The Great Pustaha was collected in the 1850s, but its true age is perhaps older. The content was translated into Dutch by Father H.J.A. Promes in 1968. The Great Pustaha contains the names of the priests and the villages where they lived. By studying the name of the villages, it can be assumed that the knowledge was transferred from the west of Lake Toba to the southwest of the lake, all the way to Lobu Siregar villages in
Siborong-Borong. The datu who wrote and owned the Great Pustaha, Guru Tumurun Hata ni adji, namora Simandjuntak lived in this village. The pustaha was brought to the Netherlands by a linguist
Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk. Van der Tuuk was born in
Malacca (1824). At the age of 12, he was sent to the Netherlands for his education. As a linguist, he went to Sumatra on an assignment for the Netherlands Bible Society to translate the Bible into the Batak language. In 1851 he arrived in North Sumatra. In 1852, he moved to North Sumatran port town of
Barus on the west coast of Sumatra. From there he traveled to the interior of Batak land where he discovered the Batak language in its purest form. Van der Tuuk is probably the first European to see the
Lake Toba. Van der Tuuk collected various Batak crafts during his stay between 1851 and 1857, including the Great Pustaha. In 1857, Van der Tuuk was forced to return to Barus after nearly being killed by the
Sisingamangaraja, the holy priest-king of the Toba Batak people. He went back to the Netherlands in 1857 and never returned to Sumatra. In the Netherlands, Van der Tuuk finished his four-volume of
Batak-Nederduitsch dictionary and translated a number of Books of the Bible. Van der Tuuk missed the East Indies and so he returned to other islands of the Netherlands East Indies. He finally resided in Bali as a Balinese residence. In 1894, Van der Tuuk died of dysentery at the age of 70 in a military hospital in
Surabaya,
East Java. In 1862, before going to Bali, van der Tuuk donated his collection to the Ethnographic Museum of the Zoological Society of
Natura Artis Magistra (now the Artis Zoo, Amsterdam). At that time it was common for a zoo to display ethnographical collections. Artifacts were usually acquired from private collectors, administrators, trade agents, travelers, explorers, missionaries, companies, and scientific societies. There was no specific area of interest, all continents were represented in a bunch of unclassified ethnographic item.
Natura Artis Magistra and the Colonial Museum In 1861, a separate Ethnographical Museum was established in the zoo. The room was small, so objects were stacked on top of each other. A 19th-century drawing shows the Great Pustaha placed on the floor, while other Toba Batak crafts e.g.
potion holders,
staffs, and knives, hung from above. In 1871, the Colonial Museum opened its doors. Frederik van Eeden collected samples of trade goods from the colonial territories e.g. the
Netherlands East and
West Indies. The Pavilion Welgelegen, where the ethnological collection was kept, soon became too small for the increasingly vast collection. In 1910 the Vereeniging Koloniaal Instituut was founded and plans were made to build a new facility in Amsterdam, opposite to Natura Artis Magistra. One of the plans is to establish a central museum for all ethnographical collections. Construction of the museum took longer than expected, partly due to
World War I. When it was finished in 1926, the Colonial Institute at the Mauritskade was the largest building in Amsterdam. In 1921, Artis donated the entire ethnographical collection of over 10,000 objects to the Colonial Institute. Through this transaction, the objects donated by Van der Tuuk came together with the collection of the Colonial Museum, including the Great Pustaha.
World War In 1939, when the threat of war was felt from neighboring Germany, the Great Pustaha was evacuated from the galleries and kept in the museum's basements. According to a newspaper article, the pustaha was one of the most precious objects stored in the vault. The Great Pustaha survived the war, perhaps thanks to the fact that the '
Ordnungspolizei' was based inside the Colonial Institute's office. After the war, the Great Pustaha was back on display. At this time the museum was called the Indisch Museum. The name Indisch Museum remained until December 1949, when the independence of Indonesia was recognized by the Netherlands.
Tropenmuseum After 1949, the museum received its
present name. In 1987 the exhibition “Budaya Indonesia: arts and crafts of Indonesia” was opened to the public. This exhibition gave an overview of 2000 years of culture and history of Indonesia, represented by 500 artifacts. The pustaha was once more displayed within the context of magical, sorcery-related objects like the medicine horns and containers. Today, the pustaha is displayed on its own as the most important example of the dragon, and as a representation of Naga Padoha. ==References==