The Discourse of Souls in Tana Toraja (Indonesia): Indigenous Notions and Christian Conceptions

Abstract

In Insular Southeast Asia, indigenous religions are oriented more towards practice than philosophy. Geertz's (1973:177) observations concerning in Bali generally hold true for other autochthonous religions of the Indonesian archipelago: Beyond a minimal level there is almost no interest in doctrine... The stress is on orthopraxy, not orthodoxy. Accordingly, discussions of indigenous notions of the soul in insular Southeast Asia rarely center on philosophical doctrine. Rather, local practitioners tend to emphasize ritual obligations to souls at various points in time, enumerating the requisite rites to aid souls in their afterlife journeys (cf. Fox 1973; Weinstock 1987). This essay is broadly concerned with the relationship between such amorphous practice-centered indigenous conceptions of soul and subsequently-introduced Christian metaphysical propositions. Recently, Indonesianists studying processes of relgious transformation have prompted us to recognize the dynamic interplay between world religions, national politics, and indigenous religions (cf. Atkinson 1983; Kipp and Rodgers 1987). Atkinson (1983), for instance, has elegantly demonstrated how the construction of the Central Sulawesi Wana is rooted in a dialogue with both world religions and nationalist Indonesian civil religion. In a similar vein, Hoskins (1987) illustrates how the redefinition of Sumbanese spirit worship as a religion resulted from exposure to the doctrine of the Christian church and the Indonesian government. On Sumba, what was once a system of ritual practices and regulations became transformed into a system of beliefs. Taking such notions of religions in dialogue as a starting point, this essay examines indigenous and Christian conceptions of the soul among the Sa'dan Toraja of upland Sulawesi. While Hoskins and Atkinson give more attention to the influence of world religions and national politics on local belief systems, my major focus in this paper is on the other side of the dialogue. That is, I am particularly concerned with the ways in which Christian Torajans incorporate and reformulate indigenous conceptions of the soul. Ranger (1987:183) has stressed the ironic aspect of African Christianity, noting that the dialectic between local religions and Christianity evolves in ways that confound both missionary and indigenous expectations. In this essay I examine how, for Christian Torajans, indigenous and Christian notions of soul not only coexist, but intermingle and at times compete. This essay begins with a discussion of the indigenous Torajan conception of the soul. One should note, however, that several factors have encouraged a more formal elaboration of their notions of soul. These factors include Torajan exposure to doctrine-centered world religions, the Indonesian government's 1969 recognition of Torajan Aluk to dolo as an official religion, and the queries of anthropologists and tourists visiting the Toraja highlands. After examining indigenous notions of the soul, I contrast these with the Dutch Reformed Church's vision of the soul. The final section addresses lay Christian Torajans' approach to the concept, and suggests that there is a discernable pattern to those indigenous ideas about the soul that persist. ETHNOGRAPHIC BACKGROUND The Sa'dan Toraja people are primarily wet-rice farmers inhabiting mountaninous Tana Toraja Regency in the province of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Most Torajans speak both Tae' Toraja, an Austronesian language closely related to other South Sulawesi languages (Mills 1975), and the national lingua franca of Bahasa Indonesia. In a multi-ethnic nation of 185 million people, the Toraja are a minority group numbering approximately 350,000. Torajan society is hierarchically organized on the basis of age, descent, occupation, and wealth. Traditionally there were three basic ranks: the aristocracy (to parengnge'); commoners (to buda, to sama); and serfs or slaves (kaunan). …