Marriage and Conception

(1) Wedding bath for fortunes and fertility

This section begins with describing the events of bathing rituals typically performed at weddings in Reragi. I first put a brief enumeration of the wedding bath (mandiq penganten) because marriage is generally considered as a necessary procedure for reproduction and couples are typically expected to have a child soon after marriage in the predominantly Islamic society of Lombok and Indonesia.¹

General procedures of marriage ceremonies

There are two broad types of marriage (merarik; In., perkawinan, penganten) in Lombok that is locally referred to as ‘marriage on stealing’ (memaling; In., kawin lari) and ‘marriage on request’ (ngendeng penganten). Marriage in stealing is a kind of kidnapping of wife found in many traditional societies in Southeast Asia.

According to oral reports, marriage on stealing used to be the common way of marriage and remains popular in rural Lombok until today, as the Sasak term of marriage (merarik) draws on ‘running’ (berari).² More recently, people have

1 As I briefly mentioned in Chapter 1, research on women’s reproductive rights requires another argument on its own and is out of the scope of this paper. See Bennett (2005), for the discussion of the modern courtship, women’s sexual autonomy and reproductive health in Mataram; Bennett (2014), for moral state of premarital sex and unmarried women’s inaccessibility to reproductive health care, and; Bennett (2015a), for women’s reproductive choices and social status in young marriage.

2 Pre-marital romantic relationships with or without parents’ permission are commonly seen in the region. Many among the 50 informants of my semi-structured interviews indicated that their marriage was by stealing (kawin lari). Some were the cases in which women were deprived of chances to reject the men in their courtship (midang),

marriage on request typically when the groom lives in a different village from the bride and when the groom’s family can afford the cost of formal events and gifts of the proposal.

In either case of marriage, Reragi villagers typically hold a series of the following ceremonies on the day of the wedding under the Islamic laws and Sasak adat marriage laws called nyorong:

(1) akad nikah (In., swearing): an Islamic tradition in which the marriage is religiously solemnized and administratively registered;

(2) gawe: a few hours of the feasts or wedding reception that immediately follows the akad nikah ceremony;

(3) mandiq penganten: a short bathing ritual after the akad nikah ceremony and the gawe feast;

(4) bejango: rituals in which a groom’s family visits the bride’s family’s house after the events mentioned above, typically in the late-afternoon.

The wedding ceremonies are typically held at the groom’s house, streets, or school playground in the neighborhood. The groom’s family is expected to pay for all or the majority of the cost of the wedding, including domestic animals for sacrifice the feast and the rental set-ups of the wedding hall, each of which cost around one million rupiahs as of 2018, according to oral report. The capacity of the ceremonies depends on the affordability of the groom’s family, and the extent of permissible

and others included a planned elopement in which the unmarried couple secretly arranged to meet and marry. Several cases are detailed in Chapter 5 of this paper. See Bennett (2005), for the discussion of the changing modalities of courtship in Lombok.

simplification is negotiated through face-to-face discussion between the families of the groom and the bride before marriage.

Mandiq penganten: wedding bath

The ritual of wedding bath remarks a short, joyous conclusion of the wedding day, after the solemn religious ceremonies and the celebratory feast. The wedding bath is held on the street in front of the groom’s house, where the wedding ceremonies also typically take place. The following description of the service draws on my

participant-observation on 12 June 2015 and other several events of wedding bath.

In advance to the wedding day, the groom’s family prepares for a bundle of wooden parts of weaving loom (kayuk sesekan), an old reragian cloth, a gold-lacquered bronze bowl (bokor), flower petals, small coins, and the source of water.³ The groom’s family also appoints one or two person(s) with high competence (ilmu) for assistance with the ritual performance. This typically involves the participation of either or both of an older female relative who can give the proper formula (jampi) or a male, Islamic religious leader (Sa./In., Ustad) who can provide prayers.

After the akad nikah ceremony and the gawe feast, both of which typically involve dozens or hundreds of guests, the wedding bath is performed with a small number of voluntary participants among close family members and neighbors without any invitation or preparatory announcement.

When the ritual tools are set ready, and the ritual performer arrives, the newly married couple comes out of their freshly shared home where they were resting after the ceremonies and sits down side by side on a new, unused rush mat (teper; In.,

3 The loom parts include a pair of the foot braces, the warp beam, and the nonskid stick.

tikar) that bundles the loom parts with the single reragian cloth wrapping the shoulders of both. While breathing jampi, the ritual performer applies the yellow soap on the upper forehead (semanget) to wish for marriage life blessed with fortunes (Sa., riski; In., rizki). (Figure 4.1).⁴

Figure 4.1 A scene of the wedding bath (mandiq penganten). A woman (center) applies turmeric soap on the forehead of the groom (left). Lombok, 12 June 2015 (photograph by author).

Several women (typically the older female relatives from the groom’s family) stand behind the couple and help the ritual performer with spreading the soap over the head and shoulders. After having enough of it, the ritual performer pours abundant water onto the couple by lifting the golden bowl over the head and flipping it upside down for several times each. She then cuts a little bit of the couple’s hair near both ears.

Finally, she scatters the chopped herbs and flower petals onto the head and body of

4 The yellow soap paste is made by scraping turmeric, grinding husked rice and mashing candleberries and commonly used to deodorize goats and cattle before sacrifice.

the couple and pours water again on their heads and shoulders until the soap is washed off.

During the bathing ceremony, the crowd on the street, predominantly women and children, go wild for another event called coin showering (serogot kepeng) that is recurringly performed in other life-cycle rituals. The coin showering constitutes a kind of exorcizing routine, in which those who could catch many coins would be blessed with fortunes. Usually, the mother of the groom (if not, other female members of the groom’s family) throws away a dozen handfuls of coins and husked rice in the air. As she continues, the crowd shout for excitement (‘Ampoq (More)!’), open arms and jump to reach out their hands to the showering money, and hurriedly crouch on the ground to collect dropped coins.

On the other hand, some of the participants in coin showering weave their way through the crowd to play pranks. They sneakily touch the dirty pot used in the gawe feast and joke sooting up people’s faces (it is said that the soot keeps bakeq away). The growing chaos of delight tempts the marrying couple to laugh aloud, which is also supposed to chase away misfortunes.

The crowd cools down when the golden bowl of coins becomes empty. The bathing ceremony is done by the time, and the drenched couple enters the groom’s parents’ house to change clothes. The groom’s family gives the ritual performers a gift set of cash and husked rice called andang-andang to show their gratitude. As the crowd scatters to make their way home, the extensive series of ceremonies are all settled down to mark a prosperous and fertile marriage.

(2) Change of women’s social statuses from a bride to a pregnant mother In Reragi, there are no particular social events organized at the time of conception.

While people tend not to hesitate to let know family members and friends about the pregnancy once it is confirmed, the matter itself is more likely reserved as a private issue rather than as a public concern.

From the time of marriage until pregnancy turns out, newly married men and women are typically called by their social status as the ‘newlywed’ (Sa./In.,

penganten), ‘groom’ (penganten mama) for men, or ‘bride’ (penganten nina) for women. Since the time the bride’s pregnancy is confirmed, family members switch the way of reference to ‘pregnant mother’ (Inaq ebon) for the pregnant woman and

‘pregnant father’ (Amaq ebon) for her husband (while the wife and husband call each other by the first name). This is often when and how more numbers of neighbors and relatives casually notice that the couple is expecting a child, and they typically join in referring to them in the same way.⁵

Reragi villagers today usually confirm the conception with commercially available pregnancy test (In., tes pek) from the drug store or free pregnancy test at the Puskesmas (sub-district health clinic). As we will explore later in Chapter 6, the acknowledgment of ngidam (pregnancy sickness and food cravings) as experienced by the pregnant mother or the expectant father sometimes serve as a motivation other than the delay of menstruation for women to take the pregnancy test.

5 People are called by the name of the first child after s/he is born and named. As we will see in detail in Chapter 5, when they are expecting another child, people around them often switch again to call them ‘pregnant mother’ and ‘pregnant father’ until s/he is born. Once the other child is born, people switch back to refer to the couple by the name of the first child, or change to call them by the name of the newborn.