Death at the building site: Construction sacrifice in southeast Asia

History of Religions

Volumn 37, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 101-121

  Wessing, Robert ^a   Jordaan, Roy E ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0012518363     PISSN: 00182710     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/463492     Document Type: Review

References (107)

1. Signe Howell, ed., For the Sake of Our Future: Sacrificing in Eastern Indonesia (Leiden: Research School CNWS, 1996)
2. Brian K. Smith and Wendy Doniger, "Sacrifice and Substitution: Ritual Mystification and Mythical Demystification," Numen 36, no. 2 (1989): 189-224
3. Richard A. Drake, "Construction Sacrifice and Kidnapping Rumor Panics in Borneo," Oceania 59, no. 4 (1989): 269-79
4. Maribeth Erb, "Construction Sacrifice, Rumors and Kidnapping Scares in Manggarai: Further Comparative Notes from Flores," Oceania 62, no. 2 (1991): 114-26
5. Gregory Forth, "Construction Sacrifice and Head-Hunting Rumours in Central Fores (Eastern Indonesia): A Comparative Note," Oceania 61, no. 4 (1991): 257-66
6. R. H. Barnes, "Construction Sacrifice, Kidnapping and Head-Hunting Rumors on Flores and Elsewhere in Indonesia," Oceania 64, no. 2 (1993): 146-58
7. Roy E. Jordaan and Robert Wessing, "Human Sacrifice at Prambanan," Bijdragen totde Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 152, no. 1 (1996): 45-73
8. Drake, pp. 271,272
9. Forth, "Construction Sacrifice," p. 259, our emphasis; and Erb, p. 116
10. Drake, p. 273
11. Drake, p. 270
12. and Anna L. Tsing, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 85-87
13. W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic: Being an Introduction to the Folklore and Popular Religion of the Malay Peninsula (New York: Benjamin Blom), p. 144, n. 2
14. Paul Sartori, "Ueber das Bauopfer," Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 30 (1898): 1-54
15. One reason for the attribution of the practice to colonial authorities may lie in the fact that, as Erb (p. 119) relates, missionaries, who were aware of old European customs in this regard, teased villagers about the need for a "head" in construction. This may have been the case earlier as well. As Sartori points out (p. 9), in nineteenth-century Europe these customs were still known, if not actively practiced anymore, and it would therefore be surprising if colonial personnel in Indonesia had been unaware of them. Other than the joking mentioned by Erb, one reason that the Dutch were thought to have been involved may well lie in the fact that in the seventeenth century the V.O.C. (the Dutch East Indies Company) seems at times to have encouraged head-hunting, albeit circumspectly, as part of a policy of divide and conquer (C. M. Pleyte, "De geographische verbreiding van het koppensnellen in dei; Oost Indischen archipel," Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, 2d sen, 8 [1891]: 908-46)
16. Barnes, pp. 146, 152
17. William Arens, The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979)
18. Rodney Needham, "Chewing on the Cannibals: Review of W. Arens, The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropopaghy," Times Literary Supplement (January 25, 1980), pp. 75-76
19. Claims to the contrary notwithstanding, there are indeed, as Rosaldo points out, many reliable reports containing much circumstantial detail. The problem is that these reports are from sailors, a category of people that is often socially distrusted, and thus little credence is lent to their statements. However, Rosaldo writes, "I don't know why we should disbelieve a sailor any more than we disbelieve an anthropologist." Renato Rosaldo, "Anthropological Commentary," in Violent Origins: Walter Burkert, René Girard, and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Kilting and Cultural Transformation, ed. Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 239-44
20. Emile Durkheim, The Rules of the Sociological Method, trans. S. A. Solovay and J. H. Mueller, ed. G. E. G. Catlin (New York: Free Press, 1964)
21. Informants as well as the literature often say that the intention of these sacrifices is to enhance the strength of the structure. Although Erb (see n. 4 above, pp. 118-119) presents some interesting data about the possible strengthening effects of animal flesh on quicklime mortar, it seems more reasonable to us that the use of "strength" by informants is intended to indicate the fact that the structure will endure, i.e., it will not be prematurely destroyed by hostile forces. If this were not the case, there is no possible reason for there to be rumors of occasional human, and especially infant sacrifices, as nonhuman animal flesh could presumably strengthen lime as well as human flesh would. It must therefore be something inherent in the nature of the live offering that protects the structure. Indeed, generalizing from Waterson's suggestion, the "strength" may come about due to protection resulting from the offerings made at the main support of the structure. Roxana Waterson, The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in South-East Asia (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 122
22. Compare Paul Mus, India Seen from the East: Indian and Indigenous Cults in Champa, ed. I. W. Mabbett and D. P. Chandler, Monash Papers on Southeast Asia, no. 3 (Clayton: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1975), p. 9. Mus overstates the case somewhat, saying that spirits are "present in all things and in all places." Spirits are indeed often thought to be present at or in significant features in the natural and social landscape, such as large, old trees, springs, caves, special rocks, crossroads, prayer houses, and the like, but this does not mean that they imbue everything, everywhere
23. Compare Erb, pp. 120-21
24. Mus, India Seen, p. 10
25. and Clifford Geertz, The Religion of Java (New York: Free Press, 1960), p. 23
26. Domenig, in an essay on a Japanese manuscript, describes how spirits may be co-opted into ceding the land and, because of this, be obliged to serve as guardian spirits (Gaudenz Domenig, "Das Götterland jenseits der Grenze: Interpretation einer altjapani-schen Landnahmelegende," in Das Gold im Wachs, ed. E. Gossmann and G. Zobel [Mün-chen: Iudicium, 1988])
27. Since both of us are most familiar with the Javanese terminology, we will use it in the course of this paper. The concepts, of course, have a much wider application
28. Compare Waterson, p. 122
29. Roy E. Jordaan, "Folk Medicine in Madura (Indonesia)," (Ph.D. diss., Rijksuniver-siteit Leiden, 1985), p. 114
30. Koentjaraningrat, Javanese Culture (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 376-78
31. Robert W. Hefner, Hindu Javanese: Tengger Tradition and Islam (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 146
32. and cf. B. J. Terwiel, "Leasing from the Gods (Thailand)," Anthropos 71, nos. 1 and 2 (1976): 254-74
33. Robert Wessing, Cosmology and Social Behavior in a West Javanese Settlement. Papers in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series, no. 47 (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, Southeast Asia Program, 1978), pp. 110-11
34. Wessing was also told that in the past a water buffalo might have been used as the ruwatan sacrifice, but for simple villagers this would be perhaps an impossible expense, leading us to think that a more elaborate stone dwelling, perhaps, is what is meant here
35. and J. H. Boeke, "De grenzen van het Indonesisch dorp," Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap 54 (1937): 797-819
36. Terwiel, p. 257
37. Melford E. Spiro, Burmese Supernaturalism (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1967), pp. 104-7
38. E. A. Gait, "Human Sacrifice (Indian)," in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1913), 5:852
39. Robert Heine-Geldern, "Kopfjagd und Menschenopfer in Assam und Birma und ihre Ausstralungen nach Vorderindien," Mitteilugen der Anthropologischen Gesselschaft in Wien 47 (1917): 1-65
40. Bambang Samsu, Rumah, Tanah, dan Leluhur di Madura Timur. Seri Kertas Kerja, no. 21 (Jember: Bidang Kajian Madura, Universitas Jember, 1992)
41. Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function, Midway Reprint (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 65
42. G. A. Wilken, "lets over de schedelvereering bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel," Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 5th ser., 4 (1889): 89-129
43. Shway Yoe, The Burman, His Life and Notions (New York: Norton, 1963), pp. 481-82
44. Heine-Geldern, "Kopfjagd," pp. 4, 30
45. Wilken, p. 90
46. Robert Wessing, "The Last Tiger in East Java: Symbolic Continuity in Ecological Change," Asian Folklore Studies 54, no. 2 (1995): 191-218
47. and Hans Joachim Sell, Der schlimme Tod bei den Völkern Indonesiens ('S-Gravenhage: Mouton, 1955), p. 16
48. Heine-Geldern, "Kopfjagd," p. 30; Sartori, pp. 39-40. We should not be understood here to be subscribing to the old notion of a "soul-substance" adhering to the deceased's remains, as was promoted by Kruijt. As Needham discusses, such soul substance has never been proven to be an ethnographic reality
49. Rather, we take this to be the actual spirit of the deceased that, by being entombed along with its skull or other body parts in the structure, is given a territory to protect. The structure, as it were, embodies the spirit and thus becomes animated. It is a body to the spirit, which it will defend. A. C. Kruijt, Het ani-misme in den Indischen archipel ('S-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1906), p. 2
50. Rodney Needham, Against the Tranquility of Axioms (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 68-74)
51. As Kris Lehman's (personal communication) informants point out, in Burma such a spirit is thought to be especially virulent, perhaps because its remains have not been given a proper funeral, thus impeding the spirit's further progress as an ancestor and forcing it to remain in the limbo of death (cf. Kwa Chong Guan, "Sraddha Sri Rajapatni: An Exploration of Majapahit Mortuary Ritual," in The Legacy of Majapahit, ed. John N. Miksic [Singapore: National Heritage Board, 1995], pp. 80-81
52. Wilken, pp. 102, 107-8; Sartori, pp. 19, 33
53. Gregory Forth, "Social and Symbolic Aspects of the Witch among the Nage of Eastern Indonesia," in Understanding Witchcraft and Sorcery in Southeast Asia, ed. C. W. Watson and Roy Ellen (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993), p. 114
54. Wilken, p. 111
55. Kees W. Bolle, "A World of Sacrifice," History of Religions 23, no. 1 (1983): 37-63. Berg notes that in the Pararaton, and old Javanese historiographic text, the ruler Ken Angrok is said to be the incarnation of a man who voluntarily offered himself as a construction sacrifice to the ascetic Mpu Tapa-Wangkeng, presumably for a religious structure, although the text does not specify this. Similarly, Spiro (see n. 27 above; p. 105) reports that a Burmese queen is said to have sacrificed herself by drowning herself in the Kyaukese irrigation system, in order to spare any further sacrificial victims. Rhum finally mentions a story about a former monk in northern Thailand who slit his own throat to become the guardian spirit of a reliquary
56. C. C. Berg, "Javaansche geschiedschrijving," in Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch-Indië (Amsterdam: Joost van den Vondel, 1938), 2:15
57. Michael R. Rhum, The Ancestral Lords: Gender, Descent, and Spirits in a Northern Thai Village, Monograph Series on Southeast Asia, Special Report, no. 29 (DeKalb: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University, 1994), p. 141
58. and Gideon Shelach, "The Qiang and the Question of Human Sacrifice in the Late Shang Period," Asian Perspectives 35, no. 1 (1996): 1-26
59. Pleyte, p. 917
60. Wilken, pp. 107-8
61. J. Habbema, "Bijgeloof in de Preanger-regentschappen," Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-lndië 51 (1900): 110-38
62. Fay-Cooper Cole, The Peoples of Malaysia (Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1945), p. 263
63. C. Snouck Hurgronje, The Achehnese (Leyden: E. J. Brill, 1906), 1:43
64. M. Yahya Mansur, "Sistim Kekerabatan Masyarakat Aceh Utara dan Aceh Besar," in Sistim Keker-abatan dan Pola Pewarisan, ed. S. Budhisantoso (Jakarta: Pustaka Grafika Kita, 1988), pp. 32-33
65. H. A. van Hien, De Javaansche geestenwereld en de belrekking, die tusschen de geesten en de zinnelijke wereld bestaat, verduidelijkt door petangan's oftellingen, bij de Javanen en Soendaneezen in gebniik, deel 1, de geschiedenis der godsdiensten en der tijd-rekenkunde op Java (Bandoeng: Fortuna, 1912), p. 170
66. W. Mintardja Rikin, "Ngabersihan als knoop in de tali paranti" (Ph.D. diss., Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, 1973), p. 40
67. Tervviel, pp. 267, 269
68. Waterson, pp. 122, 124
69. In the construction of a dwelling, special care is often taken in the selection of appropriate kinds of wood, as the spirits of the trees involved also influence the general welfare of the house and its inhabitants (Waterson, pp. 118-20)
70. Robert Heine-Geldern, "Die Megalithen Südostasiens und ihre Bedeutung für die Klärung der Megalithenfrage in Europa und Polynesien," Anthropos 23 (1928): 276-315
71. Richard Huntington and Peter Metcalf, Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 91
72. Waterson, pp. 122-37
73. Tsing, pp. 85-87
74. Drake, p. 274
75. B. Alkema and T. J. Bezemer, Beknopt handboek der volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-lndië (H1aarlem: Tjeenk Willink, 1927), p. 408
76. Waterson, p. 123
77. Edwin M. Loeb, Sumatra: Its History and People (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 131
78. Loeb, p. 92; Waterson, p. 123
79. J. Miedema and W. A. L. Stokhof, eds., Memories van overgave van de afdeling West Nieuw-Guinea, pt. 1, Irian Jaya Source Materials No. 3, ser. A, no. 2 (Leiden-Jakarta: DSALCUL/IRIS, 1992), p. 58
80. To add to the confusion, the early ethnographic literature calls various groups living in Halmahera, Ceram, Bum, and some other islands "Alfurs" (Dutch: Alfoeren), a term that indicates no specific ethnic group, but rather is an insulting term used for the "hicks living in the hills" (cf. "Alfoer," in Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch- Indië, ['S-Gravenhage: Mar-tinus Nijhoff, 1917], 1:30)
81. Edwin M. Loeb and Jan O. M. Broek, "Social Organization and the Long House in Southeast Asia," American Anthropologist, vol. 49 (1947)
82. Erb, p. 119
83. Alkema and Bezemer, p. 399
84. Robert Wessing, "De kentongan in Indonesië," Aziatische Kunst 26, no. 3 (1996): 17-24
85. D. H. Meijer, "De kentongan en de veiligheid," De Nederlandsch-Indische Politie-gids 16, no. 4 (1932): 104-8
86. Jet Bakels, personal communication
87. P. B. Joshi, "On the Rite of Human Sacrifice in Ancient, Mediaeval and Modern India and other Countries," Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay 3 (1893): 275-300
88. John Pemberton, "The Appearance of Order: A Politics of Culture in Colonial and Post Colonial Java" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1989), p. 268
89. Elizabeth Moore, "Water Enclosed Sites: Links between Ban Takhong, Northeast Thailand and Cambodia," in The Gift of Water: Water Management, Cosmology and the State in Southeast Asia, ed. Jonathan Rigg (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1992), pp. 41-42
90. R. E. Downs, "Head-Hunting in Indonesia," in Structural Anthropology in the Netherlands: A Reader, ed. P. E. de Josselin de Jong, 2d ed., Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde, trans, ser. 17 (Dordrecht: Foris, 1983), p. 118
91. Paul Arndt, Religion auf Ostflores, Adonare und Solor, Studia Instituti Anthropos 1 (Wien-Modling: Verlag und Druck der Missions Druckerei St. Gabriel, 1951), p. 79
92. Rhum, p. 43; Sartori, p. 19
93. Robert Wessing, "An Enclosure in the Garden of Love," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 22, no. I (1991): 1-15
94. Jan Rombout van Blom, "Tjandi Sadjiwan" (Ph.D. diss., Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, 1935), p. 13
95. J. W. IJzerman, Beschrijving der oudheden nabij de grens der residenties Soerakarta en Djogdjakarta (Batavia: Landsdrukkerij, 1891), p. 68
96. For more details on the findings, see Roy E. Jordaan, In Praise of Prambanan, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, trans, ser. 26 (Leiden: K1TLV Press, 1996)
97. Jordaan and Wessing, pp. 45-73
98. and Oudheidkundig Verslag, Uittreksel uit de oudheidkundige verslagen 1931-1935. Oudheidkundige Dienst in Nederlandsch-Indië (Batavia: De Unie, 1938), photo-graph (p. 22, fig. 11)
99. 92 S. J. O'Connor, "Ritual Deposit Boxes in Southeast Asian Sanctuaries," Artibus Asiae 28 (1966): 53-61
100. Paul Mus, Barabudur: Esquisse d'une Histoire du Buouddhisme Fondée sur la Critique Archéohgique des Textes (Hanoi: Imprimerie D'Exstrême-Orient, 1935), 1:195-208
101. Compare J. Kreemer, De karbouw: zijn betekenis voor de volken van de Indonesische Archipel ('S-Gravenhage-Bandung: Van Hoeve, 1956)
102. Frederick J. Simoons and Elizabeth S. Simoons, A Ceremonial Ox of India: The Mithan in Nature, Culture, and History- with Notes on the Domestication of Common Cattle (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968)
103. Bruce Lincoln, Myth. Cosmos, and Society: Indo-European Themes of Creation and Destruction (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 183, cited in Smith and Doniger, p. 220, n. 31
104. Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, Other Peoples' Myths (New York: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 114-15
105. Johanned Cornelis Heesterman, "The Ancient Indian Royal Consecration" (Ph.D. diss., Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, 1957), pp. 138-39, n. 71
106. Suchitra Samanta, "The 'Self-Animal' and Divine Digestion: Goat Sacrifice to the Goddess Kālī in Bengal," Journal of Asian Studies 53, no. 3 (1994): 779-803. This would, of course, depend on the reason for the change. Conversion to a new religion might lead to new sacrificial items or to the adoption of completely new sources of supernatural power, which would be considered superior by the converts, although nonconverts might not agree. Furthermore, the fact that the offered chicken or goat may be referred to as a human need not mean that it is a substitute for a human being but can be seen to refer to the highest offering in the set of which it is part
107. and Benedict R. O'G. Anderson, "Cartoons and Monuments: The Evolution of Political Communication under the New Order," in Language and Power: Exploring Political Culture in Indonesia, ed. B. R. O'G. Anderson (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 152-93