The Lionese are an ethnolinguistic group numbering approximately
150,000 who inhabit the central part of Flores,
Eastern Indonesia. The population of this region is divided
into numerous traditional domains (tans). These were autonomous
political units until early in this century. The data
on which the present study is based were collected during my
field research conducted from May 1983 to March 1985 in
Tana Lise, one of these traditional Lionese domains.
The Lionese economy remains a subsistence one, dependent
on the slash-and-burn or swidden cultivation of rice, maize,
cassava, sweet potatoes, and various vegetables. Recently cash
crops such as coffee, cloves, and cacao have been introduced in
mountainous areas, and irrigated paddy fields are found in
flatland in the mountains and near the coast.
It is only the swidden agriculture with which multiple and
complex agricultural rituals are interwoven. These rituals appear
to be symbolic behavior apparently related to a cosmology
or world view. But the Lionese people do not know and cannot
explain the symbolic meaning paired with the rituals by a
semiological code. They answered my questions about the
meaning 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 behavior
rather than symbolic behavior. If this is the case, is it then
impossible to advance the scientific study of these rituals beyond
a mere description of them?
My answer is 'no,' because in many cases the Lionese agricultural
rituals can be interpreted relevantly. Therefore we
can proceed from simple description to a fairly detailed interpretation
of these rituals. The aim of this study is to describe the
Lionese agricultural rituals in detail and to investigate the cultural
representation of agricultural rituals (i.e. interpretations devised
by the Lionese themselves concerning their agricultural rituals)
by means of the concept of relevance developed by Dan Sperber
and Deirdre Wilson [SPERBER and WILSON 1986].
After the exposition of a theoretical framework in the introduction
of this study, three sections follow. In section one,
there is undertaken a description and analysis of the knowledge
and beliefs concerning social organization, crops, deities, and the
settings for these agricultural rituals such as the ceremonial house,
the village and the garden. These will furnish the background
knowledge or 'context' for interpreting the agricultural rituals.
In section two, an exhaustive description is presented of all
the agricultural rituals, together with the agricultural practice,
seasonal changes in natural phenomena, and the annual cycle
of 'seasonal beliefs,' such as the visitation of moro nggele (mysterious
head hunters from overseas) and mitleik e (dreadful witches
from the east end of Flores), the coming of balu re' e (season of
disease and death), and the occurrence of tana watu gaka (Mother
Earth crying for the golden treasure kept in the ceremonial
house).
In part one of section three, by amplifying the discussion
of section one, the agricultural rituals are interpreted by means
of investigating the contexts that make them relevant. According
to the cultural representation of the agricultural rituals that
emerges 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 of
these deities. In the next part of this section, it is shown that
the seasonal beliefs are a set of images implied by the cultural
representation of the agricultural rituals.
In parts three and four of section three, the following
problems are discussed.
The people of Tana Lise are not given equal status in the
cultural representation of the agricultural rituals. Or, more correctly,
through participating in the agricultural rituals, they are
differentiated into chiefs near to the deities and those far from
them.
Tana Lise is subdivided into a number of semi-autonomous
subdomains (maki) ruled by a chief. The chief, as the person
near to the deities in each maki, exercises various powers, and
some of these chiefs do the same thing at the domain level.
Accordingly, the rules of agricultural rituals (i.e. the rules
which 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 discussion
centers on the reason why the Lionese people restrict their comments
to the rules of the agricultural rituals and are silent on the
cultural representation of the agricultural rituals. As Ivo Strecker
pointed out, no anthropological theory has so far answered
this problem satisfactorily [STRECKER 1988:203].
In my view, it is important to recognize that the Lionese
agricultural rituals are rule-following behavior in order to understand
this problem. The rules of these agricultural rituals
are simply accepted by the people holding to an 'internal point
of view' (the viewpoint of 'the group which accepts and uses rules
as guides to conduct' [HART 1961:86]). I suggest as a possible
hypothesis that their silence on the cultural representation of their
agricultural rituals is derived from holding to an internal point
of view, and maintaining silence on the cultural representation
of them has the effect of making the rules of these agricultural
rituals function in the same way as the 'representations in quotes'
defined by Sperber [SPERBER 1975:99-106].
リオ族における農耕儀礼の記述と解釈
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