RAAP—065
MARAPU
Marapu, alternatively rendered as Marafu in regional dialects, is a localized system of ancestral religion practiced predominantly on the island of Sumba and, to a lesser extent, in adjacent highland zones of Flores. Because it is not classified among Indonesia’s six state-sanctioned religions, adherents must identify administratively as Muslim or Christian, even while maintaining Marapu observance. This layered religiosity illustrates a broader pattern of syncretism in which indigenous cosmologies persist beneath the bureaucratic surface of monotheistic affiliation.
The origins of Marapu belief trace to the Mbojo people of eastern Sumbawa (ancient Bima), from where it spread eastward through migration and political displacement. A key transmission episode appears in Bo’ Sangaji Kai, a manuscript of the Bima Kingdom, which recounts the exile of a Kalepe noble family to Sumba after dissent. The marriage of La Bibano, a Kalepe aristocrat, into a ruling Sumbanese lineage embedded Marapu within new ritual geographies.
Marapu retreated from Bima under Hindu-Buddhist influence in the early medieval period and declined further after the Islamic consolidation of the seventeenth-century Sultanate of Bima. Nonetheless, its survival in mountain enclaves was documented by colonial ethnographers Zollinger in 1850 and Elbert in 1910, demonstrating the tenacity of highland ritual cultures amid religious standardization and political centralization. Today, Marapu persists not merely as belief but as a living negotiation of cosmology, memory, and state recognition, residing in the interstices of official doctrine and ancestral sovereignty.
The origins of Marapu belief trace to the Mbojo people of eastern Sumbawa (ancient Bima), from where it spread eastward through migration and political displacement. A key transmission episode appears in Bo’ Sangaji Kai, a manuscript of the Bima Kingdom, which recounts the exile of a Kalepe noble family to Sumba after dissent. The marriage of La Bibano, a Kalepe aristocrat, into a ruling Sumbanese lineage embedded Marapu within new ritual geographies.
Marapu retreated from Bima under Hindu-Buddhist influence in the early medieval period and declined further after the Islamic consolidation of the seventeenth-century Sultanate of Bima. Nonetheless, its survival in mountain enclaves was documented by colonial ethnographers Zollinger in 1850 and Elbert in 1910, demonstrating the tenacity of highland ritual cultures amid religious standardization and political centralization. Today, Marapu persists not merely as belief but as a living negotiation of cosmology, memory, and state recognition, residing in the interstices of official doctrine and ancestral sovereignty.