Anthroposnthropos
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
AANTHROPOSNTHROPOS 113.2018:114.2019: 395 343–354 – 422 An Episode fromThe the Diverse Beginnings Faces ofof TodaAnthropology Religion in the Amazon Curt NimuendajúAnthony and R. Walker the Xipaya Indians – A Research in Adverse Circumstances Peter Schröder Abstract. – The once more-or-less exclusively pastoral Todas of Ayan (Ö·n) to protect them after death. The To- the Nilgiri Mountains in South India still retain vibrant beliefs in das do not observe idol worship. Todas worship gods and goddesses they say once lived among them but there- light, fire, mountains, trees, rivers, sky, sun, and after became mountains; they tell also of ancestors who were moon, which are believed to be the major creations onceAbstract. living – TodasThe German but subsequently ethnologist became Curt Unckeldivinities. Nimuendajú Beyond Introductionof their Goddess Thekershi.2 such(1883–1945), indigenous who convictions, had immigrated Todas have to absorbedBrazil in a1903, plethora moved of Hinduhis permanent beliefs and residence ritual practices. to Belém Christian in 1913, ideology where hashe beenestab- propagatedlished professional among Todas, contacts with with foreign-led the Goeldi Christian Museum. missionar Between- This article1 is about a lesser-known episode of ies1915 succeeded and 1919, in establishinghe survived a bybreakaway working Toda precarious Christian jobs, com but- 1 anthropologicalIntroduction research in the Amazon region munity.also carried But notwithstanding out fieldwork amongthe many the divergent Xipaya sourcesIndians of in Toda quite religious ideology, the predominant and most public display of and about a quite uncommon history of anthropo- adverse circumstances. This is an illuminating episode about 2 Todathe beginnings ritual activity of (apartanthropology from among in the Christian Amazon, Todas) which still allows cen- Inlogical his recent practice. book The“Religion. historical An reconstructionAnthropological and tresrelativizing on their uniquesome stereotypessacred dairying about cult, the despite history the ofrapid anthropolo- decline Perspective”analysis of this(2015: case, 9), CurtProfessor Nimuendajú’s Homayun fieldwork Sidky, ingy, the which importance are commonly of buffaloes reproduced in the community’sin social science modern-day curricu- myamong much the esteemed Xipaya former3 Indians PhD of student Pará andat The the Ohio publi- economic life. This, together with their exclusively Toda deities la. In addition, it sheds light upon an anthropology without uni- Statecation University, of its results, claims: shed “no a light single upon definition a kind of has an- andversities culture where heroes the seems influences to suggest of German a unique ethnology ethnic religion, still pre- frequentlyvailed and categorized where texts as “non-Hindu.”written by self-educated But demonstrably researchers Indic beenthropology able to capturedifficult the to entire imagine picture” nowadays. of the reli It- is (therefore,were still accepted.if only loosely, [Brazil, “Hindu”) Curt Nimuendajú, principles permeateXipaya, anthro-Toda giousalso phenomenon.a good example “For of this international reason”, Sidky scientific writes, co- ritualpology activity. in the MostAmazon, notable history are theof Brazilianconcepts ofanthropology, hierarchy and his- “someoperation argue in thatthe beginningsreligion is bestof anthropology thought of as in athe puritytory of and German those ofethnology] prescribed ritual avoidance coupled with re- quired ritual cooperation. In sum, Toda religion – like the Toda multifacetedAmazon, when phenomenon an institution with many for anthropologicalinterpenetrat- community itself – is at once unique and, at the same time, thor- ingresearch dimensions almost as opposed did not to beingexist viewedin the asBrazilian a uni- oughlyPeter SchröderIndic. [South, PhD., India, Associated Nilgiri Mountains, Professor Toda] at the graduate taryAmazon. occurrence.” This indeed is my interpretation program for anthropology (PPGA/Pós-Graduação em Antropologia) of the Department of Anthropology and Museol- of religion as understood and practised by the once Anthony Walker, an Oxford-trained social anthropologist, re- ogy (DAM/Departamento de Antropologia e Museologia), Uni- more-or-less1 Preliminary exclusively and summarized pastoral versions Toda of thiscommunity article were tired as Professor of Anthropology at the University of Brunei versidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE), Recife, Brazil. – presented during the 18th IUAES World Congress in Flori- Darussalam in 2011 and now lives in Kandy, Sri Lanka. His peri- Having obtained his PhD in Ethnology from the Rheinische patetic career has included teaching positions at the Science Uni- anópolis, Brazil, July 16–20, 2018 (Open Panel 040: “Theo- Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany (1993), he 1 The orthography of Toda in this essay follows that of Mur- versity of Malaysia in Penang, the National University of Singa- ry, Progress, and History in Anthropology”), and during the conducted post-doctoral research in southern Ceará State, ray Emeneau (1957: 19; 1984: 5–49), except that I have add- pore, The Ohio State University, and the University of the South 15th EASA Biennial Conference in Stockholm, Sweden, Brazil (1995-1997) and at Leipzig University, Germany, in ed hyphenation where I feel this might assist non-specialists Pacific in Suva, Fiji. – He began his, still-ongoing, field studies August 14–17, 2018 (Panel 050: “Writing the History of An- 2010-2011. – His research interests concentrate on indigenous withthropology pronunciation, in a Global hence Era”). my To· Ther-θa sparticipation and Töw-fił̣ y,in where the two with the Todas in 1962 and has also conducted long-term field Emeneau has To·r as and Töwfiły. (Note, however, that I do societies of South America, development anthropology, eco- events was madeθ possible bỵ grants from FACEPE (Fun- research (since 1966) on the Tibeto-Burman speaking Lahu peo- not add hyphenation to Toda words when quoting directly – nomic anthropology, history of anthropology. – Carrying out dação de Amparo à Ciência e Tecnologia do Estado de Per- ples of the Yunnan-Indochina borderlands. – For his major pub- as I do frequently – from Emeneau’s various works. Further licationsresearch onon the Curt Todas Nimuendajú’s see References life andCited. work from 2009 on, he nambuco; process n. ACP-0043-7.03/18, for the IUAES translated five of Nimuendajú’s texts on Xipaya culture into assistance with the pronunciation of Toda words rendered in Emeneau’sCongress) transcriptionand from CNPq can be (Conselho had from Tarun Nacional Chhabra’s de Desen- “A Portuguese: Os índios Xipaya cultura e língua (Campinas, volvimento Científico e Tecnológico; process n. 2019). Email: [email protected] Guide for the Transliteration of Toda” in his 2015 book “The Toda451869/2018-4, Landscape,” AVG pp. xxxvii–xliii. modality, for the EASA Conference). The Todas believe in their Goddess Thekershi (Tö·- 22 From Revision the pen of Englishof Pö -xe·n, by Alene son of Alder-Rangel. Mut-iŝky – his name angli- 1 ḷ kisy ). They worship Goddess Thekershi for pro- 3 cizedThere as are Pellican different (n. spellingsd.) – a member of this ethnonymof Ka·s patriclan, in the scientif- first tection during their eternal (perhaps “mortal” was presidentic literature. of the In Nilgiri this Todaarticle, Uplift we Society, use the high most school common grad- in intended) existence and they also worship God uateBrazil and nowadays. literate both The in Tamilpronunciation and English. is [ʃi’paija], which cor- responds to Šipáia used by Nimuendajú in his German texts. Anthropos 114.2019 344 Peter Schröder The Leading Actor have anything to do with their specific qualities. They are quite different from the author’s other Curt Nimuendajú has already been called “the fa- texts, and the objective of this article is to explain ther of Brazilian anthropology dedicated to the their particularities by examining their origin in study of indigenous peoples in the last one hun- the context of anthropological research in the dred years” (Gomes 2008: 185).4 And Roberto Amazon region at the beginning of the twentieth Cardoso de Oliveira, in his well-known sequential century. classification of Brazilian Anthropology, ascribed Examining all the works published by Nimuen- to Nimuendajú the role of a “culture hero” (herói dajú and the secondary literature about his life and civilizador) for the tradition of ethnological re- work, it becomes evident that the ethnology of in- search about indigenous peoples in its “heroic” digenous peoples represents a kind of parenthesis phase (Cardoso de Oliveira 1988). for his scientific work. This topic prevailed since Curt Unckel was born on April 17, 1883, in Je- his first publication, the famous monograph about na, Thuringia, Germany, but emigrated to Brazil in the Apapocúva-Guaraní (Nimuendajú 1914), until 1903, where he spent two years, 1905–1907, his last fieldwork among the Ticuna, in 1945. among a group of Guarani Indians of the Batalha However, Nimuendajú also published 18 articles River, in São Paulo state. In 1906, he was baptized about indigenous languages, which generally there as Nimuendajú, which means “who came to present vocabularies or morphological descrip- sit down among us” (Dietrich 2013: 80f.). And it tions according to grammatical conventions of his was this indigenous name he entered as his sur- time, but also contain some comparisons and hy- name when he decided to accept the Brazilian