Paths and Rivers; Sa'dan Toraja Society in Transformation

553 Pages·2009·14.53 MB·English

PATHS AN D RIVERS
Boek Waterson.indb 1 27-1-2009 8:22:47
‘If we are condemned to tell stories we cannot control, may
we not, at least, tell stories we believe to be true.’
James Clifford, ‘On ethnographic allegory’ (1986:121).
Boek Waterson.indb 2 27-1-2009 8:22:47
V E R H A N D E L I N G E N
VAN HET KONINKLIJK INSTITUUT
VOOR TAAL-, LAND- EN VOLKENKUNDE
253
roxana waterson
PATHS AND RIVERS
Sa’dan Toraja society in transformation
KITLV Press
Leiden
2009
Boek Waterson.indb 3 27-1-2009 8:22:47
Published by:
KITLV Press
Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde
(Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies)
P.O. Box 9515
2300 RA Leiden
The Netherlands
website: www.kitlv.nl
e-mail: [email protected]
KITLV is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
(KNAW)
Cover: Creja ontwerpen, Leiderdorp
ISBN 978 90 6718 307 9
© 2009 Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission from the copyright owner.
Printed in the Netherlands
Boek Waterson.indb 4 27-1-2009 8:22:47
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
A note on orthography ix
Introduction xi
A return journey xv
Life in Buttang xxi
Part One: The uses of the past
I Toraja and their neighbours; Historical perspectives 1
On modes of remembering the past 2
Toraja in the Austronesian world 7
Naming the Toraja 9
Intimacies and enmities: Toraja relations with the Bugis 11
Marginality and resistance: political relations
between highlands and lowlands 17
II The view from the mountains 31
The story of Laki Padada 31
Heroes, tricksters, and relations with lowland kingdoms 33
III The Ancestors of the Same Dream 41
‘Holding back the mountain of Bone’: the seventeenth
century 42
The Ancestors of the Same Dream in oral memory 47
IV A time of chaos 61
The 1890s: the ‘Time of the Sidenreng people’ 61
The nineteenth century in local memory 68
The commoditization of slavery 78
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vi Contents
V The awakening of the oath; Memory, identity and 83
historical action
VI The colonial encounter and social transformation 95
Dutch takeover and its initial impacts 98
The Dutch Reformed Church Mission 101
The modernizing process and the development of
‘Toraja’ identity 108
Japanese Occupation and the struggle for independence 113
Part Two: A house society
VII The mythical origins of humans and their houses 123
Types of mythical narrative 126
Laughter from the stone: cosmology and creation 129
The house of Puang Matua 131
The first carpenters 133
The first humans on earth 136
Sky and water meet on earth: the to manurun di langi’ 141
The to manurun in Malimbong 147
Questions of precedence and links with the past 152
VIII A system of rank under strain 159
On the mythical origins of slavery 160
Regional variations in the ranking system 161
Changing relationships between nobles and their
dependents 169
IX Trunk and branch 173
Houses, land and graves 177
Metaphors of origin: the trunk and the tip 182
The ‘life’ of the house 183
The house and the rapu 191
Hopes and dreams 195
X Blood and bone 201
The inheritance of kinship substance 204
The centrality of siblingship in the conceptualization
of kin relations 207
Fractions of kinship substance 212
From siblings to affines, and back again 216
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Contents vii
Part Three: Village life
XI Women and men 225
On multiplicity and ambiguity in gender analysis 226
Gender as an unmarked category in Tana Toraja 229
Pairing and balance in marital relationships 234
Mobility and stability: elements of difference in the
characterisation of gender 238
XII Planting a hearth 243
Courtship and engagement 245
The marriage ritual 253
Marriage and status: intermarriage between ranks 262
Modernity and the changing style of weddings 266

XIII Land, labour and inheritance 269
Sale, pawning and sharecropping of land 271
Principles of inheritance 277
Lotong’s story 282
Agricultural labour and the formation of communal
work groups 284
Part Four: Smoke of the rising and the setting sun
XIV The structure of Aluk To Dolo 297
Rites of the East and the West 298
Ancestors and deities in the landscape 312
Intimacy with the ancestors 319
XV The enhancement of fertility 323
The ritual rhythm of the agricultural cycle 323
The ma’bua’, climactic Rite of the East 332
XVI A changing religious landscape 353
Local religions in the Indonesian national context 355
Conversion, modernity and identity 361
XVII The making of ancestors 373
The journey to the afterlife 377
The organization of a funeral 379
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viii Contents
XVIII Dynamics of the ceremonial economy 395
Economic domains and their intersections in
the Sa’dan highlands 399
Shifting measures of value: buffaloes and money 406
Mortuary ritual and the constitution of value 421

Conclusion 431
Appendices
A Passonde-sonde, Prayer recited after the ritual of
ma’tetean bori’, (interpretation of dreams) at
the conclusion of the house ceremony 441
B Chant for the ma’bugi’ ritual 443
C Verses of two ma’badong chants for the deceased
( ossoran badong) 451
D Ranked levels of the funeral ceremony 456
E Table of exchange values and inflation over the
twentieth century 458
F Genealogies 465
1 Tato’ Dena’’s genealogy of Tangdilino’ and his 466
numerous children, who spread out from Banua
Puan to found new houses in different parts of Toraja.
2 Tato’ Dena’’s genealogy of Tamboro Langi’, a widely 468
recognized to manurun ancestor. He and his wife Sanda
Bilik founded their tongkonan on Mount Ullin in
Saluputti. Their great-grandchild Laki Padada went
in search of eternal life and married a princess of
Gowa; their three sons ruled in Luwu’, Toraja
(Sangalla’) and Gowa respectively. This story is the most
important of those linking Toraja to the lowland kingdoms.
3 Genealogies of tongkonan Buttang, Pasang and 470
Pokko’ in Malimbong, showing the mythical ancestors
Pa’doran and Gonggang Sado’ko’.
Glossary 471
Bibliography 475
Index 499
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to LIPI, the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, for granting me
permission to do fieldwork in Tana Toraja, and to the then Social Science
Research Council of the UK for funding my doctoral research in 1978-
1979. My second fieldwork visit in 1982-1983 was funded by a Cambridge
University Evans Fellowship and a British Academy Southeast Asian
Fellowship. Shorter research trips in 2002, 2004 and 2007 were assisted by
funding from the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Arts and
Social Sciences Research Support Scheme. I am deeply grateful to all these
bodies for their generous support.
A note on orthography
The Toraja language is pronounced somewhat like Italian, with all letters
in the word enunciated. This includes double letters (even double ‘ng’, as
in parengnge’, ‘chief’). A distinctive feature is the glottal stop, rendered here
with an apostrophe. Pronunciation in the western districts of Tana Toraja
has the peculiarity that combinations of consonants, such as ‘nt’, ‘mp’, or
‘nk’, are pronounced as a doubling of the last consonant, as ‘tt’, ‘pp’, or ‘kk’.
Thus punti (‘banana’) is in west Toraja pronounced putti; ampo (‘grandchild’)
as appo; bungkang (‘crab’) as bukkang, and so forth. In reporting the speech
of people in Saluputti, I have retained this double consonant pattern. The
abbreviations (T.), (I.), (D.), (B.) or (M.) in the text refer to Toraja, Indonesian,
Dutch, Bugis or Makassarese words respectively.
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