Personal Religion and Magic in Mamasa, West Sulawesi: The Search for Powers of Blessing from the Other World of the Gods

174 Pages·2016·10.11 MB·English

by  Kees Buijs

Personal Religion and Magic in Mamasa, West Sulawesi
Verhandelingen van het
Koninklijk Instituut voor
Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde
Edited by
Rosemarijn Hoefte (kitlv, Leiden)
Henk Schulte Nordholt (kitlv, Leiden)
Editorial Board
Michael Laffan (Princeton University)
Adrian Vickers (The University of Sydney)
Anna Tsing (University of California Santa Cruz)
VOLUME 308
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/vki
Personal Religion and Magic in
Mamasa, West Sulawesi
The Search for Powers of Blessing from
the Other World of the Gods
By
Kees Buijs
LEIDEN | BOSTON
The realization of this publication was made possible by the support of kitlv
(Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies).
Cover illustration: Fire place with lalikan plus extra stones for pairan. Photograph by Kees Buijs.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Buijs, Kees, 1944- author.
Title: Personal religion and magic in Mamasa, West Sulawesi : the search for powers of blessing from the
other world of the gods / by Kees Buijs.
Description: Leiden : Boston : Brill, 2016. | Series: Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut Voor
Taal- en land- en Volkenkunde ; VOLUME 308 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2016036862 (print) | lccn 2016041801 (ebook) | isbn 9789004326569 (hardback : alk.
paper) | isbn 9789004326576 (E-book)
Subjects: lcsh: Toraja (Indonesian people)--Religion. | Mythology, Indonesian. | Magic--Indonesia.
Classification: lcc BL2123.T67 B845 2016 (print) | lcc BL2123.T67 (ebook) | ddc 299/.92226--dc23
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016036862
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 1572-1892
isbn 978-90-04-32656-9 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-32657-6 (e-book)
Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and
Hotei Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
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This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
Contents
List of Figures vii
Map of West Sulawesi x
Introduction 1
1 Religion and Magic 7
2 Headlines of the Religion of the Toraja’s in West Sulawesi 16
3 Pairan, Individual Religious Responsibility 43
4 Stones and Incantations, Vestiges from the Other World of the Gods 99
5 Pairan and Magic, Personal Religion in Daily Life 139
Glossary 147
Bibliography 156
Index 160
List of Figures
1 Showing-off his invulnerability, obtained by powerful stones 2
2 Bapak Bongga Barana’ in his kitchen at the fireplace with the five stones 3
3 In the traditional religion deceased people of high nobility were put upright for
some days in the house where they had lived. This tradition, called dipatadong-
kon, is still practiced nowadays 17
4 In the small aluk communities especially chickens and pigs are used for
offerings to the gods 18
5 During funeral rituals buffaloes are slaughtered 20
6 A tokeada’ in Mamasa, Nenek Pualilin 22
7 A toburake in action with her attributes, a small drum, the kamaru, and a
porcelain saucer, the pindan 23
8 A rice priestess, toso’bok. She uses also the small drum, kamaru 24
9 A tomebalun, here the man with the white band around his head has the task
to wrap the body of a deceased person. He is assisted by many men from the
family 25
10 The toburake indo’ Galo’, also called indo’ Koke, uses her kamaru 27
11 A rattan frame, rakki, is used for the offering of paisung to the gods in the
heavens 30
12 The two stones next to the fire in the lalikan are used for the offerings 30
13 The toburake uses her attributes, pindan and kamaru, to clean the house in the
ritual ditobangngi barang 32
14 In the kitchen the food is prepared. This is also the place for the offerings at the
three stones in the fireplace 33
15 Many people who attend a mortuary ritual bring a pig as a gift for the deceased.
All those gifts are counted and mentioned in the passerekan ritual 34
16 The most important buffalo is slaughtered at the simbuang batu. In the
M amasa area this is usually the only stone in the simbuang ritual 40
17 The kitchen is the centre of the family 45
18 Traditional adat house 47
19 The lentong posts rest on stones. The pelelen beams connect horizontally the
lentong posts 49
20 Banua layuk, the adat house of the highest category, inhabited by the highest
nobility 50
21 The tomambubung started to call out the eulogy on the house walking and
running from the highest point of the roof backwards 52
22 One of the oldest traditional adat houses 54
viii List of Figures
23 The beam of the central badong goes from the front of the house back and is
anchored in the petuo 55
24 Banua longkarrin, constructed without pelelen or longa. It is used by the
common people 56
25 The banua sussu’ has the oldest woodcarvings, without colour. In front a
wooden block used to unpeel rice grains by way of stamping it with long
round poles 58
26 The fireplace with the lalikan plus extra stones for pairan. The rack, para-para,
is made above the fireplace. To the right a water container, busso 59
27 A kitchen of an ordinary house. In the fireplace six stones are used for
cooking 63
28 In modern times the tradition of angka’ is still used for a bride and bridegroom.
On the small table lie the angka’ of buku siruk and buku lampa 65
29 The rice priest, toso’bok, is the first one who puts the peleko in the ground 76
30 Graves of the nobility in the middle of rice fields 76
31 A pig is slaughtered and the blood goes with the rice grains in the rice field to
obtain a rich harvest at the end 80
32 Buffaloes are guided with a rope through the nose. When they have white spots,
their value is very high 81
33 The spotted buffalo, tedong doti, is only found in the area of Toraja 82
34 A black water buffalo can be used to work in a rice field 83
35 Women show in which way they were calling men in the rice field during the
ma’dondi ritual 85
36 The head-hunters return early morning after the ‘raid’ in 1979 88
37 During the ritual the head-hunters dance in the village Batarirak was accompa-
nied by the sound of drums, gandang 89
38 The grains are first sprinkled with the blood of a slaughtered pig, in order to
request the powers of blessing from the gods, the dewata, before they are sowed
in the field. This pairan is performed by the rice priest 91
39 Ambe’ Sampe, living in the traditional aluk, has almost no trust in the pairan of
Christian people 96
40 An important road between two regions is badly damaged in a landslide
Elderly people are convinced that lack of pairan has caused this damage 98
41 Bapak Depparinding belongs to the nobility 101
42 The Mayor inspires awe with many people because of his powers stones, balo’-
balo’. He wears them under his shirt on his bare skin 102
43 The burial house tedong-tedong 105
44 The wooden boxes in the shape of water buffaloes are filled with bones and
skulls in the burial house tedong-tedong 106
List of Figures ix
45 The lalikan with a cooking pan. The two stones in the front part of the fireplace
are used for pairan offerings 108
46 Ne’ Pampangkaraeng, also called Ambe’ Arru after his first child, lived until his
death in the traditional religion, the aluk toyolo. Here he plays the tuli bond-
esan, a traditional musical instrument in Mamasa used to bring ill women in
trance as a healing procedure 109
47 Obtaining medicine by stirring water and power stones with a Toraja knife. The
sharp edge of the knife must point to the objective 111
48 Power stones are usually kept in a red cloth, bound around the waist, mostly
not visible under one’s shirt 137