HERMAN NEUBRONNER VAN DER TUUK AND …eprints.um.edu.my/8992/1/KA21(2)2002-A2.pdf · HERMAN NEUBRONNER VAN DER TUUK AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY LANGUAGE STUDY IN SOUTHEAST ... Artikel

Kekal A badi 21 (2) 2002

HERMAN NEUBRONNER VAN DER TUUKAND NINETEENTH-CENTURY LANGUAGE STUDY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA·

Dr.KeesGroeneboerAcademic Advisor of the Dutch Language Union, and affiliated with the University ofIndonesia in Depok and the Erasmus Dutch Language Center in Jakarta, Indonesia

Abstract: This article describes the life and works of Herman Neubronner van der Tuukone of the greatest scholars and linguists of the nineteenth century, well known for hi~works on Batak, Malay, Javanese, Lampong and Balinese languages.

Abstrak: Artikel ini memperihalkan riwayat hidup dan hasil penulisan Herman Neubronnervan der Tuuk, salah seorang ilmuwan dan pakar bahasa yang terkena/ dengan penulisandi da/am bahasa Batak, Melayu, Jawa, Lampong dan Bali pada abad ke-19.

At the beginning of 2002 the Royal Institute ofLinguistics and Anthropology in Leidenpublished a book which I edited entitled Eenvorst onder de taalge/eerden: HermanNeubronner van der Tuuk, afgevaardigde voorIndie van het Nederfandsch Bijbelgenootschap1847-1873 (A PrinceAmong Linguists: HermanNeubronnervan der Tuuk, Representativeof theDutch Bible Society for the East Indies 1847-1873). This volume of sources i~cludes anintegral publication of the letters written by ~ander Tuuk to his employer, the Dutch BibleSociety. These are supplemented with lett~rsto friends and colleagues as well as a Widesampling of his publications. The ~olume as awhole gives a good picture of the life and workof Van der Tuuk, who can be considered one ofthe greatest linguists of the nineteenth century,thanks to his work on Batak, Malay, Javanese,Lampong, and Balinese. I would like to tell alittle more about this unusual person, who wasalready a legendary figure in his lifetime - agreat scholar but also a contrary,unconventional, bold, and eccentric charac.terwho launched vigorous attacks on everythingthat displeased him in his time.

Van der Tuuk was born on February 23, 1824in Malacca at that time still a Dutch colony.Hewas the ~Idest son of Sefridus van der.Tu~kand Louise Neubronner, who e~emarried InMalacca on January 27, 1823. HIs father h.adbeen a notary In the Netherlands before movingto the East Indies in 1820 He began. as amember of the Court of Justice in B~tavla, butIn 1821 was appointed fiscal ~aglstrate forrevenue offenses and president of the

orphanage in Malacca. Herman's mother wasborn in Malacca as the daughter of vac officialJohann Anton Neubronner from Frankfurt amMain in Germany and Catharina Koek, born inMalacca. Herman was given the family nameof his mother as a middle name. Informationon the family can be found in the NationalArchives of Malaysia, where the birth certificateof Herman and the marriage licence of hisparents are deposited.

After Malacca was exchanged for the Britishcolony of Bengkulu in 1825 as a result of theAnglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824, the family leftMalacca for Surabaya, and Herman grew upthere surrounded by speakers of Dutch, Malay,Javanese, as well as Madurese. In 1836 hewassent to the Netherlands for his secondaryeducation. He began studying law in Groningenin 1840, earned his first degree(kandidaatsexamen) in 1843, but did notcomplete his studies. At that time he wasalready spending more time studyinglanguages, especially Arabic and Persian. Thisprompted his move to Leiden in 1846, wherehe also learned Sanskrit. While there he madea thorough study of Malay as well, and at theyoung age of twenty-two published a bookreview in which he demonstrated his familiaritywith all the relevant literature about and in theMalay language. At the end of 1847 he wasrecommended to the Dutch Bible Society forthe translation of the Bible into Batak and wasappointed - at age twenty-three - 'languagerepresentative' for the Batak Lands in MiddleSumatra. Following some preparation in Europee left for the East Indies, and In September

K I Lumpur on September 2nd, 2002. This lecture IS based on the introduction to the book Een•A lecture It Unr:drsltl alays, u~a rman Neubronner van aer Tuuk, afgeva8digde voor Indie van het Nederlandschvorst ondpf de taalge/eerdenB e npubliCat16door Kees Groeneboer (Leiden. KITLV Press, 2002)B~ ..,000 $Ch P 1847-1873. ronne 7

KekaJ Abad! 21 (2) 2002

1849 arrived in Batavia. As the west monsoonmade it impossible for him to travel onimmediately to West Sumatra, he occupiedhimself with the Malay language in Batavia andwrote a treatise on what he calledCentralization Malay - the High Malay spokenby educated Malaysians around the Straits ofMalacca.

In May 1850 he contracted a serious skindisease. The sweating and sulfur therapiesnearly drove him mad, and a longhospitalization followed. He was released fromhospital only in October of that year and hadto spend a few more months convalescing inBuitenzorg (now Bogor), where he immersedhimself in Sundanese. Finally, in January 1851he set out by boat for Padang, and from theretravelled further north to Tapanuli. He firstsettled in Sibolga, but did not find the placeparticularly suitable for his language studyowing to the great influence of Malay. Hetherefore moved on to the northern coastal townof Barus, where the population had largelyconverted to Islam but was of Batak origin andspoke Batak.

In 1852 he travelled to Mandheling in the partof the Batak Lands that was under Dutch rule.A good part of the long journey to the mainlocality, Padang Sidempuan, he made on foot.Everywhere he went he noted down words,recorded songs and stories, and copied pustaha(books made of tree bark).

In 1853 he undertook an expedition to Silindungin the Batak Lands, still independent at thetime. This brought him to the shore of LakeToba,which was considered holy and had neverbefore been seen by a European. The journeyalmost proved fatal for him, however. On theway back, according to his own report, he wastwice in danger of being eaten up by the Bataks,and the expedition became more like a flightto safety. Apparently he had quite a scare, forhe never ventured into the Batak interior again.

From Barus Van der Tuuk correspondedregularly with the Dutch Bible Society. Besidesnews about his life and work, his letterscontained more general information about thesituation in the Batak Lands. He wrote, forexample, about the spread of Islam, the advanceof Malay, and the neglect of Batak; and he gaveadvice to the mission, which in his opinion,could exert a civilizing influence on the Bataksand counter the rise of Islam. He expressedhis annoyance at the superstitions of the

Bataks, the exploitation and suppression bythe Batak chiefs, and the heavy labour exactedfrom the Bataks by the colonial government.He complained about practical problems, suchas the difficulties in getting cash from hisaccount in a remote place like Barus, thescarcity of good Batak writers, and the lack ofgood servants (which meant that he was poorlycared for and his house was always a 'pigsty'),the high cost of living in Sumatra compared toJava, the murderous climate, and the verminthat forced him to completely rewrite hismanuscripts several times. He also complainedabout the lack of intellectual conversation andabout having to live unmarried and in solitude.

For the Bataks the house of Si Pan Dor Tuk,or Raja Tuk, as he was called, was alwaysopen, and he talked with them all day long,jotting down notes that he transcribed in theevening. He always made use of Batakinformants, whom he also hired to copymanuscripts and record stories. He also askedthem to check his translations to see whetherthey made sense. Although he was oftenannoyed at what he called the laziness, filth,and greed of the Bataks, he did everything towin their confidence.

Heworked energetically at the tasks assignedhim. First he made a translation of a Biblestorybook. By way of experiment he then hada small section of this book lithographed inAmsterdam and distributed in the Batak Lands.Never before had anything been published inBatak. The people expressed their appreciationof the beautiful booklet, but because thecontent was strange and surprising to them, itaroused their suspicions, and they did not wantto accept it. Van der Tuuk complained aboutthe problems he encountered in his translationwork owing to the un-Batak content of the Bible.He also saw little point in producing a Bibletranslation as long as the Batak language hadnot been standardized and introduced as aclassroom and administrative language. Onlythen would the contact with the people becomemore direct and it would be possible tocounteract the further spread of Malay. Theproblem, however, was that the European civilservants and members of the military had noknowledge whatsoever of the indigenouslanguages and consequently introduced 'jabberMalay' all over the colony. Van der Tuuk provedhimself a defender of the regional languagesagainst Malay, which in his view was having adetrimental effect on almost all the Indonesianlanguages, causing them to change radically

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in a short time. He was afraid that in just fiftyyears no one would understand his Bibletranslations, a prediction that did come true.

Van der Tuuk made interesting distinctionsbetween what he called Centralization Malay,Local Malay, and Convention Malay.Centralization Malay, which originated in theMalay peninsula, was spoken, he maintained,by educated Malays on both sides of the Straitsof Malacca. Its many dialectic variants, suchas Minangkabau Malay, Ambon Malay, but alsoBatavian Malay, he subsumed under the termLocal Malay. The label, Convention Malay, heapplied to the Malay used by the Europeansas an everyday language with the indigenouspeople, also referred to as Pas~r Malay or'jabber Malay,' which exists in.a Wide range oflocal variants which do not qualify as languagesin his opinion. Van der Tuuk advised the BibleSociety to produce a com~let.ely newtranslation of the Bible in Centralization Malayto replace the mid-eight~enth centurytranslation of Leydecker, which was nearlyincomprehensible owing to its confusing blendof Ambon Malay and Convention M~lay. Th~Malaccan-born Abdullah bin Abdulkadtr ~unsYItestifies to this in his autobiography HlkayatAbdullah, published in 1849. He relates ~owthe Malay translation of Leydecker came intohis hands around 1820, and how difficult hefound it to read:

The book had Malay letters and Malay sounds,but the manner of speech was not MalatWords were used in places where t~ey d~dnot fit at all, and words were combined mplaces where they should not have been

b· d at all For this reason I could notcom mec ar eu. hlgrasp the meaning of the book. Everyt mgsounded so awkward to me that I could ~othelp but say: 'This is a book of the white

I and I do not know the language ofpeop e, . ementth hites' I therefore sat In amaz

e w. k [ ] The form ofthinking about that boo ....the letters is pleasing but the words makeno sense.

In keeping with Van derTuuk's advice, the BibleSociety decided in 1860 to produc.e acompletely new Malay translation of the Blbl~,. the Malay of Riau and Malacca. This~~anslation by Klinkert appeared in the i 870fdFrom then on the East Indies govern men wo~also consider this Malay to be ~he norm, whilethe Malay variants spoken outside th~se areas

. d as deviations deformations, andwere viewe ' d 1850impure. This explains why already arou~ .the linguist H. von de Wall was sent to anJung

Pinang in Riau to compile a Malay-Dutchdictionary. Riau Malay would also become thepublishing norm for schoolbooks in the EastIndies.

But let us return to the Batak Lands. InSeptember 1854 Van der Tuuk suffered a severeattack of dysentery and was hospitalized inSibolga. For a long time after that he continuedto feel weak. The tone of his letters darkened,and he was frequently troubled by depressions.He considered his Bible translating more andmore wearisome and found it almost impossibleto combine his tasks as linguist and translator.One could not translate the Bible into a languageat the same time that one was describing it.He therefore decided to accept the BibleSociety's proposal to return to the Netherlandsand transcribe and publish his material there.At the last moment before leaving Barus in April1857 he sent the following disillusionedmessage to the Bible Society:

It is a great misfortune to be in the serviceof people who are unable to judge uncivilizedpeople and think that translating the Bibleinto Batak with the help of savages is pleasantwork [ ...J. If I were a deceiver, I would painta splendid picture for you and tell you, amongother things, that there is a keenly felt needfor Christ among the Bataks, etc., etc. I leavethose lies to missionaries, and do not wishto ingratiate myself like a hypocrite withgullible people.

On October 1, 1857 Van der Tuuk, now agedthirty-three, arrived in the Netherlands andsettled in Amsterdam, where he startedtranscribing his Batak work. His translationsof the gospel of John, Genesis, Exodus, andLuke were published in 1859, and his largeBatak-Dutch dictionary appeared in 1861. Inorder to enable missionaries and civil servantsto learn Batak, he also published a few readerswith original Batak writings.

In 1862 the Bible Society decided to terminateVan der Tuuk's work on Batak. For the timebeing enough had been translated for therecently initiated mission work among theBatak people. The agreement was that afterfinishing his grammar and his translation of thegospels he would be sent to the East Indiesagain, this time to produce a Bible translationin Balinese. We do not know whether Van derTuuk was pleased with this decision. He in anycase did not rush to finish his Batak work.The first volume of his Batak grammar appearedin 1864, the second a full three years later,

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followed by the remaining translations. Hedefinitively rounded off his work on Batak atthe end of 1867. In May of 1868 he would leavefor Bali.

While working on Batak, Van der Tuuk alsodelved into other languages and planned awidevariety of projects relating to them. In 1864 hewanted to compile a Malay-Dutch dictionarybut later thought it a better idea to make it aMalay-English dictionary. He got no further,however, than a short critique of the existingMalay dictionaries. He had plans to produce aMalagasi dictionary and grammar, but neverwent beyond a preliminary study. He wantedto publish a large catalogue of all Malaymanuscripts found in European libraries, butall that materialized was a description of thecollection' of the Royal Asiatic Society inLondon. He did edit a set of three Malay readersfor the East Indies schools, and he publishedother work on Malay as well, both of alexicographic and philological nature - anactivity he would continue the rest of his life.After the death of Von de Wall, for example, hecontinued the editing of his Malay-Dutchdictionary and published it in three thickvolumes in the years 1877-1884; and in 1894he produced a supplement to the existingMalay dictionaries. Van der Tuuk's significancefor Malay - a language that was not includedin his job description - can hardly beoverestimated and deserves closer study.

From his publications it is also evident that Vander Tuuk had knowledge of awide range of otherlanguages, such as Nias, Aceh, Rejang,Mentawai, and Minangkabau Malay in Sumatra,of Philippine languages like Tagalogand Visaya,of Hindustani, of Favorlang and otherlanguages in Formosa (now Taiwan), and alsoof Chinese, Vietnamese, and Siamese (orThai). Through the work of his fellow Bibletranslators he gained familiarity withSundanese, Dajak, Buginese, andMakassarese. His formidable knowledge oflanguages made it possible for Van der Tuukto level solid criticism at his fellow linguists,and he did so with gusto and considerablevehemence. Not only was the Delft Professorof Javanese Roorda severely taken to task,but also De Hollander, who taught Malay at theMilitary Academy in Breda; Klinkert, who wasworking on the new Malay Bible translation;Pijnappel, who taught Malay in Delft andLeiden; Von de Wall, who was working on hisMalay-ChHch dictionary; and rnany other

scholars from the Netherlands, the East Indies,and elsewhere. In 1867 he wrote:

Everything that has been done up to nowfor the native languagesI considershoddywork, and no changewill comeabout as longas the languages are not studied for theirown sake. Little progresscan be madein anydiscipline if it is practised without love. Theperson who learns a language in order totranslate the Bible is by definition a miserablecreature, and for this reason I have morecontempt for myself than for others. Iunderstand that it was a cruel fate that ledme into the arms of the Bible Society.

When he arrived in the East Indies for thesecond time in 1868 and heard that a rebellionin Bali would make it impossible for him to gothere for the time being, he gratefully acceptedthe offer of the colonial government to undertakea study of Lampong in southern Sumatra. Foralmost one and a half years he travelled onfoot through the Lampong interior and workedon a Lampong dictionary. This comprehensivework of more than six hundred closely writtenpages was never published, however, becauseno suitable Lampong printing type wasavailable.

It was in 1870 when he finally went to Bali forthe Bible Society and settled in Boelelenq, inthe northern part of Bali that had been placedunder Dutch rule. In order to work in asauthentic a Balinese environment as possible,Van der Tuuk had a simple house of bambooandwood built for himself a few kilometers southof the principal town of Singaradja. He wrote:

I hadmy houseplacedat an isolatedlocationand I am determinedto haveas little contactas possiblewith Europeanstaff, for otherwiseI see no chance of learning the languagethoroughly. As for my living conditions here,they are not very pleasant, becauseconversation is totally lacking, but I can putup with this if I see progress in my work. Aperson should not come to the Indies as alinguist in order to enjoy himself,becauseoneis totally isolated here. Most Europeansherehave no interest whatsoever in studies ofthis kind, and the richly paid civil servantregard a manas crazywho hasthe maniaforstudying languages and for that reason issatisfied with a low Income.

As earlier in the Batak Lands, he was annoyedhere, too, at the suppression of the people bythe Balinese princes, by the inertia of the Dutchauthorities on this matter, and by the behaviour

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of the missionaries. Again he complained aboutthe problems he had withdrawing money fromhis bank account and about what he called thegreed of the Chinese and Arabs, on whom hewas dependent for anything he needed fromJava. Yet he liked Bali better than Sumatra,.because he considered the Balinese morecivilized and gentler in character, and theirliterature was more highly developed.

He worked there at compiling a Balinese-Dutchdictionary, and in the process soon realizedthat Balinese could not be understood withoutKawi, Old Javanese, because all of Balineseliterature was actually a continuation of Kawiliterature. He therefore decided to include theKawi words in his dictionary as well, whichwould of course make the work even morevoluminous. It was self-evident to him that thiswork had to precede the translating of the Bible,and he wrote to the Bible Society in 1871 thatthey should have no illusions about a BalineseBible translation appearing soon. It is notsurprising that in 1873 the Society reacted withrelief at the news that Van der Tuuk had beenappointed by the East Indies government to ~hepost of 'civil servant tor the study of East Indieslanguages.' Van der Tuuk was relieved as well.As a language official he would now be able todevote himself completely to the study ofBalinese without having to translate the Bibleinto that language, a task under which he hadalways chafed because it inevitably meant thathis other work would suffer:

If you translate according to. therequirements of the language, the missionaryis likely to accuse you of violating God's.word.If you sacrifice the language to the Bible, alinguist will be up in arms.

Working for the colonial government was notreally to Van der Tuuk's liking either. It bot~eredhim to have lost his freedom and to be ~sslgnedall kinds of tasks that kept him from his actual

t d· I Bali too he seemed to have founds u res, n , , I ft B rlittle happiness. Yet he never really e a I

again. He worked for anothe: twe~ty years onhis steadily expanding Kawl-Bal~nese-Dutchdictionary. He also published a Wide range ofscholarly work, much of it in the area of Malay

d J ese: he reviewed and frequentlyan avan , f II gues and wrotecriticized the work 0 co ea ,articles for East Indies newspapers.

H li ed those years 'like a Balinese.' Manye IV . the Europeans about

stories Circulated among . t .his lifestyle, but also about hts eccen nc

behaviour. He was said to bathe like the peopleof Bali under the pancoran in his neighborhood,and walk around wearing only a sarong, bare-chested, always with a heavy club in his hands.People talked about his filthy house, which wasmore like a storage place for books andmanuscripts. On the other hand he was saidto have the most excellent wines anddelicacies in his house. For the Europeansliving in Bali his house was a kind of touristattraction; people wanted to see this oddcharacter for themselves - a cause ofconsiderable annoyance to him. For theBalinese his house was always open, and theyconsulted him about almost everything. One ofthe Balinese rajahs is even supposed to havesaid: 'In all of Bali there is only one man whoknows and understands the Balinese language,and that man is Gusti Dertik, Van der Tuuk.'

On August 17, 1894 Van der Tuuk, now seventyyears old, died in the Military Hospital inSurabaya, where he had been rushed with anattack of dysentery. His Kawi-Balinese-Dutchdictionary, which was supposed to be hiscrowning achievement, was still incomplete and..vould be published posthumously in four thickvolumes totaling 3,600 pages.

It turned out that during his lifetime Van derTuuk had accumulated a small fortune insavings -135,000 guilders - while the value ofhis little house was estimated at less than tenguilders. His housekeeper continued living therefor many years, making it her task to welcomecurious European visitors with the words: 'IniGoesti Dertik poenja roemah, masoek sadjatoean' ('This is the house of Mr. Van der Tuuk,do step inside, sir.'). One of the visitors earlyin 1896 was the Bible translator Adriani, whorelated:

The house was closed in the front, but wecould push the bamboo door open at theback and walk around the four small rooms.Before long his former 'kokki' came out of alittle outbuilding, a Balinese with a ratherimmodest appearance, who soon told methat she had worked for Van der Tuuk formany years. 'The gentleman had become halfBalinese, hadn't he?' I asked her. 'Certainlynot,' she said, 'he was a grand gentleman,slept in an iron bed, and earned 1,000guilders a month!'

In indigenous eyes Van der Tuuk had apparentlybecome much less of a Balinese than Europeaneyes perceived.

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