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The Porhalaan is the traditional calendar of the
Batak people
Batak is a collective term used to identify a number of closely related Austronesian peoples, Austronesian ethnic groups predominantly found in North Sumatra, Indonesia, who speak Batak languages. The term is used to include the Karo people ( ...
of
North Sumatra
North Sumatra ( id, Sumatra Utara) is a province of Indonesia located on the northern part of the island of Sumatra. Its capital and largest city is Medan. North Sumatra is Indonesia's fourth most populous province after West Java, East Java and ...
,
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
. The Batak Calendar is a lunisolar calendar consisting of 12 months divided to 30 days with an occasional leap month. The Batak calendar is derived from
Hindu calendar
The Hindu calendar, Panchanga () or Panjika is one of various lunisolar calendars that are traditionally used in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, with further regional variations for social and Hindu religious purposes. They adopt a s ...
. The Batak people do not use the porhalaan as a mean to tell time, but rather to determine auspicious day, which is only used by the Batak shaman.
Ritual
The name porhalaan came from the word ''hala'', which is derived from Sanskrit ''kala'', "scorpion". The porhalaan is used by the Batak people for divination. Batak people did not use the porhalaan for telling time. The responsibility of interpreting the porhalaan fell solely to the chief male ritualist known as the datu. The datu would read the porhalaan to determine which day is considered auspicious or inauspicious to hold a certain ritual.
In order to minimize the risk of accidentally selecting an unfavorable day due to errors in calendar management, days are often chosen based on whether the day is able to promise happiness in two months time, probably the current month and the following one. There is often an extra 13th month in the calendar that serves this purpose, originally a Hindu leap year, but in the Batak context, it is used for a different reason. If the additional 13th month is not available, then the first month is simply used again for protection. Whether the 13th month is used to compensate for the difference to the solar year is not proven in the context of Batak society.
The Porhalaan is usually written as a table of square boxes of 30 columns (days) of 12 or 13 rows (months) as recorded in the
pustaha
Pustaha ( Toba Batak: ᯇᯮᯘ᯲ᯖᯂ) is the magic book of the Toba Batak people of North Sumatra, Indonesia. The book contains magical formulas, divinations, recipes, and laws. The pustaha is written and compiled by a Batak magician-priest (d ...
, the Batak magic book. Sometimes the porhalaan is written on a cylindrical piece of bamboo.
The Porhalaan is the clearest example of the Batakization of Hindu culture. The original
Hindu Calendar
The Hindu calendar, Panchanga () or Panjika is one of various lunisolar calendars that are traditionally used in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, with further regional variations for social and Hindu religious purposes. They adopt a s ...
was borrowed, modified and reworked according to Batak empirical and pragmatic principles. The result is a simplification of the original calendar. All that remains of a complicated system of adjusting lunar months to the solar Zodiac is a divination calendar which is not used for the purpose of telling times.
Calendar system
There is no designation of year in Batak Calendar. New Year begins on the New Moon in May, when the constellation
Orion (''siala sungsang'') vanishes in the west and the constellation
Scorpius
Scorpius is a zodiac constellation located in the Southern celestial hemisphere, where it sits near the center of the Milky Way, between Libra to the west and Sagittarius to the east. Scorpius is an ancient constellation that pre-dates the Gre ...
(''siala poriama'') rises in the east.
Porhalaan is divided into 12 months, each contains 30 days. Each month was named by its number, the first month is called simply "first month" or ''bulan si pahasada'', second month is ''bulan si pahadua'', etc. The eleventh month is called ''bulan li'', while the twelfth month is named ''bulan hurung''. The first day of each month (''bona ni bulan'') fell directly one day after the New Moon. The Full Moon usually fell on the 14th or 15th day.
Porhalaan do not use the term for "week", but each month is divided into four each containing seven days. The name of each of the seven days was borrowed from the Sanskrit name. The first day is called ''Aditya'' ("sun"), the second Soma ("moon"), Anggara (Mars), Budha (Mercury), Brihaspati (Jupiter), Syukra (Venus), and Syanaiscara (Saturn). In the porhalaan way of naming days, the name of the day in the context of '30 days of a month' is maintained. For example, the third day in a month which fell on Tuesday is known ''Nggara telu uari''. sixth day is ''Cukera enem berngi'', ninth is ''Suma na siwah'', tenth is ''Nggara sepuluh'', and so on. The 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th day is named after the moon phase, that is ''bělah'' (first quarter waxing moon), ''bělah purnama'' (full moon), ''bělah turun'' (third quarter waning moon), dan ''mate bulan'' (dead moon). The word ''pultak'' ("increasing") is added to the bright fortnight days of the porhalaan when the moon phase grows, while the word ''cěpik'' ("decreasing") is added to the dark fortnight days of the porhalaan when the moon phase decreases; this is obviously influenced by the
Hindu
Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...
shukla pasha
Shukla ( sa, शुक्ल) is a word of Sanskrit origin that means "bright" or "white". Similar to what goes for Shukla Paksha (शुक्लपक्ष) bright moonlight during waxing phase. Today it is a surname used by Brahmins in North I ...
and
krishna paksha
Paksha (also known as ''pakṣa''; sa, पक्ष, Nepal Bhasa: ''thwa'' and ''gа̄''; ) refers to a fortnight or a lunar phase in a month of the Hindu lunar calendar.
Literally meaning "side", a paksha is the period either side of the Ful ...
.
See also
*
List of calendars
This is a list of calendars. Included are historical calendars as well as proposed ones. Historical calendars are often grouped into larger categories by cultural sphere or historical period; thus O'Neil (1976) distinguishes the groupings Egyptian ...
References
Cited works
*
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{{refend
Calendars
Batak