Mappurondo Ritual Life

I have saved for last a very simple sketch of traditional religious practices, the practices that define the mappurondo enclave as an ideological minority. The ritual tradition at Bambang, like that throughout the Pitu Ulunna Salu hinterlands, goes by the name pemali appa' randanna , the "tabus of the four strands." With this metaphoric term, villagers think of ritual life as a four-stranded necklace, the loops marking four kinds of ritual time, and the beads representing prohibitions and admonitions regarding practice and conduct. The looped strands of the necklace suggest that ritual life not only adorns the village—a theme articulated in headhunting ceremonies—but also assumes a circular, cyclical, and encompassing form. In a sense, the ritual order of pemali appa' randanna adorns both the village and time itself.

Briefly, pemali appa' randanna divides the harvest year into four periods, each with a characteristic focus, mood, and purpose. Patomatean , "the rime of the dead," pertains to death and mortuary practices, and for that reason, lacks some of the seasonality of the other periods. Patotibojongan is in effect from the time the rice crop is planted to the time it is put into storage. The men's headhunting rite of pangngae then opens up pealloan ("the place of the sun"), a period that subsumes the remaining two "strands." The first of those strands is pa'bisuan ; it concerns the exuberant rites centered on the village and the household, including pangngae. Once pa'bisuan comes to an end, pa'bannetauan , the season of marriages and divorces, takes place. After wedding festivities have come to a close, villagers await the return of patotibojongan.

A closer look at this ritual calendar, beginning with patotibojongan, should help frame a discussion of pangngae in later chapters. Patotibojongan refers to the timid and girlish rice spirits who descend from the sky-world to occupy each terrace. Upon the plowing of terraces and the casting of seed or the transplanting of seedlings, every mappurondo household will give offerings and prayer to these dabata. Subsequently, the community is absorbed in labor and enters into a somber tabu period that lasts until harvested rice is placed in the granaries—very roughly, an eight-month period stretching from July through February. All of that which might disturb the

easily startled rice spirits—noisiness, laughter, storytelling, singing, drumming, and ceremony—is strictly prohibited. (Two important exceptions are funerary ritual and, as the rice matures and ripens, the manufacture of tops, swings, and windmills, the sounds of which delight the rice spirits.) At harvest, final offerings are given to the rice spirits, who ascend to the skyworld. Sheaves of rice are then dried on vertical racks. When the last of the households have collapsed their drying racks, patotibojongan comes to an end.

Not long after the drying racks have been put away, a group of men and youths will slip out of the village and go on the headhunting journey associated with pangngae. Their boisterous return in the dead of night releases the mappurondo community as a whole from public mourning for the deceased and shifts ritual practices to pa'bisuan, "the time of the quickening spirit." Pa'bisuan divides in two: pa'bisuam muane , those village-level rituals held under the authority of men (also called ukusam botto ) and the ensuing pa'bisuam baine , a series of sometimes elaborate rituals held under the authority of women for the benefit of individual households (also called ukusam banua ).

Men's ritual is limited to the annual, obligatory performances of pangngae and the prestigious and comparatively rare morara ("the bleeding" [i.e. of a sacrificial animal]), both of which are staged by entire villages.^[23] It is in these rituals that the debata restore and enliven men's sumanga ' (elan vital, or soul).^[24] Both rituals exalt the valor and cunning of headhunters, and extol the prosperity and prestige of the village and village tradition. But before morara may be staged, pangngae must be held. Pangngae involves as well, in most cases, only village residents, with occasional guests (most often kin or distinguished elders) from mappurondo communities in other settlements. Morara, on the other hand, requires a host village to invite guests from all corners of Pitu Ulunna Salu.^[25]

Rituals belonging to women (pa'bisuam baine) commence once the rites of men have come to a close. Because morara is seldom run, pa'bisuam baine usually begins when the headhunting celebrations of pangngae end. Thus, the focus of ritual shifts from male to female, and from village to household. Run under the authority of women who hold ritual office, the ceremonies of pa'bisuam baine (five according to the ToIssilita' and six according to the ToSalu) aim at bringing prosperity and health to the presiding household and its hapu, by way of sacrifice and entrancing visitations from the spirits. The rituals of the female domain are sequential, moving from the small and simple to the grand and elaborate (called parri ', "heavy," or "burdened"]).^[26] Households must adhere to the set sequence and may

not stage more than one rite per year. At the same time, a household is under no obligation to run one of these rituals unless husband and wife have made a vow to do so.

Following the season's final pa'bisuam baine ceremony, activity shifts to the fourth strand of ritual injunctions and admonitions—pa'bannetauan, "the time of human seed." Like the rituals associated with women, the weddings of pa'bannetauan could be called rice-sensitive, in the sense that they take place only when a household has enough rice to put on a marriage feast for a daughter. In practice, households will not stage an elaborate rite during pa'bisuam baine if they anticipate proposals from prospective sons-in-law, preferring instead to reserve the necessary rice supplies for a marriage feast. As might be expected, harvest failures dramatically limit the number of weddings staged in a given year. With the close of pa'bannetauan, the exuberance of pealloan subsides. Although no major ceremonies may be staged, villagers continue to labor or relax in relative freedom from tabus.

There exist a number of other rituals that are more contingent in nature, though some of them have a connection with pealloan. These stray beads, so to speak, have to do with epidemic, natural disaster, early stages of a person's life-cycle, and construction of a house. The crises of epidemic and natural disaster can befall a village at any time. Prolonged or serious illness is usually dealt with privately, after enlisting the aid of recognized curers (usually female) who possess knowledge of the incantations and offerings used to heal.^[27] In the case of epidemic, however, village elders try to drive away the supernatural beings thought to bring illness upon the hamlets. A public sacrifice is held on a path downriver from the village (the cosmological direction of death and illness), and a frightening effigy is installed to ward off the beings' return. Similarly, disturbances within a hamlet—landslides, the toppling of trees, or the collapse of a house—are followed with calming sacrifices to the startled debata who may have unleashed the calamity.

Life-cycle rituals associated with pealloan include the now-defunct practices of male tooth-filing and superincision that were halted earlier in this century by Dutch and Indonesian authorities. Among extant practices, the ritualized presentation of clothes to children in their fourth year (peculiar to ToIssilita' communities) takes place during pealloan. Minor rites seeking a long life for a year-old infant, marking a child's contact with the ground (i.e. taking first steps), or beautifying an infant girl by ear-piercing happen by parents' preference and discretion during pealloan, too. But the earliest life-cycle rites—naming, and introduction of the child to the sleeping sling—happen within a month of birth and are not coordinated with pealloan. Finally, the very visible ritual event of installing a hearth in a newly con-

structed house (by taking ashes from the wife's mother's fireplace) happens without exception during pealloan.

This quick sketch hardly does justice to the complexity and texture of mappurondo ritual practice. Nonetheless, the basic character of the ritual order comes across in this outline of practice. At root, the ceremonial order—in its regulation of time, sociality, and discourse—establishes a powerful set of constraints on labor, consumption, and domestic and communal reproduction. Prosperity is perhaps its key theme—whether of person, household, hapu, or settlement. That discourse of prosperity, however, also includes, and makes intelligible, an anxious desire for prestige. Local religion thus sacralizes, and even fuels, the prestige politics that shape social life in the mappurondo communities. The rich symbolism of pemali appa' randanna also forms the context in which local gender differences reach their most radical formulation and display.^[28] Such shifting asymmetries not only play a part in shaping human relationships but also inform the making of household and village as the key sites for the sacred politics of prosperity, authority, and power.

I should not leave the impression that the ritual order is free of pressure and change. Judging by the recollections of older men and women, pa'bisuam baine—in contrast to other portions of the ritual cycle—is in some communities on its way to becoming badly stalled with respect to the staging of parri' ceremonies. These elaborate rituals have always been difficult and costly to perform, and the current economy and the vast number of conversions to Christianity since 1970 have made them more burdensome and problematic for a household. As a result, the ritual cycle of today is one geared especially to weddings, funerals, and the headhunting rites of pangngae. The consequences for women should be clear—their place in ritual life has diminished somewhat and taken new focus.

Having sketched the basic social and historical outlines of the mappurondo enclave at Bambang, I can resume exploration of local headhunting practices. I should stress that Christians dominate the religious and political landscape in Bambang, just as Muslims do downriver in Mambi. Followers of these world religions have rejected pemali appa' randanna in everyday moral practice. The mappurondo enclave in Bambang persists, meanwhile, as a number of village-based ritual polities that have yet to coalesce into a territory-wide religious body. Living uneasily with their Christian neighbors and kin, reluctant to put aside the tensions that separate ToSalu and ToIssilita' camps, and often bewildered by the intrusions of the Indonesian state, mappurondo households seldom look beyond village boundaries and show

little interest in joining a larger cooperative union. Nevertheless, all the mappurondo communities in this enclave have a consistent, historically informed vision of Bambang as repository and guardian of adat tradition. The tenacity of pangngae relative to other traditional ceremonies shows that the village remains the pivotal site for reproducing and giving institutional form to the broader ideological order of ada' mappurondo.