Figure 1. Kenyah tutor do or solar gnomon. (From Hose and McDougall, Pagan Tribes of Borneo, p. 108, facing.) SKY CALENDARS OF THE INDO-MALAY ARCHIPELAGO: REGIONAL DIVERSITY/LOCAL KNOWLEDGE1 Gene Ammarell . in recent years anthropology has begun to face up to the implications of the truism that people do not respond directly to their environment but rather to the environment as they conceive of it e.g. to animals and plants as conceptualized in their minds and labeled by their language. In other words, understanding human ecology requires understanding human conceptual systems. It is not enough to understand the role of a type of organism in economics and/or ritual. One must also understand how the people involved classify and think about it.2 Anthropologists, not unlike the traditional peoples they study, have long recognized the fundamental interrelationship of human populations and the natural environments in which they live.3 The study of this interrelationship, carried out by an objective observer using the categories and tools of Western science, has come to be known as human ecology.4 5 But it is also true that all societies have their own body of knowledge through which they seek to understand the natural environment and their relationship to it. Thus we may be better able to understand a society by going beyond the objec­ tivity and categories of science and begin to consider the interrelationship of a society with its environment from the viewpoint of the members of that society. It is this attempt to understand how members of a society, themselves, conceive of their environment that has come to be known as ethnoecology.6 Ethnoastronomy, the subject of this paper, may be seen as a branch of ethnoecology wherein the 1. Earlier. versions of this article were delivered at the Southeast Asia Summer Studies Institute on August 3, 1986, and at the International Astronomical Union Colloquium # 9 1 , History of Oriental Astronomy, held in New Delhi, India, on November 16, 1985. I would like to thank all those who have commented on this article, espe­ cially Anna L Tsing, Charles O. Frake, Harold C. Conklin, and John R. Bowen. 2. Robert K. Dentan, "An Appeal to Members of the Society from an Anthropologist,11 Malayan Nature 23 (1970): 121-22. 3. See, for example, C. Wissler, The Relations of Man to Nature in Aboriginal America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1926); A. L. Kroeber, Cultural and Natural Areas of Native North America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1939); Gifford Geertz, Agricultural Involution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963). 4. Eric S. Casino, "Jama Mapun Ethnoecology: Economic and Symbolic," Asian Studies 5 (1967): 1-3. 5. Ibid. 85 86 interrelationship of human populations with their celestial environment is the focus of interest. Although researchers in Southeast Asian cultures have made significant contribu­ tions to the growing body of literature in ethnoecology,6 few have attempted to put together regional knowledge of the celestial environment in comparative studies that would make this knowledge more accessible to students of ethnoecology and ethnoastronomy.7 As recently as 1982 archaeoastronomer Anthony Aveni noted that the Indo— Malay region represented "a significant gap in the archaeoastronomicai and ethnoastronomical record between the Indian mainland and Oceania.”8 The gap, however, is quickly closing. Literature searches,9 personal communications, and interviews conducted over the past several years have revealed an astronomical tradition that is, at once, unique to this cultural area and richly diverse in its local variation. It is the intent of this article to share some of this richness by: 1) describing several of the many techniques of astronomical observation employed by the Indo- Malay peoples to help regulate their agricultural cycles; and 2) suggesting, in three cases, how traditional knowledge of the celestial environment appears to be integrated with other environmental knowledge and with social practices within the respective cultures. The Celestial Landscape The passage of time is mirrored in all of nature; in the light and warmth of day and the dark and coolness of night; in the flowering of plants; in the mating and migratoiy behavior of animals; in the changes in weather; and in the recurring cycles within cycles of the sun, moon, planets, and stars as they transit the celestial sphere. O f these cycles, perhaps the most obvious is the diurnal rising and setting of the sun, moon, planets, and stars, as well as the synodic, or cyclic changes in the phase of the moon and in the time of day that it rises and sets. More subtle than these might be the annual changes in the sun and stars; the north— south shift in the path of the sun across the sky (including its rising and setting points and 6. See, for example, Harold C. Conklin, T h e Relation of Hanunoo Culture to the Plant World* (PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1954); Charles O. Frake, "Cultural Ecology and Ethnography,” American Anthropologist 64 (1962): 53-59; Dentan, "Appeal to Members of the Society”; Karl L Hutterer, A. Terry Rambo, and George Lovelace, eds., Cultural Values and Human Ecology in Southeast Asia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1985); and Gerald G. Marten, ed., Traditional Agriculture in Southeast Asia: A Human Ecology Perspective (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1986). 7. A notable exception is A. Terry Rambo, ”O f Stones and Stars: Malaysian Orang Asli Environmental Knowledge in Relation to Their Adaptation to the Tropical Rain Forest Ecosystem,” Federation Museums Journal 25 (1980). 8. Anthony F. Aveni, personal communication. 9. Much of the information for this article has come from historical and ethnographic literature where the authors have been more or less knowledgeable in the field of observational astronomy. Utilizing a technologically sophisticated and precise plane­ tarium star projector, it has been possible, in each case, to recreate visually the astronomical phenomena described and to refine the descriptions of the observations found in the literature. The star projector has proved itself to be an invaluable tool in this research. Figure 2. Kenyah aso do or base of solar gnomon. (Adapted from Hose, "Various Methods of Computing Time,* appendix.) 88 its relative distance above the horizon at noon) and the appearance, disappearance, and reappearance of familiar patterns of stars at various times of night. T o the trained eye, nature is replete with signs of seasonal change. As an integral part of the natural landscape, these recurring celestial phenomena have long provided traditional farmers worldwide with dependable markers against which agricultural operations can be timed. Many traditional, sedentary desert and plains cultures use the shift in the rising and/or setting points of the sun along the horizon both to mark important dates and seasons and to commemorate the passage of years. Such an environment is conducive to the development and use of these horizon— based solar calendars: a permanent location from which to make sightings, a series of permanent distant horizon markers, either natural or manufactured, and a clear view are all that is needed for such a calendar.10 Such conditions are not common in Indonesia and Malaysia. Here the landscape may consist of anything from a nearby or distant mountain to, more often, some nearby trees; the horizon is, therefore, a rather undependable device against which to sight and measure the rising and setting positions of the sun.11 But in cultivated areas of the region, even from swiddens located deep within the rainforest, one can usually find a field or homesite from which much of the sky is visible. Diversity of Techniques Where permanent, distant horizon markers are not commonly available, several types of observations of annually recurring celestial phenomena can still be made. These include cyclic changes in the phases of the moon, the annual changes in the apparitions of familiar groups of stars, and the annual changes in the altitude of the sun at noon. Variations of these types of observations as practiced by tradi­ tional Indonesian and Malaysian farmers will now be presented. For the sake of clarity, they are grouped using Western astronomical categories as follows: solar gnomons, heliacal apparitions of stars and groups of stars, and lunar-solar and sidereal- lunar observations. Solar gnomons. Most often seen on sundials in Western cultures, a solar gnomon is simply a vertical pole or other similar device that is used to cast a shadow. The attitude of the sun above the horizon varies not only through the day, however, but through the year as well. By measuring the relative length of this shadow each day at local solar noon, one can observe and more or less accurately measure the changing altitude of the sun above the horizon (or, reciprocally, from the zenith) through the year and, thereby, determine the approximate date. Tw o distinct types of solar gnomons have been reported. Both measure the altitude of the sunat local solar noon to determine the date. One type has been attributed to various groups of the Kenyah (Fig. 1). It consists of a precisely measured 10. Anthony F. Aveni, Native American Astronomy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977), esp. pp. xiv, 18. 11. During my 1986 field work in South Kalimantan, a young Meratus Dayak man gave a detailed account of changes in the rising and setting points of the sun through the year from his rice field. He noted the relative north— south shift and was able, when questioned, to correlate this shift with the local agricultural calendar. However, this kind of correlation was not a feature of Meratus traditional skylore, nor was it conventionally used to predict or describe the timing of agricultural events. Figure 3. Javanese bencet or solar gnomon.