in fact known as the Rio of his lurah. Thus there are four individual representatives referred to as: Rio Sangaro, Rio Mandaro, Rio Pati and Rio Temenggung. These names, then, refer to both the lurah and the individual nenek-mamak . To complicate matters further, within each lurah there are two types of hereditary honorific title: Depati and Rio. The number of people holding these titles appears to have expanded over the years. It seems that the original settlers of Pondok Tinggi, who were in fact the Rio Sangaro lurah who, according to tradition, came from Sungai Penuh, were given the title Depati Payung. When other lurah settled there subsequently they at first shared this title but then over the years they acquired individual titles of their own which retained the original Depati Payung in the name to which special suffixes were added. It seems that each perut was eventually accorded a separate title. Furthermore, in addition to the title of Depati there was also a more Junior title of Rio. Subsequently, pintu too acquired titles and sometimes even within pintu there were more than one Depati. These hereditary titles pass from MD to ZS. Current holders of the Depati titles are considered the most authoritative men within the lurah and in traditional forums they are accorded the greatest respect.
There are two ways in which membership of a lurah is acquired, that is to say there are for men two types of membership. In the first place all villagers are through their mothers members of the latter's lurah at birth. The men of the lurah are its anak jantan (male children) and the women its anak betino (female children). Only anak jantan may hold the title of Rio and Depati and become office holders in the lurah . Women remain in their natal lurah throughout their lives, but by virtue of his marriage a man who marries a woman of another lurah becomes an anak betino in his wife's lurah . As an anak betino he is expected to be of assistance to the lurah , giving his services whenever the lurah is involved in a cooperative enterprise. In return it is the responsibility of the anak jantan of the lurah to see to the welfare of the man and his wife and children. It is a system of reciprocity, of rights and obligations, upon which, ideally, the social organisation of the community turns.
In fact, the organisation of the lurah as I have described it above may be considered a replica of the ideal form of kinship relations as they exist within the household at a domestic level. The role which the anak jantan of the lurah assume, for example, as the guardians and protectors of the anak betino is similar to the role of the in-laws or, in particular, the mother's brothers and the wife's brothers, towards the in-marrying husband. The idiom describing the relationships is identical, and certainly within the vision of the villagers the institution of the lurah is seen as an extension of kinship relations into the wider sphere of village government.
Leaving aside for the moment whether this identification between the lurah and the domestic household reflects a genuine expansion of kinship relations or whether it in fact masks what are different orders of control and organisation, let me describe briefly the fundamental principles of kinship in Pondok Tinggi.
Descent from both mother and father is recognised, but it is descent through the female line which is particularly emphasised and determines most of the important institutions of kinship in the village. Marriage is initially uxorimatrilocal. Landed property devolves principally on female heirs. Honorific titles pass from mother's brother to sister's son. Guardianship of a family's interests is in the hands of the mother's brother, the mamak , who plays a role of central importance as the mediator between the family and society at large. The ideal principles according to which the society operates are matrifocal, constantly stressing a man's links with his mother, his sister and the children of the latter. In these circumstances the in-marrying husband, the father of the grandchildren of the household, is an honoured guest treated with respect and consideration, but he is in an ambivalent position because, although dwelling under the same roof as his wife and children, he does not think of the house as his home, and there are rigid constraints upon the way he behaves and expresses himself. Details of this will be found in the body of the thesis.
My first visit to Pondok Tinggi was at the end of 1972, and subsequently I have returned there several times, the last occasion being for fifteen months from August 1978 - December 1979 when I did extensive fieldwork. From the very first I was fascinated by issues of kinship. I too had expected that the situation in Kerinci would resemble that of Minangkabau very closely so I was surprised by the differences which quickly presented themselves. I began by collecting genealogies not because of any firm belief in the "genealogical method" but because this seemed the best way to learn about individuals and their families and gave me a set of references when I wished to talk about issues of kinship with people. One thing which immediately became clear when collecting this information was that there was not much genealogical depth to people's memories: most could recall members of the fourth generation above them. And yet the descent group structure seemed fairly clear-cut. How, then, was membership of the group defined? This question led logically to an investigation of the marriage rules and prohibitions and from these I quickly went on to learn about property and inheritance.
In the course of several conversations and in discussion of particular cases it was often mentioned that the situation now was very different from what it had been: that, for example, sons demanded more from the parental legacy than customary law strictly allowed them. Other people mentioned that a mamak was not such an authoritative figure as he had been in the past. There was in general a feeling that adat and village traditions had declined in importance. This type of regret for the passing of idealised former times is of course a common phenomenon and my anthropological training prepared me for what I encountered. I was thus able to perceive that underlying this constant reference to former times was a curious ambivalence. Although people spoke with pride and nostalgia about past traditions it was clear from what they said that some of the old ways had been irksome and to their present way of thinking absurd. It was at this point that I thought about doing more detailed research into social change and the passing of traditional institutions to try to get some understanding of what precisely had occurred.
The difficulty which scholars have found in studying social development in any community is that it never seems possible to date precisely when significant change occurs. The peculiar circumstances in Kerinci, however, have made the history more accessible to investigation. Although there had, of course, been contact between Kerinci and the outside world for centuries, the valley was, until the beginning of this century, remote and isolated. Very few people seem to have visited it from neighbouring areas. This situation changed dramatically with the arrival of the Dutch. It therefore seemed to me possible to concentrate on the period of the last seventy five years as a time when changes had occurred in a sudden convulsive fashion within the space of two generations and within living memory. My intention was to plot what had happened, paying attention to historical events which had affected the community and charting the overall socio-economic development. In this way I hoped, ultimately, to be in a position to assess the validity of those statements about the decline of village institutions.
The structure of the thesis mirrors the progress of my discoveries, moving from one theme to another in much the same way as I was led to them in the course of my researches. The starting point is a description of those aspects of relationships between kin which first struck me as interesting and puzzling and which prompted me to try to discover the principles of organisation underlying what I perceived in the flux of day to day experience.
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