COMMENSALITY AND FOOD PROHIBITION

Abstract

Until recently, Savu island in eastern Indonesia had no written traditions, and kinship ties were recalled through a variety of mnemonic devices some of which were neither oral nor auditory. This article deals with a set of ceremonies involving commensality and food prohibition. The second ceremony called ‘The matter of the chicken's head’ (manu kètu lai), takes place once in the life of a woman when her marriage no longer produces children and is one of the mechanisms used in Savu for building social memory across generations as well as within one generational level. The article analyses the ceremonial practices leading to processes of knowledge and memory transmission of these particular ceremonies. No special ritual text is uttered and messages are conveyed in other ways. The precedence among the generations as well as at one generational level is visually demonstrated. The ceremonial food shared at each meeting, an essentially incorporating practice, also contributes to recollecting the events. In addition, the gift exchange allows the switch in gendered positions between the respective parties. Finally, this article exposes how the ultimate purpose of ‘the matter of the chicken's head’ reaches beyond memorising genealogical links.

Notes

¹See Baddeley et al. (2009); Boyer and Wertsch (2009); Damasio (2001); Kotre (1995); Neisser and Fivush (1994); Schacter (1995; 1996).

²On this subject see Duggan (2009).

³On ritual practices see Bloch (1992: 4); Boyer (2001, 2009); Turner (1974).

⁴See for example Figure 3 further below. The ancestresses of my informant were of the same clan for the last six generations.

⁵Ideally buffaloes are preferred but pigs are acceptable replacements if the former are not available. Compromises can be made on the number of animals, if alive or as meat, and in the latter case several relatives share an animal.

⁶Sorghum or sorgo (Sorghum saccharatum). Mung bean is kacang hijau in Indonesian (Phaseolus radiatus).

⁷On the subject of sister-brother networks see Duggan (1999, 2001, 2008); For example in the districts of Liae and Mesara where a number of people follow the ancestral religion or still feel attached to tradition, when a man digs out a new hearth for cooking lontar palm juice, he slaughters a goat for his sister and she reciprocates with three chickens. When the brother repairs his house, the sister provides him with chickens and with a protective cloth she has woven for him and he slaughters an animal for her. For a sister-brother network on Raijua, see Kagiya (1985) and on Flores see Howell (1990).

⁸Dog meat is classified as ‘male’ and ‘hot’. It is part of ceremonial meat for marriage and funeral.

¹⁰The Savu terminology for naming generations differs from western terminology. Seen from ego, apu includes grandparent and grandchild, nuhi, great-grandparent and great-grandchild and so on. This naming system is not specific to Savu as other societies in the area have similar systems. For generational names on Savu see Kana (1978: 239).

⁹At some stage of the conversations, it was mentioned that there were male descendants who migrated and that the contact with those living in Savu was lost. It is also possible that descendants who had converted to another religion no longer wanted to carry out rituals of the traditional ancestral religion.

¹¹For simplicity I shall use the singular form to name the entire cycle, thus midlife ceremony, although it comprises five rituals.

¹²On precedence see Fox (1996: 130–45) and Vischer (2009).

¹³Bethel Church here which denounces eating meat from an animal sacrificed to the God of Prosperity, i.e. to a pagan god.

¹⁴Dimu Kore, raja of Mesara, Treaty of Paravicini, 1756, VOC, Timor files, letters 30, 36. Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia.

¹⁵Buki Dimu in VOC, ‘Missiven’  3693, 1781. Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia.

¹⁶In the western calendar the cycle is five years for the five steps, while in the adat calendar of Savu where the lunar year starts in April or May, it takes place over four years. However my informants always mentioned five years so that I use their accounting.

¹⁷See Fox (1980).

¹⁸For gendered symbolism in Savu woven cloths see Duggan (2001: 78).

¹⁹On the power of cloths see Duggan (2006: 46–7).

²⁰Bapak Beha Lado, my host in Seba, believed that the food taboo he shared with the widow of the last raja of Savu was initiated 14 generations ago, at the time of their ancestors Dila Jingi and her brother Jawa Jingi. However he explained that at ceremonies (marriage or funeral) he waited until other descendants had taken food from the buffet. If they ignored the food prohibition, he ignored it too. If they respected the taboo, he refrained from taking the prohibited food. However he was not afraid of the curse, lawija.

²¹If she is a follower of the ancestral religion she will be buried below the platform of the house; if she is Christian she will be buried next to her parents' house.

²²On techniques of the body, see for instance Mauss (1979), Bourdieu (1977) and Connerton (1989). This aspect of remembering is explained below.

²³In the traditional system of barter on Savu, chickens were not mentioned as being suitable as an exchange for valuable goods or animals. They always had a lesser value and are the smallest animal sacrificed in rituals.

²⁴On the role of repeated retrieval in shaping social and collective memory see Roediger et al. (2009).

²⁵Food taboo is not the exclusive characteristics of manu kètu. Some clans and some wini have food taboos for all their members (for instance crocodile, turtle, beef or sugar cane) which are based on narratives relating to the group's creation.

²⁶On the symbolic meaning of food in Southeast Asia, especially shared and prohibited food, and food as identity builder see Janowski and Kerlogue (2007).

²⁷The main harvest ceremonies take place over three days and one night. They are lingu d'ere for taking down the ritual drums to the ceremonial place, gape for calling the ancestors, and kowa hole for launching the ceremonial (‘thanksgiving’) boat. Prior to this, nights of ceremonial dances, ped'oa (‘prayers’ or ‘calls’), are accompanied by chants performed by one singer allowed improvisation to whom the dancers respond in a chorus, repeating parts of his text. A single performance may last an hour.

²⁸Firstly the young people were sitting on the side, not in the middle of the room with the core of the group; secondly they wore t-shirts and jeans instead of the traditional hand-woven cloth. This shows their reservation towards traditions and the ceremony.