Seeds of Play, Words of Power: an ethnographic study of Iban shamanic chants. (Reviews).

Alexander, Jennifer

By Clifford Sather

Kuala Lumpur: Tun Jugah Foundation in cooperation with the Borneo Research Council. 2001

Pp. xvii +753

Price: US $49. RM95 pb RM120 hb

This treatise on Ibanic shamanic songs and their role in traditional Iban healing is based on intensive and extensive research spanning several decades. The songs (leka pelian) are the core part of the rituals performed by Iban shamans (manang) which are intended to recover wayward souls, cultivate the human plant image, create protective spirit-barriers, slay spirits, or promote a fitting separation between the living and the dead. This meticulous work is the highlight of the already extensive shamanic literature on Borneo, providing a comprehensive and illuminating analysis of an absorbing topic.

In the first eight chapters, Sather provides the cultural context of the shamanic chants (leka pelian); the staging, structure, and performance of the pelian is described in fine detail. The starting point for his analysis is the observation that what was often seen as incomprehensible by earlier observers who were not fluent in Iban, can often be explained by close attention to the texts. Contrary to assumptions by classic social anthropologists who were seldom fluent in indigenous languages, a knowledge of the text illuminates the performance of the manang and enables observers to understand the ritual and its significance. Sather clearly distinguishes three major categories of Iban ritual performers: shamans (manang), bards (lelembang) and soul guides (tukang sabak). A crucial feature of the predominantly male Iban shaman is that he performs pelian. Unlike the shamans of Eliade's well known classification, manang do not become possessed by the spirits but remain autonomous agents communing with the spirits .

In the following chapters of the introductory section, Sather explores the nature, significance and lengthy process of becoming a manang, and contextualises notions of illness and health within Iban concepts of personhood. In more analytical mode, he delves deeply into the esoteric: the symbolic and metaphorical representations of the 'journey' and the cosmos contained in the leka pelian. Chapters 5 and 6 examine the curing ceremony and the use of longhouse space during a pelian ritual. The final two chapters of the first section are devoted to an analysis of the song texts, conventions of presentation, and the efficacy of performances. These eight chapters are neatly contained within a little over 200 pages, about the ideal length for a modern academic text.

The bulk of the book, however, is the other nine chapters which describe nine specific pelian rituals. Each includes the Iban text version, with interlinear glosses, and English translations, supplemented by occasional passages contextualizing the songs. All bar one chapter are based on live performances and include Pelian Ngambi' Semengat Baruh Jerangku Kara' (To Recover the Soul from Under the Roots of the Kere' Tree), a simple ritual performed to capture a lost soul, and Pelian Beserara Bunga (Severing the Flower), a rite to mark the end of mourning. The Gawai Betawai, the longest and most complex pelian is based on a reconstructed account as the actual ritual has not been performed since the mid-1940s. A group of shamans under direction from a leader and with the occasional assistance of bards performed this rite usually for a chronically ill child who had failed to respond to previous means of healing. Even for someone with little knowledge of Iban, reading aloud a few lines of the text provides a powerf ul representation of the rhythm and rhyme of the verse songs. The interlinear gloss will be of particular interest to linguists and the English translation supplies images of peculiarly Ibanic ideas, philosophy, legends and oral history. To round off the study Sather adds a glossary, and three appendices, one by the musicologist Patricia Matusky on the musical elements of the Pelian.

This first, 'introductory' part of this work is essential reading for everyone with an interest in Borneo and in my view could stand alone as a work of broad general appeal. However, in the interests of focussing attention on the texts and the translation, the author has chosen to incorporate them in the same book. This makes for a somewhat bulky volume, in which the latter part is designed to appeal both to a more esoteric audience with a highly developed interest in textual presentation, as well as current and future generations of Iban. I found Sather's description and analysis of Iban shamanic rituals helped me understand similar events I witnessed among other indigenous groups in Sarawak who lack similar records of their oral traditions. The author has played a particularly prominent role in stimulating indigenous Sarawakians to record, transcribe and analyse their epic poems, stories, myths and legends which are rapidly disappearing under the onslaught of modernity and Christianity.

Seeds of Play, Words of Power: an ethnographic study of Iban shamanic chants, is a fine example of scholarship and ethnographic research, and a tribute to the Ibanic people of Sarawak.