Reading the Tambunan Dusun Cosmogonic Myth
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IJAPS, Vol. 2, No. 2 (November 2006) READING SYMBOLS AND MYTHICAL LANDSCAPE IN THE "TAMBUNAN DUSUN ORIGIN MYTH" OF NORTH BORNEO* Low Kok On Universiti Malaysia Sabah INTRODUCTION Tambunan is a district in the interior of Sabah, East Malaysia in Northern Borneo (Map 1). The majority of the indigenous peoples residing here are known as Tambunan Dusuns. Tambunan Dusuns belong to a Dusunic family. In the early 20th century, the social structure of the Tambunan Dusuns was based on seven sub-tribes, namely Tuwawon, Tagahas, Tibabar, Bundu, Gunnah, Palupuh and Kohub. Three out of the seven sub-tribes, i.e. Tuwawon, Tagahas and Tibabar are still residing in Tambunan district to date. According to Williams (1965: 67): Prior to 1880s, the Tambunan valley was occupied, and appears to have served as a boundary zone and cockpit of head warfare for several local groups. After 1885, native police patrols under European officers of the North Borneo Chartered Company established a tenuous form of order sufficient to allow initial settlement on the northern fringe of the plain, settlement of the valley floor along the eastward course of the Sunsuron River proceeds rapidly in the year 1900–1925. However, continued fears of head taking slowed settlement of the central and south portions of the Tambunan plain. Those areas, along the southward course of the Pegalan River, were not cleared of primary jungle until the mid 1930s'. For many years in the past, Tuwawon and Tagahas Dusuns had carried on a guerilla war between themselves. Such guerilla warfare between these two main tribal groups assumed greater urgency to the * Parts of this paper had been presented in the American Folklore Society Annual Meeting 2004 in Salt Lake City, Utah from 12–17 October 2004. 29 IJAPS, Vol. 2, No. 2 (November 2006) Low Kok On North South China Sea Sulu Sea Tambunan District Keningau Map 1. District of Tambunan and other major towns in Sabah. Governor of the North Borneo Chartered Company when Mat Salleh, the well-known rebel in North Borneo allied himself with the Tagahas Dusuns to fight against the Tuwawon Dusuns in the 1890s. The seriousness of the guerilla warfare between Tuwawon and Tagahas Dusuns during the past can be revealed by one of the incidents as stated by Wookey (1956/57: 434): He (Mat Salleh) had, together with the Tegas (Tagahas), attacked the Sunsuron people while the latter were at work in their paddy fields. To settle this affair, Fraser arranged for a meeting between Mat Salleh and his friends the Tegas, together with the opposing faction, the Tiawans (Tuwawon). Fraser was aware that the Tiawans were feeling particularly upset at losing some 80 head of cattle, as well as the lost of some 30 of their people. Like other Dusunic-speaking peoples, the majority of the Tambunan Dusuns are farmers and most of them are engaged in planting paddy, vegetables, 30 IJAPS, Vol. 2, No. 2 (November 2006) Reading Symbols and Mythical Landscape fruit trees and rearing cattle, poultry, pigs, etc. The Tambunan town is surrounded by terraced paddy fields and seventy picturesque villages. The 1990 census shows that Tambunan has a population of 19,666 people. The population is homogeneous, rich in cultural traditions, and experienced in transitional subsistence farming (http://www.ids.org.my/publications/ ResearchPaper/). To date, the Tuwawon occupies three of the existing villages in Tambunan district, i.e. Kampung Sunsuron (see Appendix 2), Kampung Megong and Kampung Nodu. The Tagahas occupies Kampung Tobou and Kampung Kintuntul, and the Tibabar are residents in Kampung Tibabar. This paper concerns reading symbols that had appeared in the "Tambunan Dusun Origin Myth" published in the Journal of Malaysia Branch Royal Asiatic Society (JMBRAS) by Williams (1960). As Campbell (1988: 5) said, "We should read myths. They teach us that we can turn inward, and we will begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people's myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts—but if you read the other one, you begin to get the message." In other words, myth is a manifestation of symbolic images. The symbolic field is based on the experiences of people in a particular community, at that particular time and place. Myths are so intimately bound to the culture, time and place that unless the symbols, the metaphors, are kept alive by constant recreation through the arts, life just slips away from them (Campbell, 1988: 72). According to Turner (1968, a: 1–2), a symbol is the smallest unit of ritual which still retains the specific properties of ritual behavior; it is a "storage unit" filled with a vast amount of information. Symbols can be objects, activities, words, relationships, events, gestures, or spatial units (Turner, 1967: 19). For example, the passive attitude of the male initiations may be symbolized by the wearing of female apparel (Turner, 1968: 576). Middleton (1967: x) states that a myth is a statement about society and man's place in it, and in the surrounding universe. Such a statement is, in general, a symbolic one. As man's earliest belief systems were mostly told in the form of myths via oral tradition from one generation to another, thus in this paper, the writer is interested in finding out the meanings of symbols that could be read in the "Tambunan Dusun Origin Myth" collected by Williams (1960). 31 IJAPS, Vol. 2, No. 2 (November 2006) Low Kok On THOMAS RHY WILLIAM'S FIELD WORK The "Tambunan Dusun Origin Myth" discovery had been gathered by Williams (1960) through this manner: 25 informants selected by age, sex, and community status were questioned in a series of interviews varying from two to four hours per person. The first series of interviews completed a total of fifteen hours of time for each informant. These interviews were conducted in the Malay and Dusun dialects through the help of two English- speaking Tambunan Dusun interpreters. The second series of interviews were a total of three to five hours in duration, and were directed to the elicitation of answers to questions concerning details of various myths or inquiries as to inconsistent data derived in the first interviews. At the completion of the second series of interviews, six of the 25 informants were selected on the basis of William's deduction of their intelligence, family history, experiences, frequency of contacts with non-native cultural tradition, and willingness to continue talking on a series of subjects seemingly adequately covered in previous interviews. In the third series of interviews, a full record was made of all comments by the informants in a set of two three-hour meetings. This record was thereafter transcribed into the Dusun dialects. The transcripts were later translated by the interpreter into English. The report presented by Williams was considered to be the most concise final product recorded in full cycle translation interviews. READING THE SYMBOLS The "Tambunan Dusun Origin Myth" started with the creation of the world, the primordial human, also known as the "Universal Man" according to Cirlot (1971: 198), a lizard and a snake by the Spiritual Being known as Kinoingan. Like most of the creation myths 1 , the "myth" contained the archetype of "the spirit" as one of the archetypes identified by Jung2 (1992). In short, Kinoingan is the Creator who created current reality that is the way of life and the environment like "The Dreamtime" for the Australian 1 Creation myths are those that deal with the creation of the universe from chaos, from water or from nothing; from the emergence of the lower worlds, by some cosmic beings, by supernatural animals (Creation, ENCARTA 99). 2 In Four Archetypes, Jung (1992) identifies and discusses four main archetypes: the mother archetype, the trickster archetype, the archetype of the spirit, and the archetypal pattern of rebirth. 32 IJAPS, Vol. 2, No. 2 (November 2006) Reading Symbols and Mythical Landscape Aboriginal people 3 . Right from the beginning, the mythmakers of the Tambunan Dusuns said, "The creation of the earth and man was at once, for God works at once. Man and animals were created by God from the clay of the earth…." Thus this myth defines the first batch of human beings and animals – a life form that was made from earth-material (clay, dust, soil and so forth) by God. The motif of the primordial human being created by God using earth- material also appeared in Genesis and other myths that were well spread all over the world. In Genesis, Adam is the designation and name of the first human creature in the creation narratives found in the Old Testament. The word adam may refer to the fact that this being was an "earthling" formed from the red-hued clay of the earth. In Hebrew, adom means "red" and adamah means "earth" (Fishbane, 1995: 27). Besides, the Shilluk Tribe in Africa has this creation myth: The creator Juok moulded all people of earth. While he was engaged in the work of creation, he wandered about the world. In the land of the Whites, he found a pure white earth, and out of it, he shaped White people. Then he came to the land of Egypt, and out of the mud of Nile, he made red or brown people. Lastly, he came to the land of Shilluks, and finding there black earth, he created black people out of it (http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/ ophelia.htm). If one refers to the other versions of the Dusunic-speaking peoples creation myths, one should be able to notice that the belief among the Dusunic-speaking peoples regarding to the primordial human being created by spiritual beings using earth-material is in fact very significant and dominant.