Research Items

Abstract

THE RELIGION OF MENTAWEI.—Mentawei Islands, lying west of Sumatra, owing to political conditions, have received more attention from Dutch and German than from English-speaking ethnologists. They were, however, visited in 1926 by Mr. Edwin M. Loeb, as a, research scholar of the University of California, and he has now published an account of the religious organisation of the Pageh group of islands in the Publications in American Archceology and Ethnology, vol. 25, No. 2 of that University. He deals more especially with the punen system. The punen is the community religious festival (as distinct from the lia or family festival) which is attended by all members of the uma, the communal house. The festival is of long duration, sometimes lasting for years. It takes place at the building of a new communal house, the choice of a new priest, the making of a new field, the spilling of blood in the village, an epidemic, and so forth. The main ceremonial acts are the slaughter of pigs and chickens, the sacrifice of their livers and haruspication. The souls of the dead members of the uma are invoked to return, and imitative dances are held, and towards the end of the festival monkeys, deer, and sea turtle are hunted. All men sleep in the uma and sexual intercourse is taboo. The religious beliefs of the Mentawei Islands are animistic. They believe in nature spirits, souls, and ghosts; but the nature spirits, with a few exceptions, are not given names. They are the spirits in the sea, the jungle, and so forth. The exceptions are a god who causes earthquakes, the original meaning of his name being ‘grandfather’. It is on account of this god that a human sacrifice used to be offered at the building of the uma. Other specially designated gods are two water spirits, the first being propitious if due sacrifices are offered and no ritual sin has been committed, and the second is evil. The soul cult is specially directed to the preservation of health and long life, while ghosts are the bringers of disease to whom prayer is offered for purposes of witchcraft, and to whom sacrifice is made only when they have entered a village bringing sickness, to induce them to go away.