Bundo Kanduang

Bundo Kanduang, 'the true mother,' is the queen of Pagaruyung and the moral centre of the Kaba Cindua Mato, the most celebrated of the Minangkabau oral epics. Ruling in a matrilineal frame, she embodies the ideal of womanhood, the limpapeh or central pillar that holds up the great house, and her wisdom and adat-knowledge direct the whole action of the kaba: it is her word that dispatches Cindua Mato to fetch the bride Puti Bungsu for her son Dang Tuanku. In the epic's close she and Dang Tuanku pass out of the ordinary world; sources differ on whether she dies, sails away to the land of Rum, or ascends bodily into the unseen. In modern West Sumatra her name has become an honorific for the senior woman of a lineage and a national symbol of Minangkabau matriarchal ideals.

Children

• Dang Tuanku

Domains

• queenship
• customary wisdom

Powers

• embody the ideal of Minangkabau womanhood and adat

Epithets

• Limpapeh Rumah nan Gadang — the central pillar of the great houseNavis, A.A. 1984. Alam Terkembang Jadi Guru. Jakarta: Grafiti Pers, pp. 71-80. (secondary)

Relations

• child: Dang TuankuAbdullah, Taufik. 1970. 'Some Notes on the Kaba Tjindua Mato.' Indonesia 9: 1-22. (secondary)
• companion: Cindua MatoAbdullah, Taufik. 1970. 'Some Notes on the Kaba Tjindua Mato.' Indonesia 9: 1-22. (secondary)

Sources

• Bundo Kanduang is the legendary queen of Pagaruyung and central female authority of the Kaba Cindua Mato, revered as the archetype of the ideal Minangkabau woman and mother.: Abdullah, Taufik. 1970. 'Some Notes on the Kaba Tjindua Mato.' Indonesia 9: 1-22. (secondary); Hadler, Jeffrey. 2008. Muslims and Matriarchs. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 20-30. (secondary)