Hainuwele
Hainuwele ("coconut palm branch ") is a myth of the Wemale , an original ethnic group from the Indonesian island of Seram .
myth
The myth was recorded by Adolf Ellegard Jensen during an expedition of the Frobenius Institute to the Moluccas between 1937 and 1938 .
During a hunting a bachelor named Ameta found impaled on the tusks of a drowned boar a coconut , a previously unknown plant. Ameta takes her home. That same night a figure appears to him in a dream who instructs him to plant the coconut in the earth. A few days after he did as he was told, the coconut grew into a fully developed, flowering palm . Ameta climbs the palm to harvest flowers, but cuts her finger and blood drips into a blossom on the palm. Nine days later, instead of the flower, he finds a girl whom he calls Hainuwele and who takes him home wrapped in a sarong . She quickly grows to marriageable age. Hainuwele has a special ability: when defecating , she eliminates valuables. Ameta becomes a rich man.
Hainuwele participates in a nine-day dance ritual at a place called Tamene Siwa , in which the men form a nine-fold spiral and the women sit in the middle. In this Maro dance , it is customary for the girls to distribute betel nuts to the men. When the men asked Hainuwele for such items, however, she distributed valuables that she had disposed of herself, which the men were initially very happy about. Every day she gives larger, more valuable objects: corals , Chinese porcelain plates, machetes, copper boxes, gold earrings and gongs . After a while, the villagers get scary about Hainuwele's ability and, driven by envy, decide to kill her on the ninth night of the dance. Before that, the men dig a pitfall in the center of the dance floor, into which Hainuwele is now jointly pushed. With continued singing and dancing, Hainuwele is buried alive by the men.
Ameta misses Hainuwele after a while and starts looking for her. He learns what happened through an oracle . He digs up her corpse, cuts it into pieces and buries the body parts spread around the dance floor. Various previously unknown food plants, especially tuberous fruits, grow from the body parts.
Ameta brings the severed arms of Hainuweles to mulua Satene , the divine ruler over the people. She builds a spiral gate through which people are supposed to step. Those who manage to pass through the gate remain human, but from this point onwards they are mortal and are divided into Patalima ("people of five") and Patasiwa ("people of nine"). Those who fail to step through the gate turn into new species of animals or ghosts. Satene herself leaves the earth and becomes the ruler of the realm of the dead.
interpretation
Hainuwele can be understood in a broad sense as a creation myth : The design of the natural environment, human existence and social structures are explained. Animal species, spirits and crops are created, an explanation for human mortality and tribal formations of the Wemale are given.
Jensen interprets the figure of the Hainuwele as a Dema deity . According to Jensen, the belief in a Dema deity is typical of simple planter cultures in contrast to hunter-gatherer societies and societies with grain-based agriculture . Jensen recognizes the worship of Dema deities in numerous cultures around the world. He assumes that the worship of Dema deities goes back to the Neolithic Revolution in prehistory and early history . It is characteristic of Dema deities that they are killed, dismembered and buried in the myth of primeval, immortal people ( Dema ). Subsequently, food plants are created from their body parts. Worship of a Dema deity expresses the belief that the creation of new life is necessarily linked to the mortality of life. Jensen emphasizes in this interpretation of Hainuweles that for numerous elements of the myth there were parallels in the rituals of the females, such as the Maro dance , and that myth and ritual formed a unit of meaning.
Recent research rejects the interpretation as a creation myth and use of the term Dema deity. The cultural-morphological idea of the dema deity is problematic as such, since it assumes an original link between the most varied, very different myths of spatially widely separated cultures and is hardly supported by archaeological or other empirical data.
Rather, the interpretation of Hainuwele emphasizes social anthropological aspects: The foreign and (thus?) Impure origin of the valuables distributed by Hainuwele is emphasized as the cause of a social conflict (envy). None of the items were originally produced in Seram and reached Seram in the 16th century at the earliest. The valuables can be understood as "dirty money". The myth thus dealt with a new, problematic socio-economic situation that the women were confronted with and tried to bring them into harmony with older mythical ideas. In this context, the introduction of mortality among people is explained as a compensation or reparation for the valuables received in relation to the world of spirits and gods.
literature
- Joseph Campbell : The Masks of God. Primitive Mythology. Sphinx, Basel 1991, ISBN 3-85914-001-9 .
- Mircea Eliade : Myth and Reality. Harper & Row, New York NY 1963.
- Adolf Ellegard Jensen , H. Niggemeyer: Hainuwele. Folk tales from the Moluccan island of Ceram. Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1939 ( Results of the Frobenius Expedition, Vol. I)
- Adolf Ellegard Jensen: Myth and cult among primitive peoples. dtv, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-423-04567-1 .
- Adolf Ellegard Jensen: The three streams. Traits from the spiritual and religious life of the Wemale, a primitive people in the Moluccas. Harrassowitz, Leipzig 1948.
- Adolf Ellegard Jensen: An East Indonesian myth as an expression of a worldview. In: Paideuma. Communications on cultural studies. 1, 1938-1940, ISSN 0078-7809 , pp 199-216.
- Burton Mack: Introduction: Religion and Ritual. In: Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly (Ed.): Violent Origins. Walter Burkert , René Girard , and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation. With an introduction by Burton Mack and a commentary by Renato Rosaldo. Stanford University Press, Stanford CA 1987, ISBN 0-8047-1370-7 , pp. 1-72
- Jonathan Z. Smith: Imagining Religion. From Babylon to Jonestown. University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL a. a. 1982, ISBN 0-226-76360-9 , pp. 96-101 ( Chicago studies in the history of judaism ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jensen: An East Indonesian myth as an expression of a worldview. P. 200
- ↑ Jensen, Hainuwele. Pp. 59-64
- ↑ Jensen: Hainuwele. Pp. 88-111, esp. 107ff. See also Jensen: Myth and cult among primitive peoples. Pp. 142, 240
- ↑ Jensen: Hainuwele. S. 17. See also Jensen: Myth and cult among primitive peoples. Pp. 239f, 269
- ^ Mack: Introduction: Religion and Ritual. Pp. 41-43