A CEREMONIAL STAFF "TUNGGAL PANALUAN"

Description:

Indonesia, Sumatra North, Lake Toba area, Batak, Toba-Batak, early 20th c.
174,5 cm
Very elaborate, fully carved staff of a high-ranking datu. The tunggal panaluan staff is a hardwood staff up to 180 cm long, which is richly carved over three quarters of its length. It is the ceremonial staff of a datu, a magician and shaman of the Batak people in the north of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Such a staff, which is said to have magical powers, is used in numerous ceremonies of the datu and is also his badge of rank. The grouped motifs, human and animal figures as well as mixed creatures singga, partly merge into one another and embody the ancestral line and their protective deities (singa) and their continuation through the descendants. The staff is crowned by a free-standing or riding figure or a carved human head. Each staff is specially made for a datu. The upper end of the staff is wrapped with strips of cloth that form a kind of turban. The prepared brain of a human sacrifice is said to have been placed in this ‘turban’ in the past. Studies of tunggal panaluan in European ethnological museums have not yet been able to confirm this. A long bundle of human hair protrudes from the ‘turban’. The datu of the Toba-Batak (known as the guru among the Indian and Muslim-influenced Karo-Batak) is a medicine man with magical powers and abilities, skilled in ‘white magic’, who has the task of preventing and curing illnesses. According to the Batak, illness is triggered by the loss of the soul (tondi), which is caused by the work of evil spirits, the capriciousness of a patient's tondi or the influence of an evil sorcerer. In addition to his function as a magical healer, he is also a fortune teller, oracle and clairvoyant, rainmaker and disperser of storms. The datu ensures the well-being of the social group by virtue of his access to the sphere of the gods and ancestors and is therefore a person of great prestige and dignity. The tunggal panaluan, which is used in almost all rituals, is one of the most important ritual objects of a datu and, along with the medicine horn, the most important external sign of his office. During the magical acts, the datu goes into a ritual trance and dances with the tunggal panaluan in his hand. The Batak have two types of ritual staffs: tunggal panaluan and tungkot malehat. They differ clearly in appearance, but whether they also differ in their magical function has not been conclusively clarified.
From an old German private collection, assembled in the 1950s - Minor traces of age, partly slightly chipped
Publ.: IFICAH (2018), "Die Verwandtschaft im Nacken", exhibition catalogue