Preface and Acknowledgements List ofIllustrations, Maps, Graphics and Tables

1 Introduction  1.1 Grand Narratives: Where Do Kinship and Marriage Fit In? 1.2 The Toba Batak 1.3 Discourse, Agency and Modernities 1.4 Kinship: Structure, Process, and Issues 1.5 Composition 1.6 Sources Part 1: A Historical Ethnography

2 The Construction of Toba Batak Gender  2.1 Batak Adat and Its Divine Origin 2.2 The Origin of Mankind and the Creation of the Earth 2.3 Gendered Hierarchies 2.4 The Woman as the Intermediary between Clans 2.5 Prohibited Marriages 2.6 The Most Coveted Union 2.7 Reciprocal Marriage Payments 2.8 The Right Marriage is a Fertile Marriage 2.9 Myth and Reality: Recurrent Themes 2.10 Toba Batak Mythology as a Reflection of Gendered Interests

3 Customary Marriage  3.1 Hypogamy: The Ideal and the Practice 3.2 Reasons for Forging Marital Alliances in the Nineteenth Century 3.3 Fathers, Daughters, and Arranged Marriages 3.4 Courtship and Premarital Sexual Relations 3.5 Bypassing the Fathers 3.6 Never Relinquished by Her Family of Origin 3.7 The Crucial Factor: The Agency of the Daughter

4 Fertility, Mortality and the Pinnacle of Life  4.1 Fertility, Morbidity, and Mortality in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century 4.2 The Concept of a Blessed Life 4.3 Male Progeny and the Journey of the Soul 4.4 Joy and Grief 4.5 Strategies to Avert Disaster 4.6 The Male Strategy to Reach the Pinnacle of Life 4.7 Gendered Odds

5 Ruptures: Divorce and Widowhood  5.1 Conflict, War, Mediation, and Jurisdiction 5.2 Toba Batak Legal Terminology