To Nation by Revolution: Indonesia in the 20th Century

Chapter 3. From Betel to Tobacco: The Modern Transformation

From Betel to Tobacco 63 63 CHAPTER 3 From Betel to Tobacco: The Modern Transformation Southeast Asians appear to have been extensive users of mild narcotics throughout their recorded history. For all but the past century of this history, the betel quid, composed of areca nut, betel leaves, and lime, was the characteristic relaxant central to the agreeable social interaction that Southeast Asians valued. For thousands of years, the peoples of Southern Asia and Melanesia were inveterate chewers of betel, giving rise to the claim that it was the most widely used narcotic in human history.1 In this region, most other narcotics began to be used as a part of the betel chew. Cigarette smoking has almost completely replaced the chewing of betel among male Indonesians during the past century. According to a 1980 survey,2 85 per cent of adult Indonesian men smoked when they could afford it, although less than 1.5 per cent of Indonesian women did so. Women have abandoned the chewing of betel more slowly, presumably because cigarette-smoking was not deemed an appropriate substitute for their use. This article will examine the massive shift in Indonesian consumption as the major case study of tropical Asia in general. The implications of such a large-scale change for Indonesian health, expenditure patterns, and social and ritual interaction are of major importance. Betel in Indonesian History The three essential ingredients of the betel quid are all naturally available in Indonesia. Lime is readily obtained from crushed shells. The two plant elements are the seed or “nut” of the areca palm (areca catechu) and the fresh leaf of the betel vine (piper betle), which forms the wrapper for the quid. In eastern Indonesia and New Guinea, the fruit or pod of the siriboa 64 To Nation by Revolution variant of the betel vine is preferred to the leaf, and has the same chemical effect.3 Areca and betel both appear to be native to the Indonesian Archipelago ; this is indicated by the diversity of indigenous terms that are applied to them. Toba Low English Malay Aceh Batak Javanese Bali Makasar Bugis Ternate areca pinang pineung jambe banda rappo alossi hena betel sirih ranub napuran Suroh chanang leko’ ota bido marau The same diversity is to be found in the Philippines — Tagalog bunga/ ikmo, Pampangan luyos/sumat; Visayan bunga/mamon. By contrast, the languages of India tend to use cognates of the words supari and pan,4 suggesting a more recent introduction of the plants. Indian sources began to refer to betel-chewing only during the first four centuries of the Christian era, and therefore it is assumed that the precious plants were introduced from Southeast Asia during that period.5 In Southeast Asia, there is no indigenous evidence from such early periods, though Chinese references go as far back as a second-century BC description of betel-chewing in Vietnam.6 By the Tang period, we have numerous Chinese references to the use and export of areca from the Indonesian area.7 Chau Ju-kua noted that in 12th-century Po-ni (Brunei?), betel was prominent in both marriage ritual and court ceremonial,8 while Ma Huan reported of Java in the early 15th century: Men and women take areca-nut and betel-leaf, and mix them with lime, made from clam-shells; their mouths are never without this mixture … When they receive passing guests, they entertain them, not with tea, but only with areca-nut.9 The fact that the Chinese term for areca since at least Tang times, pin-lang, derives from Malay pinang suggests that the area then dominated by Malay-speaking Sriwijaya (Sumatra, Malayan Peninsula, western Borneo) was the major source of this commodity. On the other hand, the more isolated upland peoples of the Peninsula (as distinct from coastal Malays) until recently used betel sparingly if at all, whereas the Negritos of northern Luzon in the 16th century were even more addicted to it than From Betel to Tobacco 65 were lowlanders.10 This tends to confirm the linguistic evidence that it is to the islands rather than the mainland of Southeast Asia that we should look for the sources from which areca and betel spread. By the 16th and 17th centuries, when we have much fuller descriptions , the chewing of betel was established virtually everywhere in tropical Asia as the indispensable politeness to be offered a guest in...