Sakuddei Myths: “The Ear” | Translation & Commentary by Dr. Reimar Schefold
The Ear
Translation by Dr. Reimar Schefold
There was once a man who was a keen tracker of game. One day he tracked down a deer and shot at it with a bow and arrow. Whoosh! He shot at it, and followed it and followed it. He came to a wallow and lost the track. A short time after, he went tracking again, and again shot a deer. Whoosh! He followed it, came to a wallow, but the tracks had disappeared and he couldn’t find them anymore. Another day he went out again, walked and walked, and then saw a deer. Whoosh! He shot at it. He went and followed its tracks, came to a wallow, but did not catch up with his prey, did not even see it, did not even find its tracks anymore.
This had now been happening so frequently that all his brass-tipped arrows were used up. He began to weep. Then suddenly his eyes opened and he saw a great house. And as for the wallow, it had become a feeding place for pigs, just like what we have at home. And he saw a spirit who said:
“Come up here, grandson!”
So the man climbed up to the house. And there he saw his brass-tipped arrows that he had previously shot at the deer and wild boars. He saw them sticking out of the roof that was thatched with leaves. He saw them - “Hey, aren’t these my arrowheads? So this is where the game is that I shot. So the people here have eaten it!”
The spirit said: “What is wrong, my grandson, you are weeping!”
“l am weeping, grandfather, because I am looking for the animals I have shot and I cannot find them.”
“Are you? Then go and fetch sago as food for the pigs, my grandson!“
So the man went and fetched sago for the pigs. He chopped up the great logs, and then carried them, carried and carried and laid them down in front of the veranda. Now the spirit said:
“Quickly, throw it onto the feeding place, the food for the swine.”
He threw it. Crash! And then the spirit called out the call for pigs: “kiooo!” Soon wonderful deer came with antlers branching out wide! The man however said to himself in his thoughts: “So, this must be where they come from, this is the feeding-place of the deer. Then somebody must own them!”
Now the spirit asked: “Tell me, when are you going back, my grandson?”
“Well - I was just on the point of going.”
“When you go, my grandson, I shall give you something to take with you. Meat for all of you, and for your wife.”
“So be it, grandfather.”
Now the spirit tested the man. He said: “Fetch your arrows, my grandson, shoot that little deer and take it with you.”
The man thought: “What, if I only shoot a little one, it will not be enough for all of us. I will shoot a big one.” And he fetched his brass-tipped arrows and shot a magnificent deer. Whoosh! He shot it, and it died. Then he went back to the house:
“Grandfather, it is dead.”
The spirit answered: “You are truly clever. It is right that it should be so.”
“What shall we do, grandfather? Shall we share the meat?”
“So be it.”
They now singed the deer and then cut up the meat. The head they laid in a wooden trough. And now the Spirit put his foot against the deer’s ear. His left ear. “Come now, divide the meat into two halves, my grandson.”
The man divided up the meat. Divided into exactly equal pieces. But the spirit said: “What is this, my grandson? That is not very much meat for us, for your grandparents. You have given us only a little, we have come off worse”.
“No grandfather, the shares are exactly equal,” answered the man. In his thoughts, however, he said to himself: “Whatever shall I do?” He divided it up again so that he came off worse. He did not give himself much but he did give a large quantity to the spirits. He divided, and all the while the spirit tapped his foot against the deer’s left ear.
“So, grandfather, that is the meat for you.”
“Grandson, what you are doing is wrong. That is not enough for us. You are simply giving us too little. Really you’re doing nothing but making sure we come off worse!“
“No, grandfather, you have more, there is only a little for me.”
“No.” And, so saying, the spirit tapped his left foot against the deer’s left ear.
Now the man noticed the spirit’s foot on the deer’s ear, and said to himself: “What ever is he trying to convey? Maybe he’s trying to indicate that he would like to have the meat of the ear for himself?” He tried this out and cut off the ear. Cut off the deer’s ear.
“Yes indeed, my grandson, that is the meat we want! If you ever again shoot a deer, or a wild boar, or a Simakobu monkey, or indeed any kind of game, then give us, your grandparents, its ear as our meat. Its ear - you will be giving but a little, but for us, it is a great deal. Even if you cut the body into equal halves, even if you give us yet more, it is not much, it can never be much. The ear, on the other hand, is more than enough!”
He said this to the man, who went to fetch palm- leaflets to pack everything in, the whole body and the bones, and then he made to leave. “I shall go now, grandfather.“
“So be it, go now, grandson. But remember what I told you." The spirit had also told him about the taboos during the hunt. Once again he repeated some of them: "Do not make the water turbid, or you will not see the game. Don't eat anything sour, or you will hurt yourself with the sharp hunting weapons. And no playing around with women in the open air! And now go on, grandson!"
And so the man walked off and arrived home. And since the deer he had shot was there, he called his brothers, called his sisters, his brothers-in-law, and their children. They all ate up the venison, ate it up until there was none left.
Then he went to fetch wood. While he was in the forest, the spirit saw him again. He went up to him and said:
“How is it, my grandson, is your meat all eaten up?”
“Yes, grandfather, it is all eaten up.”
“Why, grandson, we still have a great amount. We, your grandparents, still have much left.“
“Really?”
“If you think I’m lying, come and see.“
So, they went to the home of the spirits. And there was meat everywhere, he saw it in the bamboo carriers, he saw it in pots, he saw it in pans, and — in what enormous quantities! All from the deer’s left ear. The spirit said: “Look, that meat of ours, how much there still is. You took away the whole body and we took only one of its ears, but what an enormous amount has come from that!“
“Yes, indeed.”
“Well, take these for your people, grandson, these two bamboo cooking vessels full of meat.”
So the man took a couple of bamboo cooking vessels full of meat away with him when he left. Took them away, came home, and there they ate it up.
This is the story and the significance of our sacrificing the deer’s ear and the ears of any game we capture. This and no other."
Wooden human figure (tularat sirimanua), carved in relief on the house post supporting the front left corner of the dance floor of the Bulakmonga uma in North Pagai, ca. 1920. It has an oval heart-shaped face with flat triangular nose, incised eyes and mouth, and protuberant ears. The arms are crossed in front of the chest in relief. Notched zigzag ornaments at the lower border, 14 x 66 cm. Attached to this pole were stools for the kerei to sit on when summoning benevolent spirits and the souls of game animals. The figure had no specific religious connotation but its decorative form was meant to attract good forces. The Dallas Museum of Art. The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Fund, Inc.
Commentary
The Mentawaians have to cope with the necessity of killing animals for their daily food. In the story of Polele previously published on Arts of the Ancestors, we have met one solution people have found to the problem of killing living beings: By observing taboos, humans will impose on themselves specific restrictions which the wild animals will accept as compensation for the act of violence. Another problem, however, remains open: Who are the rightful owners of these animals and how should they be compensated?
Here another dilemma arises. In contrast to one's own ancestors, who, like careful parents, generally do not demand any real value from their offspring for their support, the spirits in the forest are strangers, entities with whom there is no family relationship and whose assistance cannot be taken for granted. One would actually have to provide an adequate return for their yielding of game. But how can humans repay a favor for animals that, unlike their own domestic ones, they have not cared for themselves and which they would nevertheless like to receive? This is the subject of the Ear Sacrifice narrative that was again told to me by Tengatiti. It explains the sacrifice of the left ear of the prey as a counter presentation for success in hunting.
The starting point of the story is the continual disappearance of the hunted animals in the jungle. The hunter finally discovers that the animals have an owner and that he has to pay something in return for their acquisition. He is the first to learn what has applied to all hunts since then: part of the prey must be ceded to its original owners. Moreover, the hunter must also submit to certain rules in his behavior, through which he can compensate for his violent intervention in the environment.
In any interpretation of myths, it is important to pay attention to the exact choice of words. In the story of the ear sacrifice, the difference between the relationship to wild animals and that to people's own domestic ones comes out clearly. The breeding of domestic animals is only one of the elements in the series of human actions for the success of which one places oneself entirely under the protection of one's own ancestors and to whom one constantly shows one's gratitude with small gifts, just as one does to the elders within the family. With the forest spirits, on the other hand, one encounters a quite divergent idiom, a negotiation with words like "disadvantage" and even "cheat" which evoke a completely different image.
2 In this context, a comparison with a well-known Greek tradition suggests itself, according to which Prometheus, faced with a similar dilemma of adequacy, left it up to the gods themselves to choose what kind of sacrifice they desired (Hesiod, Theogony 535 ff). He made two heaps from a slaughtered cow: a small one with the good meat and a larger one with all the bones and fat, and covered the whole with the skin. Zeus, summoned to come and choose, greedily demanded the larger part, and since then the sacrifices to the gods have consisted of what people gladly refrain from. In contrast to the conciliatory outcome in Mentawai, however, this led to conflict. According to Meuli (1975, II: 1011), the Greek offering of the bones is an echo of the same hunter tradition I mentioned above with Polele and the sea turtle.
Dr. Reimar Schefold
Dr. Reimar Schefold is Professor Emeritus Cultural Anthropology and Sociology of Indonesia at Leiden University. He has a long-standing interest in material culture, art, and vernacular architecture, particularly that of Southeast Asia, which has been the subject of many of his scholarly publications and Museum exhibitions. He has conducted several extensive periods of fieldwork in Indonesia, notably among the Sakuddei of Siberut, Mentawai Islands, where he spent two years from 1967 to 1969 and several shorter stays later; the Batak of Sumatra, and the Sa’dan Toraja of Sulawesi.
He is, with Steven G. Alpert, editor and one of the authors of Eyes of the Ancestors: The Arts of Island Southeast Asia at the Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art; New Haven etcetera: Yale University Press. 2013) and, with Han F. Vermeulen, of Treasure Hunting? Collectors and Collections of Indonesian Artefacts (Leiden: Research School CNWS/National Museum of Ethnology. 2002). His most recent publication is Toys for the Souls: Life and Art on the Mentawai Islands (Belgium : Primedia sprl. 2017) where in the Bibliography more of his writings on Mentawai can be found.
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