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R. Blust Rat ears, tree ears, ghost ears and thunder ears n Austronesian languages

In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 156 (2000), no: 4, Leiden, 687-706

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Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:56:29PM via free access ROBERT BLUST Rat Ears, Tree Ears, Ghost Ears and Thunder Ears in Austronesian Languages

1. Introduction

Mushrooms occupy a peculiar place both in the natural order and in the realm of culture. Unlike chlorophyllous plants, they do not manufacture their food by photosynthesis, and so in place of the reassuring green of typical leafy vegetation, they present a pale and sickly cast, often suggestive of rot and decomposition. As if this fundamentally unattractive physical appearance were not enough to mark them off as an alien life form, the suddenness ' of their appearance, often following thunderstorms, has created a universal aura of mystery in folk conceptions of these organisms. Finally, a number of mushrooms have hallucinogenic properties which link them with trance-like states of spirit possession. These qualities have left a lexical imprint in human language generally. The purpose of this paper is to document the occurrence in Austronesian languages of words for mushrooms or related types of fungi which translate literally as 'rat ear', 'tree ear', 'ghost ear' and 'thunder ear', and to make some preliminary suggestions as to what may have motivated such expressions.

2. Fungi as ears

It might seem surprising that mushrooms are called by the same morpheme as 'ear', but the more detailed descriptions often specify the referent as a jelly fungus. Unlike the more familiar umbrella-shaped fruiting bodies of mushrooms, jelly fungi are saprophytes, which sprout directly from the trunks of dead trees as a collection of folded tissues which may appear cup-like or ear- like. Indeed, the comparison of such fungi to ears is a universal feature of human perception, reflected in many different language families, as well as in the name of the Linnaean genus Auricularia ('ear-like'). Well-known ex-

ROBERT BLUST obtained his PhD at the University of Hawaii, where he is currently Professor of Linguistics, specializing in comparative Austronesian linguistics and culture history. His pub- lications include 'Early Austronesian social organization; The evidence of language1, Current Anthropology, 1980, and Austronesian root theory, Benjamins, 1988. Professor Blust may be con- tacted at the Department of Linguistics, University of Hawaii, Moore Hall 569, 1890 East-West Rd., Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.

BK1156-4 (2000)

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amples include the Jew's ear (Auricularia auricula-judae), which The Oxford English Dictionary describes as a mistranslation of medieval Latin auricula Judae 'ear of Judas', 'so called from its shape and its frequent occurrence on the elder, the tree from which Judas Iscariot reputedly hanged himself, and the Mandarin mu er ('wood ear'), commonly described as a jelly fungus which grows on trees. Heyne (1927:52), who gives the Auriculariaceae as a group of the Basidiomycetes (a large group of fungi including the smuts, rusts, mushrooms and puffballs), lists some less well-known terms in European languages which are missing from even the larger dictionaries, including French oreilles de chat 'cat ears', and Dutch muizenoortjes 'mouse ears.' Terms of similar semantic structure are also found in languages of the Americas, as seen in Lakota chan nankpa (literally 'tree ear' or 'wood ear'), which Gilmore (1919:62) describes as 'a fungus found growing on ash trees: Polystictus versicolor L.', and Tzotzil cikin c'o con (literally 'ear-rat-animal') 'highland "mushroom": Panus sp.', said to be a herb which resembles ear fungi (Laughlin 1975:119). A number of Austronesian languages use the morpheme for 'ear' or a reduplicated shape of the same form without further modification to refer to some type of fungus, as in Pazeh (central Taiwan) saringa 1. ear, 2. wood-ear fungus; Puyuma (south-eastern Taiwan) 1. TangiLa 'ear', 2. TangiLa-ngiLa-yan 'Jew's ear: Auricularia auricula-judae'; Itbayaten (northern Philippines) talina 1. outer ear, earlobe, auricle, 2. edible tree fungus: Auricularia auricula-judae L.; Nauna (Admiralty Islands) 1. taling 'ear', 2. taling-ling 'mushroom'; Nggela (central Solomons) talinga 1. wax in the ear, 2. fungus, mushrooms on mbiluma tree; Kwaio (south-eastern Solomons) 1. alinga-na (with obligatory 3sg possessive pronoun) 'ear', 2. alinga 'mushroom'; Sa'a (south-eastern Solomons) alinge 1. ear, 2. large fungi, some edible, growing on logs; Rotuman/a/mgfl 1. ear, 2. toadstool or fungus; Tongan 1. telinga 'ear', 2. talinge-linga 'fungus'; Samoan talinga 1. ear, 2. name given to several types of fungus, including Jew's ear.

2.1. Rat ears Austronesian terms for mushrooms which translate literally as 'rat ear' include the following:

Table 1. Names for mushrooms that have the semantic structure 'rat ear' in Austrone- sian languages

Bontok koleng si otot (ear-rat) Tagalog tainga-ng daga' (ear-LIG-rat) Malay chendawan telinga tikus (mushroom-ear-rat) Tae' talinga balao (ear-rat) Marshallese lojilnin kijdik (ear of rat) Samoan taliga 'imoa (ear-rat)

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Rarotongan taringa kiore (ear-rat) Tuamotuan taringa kiore (ear-rat)

Reid (1976:162) glosses Bontok koleng si otot as 'a kind of thin, non-edible bracket fungus which grows on trees'. Webster (1924:90) gives Tagalog tainga-ng daga" as the Auricularia polytricha, a 'fleshy, leathery, rather thin, more or less lobed fungus 5-15 cm. in diameter which grows on dead wood of many species'. Burkill (1935:268) describes Malay chendawan telinga tikus or kulat telinga tikus as a fungus which grows on rotting wood: Auricularia auricula-judae, Schroet. Van der Veen (1940:660) lists Tae' talinga balao as 'a type of fungus which grows on the underside of decaying bamboo of the genus Den- drocalamus in the shape of a rat's ear'. Abo et al. (1976:184) give Marshallese lojilnin kijdik as 'a plant, toadstool Auricularia ampla Persoon, and other ear- like Basidiomycetes (fungi)'. Savage (1980:359), finally, lists Rarotongan taringa kiore as 'a species of fungus which grows on decaying trees'. The Samoan and Tuamotuan glosses are less informative. The motivation for the expression 'rat ear' is relatively transparent. Jelly fungi come in many sizes and shapes, but the Auricularia are typically thin and smooth. Because they lack internal structure their general shape resembles the ears of rodents or other small mammals more nearly than a human ear. They are typically brown or reddish-brown, with a soft velvety exterior when young, while older fruiting bodies dry out and have a pale grey, furry exterior. In texture they are tough and rubbery, hence all in all the comparison appears to be one which could easily have arisen through convergent innovation.

2.2. Tree ears Austronesian terms for mushrooms which translate literally as 'wood ear' or 'tree ear' include the following:

Table 2. Names for mushrooms that have the semantic structure 'wood ear1 or 'tree ear' in Austronesian languages Itbayaten talina nu kayuh (ear-of-tree) Kankanaey inga-n di kaiw (ear-of-tree) Hanunoo talingabatang (ear-log) Chamorro talanga-n hayu (ear-of tree) Erai aikinin (tree-ear) Mondropolon cannl key (ear-tree) Maori taringa rakau (ear-tree)

Again, one does not have to go far to understand the motivation for this term. Since saprophytes most commonly grow on the trunks of decaying trees, it is not surprising that they would be called 'tree ears' or 'wood ears'

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:56:29PM via free access 690 Robert Blust in various languages (in most Austronesian languages the meanings 'wood' and 'tree' are not lexically distinguished). The real challenge, then, is to explain why some bracket fungi are called 'ghost ears' or 'thunder ears'.

2.3. Interlude: Mushrooms in culture In an essay engagingly entitled 'Mushrooms in culture' the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1976) sketched the fundamentals of an ethnology of mushrooms, or ethnomycology. Levi-Strauss's essay is divided into two parts. The first is an overview of the seminal work of R. Gordon Wasson (1968), with an occasional aside to Wasson and Wasson (1957), and the second a brief survey of the ethnomycology of the Americas outside Mexico, prompted in part by a critical assessment of some of the more general claims made by Wasson. The Wassons advanced several intriguing propositions about mushrooms in culture, including the following: 1. cultures can be characterized as being either passionately mycophile, or mushroom-loving (Russians, most Medi- terranean peoples), or passionately mycophobe, or mushroom-despising (Celtic and Germanic peoples); 2. globally mushrooms 'are associated with either thunder and lightning, or the devil, or madness'; 3. these associations reflect an ancient Eurasian mushroom cult which was widespread in early Europe, but became obscured by the invasions of mycophobe Celtic and Germanic peoples; 4. similar cults are preserved among aboriginal peoples in Siberia and Mexico, where they revolve around the consumption of the hallucinogenic umbrella-shaped fly agaric, or Amanita muscaria, easily identified by its large flat or rounded cap ranging in colour from a speckled bright red to a dull gold. Wasson (1968) attempts to shed light on certain of the Vedic texts of ancient India which refer to the soma, identified variously as a plant, the juice of that plant, and a god. Earlier attempts to isolate the referent of 'soma' were unsuccessful in various ways, and Wasson shows how a number of obscure references in the Vedic texts yield a straightforward interpretation once the soma is identified with the Amanita muscaria. Particularly puzzling were references to the ritual consumption of soma in the form of human urine. To illuminate these passages, Wasson tries to place them in a wider ethnological perspective. In the ethnographic present, various Siberian peoples, including the Ostyak, Vogul, Ket, Samoyed, Chukchi, Koryak, and Kamchadal, used the fly agaric to achieve a state of ritual intoxication. In addition, there are indirect indications that such a practice formerly existed among the Yukaghir of Siberia and the Inari Lapps of northern Scandinavia. According to Wasson (1968:275), 'Drinking the urine of one who has recently eaten fly-agaric produces the same effect as eating the mushroom. The passion for intoxication becomes so strong that the people will often resort to this source when agaric

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:56:29PM via free access Rat Ears, Tree Ears, Ghost Ears and Thunder Ears 691 is not available.' Hence the ritual consumption of soma in the form of human urine distinctly suggests the equation soma = amanita. Curiously, inedible mushrooms are compared to dog's urine throughout modern India (Wasson 1968:64) and among the Siberian Yukaghir (Levi-Strauss 1976:229). Jochelson, who is Levi-Strauss's source for the Yukaghir, notes that They do not eat mushrooms, regarding them as unclean food growing from dogs' urine. However, according to traditions, they used to intoxicate themselves with the poisonous fly-agaric, which is still eaten by the Koryak and Chukchee. The Yukaghir call mushrooms can-pai, i.e. tree-girl. (Jochelson 1926:419.)

It is worth pointing out that an association of mushrooms with dog's urine has also been reported among some Austronesian-speaking peoples. In de- scribing the folklore of the Tidong of north-eastern Kalimantan, for example, Beech (1908:17) reported that 'Mushrooms spring from dogs' urine, and if when you gather them you shout like a madman more will spring up in their place'. A slightly more differentiated version of this belief appears in the Ta- galog and Bikol regions of southern Luzon, Philippines, where edible mushrooms are attributed to lightning strikes, but inedible mushrooms are said to have sprouted from places where a dog has urinated (Maria Sheila Zamar, personal communication). Variants of this pattern in other cultures confirm that the fundamental purpose of the belief is to provide an explanation as to why mushrooms spring up unannounced. Among the Delaware Indians, for example, 'a "mushrind" (mushroom) is believed to grow from frog-spawn' (Tantaquidgeon 1942:60), while Thompson (1955-1958:331), in a section entitled 'Origin of trees and plants', cites the Lithuanian folk belief that mushrooms spring from the spittle of a deity. The apparently dominant folkloric preference for dog's urine as a causal agent in the growth of fungi doubtless stems from the fact that until modern times dogs were the most common domesticated animal worldwide, and have the well-known habit of frequently marking their territory with traces of urine.1 In fairly typical Structuralist fashion, Levi-Strauss draws Wasson's observations together in the form of a pair of analogical proportions which are implicitly transcultural or supracultural: (a) human urine is to amanita as dog's urine is to ordinary mushrooms, (b) amanita is to other mushrooms as humans are to dogs. This is not the place to discuss how well Levi-Strauss

1 The association of mushrooms with dung in Malagasy holataikomby (literally 'ox-dung fungus') 'species of ground fungus, so called perhaps because they grow in or near ox dung', or Hawaiian kukaelio (literally 'horse's dung') 'mushroom' (a form that must postdate the introduction of horses in the nineteenth century) probably has a very different motivation, since dung heaps are visible and some species of fungus, like the hallucinogenic Psilocybe coprophila, which is central to the mushroom cults of many Mexican Indians, are known to grow on or in proxim- ity to them.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:56:29PM via free access 692 Robert Blust has succeeded in fusing the comparative goals and methods of classical ethnology with the quite different descriptive goals and methods of twentieth- century ethnography, apart from saying that he does not specify what abstract schemata of this type represent. The level of reference cannot be a particular culture, as the very function of such an abstraction is to connect ethnographic comparata, in this case the association of both human and canine urine with mushrooms in India and Siberia. In effect, Structuralist abstractions such as this must be seen as universal cognitive blueprints, but this is precisely what leads to difficulties in their application to particular cases.2 The analogies which Levi-Strauss invokes are problematic in several ways. First, the primary ethnographic data relating mushrooms to human urine and dog urine in India and Siberia are either temporally or spatially in complementary distribution. Ordinary mushrooms are not referred to as 'dog's urine' in the Rig Veda, but only in modern India, where there is 'no trace of a sacred mushroom' (Wasson 1968:64). Similarly, in Siberia it is the Yukaghir who have traditions of formerly consuming the fly agaric, but who no longer do, who associate mushrooms with the urination of dogs. Under these circumstances it is difficult to set up an analogical proportion which relates human urine and canine urine with mushrooms in the minds of one and the same people. Second, the essence of ah analogy is a perceived parallelism which is like- ly to be seen in the same way by the great majority of human beings (for example, 'black is to white as night is to day'). Without shared perceptions analogies simply will not work. By contrast, the parallelism Levi-Strauss pro- motes is contrived: the human body acts as a filter in the case of amanita, but the dog's body has no such role, since dogs don't eat mushrooms. The two associations of urine with mushrooms are thus quite disconnected. The first has to do with a cultural practice which involves the sharing of hallucinogenic substances. The second has to do with the need to explain the sudden appearance of the fruiting bodies of mushrooms, a phenomenon which con- trasts strikingly with the growth patterns of other types of plants. Human beings in general feel a powerful emotional ambivalence towards mushrooms and related types of fungi, since these organisms simultaneously evoke feelings of both disgust and fascination. At the same time humans feel a cognitive ambivalence towards mushrooms, since the etiology of their appearance was quite mysterious to pre-scientific minds. The widespread

2 Leach (1974:50-2) appears to have similar difficulties in discovering the physical or psy- chical locus of Structuralist formulae, since "The nature of "the human mind", which functions as a kind of randomizing computer to generate these permutations "without being aware of the fact", is left obscure'.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:56:29PM via free access Rat Ears, Tree Ears, Ghost Ears and Thunder Ears 693 belief that dog's urine triggers the growth of mushrooms is thus multi-func- tional, since it satisfies the problem of providing an explanation for a mysterious natural phenomenon, and at the same time is consistent with the general association of mushrooms with rot, waste and decay. The third problem with the analogy presented by Levi-Strauss is that it includes the amanita as part of a universal cognitive formula. But there is little or no evidence that psychotropic mushrooms have ever been used by Austronesian-speaking peoples. Standard surveys of the use of hallucinogenic substances such as mushrooms omit any reference to the Austrone- sian world (de Rios 1984), and a search through ethnographies and ethnobo- tanical studies of Austronesian-speaking peoples turns up equally negative results.3 Without the first half of the analogical proportion ('human urine is to amanita') the second half ('as dog's urine is to ordinary mushrooms') loses its contrastiye force. Moreover, the Tidong case suggests that there need not be a correlation between the usefulness of a mushroom and the emotional reaction to it: since mushrooms, would not be gathered if they were not useful, it appears that a negative association with dog's urine may be found even with edible types of mushrooms. Are most Austronesian-speaking societies mycophile or mycophobe? Rather than adopt such a binary mode of classification, perhaps it would be more realistic to recognize a profound ambivalence about mushrooms and related fungi in all cultures. Wasson's characterization of Germanic peoples as mycophobes, for example, is confronted with regional counter-examples, while standard treatments, of European mycology class the Amanita muscaria among 'the deadly amanitas' - toadstools par excellence - whereas this is one and the same organism as the soma, or 'divine mushroom of immortality', which attained the status of a deity in Vedic India. In short, at least for mushrooms, the line between toxic and intoxicating can become perilously thin.4 The point of this discussion is to provide a more general context for the understanding of the Austronesian data which follow. In particular, the association of mushrooms with dog's urine highlights a recurrent cognitive dilemma which has confronted human beings in widely separated parts of the earth: why do mushrooms suddenly appear without clear causation? The

3 Wasson (1956:610) implies that there is tenuous evidence that hallucinogenic mushrooms were used in Borneo, but gives no particulars, and this suggestion is not supported by any of the ethnographic sources on Borneo known to me. 4 , Wasson seems to have been unaware of the passion for mushrooms in Yorkshire, where, following thunderstorms, it is common practice for the country people to go out to search the hills for new growths of fungi (D.J. Prentice, personal communication). This practice does not appear to differ substantially from one which Wasson (1956:605) reports for France and describes as perhaps 'the final surviving trace in the Western World of a belief that reaches in time back to remote pre-history and in space around the world'.

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belief that mushrooms spring up in places where dogs have urinated is a widely shared solution to the problem of explaining this puzzling fact. But it is not the only solution that the human mind has conceived, nor is it the only solution that has been conceived independently in geographically discon- tinuous regions. We are now ready to consider the names for mushrooms which translate as 'ghost ears' and 'thunder ears' in Austronesian languages.

2.4. Ghost ears Austronesian terms for mushrooms which translate literally as 'ghost ears' include the following:

Table 3. Isneg talinga danag (ear-spirit) Nias talinga oro (ear-spirit) Seimat taxing i paxi (ear-spirit) Puluwat halinga-n hooma (ear-ghost) Trukese seninge-n sooma (ear-spirit/ghost) Ponapean saleng en eni (ear-ghost) Rotuman faliang ne 'atua (ear of ghost) Fijian dalinga ni kalou (ear of spirit/ghost)

The following additional information is available. Vanoverbergh gives talinga danag as 'A kind of bracket fungus that resembles the xanggarat (large brown edible bracket fungus, smooth on top), but is usually much larger', and danag as Thin and filthy spirits. Those who inhabit a balisi tree (= banyan) affect with fever or deafness anybody who dares throw stones at their abode ... In general, they emaciate people and keep them dirty, even though they bathe frequently. Should they inhabit a tree in your rice field, place a bdtang bracket fungus in it, and they will decamp. (Vanoverbergh 1972:207.)

The bdtang is described as 'A kind of very hard, rather large bracket fungus, in the shape of an ear. It grows on trees and is not edible.' There is no explicit indication as to whether the talinga danag is edible, but this seems unlikely, given the negative associations of the danag spirits. Other data include: Seimat taxing i paxi = 'ear of ancestral spirit' (Blust n.d.a); Puluwat hdlingd-n hoomd 'tree fungus, mushroom', where hooma = 'bad ghosts of the dead; malevolent spirit (feared, as they are believed to devour humans)' (Elbert 1972:37); Trukese seninge-n anu or seninge-n soomd 'any of a large number of fungi ... such as Auricularia, Ganoderma tropicum, Polyporus grammocephalus, Poria, Psilocybe, Pycnoporus sanguineas, Schizophyllum radiatum, Tyromyces' (Goodenough and Sugita 1980:147); and Rotuman faliang ne 'atua 'toadstool

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:56:29PM via free access Rat Ears, Tree Ears, Ghost Ears and Thunder Ears 695 or fungus' (Churchward 1940:194).5 Among the Pinatubo Negritos of western Luzon 'The non-edible mushrooms and ear-fungi are invariably called kuwdt-anito, that is, the "mushrooms and ear-fungi of the spirits'" (Fox 1952:232), and words of similar semantic structure are found for mushrooms of various types among the Tsimshian Indians of British Columbia (Dunn 1978:17) and the Carib of north-eastern South America (Ahlbrinck 1931:482). Why are various fungi called 'ghost ears' or 'spirit ears' in widely separated Austronesian languages? As noted earlier, Wasson and Wasson (1957) pointed out that mushrooms universally 'are associated with either thunder and lightning, or the devil, or madness'. The 'devil', of course, is a Judaeo- Christian concept, not a universal one, and might be regarded as correspond- ing with 'ghost' or 'spirit' in traditional animistic societies. We could thus entertain the hypothesis that mushrooms called 'ghost ears' contain hallucinogenic or toxic substances and so are associated with states of spirit possession. Wasson (1956,1968) has appealed to the mind-altering properties of the Amanita muscaria to explain quite varied folk-beliefs, including the association of mushrooms with the devil and with lightning strikes. Since there is little if any evidence for the use of psychotropic mushrooms among Austro- nesian-speaking peoples, however, this interpretation is problematic. Second, the name 'ghost ears' itself suggests that the referent in most or all of the above languages is a saprophytic fungus which grows on trees rather than a pileate fruiting body of the amanita type.6 Could the association of mushrooms with spirits on the one hand and with dog's urine on the other be motivated by the same question? It is clear that the sudden sprouting of the fruiting bodies of many types of mushrooms tended to baffle the minds of preliterate peoples. Unlike higher plants, which grow gradually and propagate through more readily comprehensible means (as visible seeds), the fruiting bodies of fungi tend to appear abruptly and without obvious connections to a fertilizing agent. In an animistic world any natural phenomenon of dubious causation would readily be attributed to the action of spirits. This is certainly true of the rainbow, which appears sudden-

5 Since falinga belongs to the native lexical stratum in Rotuman, and 'atua is a Polynesian loan (Biggs 1965), the collocation faliang ne 'atua evidently is a relatively recent formation. 6 Similar names could, of course, be given to mushrooms which are not deliberately con- sumed for their psychotropic effects, but nonetheless give rise to abnormal psychological states through accidental poisoning. One apparent case of this type has come to my attention. In cor- respondence dated 15 October 1982, Niko Besnier pointed out to me that 'the Tongans ... know about mushrooms, and call them fakamalu 'a tevolo "Devil's umbrella". The explanation that is current there is that this is a reference to both the shape and the hallucinogenic nature of the species.' The name in this case clearly makes use of an English morpheme, and so presumably postdates contact with Western culture.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:56:29PM via free access 696 Robert Blust ly and without obvious causation (Blust n.d.b), and it would apply equally to the mysterious overnight appearance of mushroom populations seemingly out of thin air. In post-Christian Europe such phenomena have been attributed to the action of fairies, elves or other less offensively supernatural agents, as witnessed by. such expressions 'as English fairy ring for circular growths of mushrooms which spring up in the dewy grass (where the fairies danced in circles at night), or Dutch elvenbanken (elf benches) for bracket fungi which offer a diminutive sitting place on the trunks of certain trees.7 Names of the type 'ghost.ear' in Austronesian languages thus may reflect a native speaker perception of the fungi in question as products of spirit activity. To date there is little ethnographic evidence to test this hypothesis, and it is curious that most known names of fungi which contain a morpheme for 'ghost' or 'spirit' also contain the morpheme for 'ear', suggesting that they are predominantly jelly fungi or bracket fungi. Unlike the fruiting bodies of most mushrooms, jelly fungi and bracket fungi do not appear suddenly, and some bracket fungi are fairly long-lived. The animistic connection with spirit agency in such cases presumably would be through the peculiarity of their attachment: whereas 'normal' plants sprout from the earth, jelly fungi, bracket fungi and the like sprout from the trunks of living or decomposing trees, and thus appear to have been artificially (that is, supernaturally) implanted rather than resulting from commonly understood processes of growth.

2.5. Thunder ears Austronesian terms for mushrooms which translate literally as 'thunder ears' appear to be more limited, but include the following:

Table 4. Chamorro talanga-n hulu (ear-of thunder) Gilbertese taninga ni ba (ear of thunder) Woleaian talinge-li-pach (ear-of-thunder)

The first two terms require a few words of explanation. Although Chamorro talanga-n hulu translates literally as 'ear of thunder', Topping, Ogo, and Dungca (1975:196) gloss it as 'Roll of thunder, bolt of lightning. After a storm, disorders of thickets or woods are attributed to it.' This definition contains no explicit reference to mushrooms, and so the form might be dismissed as of dubious relevance. But the semantic structure of talanga-n hulu points clearly

7 The Oxford English Dictionary defines 'fairy-ring' as 'A circular band of grass differing in colour from the grass around it, a phenomenon supposed in popular belief to be produced by fairies when dancing; really caused by the growth of certain fungi'.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:56:29PM via free access Rat Ears, Tree Ears, Ghost Ears and Thunder Ears 697 to fungi (compare Table 2: Chamorro talanga-n hayu). On inquiry, Topping (letter of 20 December 1983) was able to confirm the association of thunder or lightning strikes with the appearance of mushrooms: 'I inquired about the meaning of talangan hulu, and have found that it does indeed refer to the rush of fungi found in the forest after heavy rains, and that they are somehow attributed to lightning and thunder. It is believed that they were left by dwarfs that ran away' The last sentence suggests an element that is extrane- ous to the original belief system as reflected in the semantic structure of the word, and may ultimately derive from Spanish contact. Luomala (1953:111) analyses Gilbertese (Kiribati) taninga ni ba as 'ear of leaf. Bingham (1908), in fact, gives ba with multiple meanings: 'the midrib or main stem of the cocoanut frond; a leaf; thunder; a skin disease of infants'. Luomala's analysis presumably is motivated by a priori considerations of plausibility, although by her own account the fungi in question (probably Polyporus sanguineus Fr. and possibly Earliella corrugata (Pers.) Murr.) grow on the logs, not the fronds of the coconut tree. The choice of ba 'thunder' in this plant name is based on the structural parallelism of the Gilbertese and Woleaian words, and the probable cognation of Gilbertese ba with Woleaian pach, which Sohn and Tawerilmang (1976:113) give with only two meanings: (1) thunder, lightning, (2) end-piece of a canoe, prow. Wasson (1956) has shown that the appearance of mushrooms was associated by Greek and Roman classical writers with thunderstorms and lightning strikes, and that a similar connection is found in France, in much of the Middle East, in China, in Madagascar, in the Philippines, and among the Maori of New Zealand. As further support for this association, Levi-Strauss (1976:235) cites Hill-Tout (1904:31-2), who gives Qatkaimonatc = 'thunder excrement' as the name for a Polyporus species used as a detergent among the Salishan-speaking Seechelt (Seshelt) of coastal British Columbia. We might add that a name of identical semantic structure (mushroom = thunder excrement) is found in Kiowa of the southern plains (Harrington 1928:140), and that a belief that mushrooms spring up in places where lightning has struck is common to Tamil and other South Indian speakers (Athisivan, personal communication). By comparison with the data in Tables 1-3, terms meaning 'thunder ear' appear to be rare in Austronesian languages. However, a cultural or linguistic association between mushrooms and thunder without the label 'thunder ear' is more widely attested among Austronesian-speaking peoples than the data in Table 4 indicate. The Timugon Murut of Sabah refer to the edible puffball as kulat tingkalud 'thunder mushroom', as they believe that it appears following thunderstorms (D.J. Prentice, personal communication). Among peninsular Malays it is said that mushrooms spring up following a thunderstorm (James T. Collins, personal communication), and the villagers of East

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Java hold that fungi proliferate in spots that have been struck by a thunderbolt (Bahasa Indonesia: halilintar or petir) (Dendy Sugono, personal communication). For Malagasy, Richardson (1885:275) gives holatra 'a generic name for fungi', and holabdratra (see also vdratra 'thunder; thunderbolt, lightning') 'probably a kind of mushroom growing immediately after rain'. For Numfor of West New Guinea, Van Hasselt and Van Hasselt (1947:111) cite kapo 'mushroom, fungus', and then list four edible varieties, of which the kapo saprop ('ground mushroom') or kapo kadadu ('thunder mushroom') is said to spring from the ground following a thunderstorm. In a similar vein, Demetrio y Radaza (1970:894-5) cites a Philippine folk belief that 'lightning makes mushrooms grow'.8 Why should this association between sudden, transient meteorological phenomena and the sprouting of mushrooms exist in various parts of the world? The most straightforward explanation would be that the cultural association mirrors a natural association: if mushrooms do appear in profusion following a thunderstorm, it is not surprising that this fact would have been observed and recorded in linguistic expressions independently in various parts of the world. The article 'mushroom' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica gives some encouragement to this line of explanation: Because of their sudden appearance and rapid decay, mushrooms have come to symbolize anything ephemeral or short-lived. They have been thought of as the provender of Mother Earth, embodiments of fertility. Their mysterious appearance has also inspired many locai legends of dark meaning ... In nature fruiting often occurs only once a year (for many species in the autumn), when a particular series of weather events triggers the process. Early autumn spells of warm, wet weather often are followed by the burgeoning of fruiting bodies; such a fruiting is commonly referred to as a 'break'.

The author of this article gives no further details concerning the 'particular series of weather events' which triggers the appearance of the fruiting body, thus inviting speculation that thunder and lightning may be causally implic- ated in breaks of mushrooms. However, there appears to be no scientific basis for this connection,9 This problem illustrates clearly how the biologist and

8 Demetrio y Radaza does not label information by language group, but gives the general localities from which his statements were collected. This statement, collected in Cagayan de Oro city, probably was elicited from a speaker of Cebuano Bisayan. 9 According to Dr. Walter Julich, a research mycologist at the Rijksherbarium in Leiden during the early 1980's, temperature and moisture are the only meteorological factors which have a clearly established triggering effect on the production of breaks'. He recognized the popular belief that breaks are caused by thunder and lightning, but dismissed it as folklore; mushrooms appear in greater profusion after abundant rains (at the optimal temperatures), whether or not these are accompanied by electrical phenomena in the atmosphere. The same point is made by Wasson (1956:606). •

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:56:29PM via free access Rat Ears, Tree Ears, Ghost Ears and Thunder Ears 699 the ethnologist or linguist may be confronted with very different explanatory problems in examining the same general phenomenon. It may be true that the popular connection between thunderstorms and 'breaks' is folklore, but the global distribution of the belief demands explanation, indeed, all the more so if it is without empirical foundation. In short, whereas the biologist is concerned with natural history, the ethnologist (and linguist) is concerned with the natural history of belief, and explanations appropriate to one realm may be entirely inappropriate to the other. Wasson (1956) concludes that the association of mushrooms with lightning is a metaphor for the ecstasy produced by the consumption of the fly agaric, just as the association of mushrooms with spirits ('the devil') is a metaphor for the madness that such consumption sometimes produces. His argument, as it unfolded between 1956 and 1968, takes approximately the following form. (1) The soma cult of Vedic India, which thrived some 3,000 years ago, was centred on the ritual consumption of the Amanita muscaria. In time this ritual was abandoned, so that the Vedic references to soma became obscure. (2) The poetic imagery of the Rig Veda makes it clear that even in Vedic times the soma was a prized rarity, found only in the high mountains (the Hindu Kush or Himalayas). Because of the relative inaccessibility of Amanita muscaria in the Indus Valley, from an early period it was common to use more readily available substitutes for it. (3) The soma cult was brought to India from the North by Indo-European speakers who had previously been in contact with speakers of Finno-Ugric languages, presumably in north- central Asia. (4) The attested Siberian and Scandinavian cases confirm that some form of ritual consumption of Amanita muscaria has an ancient pedi- gree. (5) The association of mushrooms with lightning strikes by other peoples who do not consume the fly agaric can be taken as prima facie evidence that they once did. Wasson's contributions to ethnomycology have been widely recognized and justly praised (see, for example, Riedlinger 1990), and there can be little doubt that his identification of the soma of the Vedic texts with Amanita muscaria is correct. But in achieving this important breakthrough it is apparent that he became the victim of an idee fixe: because the association of mushrooms with thunder and lightning in Vedic India centres on the ritual consumption of the Amanita muscaria, the similar associations everywhere on earth must have been inspired by an ancient cult of the same type. In other words, the globally distributed beliefs connecting mushroom breaks with lightning strikes cannot be a product of convergent evolution, but must reflect shared history. As he puts it,

Mushrooms are strange, and one might attribute supernatural parentage to them, but would everyone jump to the lightning-bolt as the divine begetter? ... Did our myth spread from a focus of origin by diffusion? Surely the range is too vast... It

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seems less unlikely that we must ascend per stirpes to that remote time when the ancestors of all these peoples were living in cultural contact with each other some- where in the Eurasian landmass. At some moment... was there perhaps a dramatic event or discovery that suddenly stamped the mushroom with the imprint of the fulminating Almighty, and left such an impress on the mushroom as to survive to this day, thousands - maybe tens of thousands of years after the discovery itself is forgotten? (Wasson 1956:608.)

In this Edenic state, if we are to believe the argument, a single community or culture area developed a ritual which is still remembered and partially (but imperfectly) preserved in scattered parts of the earth after the great diasporas of Homo sapiens. The associations of mushrooms with lightning, and presumably the spirit world as well, were all originally inspired by poetic images of the amanita, which were later transferred to other types of mushrooms, where they became meaningless survivals, much as the imagery of the soma in the Rig-Veda became meaningless once it was dissociated from the Amanita muscaria that had inspired it. The steps in Wasson's chain of infer- ence are reasonably clear, even for those who may find it difficult to accept them, but his conclusion clearly creates more problems than it solves. Culture traits which appear to involve arbitrary associations do not present an explanatory problem so long as they are geographically restricted, since such a distribution could plausibly be a product of shared history. But when a culture trait that appears to be arbitrary is globally distributed the matter is altogether different, since shared arbitrary associations suggest shared history, but global distributions suggest independent origin. It was for just this reason that Wasson felt the need to posit an ancient community of origin in which the associations of mushrooms with lightning became fixed (and later transmuted from a metaphor for ecstasy to an agent of fungal fructification). But globally distributed beliefs about mushrooms form only a tiny fraction of the total body of globally distributed culture traits which appear to be arbitrary. One could as easily cite the fact that sun showers are called 'the fox's wedding' or something closely similar over much of Eurasia and Africa (Blust 1999), or the idea of the dragon (Blust 2000), the taboo against pointing at a rainbow (Blust n.d.b), the supernatural associations of albinism in animals, or the association of head-hunting with fertility. Some of these associations have to postdate the geographical separation of much of humanity Head-hunting, for example, is found only among agriculturists, and has essential connections with the agricultural cycle in widely scattered regions, but agriculture has a history dating back no more than 10,000 years. In short, there is no reason to treat the whole of ethnomycology as centred on the Amanita muscaria. Because they do not fit neatly into the general category of plants, mushrooms and other fungi have long perplexed the human mind, and it is this fundamental fact which is centrally important in trying to

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 06:56:29PM via free access Rat Ears, Tree Ears, Ghost Ears and Thunder Ears 701 explain widely distributed and surprising beliefs about them. The connection of mushrooms with thunder brings us back to the problem of how human beings with an animistic conception of nature would attempt to explain the sudden and seemingly random appearance of mushrooms. Two widely adopted solutions to this problem have already been noted, the first appealing to natural, the second to supernatural causation: (1) mushrooms spring up in places where a dog has urinated, (2) mushrooms spring up through the agency of spirits. The connection of mushrooms with thunder, like the connection of mushrooms with dog's urine, appeals to natural causation. Dogs urinate on any convenient projection, thereby creating a large number of potential locations for mushrooms to spring up. The belief that mushrooms appear where lightning has struck provides almost equal latitude to the imagination, since lightning strikes typically are unseen and may be frequent during heavy-storms. Arguably, lightning strikes might be viewed as combining natural and supernatural elements of causation, since thunderstorms themselves are so commonly regarded as products of supernatural agency among animistic peoples. That such a counter-to-fact view has arisen independently in many parts of the earth should not be surprising. Breaks of mushrooms are associated with thunderstorms, not because they are spawned by lightning strikes, but because the conditions of temperature and humidity which give rise to thunderstorms must correspond to a very large degree to those which give rise to mushroom breaks. Although he devotes a great deal of attention to the association of mushroom breaks with lightning strikes, Wasson mentions the similar association with dog's urine only in passing. Yet both associations are widely attested, and in the view presented here they are motivated by the same cognitive pressure: how to explain the mystery of why fungi appear suddenly (as with mushrooms), or attached to trees (as with jelly fungi or bracket fungi).

3. Mushrooms as talismans

One final point remains to be explored. In addition to their many other uses, fungi are sometimes used or worn as talismans. With reference to the Bagobo of Mindanao in the southern Philippines, Cole.notes that Certain charms, or actions, are of value either in warding off evil spirits, in caus- ing trouble of death to an enemy, or in gaining an advantage over another in trad- ing and in games. One type of charm is a narrow cloth belt in which 'medicines' are tied. These medicines may be peculiarly shaped stones, bits of fungus growth, a tooth, a shell, or similar object. (Cole 1913:108-9.)

Similarly, Evans (1937:73 ff.) points out that kilts of fungus rhizomorphs were

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used among various Negritos of Malaya as protection against 'hot rain' (rain while the sun is shining). In Borneo, Kelabit redhang is the name for a bracket fungus which grows on the sides of trees, and at the same time for an obstacle of branches built around a fruit tree to protect it from marauders, suggesting an equation 'bracket fungus = amulet'. Moreover, Richards (1980: 169) gives Iban kulat 'mushroom', batu kulat ('mushroom stone') with .the meaning 'noxious talisman'. Levi-Strauss (1976:234) notes that the Salishan-speaking Clallam and their Chimakuan-speaking neighbours the Quinault of Puget Sound 'attributed to fungi growing on reeds or conifers the property of a gambling talisman'. Given its occurrence in a geographically restricted area, this observation would be of only local, ethnographic interest, were it not for the fact that a similar belief is reported in insular Southeast Asia. Demetrio y Radaza (1970:1:162) recorded a belief in the Manobo-speaking area of Mindanao which holds that 'mushrooms with three feet are good for gambling', and in another context cites the folk belief that a mushroom with three feet ensures victory in a cockfight. What relevance do these observations have to the association of mushrooms and lightning strikes? There is just enough evidence to merit mention that mushrooms are sometimes viewed as talismans against lightning strikes. Wasson, who interprets the data in a very different light, notes that the Tanala of Madagascar dry and convert to powder the sclerotium of the mushroom known as Lentinus • tuber regium Fries., on which the Tanala people bestow the name olatafa. When a thunderstorm of fearful violence breaks, the natives quickly put some of the powder moistened with water into their mouths, and as the lightning bolt streaks by, they spit forth the fungal paste into the storm crying 'Fotaka!' or else 'Fotaka male- my!', which is to say 'Earth!1 or 'Soft earth!' (Wasson 1956:607-8.)

Wasson sees the lightning-mushroom link in examples such as this as a reflection of 'the psychic disturbance of mushroomic ecstasy'. But one could as easily see the use of fungi in this case as a talisman against a lightning strike. A very similar interpretation appears to be possible for the expression kapo kadadu 'kind of mushroom' among the Numfor of West New Guinea. As noted earlier, Van Hasselt and Van Hasselt (1947:104) gloss kadadu as 'thunder'. In fact, however, they list two homophonous words kadadu, of which the second is glossed as 'an upright fern which is abundant in low-lying and well-watered areas ... In Humboldt Bay the stems are used to make images which are placed on houses as protection against lightning strikes.' Here it is not the mushroom itself which is used as an amulet, but a fern which is labelled by the same morpheme as that for 'thunder' in the mushroom name kapo kadadu.

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There is a curious parallelism between these observations about fungi and 'thunder stones' - prehistoric stone implements which are widely regarded in animistic cultures as products of lightning strikes. Thunder stones have the following properties: (1) they are of obscure origin; (2) they are almost universally believed to result from lightning strikes, particularly of trees; (3) evidently through a generalization of the widely held belief that 'lightning never strikes twice in the same place', they are also commonly regarded as talismans against a lightning strike.10 We have already seen that mushrooms share the first two properties, and are also used as talismans. The evidence that they are believed to provide protection against lightning strikes is tenuous so far, but the overall parallels with beliefs about thunder stones are too striking to ignore.

4. Conclusions

In conclusion, words for mushrooms and related fungi in Austronesian languages cannot possibly be understood without a fairly extensive cultural exegesis. This undoubtedly will prove to be true of terms in this semantic domain in many language families. The common practice of seeing human languages as either products of universal psychological factors or historically particular cultural factors is thus a false dichotomy. The data considered in this paper involve facts peculiar to Austronesian languages, but can only be fully understood by reference to more general properties of human perception and cognition. The universal and the particular co-exist in both language and culture, and distinguishing the two presents - and will continue to present - one of the most challenging and rewarding tasks of scholarship in both linguistics and ethnology.

10 Fox (1952:339) reports that thunder stones are used as protection against lightning among the Pinatubo Negritos of the northern Philippines. Wilken (1912 4:539) gives numerous examples from Indonesia. Cozemius (1932:134) describes virtually identical beliefs among the Miskito and Sumu Indians of Honduras and Nicaragua.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I wish to express my thanks to two anonymous referees for comments which led to improvements in an earlier version of this manuscript, and to James T. Collins for his assistance in obtaining information. Any errors of fact or interpretation remain my sole responsibility.

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