SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

j8 I Signs in Ethnographic Context
Transactional Symbolism in Belauan Mortuary Rites I 5^
traduction of Western currency, the diall was a very small piece of Belauan
money, or even a piece of polished glass. This is not to be taken as an insult to
the woman, but is typical of financial dealing with spirits, who are always presented
with low-valued or even counterfeit pieces. Though Belauan money is still
used at funerals, more commonly the diall consists of a sum of American cash
collected during the funeral, which is put to use in paying off the incurred debt.
In Ngeremlengui, a distinction is made between the diall collection at a funeral
of a widowed woman and that at the funeral of a woman with a surviving
spouse. In the former case, the diall is collected principally from the deceased's
male and female children and from the children of her male brothers. In the latter
case, it is collected from the "senior men" (okdemaol)
of the house of the deceased.
These men are quite happy to contribute this cash because they know
that, in so doing, they are marking themselves out as people entitled to receive a
portion of the money at the affinal death settlement talks several months later.
At this point the focus of activity shifts to the meeting house, where visiting
men and women have been waiting. They have not been unattended, however,
since local women and children have been entertaining them with comic dances
and singing intended to lift their sorrowful state of mind. These dancers and
singers are rewarded for their efforts by small gifts of money (sengk) provided
by the senior men of the house. In addition, visiting mourners are thanked for
their patience by the presentation of "food for sitting so long" (kallel a kltom el
but), which is more properly called "traveling food"
(ukerael):
We call this "food for sitting so long" because these women have been in the
meeting house all day and night, and so the food is to thank them. . . . But if
a person joins the mourners at the house, they do not receive this. In olden
times this would consist of taro and coconut sytup [ilaot], but today it is just
rice, biscuits, soy sauce, and sugar. Also, there is something called "food of
the village" [kallel a beluu]. If a lot of food is left over from the evening meal,
it is divided up and sent to houses in each village. Even if people did not attend
the funeral, it is taken to them. They will not receive the food for sitting so
long, howevet, since they did not stay in the meeting house. (F)
This traveling food is provided by the female children of the house (and thus
specifically not by the spouses of men), who are thereby thanking these women
for helping them mourn their dead kinsperson. These gifts of cash and traveling
food exactly parallel the presentations described by Kubary (19003:40—41) over
one hundred years ago:
Custom demands that the mourning house distribute something to drink to
everyone present, and the first task of the relatives [at the house] is to purchase
stone pitchers of coconut syrup [ilaot], in a number commensurate with the
importance of the family. This syrup is mixed with water, and everyone drinks
it, but it is chiefly given to the visitors and the mourners. Then the women,
who sing during the night, receive Gekur, a present made of turtleshell objects.
12
With the coffin now resting in the meeting house, all is set for the next two
stages of the funeral, the "taking the title" (omelai er a dui) rite and the "burial"
proper {omelakl).
At one of the funerals I attended, however, it was already
growing dark by this time, and people were afraid that it would be difficult to
proceed any farther. Everyone simply stayed put until morning: the visiting male
and female mourners crowded at opposite ends of the meeting house, the close
female mourners sitting inside the house of the deceased, and the male titleholders
affiliated with the surviving spouse gossiping in front of his house. I must confess
that at about 1:00 a.m. I returned to my house to type fieldnotes and to sleep.
Men in the village, however, told stories together through the night. 13
The funeral resumes in the morning with the final expressions of grief on the
part of relatives of the deceased. Dressed in black, the close female mourners
come slowly out of the house and take their place near the coffin in the center
of the meeting house. Several emotional eulogies ate delivered by spouses, sisters,
adult children, ministers, and others linked to the deceased; some of these utterances
resemble Christian prayers, while others directly address the deceased. I
was impressed by the degree to which men joined women in overt emotional
display—the ethnographic record is consistent that such public expressions of
grief were confined to women.
Then the coffin is carried to the central door, where the taking-the-title rite
is performed. A minor titleholder known to be a specialist in this practice stands
at the head of the coffin and, slowly waving a coconut frond wrapped with wild
taro leaves back and forth three times, quickly recites formulaic words, such as
the following:
I am going to take this sacred title [meang el dui]. The person who carried this
title was unfortunate. She did not have a mwr-feast in her honor, and now she
has nothing at all. But there were plenty of pieces of oraw-valuables. And so
now she is dead and takes all this misfortune and departs. Good luck now
comes to the house, to all of us, and to myself. 14
The symbolism here is complex. A male chiefly title is known as dui, which is
the word for coconut frond, the idea being that a high-ranking man "carries the
title" (meluchel
a dui) on his head. In this portion of the rite, the coconut frond
is wrapped in a wild taro leaf (dudek
el bisech), since this is the same word for
the white-tailed tropic bird (dudek), known to be a particularly strong flier. 15 So
the frond, emblematic of the title, is taken by the chosen successor, who places
it behind his or her heel, indicating thereby the closeness of the new titleholder
to the maternal affection of the senior women of the house. This seemingly minor
detail of ritual action is connected with an expression used to describe men who
have close matrilineal relations to the senior woman (ourrot) of the house:
merrot