This article is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the 12th IAHA [International Association of Historians of Asia] Conference, University of Hong Kong, 24–28 June 1991. The issues discussed here are explored more fully in my Ph.D. diss., “Prophets and Followers in Batak Millenarian Responses to the Colonial Order: Parmalim, Na Siak Bagi and Parhudamdam, 1890–1930” (The Australian National University, 1988). I am very grateful to B. Dahm, G. Daws, J. Fox, R. de Iongh, Y. Ishii, M. van Langenberg, D. Marr, A. Reid, L. Schreiner, A.A. Sitompul and S. Situmorang for their comments and advice.

¹ I generally follow the definition of a “millenarian” movement as conceived by Y. Talmon and N. Cohn, who use the term not in a specific and limited historical sense, but in the wider sense of characterizing religious movements that expect imminent, total, ultimate, this-worldly, collective salvation [Talmon, Y., “Millenarism”, in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. Sills, D.L., vol. 10 (New York: The Macmillan Company and The Free Press, 1968), p. 349Google Scholar, and Cohn, N., “Medieval Millenarism: Its Bearing on the Comparative Study of Millenarian Movements”, in Millennial Dreams in Action: Essays in Comparative Study, ed. Thrupp, S.L. (The Hague: Mouton, 1962), p. 31]Google Scholar. Though “messianic” movements, which arose where history was seen as a series of recurrent cycles, have little of the linear quality of many European millenary movements, we can use the term “millenarism” to refer to them because their prophetic leaders endeavoured to initiate followers into the source of power appearing to cause such a total transformation.

² This does not mean that millenarian movements arose only in colonial situations or because of foreign impact. Such movements were also evident in the pre-colonial period without foreign influence, when established socio-cultural conditions were distorted by disasters such as plagues, devasting fires, recurrent long droughts or by the unjustified assumption of power [Kartodirdjo, S., “Agrarian Radicalism in Java: Its Setting and Development”, in Culture and Politics in Indonesia, ed. Holt, C. (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1972), p. 75, and Talmon, “Millenarism” p. 354]. There are two main reasons why I have chosen to study millenarian movements under colonial regimes or foreign influence. The first reason is that by dealing with cross-cultural millenarian movements, I would like to consider through what millenarian vision prophets were able to draw people into movements in order to explain the role of prophets better. The other is because there are abundant source materials about millenarian movements during the colonial era.Google Scholar

³ Scott, J. C., The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976).Google Scholar

⁴ Adas, M., Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against the European Colonial Order (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1979), pp. 80–91.Google Scholar

⁵ Ibid., pp. 92–121, and J. M. van der Kroef, “Messianic Movements in the Celebes, Sumatra, and Borneo”, in Millennial Dreams, ed. Thrupp, pp. 117–20,

⁶ This does not mean that millenarian movements were mere retreats into the traditional world. Even when millenarian visions put great stress on nativistic elements, these movements endeavoured to keep some aspects of their indigenous culture alive in new situations or revitalize these traditions by giving them new meanings. In this sense, millenarian movements were new attempts to establish new world views by taking both the indigenous and the externals into consideration. See for instance, Adas, Prophets, pp. xxvi-xxvii, and Talmon, “Millenarism” p. 353.

⁷ Kartodirdjo, S., “Agrarian Radicalism”, pp. 78–82 and Protest Movements in Rural Java: A Study of Agrarian Unrest in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

⁸ Adas, Prophets, p. xx and 112.

⁹ Warneck, J., Die Religion der Batak Ein Paradigma für die animistischen Religionen des Indischen Archipels (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1909), pp. 109–113.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Related works include Adas, Prophets, and Popkin, S.L., The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1979), pp. 252–66Google Scholar. The former still needs to explain why prophets were important in these movements, and the latter uses very general terms that are applicable not only to millenarian movements but also to other sociopolitical movements. In this paper, I will not refer to unorganized protest movements in which no prophetic leader appeared; however, so long as existing co-ordination systems continue to function, leaderless opposition is possible [see Popkin, The Rational Peasant, p. 266, and Scott, J.C., Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985)].Google Scholar

¹¹ I exclude from millenarian leaders those who endeavoured to share the indigenous source of power through traditional ways or who endeavoured to gain access to the external source of power through external ways. When the traditional approach [to share the indigenous source of power through indigenous ways] collapsed in new situations, millenarian movements generally started. The latter pattern is a pure assimilation into a new power. Such adherence to traditional ways or to a new power, that caused no competitive situation between an indigenous power and an external power, inhibited people from engaging in millenarian activities. See Burridge, K.O.L., New Heaven New Earth: A Study of Millenarian Activities (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969), pp. 33–35.Google Scholar

¹² Proces-Verbaal of Guru Somalaing (Tarutung, 31 Jan. 1896), Indischen brief, 22 May 1896, no. 910/2, Verbaal 25/6/1896/96.

¹³ For instance, Waldemar, Testimony of Gayus Hutahaean (Pangururan, 2 Feb. 1922), V.E. Korn Collection, no. 454.

¹⁴ Since the main leaders of the earlier stages of the Parmalim movement were sentenced to exile by decision of the Governor-General of Netherlands India, their testimonies, which had first been sent to the Council of Netherlands India [in Batavia] from Tapanuli, were later sent to Netherlands Ministry of Colonies along with the Governor-General's decisions. These testimonies can be found in the Archives of the Ministry of Colonies in Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague.

¹⁵ Modigliani, E., Fra i Batacchi indipendenti (Roma: Società Geografica Italiana, 1892).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Most of them are stored in V.E. Korn Collection (no. 441 and 454) in Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Leiden.

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²⁸ Proces-Verbaal of Guru Somalaing.

²⁹ “De zendingsposten der Rijnsche zending in Silindoeng en Toba”, De Rijnsche Zending (1887), pp. 63–68; and Joustra, Batakspiegel, p. 258.

³⁰ Pilgram, G., Laban: Ein Lebensbild aus der Batak=Mission auf Sumatra (Barmen: Rheinischen Missíons-Gesellschaft, 1921), pp. 12–28; and “Eenige schetsen uit de Batta-zending”, De Rijnsche Zending (1883), p. 99.Google Scholar

³¹ Proces-Verbaal of Guru Somalaing.

³² Ibid.

³³ Ibid.; and de Boer, D.W.N., “De Permalirasekten van Oeloean, Toba en Habinsaran”, Tijdschrift voor het Binnenlandsch Bestuur 47 (1914): 382–83.Google Scholar

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⁴¹ Proces-Verbaal of Guru Somalaing.

⁴² Boer, “De Permalimsekten”, pp. 391–92.

⁴³ Ibid., pp. 382–84.

⁴⁴ Joustra, M., “Een bezoek aan de Rijnsche Zendelingen in Silindoeng en Toba”, Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap 43 (1899): 260.Google Scholar

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⁴⁶ Pohlig, P. to the Inspector of the Rheinischen Missions-Gesellschaft (Siantar, 28 Dec. 1891), B/f 34 (in Archiv der Vereinigte Evangelische Mission, Wuppertal).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ “De Batta-zending”, De Rijnsche Zending (1892), p. 195.

⁴⁸ The Governor-General's Decision of 29 December 1892, no. 3.

⁴⁹ “Aus der Battamission”, Berichte der Rheinischen Missions-Gesellschaft (1893), pp. 325–26.

⁵⁰ Joustra, M., “De Singa Mangaradja-figuur”, in Gedenkschrift voor het Koninklijk Instituut voor de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1926), p. 211.Google Scholar

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⁵³ “Extract uit het Register der Besluiten van den Gouverneur-Generaal van Nederlandsch-Indië” (Cipanas, 22 May 1896), Indischen brief, 22 May 1896, no. 910/2.

⁵⁴ For further details, see Hirosue, “Prophets and Followers”, pp. 160–212.

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