The historical record indicates contact, particularly in coastal communities in western and northern Sabah, between Dusun and Indians, Chinese, Malays, and Europeans. Thus, beginning after the seventh century B.C., Indian traders and travelers en route by boat to and from south China stopped briefly along the western and northern Borneo coasts to replenish supplies or seek shelter from severe South China Sea weather. These Indian travelers included various types of craftsmen and Brahman and Buddhist teachers and priests. During the time of the Western Han Empire (202 B.C. to A.D. 9), Chinese traders and religious pilgrims traveling to and from India also were in contact with the coastal peoples of western and northern Borneo, seeking local products. Chinese trade with India, with stops by ships along the coasts of Borneo, expanded several times until A.D. 1430, and included the establishment of some trading settlements, such as the one founded in A.D. 1375 at the mouth of the Kinabatangan river in the eastern part of north Borneo by a Chinese trader (Wang Sen-ping). These contacts between northern Borneo native peoples and Chinese traders and travelers over many centuries introduced a wide range of Chinese cultural forms to Bornean populations, and brought them the techniques and tools of irrigated rice agriculture using the water buffalo as a principal source of power in field preparation. Between the ninth and thirteenth centuries A.D. the early Malay Buddhist kingdom of Srivijaya, centered in the area of the present-day city of Palembang, Sumatra, dominated the southern and southwestern coasts of Borneo. Representatives of this kingdom made contact with people along the coasts of western and northern Borneo. Then the powerful Hindu kingdom of Majapahit, located in Java, exercised state power in the same coastal areas of Borneo beginning in the early fourteenth century A.D. Islamic influences and cultural forms spread to the area as the state of Malacca, ruled by a Muslim prince, exerted its domination in the fifteenth century A.D. Some European cultural influences reached the western and northern Borneo coasts as traders sought local products, particularly spices, following the conquest of Malacca by a Portuguese fleet in A.D. 1511. Regular and intensive contacts between Europeans and the coastal peoples of Borneo did not begin until after the mid-nineteenth century A.D., as the British sought to establish protectorates to maintain the safety of trade routes through the South China Sea.
In northern Borneo, a private chartered company was established by British investors in 1881, which ruled the area as a sovereign entity until 15 July 1946, when British North Borneo became a British colony. British colonial rule continued for seventeen more years, until North Borneo became the state of Sabah in Malaysia in September 1963. Thus the Dusun were in regular contact with British cultural and social forms for eighty-two years, during which power, authority, and law were usually imposed unilaterally and with little regard for Dusun tradition. These contacts brought Dusun to realize they were citizens of a Malaysian state, and also brought them into regular contact with a new national language (Bahasa Melayu) and an emphasis by the national government on Muslim religious traditions, values, and social practices.
Kin Groups and Descent. Descent in Dusun culture is bilateral. Ego-oriented kindreds also are present and are active in celebration of important events in the life of an individual. For Dusun, a kindred is a group of relatives recognizing their relationship to a particular individual without regard to whether the relationship is traced through a male or female relative. Dusun also have specific social groups, all members of which are descendants of a particular founding ancestor, whose activities are told in legend and folktale on special occasions of ritual feasting and ceremony, and in whose name some land and moveable property are owned. These ancestor-oriented kin groups conventionally have regulated marriage between members through insistence on the practice of endogamy.
Kinship Terminology. Dusun traditionally employ Eskimo cousin terminology. They also emphasize the relative ages of unrelated persons through use of special kin terms.
The Dusun traditionally are animists, believing there is a direct and continuing relationship between the events of daily life and a complex world of good and evil supernatural beings and unseen forces. Dusun also believe that proper ritual and ceremonial acts can be interposed between humans and supernatural beings and forces in an attempt to modify, or even to control, events that cause humans to fall ill, be uncertain, lose their luck, feel pain, or become fearful.
Religious Beliefs. Dusun conceptions of the universe include a variety of malevolent supernatural beings and forces believed to be responsible for the personal crises of human life, including accidents, illness, and death. These harmful beings include entities and forces that have existed since the time of the creation of the world, as well as the souls of the dead doomed by the creator being to an eternity of wandering and cannibalism because of evil deeds performed while alive. A group of beneficial spirit beings and forces is also believed to be important in keeping order in the universe and in daily human life. The most important of these supernatural beings and forces in everyday life is the "spirit of the rice," a female entity who serves as the guardian of the rice crop and rice storehouse and in whose name specific rituals are performed at times of rice planting and harvest. In addition, Dusun traditionally believe in the existence of a specific class of named supernaturals whose attributes and powers are known and used by ritual specialists as they seek to divine and control events leading to life crises. A creator force, personified into a being called "Asundu," who has a legendary history and is possessed of awesome powers, is said to have shaped the universe and to direct the destiny of all its inhabitants. A specific power of the creator, believed to be derived from the inexhaustible store of the power of this being, is said to provide for the curative and restorative powers of female and male ritual specialists. Objects, geographic locations, and persons are said to be imbued with considerable amounts of this power and must be treated with respect or avoided if possible. A special designation (apagun) and carved symbols are used by Dusun to "wall off such locations or objects from inadvertent human contact. Today, large numbers of Dusun have become Christians and so reject many animistic beliefs and practices. Some have also become Muslims.
Religious Practitioners. Some male and female individuals in each Dusun community are specially knowledgeable in the many ritual and ceremonial acts used to mediate between humans and the supernatural world. These rituals and ceremonies involve spirit possession, use of symbolic objects, recitation of lengthy sacred verses, and often center upon specific individuals, places, or crops afflicted with a disease or ill fortune. The effectiveness of a ritual or ceremony is said to depend upon precisely following correct procedures and the accurate recitations of verses. Female ritual specialists tend to concentrate on curing and divination regarding individual illness and bad fortune. Male ritual specialists tend to concern themselves with alleviation or prevention of a worldwide scope. The verses recited by female and male ritual specialists are often expressed in an archaic form of the Dusun language not known or widely used in a community; they are learned through long apprenticeship to senior ritual specialists.
Ceremonies. Public performances of ritual acts, many concerned with the annual swidden and irrigated rice agricultural cycle, are a regular feature. Ceremonies marking individual life-cycle stages or transitions (for example, birth, marriage, and death) are also important.
Arts. Art and house architecture are imbued with forms and designs common to other native Bornean peoples. Many of these art forms are believed by Dusun to express a "spiritual" (id dasom ginavo) intent or quality, and are said to exhibit their deep understanding, or ginavo, and respect for Dusun tradition, or koubasan. Traditional musical instruments include a bamboo mouth harp, a bamboo-and-gourd wind instrument, and gongs of various sizes obtained in the past from Chinese traders. Dusun men have traditionally practiced tattooing of their necks, forearms, and shoulders with intricate designs of deep spiritual meaning.
Medicine. Personal illness is believed by Dusun to derive from bad fortune, various actions taken by harmful supernatural beings and forces, and the malign intentions of human adversaries. A wide range of medicinal remedies, derived from various plant and animal products and made into different lotions and poultices, is used to help alleviate and cure illness. Special importance is attached to a variety of a swamp-plant root that is believed to have magical and curative powers and is used by female specialists when seeking to divine and cure personal illness.
Death and Afterlife. The Dusun believe that following death the spirit of an individual proceeds to the supernatural world. There the spirits of the dead are said to rest near the creator being in a world similar to the human world but lacking disease, bad fortune, failed crops, and combat, where all things are new and never in need of replenishment. Some spirits of the dead are believed not to reach the place of the dead since they are captured en route by harmful spirits or eaten by cannibal spirits. A period of formal mourning, which includes a number of ritual and ceremonial actions, is intended to ease the transition of the dead to their new life in the afterworld.
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