著者

杉島 敬志

出版者

国立民族学博物館

雑誌

国立民族学博物館研究報告 (ISSN:0385180X)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.15, no.3, pp.573-846, 1991-03-18

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The Lionese are an ethnolinguistic group numbering approximately150,000 who inhabit the central part of Flores,Eastern Indonesia. The population of this region is dividedinto numerous traditional domains (tans). These were autonomouspolitical units until early in this century. The dataon which the present study is based were collected during myfield research conducted from May 1983 to March 1985 inTana Lise, one of these traditional Lionese domains.The Lionese economy remains a subsistence one, dependenton the slash-and-burn or swidden cultivation of rice, maize,cassava, sweet potatoes, and various vegetables. Recently cashcrops such as coffee, cloves, and cacao have been introduced inmountainous areas, and irrigated paddy fields are found inflatland in the mountains and near the coast.It is only the swidden agriculture with which multiple andcomplex agricultural rituals are interwoven. These rituals appearto be symbolic behavior apparently related to a cosmologyor world view. But the Lionese people do not know and cannotexplain the symbolic meaning paired with the rituals by asemiological code. They answered my questions about themeaning or purpose of the rituals in a general way by saying'It is our custom' or 'We must perform it that way.' Accordingly,these agricultural rituals are rule-following behaviorrather than symbolic behavior. If this is the case, is it thenimpossible to advance the scientific study of these rituals beyonda mere description of them?My answer is 'no,' because in many cases the Lionese agriculturalrituals can be interpreted relevantly. Therefore wecan proceed from simple description to a fairly detailed interpretationof these rituals. The aim of this study is to describe theLionese agricultural rituals in detail and to investigate the culturalrepresentation of agricultural rituals (i.e. interpretations devisedby the Lionese themselves concerning their agricultural rituals)by means of the concept of relevance developed by Dan Sperberand Deirdre Wilson [SPERBER and WILSON 1986].After the exposition of a theoretical framework in the introductionof this study, three sections follow. In section one,there is undertaken a description and analysis of the knowledgeand beliefs concerning social organization, crops, deities, and thesettings for these agricultural rituals such as the ceremonial house,the village and the garden. These will furnish the backgroundknowledge or 'context' for interpreting the agricultural rituals.In section two, an exhaustive description is presented of allthe agricultural rituals, together with the agricultural practice,seasonal changes in natural phenomena, and the annual cycleof 'seasonal beliefs,' such as the visitation of moro nggele (mysterioushead hunters from overseas) and mitleik e (dreadful witchesfrom the east end of Flores), the coming of balu re' e (season ofdisease and death), and the occurrence of tana watu gaka (MotherEarth crying for the golden treasure kept in the ceremonialhouse).In part one of section three, by amplifying the discussionof section one, the agricultural rituals are interpreted by meansof investigating the contexts that make them relevant. Accordingto the cultural representation of the agricultural rituals thatemerges from this investigation, the crops are the wives given to(male) human beings from Mother Earth and Father Heaven,while the agricultural cycle is the life cycle of the daughters ofthese deities. In the next part of this section, it is shown thatthe seasonal beliefs are a set of images implied by the culturalrepresentation of the agricultural rituals.In parts three and four of section three, the followingproblems are discussed.The people of Tana Lise are not given equal status in thecultural representation of the agricultural rituals. Or, more correctly,through participating in the agricultural rituals, they aredifferentiated into chiefs near to the deities and those far fromthem.Tana Lise is subdivided into a number of semi-autonomoussubdomains (maki) ruled by a chief. The chief, as the personnear to the deities in each maki, exercises various powers, andsome of these chiefs do the same thing at the domain level.Accordingly, the rules of agricultural rituals (i.e. the ruleswhich the people obey when performing the agricultural rituals)or the agricultural rituals themselves as rule-following behavior,work in the same way as the 'power-conferring rules' or the'secondary rules' defined by H. L. A. Hart [HART 1961].Finally, in the conclusion of this study, a brief discussioncenters on the reason why the Lionese people restrict their commentsto the rules of the agricultural rituals and are silent on thecultural representation of the agricultural rituals. As Ivo Streckerpointed out, no anthropological theory has so far answeredthis problem satisfactorily [STRECKER 1988:203].In my view, it is important to recognize that the Lioneseagricultural rituals are rule-following behavior in order to understandthis problem. The rules of these agricultural ritualsare simply accepted by the people holding to an 'internal pointof view' (the viewpoint of 'the group which accepts and uses rulesas guides to conduct' [HART 1961:86]). I suggest as a possiblehypothesis that their silence on the cultural representation of theiragricultural rituals is derived from holding to an internal pointof view, and maintaining silence on the cultural representationof them has the effect of making the rules of these agriculturalrituals function in the same way as the 'representations in quotes'defined by Sperber [SPERBER 1975:99-106].