Bukit Rabong in this world and the next.

Bukit Rabong in this world and the next. I am grateful to Martin Baier and Herwig Zahorka for pointing outsome current discrepancies in the topographic mapping ofKalimantan--particularly with regard to mountains--their names,locations, and elevations. Their Brief Communications remind me of a difficulty i encountered,myself, in the course of working with Iban shamans (manang) in theSaribas region of western Sarawak. The difficulty concerns a seeminglyproblematic mountain which local shamans and others call Bukit Rabong(alt. sp. Rabung). The term rabong, by itself, means, literally,'highpoint,' 'apex,' or 'summation.' Inits more abstract noun abstract nounn.A noun that denotes an abstract or intangible concept, such as envy or joy. form, as perabong, it signifies'zenith'--hence, Saribas shamans often describe Bukit Rabongas being located directly beneath, or itself forming, at its top, theperabong langit, literally, the 'zenith of the sky.' It issaid that the summit of Bukit Rabong, in fact, connects with the sky(langit) and so, for Saribas shamans, with the home of the upperworldgods, most importantly Adv. 1. most importantly - above and beyond all other consideration; "above all, you must be independent"above all, most especially Menjaya and his sister Ini' Inda, both ofwhom are closely associated with shamanism shamanism/sha��man��ism/ (shah��-) (sha��mah-nizm?) a traditional system, occurring in tribal societies, in which certain individuals (shamans) are believed to be gifted with access to an invisible spiritual , and, the latter, with theinitiation of novice shamans. This ritual initiation (bebangun), whichis enacted by living shamans in this world, is said to take place, inactuality, unseen, on the 'summit' (tuchong) of Bukit Rabong(see Sather 2001: 29). Bukit Rabong is associated not only with shamans, but also withdeath. Like most places identified with death, Bukit Rabong is thoughtto have both a physical presence in 'this world' (lit., dunyatu'), that is to say, in the ordinary visible world of everydaylife, as well as an invisible counterpart presence, unseen to us, asliving human beings, in the afterworld. For the Saribas Iban, BukitRabong is, more specifically, the place to which the 'souls'(semengat) of dead shamans journey after death and, thereafter, theplace where their 'spirits' (antu) are thought to make theirhome in the Iban afterworld. As one Saribas shaman, the late ManangBangga of Muton Ionghouse, put it, Bukit Rabong is, in essence,'the land of the shamans' souls' (menoa semengat manang)(see Sather 2001 : 116). In this sense, Bukit Rabong precisely parallelsBatang Mandai, which, for the Saribas Iban, is the place to which thesouls of ordinary human beings (iban, as opposed to manang) (1) journeyafter death. The Batang Mandai also has a physical presence in thisworld--in this case, as the Mandai River The Mandai River is a tributary of the Chichirgeaua River in Romania. ReferencesAdministraţia Naţională Apelor Romane - Cadastrul Apelor - Bucureşti Institutul de Meteorologie şi Hidrologie - R?urile Romaniei - Bucureşti 1971 , a southern tributary of theKapuas in West Kalimantan West Kalimantan (Indonesian: Kalimantan Barat often abbreviated to Kalbar) is a province of Indonesia. It is one of four Indonesian provinces in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo. Its capital city Pontianak is located right on the Equator line. (also known to Saribas manang as the BatangMandai Idup, 'the Mandai River of the Living'), as well as aninvisible afterworld counterpart (Batang Mandai Mati, 'the MandaiRiver of the Dead') along which the spirits and souls of the greatmajority of Iban are said to make their home after death. Today, when a death occurs, most Saribas Iban perform a simpleChristian burial A Christian burial is the burial of a deceased person with ecclesiastical rites in consecrated ground. History and Antecedents of the Roman Catholic Burial ritualEarly Historical EvidenceAmong the Greeks and Romans, both cremation and burial were practiced. and prayer service. This was not the case, however, inthe 1970s and 80s, when I began fieldwork, and elsewhere I havedescribed "traditional" Saribas Iban death rituals as Iobserved them during those years (Sather 2003). The significant pointhere is that both Bukit Rabong and Batang Mandai loomed large in theserituals and in the ways in which the living, in this world, continued tointeract with the dead. The Saribas region, comprising the present-day Betong Division Betong Division, formed on March 26 2002, is the 11th and newest of the eleven administrative divisions in Sarawak, east Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. Formerly part of Sri Aman Division, Betong is in the Saribas area. It has a total area of 4,180. , islocated some distance from the West Kalimantan border. Consequently,very few Saribas Iban have traveled to Kalimantan and I never met anyonewho claimed to have been to either Bukit Rabong or the Mandai River.Stories are told, however, of men who are said to have traveled to theseplaces in the past in order to obtain pengaroh (charms) directly fromthe dead. In these stories, many fail to return, while others bring backcharms which in time become family pesaka (inherited wealth Noun 1. inherited wealth - wealth that is inherited rather than earnedwealth, wealthiness - the state of being rich and affluent; having a plentiful supply of material goods and money; "great wealth is not a sign of great intelligence" ).Considerable secrecy surrounds pengaroh, however, and 1 never met anyonewho acknowledged owning such charms. People I spoke with, includingmanang, expressed considerable uncertainty about where Bukit Rabong andBatang Mandai are located, but nearly all were sure that these placesexist in a physical form somewhere in West Kalimantan. The main trunkroad that now connects the Saribas with Kuching runs in several placesvery close to the Kalimantan border and here, at higher elevations,Bukit Rabong is said to be visible on the distant horizon from theSarawak side of the border. Moreover, it is readily recognizable. It hasa distinctive shape, with steep sides and a high bulging summit that isdescribed by Saribas shamans and others, including persons who say thatthey have seen it, as exactly resembling a tawak or agong gong when seenin profile (Sather 2001:117). According to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. the late Benedict Sandin Benedict Sandin (1918-1982) was an Iban ethnologist, historian, and Curator of the Sarawak Museum in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia. He also served as Government Ethnologist to the Government of Sarawak. , theformer Curator of the Sarawak Museum The Sarawak Museum is the oldest museum in Borneo. It was established in 1888 and opened in 1891 in a purpose-built building in Kuching, Sarawak. Sponsored by Charles Brooke, the second White Rajah of Sarawak, the establishment of the museum was strongly encouraged by Alfred Russel , and several other Saribasauthorities, Bukit Rabong rises from the true left bank of the MandaiRiver. This fits closely with descriptions from Saribas chants whichdepict the journey of the shamans' souls up rapids from the MandaiRiver. From the head of these rapids the souls jump to the summit ofMount Rabong (Tuchong Rabong). On the other side of the border, the presence of the Mandai Riverhas never been in question. Bukit Rabong, on the other hand, is adifferent matter. 1 was never able to locate a mountain of that name onmaps of West Kalimantan. If it exists, as most people assured me that itdid, including those who had actually seen it from afar, it must beeither unrecorded on maps or known to Indonesian cartographers Cartography is the study of map making and cartographers are map makers. Before 1400Anaximander, Greek Anatolia, (610 BC-546 BC), first to attempt making a map of the (known) world byanother name. But what name? And where precisely is it located? For people in the Saribas, including even manang, these questions,for all practical purposes, have no particular significance. Thephysical mountain cannot be seen from where they live, and, in any case,it is the invisible, not the this-worldly mountain, that matters. In time, I came to think about Bukit Rabong in pretty much the sameway. That is, until one day, four or five years ago, when I was workingin the Research Section of the Tun TUN, measure. A vessel of wine or oil, containing four hogsheads. Jugah Foundation's offices inKuching. The secretary came to my desk and said that 1 had a visitor.The visitor turned out to be an amateur ethnographer eth��nog��ra��phy?n.The branch of anthropology that deals with the scientific description of specific human cultures.eth��nog named Roland Wernerwho had published, several years earlier, a book on the art and materialcultural of the Jah-het, an Orang Asli community in peninsular Malaysia.He was visiting Sarawak and had read my book on Saribas Iban shamanism(Words of Play, Seeds of Power, 2001). He had a question for me. He thenproduced a map of Kalimantan and asked me to locate Bukit Rabong. He hadsearched the map himself and couldn't find it where I had indicatedthat it should presumably pre��sum��a��ble?adj.That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. exist. I told him that I had experienced thesame difficulty. If the mountain had, indeed, been mapped, which, to me,wasn't at all a certainty, then it must be known to Indonesianmap-makers by a different name. This wouldn't be surprising, as thearea in which it is said to be located is not inhabited by the Iban, butby other ethnic groups. Moreover, from where I did my fieldwork, BukitRabong couldn't be seen at all. None of the shamans I worked withhad ever been there, nor, for that matter, did they express anyparticular interest in the physical, this-worldly mountain. Instead,their concern, as practicing shamans, was with its invisibleotherworldly counterpart. Here, they said the spirit shamans (petaramanang) live who assist them as spirit companions in their healingperformances, including, among them, the spirits of formerly livingshamans. And here, their own souls would eventually find a home. Indeed, manang when they refer to Bukit Rabong in rituals are notalways referring to an actual mountain, even an otherworldly one.Individual rituals are called pelian and each pelian contains a sungcomponent called the leka pelian, meaning, literally, 'thegist' or 'seeds of the pelian.' In describing the lekapelian, one must necessarily enter a riddle-like speech domain describedas jako' dalam, literally, 'deep speech,' in which wordstypically have multiple meanings. References to Bukit Rabong occurfrequently in the leka pelian. For example, in the final lines of nearlyall leka pelian, the manang sings of leaping into the air, together withhis spirit companions, and of alighting on the summit of Bukit Rabong.In the course of performing a pelian, the shaman is believed to send outhis 'soul' (semengat), which, together with his spirit helpers(yang) and other spirit companions, performs, unseen, the actual work ofthe pelian. In these concluding lines, Bukit Rabong refers not only to amountain, but also to the top of the head, more specifically, to thebubun aji, the 'anterior fontanelle fontanelle/fon��ta��nelle/ (fon?tah-nel��) a soft spot, such as one of the membrane-covered spaces remaining at the junction of the sutures in the incompletely ossified skull of the fetus or infant. ,' through which the humansoul is believed to enter and leave the body. At one level, then, theselines describe the return of the manang's soul to his body, as wellas, very often, the return of his patient's soul which the mananghas succeeded in recovering. At the same time, the words also describethe return of the shaman's spirit companions to the top of BukitRabong. I'm afraid my visitor found all of this less thansatisfactory. His own interests, as far as I could make out, wereexclusively with physical mountains, magnetic directions, and thematerial objects, including crystals, used for curing. Shortly after this, I began to work on a long essay on Saribas Ibanancestors and concepts of ancestorship for a panel, "Ancestors inBorneo," which Kenneth Sillander and Pascal Couderc were thenorganizing for the BRC BRC Black Rock City (Burning Man)BRC British Retail ConsortiumBRC Business Resource Center (Small Business Administration)BRC Bisexual Resource CenterBRC Black Radical Congress biennial meetings in Kuching. Writing the paperbrought me back once again to the question of Bukit Rabong. The factthat the souls of deceased shamans travel to a separate afterworld andthat, from there, their spirits enter into quite different relationshipswith the living than the spirits of the ordinary dead, meant that it wasnecessary to treat deceased shamans as a separate category of"ancestors." Differences are marked in many ways. For example,during burial, the orientation of the body in the grave is reversed forshamans; with the head oriented so that it points upriver, rather thandownriver down��riv��er?adv. & adj.Toward or near the mouth of a river; in the direction of the current: swam downriver; a downriver canoe race.Adv. 1. . Summing up these differences, I wrote in my essay("Recalling the Dead, Revering the Ancestors"): While the souls and spirits of the ordinary dead are believed to travel downriver (kili') to Sebayan, those of dead shamans travel, by contrast, upriver (kulu), to a separate afterworld of their own located on the summit of Mount Rabong. In Sebayan, the ordinary dead are believed to live along an invisible river known as the Mandai ... Like a number of other Borneo peoples, the Iban believe that this river has a visible counterpart in the living world, also known as the Mandai ... Mount Rabong, too, has a visible counterpart, but its location is less certain. From their abode at the summit of Mount Rabong, the spirits of ancestral shamans play a notably different role [in the affairs of the living] than the spirits of ordinary ancestors. While the latter are concerned with renewing and strengthening the lives of the living, the former are more specifically involved in the ritual work and initiation of living shamans. Thus during curing rituals, they are regularly invoked ... as spirit companions. Many shamans take [their] name ... as their shamanic title (julok) and some of these spirits act as personal spirit helpers. The top of Mount Rabong is said to be directly accessible to the upperworld ... [and here,] according to myth, Ini' Inda [one of the principal shamanic gods] initiated the first human shamans ... Since then.... she carries out these same rites [whenever] ... novice shamans undergo initiation in this world. In the process, the ancestral shamans assist as spirit companions and bestow upon the newly initiated novices charms and ritual paraphernalia. The late Reed Wadley and I were regular email correspondents duringthis time. I shared with him several earlier drafts of the ancestorsessay and benefitted greatly from his comments. In the course of ourcorrespondence, the question of Bukit Rabong's possible locationcame up a number of times. In September 2007, Reed was in WestKalimantan. Here, he asked a number of local Iban about Bukit Rabong. OnSeptember 17, 2007, he wrote by email: You're going to love this, Cliff: According to an aka' [editor: honorific term for an older friend] in Lanjak (who would know), Bukit Rabong is in Sarawak; where exactly he didn't know As in the Ulu Paku Ulu Paku is an area the small district of Spaoh, Sarawak, Malaysia. It is a primarily native Iban area. It is made up of 11 Iban longhouses (not including Anyut area). The lounghouses here, despite being called longhouses are relatively short with the longest is only around 25 , where I did my own fieldwork, so, too, in theEmperan, where Reed worked, people seemed equally uncertain about thelocation of Bukit Rabong. However, from the area around Lanjak, near theSarawak border, Bukit Rabong is sometimes visible, although at a greatdistance. In the same letter, Reed went on to write: It would seem that Bukit Rabong stays quite firmly on [the] edge of visibility. I wonder though if in the past, when Sarawak Iban would have been traveling more into West Borneo and more knowledgeable about its geography, these sacred sites were equally removed from visibility. I think it's only been with the creation of Malaysia and its extraordinary economic success that has kept Sarawak Iban on their own side of the border and thus led to a diminution of geographical knowledge. During the Dutch period, there seems to be an almost ubiquitous presence of lban from Sarawak in places up and down the Kapuas, either raiding (early on) or working. Bukit Rabong might have been a little farther removed back then, on the edge of geographic awareness. Here, I think, Reed makes several valuable points. First, there wasalmost certainly more travel in the past by Sarawak Iban into what isnow West Kalimantan. This is well attested to by Saribas oraltraditions, not only by stories of men traveling to the Mandai River andneighboring mountains to obtain pengaroh, but also accounts of raiding,trading expeditions, and return migrations (cf. Sandin 1994). Second, asthe Iban have moved and expanded over time, it is possible that themountain identified by local Iban groups as Bukit Rabong may havechanged as well--but always preserving its location on the periphery ofvisibility. This is suggested by the leka pelian in which the manangfrequently describe Bukit Rabong, tellingly, as "famed RabongSummit visible from afar' (Tuchong Rabong tampak benama, see Sather2001: 422). Later Reed passed on some of this correspondence to MichaelEilenberg, a Danish anthropologist who was then traveling in WestKalimantan. Michael climbed Bukit Seberuang, just above the town ofLanjak, West Kalimantan, and from there took the photograph that appearsbelow (Photo 1), which he sent to Reed as an email attachment See e-mail attachment. . Reed, inan email message to me dated Monday, December 10, 2007, sent on a copyof Michael's photo. Reed's accompanying message read asfollows: Cliff, I wonder if I've just found Bukit Rabong, or at least the possibility of it. See the attached jpg photo, taken by Michael Eilenberg from Bukit Seberuang right abo[ve] the town of Lanjak: Looking up to the upper left corner, you can see a mountain in the shape of a tawak, right on the edge of [the] horizon. I don't know what the mountain's name is, but Sellato would know--that's his people's menoa. But damned if that might [not] be the one! Reed The direction in which the photo is taken, with Bukit Rabong on thefar left, toward the Mandai River, does, indeed, orient it generallytoward the country (menoa) of the Aoheng and Ot Danum, people studied bythe anthropologist Bernard Sellato. I wrote to Bernard at once, sendinghim a copy of Michael's photograph. I received Bernard's emailreply soon after, on Thursday, December 13, 2007: Dear Cliff, Would that be Gunung Tilung, Tevilung, Tebilung? A sacred mountain to all uppermost Kapuas people, precisely because of its shape, and assumed by some to be the abode of the souls of the dead ... All the best, BS In a second email, sent December 17, 2007, Bernard confirmed thatGunung Tilung is, indeed, visible from the Sarawak side of the borderand so, given its distinctive shape, is very likely the same mountainthat several Saribas Iban had told me that they had seen while travelingalong the border and which they identified as Bukit Rabong. He alsoattached a photograph of Gunung Tilung, which appears as Photo 4 in hisbook, Hornbill hornbill,common name for members of the family Bucerotidae, Old World birds of tropical and subtropical forests, named for their enormous down-curved bills surmounted by grotesque horny casques. From 2 to 5 ft (61–152. and Dragon (1989, see Photo 2 below). The photo itselfwas taken near Putussibau. As he added in a subsequent note (December21): Gunung Tilung or Tevilung, as far as I am aware, is where all the (ordinary) dead go ... Since it is fairly visible from Putussibau, where many groups came to trade, as my photo shows, as well as from the Sarawak border area, as [Michael's] photo shows, no wonder its shape has left a lasting impression on all people residing in or passing by those areas. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Continuing, he goes on to suggest, Possibly, the Sarawak Iban, who could only see it from afar, made the mountain the abode of dead shamans, while most local groups, like the Taman, Maloh, etc., view it as the abode of all dead spirits. Concluding his note of December 17, 2007, Bernard additionallywrote, "I'm pretty sure it's the same mountain. Manygroups, beyond [the] upper Kapuas region know of it." (2) Referringto what he describes as a "pretty poor" APA (All Points Addressable) Refers to an array (bitmapped screen, matrix, etc.) in which all bits or cells can be individually manipulated. APA - Application Portability Architecture map of Borneo, headds, "On my map, it is called Gunung Liang Sunan (987m) and isindeed on the Mandai (left bank)." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In his message of December 21, Bernard makes another point, which,I think, has considerable bearing on the possible significance of BukitRabong, not only for the Iban, but for other groups as well. Neither theMandai River nor Bukit Rabong exist within an area of present-day Ibansettlement. Although the Saribas iban trace their origins back throughan extensive body of oral traditions to the middle and upper Kapuas,except for what is described by some accounts as a brief transit by wayof the mouth of the Mandai, neither the Mandai River nor Bukit Rabongare regarded by the Iban as places of origin or even significant pastsettlement. While both clearly exist, as landmarks within the Ibancognative world, they occupy or define its outer peripheries, existing,as Wadley aptly put it, at the edge of Iban geographical awareness. AsSellato suggests in his note, Mount Rabong, Tilung, Tevilung, orwhatever it is called by local groups, may be seen as peripheral, orboundary defining, in an even more fundamental sense. Thus, he writes(December 21, 2007): Actually, the interesting thing with this otherwise not especially interesting mountain is the fact that it stands right at the triple point between the territories of three major ethno-cultural clusters: Iban and Ibanic to the W and NW, Ot Danum and other Barito-speaking peoples to the S, and "central Borneo" (in the Rousseau sense) and nomads to the E--plus Tamanic to the N. So, no wonder, either, that it appears in the oral traditions ... of people living quite far away, such as the Berawan, although, of course, those could never have seen it themselves and have learned about it [only] from others. While we are dealing here with a mountain that, in one way oranother, is sacred to many people in Borneo, it is not entirely clear,at this stage, that all of these people are referring to the samemountain, although, as Sellato says, this seems highly probable. Equallyuncertain is the question of whether this mountain is the same as themap-maker's Gunung Liang Sunan. Here I would repeat MartinBaler's call for a systematic review of the physical geography physical geography:see geography. ofKalimantan as a way of reaching some definite answer. Sandin, Benedict 1967 The Sea Dayaks of Borneo before White RajahRule. London: Macmillan. 1994 Sources of Iban Traditional History. Special Monograph No. 7,Sarawak Museum Journal. Sather, Clifford 2001 Seeds of Play, Words of Power Words of Power (1997) is an aggrotech single by Funker Vogt. Track listing"Words of Power (Highspeed mix)" "The 3rd War (Original mix)" "Thanks For Nothing (Original mix)" "Words of Power (Power mix)" "The 3rd War (Atomic Shell)" : AnEthnographic Study of Iban Shamanic Chants. Kuching: Tun JugahFoundation and the Borneo Research Council. 2003 Transformations of self and community in Saribas Iban deathrituals. In: William D. Wilder, ed., Journeys of the Soul:Anthropological studies of death, burial and reburial Noun 1. reburial - the act of burying againreburyingburying, burial - concealing something under the ground practices inBorneo. Phillips: Borneo Research Council, Monograph, 7, pp. 175-247. 2004 The Iban. In: Ooi Keat Gin, ed., Southeast Asia. A HistoricalEncyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio Press, Vol. 2, 623-625. Forthcoming: Recalling the Dead, Revering the Ancestors: Multipleforms of ancestorship in Saribas Iban society. In: Kenneth Sillander andPascal Couderc, eds., Ancestors in Borneo Societies: Death,Transformation, and Social Immortality. Copenhagen: NIAS Nias(nē`äs), volcanic island (1990 pop. 588,543), 1,842 sq mi (4,771 sq km), Indonesia, in the Indian Ocean, off Sumatra. Most of the population are descended from the Niah people; their economy is largely agricultural. Press. Sellato, Bernard 1989 Hornbill and Dragon. Singapore: Sun Tree. Clifford Sather Editor, BRB "Be right back." See digispeak. (chat) BRB - (I will) be right back. brb-editor@comcast.net (1) This use of the term iban. meaning "layperson lay��per��son?n.A layman or a laywoman.Noun 1. layperson - someone who is not a clergyman or a professional personlayman, secular " or,simply, "human being.' is the most likely source of the modernethnonym eth��no��nym?n.The name of a people or ethnic group.ethno��nymic adj. (cf. Sather 2004: 623). (2) One such group that Sellato mentioned in his note are theBerawan. Thus, Sellato writes that Gunung Tilung "'is evenmentioned in Berawan texts given by Metcalf in Where are you/spirits?.although Metcalf did not recognize it as an actual mountain--he was soengrossed en��gross?tr.v. en��grossed, en��gross��ing, en��gross��es1. To occupy exclusively; absorb: A great novel engrosses the reader.See Synonyms at monopolize.2. in his speaking-in-pairs stuff that he believed that all namesmentioned in Berawan texts were just plat A map of a town or a section of land that has been subdivided into lots showing the location and boundaries of individual parcels with the streets, alleys, easements, and rights of use over the land of another. terms or names fabricated fab��ri��cate?tr.v. fab��ri��cat��ed, fab��ri��cat��ing, fab��ri��cates1. To make; create.2. To construct by combining or assembling diverse, typically standardized parts: forthe sake of rhymes, the interesting thing being that the Berawan heredemonstrate that they know a lot of toponyms from regions far away fromtheirs." Sellato touched on these matters in his review of Metcalfpublished in L 'Homme (1991, vol. 120. XXXI, 4: 124-26).