Marind-anim
The Marind-anim (often called Tugeri in colonial times ) are a Melanesian people in the south of the Indonesian part of western New Guinea .
The Marind-anim settlement area extends between the Digul River, north of Yos Sudarso Island , and the Maro (north of Wasur National Park ), not far from the state border with Papua New Guinea . Mainly the Marind-anim settled along the rivers Bian and Kumbe as well as near the coast of the Arafura Sea , because this offered them a stable food supply.
living conditions
In the period before 1900, the people are said to have comprised over 15,000 people. Introduced epidemics (including venereal diseases ) reduced the population by half. Widespread infertility among Marind-anim women is also said to be responsible for the shrinkage. This is attributed to unusual sexual practices. In the hinterland there are other tribes related to the Marind-amin, with whom there used to be a strong cultural exchange.
Adjacent tribal neighbors are the Jee-anim (in the east and along the Maro) and in the southeast, between the rivers Maro and the Torassi, the Kanum people (Kánum-írebe) . In the west, the Makleeu-anim , who mainly settle along the Bulaka River, border the Jab-anim even further east. Various small tribes live in the northern areas adjacent to the Digul. To a large extent nothing is known about them. Tribes with foreign-sounding dialects and foreign languages, i.e. those that lie beyond the areas mentioned, were called foreigners ( Horak meen ) and enemies ( Ikam-anim ) by the Marind-anim .
Main weapons and weapons of war form the bow and arrow. The Marind-anim in the catchment area south of the Digul make their bows from palm wood, south of it from bamboo. The bowstrings consist of rattan strips in the northern regions and liana fibers in the south . The arch protection was made from ribs and bast from coconut leaves. The composite arrow shafts are made of reed-like , with and without barbs. The spear ( dam ) is also used, sometimes even as a main weapon. Spear throwers ( Kander ) were made from bamboo and also processed for pig catchers.
History and culture
In the 17th century the Dutch East India Company tried unsuccessfully to occupy the resource-rich New Guinea. It was not until 1828 that the Netherlands was able to conquer the region. In 1885 the British recognized the Dutch as protectors of Dutch India and Dutch New Guinea . At this time, the British colony of British New Guinea and the German Kaiser-Wilhelms-Land were founded in eastern New Guinea . The first reliable news about the Marind-anim comes from the English occupation after Mac Gregor set out on the south coast of New Guinea in 1891, accompanied by the Scottish missionary James Chalmers and the surveyor JB Cameron . Soon there were conflicts between the colonial powers. The British felt compelled to make diplomatic demarches to the Dutch . The Marind-anim from Dutch sovereignty carried out head -hunts in an exceptionally aggressive manner , repeatedly penetrating deep into the hinterland of British New Guinea.
In 1902 the Netherlands therefore set up an administrative base in Merauke , in the middle of the Marind-anim tribal area. From 1905 the Catholic Mission started its work in the region. The colonial administration concentrated on headhunting ( koppensnellen ) and the widespread "orgiastic homosexuality" among the Marind-anim. The Dutch ethnologist Jan van Baal , who was also governor of Dutch New Guinea between 1953 and 1958, writes in his standard work "Dema" that the excesses in the cult of the Marind-anim had enraged self-understanding ethnographers. The German ethnologist Hans Nevermann , who has been involved in various research work in the region since 1933, is said to have written down with disgust that no other people would behave "so beastly and shamelessly" at cultic ceremonies. Wedding nights were also unusual. Since the Marind-anim believed that the amount of semen determined a woman's fertility, all male members of the husband's lineage were allowed to have sex with his wife on the wedding night. If there was not enough time for this, this was continued on the following nights. Both the mission and the colonial administration reacted with prohibitions, so that the old rites quickly disappeared from the everyday life of the people.
The Swiss Paul Wirz documented traditional cult acts and various myths between 1916 and 1931 .
→ See also: People of Zambia in Papua New Guinea
→ See also: Sexuality among the Bimin-Kuskusmin in Papua New Guinea
The headhunt
The headhunting was deeply rooted in the faith of Marind-anim and had about the importance of strengthening spiritual and secular power (mana) . On the occasion of births it was a cultic custom, because the name of the decapitated person from another tribe ( Ikam-anim ) was given to one's own child, differently: a head without a name was worthless due to a lack of animistic powers. The cannibalism following headhunting was part of the cultic order.
Cults
The Marind-anim had different regional cult cycles.
The majo cult
The official tribal cult was called Majo and originally had the character of a mythological- totemic fertility ceremony. According to the myth, it is said to have originated from sexual and cannibalistic celebrations, only to mutate later into a coconut cult, which pays homage to the fertility of the coconut palm produced by the cult. However, it is not clear whether the origins of the cult are true and which aspect of the cult is possibly based on pure analogy. Within the same village it recurred periodically every four to six years and was celebrated along the coast in a set sequence. The individual village ceremony lasted for up to six months during the dry season. During the festival all other cultic measures were suspended, including headhunting. The Majo rituals were primarily used to initiate male and female descendants ( Majo-Marind ). Women were allowed to take part in the cult, but were not privy to all ritual secrets. In a petty manner, the ceremonial initiate ( Metoar ) ensures that the novices carefully get to know and try all food and luxury goods as well as harvesting methods ( kamak ) before it can be ensured that the food is physically acceptable.
Cult climax (Dema)
With the term Dema , the Marind-anim connects a series of ideas, the common characteristic of which is something strange, incomprehensible and inexplicable. Every body is animated, but Dema is only there when this soul force is found in increased energy. An ordinary stone, which can be associated with a betel nut, then has animistic powers from which it can give off. Since like can have an effect on like, the magic of a personified stone dema is close. Dema are on the one hand impersonal, all-fulfilling forces (in the spiritual sense) as well as an independently free soul being from which these forces emanate (human magic representations).
The ritual highlight of various festivals, especially the Majo , was therefore the Dema festival. Having reached the center of fertility worship, the Dema put on different ceremonial attire to display the characteristics of the honored goods, such as bamboo, sago and coconut, edible crabs or simply the sea and waves. There was also no lack of penis dema. The term dema is borrowed from the language of the Marind-anim. The renowned cultural morphologist A. E. Jensen sees in this the worship of the Dema deity . In his opinion, this differs from our familiar notions of God primarily in that knowledge is not conveyed as a cultural hero, but is passed on directly through the death of their bodies, which are transformed into useful plants. This transfer of knowledge is repeated again and again in the sacrificial cult. The Dema thus alludes to the mythical ancestors, whose primeval work is the basis for everything, the plant world, the animals, the stars, fire, all weapons and other life accessories, even overriding the order of earthly existence itself and the good behavior based on it. Dramatically staged, the progenitors are remembered in the ritual. In doing so, the Dema do not escape their ordinary earthly existence, but rather they were abused, violated and killed. As a result, with the first killing of a Dema, death came into the world.
The dema-wiel colorfully symbolized the rite through well-equipped actors who were adorned with many accessories such as bamboo poles , bird skins, animal skins, sacred plants, down and feathers (such as cassowaries , herons or birds of paradise ). This also included imitations of sago palms and banana trees. The highlight was the appearance of the Gari figure, who conveyed the sun and fire. He incorporated the whole of the world by means of an approximately 3 meter high fan made of sago tree components. The masquerade adorned the wearer's head. This event was accompanied by the sound of fur drums. Areka was consumed for strengthening .
Face masks were used in death rituals . They were cut from coconut bast and palm leaves.
The Imo cult
Due to the extraordinary closeness of the natives, very little is known about the Imo cult . It got its name after the former coastal settlement that corresponds to today's Sangassé . The cult was hardly celebrated in the interior of the country. There is disagreement about whether he had a mystery cult character or whether it was even a secret society . In a differing view of Nevermann, Wirz insisted that all ritual acts were mystery cults. In any case, women and children were excluded from the festival that took place outside the village.
It is not assumed that the Imo served a practical purpose, although he is said to have taken into account the particular characteristics of the villages in the ceremonial. However, there is broad agreement that he only followed the example of the Majo cult by not taking fertility per se, but increasing fertility as its content. It is known that cannibalism was cultivated and that paints applied to the festival were sparsely used.
The Rapa cult
The ceremonies of the Rapa cult included fire drilling ( Rapa ) and fire sawing ( Phirug ) , so that the idea of the art of making and keeping fire can be referred to as a fire cult. The myth was enacted by the fire dema. Only men and youths were among the initiates. Here, too, the basis of the festival was sexual and subsequently cannibalistic debauchery on female victims kidnapped from the people for this purpose ( Iwåg = marriageable girls ). To increase fertility, the bones of the women eaten were painted red and buried in coconut trees.
This cult, which was cultivated only among a few tribal parts of the Marind-anim, namely those along the small river Kondo, had a reputation in the neighborhood for being particularly frightening and terrifying. The secret society was immersed in a particularly mystical darkness, the festival was celebrated more aggressively than the others ( Majo, Imo ). The Kondo-anim even replaced the majo cult with him.
The Sosom cult
To the extent that buzzers have already played a role on various Marind-anim occasions (for example in the secret cults on the upper Bian ), especially on the occasion of the Sosom cult . The influences to this came from the eastern regions of the island and were closely linked to the conduct of fornication against the boys of their own tribal parts (homosexuality). It is assumed that according to myth, Sosom was a giant, a dema, about the size of a coconut tree. When he arrived, a large hut was built for him for the duration of his stay before he moved further west. Men ( patur ) and boys ( mokraved ) had to be brought to him, which he swallowed and gave out again without them noticing. He ate the intestines of a few and filled their bellies with coconuts ( boka ), leaving no wounds. In order to protect themselves from his death march into the village, the women were urged to teach the chosen boys. Clubs, swords and the imbassum were used as headhunting weapons.
Ceremonial weapons
Spears with a wide, ornamentally pierced point and clubs with a perforated stone disc were used as striking parts for headhunting . The Marind-anim prepared the scalp of the killed enemies in such a way that it would later fit over the flesh-free skull in order to display it on fork posts. Schwirrholz was also the focus of at least two of the five most important cults ( Sosom and secret cult on the upper Bian ).
Pubic coverings
The scientist Beatrice Voirol examined the relationship structures of the tribes of southwestern New Guinea by researching their pubic coverings. She turned in particular to the customs of the Marind-anim. Classical pubic coverings then represented the outer coils of the Melo snails . These were pierced on both sides so that cords (occasionally simple rattan strips) could be pulled through to attach to the body. She found penis shells ("sabu"), collected by Wirtz and Nevermann, in the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam and in the Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden . In the ceremonial "ewati", the appearance of the mother brother, plays an important role. He ritually introduces the growing nephew into society and hands him the piece of jewelry for the first time. In addition to the penis jewelry, which in rarer cases also consisted of coconut parts, braids of raffia were braided into the hair, the face was painted in gorgeous colors, tiaras made of cassowary and / or bird of paradise feathers and bracelets and knee bands with abundant decorations were made.
language
The Marind-anim belong to the Marind-speaking area (Tugeri), which is part of the superordinate Trans-New Guinea main branch (TNG) .
The Marind language family is sub-categorized as follows:
- Boazi-language branch: Kuni-Boazi , and Zimakani
- Marind (core language); Dialects are Southeast Marind , Gawir , Holifoersch , and Tugeri . Bian-Marind (Nordwest-Marind) and AKA Boven-Mbian are already so different that mutual intelligibility is no longer guaranteed.
- Yaqay-language branch: Warkay-Bipim , Yaqay
Works by Paul Wirz
- Paul Wirz : The ornaments and especially the representation of human forms in the art of Dutch South New Guinea . Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 60: 115–131, Batavia.
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The Marind-anim of Dutch South New Guinea . Hamburg University, treatises from the field of foreign studies , Friederichsen, Hamburg 1922–1925.
- Vol. 1, part 1: The material culture of the Marind-anim. 1922
- Vol. 1, Part 2: The religious ideas and the myths of the Marind-anim, as well as the formation of the totemistic-social groupings. 1922
- Vol. 2, part 3: The social life of the Marind-anim. 1925
- Vol. 2, part 4: The Marind-anim in their festivals, their art and their knowledge and characteristics. 1925
Further literature
- Jan van Baal : Dema, Description and Analysis of Marind-Anim Culture (South New Guinea) . The Hague 1966.
- Jan van Baal: The Dialectics of Sex in Marind-anim Culture. In Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia . edited by GH Herdt, University of California Press, Berkeley 1984.
- Raymond Corbey: Headhunters from the swamps: The Marind Anim of New Guinea as seen by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, 1905-1925 . KITLV Press and Zwartenkot Art Books, Leiden 2010.
- Hans Nevermann : sons of the killing father. Demon and headhunter stories from New Guinea. The face of the peoples . Erich Röth-Verlag, Eisenach / Kassel 1957.
- Hans Nevermann: A visit to Stone Age people , in Fraktur, Kosmos, Stuttgart 1941, series of publications: Kosmos - Kosmos-Bändchen; 164.
- Waldemar Stöhr: Art and Culture from the South Seas, Clausmeyer Collection, Melanesia . Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum für Völkerkunde, Cologne 1987, ISBN 3-923158-11-4 .
- Bruce Knauft: South Coast New Guinea Cultures: History, comparison, dialectic . University Press, Cambridge 1993, ISBN 0-521-42931-5 .
Web links
Remarks
- ^ Robert B. Edgerton, Sick societies: challenging the myth of primitive harmony , p. 182
- ^ Jan Van Baal, Dema (1966), Description and Analysis of Marind-Anim Culture (South New Guinea) .
- ↑ Kanum anim
- ↑ Paul Wirz: Die Marind-anim von Holländisch-Süd-Neu-Guinea vol. 1, part 1, p. 23 ff. (See lit.)
- ↑ a b Paul Wirz: The Marind-anim of Dutch-South-New-Guinea, Vol. 2, Part 4: The Marind-anim in their festivals, their art and their knowledge and qualities, pp. 105-113 (s. Lit.)
- ↑ a b Waldemar Stöhr, Art and Culture from the South Seas, p. 107 + 121 (see lit.)
- ↑ a b c d Jan van Baal, Dema, Description and Analysis of Marind-Anim Culture (South New Guinea), pp. 603–607 (see lit.)
- ^ Jan van Baal, The Dialectics of Sex in Marind-anim Culture. In Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia: pp. 137–139 (see lit.)
- ↑ a b c d e Paul Wirz: Die Marind-anim von Holländisch-Süd-Neu-Guinea, 1, pp. 1–25 (see lit.)
- ↑ Hans Nevermann, p. 112 (see lit.)
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Paul Wirz: Die Marind-anim von Holländisch-Süd-Neu-Guinea, vol. 2, part 3, pp. 26–39 (see lit.)
- ↑ Hans Nevermann, p. 13 (see lit.)
- ↑ Jan van Baal, Dema, Description and Analysis of Marind-Anim Culture (South New Guinea), pp. 498–500 (see lit.)
- ↑ Paul Wirz: The Marind-anim of Dutch South New Guinea, Vol. 2, Part 4: The Marind-anim in their festivals, their art and their knowledge and characteristics, p. 6 ff.
- ↑ Paul Wirz lists the dema in numerous photographs and drawings in Part IV on various boards.
- ↑ Jan van Baal, Dema, Description and Analysis of Marind-Anim Culture (South New Guinea), pp. 178–196 (see lit.)
- ↑ Paul Wirz: Die Marind-anim von Holländisch-Süd-Neu-Guinea, pp. 40–59 (see lit.)
- ↑ Ceremonial drums of the Marind-anim ( Memento of the original from February 18, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Paul Wirz: The Marind-anim of Dutch South New Guinea, Vol. 2, Part 4: The Marind-anim in their festivals, their art and their knowledge and properties, pp. 82-86
- ↑ Jan van Baal, Dema, Description and Analysis of Marind-Anim Culture (South New Guinea), pp. 725–740 (see lit.)
- ^ Paul Wirz: Die Marind-anim von Holländisch-Süd-Neu-Guinea, 1, p. 56 (see lit.)
- ↑ Beatrice Voirol, in Göttingen Contributions to Ethnology Volume 4, Winding Paths , Ethnography of the “Melo” snail in Papua, Indonesia, p. 157 ff.
- ↑ MultiTree: A Digital Library of Language Relationships
- ↑ Kuni-Boazi
- ↑ Zimakani
- ^ Marind + dialects
- ↑ Sebastian Nordhoff, Harald Hammarström, Robert Forkel, Martin Haspelmath (editor), Nuclear Marind . Glottolog 2.2. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (2013).
- ↑ Warkay-Bipim
- ↑ Yaqay
