Guardians of the Sacred Forest

“The mountains may not be destroyed, the valleys may not be damaged, What is long may not be cut short, what is short may not be lengthened, We must remain faithful to the ways of our ancestors." – Traditional Baduy verse

Written by Irfan Kortschak


For tourists, journalists, and anthropologists alike, the very idea of a people who live deep in the forest, excluding all outsiders, has a powerful fascination. A ‘Keep Out’ sign exerts an allure as powerful as the locked cupboard at the end of Bluebeard’s corridor, and for no better reason than that outsiders are not welcome. In our hearts, perhaps, each of us secretly believes we are special, and will be welcome at spectacles and events closed to ordinary mortals.

It was this fantasy that had led me, clambering up and down steep, slippery footpaths, past dry rice fields and through light secondary forest and bamboo glades, to a rickety looking bamboo bridge that creaked and swayed gently in the breeze. I sat, scowling and biting my nails, and wiping the sweat from my face with a hand filthy with mud.

I couldn’t cross this bridge, and not because it looked too rotten and fragile to bear my weight. At any rate, a fall would not have been the catastrophe in might have been elsewhere. The water in the stream was clean and pure, unsullied by the household waste that turns the banks of rivers elsewhere in Indonesia into fly-infested eyesores. But I scowled at the babbling brook, in no mood to be impressed by its song. For me, the river was just the boundary that separated the territory of the Inner Baduy from the outside world. On the other side, where I couldn’t go, lived a community whose members are required to maintain a stringent degree of ritual purity. And they didn’t want me anywhere near them.

It was nothing personal, nothing that I’d done. It was what I was, a foreigner, a city dweller, a luxury lover. For the Baduy, outsiders in general and foreigners in particular are a polluting influence, and are permitted to enter only rarely, by the grace of the custodians. Unsullied by the presence of outsiders, the sacred forest is protected by the ritually pure guardians of the sacred forest, at the centre of which lies the Arca Domas, an ancient megalithic site about which little is known.

Precisely because the Baduy turn their back on the world, refusing to explain or justify themselves, they exert a powerful attraction. Peering in through the cracks in the forest, outsiders strain to make sense of the incomprehensible by projecting their own fantasies and fears. For believers in magic, the Baduy are powerful wizards; for environmentalists, they are noble savages; for the religious, they are unrepentant pagans. Confused observers variously describe them as a lost tribe, aristocratic Hindu refugees, or the Amish of the East. Meanwhile, the Baduy continue to live their lives, entirely indifferent to whatever outsiders choose to believe.

While much remains a matter for conjecture, some facts are known for certain. Members of the innermost community live in one of three villages, Cikartawana, Cibeo, and Cikeusik, located on the forested foothills around Mt. Kendang, southeast of Rangkasbitung, in the province of Banten.

The beliefs of the Baduy require villagers to cultivate subsistence crops without hoe, plough, or irrigation, practicing slash and burn agriculture and rotating the use of land. The Inner Baduy may not alter the course of a stream or level land for any purpose. While the men fish, hunt and gather fruit and honey from the forest, they do so in the least intrusive and destructive fashion possible. Also, the Inner Baduy refrain from the use of manufactured goods of any sort. They produce all their own household and personal items, their own tools and agricultural equipment, using materials they gather or grow. They dress in plain cloth that the women spin and fashion into clothes. Men wear a white headdress and shirt and a black sarong with vertical white stripes, while women wear a black sarong and bodice. Only certain basic materials, such as raw iron used for fashioning knives and raw cotton used for weaving, are imported from the outside world. The inner Baduy do not ride horses or vehicles of any sort. When they travel abroad, they walk, always, no matter how far.

According to those who have made friends with them, the Baduy believe that they are the direct lineal descendents of the first people to occupy the earth. As the home of the first people, the land they are born from is a living mandala, a representation of the entire universe. In order to prevent devastation and calamity throughout the world, they strive to live here in harmony with the earth and in conformity with the laws prescribed by their ancestors. There are no schools, no medical facilities, and no government officials of any kind.

Surrounding the holy sanctum is a buffer zone where members of the outer Baduy community live. Comprising almost eight thousand individuals living in sixty-seven villages, members of the outer community speak the same archaic dialect of Sundanese as do the insiders, to whom they are related by ties of blood, marriage, and ritual. The taboos and rules that govern this group are considerably less rigorous than those regulating the inner group, although the use of vehicles, machinery, electricity and chemicals within their territory is still forbidden, as is the cultivation of commercial crops. Members of this group may travel in motorized vehicles when journeying outside the area, however, and have far more frequent interactions with the outside world. While some outer Baduy wear a few items of mass-produced clothing, such items are always plain black or dark blue.

***

On my walk to the river’s edge, I had been accompanied by Katamsi Nurrasa, my guide from Jakarta, and Sarmin, a member of the outer Baduy community. For the last several days, I had been staying at Sarmin’s hut in the village of Cijengkol. Like all Outer Baduy dwellings, his home consisted of a raised platform with a slatted floor and walls made of woven bamboo, divided into five sections: the veranda, the guestroom, the storeroom, the storage space above the fireplace, and the main area, which also functioned as a bedroom. The roof was made of sago palm leaves and thatch palm. The sparse furniture was made from bamboo, cut from the forests. All kitchen utensils were also hand-made, with the exception of a few basic cooking implements. There was no electricity, no running water, and no bathroom.

Katamsi went across the bridge to Cibeo, to ask the representative of the Pu’un, the spiritual head of the community, if I might visit. While Katamsi was also an outsider, he was Indonesian and had been visiting the Baduy for more than five years. Over time, he had made many friends in both the inner and the outer community. A retired marine engineer with decades of experience of traveling the world, he had a deep respect and affection for the Baduy. To a large extent, the community had accepted him.

Without a good guide to explain the taboos and mores of Baduy society, it is virtually impossible to visit this area. At best, the unprepared traveler can visit the tourist gateway at Ciboleger, where Jaro Daina, a member of the Outer Baduy appointed as the official mediator between the community and the outside world, holds office. From there, accompanied by one of the many aggressive local guides, you can walk to Gajebo, a frequently visited Outer Baduy village located far from the inner community. I shuddered slightly at the memory of the paths littered by the frequent school groups and the slightly furtive offers of coca-cola from villagers who may or may not have been genuine members of the Baduy community.

Seated by the side of the river, Sarmin, my Baduy host, began to talk. Like most members of the Baduy community, he was reserved and sparing with his speech. While not appearing to be disturbed by the presence of outsiders, neither are the Baduy particularly welcoming. On my trip in, when I had passed through outer villages, the inhabitants barely glanced up from weaving, fashioning knives, and other tasks unless I approached them directly, when they answered my questions shortly and without fuss. While Sarmin was hardly loquacious, this was the second time that I had stayed with him for several days. He was beginning to open up a little.

I told Sarmin that I’d heard that the Baduy were forbidden to use cash. When he replied, he spoke simply, and looked me straight in the eye. Unlike people in the cities, the Baduy are not shy about eye contact, even with people they barely know. “No,” he corrected me, “There are lots of rich Baduy. We sell knives, cloth, honey, fruit, and other things from the forest to outsiders. There isn’t much to spend our money on. We just save it.” He looked away, and added nothing further. It is not in the nature of the Baduy to volunteer information about themselves, and they are not embarrassed by silence.

I prodded a little. With little on which to spend their cash, Sarmin admitted that some villagers accumulate significant savings. He added that outsiders in the surrounding areas often borrowed money from members of the Baduy community to fund their consumeristic lifestyles, offering up plots of land as security. “A brother of mine lent a man near here fifty million rupiah to hold a wedding for his daughter. He couldn’t pay it back.” The Baduy celebrate weddings with the simplest ceremony imaginable, a shared meal and a few words. In the villages outside their community, poor farmers mark the same rite of passage by hiring a band, staging puppet performances, holding a feast. When the villager couldn’t repay the loan, he surrendered a block of land to the brother. Members of the Outer Baduy often grow some cash crops on these newly acquired lands outside their traditional territory, although most maintain their simple lifestyles.

There are exceptions, however. Sarmin talked of a former member of the Outer Baduy community, Haji Kasmin, who had a driving ambition to attain a formal education, something forbidden by customary law. “He was a rebel. He had to leave,” said Sarmin. Curious about the ‘rebel Baduy,’ I later asked people in the nearby villages, outside the community, for more information. They laughed: everybody knew Haji Kasmin. After leaving the community, he had converted to Islam and gone on to achieve considerable success in the business world, eventually being appointed as a member of the national parliament. In fact, there was little shame or disapprobation attached to his departure – Kasmin remained a frequent visitor to the Baduy territory, and played a valuable role as a defender of Baduy interests at the national level. While the most prominent of those who leave the community, Kasmin is hardly unique, and a significant number of others have also left to assimilate into the surrounding villages. “Life here doesn’t suit everyone,” Sarmin said, adding with some understatement: “It’s very simple.”

Katamsi returned from his walk to the inner villages, puffing slightly with exertion. Katamsi is softly spoken and polite to a fault, but he shook his head and spoke without mincing his words. “No, I’m sorry. You won’t be able to cross the bridge.” I was crestfallen, but there was no point in arguing or pleading. It was the law.

Apparently, it was a particularly sensitive time. It appeared that the annual Kawalu festival and the ceremonies that accompany it had just ended, several days earlier. As is customary at this time, members of the inner community were busy preparing to walk to Serang to offer forest produce as tribute to the Governor of Banten. Katamsi explained that Kawalu was a village cleansing ceremony held at harvest time. During this time, Katamsi said, the inner area is completely closed to outsiders. “The Pu’un set up a band to go around the Baduy villages, house by house. They check that people don’t have things they shouldn’t have. Stuff like plates and crockery with patterns on them, or battery operated torches,” Sarmin chimed in. “If they find stuff like that, they take it away. They give the family a warning or some kind of punishment. Depends on what they find.”

In the inner Baduy community, infringements of the law often mean expulsion to the outer community. Sarmin told a story of one inner Baduy member who had seen a bus pass by in the area outside his territory. On an impulse, he had succumbed to temptation, and taken a ride. “He just wanted to see what it was like. Then he went straight to the Pu’un and told him. The Pu’un said he and his family would have to move to the outer community.” He was not shamed or shunned, and he retained friendly relationships with his old community – but they felt he had forfeited the right to live with them. His conduct had placed him outside the inner circle.

The three Pu’un, one each from Cikartawana, Cibeo, and Cikeusik, are the spiritual leaders of the entire Baduy community. Their word on matters of taboo and ritual is law. While the position of Pu’un is usually hereditary, they are leaders in matters of ritual only. While they have many special responsibilities, they have few extra priveliges, and no extra luxuries. After ensuring the purity of the community during the Kawalu ritual, the Pu’un conduct the annual pilgrimage to the Arca Domas, the primordial megalithic site deep in the sacred forest. As the three Pu’un and their assistants are the only people ever permitted to set foot in this forest, and only at this time of the year, practically nothing is known about the site and the rituals conducted there. When I pushed Sarmin for details, he just looked away, not even bothering to shrug.

On Katamsi’s visit to the inner zone, he met an old friend, Naniek, a member of the Inner Baduy and the son of a former Pu’un. Naniek joined us on the walk back to Sarmin’s village. On the way, he asked me where I lived. I told him my address in Jakarta, certain it would mean nothing to him. To my astonishment, he said: “Oh, yes. Near the Hilton Hotel, isn’t it?” I stared at him, this man of the forest in his home-spun rags, holding a bamboo staff. I couldn’t believe that he could possibly know anything about Jakarta’s premier five-star hotel, but he nodded in a positively blasé fashion. “I often go to Jakarta,” he said, then grinned widely for no apparent reason, displaying teeth that had obviously not benefited from modern dentistry. When I asked why he made these trips, he just shrugged. Katamsi chuckled. “He just visits for the fun of it.” Still not quite believing, I asked how he got there. “I walk,” he said, as though it was the most obvious thing to do. Pushed, he said that he made the 120-kilometer journey on foot in two days or three days, following the railway track and sleeping in public places or the houses of acquaintances. Katamsi backed him up. “One day I came to work. My office is on the 25th level of the Menara Batavia building. Naniek was sitting on the floor of the lobby. The receptionist was having a fit. Naniek wouldn’t use the lift, so he walked up the stairs. He didn’t want anything in particular, he’d just come to say hello.” Katamsi and Naniek laughed at the memory of the flustered receptionist, and at Katamsi’s valiant insistence that he would walk down the stairs to accompany Naniek back to the street.

As we wound our way through the hilly terrain, Naniek and Katamsi found further sources of amusement, laughing at stories of outsiders who come to the inner community in search of spiritual advice or magical solutions to their problems. Again, Naniek shocked me with his blasé manner. “President Soekarno used to come here quite often. He walked in,” he said casually. He seemed to find it perfectly natural that the head of state should find the time for these ventures into the forest. There is a historical precedent – Javanese nobles would often boast of their special relationship with the men of the forest, which they felt was a source of magical power and potency.

In the modern era, the attempt of some powerful individuals to fit the Baduy into their own world view has backfired hilariously. Naniek spoke of one particular case: “When Soeharto came, he flew into the region by helicopter, but it couldn’t land in the forest. He wanted the Pu’un to meet him, but they wouldn’t come out. The Pu’un don’t go out of the forest.” Remembering the almost fawning respect nearly every Indonesian showed the former strong man, it struck me as amazing to meet people who declined an invitation to meet him. “The Baduy aren’t rebellious. We showed respect. The Pu’un sent a member of the outer Baduy to meet the president. But the Pu’un didn’t go,” Naniek said. Then he grinned broadly again.

Smiling, Katamsi added his story of a distraught teenage girl who had asked him to take her to Cibeo only several weeks previously to seek the solution to some adolescent love crisis. “She was looking for a potion or charm. She wanted something to make her boyfriend take her back,” he said. Many of the visitors, it seems, seek charms, potions, or other instant cures for their problems. If anything, the Baduy seem slightly embarrassed by this insistence that they possess powerful magic and sorcery. Instead, they insist that they merely live simply and modestly, in the forest, the way their ancestors did.

We arrived at Sarmin’s village before dusk. Naniek continued on his way, unperturbed by the impending darkness. As night fell, the shrill screech of cicadas, the wind rustling in the bamboo leaves, and the dogs’ howling prevailed. I thought about Naniek’s stories and the irony of the frustrated, the ambitious and the broken-hearted turning up here and begging for help. It may have been misguided, but I understood why outsiders – kings and presidents, artists and back-packers – have been drawn to this refuge for centuries. There is magic here, but I wondered if outsiders could walk in, wrap it up and take it away in their pockets.

At the bridge, earlier in the day, I had been disappointed that I hadn’t been allowed to visit the Baduy’s inner sanctuary. By the end of the day, I’d realized that I shouldn’t have even tried. After all, their villages and the forest they guard remain sacred only because they are undisturbed. Living according to their stern and austere code, the Baduy guard the secret glades well. A consecrated community rather than an isolated tribe, they are not ignorant of modern civilization. Rather, they deliberately reject it. That is their gift to us. We have much to learn.

About the author

Until the beginning of 2006, Irfan Kortschak was employed as the Editor-in-Chief of Garuda Indonesia’s Magazine and other publications for more than two years, a position which has involved the writing of feature articles; the collection, compilation, and editing of feature articles by Indonesian and expatriate contributors; liaisons with the Editorial Board and other officials of Garuda Indonesia Airlines; interviews with central and regional government figures, tourism industry operators, and others; and the training and supervision of a team of journalists, photographers and designers. In this capacity, he traveled throughout Indonesia and abroad, to destinations in South-East Asia, East Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Australia to write and take photographs for feature articles.
This article remain the copyright of the Author (Irfan Kortschak). Under no circumstances should the photos or text be used without the express written permission of the Author (Irfan Kortschak). He can be reached at irfan@wayang.net

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