Paths and Rivers; Sa’dan Toraja Society in Transformation

Abstract

Paths and rivers xivtakeover was in fact preceded by a period of social upheaval in the highlands. Still, European colonisation, here as elsewhere, inevitably involved a collision with a radically different cosmology and different notions of what it means to lead a good or a successful life. In seeking to understand what the Toraja worldview had been, prior to this confrontation, I am struck by the tenacity with which some elements of that pattern have been maintained, even as other aspects are threatened with extinction, and new cultural patterns and ideas replace them. I hope that now I have been able to craft a somewhat broader and deeper picture of a society in transformation. The imagery of paths (lalan) and rivers (salu) helps me to think about continuities and differences, about the endurance of place and the flow of time, about the inroads made by outsiders into the highlands, as well as the outward journeys undertaken by Toraja migrants seeking their fortunes. Those images have salience to Toraja themselves in a number of ways. Paths through the landscape are of many kinds, not only those travelled by humans (lalan naola tau); they range from the tiniest 'mouse paths' (lalan balao) to the broad and muddy paths made by buffaloes (lalan tedong). One may also speak of the path of life (lalan katuoan) and the path of history (lalan sejarah -though here the word for history is a borrowing from Indonesian). From the human point of view, paths also link houses, which as birth places become sites of origin for people and which branch over time as descendants move to found new dwellings for themselves. To explain or talk 'about' anything is to speak of 'its path' (lalanna). Things that should be kept apart, such as rituals of the east and of the west, must be put on 'separate paths' (pattan lalan). The imagery of rivers is even more salient. Discourse is the flow or 'river of words' (saluan kata). When people tell their genealogies, they 'river' their ancestors (massalu nene'); the history of how any particular event unfolded is its 'river' (passalu). The flow of time is simultaneously the ordered progression of named ancestors from one generation to the next. Over and over again, Toraja acquaintances, telling myths and stories of the past, would end by tracing a line of descent from the ancestor they had been talking about to themselves, thereby legitimating their knowledge, their status, and their right to tell the story. Knowledge that has been passed down unbroken from the ancestors is said to have been 'preserved like river stones touching each other' (disedan karangan siratuan), for however many stones may be washed away by the rushing water, there are always others to take their place, and the river bed is never bare. Massalu is also to discuss any matter in detail, making it clear and putting things in order. The 'river' of a thing (salunna) is what is proper and correct; to 'go with the flow' of the river (unnola salunna) is to do things properly. To 'travel down the river' (dipaolai salu) of a problem o...

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