Pariangan is a

Minangkabau Minangkabau may refer to: * Minangkabau culture, culture of the Minangkabau people * Minangkabau Culture Documentation and Information Center * Minangkabau Express, an airport rail link service serving Minangkabau International Airport (''see belo ...

village located in the regency of

Tanah Datar Tanah Datar Regency is a landlocked regency (''kabupaten'') in West Sumatra province, Indonesia. The regency has an area of 1,336 km2, and had a population of 338,484 at the 2010 Census, which rose to 371,704 at the 2020 Census. The regency sea ...

West Sumatra West Sumatra ( id, Sumatra Barat) is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the west coast of the island of Sumatra and includes the Mentawai Islands off that coast. The province has an area of , with a population of 5,534,472 at the 2020 cen ...

province,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. The village is located on the lower slopes of

Mount Marapi The Marapi (), or Mount Marapi ( min, ڬونوواڠ ماراڤي, Gunuang Marapi) is a complex volcano in West Sumatra, Indonesia. Its name means ''Mountain of Fire'', and it is the most active volcano in Sumatra. Its elevation is . A number of ...

, a highly active

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the Crust (geology), crust of a Planet#Planetary-mass objects, planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and volcanic gas, gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Ear ...

, at a distance of fifteen kilometres from the market town of

Batu Sangkar Batusangkar (''batu'': stone, rock, ''sangkar'': cage) is the capital of the Tanah Datar regency of West Sumatra, Indonesia. It is known as "the city of culture". History The town is near the former seat of the Minangkabau royalty established by A ...

. Despite its size, the village is of great cultural and historical significance to the Minangkabau people.

History

Local legend states that Pariangan is the oldest of all Minangkabau villages. A large ancient tomb in the village is said to belong to Tantejo Gurhano, an early ruler. Today the whole village is preserved as a cultural monument under national legislation.

Architecture and design

Pariangan is one of the best-preserved traditional Minangkabau villages, containing many ' rumah gadang' traditional houses. The oldest of these are said to be three hundred years old and feature beautiful wood-carving and walls woven from

rattan Rattan, also spelled ratan, is the name for roughly 600 species of Old World climbing palms belonging to subfamily Calamoideae. The greatest diversity of rattan palm species and genera are in the closed- canopy old-growth tropical fores ...

. The town also features a ' surau', a communal living quarters for unmarried males, one of very few surviving examples of such a structure. The centrepiece of the town today is a large traditional

mosque A mosque (; from ar, مَسْجِد, masjid, ; literally "place of ritual prostration"), also called masjid, is a place of prayer for Muslims. Mosques are usually covered buildings, but can be any place where prayers ( sujud) are performed, ...

said to date back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is believed to be the oldest Minangkabau mosque in existence. Alongside the mosque today are the hot springs where communal bathing continues as it has for centuries.

References

* Waterson, Roxanna. ''The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in South-East Asia''. Oxford University Press, 1990. {{coord, 0, 25, 59.15, S, 100, 30, 17.96, E, region:ID_type:city, display=title Populated places in West Sumatra