Marriage and Affinal Exchange

Engagement and Marriage Proceedings

With the notable exception of "irregular marriages" (see Parr and Mackray 1910, 82–85), negotiations as well as reciprocal hosting and small-scale feasting involving the kin of the prospective bride and groom might begin months in advance of the engagement proceedings, let alone the formal wedding.^[11] Even the most preliminary inquiries (merisik ) concerning the pedigrees and backgrounds of the spouses-to-be involved visits by the future groom's kin (or their intermediaries) to the enatic relatives of the girl (or their representatives). If these and similarly oriented visits were to proceed smoothly, the guests were required to bear small packets of betel to symbolize their sincerity and honorable intentions, just as the hosts were more or less obligated to provide tea or light snacks (if not a substantive meal) and some of their own betel as well (see Newbold 1839, 2 : 294–295).

Assuming the girl's elder kin responded favorably to the proposed union, a simple gold "asking ring" (cincin tanya ), given to them as a token of the groom-to-be's sincerity in pursuing the match, would further firm up the agreement (Newbold 1839, 1 : 254; Parr and Mackray 1910, 79–80). A second gold ring presented by the suitor's kin then finalized the betrothal (Parr and Mackray 1910, 80). This latter transaction typically occurred in the context of an elaborate engagement feast (kenduri ) sponsored by the girl's side (NSSSF [1911] 252/11) and attended by the clan subchief and lineage heads of her local clan, the majority of her lineage mates (including out-marrying males), more distantly related persons in the community, and a large contingent of her fiancé's kin.

The first day of formal wedding ceremonies^[12] revolved around the "marriage contract" (akad nikah ) and focused on a series of ritual transactions known as "fulfilling the adat" (mengisi adat ). The most elaborate of these transactions was the presentation of "marriage gold" (mas kawin )

from the clan subchief of the groom, together with its receipt by the bride's clan subchief and its inspection by other representatives of her clan (Parr and Mackray 1910, 36, 94). This ceremony ranked as the central element of the entire ritual complex with regard to validating the bond between husband and wife, and the link between their respective descent units. The reasons for the significance of this transaction become evident when one considers that the marriage gold encompassed two separate payments: first, the marriage gold proper, which seems to have been regarded as a prestation from the groom to the bride (Newbold 1839, 1 : 254, 2 : 283; Parr and Mackray 1910, 83, 94); and second, the "adat money" (wang adat ), the handing over of which was apparently conceptualized as involving two clans in their entirety (Parr and Mackray 1910, 94). Part of this latter sum was earmarked for officials of the bride's clan. The remainder was claimed by the bride's mother, who distributed some of it to her close enates and used the rest to help defray wedding expenses, the bulk of which were borne by her household.

The marriage gold payments were immediately followed, and effectively reciprocated, by the return to the groom's side of the two engagement rings, which the bride's mother had safeguarded ever since they were first presented to the bride's clan subchief (or other representatives) (Caldecott 1918, 40–41). Additionally, at this stage of the ceremonies, if not before, the property (harta pembawa ) and debts, if any, that the groom brought to the marriage were formally declared, followed by a similar declaration concerning the property (harta dapatan ) that the bride brought to the union.^[13]

The first day of formal wedding ceremonies was also the occasion for the specifically Islamic dimension of the marriage ritual, which called for the presence of a local mosque official, the bride's Islamic guardian (wali ), the groom, and, as witnesses, a few male onlookers. This aspect of the wedding focused on the mosque official's recitation of the marriage service (khutbah nikah ) and warrants special remark for two reasons. First, it symbolized—but most definitely did not effect—a transfer of legal responsibility and control over the bride from her Islamic guardian (usually her father, but in any case a male) to her husband.^[14] Second, it appears to suggest that the system of affinal alliance was composed of descent units linked through exchanges of rights over women. I argue that the messages conveyed in this component of the marriage ritual were largely irrelevant

to, and contradicted by, the overall design of the transactions in the formation of conjugal bonds and social reproduction. More specifically, the realities of marriage and affinal exchange did not center on a father relinquishing rights and obligations concerning his daughter, and doing so in favor of his daughter's husband; rather, they turned on a mother's transfer of claims and responsibilities over her son to the son's wife and the latter's immediate enates.^[15] I shall return to this theme in due course.

After the recitation of the marriage service and the ensuing period of common prayer on behalf of the newly wed couple, the bride's relatives treated the groom's kin and all other guests to a sumptuous feast including oiled rice (nasi minyak ), meat, and other lavishly prepared and ornately garnished foods. At the close of the feast both sets of kin retired to their respective compounds, although the groom might have stayed at his bride's mother's house, sleeping alone on the verandah.

The second day of the wedding festivities, known as "the day of becoming one" (hari bersatu ), also witnessed a series of reciprocal exchanges between the kin of bride and groom. Relatives of the groom, for instance, arrived in procession at the bride's home bearing betel and various items of cooked food including glutinous rice (pulut ) prepared with turmeric. This rice was placed adjacent to the dais where the bride and groom would later sit in state (bersanding ) while being viewed by guests and hosts alike. During this phase of the marriage ritual, women from among the groom's entourage applied a henna mixture to the bride's palms and feet, and in a reciprocal gesture of goodwill their counterparts on the bride's side did the same to the groom.^[16] Beforehand, however, a mock struggle between bride and groom was enacted, with assistance from their principal attendants. Focusing on reciprocity, the exchange of food, and relationships mediated and defined by the giving and receiving of food, this ritual feeding (makan suap ) consisted of bride and groom each attempting to force a handful of pulut into the other's mouth while simultaneously endeavoring to resist "receiving the other's gift." If all went well, neither party to the attempted exchange could claim an unqualified success. In short, the attendants saw to it that neither bride nor groom prevailed over the other, for such an outcome would bespeak a marriage marked by the victor's dominance, as opposed to a relationship characterized by balance and complementarity.^[17]

Following the ritual feeding, the bridal couple feasted while the groom's kin partook of another sumptuous meal provided by their affinal hosts. Thereafter both sets of relatives retired to their respective compounds and began (or continued) preparations for the third day of the wedding festivities. Later that night, however, the groom returned to his bride's mother's home, bearing gifts of food from his kin along with a bundle of clothes and other personal possessions, symbolizing the severance of residential ties with his mother, sisters, and other close enates. Once inside he was welcomed by his in-laws, offered betel by his wife, and otherwise accepted into her household. The groom slept inside the house that night, joined by his bride.^[18]

The third, and typically the final, day of formal wedding ceremonies was known as "the day of introductions" (hari menyalang ), in reference to the ritualized introductions that took place then between the bride and a contingent of her kin (excluding her mother) on the one side and the groom's mother and kin on the other. These introductions were initiated by the bride's relatives, who traveled in a procession, headed by the bridal couple, to the groom's mother's house bearing gifts of betel and food, including packets of glutinous rice and sweet dodol cakes. On its arrival the procession was formally greeted by representatives of the groom's side, who assumed the role of host for the day. Following the presentation of the gifts, the bridal entourage and all other visitors were served a lavish feast sponsored by the mother of the groom. Later in the evening the groom's mother also gave representatives of the bride's group a small sum of money, as a reciprocal gesture acknowledging the glutinous rice and dodol cakes they had given her. Representatives of the other households that had also received food followed suit, or alternatively pledged their intentions to reciprocate these prestations at a future date. (The money thus collected was subsequently turned over to the bride, as were any other gifts that might have been offered up by the groom's kin on this occasion, such as plates or a table setting for two provided by the groom's mother.)

The winding down of the hari menyalang feast marked the close of formal wedding ceremonies, even though other ritualized introductions and exchanges typically continued for another week or two. One such series of events (glossed berbesan ) centered on the ritual meeting of the bride's and groom's parents. The first of these formal introductions took place when

the groom's parents and kin, laden with offerings of betel, glutinous rice, and other food, visited the home of the bride's parents. The gifts were presented by the groom's mother to the bride's mother in the context of a feast hosted by the bride's household. The second round of introductions involved a similar sequence of events and similar gifts (probably with the addition of dodol cakes), but in reverse—that is, the visit and presentation of gifts by the bride's parents and kin, who journeyed to the home of the groom's parents.

A subsequent phase of ritualized visits (menyalang or menyembah ) involved the bridal couple's being formally introduced to the respective enates of bride and groom. In the first series of such introductions ("the small menyalang," or menyalang kecil ), the couple visited various households of the bride's kin. Each household received gifts of betel and other food from the bridal couple, along with glutinous rice and dodol cakes. They then provided the bridal couple with a meal, shared in the food the couple had brought, and presented the bride and groom with a small sum of money as a reciprocal gesture acknowledging the gifts of rice and cake. The duration of this period of visiting depended largely on the size of the bride's local descent group, but a few days at most was probably the norm.

The second series of formal social calls subsumed under the rubric of menyalang was also of short duration, although these visits appear to have been somewhat more elaborate and were designated by a separate term (mengulang jejak ), which, not surprisingly, refers to the groom's retracing his footsteps for the last time. The bridal couple now called on various households inhabited by the groom's kin, each of which was likewise presented with gifts of betel and food and responded as the bride's kin had during menyalang kecil.

This overview of the principal events and transactions associated with engagement and marriage proceedings is by no means exhaustive, but it should suffice for our present purposes.

Before broaching the subject of funerary rituals, I wish to emphasize that, of the items that a newly wed woman presented to her mother-in-law during her initial visits to the latter's home, dodol cakes were the most important. Moreover, a married woman was fully expected to offer dodol to both her mother-in-law and other women of the mother-in-law's lineage branch whenever she visited them. These prestations occur even to-

day, and have always been among the primary symbols both of affinity and of women's crucial role in maintaining affinal bonds.

Funerary Rituals

Women's central role in maintaining affinal ties was even more pronounced in the realm of funerary rituals. For one thing, hosting burial and funerary rituals necessitated that female labor and other resources be mobilized from the entire lineage branch (at the minimum), just as attendance at such events obligated female guests to provide uncooked food to their hosts on entering the latter's compound. More generally, the wife's female relatives and other close kin served as hosts throughout the one-hundred-day-long funerary cycle, regardless of whose death led to the severing of the marriage tie. In the event of the husband's death, for example, the widow was responsible for all expenditures associated with not only the actual burial but also the principal funerary rituals and feasts (Parr and Mackray 1910, 88, 91; Taylor [1929] 1970, 123), all of which took place in her village. Particularly relevant here is the ritual batang tuboh , performed some one hundred days after the husband's death and revolving around symbolic prestations from the widow and her kin to the deceased's mother and other enatic survivors. Ideally at least, such prestations have long consisted of a pair of pants, a coat, a hat or cap, a knife, a sleeping mat, and a pillow (Parr and Mackray 1910, 88; DeMoubray 1931, 149–150)—the very, and highly personal, items the husband brought with him when he first began living among his wife's enates. The passing of these items from the widow to her mother-in-law symbolized both a complete and permanent rupture in the daughter-in-law's relationships with her former husband (but not necessarily his immediate enates) and a return to the mother-in-law of the son that she had in effect "given away" in marriage. Moreover, just as this ritual depicted the principal exchanges in the formation of conjugal bonds and affinal ties as centering on the transfer of rights over males, so too did it portray such exchanges as involving transfers between women, who were thus represented as trafficking in men—or at least in rights over them.

The rituals that occurred on a wife's death conveyed similar messages. At the end of the funerary cycle, for example, the widower's kin formally

invited him back to his natal compound. This ritual gesture, jemput adat , symbolized the peripheral and ambiguous "guest" status of the widower (and of the in-marrying male in general) within his affinal community, for it emphasized that neither he nor his adat rightfully belonged there once his wife had been dead more than one hundred days. The jemput adat also coincided with the assessment and differentiation of rights over the separate estates of survivor and deceased, along with their jointly acquired holdings (Taylor [1929] 1970, 123–124). As with the batang tuboh and the concurrent distribution of property rights on that occasion, the jemput adat underscored the preeminence and permanence of matrilateral filiation, descent, and siblingship, and the qualified, conditional, and temporary nature of rights flowing from a man's marriage and his position as father.

Neither of these funerary rituals necessarily signaled the end of affinal exchange between two sets of enatic kin that had been linked through a single marriage. Even though a widow's remarriage resulted in her assuming a new series of affinal obligations (symbolized in periodic prestations of dodol cakes to her new husband's immediate female enates) and essentially canceled out all preexisting affinal responsibilities, her former obligations might be honored by her daughters from her former marriage, who would thus maintain the exchanges in question. Additionally, just as intermarriage in subsequent generations could serve to reestablish the bonds of affinity between the two groups, so could leviratic and sororatic remarriages; these could even be timed so as to preclude prolonged disruption or structural ambiguity in the relationship between the kin of survivor and deceased. A levirate remarriage, for example, could be contracted more or less immediately following the batang tuboh ritual, such that the mother of the deceased regained her dead son's personal possessions—and by implication his essence or spirit—and then proceeded to "hand over" another of her sons. A sororate remarriage could be similarly timed and would also promote affinal continuity.