Nar Kobar

Nar'Kobar

For 250 years, Nar'Kobar's mission as member of the 'Jiinayil Aq'lun' (a Jin language term for 'human counterpart') was to influence or motivate humans and transforming them mentally into a 'gampusan' human (The term 'gampusan' reflects the evil or negative states/tendencies of the mind). At the time, his main purpose was to transform Lena - his present subject - into a 'gampusan' woman. For over 8 years, Nar'Kobar's 'motivational' influence on Lena hadn't shown much success due to Lena's strong religious belief. His tasks become somewhat more difficult and perilous when Ipung - a campus friend of Lena - started wooing Lena. Ipung had supernatural ability to 'see' the Jin being through his mind-eye. Ipung also has supernatural self defense abilities that could harm the Jins physically. Thinking that Ipung's supernatural abilities would directly conflict and create unwanted setbacks on Lena's transformation process, with the aid of his friend Nar'Himaar, Nar'Kobar plans to overcome this problem by making another of Lena's friend (Gugun) fall in love with her. If Lena and Gugun became lovers, Ipung would eventually forfeit his pursue on Lena, thus making Lena's transformation more possible for Nar'Kobar. At the moment, a first born Jin princess named Larasati from the Jin kingdom Madanglaya was planning on visiting the human realm to gain more experience and knowledge about the human race. Princess Larasati chose Nar'Kobar as her 'mentakir' (guidance, teacher), considering his extensive knowledge of the humans. Nar'Kobar advised princess Larasati to change her appearance, using her state-of-the-art form transformation ability, into a gorgeous, voluptuous, and rich Eurasian woman named Laura Berman. He plans on making Ipung fall in love with Laura thus stopping him from wooing Lena.

Print, Poetics, and Politics

This study presents the text and first English translation of a Sumatran turi-turian or chanted epic called the tale of Datuk Tuongku Aji Malim Leman, the hero s name. This is a famous southern Batak story from the town of Sipirok. The version at issue, in the Angkola Batak language, was published as a folkloric but also rather novelistic printed paperback book for a popular southern Batak audience in 1941, at the end of Dutch colonial rule in the Indies. This sly book version of Datuk Tuongku by the novelist and newspaperman M.J. Soetan Hasoendoetan, gave southern Batak readers a great literary epic of their own to claim within Indies literatures: here was a touchstone for asserting their cultural excellence at a time when the Batak societies were often denigrated as tribal by both Dutch officialdom and other Indies residents. Soetan Hasoendoetan s deft, elegant, but also playful and funny prose rendition of Datuk Tuongku allowed his Batak readers to imagine Batak traditions and Batak modernities simultaneously, and to mull over the relationships between high oratory and the Latin alphabet print literacy promulgated in the colonial schools of Tapanuli. The study also includes a lengthy anthropological interpretation of the 1941 text, seeing it as a work of both politics and art. The introductory essay draws on postcolonial theory and upon ethnographic fieldwork on literacy, oratory, and turi-turian in Sipirok.

Vrag Naroda (Enemy of the People)