Toraja

Girl in wedding dress ( pakaian adat )

The Toraja are a people on the Tanah Toraja highlands on the Sulawesi island in Indonesia . They speak Toraja-Sa'dan ( basa Tora'a ), an Austronesian language . Their settlement area is in South Sulawesi in the administrative districts of Tanah Toraja and Toraja Utara and in the district of Mamasa in the West Sulawesi province .

history

The Torajas may have immigrated from southern China in pre-Christian times. Its name comes from the Buginese language . To Riaja means "people from the mountains". From the late 15th century, when the Bugis converted to Islam , living together became increasingly difficult. The Torajas began to fear their Muslim neighbors. The Bugis despised their neighbors because they ate pork, which was now strictly forbidden. Eventually the Bugis drove the Toraja out when several attempts at conversion to Islam failed. This was mainly due to the fact that pork was the main food of the Toraja and that the slaughter of goats seemed strange and scary to them. Like many Indonesian ethnic groups, the Toraja were headhunters and raids on neighboring villages were frequent. Villages were therefore strategically placed on hilltops and were heavily fortified. The Dutch colonialists pacified the Toraja. Before the 20th century, the Torajas did not see themselves as an independent ethnic group. Before the Dutch colonial era and the Christianization of the Toraja, the Toraja in the highland areas only identified with their villages, there was no broad sense of identity. Although rituals created links between the villages, there were differences in dialects, social hierarchies and ritual practices in the highland region. Toraja was also initially more of an external name for the Bugis and Macassars than a self-name. It was not until the presence of the Dutch missionaries in the highlands that a stronger ethnic awareness emerged in the Sa'dan Toraja region, and this common identity grew with the rise of tourism in Tana Toraja. The Toraja are divided into different geographical groups. The two most important are Mamasa , centered around the isolated Kalumpang Valley, and Sa'dan in Tana Toraja .

Culture

Torajah House

Toraja village

The Torajas have changed very little for centuries. The whole of life is shaped by their traditional beliefs, spirits, demons , myths and a unique ancestor cult .

architecture

See main article Tongkonan

A Toraja village consists of two parallel rows of houses, with the houses facing north. Opposite them are the rice granaries built on wooden stakes. These can hold up to 20,000 kg of rice sheaves. The houses ( called Tongkonan ) also stand on wooden stakes and have a roof made of several layers of bamboo in a ship-like shape. Buffalo horns are attached to the front support beams, which indicate the social status of the owner, the more horns, the higher the social status. The houses are built without any nails. Tongkonans are the traditional houses of the Toraja's ancestors. The word "Tongkonan" is derived from the Toraja word tongkon (to sit).

Tongkonan are the center of Toraja social life. The rituals associated with the Tongkonan are an important expression of the spiritual life of the Toraja, as the Tongkonan represents a connection to their ancestors and to living and future family members. 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.

Building a Tongkonan is a laborious job and is usually undertaken with the help of the entire extended family. There are three types of Tongkonan. The Tongkonan Layuk is the house of supreme authority that is used as the "center of government". The Tongkonan Pekamberan belongs to the family members who have some authority over local traditions and customs ( Adat ). Ordinary family members live in Tongkonan Batu . The exclusivity of the nobility with regard to Tongkonan is dwindling, as many Torajas now find lucrative employment in other parts of Indonesia. With the money sent back, they enable their families to build larger Tongkonans .

Wood carvings

Carved ornaments in red, black, white and yellow are attached to the walls of the houses . To express social and religious beliefs, Torajas make wood carvings they call passura (or "the writing"). Wood carvings are therefore cultural manifestations of the Toraja.

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 believe they need to present a unified explanation for tourists. The picture on the left shows a water buffalo and represents wealth and the desire to have many buffalos for the family.

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.

pa'tedong
(buffalo)
pa'barre allo
(the sun and its rays)
pa're'po 'sanguba
(dancing alone)
ne'limbongan
(the legendary creator)

society

There are three types of membership in Toraja society: family, class, and religion.

Family affiliation

The family is the primary social and political group in Toraja society. Each village is an extended family whose seat is the Tongkonan. Each Tongkonan has a name, which becomes the name of the village.

Marriage between distant relatives (fourth cousins and beyond) is a common practice to strengthen kinship ties. The Toraja Society forbids marriage between close cousins (up to and including third cousins) - except for nobles, who thereby prevent the dispersion of their property. The family relationships are reciprocal , which means that in the extended family you help each other with agricultural work, share the effort for buffalo rituals and support each other in paying off debts.

Every Toraja belongs to both the mother's and father's family, which is the only bilateral family line in Indonesia. Children therefore inherit from the mother and father side, including land and family debts. Children's names are given on the basis of relatives and are usually chosen after deceased relatives.

Before the formal administration of the Toraja villages by the Tana Toraja Governorate began , each Toraja village was autonomous. In a more complex situation in which a Toraja family could no longer cope with their problems alone, several villages formed a group. Sometimes villages allied against other villages. Relationships between families were expressed through consanguinity, marriage, common ancestral houses (tongkonan), and the exchange of buffalos and pigs on ritual occasions. Such an exchange not only strengthened political and cultural ties between families, but also determined the place of each person in a social hierarchy: who poured palm wine , who wrapped a corpse, who prepared sacrifices, where was a person allowed to sit, what food could be used or avoided, and what piece of meat was one's share.

Class affiliation

Three Toraja elders in traditional warrior clothing pose with a Dutch Salvation Army officer in 1930

Three Toraja elders in traditional clothing take part in a wake, March 2014

In early Toraja society, family relationships were closely related to social class. There were three classes: nobility, middle class, and slaves. Slavery was officially abolished in 1909 by the Dutch colonial government . The class is inherited from the mother. It is taboo to marry a woman of the lower class, that is to say "downstairs". On the other hand, marrying a woman from a higher class can improve the status of the next generation. Nobles who were believed to be direct descendants of the person who came down from heaven lived in the Tongkonan, while commoners lived in less lavish houses ( called bamboo huts called banua ). Slaves lived in small huts, the Tongkonan be built around their owners had. Commoners could marry outside of their class, but the nobility preferred their own kind to maintain their status. Sometimes nobles married nobles from neighboring peoples, such as the Bugis or Macassars . Despite close family ties and inheritance of status, there was a certain degree of social mobility, as marriage or change in wealth could change individual status. Wealth was shown in the possession of buffalo.

Slaves were family property in the Toraja society. Sometimes Torajans chose to become slaves when they were in debt in order to work as payment. Slaves could be taken during wars and the slave trade was common. Slaves could buy their freedom, but their children still had inherited slave status. Slaves were forbidden to wear bronze or gold, they were not allowed to decorate their houses with carvings, to eat the same dishes as their owners or to have sex with free women, which was punishable by death.

Religious affiliation

The traditional Toraja belief system is polytheistic and animistic and is called Aluk , which can be translated as "the way" (sometimes also as "law"). The cosmos, according to Aluk, is divided into the upper world (heaven), the human world (earth) and the underworld.

The earthly authority, the Aluk priest, whose words and deeds should be heeded in both life (agriculture) and death (burial), is called To Minaa . Aluk is not just a belief system, it is a combination of law, religion and custom. Aluk regulates social life, agricultural practices and ancestral rituals. The details of the Aluk can vary from one village to another. A general rule is that rituals of death and rituals of life must be separated. The Torajas believe that performing the rituals of death could ruin their bodies when combined with rituals of life. The rituals of death are referred to as "smoke descending" rituals, while rituals of life are referred to as "smoke rising" rituals. Both types of rituals were just as important. When Torajas became Christians, Dutch missionaries forbade them from participating in or performing rituals of life, but they were allowed to continue performing rituals of death. Consequently, rituals of death are still practiced today while rituals of life have waned.

language

The ethnic Toraja language with the main language Toraja-Sa'dan is predominant in Tana Toraja. Although the national Indonesian language is the official language and is also understood by the Toraja, all primary schools in Tana Toraja teach the Toraja language.

Language varieties of Toraja, including Kalumpang , Mamasa , Tae ' , Talondo', and Toraja-Sa'dan , are among the Malayo-Polynesian languages of the Austronesian language family. The isolated geographical nature of Tana Torajas led to the development of many dialects in the language varieties themselves. There are three main dialects for the main language Toraja-Sa'dan, namely Makale (Tallulembangna), Rantepao (Kesu ') and Toraja Barat (West Toraja, Mappa- Pana). Rantepao is the most highly regarded dialect. The high Toraja, which used to be spoken by the aristocratic class of the Toraja, is now extinct in everyday use and is only used for religious and ritual tasks. High Toraja is also only understood by a few Toraja.

Through Transmigrasi programs, which were introduced during the Dutch colonial era and were later continued by the Indonesian governments, some Toraja dialects were influenced by other languages of the immigrants. This influence is an important factor in the linguistic variety of the Toraja languages.

Linguistic variety of the Toraja languages
Language varieties	ISO 639-3	Number of speakers	Dialects
Kalumpang	kli	12,000 (1991)	Karataun, Mablei, Mangki (E'da), Bone Hau (Ta'da).
Mamasa	mqj	100,000 (1991)	North Mamasa, Central Mamasa, Pattae '(South Mamasa, Patta' Binuang, Binuang, Tae ', Binuang-Paki-Batetanga-Anteapi)
Ta'e	rob	250,000 (1992)	Rongkong, Northeast Luwu, South Luwu, Bua.
Talondo '	tln	500 (1986)
Toraja-Sa'dan	sda	500,000 (1990)	Makale (Tallulembangna), Rantepao (Kesu '), Toraja Barat (West Toraja, Mappa Pana).
Source: Gordon (2005).

One of the hallmarks of the Toraja language is the concept of mourning. The meaning of the death ceremony in the Toraja culture has shaped their language, with which they can express fine gradations of grief and sadness. The Toraja language contains many terms related to grief, longing, depression, and psychological pain. A clear expression of the psychological and physical effects of loss creates catharsis and sometimes reduces the pain of grief itself.

Funeral rites

Valuable albino buffalo at Rantepao

Grave goods

Funerary figures

Tree graves for newborns in Kambira

The Toraja believe that an earthly life is only a transition and only the hereafter (puya) is important. When death of a man who leaves the soul the body, but remains in the immediate vicinity. The corpse is therefore embalmed and laid out in the back of the house until the funeral ceremony is complete, which can sometimes take several years. The higher the status, the longer the body is kept in the house and the higher the expectation of a particularly large funeral. The deceased kept in the house is treated like a sleeping family member. By treating the corpse with formalin , the decomposition process is delayed and mummification is achieved. The corpses used to be embalmed.

The higher the reputation of the dead, the more water buffalo (the white ones are considered to be the most valuable) have to be sacrificed at the festival. The water buffalo are a symbol of power and wealth. The Torajas believe that the deceased needs the buffalo to make his journey to the afterlife and that they will get to Puya more quickly if many buffalo have been sacrificed. Today, both a Christian priest and an Aluk priest (To-Minaa) are often present at the funeral. Funerals and other celebrations traditionally take place in a special place called the Rante . Some RANTES are also menhirs to see drawn up for especially meritorious deceased of high status. Hundreds of people take part in the funeral ceremonies, which can last several days. The Toraja are not bothered by the fact that tourists also take part in these celebrations. The participants wear clothes of dark colors, especially red or black. Such celebrations can lead to financial ruin. The slaughter of dozens of water buffalo and hundreds of pigs with a machete is the culmination of the lavish death ceremony with dancing and music and boys catching the splashing blood in long bamboo tubes. Exact records are kept of who brings the guests and how many pigs as a present to the funeral. If someone from their family dies, the present must be rewarded with the same gesture. The Indonesian state also makes money and an official counts the gifts brought at the entrance to calculate the taxes to be paid.

Traditionally, cockfighting ( bulangan londong ) is also part of the ceremony , as it includes bloodshed on earth, like the sacrifice of buffalo and pigs. Tradition requires the sacrifice of at least three roosters. However, it is common for at least 25 pairs of roosters to fight each other as part of the ceremony. Since bets are made for amounts of money in the fights, cockfights are officially banned as a game of chance in Islamic Indonesia. People of high status are placed in round coffins. For them, elaborate litters are built, which are only used once for transport to the entrance of the rock chamber, after which the litters are left there.

In the Ma'Nene ritual , which takes place in August, the bodies of the deceased are exhumed to be washed, cared for and re-dressed. The mummies are then taken through the village.

Since the Toraja believe that they can take everything with them to the afterlife, valuable grave goods are given to the dead and hung in artfully carved wooden coffins on rock walls. Because of the looting of graves, the Toraja try to hide their dead in caves or later in artificially created rock graves. The rock tombs are hand-carved into the limestone cliffs and offer space for a whole family. In front of the entrances to the caves and rock tombs, wooden figures (called Tau Tau ), which represent the deceased, are placed on balconies . However, grave caves and dew-dew are only given to the nobles. Tau Taus were targeted by grave robbers who sold them to antique collectors. A stolen rope has been shown in an exhibition on several occasions , for example in the Brooklyn Museum in 1981 and in the Arnold Herstand Gallery in New York in 1984. Common people are often buried in front of the caves of the nobles. There are therefore several methods of burial , depending on the status , the coffin can be placed in a cave or in a stone grave or hanging freely on a rock wall. Burial in the ground is taboo, but today, instead of traditional family caves, modern grave houses are often built. Newborn babies are buried in special trees. It is a particularly resin-rich tree species. The resin is supposed to nourish the children in a similar way to breast milk, so that they can grow with the tree, since they are seen as too young to die. However, the old traditions are gradually being forgotten as more and more Torajas move to the cities and look for work there.

religion

The Christianity came with Dutch missionaries in 1913 in the area. To begin with, 20 Torajas were baptized. Missionaries served in the area until the 1950s. Today 80 percent of the approximately 600,000 Toraja Christians, 75 percent belong to the evangelical Gereja-Toraja ("Toraja Church"). The official website of the Tana Toraja district shows the following figures for 2006: Protestants : 65.15%, Catholics : 16.97%, Islam : 5.99% and Toraja- " Hindu " (Aluk To Dolo): 5.99%. Christianity and tradition exist side by side, which is more or less accepted by the Protestant Gereja-Toraja and the Catholic Church .

The Muslim Torajas, who were forcibly Islamized in the 15th and 16th centuries and who make up around 15 percent, have largely given up their tradition in contrast to the Christian Torajas and, like the Muslim majority in South Sulawesi, practice an Orthodox Islam based on the Arab model. In addition, evangelical groups that do not tolerate the old traditions of the Toraja have been proselytizing since the 2000s .

Dance and music

Music and dances can be divided into a group for happy, entertaining and a group for sad occasions. The Torajas perform dances on many occasions, especially during their lavish funeral services. They dance to express their grief and to honor and even cheer the deceased person, because this person has a long journey into the afterlife. First, during the funeral ceremony, a group of men form a circle and sing a monotonous chant throughout the night to honor the deceased (a ritual called ma'badong ). This is considered by many Torajas to be the most important component of the funeral service. On the second day of the funeral, the war dance ma'randing is performed to extol the deceased's courage in life. Several men perform the dance with a sword, a large buffalo hide shield, a helmet with a buffalo horn, and other decorations. The ma'randing dance precedes a procession in which the deceased is carried from a rice granary to the so-called rante , the place of the funeral service. During the funeral, older women dance the ma'akatia dance, to which they sing a poetic song and for which they wear costumes with long feathers. The Ma'akatia dance is intended to remind the audience of the generosity and loyalty of the deceased. After the buffalo and pig slaughter ceremony, a group of boys and girls clap their hands as they dance a joyous dance called Ma'dondan .

As in other agrarian societies, Torajas dance and sing during harvest time . The ma'bugi dance is a harvest ceremony and the ma'gandangi dance is performed while the Torajas are pounding rice. There are several weapon dances, such as the manimbong dance performed by men and followed by the ma'dandan dance by women. The Aluk-To-Dolo religion regulates when and how the Torajas dance. A dance called Ma'bua can only be performed once every 12 years. Ma'bua is a big celebration, in Toraja, where the Aluk-To-Dolo priests wear buffalo heads and dance around a sacred tree.

A traditional musical instrument of the Toraja is a bamboo flute called a pa'suling . This six-hole flute, widespread in the Malay Islands, is played in many dances such as the Ma'bondensan Thanksgiving dance , where the flute accompanies a group of shirtless men with long fingernails. The Toraja have their own musical instruments such as the pa'pelle ( natural trumpet made from palm leaves) and the very rare pa'karombi (Indonesian genggong , a mouth harp made of bamboo). The pa'pelle is played during harvest time and at house initiation ceremonies . The two-string spiked fiddle gesok-gesok is a variant of the rebab and is used in some ceremonies.

Tourism and commercialization

literature

Nigel Barley : Hello Mister Puttymann. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1994, 1999, ISBN 3-423-12580-2 .
Walter Kaudern: Ethnographical studies in Celebes: Results of the author's expedition to Celebes 1917–1920. Volume I: Structures and Settlements in Central Celebes. Volume II: Migrations of the Toradja in Central Celebes. Elanders Boktryckeri Aktiebolag, Gothenburg 1925
Dana Rappoport: Ritual music and christianization in the Toraja's Highlands, Sulawesi. In: Ethnomusicology. Society for Ethnomusicology, 2004, Vol. 48, No. 3, Fall 2004, pp. 378-404.
Shinji Yamashita: Manipulating Ethnic Tradition: The Funeral Ceremony, Tourism, and Television among the Toraja of Sulawesi. In: Indonesia 58, 1994, pp. 69-82.

Web links

Commons : Toraja - collection of images

Sarah Bartz: Cosmology and Cosmogony of Sa'dan Toraja , 2004

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c Kathleen M. Adams: Art as Politics: Re-crafting Identities, Tourism and Power in Tana Toraja, Indonesia. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 2006. ( online )

↑ ^a ^b ^c Volkman, Toby Alice: Great Performances: Toraja Cultural Identity in the 1970s . In: American Ethnologist . 11, No. 1, February 1984, p. 152. JSTOR 644360 . doi : 10.1525 / ae.1984.11.1.02a00090 .

↑ 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. @1@ 2

^ ^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.

^ ^A ^b Waterson, Roxana: The ideology and terminology of kinship among the Sa'dan Toraja . (PDF) In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- and Volkenkunde . 142, No. 1, 1986, pp. 87-112. Retrieved May 18, 2007.

^ Waterson, Roxana: Houses, graves and the limits of kinship groupings among the Sa'dan Toraja . (PDF) In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- and Volkenkunde . 151, No. 2, 1995, pp. 194-217. Retrieved May 18, 2007.

↑ ^a ^b ^c Kathleen M. Adams: Making-Up the Toraja? The Appropriate of Tourism, Anthropology, and Museums for Politics in Upland Sulawesi, Indonesia . In: Ethnology . 34, No. 2, Spring 1995, pp. 143-153. JSTOR 3774103 . doi : 10.2307 / 3774103 .

↑ cf. Kis-Jovak et al. (1988) Ch. 2, Hetty Nooy-Palm, The World of Toraja. Pp. 12-18.

↑ Wellenkamp (1988)

↑ Zakaria J. Ngelow: Traditional Culture, Christianity and Globalization in Indonesia: The Case of Torajan Christians Archived from the original on June 20, 2007. Information: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) In: Inter-Religio . 45, Summer 2004. Retrieved May 18, 2007. @1@ 2

^ ^A ^b Raymond G. Gordon: Ethnologue: Languages of the World (Online Version), Dallas, Tex .: SIL International, 2005. Archived from the original on October 5, 2001 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 October 17, 2006). @1@ 2

^ ^A ^b Sutton, R. Anderson: Performing arts and cultural politics in South Sulawesi . (PDF) In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- and Volkenkunde . 151, No. 4, 1995, pp. 672-699.

↑ ^a ^b Jane C. Wellenkamp: Notions of Grief and Catharsis among the Toraja . In: American Ethnologist . 15, No. 3, August 1988, pp. 486-500. JSTOR 645753 . doi : 10.1525 / ae.1988.15.3.02a00050 .

↑ Amanda Bennett, When Death Doesn't Mean Goodbye. In: nationalgeographic.com. March 1, 2016, accessed July 2, 2017 .

↑ Thomas Blubacher: Instructions for use for Bali. Piper ebooks, 2015, ISBN 978-3-492-97101-0 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).

^ ^A ^b Shinji Yamashita: Manipulating Ethnic Tradition: The Funeral Ceremony, Tourism, and Television among the Toraja of Sulawesi . In: Indonesia . 58, No. 58, October 1994, pp. 69-82. JSTOR 3351103 . doi : 10.2307 / 3351103 .

↑ incito tour ( Memento of the original from July 2, 2012 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. PT. INCITO PRIMA - Re: Funeral Ceremony in Toraja - Authorized by: Department of Law and Human Rights of Republic of Indonesia @1@ 2

↑ Toraja Unique Ritual: Cleaning and Changing Clothing Ancestors corpse . Amazingnotes.com. Archived from the original on September 3, 2012. 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. Retrieved August 26, 2012. @1@ 2

↑ Mummies dug up for a change of wardrobe . Daily Mail. Retrieved August 26, 2012.

↑ Tana Toraja official website ( Indonesian ). Archived from the original on May 29, 2006. Retrieved on October 4, 2006.

↑ Toraja Dances . www.batusura.de. Retrieved May 2, 2007.

↑ Toraja Music . www.batusura.de. Retrieved May 2, 2007.

↑ ^a ^b Toby Alice Volkman: Visions and Revisions: Toraja Culture and the Tourist Gaze . In: American Ethnologist . 17, No. 1, February 1990, pp. 91-110. JSTOR 645254 . doi : 10.1525 / ae.1990.17.1.02a00060 .

↑ Toby Volkman: Tana toraja: A Decade of Tourism Archived from the original on September 27, 2007. Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Cultural Survival Quarterly . 6, No. 3, July 31, 1982. Retrieved May 18, 2007. @1@ 2

↑ ^a ^b ^c Kathleen M. Adams: Cultural Commoditization in Tana Toraja, Indonesia Archived from the original on September 27, 2007. 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. In: Cultural Survival Quarterly . 14, No. 1, January 31, 1990. Retrieved May 18, 2007. @1@ 2

[Kathleen_M._Adams-1] Kathleen M. Adams: Art as Politics: Re-crafting Identities, Tourism and Power in Tana Toraja, Indonesia. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 2006. ( online )

[Volkman1984-2] Volkman, Toby Alice: Great Performances: Toraja Cultural Identity in the 1970s . In: American Ethnologist . 11, No. 1, February 1984, p. 152. JSTOR 644360 . doi : 10.1525 / ae.1984.11.1.02a00090 .