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Tradition in Toraja Land
| Article
# : |
16157 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1989 |
4,363 Words |
| Author
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Erika Fabian and Albert Moldvay
Erika Fabian and Albert Moldvay are free-lance
photojournalists. |
Dressed in colorful outfits, their black eyes watching over the shimmering emerald rice fields of the valley below them, the Tau Tau guard the liang, the graves of the dead in Toraja Land. They seem like observers on a grandstand. The Tau Tau are life-sized effigies that stand in rows on balconies on the sheer cliffs of Toraja Land. In the early morning sunlight our guide explains their presence: "The people of Toraja began to bury their dead in these cliffs in the seventeenth century to prevent strangers from robbing the graves. The Tau Tau are effigies of the dead put by the tombs as guardians. They are taboo to touch except by relatives who come to renew their clothes or place offerings in their hands when they want to communicate with the ancestor whom they represent."
On a closer look we see that the Tau Tau have one hand extended in a welcoming gesture and the other pointed toward themselves, signifying the give and take between the living and the dead. The dead bless the living; on the other hand, the living must take care of the dead. Even today, when most of the Torajans are Christian, they believe in the connection between the living and the departed.
This link is evident in both the story of their origin and the traditions of the "old religion"--Aluk Todolo--of the Torjan people. According to some sources, the first ancestors sailed from Southern China around 3000 B.C. to the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. They traveled up the Saqdan River into the valley that is now known as Toraja Land. However, some believe that their ancestors were a group of people called tomanurung, which means "people who have descended from heaven," who came in spaceships and landed on top of the mountains that circle the valley of Toraja Land.
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