The Sa’dan-Toraja: A Study of Their Social Life and Religion

The Sa’dan-Toraja: A Study of Their Social Life and Religion PDF

Author: H. Nooy-Palm

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-12-06

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 9004487751

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Until about 1870 the Sa’dan-toraja of Sulawesi had little contact with the outside world. Several factors, of which the introduction of the coffee-growing and the coffee trade was chronologically one of the first, have changed their life as a megalithic people enmeshed in mythology and ritual drastically. The conversion of nearly half the population to Christianity after 1945 brought a particularly profound change in Sa’dan-Toraja society. Old customs, in particular as regards funerary rites, have a tenacious life, however. In autochthonous Toraja culture rituals are the main focus of attention. They are divided into ceremonies of the East and those of the West. The former, associated with sunrise and life, comprise feasts of the living; yellow and white are the colours belonging to these joyous festivals. The West is associated with sunset, death and darkness; the main colour connected with it is black. So death rituals are referred to a “night ceremonies”. In time these death feasts grew more and more complicated, finally overshadowing the festivals of the East.

The Poetic Power of Place

The Poetic Power of Place PDF

Author: James J. Fox

Publisher: ANU E Press

Published: 2006-09-01

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1920942866

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This collection of papers is the fourth in a series of volumes on the work of the Comparative Austronesian Project. Each paper describes a specific Austronesian locality and offers an ethnographic account of the way in which social knowledge is vested, maintained and transformed in a particular landscape. The intention of the volume is to consider common patterns in the representation of place among Austronesian-speaking populations.

Paths and Rivers

Paths and Rivers PDF

Author: Rosana Waterson

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2009-01-01

Total Pages: 552

ISBN-13: 9004253858

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Fieldwork extending over a thirty-year period provided materials for this book. Paths and Rivers offers an unusually deep and broad picture of the Sa’dan Toraja as a society in dynamic transition over the course of the past century. The Toraja inhabit the mountainous highlands of South Sulawesi, Indonesia, and are well known for their dramatic architecture, their unusual cliff burials, and their flamboyant ceremonial life, which places extraordinary economic demands on individuals and families. The analysis is informed, firstly, by a comparative perspective which sets Toraja social structure in the context of the Austronesian world. Secondly, the author delves deeply into Toraja social memory to show how people think about the past. She examines the usefulness of history and myth in the present as a source of identity, a template for action, or a resource by means of which to claim precedence. The book gives a clear picture of the structure and ethos of the indigenous Toraja religion, the Aluk To Dolo or "Way of the Ancestors", with its complex cycle of rituals. The book concludes with an analysis of the ceremonial economy, which draws upon both domestic subsistence production and the global market economy. Paths and Rivers draws together a fascinating picture of one society’s journey into modernity.

Tana Toraja

Tana Toraja PDF

Author: Terance W. Bigalke

Publisher: Brill

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13:

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Tana Toraja is a highland region in the Indonesian province of South Sulawesi, best known today for its exquisite Arabica coffee and as an exotic destination. Toraja is a place, but more importantly a people who have been shaped by location, and by selective absorption of and resistance to cultural forces from the Islamic lowlands. This ambitious, multifaceted study traces the history of Tana Toraja, from 1870 (40 years before the Dutch took control of the highlands) to the 1990s. It shows how the people of this area re-negotiated their place in the province and in the Indonesian nation during times of major political change, and succeeded in avoiding ethnic and religious hostility of the sort that has recently plagued nearby Central Sulawesi and other parts of Eastern Indonesia. Drawing from Dutch and Indonesian archives as well as extensive interviews with Torajans and lowlanders in South Sulawesi, the author discusses a wide range of subjects, including trade (coffee, slaves and arms), the missionary presence, colonial administration, modern education and the development of ethnic consciousness, religious change, and the growth of political activity. The invaluable oral sources collected in this book are no longer possible today because of a passing of a generation.

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