Tongkonan
Tongkonan is the traditional ancestral house, rumah adat (Indonesian: traditional house ) of the Toraja , a people on the island of Sulawesi , Indonesia . Tongkonans have a roof made of several layers of bamboo in a ship-like shape. As is typical of Indonesia's Austronesian traditional architecture, tongkonans are built on wooden stakes. Traditionally, only the nobles have the right, on Toraja Tongkonans to build. Simple people live in smaller and less expensive houses called Banua .
background
Like many Indonesian ethnic groups, the Toraja were headhunters and raids on neighboring villages were frequent. Villages were therefore strategically placed on hilltops and strongly fortified. It was only the Dutch colonialists who pacified the Toraja and got them to build their villages in the valleys as well. Today, the majority of the Torajas are Christians, but some of them continue to practice the old animistic rituals of their traditional religion . The Torajas are divided into different geographical groups; the two most important are Mamasa , centered around the isolated valley of Kalumpang, and Sa'dan in Tana Toraja .
Etymology and history
The word "Tongkonan" is derived from the Toraja word tongkon ("to sit") and describes the place where the family meets.
According to a Toraja myth, the first Tongkonan in heaven was built on four stakes with a roof made of Indian fabric. When the first ancestor of the Toraja descended to earth, he imitated this first house and held a great ceremony. According to another legend, when the Torajas arrived with boats from the north they were caught in a violent storm and their boats were so badly damaged that they used them as roofs for their new houses.
Construction
Tongkonans are traditionally oriented in a north-south direction. The entire structure is dominated by the oversized gable roof with upward-curved gables. The interior space is small compared to the overwhelming roof structure. The interiors are usually narrow and dark with few windows, but daily life takes place outside the houses, the interior is only used for sleeping, storing goods, meeting and occasional protection.
Building a Tongkonan is a laborious job and is usually undertaken with the help of the entire extended family. Building a large Tongkonan can take a ten-man team over three months and another month to carve the decorations and paint the exterior walls. A bamboo scaffolding will be erected for the duration of the construction phase. Traditionally, tongue and groove - wood joints used without using nails. A number of components are prefabricated and only assembled in situ . Although built on a log house substructure, the horizontal beams of the Tongkonans are placed on large vertical wooden stakes with mortise and tenon joints cut into their ends . The rest of the substructure is assembled in place. Wooden boards form the floors. The often decorated side paneling is then attached to the main horizontal beam. The characteristic curved roof shape is achieved by a series of vertical spars to support the upward angled beams. The roof is formed by assembling bamboo sticks with rattan in layers and tying them lengthways to the rafters . Nowadays, corrugated iron sheets are increasingly being used instead of bamboo for the roof and nails.
In larger Toraja villages in Sa'dan houses are arranged in a row next to each other, with their roofs in north-south orientation with the front gable facing north. Opposite each house is the family's rice granary, called alang , which also stand on wooden stakes but are smaller than the Tongkonans. The rice granaries are a symbol of the family fortune. Together, the rice piles form a second parallel row. The Toraja houses in Mamasa, however, face the direction of the river with their rice granaries perpendicular to the house.
The Tongkonan at Ke'te Kesu ' are said to be 500 years old; too old for a Toraja to claim to be a direct descendant of the founder. However, the buildings themselves are constantly being maintained and renewed, so age relates more to the length of time the space was used.
Social and cultural importance
What Torajas of all religions have in common is the cultural centrality of the Tongkonans as parent houses. The houses are the focal point of the identity and tradition of the family that represent the descendants of the founding ancestors. Kis Jovak et al. (1988) describes the Tongkonans not simply as a house, but as a symbol of the Toraja microcosm.
Because of the importance of ancestors to identity, it is through the Tongkonan that Torajas consider themselves related to parents, grandparents, and more distant relatives. Torajans belong to more than one house, since ancestry is defined bilaterally, i.e. through both the male and female lines. After marriage, Toraja men usually live in the homes of their wives' families. In the event of a divorce, the house is seen as the woman's possession, although the man can be compensated with the rice granary, which he can dismantle and put back together elsewhere. However, a tongkonan is never removed, in part because of the large number of placentas that are buried on the east side of the house after the birth of a child (the east is associated with life).
The Tongkonan is traditionally seen as the navel of the universe and a miniature cosmos, and in some regions it is the meeting point of the north-south and east-west axes. It is oriented to the north, on the "head of heaven" where Puang Matua resides. The rice granaries ( Alang ) opposite face south. In some regions the house is entered through a door at the north end of the east wall, and in others through a door at the west end of the north wall. A Tongkonan is vertically divided into three levels: the attic where the family heirlooms are kept, the living area and the space under the floor where the cattle are kept. This reflects the division of the cosmos into the upper world, the middle world and the underworld.
There are three types of Tongkonan that are classified according to their function in society. Den Tongkonan layuk ( Great Tongkonan ) or Tongkonan Pesio 'Aluk ( Aluk practitioner ) is the original parent company. The Tongkonan layuk is the seat of a family group that traces its ancestry back to a single founding couple. It is the house of supreme authority and it is the center of government . The word Tongkonan means place to sit in the Toraja language . This is where people gather to discuss matters of concern to the community.
The second type is the Tongkonan pekamberan or Tongkonan pekaindoran , which belongs to the family members and descendants of the founder. It is their duty to carry out the local traditions ( adat ). The last type is the Tongkonan batu , which belongs to common family members. Traditionally, only the nobility could build large tongkonans and carry out the lavish ceremonies associated with them.
Ordinary houses, called banua , are smaller, less ornate houses, but families can also be traced back through their origins. The residents are families of lower social status. After several generations of the same lineage have lived in them and performed appropriate rites, the houses can be converted into tongkonans, but this rarely happens due to the high cost. The former exclusivity of the tongkonan is declining as many non-aristocratic Torajas now find employment in other parts of Indonesia and transfer funds back to their families so that they can build larger tongkonans.
Ornaments
The gables and outer walls of the Tongkonans are often decorated with red, black, and yellow-colored wood into which patterns are carved. However, the Toraja society is very hierarchical and traditionally only the nobles are allowed to decorate their houses with carvings. In order to express social and religious beliefs, Torajas make wood carvings that they call passura (or "the writing"). Wood carvings are therefore cultural manifestations of the Toraja.
Most of the carvings on Tongkonans depict prosperity and fertility, with the individual designs showing what is important for the respective family. Some patterns also represent the social status of the family associated with the Tongkonan. Other houses have no carving or painting, their surfaces are simply bare weathered woods. Each carving motif has a special name, common motifs are animals and plants that symbolize a certain virtue. For example aquatic plants and animals such as B. Crabs , tadpoles and waterweed are common and symbolize fertility. In some areas, the elders of the nobility claim that these symbols refer to strength of the noble family. However, the importance of some of the carved motifs on houses remains controversial, and tourism has made these debates even more complicated, as some Torajas feel they need to present a unified explanation for tourists. The picture above shows a water buffalo and represents wealth and the desire to have many buffalo for the family.
Circular motifs represent the sun, the symbol of power. Golden kris ('dagger') motifs symbolize wealth. Water is also a common theme in design and stands for life, fertility and fertile rice fields. Roosters are represented in the colors red, white, yellow and black; These colors represent the indigenous religion of the Toraja Aluk Um Dolo (The Path of the Ancestors). Black symbolizes death and darkness, yellow God's blessings and strength, white is the color of flesh and bones and a symbol for purity and red, the color of blood, is a symbol for human life. The pigments are obtained from natural substances, black from soot, white from lime; red and yellow from earth colors and tuak ( palm wine ) is used to enhance the colors.
Many of the motifs are identical to those on Dong-Son timpani. Hinduism-Buddhism is believed to be another source of motifs; especially the square cross motifs may have been copied from cloths from India . Christian Torajas also use the cross as a symbol of their faith. The artists' payment for the decoration is traditionally made in buffalo.
Regularity and order are features in Toraja wood carvings, as are abstraction and geometric patterns. Nature is often used as the basis of ornamentation, because nature is full of abstractions and geometries with regularities and order. The patterns of Toraja wood carvings have been studied in ethnomathematics to reveal their mathematical structure, however the art of the Torajas is based only on approximations. Bamboo sticks are used as a geometric tool to create an ornament.
Buffalo horns are hung vertically on the front gable and are a sign of prestige. Their number shows the wealth of the household. Furthermore, a buffalo head is made of painted wood and buffalo dung, but attached to the facade with real horns.
Tongkonan today
Although still in great esteem among the Torajas because of its ritual significance, the Tongkonans, which, like many Indonesian traditional forms of construction, have a small, dark and smoky interior, are losing popularity as a dwelling among contemporary Torajas. Instead, many villagers choose to live in a single storey 'Pan-Indonesian' style house. The more spacious, lighter and better ventilated Bugis house type is also increasingly being adopted. One approach more in line with tradition is to add another floor to the Tongkonan. Even if many in the village build modern houses next to the Tongkonans, the ritual significance of the Tongkonan remains, even if it is no longer used as a dwelling.
The Tongkonans are an important part of Toraja's tourist marketing today, their uniqueness attracting enough foreigners to make Tana Toraja one of Indonesia's premier destinations for international tourists. Today, as tourism has made the richly carved Tongkonans the symbol of the Toraja ethnic group, the Tongkonans with their carved geometric patterns are seen as symbols of the Toraja ethnic identity in general and not just as symbols of the identity of the Toraja elite.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Toraja Architecture . Ladybamboo Foundation. Archived from the original on July 27, 2009. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 4, 2009.
- ^ Barry Dawson, Gillow, John: The Traditional Architecture of Indonesia . Thames and Hudson, London 1994, ISBN 0-500-34132-X , p. 137.
- ↑ cf. Kis-Jovak et al. (1988), Ch. 4, Hetty Nooy-Palm, The house as microcosm , p. 34.
- ↑ a b c d Kathleen M. Adams: Art as Politics: Re-crafting Identities, Tourism and Power in Tana Toraja, Indonesia . University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 2006, ISBN 978-0-8248-3072-4 .
- ^ A b Miquel Alberti Palmer: The Kira-kira method of the Torajan woodcarvers of Sulawesi to divide a segment into equal parts . In: Third International Conference on Ethnomathematics: Cultural Connections and Mathematical Manipulations . University of Auckland, 2006.
literature
- Kathleen M. Adams: Art as Politics: Re-crafting Identities, Tourism and Power in Tana Toraja, Indonesia . University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 2006, ISBN 978-0-8248-3072-4 .
- Samban C. Parinding, Achjadi, Judi: Toraja: Indonesia's Mountain Eden . Time Edition, Singapore 1988, ISBN 981-204-016-1 .
- Dawson, B., Gillow, J., The Traditional Architecture of Indonesia , 1994 Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, ISBN 0-500-34132-X