Saturday, August 31, 2013
Friday, January 21, 2011
SF launch of two great books on Philippine culture
I've known Virgil since I launched my own first book, The Naga Race, back in 1994. He helped me promote my book and I contributed a section to a book on the Philippine healing of which he was the lead author.
Way of the Ancient Healer is the first Virgil's first solo book and it offers a really thorough study of the many types of indigenous healing systems that exist in the Philippines. The types of therapies range from the purely spiritual to methods based on manipulation of the body and the systematic use of herbal medicines.
While the Virgil's previous work dealt more with the ins and outs of actual healing, Way of the Ancient Healer is more focused on the sacred realm of Philippine healing traditions. The healer was also a mystic, shaman, medium and prognosticator. The idea of classicism was virtually absent in local traditions, which were instead very syncretic and synthetic readily incorporating new ideas so long as they appeared to work.
Virgil comes from a long line of indigenous healers and he has studied with many of the world's most noted teachers of ancient traditions.
The famed guru and public speaker, Dr. Deepak Chopra says of Virgil's book:
"In Way of the Ancient Healer, Virgil Mayor Apostol brilliantly blends the art and science of the sacred teachings of Filipino traditional healing to help people find their path toward health and happiness."
I met Lane Wilcken first over the Internet not too long after the publication of my first book. Lane was just starting to prepare his book on Filipino tattoos and I referred him to Virgil who comes from northern Luzon where the tattooing tradition survives to this day.
Lane did a tremendous amount of research for Filipino Tattoos Ancient and Modern venturing deep into the mountains of northern Luzon to meet the last traditional tattoo master from those parts.
Filipino Tattoos Ancient and Modern is destined to become the premier work on Filipino tattoo tradition as no earlier work has taken on the subject in any thorough detail. Lane's book will give readers a deep understanding of tattoo symbols and the cultural and spiritual underpinnings of the tradition.
Lane also does a marvelous job of linking the tattoos of the Philippines with those of the wider Austronesian cultures of which the Philippines belongs.
Both Virgil and Lane will be at the event on Saturday to sign books and to discuss these topics with participants.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Father Christmas and the Green Man
With the holiday season upon us, it's a great time to investigate the possible connections of Father Christmas with the Green Man.
The idea of the link between Father Christmas, linked with the Yuletide or Winter Solstice, and the Green Man of art and architecture has been explored since at least the time of Lady Raglan in 1939. Father Christmas is traditionally depicted with crowns or other ornaments of holly, ivy and mistletoe and often dressed in green robes.
Green Man
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20040310163133/http://www.lincsheritage.org/lincs/misc/green-man.html
The Green Knight of medieval literature -- often equated with the artistic Green Man -- had a Winter Solstice connection. He scheduled his rematch with Sir Gawain on the shortest day of the year. Interestingly, in the first contest between the two, the Green Knight's head was cut off by Gawain but with surprising results. The headless body of the Green Knight retrieved the head, which offered the winter challenge to Gawain before body and head went on their way together.
The head cult perspective offers an obvious link with the foliate head of the Green Man depicted in art.
Victorian drawing of Father Christmas from a copy of Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol with green robe and foliate crown.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scrooges_third_visitor-John_Leech,1843.jpg
If we go back to the Tantric connections suggested for the Green Man here, we can find in the Kabbalah the idea of a father figure known as Abba, which means "father" in Hebrew. This Abba is related to the male principle of creation. He is paired with Imma, meaning "mother" in Hebrew, the female principle.
While Judaism disdained anthropomorphic icons, Abba and Imma were described in the texts as mated in divine union resulting in the generation of progeny or creation. Abba can be equated with Adam Kadmon, the primordial man. The divine union of Abba and Imma is similar in many respects to that of the Tibetan concept of Yabyum. Yab also means "father" in Tibetan, while Yum means "mother." The Yabyum depiction of deities in Tibetan art shows a male and female deity in sexual union. The literary references to Abba and Imma are also quite sexually explicit in their description of the cosmic union.
Despite the taboo against iconography, Abba was still meditated upon in the sense of his Partzufim or "face." The Kabbalistic practitioner concentrated on the divine face of Abba and other forms of the creative male principle, particularly focusing on the massive beard. According to some interpretations, by concentrating on the face of Abba and traveling along the hairs of his beard, one achieves unity with the Divine Image. The similarity with Tantric visualization of the deity is striking.
Also, the aspect of meditating on the face brings us back to the head cult, i.e., in the Green Knight example, and to the "face motif" discussed here earlier in connection with the Green Man.
Non-religious depiction of the head of Adam Kadmon, who himself is seen as a form of the Tree of Life.
Source: http://img2.allposters.com/images/BRGPOD/202525.jpg
Although I have not found a direct solstice link with Abba and Imma, the erotic union of the two, or rather the union of their "faces," is considered to have generated the ten Sephirot of the Sefer Yetzirah "tree."
Abba, along with other forms of the male principle, are also directly seen as types of the Sun, while Imma and the female principle including the Shekinah were seen as types of the Moon. The Partzufim or faces motif blends quite well with this linkage to the celestial luminaries.
Like Abba, Father Christmas has a full beard while the Green Man has vegetation spewing from his mouth. In all these cases, the representation may be that of the generative powers of the Sun.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
The idea of the link between Father Christmas, linked with the Yuletide or Winter Solstice, and the Green Man of art and architecture has been explored since at least the time of Lady Raglan in 1939. Father Christmas is traditionally depicted with crowns or other ornaments of holly, ivy and mistletoe and often dressed in green robes.
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20040310163133/http://www.lincsheritage.org/lincs/misc/green-man.html
The Green Knight of medieval literature -- often equated with the artistic Green Man -- had a Winter Solstice connection. He scheduled his rematch with Sir Gawain on the shortest day of the year. Interestingly, in the first contest between the two, the Green Knight's head was cut off by Gawain but with surprising results. The headless body of the Green Knight retrieved the head, which offered the winter challenge to Gawain before body and head went on their way together.
The head cult perspective offers an obvious link with the foliate head of the Green Man depicted in art.
Victorian drawing of Father Christmas from a copy of Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol with green robe and foliate crown.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scrooges_third_visitor-John_Leech,1843.jpg
If we go back to the Tantric connections suggested for the Green Man here, we can find in the Kabbalah the idea of a father figure known as Abba, which means "father" in Hebrew. This Abba is related to the male principle of creation. He is paired with Imma, meaning "mother" in Hebrew, the female principle.
While Judaism disdained anthropomorphic icons, Abba and Imma were described in the texts as mated in divine union resulting in the generation of progeny or creation. Abba can be equated with Adam Kadmon, the primordial man. The divine union of Abba and Imma is similar in many respects to that of the Tibetan concept of Yabyum. Yab also means "father" in Tibetan, while Yum means "mother." The Yabyum depiction of deities in Tibetan art shows a male and female deity in sexual union. The literary references to Abba and Imma are also quite sexually explicit in their description of the cosmic union.
Despite the taboo against iconography, Abba was still meditated upon in the sense of his Partzufim or "face." The Kabbalistic practitioner concentrated on the divine face of Abba and other forms of the creative male principle, particularly focusing on the massive beard. According to some interpretations, by concentrating on the face of Abba and traveling along the hairs of his beard, one achieves unity with the Divine Image. The similarity with Tantric visualization of the deity is striking.
Also, the aspect of meditating on the face brings us back to the head cult, i.e., in the Green Knight example, and to the "face motif" discussed here earlier in connection with the Green Man.
Non-religious depiction of the head of Adam Kadmon, who himself is seen as a form of the Tree of Life.
Source: http://img2.allposters.com/images/BRGPOD/202525.jpg
Although I have not found a direct solstice link with Abba and Imma, the erotic union of the two, or rather the union of their "faces," is considered to have generated the ten Sephirot of the Sefer Yetzirah "tree."
Abba, along with other forms of the male principle, are also directly seen as types of the Sun, while Imma and the female principle including the Shekinah were seen as types of the Moon. The Partzufim or faces motif blends quite well with this linkage to the celestial luminaries.
Like Abba, Father Christmas has a full beard while the Green Man has vegetation spewing from his mouth. In all these cases, the representation may be that of the generative powers of the Sun.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
Sunday, September 12, 2010
More on migration of Tantric concepts
In 1977, the anthroposophist Pio Filippani-Ronconi suggested that elements of Ismaili Shi'ism appeared to have originated from the Vajrayana Tantric Buddhist doctrine in Tibet. Specifically he compared the Vajrayana system of the five Dhyani Buddhas, also called Jinas and Tathagatas, to the Holy Family of Islamic mysticism -- the Five of the Mantle. Indeed, one could favorably compare many elements, particularly in the areas of cosmology and numerology, within the Tibetan and Islamic mystical traditions, and furthermore extend these westward to the Kabbalistic traditions.
The five Dhyani Buddhas are transcendental enlightened beings (Buddhas) as compared to their earthly, human counterparts known as Manusa Buddhas. Each of the Dhyani Buddhas is linked with a specific cosmic time cycle, and also with a "family" of beings and attributes. The five-fold division of the cosmos in line with the Dhyani Buddhas recalls the Wuxing classification in China, but we will not pursue that lead in this article.
Dhyani Buddhas are particularly associated with the five primary colors -- white, blue, red, gold/yellow, and green.
In Islamic mystic tradition, the Five of the Mantle (or Cloak) -- Muhammad; his daughter Fatima, her husband 'Ali; and the couple's sons al-Hasan and al-Husayn -- become primordial, transcendental beings in Twelver Shi'ism. They are said to have existed before Creation and are linked with successive cosmic cycles in a manner remarkably similar to that of the Dhyani Buddhas. Additionally, the five are associated with the "Five Lights" or "Five Colors" a reference to the human incarnations of these transcendental beings.
In Tibetan Buddhism, the five Dhyani Buddhas are combined with a sixth being -- the Adibuddha -- representing the pantheistic totality of the group. Similarly in Islamic mystical tradition, the angel Gabriel becomes the "sixth of you five," which Henry Corbin describes as the "uni-totality" of the pentad. In both the Tibetan and Islamic systems, this sixth member is associated with the element of the mind, as Vajrasattva (manas "mind") in the case of the Adibuddha, and as the Ruh Natiqa or "Thinking Spirit" in the Ismaili tradition.
Body of Light
The association of the Dhyani Buddhas and the Five of the Mantle with the five colors links conceptually with the belief found in both schools that spiritual adepts can attain a "body of light."
In the Dzogchen and Bonpo traditions of Tibet, this is known as the Rainbow Body or the Rainbow Light Body. Upon the attainment of the highest yogic plane before death, the yogi dissolves into the "Five Pure Lights," i.e., the five primary colors of the rainbow achieving union with the Dharmakaya, the pantheistic godstuff.
The Sufi "body of light" or "resurrection body" is attained by the adept who completes a sacred itinerary that is generally thought of as imaginal in nature. Actually the final part of the journey is that in which the devotee travels to union with the Divine in this subtle body of light.
The Inner and Outer Journey
Both the Tibetan and Islamic mystical traditions include concepts of a pilgrimage that the adept undertakes to attain spiritual transformation.
In the Tibetan case, there are clearly both real world along with imaginal sides to this tradition. The pilgrimage sites are real places that have been traditionally used as such including Kamarupa in Assam, the Gondavari River in South India, and the Himalayan range in Nepal and Tibet. The only really exotic destination is Suvarnadvipa, which also happens to be a key location in this blog's research.
The Tibetan pilgrimage sites are divided into five major groups -- the pitthas, ksetras, chandohas, melapakas and smasanas -- and these are further subdivided by adding the prefix upa- to each major group. Thus there are five groups of pilgrimage sites, ten in all including subgroups, that are said to correspond also to ten parts of the human body:
Suvarnadvipa is included in the group known as the upamelapakas, which are associated with the feet and the calves. According to Jamgon Kongtrul, the inner journey of transformation begins interestingly enough from the head and then moves downward toward the feet. Suvarnadvipa is found at the eighth stage of awakening and is associated with the sacred ground known as the "Higher Gathering Place." The sacred grounds of the ninth and tenth stages are known respectively as "Cemetery" and "Higher Cemetery" suggesting that the adept is already passed on beyond this life.
The Sufi and Shi'a sacred journey is represented by the journey of the birds to the East toward Mt. Qaf, the eighth mountain in a system that consists of either nine or ten stages. The birds never proceed beyond Qaf, which is known as the Footstool of God, for the next stages take the adept to the very Throne of God.
For the Sufi mystics also, the inner itinerary begins from the top, starting in the eyes according to al-Kubra then moving down into the face, the chest, and then the rest of the body. Like Suvarnadvipa, the eighth stage of the Tantric pilgrimage, Mt. Qaf, the eighth sphere, was located in the furthest East. Abassid tradition places it "behind," i.e. on the other side of the China Sea.
Kabbalah echoes
The Zohar, the central text of Kabbalah that dates back to 13th century Spain, also emphasizes a journey, mainly spiritual in nature, that the practitioner undertakes to reach Gan Eden -- the Garden of Eden, also known as Pardes. There are actually two Garden of Edens -- a heavenly one that one attains to after death, and an earthly garden where the Shekinah is exiled.
The Shekinah is the female aspect of the Divine that remained in the Terrestrial Paradise after the banishment of humanity. The Kabbalah adepts seek to rejoin the Shekinah via a sacred pilgrimage to the primordial garden through mystical paths known as Sephirot. The Sephirot were likened to the organs of the human body, specifically that of Adam Kadmon, the Primordial Man.
The Sephirot shown in a traditional diagram. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tree_of_life_hebrew.svg)
From Wikipedia: "Metaphorical representation of the Five Worlds, with the 10 Sephirot radiating in each, as successively smaller Iggulim-concentric circles."
At the top of the body is the first Sephira, Keter, the crown of the head, while the tenth and last Sephira corresponding to Gan Eden is Malkuth, which also represents the feet of Adam Kadmon. The Hebrew term malkuth is related to the malakut of Islamic mysticism with both words referring to the "realm of kings," an area on the border of the earthly and heavenly regions.
Although the sacred journey of Kabbalah was an inner one, the belief in a real world Gan Eden did exist. According to medieval documents like the Hebrew letters of Prester John, the location of Gan Eden was 'India ha-gedolah or "Further India," the same area where one finds the Sambatyon River and the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel.
Evidence exists that at least some medieval Kabbalists undertook real journeys to these far-off locations. For example, Abraham Abulafia attempted to find the Sambatyon River with the idea that he could help the world along toward the end times, but also to help undo the "knots" that hindered his own spiritual development.
Echoes in the East
Suvarnadvipa (Island of Gold) in the Tibetan version of the spiritual itinerary would equate with the locations of Qaf and Gan Eden in the respective Islamic and Kabbalah traditions. As I have argued often here, the Ming Dynasty kingdom known as Lusung (Luzon) was the political and cultural heir to Suvarnadvipa and located in the same geographical political center.
Here we can still find the concept of cyclic and generational time represented in the image of a human body divided into five parts. The body thus divided could represent five generations of a clan, and also the cycles of regeneration and reincarnation that existed in the previous belief systems.
I have also suggested previously that the sacred lands of Lusung were apparently divided in a quadripartite fashion based on the imagery of the human body. Thus, we have place names like Olongapo or Ulo ng Apo "Head of the Lord."
Another example of the human form representing the cosmos or at least the Earth can be seen in the Tausug house architecture that interlinks Earth, tree, house and human body.
A diagram of a traditional pentagonal Tausug house made with nine posts that create an outline of a human body in the well-known squatting figure motif. The tree acts as the umbilical cord of the Mother Earth extended by a rope tied to a central post. After nine months, the period of human gestation, the rope is cut. (Sources http://media.photobucket.com/image/tausug%20nine%20square%20house%20numbers/kharl_prado/tausug.jpg)
The house with it's symbolic human figure represents the "child" of the Earth and thus is a copy of the world in microcosm. While the oldest form of the Austronesian house had four corner posts, a central post is often added symbolically to represent the center of the world. Thus, the five posts create an imagery of the cosmos. In the Austronesian scheme of the base, trunk and tip, the base of the house is the bottom and thus one travels back to the "source" by going from top to bottom.
In another sense, the mythical family of Pinatubo and Arayat can be compared to the Holy Family of the Mantle in Islamic tradition. In the local folk legends, this family is often represented with five members, for example, Sinukuan and his spouse and their three daughters. However, an extensive review of the traditions would allow us to logically reconstruct the family as consisting of the two deities of Pinatubo and Arayat, standing for the Moon and Sun respectively; a single child for each of these deities, more connected with the Earth, who are involved in a battle-courtship; and the offspring of the latter who again has an astronomical relationship representing Venus, the Morning Star.
Islamic mystical tradition normally equates Muhammad with the Sun; 'Ali with the Moon; Fatima with Venus; while the al-Hasan and al-Husayn are sometimes equated with the pole stars. The emphasis on the luminaries and Venus to the exclusion of the other planets is quite telling. The astronomical links here are clearly associated with the association of these "families" with cyclic time.
We also hear of widespread beliefs surrounding the rainbow in the Philippine region . In some cases, the rainbow was equated with the Supreme Deity, while elsewhere it is seen as the abode of God or the gods. Sometimes it is viewed as a bridge or boat by which one reaches the Divine after death. There was a belief that people who died a noble death by the sword, or who were devoured by crocodiles, or struck by lightning, became anitos (deified spirits) and were united with the pantheistic Deity in the rainbow, or through the vehicle of the rainbow.
In Pampanga, the pantheistic nature of the rainbow can be seen in its name pinanari "loincloth of the King" with the "king" here probably referring to the creative force Mangetchay.
Concepts of transformation are also included in the practice of obtaining a mutya, although in this case the transformation involves those still living on earth. Mutya refers to a pearl or gem that shines and radiates light. Grace Odal-Devora states: "...the inherent powers and virtues of the various mutya objects can be the basis for conceptualizing on the nature of the self – that starts from discovering the innate powers and inherent virtues within and using them to transform oneself and one’s society – like the transformation of the pearl from slime, mud, sand or dirt into a gem of light, beauty, healing and purity."
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Cooper, David A. The Ecstatic Kabbalah. Boulder, Colo: Sounds True, 2005.
Corbin, Henry. Cyclical time and Ismaili Gnosis, http://www.amiscorbin.com/textes/anglais/Corbin%20Cyclical%20Time.pdf.
Idel, Moshe. Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah. SUNY series in Judaica. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988.
Karma-gliṅ-pa, and W. Y. Evans-Wentz. The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Or, The After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane, According to Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup's English Rendering. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Katz, Nathan. Indo-Judaic Studies in the Twenty-First Century: A View from the Margin. New York: Palgrave Mac Millan, 2007, 64-5.
Merkur, Daniel. Gnosis: an esoteric tradition of mystical visions and unions. SUNY series in Western esoteric traditions. Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press, 1993, 217-245.
Odal-Devora, Grace. 2006. Some problems in determining the origin of the Philippine word "mutya" or "mutia." Paper presented at Tenth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics. 1720 January 2006. Puerto Princesa City, Palawan, Philippines. http://www.sil.org/asia/philippines/ical/papers.html.
Reyes y Florentino, Isabelo de los. Notes in order to familiarize myself with Philippine theodicy : the religion of the Katipunan which is the religion of the ancient Filipinos, National Historical Institute, 1980, 4, 6.
Sakili, Abraham P. Space and Identity: Expressions in the Culture, Arts and Society of the Muslims in the Philippines. Diliman, Quezon City: Asian Center, University of the Philippines, 2003.
Silliman, Robert Benton. Religious Beliefs and Life at the Beginning of the Spanish Regime in the Philippines: Readings. Dumaguete City, Philippines: Reproduced by College of Theology, Silliman University, 1964.
Wallace, Vesna A. The Inner Kālacakratantra A Buddhist Tantric View of the Individual. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Zangpo, Ngawang, and Blo-gros-mtha'-yas. Sacred Ground: Jamgon Kongtrul on "Pilgrimage and Sacred Geography". Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion Publ, 2001.
The five Dhyani Buddhas are transcendental enlightened beings (Buddhas) as compared to their earthly, human counterparts known as Manusa Buddhas. Each of the Dhyani Buddhas is linked with a specific cosmic time cycle, and also with a "family" of beings and attributes. The five-fold division of the cosmos in line with the Dhyani Buddhas recalls the Wuxing classification in China, but we will not pursue that lead in this article.
Dhyani Buddhas are particularly associated with the five primary colors -- white, blue, red, gold/yellow, and green.
In Islamic mystic tradition, the Five of the Mantle (or Cloak) -- Muhammad; his daughter Fatima, her husband 'Ali; and the couple's sons al-Hasan and al-Husayn -- become primordial, transcendental beings in Twelver Shi'ism. They are said to have existed before Creation and are linked with successive cosmic cycles in a manner remarkably similar to that of the Dhyani Buddhas. Additionally, the five are associated with the "Five Lights" or "Five Colors" a reference to the human incarnations of these transcendental beings.
In Tibetan Buddhism, the five Dhyani Buddhas are combined with a sixth being -- the Adibuddha -- representing the pantheistic totality of the group. Similarly in Islamic mystical tradition, the angel Gabriel becomes the "sixth of you five," which Henry Corbin describes as the "uni-totality" of the pentad. In both the Tibetan and Islamic systems, this sixth member is associated with the element of the mind, as Vajrasattva (manas "mind") in the case of the Adibuddha, and as the Ruh Natiqa or "Thinking Spirit" in the Ismaili tradition.
Body of Light
The association of the Dhyani Buddhas and the Five of the Mantle with the five colors links conceptually with the belief found in both schools that spiritual adepts can attain a "body of light."
In the Dzogchen and Bonpo traditions of Tibet, this is known as the Rainbow Body or the Rainbow Light Body. Upon the attainment of the highest yogic plane before death, the yogi dissolves into the "Five Pure Lights," i.e., the five primary colors of the rainbow achieving union with the Dharmakaya, the pantheistic godstuff.
The Sufi "body of light" or "resurrection body" is attained by the adept who completes a sacred itinerary that is generally thought of as imaginal in nature. Actually the final part of the journey is that in which the devotee travels to union with the Divine in this subtle body of light.
The Inner and Outer Journey
Both the Tibetan and Islamic mystical traditions include concepts of a pilgrimage that the adept undertakes to attain spiritual transformation.
In the Tibetan case, there are clearly both real world along with imaginal sides to this tradition. The pilgrimage sites are real places that have been traditionally used as such including Kamarupa in Assam, the Gondavari River in South India, and the Himalayan range in Nepal and Tibet. The only really exotic destination is Suvarnadvipa, which also happens to be a key location in this blog's research.
The Tibetan pilgrimage sites are divided into five major groups -- the pitthas, ksetras, chandohas, melapakas and smasanas -- and these are further subdivided by adding the prefix upa- to each major group. Thus there are five groups of pilgrimage sites, ten in all including subgroups, that are said to correspond also to ten parts of the human body:
Suvarnadvipa is included in the group known as the upamelapakas, which are associated with the feet and the calves. According to Jamgon Kongtrul, the inner journey of transformation begins interestingly enough from the head and then moves downward toward the feet. Suvarnadvipa is found at the eighth stage of awakening and is associated with the sacred ground known as the "Higher Gathering Place." The sacred grounds of the ninth and tenth stages are known respectively as "Cemetery" and "Higher Cemetery" suggesting that the adept is already passed on beyond this life.
The Sufi and Shi'a sacred journey is represented by the journey of the birds to the East toward Mt. Qaf, the eighth mountain in a system that consists of either nine or ten stages. The birds never proceed beyond Qaf, which is known as the Footstool of God, for the next stages take the adept to the very Throne of God.
For the Sufi mystics also, the inner itinerary begins from the top, starting in the eyes according to al-Kubra then moving down into the face, the chest, and then the rest of the body. Like Suvarnadvipa, the eighth stage of the Tantric pilgrimage, Mt. Qaf, the eighth sphere, was located in the furthest East. Abassid tradition places it "behind," i.e. on the other side of the China Sea.
Kabbalah echoes
The Zohar, the central text of Kabbalah that dates back to 13th century Spain, also emphasizes a journey, mainly spiritual in nature, that the practitioner undertakes to reach Gan Eden -- the Garden of Eden, also known as Pardes. There are actually two Garden of Edens -- a heavenly one that one attains to after death, and an earthly garden where the Shekinah is exiled.
The Shekinah is the female aspect of the Divine that remained in the Terrestrial Paradise after the banishment of humanity. The Kabbalah adepts seek to rejoin the Shekinah via a sacred pilgrimage to the primordial garden through mystical paths known as Sephirot. The Sephirot were likened to the organs of the human body, specifically that of Adam Kadmon, the Primordial Man.
The Sephirot shown in a traditional diagram. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tree_of_life_hebrew.svg)
From Wikipedia: "Metaphorical representation of the Five Worlds, with the 10 Sephirot radiating in each, as successively smaller Iggulim-concentric circles."
At the top of the body is the first Sephira, Keter, the crown of the head, while the tenth and last Sephira corresponding to Gan Eden is Malkuth, which also represents the feet of Adam Kadmon. The Hebrew term malkuth is related to the malakut of Islamic mysticism with both words referring to the "realm of kings," an area on the border of the earthly and heavenly regions.
Although the sacred journey of Kabbalah was an inner one, the belief in a real world Gan Eden did exist. According to medieval documents like the Hebrew letters of Prester John, the location of Gan Eden was 'India ha-gedolah or "Further India," the same area where one finds the Sambatyon River and the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel.
Evidence exists that at least some medieval Kabbalists undertook real journeys to these far-off locations. For example, Abraham Abulafia attempted to find the Sambatyon River with the idea that he could help the world along toward the end times, but also to help undo the "knots" that hindered his own spiritual development.
Echoes in the East
Suvarnadvipa (Island of Gold) in the Tibetan version of the spiritual itinerary would equate with the locations of Qaf and Gan Eden in the respective Islamic and Kabbalah traditions. As I have argued often here, the Ming Dynasty kingdom known as Lusung (Luzon) was the political and cultural heir to Suvarnadvipa and located in the same geographical political center.
Here we can still find the concept of cyclic and generational time represented in the image of a human body divided into five parts. The body thus divided could represent five generations of a clan, and also the cycles of regeneration and reincarnation that existed in the previous belief systems.
I have also suggested previously that the sacred lands of Lusung were apparently divided in a quadripartite fashion based on the imagery of the human body. Thus, we have place names like Olongapo or Ulo ng Apo "Head of the Lord."
Another example of the human form representing the cosmos or at least the Earth can be seen in the Tausug house architecture that interlinks Earth, tree, house and human body.
A diagram of a traditional pentagonal Tausug house made with nine posts that create an outline of a human body in the well-known squatting figure motif. The tree acts as the umbilical cord of the Mother Earth extended by a rope tied to a central post. After nine months, the period of human gestation, the rope is cut. (Sources http://media.photobucket.com/image/tausug%20nine%20square%20house%20numbers/kharl_prado/tausug.jpg)
The house with it's symbolic human figure represents the "child" of the Earth and thus is a copy of the world in microcosm. While the oldest form of the Austronesian house had four corner posts, a central post is often added symbolically to represent the center of the world. Thus, the five posts create an imagery of the cosmos. In the Austronesian scheme of the base, trunk and tip, the base of the house is the bottom and thus one travels back to the "source" by going from top to bottom.
In another sense, the mythical family of Pinatubo and Arayat can be compared to the Holy Family of the Mantle in Islamic tradition. In the local folk legends, this family is often represented with five members, for example, Sinukuan and his spouse and their three daughters. However, an extensive review of the traditions would allow us to logically reconstruct the family as consisting of the two deities of Pinatubo and Arayat, standing for the Moon and Sun respectively; a single child for each of these deities, more connected with the Earth, who are involved in a battle-courtship; and the offspring of the latter who again has an astronomical relationship representing Venus, the Morning Star.
Islamic mystical tradition normally equates Muhammad with the Sun; 'Ali with the Moon; Fatima with Venus; while the al-Hasan and al-Husayn are sometimes equated with the pole stars. The emphasis on the luminaries and Venus to the exclusion of the other planets is quite telling. The astronomical links here are clearly associated with the association of these "families" with cyclic time.
We also hear of widespread beliefs surrounding the rainbow in the Philippine region . In some cases, the rainbow was equated with the Supreme Deity, while elsewhere it is seen as the abode of God or the gods. Sometimes it is viewed as a bridge or boat by which one reaches the Divine after death. There was a belief that people who died a noble death by the sword, or who were devoured by crocodiles, or struck by lightning, became anitos (deified spirits) and were united with the pantheistic Deity in the rainbow, or through the vehicle of the rainbow.
In Pampanga, the pantheistic nature of the rainbow can be seen in its name pinanari "loincloth of the King" with the "king" here probably referring to the creative force Mangetchay.
Concepts of transformation are also included in the practice of obtaining a mutya, although in this case the transformation involves those still living on earth. Mutya refers to a pearl or gem that shines and radiates light. Grace Odal-Devora states: "...the inherent powers and virtues of the various mutya objects can be the basis for conceptualizing on the nature of the self – that starts from discovering the innate powers and inherent virtues within and using them to transform oneself and one’s society – like the transformation of the pearl from slime, mud, sand or dirt into a gem of light, beauty, healing and purity."
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Cooper, David A. The Ecstatic Kabbalah. Boulder, Colo: Sounds True, 2005.
Corbin, Henry. Cyclical time and Ismaili Gnosis, http://www.amiscorbin.com/textes/anglais/Corbin%20Cyclical%20Time.pdf.
Idel, Moshe. Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah. SUNY series in Judaica. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988.
Karma-gliṅ-pa, and W. Y. Evans-Wentz. The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Or, The After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane, According to Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup's English Rendering. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Katz, Nathan. Indo-Judaic Studies in the Twenty-First Century: A View from the Margin. New York: Palgrave Mac Millan, 2007, 64-5.
Merkur, Daniel. Gnosis: an esoteric tradition of mystical visions and unions. SUNY series in Western esoteric traditions. Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press, 1993, 217-245.
Odal-Devora, Grace. 2006. Some problems in determining the origin of the Philippine word "mutya" or "mutia." Paper presented at Tenth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics. 1720 January 2006. Puerto Princesa City, Palawan, Philippines. http://www.sil.org/asia/philippines/ical/papers.html.
Reyes y Florentino, Isabelo de los. Notes in order to familiarize myself with Philippine theodicy : the religion of the Katipunan which is the religion of the ancient Filipinos, National Historical Institute, 1980, 4, 6.
Sakili, Abraham P. Space and Identity: Expressions in the Culture, Arts and Society of the Muslims in the Philippines. Diliman, Quezon City: Asian Center, University of the Philippines, 2003.
Silliman, Robert Benton. Religious Beliefs and Life at the Beginning of the Spanish Regime in the Philippines: Readings. Dumaguete City, Philippines: Reproduced by College of Theology, Silliman University, 1964.
Wallace, Vesna A. The Inner Kālacakratantra A Buddhist Tantric View of the Individual. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Zangpo, Ngawang, and Blo-gros-mtha'-yas
Saturday, September 04, 2010
The Christian Buddha
Returning over the next few blog posts to the theme of the migration of Tantric elements from South and Southeast Asia across the Muslim world into Europe, probably the most noteworthy literary evidence of this transmission of ideas comes in the story of Barlaam and Josaphat.
The Sayabiga, I have suggested in this blog, played an important role in the transmission of Tantric ideas, as they migrated along the trade routes seemingly always accompanied for some reason by another group known as the Zutt (Jats). The Sayabiga originally came from Zabag (Suvarnadvipa) and the king of that country had a great interest in reaching out to far-off kingdoms. During the Pala dynasty, we hear of Serlingpa, a prince of Suvarnadvipa, bringing a number of Tantric texts including the abridged Kalacakra Tantra from Shamhbala, which can thus be equated with Suvarnadvipa. Even earlier, this same regional king, who was known by Muslims as the Mihraj, had sent correspondence to the Umayyad caliphs Mu'awiyah and Umar ibn abd al-Aziz.
Along the trade routes, the merchants and seafarers of Zabag had absorbed Tantric Buddhist and Muslim, mostly Shiite, influences. In Europe, I have suggested that Sayabiga settled in the areas of the rice fields of Valencia with their tidal rice and fishing culture based on the tropical Japonica rice strain. Some of these Sayabiga may have dispersed along the pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela in connection with the people known as Agotes and Cagots.
The Legend of Barlaam and Josaphat
Two important texts were transmitted into Europe from the East during the Romanesque period. These were the books known as the Legend of Barlaam and Josaphat and the European versions of the Arabic Kalilah wa Dimnah, based on the Sanskrit Panchatantra.
The Barlaam legend contains the story of the cattari-pubba-nimattani, the "four signs" of the Buddha. In the story, the Indian prince Josaphat is confined within the wall of the king's palace to keep the prince safe from the evils of the world. The prince though becomes the subject of a prophecy that declares he will either become a great world conqueror or shall take up the life of an ascetic. He manages to convince his father to allow him to make excursions to the park outside the walls of the palace escorted by his friends. There he encounters for the first time in order an old man, a sick man, a corpse, and lastly, an ascetic. Eventually Josaphat decides to join the ascetic, Barlaam, and renounces the throne to become a hermit himself. Now, these important elements of the story provide a near replica of the tale of Gautama Buddha.
A sculpture at the Parma Cathedral by Benedetto Antelami (c. 1150 – c. 1230) shows St. Josaphat, i.e., the Christianized Buddha, standing in the Tree of Life after being transported there by angels. (Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/15762541@N06/2230621003/
According to the text itself, the Barlaam story was written down by one John the Monk of St. Sabas Monastery near Bethlehem. John reportedly received the legend from "pious men" from India who apparently translated the tale. However, all Europeans versions of the Barlaam legend that exist today are thought to trace back to a Greek translation of a 10th century Georgian version by Euthymius the Iberian.
The Georgian version in turn is derived from the Ismaili Shi'ite text Kitab Bilawhar wa Budhasaf in Arabic, which dates to about the 8th century. An Old French version by Gui de Cambrai appears around 1215 in Western Europe. Around 1250, Hebrew and Old Spanish versions of Kalilah wa Dimnah also appear on the European scene, so we can say rather confidently that the transmission of the two texts was linked at least to some extent.
The ultimate source of both the Buddha and Panchatantra stories appears to be Buddhist. Such a contention is natural enough with the story of the four signs, but the Panchatantra leads us further to make a connection with the Tantric Buddhism of Tibet.
In the Kalilah wa Dimnah cycle we find the story of the interpretation of the king's dreams that has a decided anti-brahmin bias. The story is completely missing from the Hindu Panchatantra, but is found in the Tibetan Kanjur.
Flow of knowledge from the East
We know that during Abbasid times the caliphs, probably attempting to imitate Sassanian rulers, welcomed scholars from all directions and particularly from "India" to their courts. In 772, for example, a scholar from Indian brought an astronomical work called the Sindhind to the court of al-Mansur.
However, many of the "Tantric" cultural elements appear to have been transmitted more by groups of wandering ascetics, probably connected with the Zutt and Sayabiga, who it has been suggested eventually helped spawn the Sufi Dervish sects. The early ascetics appear to have had a Shi'ite bias and we can see that particularly in the mystical orientation of the Ismaili branch of the Shi'a religion.
Zutt and Sayabiga, described alternately as guards, mercenaries, pirates, farmers, and buffalo herders, were already present in the Sassanian empire before the Arab invasions. Many of these people were forcibly moved to the swamps around Basra to help in creating an agricultural system there. So, it is worth noting the position of Basra as an early center of Islamic mysticism with its blending of Persian and Indic influences. Both Sayabiga and the Zutt were later moved to northern Syria, which like Basra also became strongly associated with Ismaili and Sufi mysticism.
At some point also, the "Gypsy" Sayabiga and Zutt appear to have located themselves in Egypt. A few names provide some evidence of these groups in the history of the region. For example, from 815 to 820, the governor of Egypt was Yusuf al-Zutti, whose nisba "surname" indicates he was from a Zutt tribe. Salim Bayya' al-Zutti was a Shi'ite faqih and a companion of the Imams Musa ibn Ja'far and 'Ali ibn Musa.
Likewise, the captain of the guard of Caliph Ali was Ma'kal Ibn Kifi al-Zabaji, whose nisba could indicate ancestry from Zabag. A number of Muslim authors testify that the Sayabiga were widely employed as guards, for example, at the treasury of Basra. The early Sufi mystic Salim al-Barusi may trace his descent from Barus or Balus in Sumatra, the home of the famous Fansuri camphor, while another Sufi sage Abu Yazid al-Waqwaqi has a nisba that could indicate his heritage from the islands of Waqwaq south of Zabag.
The evidence of a Tibetan Buddhist background to the texts of Kalilah wa-Dimnah and Barlaam and Josaphat would fit in well with the Sayabiga presence as Zabag had established links with Tibet through the Kalacakra doctrine. Serlingpa was stated by various sources to have brought texts in the historical period (10th-11th centuries) from Shambhala, and other sources claim or suggest that he was himself the author of important texts and commentaries. Thus, Shambhala was not simply an imaginal location as suggested by some, but a real place identical with Suvarnadvipa (Zabag).
Indeed, the Sufi and Ismaili sacred geographies, also often interpreted as purely imaginal, are geographically located in the same general region as Shambhala-Suvarnadvipa. In the Sea of China, was sacred Mt. Qaf and the talking Waqwaq Tree (Wakwak). Many locations like the mystical fortress island Kangdez were even given latitude and longitude coordinates in Islamic geographical tables.
The appearance of the Hebrew and Spanish versions of the Panchatantra tales seem to point toward a southern entrance of these Tibetan Buddhist stories. Although the earliest Western European variant of Barlaam and Josaphat appears in France, Spain was also an important center for Barlaam tales. Spain and neighboring southern France experienced a flowering of mysticism during this period.
In the areas inhabited by the Agote-Cagot people, this influence was strongest where it appears together with "Tantric" material of a sexual nature found in both church art and in the literature of the troubadours. In Languedoc, the Cathars adopted Barlaam and Josaphat as an important book, and according to D.M. Lang they even used the text to defend their rejection of material pleasures, property ownership, and the practice of asceticism among the Perfecti order. Some have even claimed that the Provencal version of Barlaam was a crypto-Cathar document.
In neighboring Provence, the Jewish Kabbalah arises around the same time as Catharism. Like the latter, it shares attitudes towards reincarnation, the transmigration of souls back and forth between humans and animals, and other spiritual beliefs with the Cathars. That the Kabbalah mystics were strongly influenced by Sufism and Ismaili Shi'ism is a standard view in the scholarly world.
Impact of the Legend of Barlaam and Josaphat
Even though this story became popular in Europe only in the 13th century, the tale became so widespread that both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches eventually accepted both Barlaam and Josaphat as saints. Philip Almond describes the story's almost unparalleled popularity:
Even as late as the 19th-20th centuries, the book had influenced Leo Tolstoy to renounce materialism in the middle of his life. It may not be a coincidence that the flourishing of monastic orders like the Augustinians, Carmelites, Cistercians, Dominicans, and Franciscans, which helped propagate Romanesque architecture, occurred after the original translations of the work into Greek and Latin.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Almond, Philip C. "The Buddha of Christendom: A review of the legend of Barlaam & Josaphat," Religious Studies, 23, 1987: 391-406.
Ashtiany, Julia. ʻAbbasid Belles-Lettres. The Cambridge history of Arabic literature. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 140-1.
Bīdpāī, and I. G. N. Keith-Falconer. Kalilah and Dimnah. Cambridge: University press, 1885.
Lach, Donald Frederick. Asia in the Making of Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965, 100-111.
Surmelian, Leon Z. Daredevils of Sassoun; The Armenian National Epic. Denver: A. Swallow, 1964, 254.
Tolstoy, L. A Confession and What I Believe, London, 1921, 23-4.
The Sayabiga, I have suggested in this blog, played an important role in the transmission of Tantric ideas, as they migrated along the trade routes seemingly always accompanied for some reason by another group known as the Zutt (Jats). The Sayabiga originally came from Zabag (Suvarnadvipa) and the king of that country had a great interest in reaching out to far-off kingdoms. During the Pala dynasty, we hear of Serlingpa, a prince of Suvarnadvipa, bringing a number of Tantric texts including the abridged Kalacakra Tantra from Shamhbala, which can thus be equated with Suvarnadvipa. Even earlier, this same regional king, who was known by Muslims as the Mihraj, had sent correspondence to the Umayyad caliphs Mu'awiyah and Umar ibn abd al-Aziz.
Along the trade routes, the merchants and seafarers of Zabag had absorbed Tantric Buddhist and Muslim, mostly Shiite, influences. In Europe, I have suggested that Sayabiga settled in the areas of the rice fields of Valencia with their tidal rice and fishing culture based on the tropical Japonica rice strain. Some of these Sayabiga may have dispersed along the pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela in connection with the people known as Agotes and Cagots.
The Legend of Barlaam and Josaphat
Two important texts were transmitted into Europe from the East during the Romanesque period. These were the books known as the Legend of Barlaam and Josaphat and the European versions of the Arabic Kalilah wa Dimnah, based on the Sanskrit Panchatantra.
The Barlaam legend contains the story of the cattari-pubba-nimattani, the "four signs" of the Buddha. In the story, the Indian prince Josaphat is confined within the wall of the king's palace to keep the prince safe from the evils of the world. The prince though becomes the subject of a prophecy that declares he will either become a great world conqueror or shall take up the life of an ascetic. He manages to convince his father to allow him to make excursions to the park outside the walls of the palace escorted by his friends. There he encounters for the first time in order an old man, a sick man, a corpse, and lastly, an ascetic. Eventually Josaphat decides to join the ascetic, Barlaam, and renounces the throne to become a hermit himself. Now, these important elements of the story provide a near replica of the tale of Gautama Buddha.
A sculpture at the Parma Cathedral by Benedetto Antelami (c. 1150 – c. 1230) shows St. Josaphat, i.e., the Christianized Buddha, standing in the Tree of Life after being transported there by angels. (Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/15762541@N06/2230621003/
According to the text itself, the Barlaam story was written down by one John the Monk of St. Sabas Monastery near Bethlehem. John reportedly received the legend from "pious men" from India who apparently translated the tale. However, all Europeans versions of the Barlaam legend that exist today are thought to trace back to a Greek translation of a 10th century Georgian version by Euthymius the Iberian.
The Georgian version in turn is derived from the Ismaili Shi'ite text Kitab Bilawhar wa Budhasaf in Arabic, which dates to about the 8th century. An Old French version by Gui de Cambrai appears around 1215 in Western Europe. Around 1250, Hebrew and Old Spanish versions of Kalilah wa Dimnah also appear on the European scene, so we can say rather confidently that the transmission of the two texts was linked at least to some extent.
The ultimate source of both the Buddha and Panchatantra stories appears to be Buddhist. Such a contention is natural enough with the story of the four signs, but the Panchatantra leads us further to make a connection with the Tantric Buddhism of Tibet.
In the Kalilah wa Dimnah cycle we find the story of the interpretation of the king's dreams that has a decided anti-brahmin bias. The story is completely missing from the Hindu Panchatantra, but is found in the Tibetan Kanjur.
Flow of knowledge from the East
We know that during Abbasid times the caliphs, probably attempting to imitate Sassanian rulers, welcomed scholars from all directions and particularly from "India" to their courts. In 772, for example, a scholar from Indian brought an astronomical work called the Sindhind to the court of al-Mansur.
However, many of the "Tantric" cultural elements appear to have been transmitted more by groups of wandering ascetics, probably connected with the Zutt and Sayabiga, who it has been suggested eventually helped spawn the Sufi Dervish sects. The early ascetics appear to have had a Shi'ite bias and we can see that particularly in the mystical orientation of the Ismaili branch of the Shi'a religion.
Zutt and Sayabiga, described alternately as guards, mercenaries, pirates, farmers, and buffalo herders, were already present in the Sassanian empire before the Arab invasions. Many of these people were forcibly moved to the swamps around Basra to help in creating an agricultural system there. So, it is worth noting the position of Basra as an early center of Islamic mysticism with its blending of Persian and Indic influences. Both Sayabiga and the Zutt were later moved to northern Syria, which like Basra also became strongly associated with Ismaili and Sufi mysticism.
At some point also, the "Gypsy" Sayabiga and Zutt appear to have located themselves in Egypt. A few names provide some evidence of these groups in the history of the region. For example, from 815 to 820, the governor of Egypt was Yusuf al-Zutti, whose nisba "surname" indicates he was from a Zutt tribe. Salim Bayya' al-Zutti was a Shi'ite faqih and a companion of the Imams Musa ibn Ja'far and 'Ali ibn Musa.
Likewise, the captain of the guard of Caliph Ali was Ma'kal Ibn Kifi al-Zabaji, whose nisba could indicate ancestry from Zabag. A number of Muslim authors testify that the Sayabiga were widely employed as guards, for example, at the treasury of Basra. The early Sufi mystic Salim al-Barusi may trace his descent from Barus or Balus in Sumatra, the home of the famous Fansuri camphor, while another Sufi sage Abu Yazid al-Waqwaqi has a nisba that could indicate his heritage from the islands of Waqwaq south of Zabag.
The evidence of a Tibetan Buddhist background to the texts of Kalilah wa-Dimnah and Barlaam and Josaphat would fit in well with the Sayabiga presence as Zabag had established links with Tibet through the Kalacakra doctrine. Serlingpa was stated by various sources to have brought texts in the historical period (10th-11th centuries) from Shambhala, and other sources claim or suggest that he was himself the author of important texts and commentaries. Thus, Shambhala was not simply an imaginal location as suggested by some, but a real place identical with Suvarnadvipa (Zabag).
Indeed, the Sufi and Ismaili sacred geographies, also often interpreted as purely imaginal, are geographically located in the same general region as Shambhala-Suvarnadvipa. In the Sea of China, was sacred Mt. Qaf and the talking Waqwaq Tree (Wakwak). Many locations like the mystical fortress island Kangdez were even given latitude and longitude coordinates in Islamic geographical tables.
The appearance of the Hebrew and Spanish versions of the Panchatantra tales seem to point toward a southern entrance of these Tibetan Buddhist stories. Although the earliest Western European variant of Barlaam and Josaphat appears in France, Spain was also an important center for Barlaam tales. Spain and neighboring southern France experienced a flowering of mysticism during this period.
In the areas inhabited by the Agote-Cagot people, this influence was strongest where it appears together with "Tantric" material of a sexual nature found in both church art and in the literature of the troubadours. In Languedoc, the Cathars adopted Barlaam and Josaphat as an important book, and according to D.M. Lang they even used the text to defend their rejection of material pleasures, property ownership, and the practice of asceticism among the Perfecti order. Some have even claimed that the Provencal version of Barlaam was a crypto-Cathar document.
In neighboring Provence, the Jewish Kabbalah arises around the same time as Catharism. Like the latter, it shares attitudes towards reincarnation, the transmigration of souls back and forth between humans and animals, and other spiritual beliefs with the Cathars. That the Kabbalah mystics were strongly influenced by Sufism and Ismaili Shi'ism is a standard view in the scholarly world.
Impact of the Legend of Barlaam and Josaphat
Even though this story became popular in Europe only in the 13th century, the tale became so widespread that both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches eventually accepted both Barlaam and Josaphat as saints. Philip Almond describes the story's almost unparalleled popularity:
It enjoyed a popularity attained perhaps by no other legend. It spread into nearly all the countries of Christendom and is extant in over sixty versions...and even at the beginning of the eighteenth century, returned to the East in a Philippine dialect. It was also included in Vincent of Beauvais's thirteenth century Speculum historiale, and in the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine in the same century. It was probably from Caxton's English translation of the latter work, The Golden Legend, that Shakespeare borrowed the fable of the caskets for use in The Merchant of Venice.
Even as late as the 19th-20th centuries, the book had influenced Leo Tolstoy to renounce materialism in the middle of his life. It may not be a coincidence that the flourishing of monastic orders like the Augustinians, Carmelites, Cistercians, Dominicans, and Franciscans, which helped propagate Romanesque architecture, occurred after the original translations of the work into Greek and Latin.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Almond, Philip C. "The Buddha of Christendom: A review of the legend of Barlaam & Josaphat," Religious Studies, 23, 1987: 391-406.
Ashtiany, Julia. ʻAbbasid Belles-Lettres. The Cambridge history of Arabic literature. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 140-1.
Bīdpāī, and I. G. N. Keith-Falconer. Kalilah and Dimnah. Cambridge: University press, 1885.
Lach, Donald Frederick. Asia in the Making of Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965, 100-111.
Surmelian, Leon Z. Daredevils of Sassoun; The Armenian National Epic. Denver: A. Swallow, 1964, 254.
Tolstoy, L. A Confession and What I Believe, London, 1921, 23-4.
Friday, August 06, 2010
Lapita, Taotie and other Face/Head Motifs (Part 3 of 3)
Another strong evidence of the relationship between the Indian and European face motifs is the existence in Romanesque art of a feline face disgorging (or gorging) strings of beads from the corners of its mouth. Similar motifs are found in India and Tibet with the apparent earliest example located at the Ajanta Caves dating to the 5th century.
Feline masks with strings of beads streaming from the corners of their mouth at Iffley Church in Oxford, England, 12th-13th century. (Source: http://www.bejo.co.uk/greenmantrail/html/missing.html)
A Gupta era Kirtimukha with festoons of pearls disgorged from the corners of the mouth. Notice the double spiral "horns." (Source: Huntington Archive)
Traditional Tibetan bell (Source: Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols and Motifs) and
A more elongated type of head disgorging various items from the upper part of the mouth with no lower jaw visible, Lincoln Cathedral, Norman period. Click on image for larger view. (Source: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lincoln_cathedral_03_West_portal.jpg)
More on the meaning of the face motifs
Face motifs continue to be used to this day in the Austronesian-speaking regions in tattoos, textiles and other art forms. In the Marquesas, the mata hoata "face" and ipu "eye" motifs can be used to denote the etua, the deities and deified ancestors to include the pantheistic Fractal Being.
The Kala form of the face motif in Southeast Asia gives this design a connection with the deity of cosmic time. In the Philippines, the pantheistic volcano gods are seen in some cultures as lords of, or personifications of time. In medieval Tibet, the Kalacakra Deity was both lord of time and also a form of the pantheistic Adibuddha or "First Buddha."
In the Philippines, one of the closest matches to the face motifs under discussion are the decorations found on boat prows, blade hilts, musical instruments, and other items known variously by names such as Bakunawa, Buaya, and Naga. The Bakunawa motif is connected with a deity among certain peoples of Panay who in the past chose auspicious times for events based on the direction that the Bakunawa was said to be facing. Almanacs were made that gave the direction of the Bakunawa's face for any time of the year, and these calendars also served a geomantic purpose in orienting the direction of the entrance of a home under construction.
The Bakunawa was thus related to aspects of astronomical time, although I have not seen information connecting this deity with any constellations or stars. Viewed as a great winged dragon-like creature with a red tongue, the Bakunawa was also said to swallow the Moon during eclipses. In this sense, the serpent may have been related to the Indian deity Rahu, who was also envisioned as a disembodied head that devoured the Sun or Moon during an eclipse.
Bakunawa blade hilts (Source: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v51/zelbone/Philippine%20Edged%20Weapons%20Forum/3Visayanhilts.jpg)
The hilt on this blade from Panay is more like the buaya or makara motif (crocodile-like). (Source: http://www.filhistory.com/2010/07/sundang-itak-bolo-pinuti-talibong-tenegre-pinote-philippiine-weapon-filipino-sword-sandata-1-1.html)
The idea of the Bakunawa devouring the Sun or Moon may connect with the earlier red-slipped, Lapita and Taotie face motifs. In the tumpal face design, the "eyes" can also represent the Sun as discussed above but additionally they can represent the Moon also. In an earlier post, I suggested that the crescent shape, and also the half circle shape found in some red-slipped and other early tumpal patterns could represent the "Crescent Sun." The latter astronomical term refers to a Sun nearly fully eclipsed but with the non-eclipsed part forming a crescent shape.
In addition, the name "Taotie" is generally translated as "Glutton," while the Chinese term for "solar eclipse" 日食 means literally "to eat the Sun." However, while some experts believe the Taotie may be linked with the eclipse, I have not seen any explicit literary or artistic reference making this connection. K. C. Chang does provide literary evidence that the motif was linked with the concept of "devouring humans" though.
The concept of devourer is also found in the legends surrounding Kala, who as the personification of time consumes humans and also the entire world in his ceaseless march. The depiction of Kala above gates in Indonesian temples gives the impression that the deity is devouring the pilgrims as they move from one part of the temple to another.
In Papua New Guinea and Melanesia, one commonly finds instances of masks representing "Ghosts" that devour and regurgitate initiates in sacred rituals. A similar idea may have been present in the pre-colonial Philippines and nearby parts of Indonesia in relation to concepts of immortality. Here we find the idea that the entrails represented human mortality and that removal of these entrails cause the subject to become immortal.
In relation to this we have the legends of what are now considered demons -- the Aswang and Manananggal -- that are able to detach their heads from their bodies when they go to search for "prey." In most cases, they do not devour their victims whole but simply suck out their viscera. While this myth today is used in horror stories, in ancient times it may have referred to rituals believed to confer immortality or long life.
Interestingly the Aswang and Mananaggal when detaching their heads were said to take their own viscera along with them trailing from their necks. According to early Spanish records, the icon of the god Malyari of Pinatubo and Zambales, was said to consist only of a head and straw arms. Possibly the straw arms were actually viscera as in the case of the legends of the body-less "demons," and these hanging entrails could be related to the depiction of foliage streaming out of the mouth of Kirtimukha and Kala images. The protruding tongue motif widely found in Polynesia, Melanesia and Papua New Guinea, and less commonly in Southeast Asia, may also be related to the imagery of streaming intestines-vegetation.
The Green Man and the Green King
In Europe, the foliage spewer motif is often related to the medieval tales of the Green Knight as found in Grail and other literature of the same period. However, an even better explanation might be found in the concept of the Green King found in Eastern Christian apocalyptic literature.
Most important of these is the Apocalypse of Bahira, a 9th century work in Syriac and Arabic that tells of a Green King from the East to come in the last days:
Barbara Roggema thinks the idea of the Green King is related to the Islamic al-Khidr, the Green One, who represents fertility and immortality. However, she notes that al-Khidr was not destined to kingship and she interprets the concept as an early prototype of the king who would become known as Prester John. She gives as evidence a passage from the Liber Otensor written by the 14th century Franciscan Jean de Rocquetaillade who equated the Green King of the Apocalypse with the King of the Tartars, who at the time was widely identified as Prester John.
According to Ibn al-Tiqtaqa, the Green King wore green clothing because that was the color of garments worn in Paradise -- another link with the Prester John kingship. In addition to having Paradise within or near his kingdom, Prester John's land was filled with many fruits and fountains that bestowed long life, and he ruled with a fabulous emerald scepter.
For another possible connection involving the Green King and al-Khidr, see my article on Qingtong, the Blue-Green Lad, (and here also) who was an early Daoist messianic figure expected to arise from a region to the southeast of China; as well as my article on Mount Qaf.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Ambrosio, Dante L. "Bakunawa and Laho," Philippine Daily Inquirer, 02/08/2009, http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/talkofthetown/view/20090208-188046/Bakunawa_and_Laho.
Chang, Kwang-chih. Art, myth, and ritual: the path to political authority in ancient China. Cambridge, Mass. u.a: Harvard Univ. Press, 1983, 72-3.
Healy, Tim. "The Missing Link?" The Green Man Trail, 2007, http://www.bejo.co.uk/greenmantrail/html/missing.html.
Roggema, Barbara. The legend of Sergius Baḥīrā: eastern Christian apologetics and apocalyptic in response to Islam. Leiden: Brill, 2009.
Riesenfeld, Alphonse. The Megalithic Culture of Melanesia, Brill, 1950.
Scott, William Henry. Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society. Quezon City, Manila, Philippines: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1997, 252.
Feline masks with strings of beads streaming from the corners of their mouth at Iffley Church in Oxford, England, 12th-13th century. (Source: http://www.bejo.co.uk/greenmantrail/html/missing.html)
A Gupta era Kirtimukha with festoons of pearls disgorged from the corners of the mouth. Notice the double spiral "horns." (Source: Huntington Archive)
Traditional Tibetan bell (Source: Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols and Motifs) and
A more elongated type of head disgorging various items from the upper part of the mouth with no lower jaw visible, Lincoln Cathedral, Norman period. Click on image for larger view. (Source: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lincoln_cathedral_03_West_portal.jpg)
More on the meaning of the face motifs
Face motifs continue to be used to this day in the Austronesian-speaking regions in tattoos, textiles and other art forms. In the Marquesas, the mata hoata "face" and ipu "eye" motifs can be used to denote the etua, the deities and deified ancestors to include the pantheistic Fractal Being.
The Kala form of the face motif in Southeast Asia gives this design a connection with the deity of cosmic time. In the Philippines, the pantheistic volcano gods are seen in some cultures as lords of, or personifications of time. In medieval Tibet, the Kalacakra Deity was both lord of time and also a form of the pantheistic Adibuddha or "First Buddha."
In the Philippines, one of the closest matches to the face motifs under discussion are the decorations found on boat prows, blade hilts, musical instruments, and other items known variously by names such as Bakunawa, Buaya, and Naga. The Bakunawa motif is connected with a deity among certain peoples of Panay who in the past chose auspicious times for events based on the direction that the Bakunawa was said to be facing. Almanacs were made that gave the direction of the Bakunawa's face for any time of the year, and these calendars also served a geomantic purpose in orienting the direction of the entrance of a home under construction.
The Bakunawa was thus related to aspects of astronomical time, although I have not seen information connecting this deity with any constellations or stars. Viewed as a great winged dragon-like creature with a red tongue, the Bakunawa was also said to swallow the Moon during eclipses. In this sense, the serpent may have been related to the Indian deity Rahu, who was also envisioned as a disembodied head that devoured the Sun or Moon during an eclipse.
Bakunawa blade hilts (Source: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v51/zelbone/Philippine%20Edged%20Weapons%20Forum/3Visayanhilts.jpg)
The hilt on this blade from Panay is more like the buaya or makara motif (crocodile-like). (Source: http://www.filhistory.com/2010/07/sundang-itak-bolo-pinuti-talibong-tenegre-pinote-philippiine-weapon-filipino-sword-sandata-1-1.html)
The idea of the Bakunawa devouring the Sun or Moon may connect with the earlier red-slipped, Lapita and Taotie face motifs. In the tumpal face design, the "eyes" can also represent the Sun as discussed above but additionally they can represent the Moon also. In an earlier post, I suggested that the crescent shape, and also the half circle shape found in some red-slipped and other early tumpal patterns could represent the "Crescent Sun." The latter astronomical term refers to a Sun nearly fully eclipsed but with the non-eclipsed part forming a crescent shape.
In addition, the name "Taotie" is generally translated as "Glutton," while the Chinese term for "solar eclipse" 日食 means literally "to eat the Sun." However, while some experts believe the Taotie may be linked with the eclipse, I have not seen any explicit literary or artistic reference making this connection. K. C. Chang does provide literary evidence that the motif was linked with the concept of "devouring humans" though.
The concept of devourer is also found in the legends surrounding Kala, who as the personification of time consumes humans and also the entire world in his ceaseless march. The depiction of Kala above gates in Indonesian temples gives the impression that the deity is devouring the pilgrims as they move from one part of the temple to another.
In Papua New Guinea and Melanesia, one commonly finds instances of masks representing "Ghosts" that devour and regurgitate initiates in sacred rituals. A similar idea may have been present in the pre-colonial Philippines and nearby parts of Indonesia in relation to concepts of immortality. Here we find the idea that the entrails represented human mortality and that removal of these entrails cause the subject to become immortal.
In relation to this we have the legends of what are now considered demons -- the Aswang and Manananggal -- that are able to detach their heads from their bodies when they go to search for "prey." In most cases, they do not devour their victims whole but simply suck out their viscera. While this myth today is used in horror stories, in ancient times it may have referred to rituals believed to confer immortality or long life.
Interestingly the Aswang and Mananaggal when detaching their heads were said to take their own viscera along with them trailing from their necks. According to early Spanish records, the icon of the god Malyari of Pinatubo and Zambales, was said to consist only of a head and straw arms. Possibly the straw arms were actually viscera as in the case of the legends of the body-less "demons," and these hanging entrails could be related to the depiction of foliage streaming out of the mouth of Kirtimukha and Kala images. The protruding tongue motif widely found in Polynesia, Melanesia and Papua New Guinea, and less commonly in Southeast Asia, may also be related to the imagery of streaming intestines-vegetation.
The Green Man and the Green King
In Europe, the foliage spewer motif is often related to the medieval tales of the Green Knight as found in Grail and other literature of the same period. However, an even better explanation might be found in the concept of the Green King found in Eastern Christian apocalyptic literature.
Most important of these is the Apocalypse of Bahira, a 9th century work in Syriac and Arabic that tells of a Green King from the East to come in the last days:
...a king dressed in green clothes will come from the East and through him there will be great peace and quiet in the world. Churches will be built and monasteries will be restored. And he is the last one whom the world expects to come at the end of the kingdoms of the Sons of Ishmael.
Barbara Roggema thinks the idea of the Green King is related to the Islamic al-Khidr, the Green One, who represents fertility and immortality. However, she notes that al-Khidr was not destined to kingship and she interprets the concept as an early prototype of the king who would become known as Prester John. She gives as evidence a passage from the Liber Otensor written by the 14th century Franciscan Jean de Rocquetaillade who equated the Green King of the Apocalypse with the King of the Tartars, who at the time was widely identified as Prester John.
According to Ibn al-Tiqtaqa, the Green King wore green clothing because that was the color of garments worn in Paradise -- another link with the Prester John kingship. In addition to having Paradise within or near his kingdom, Prester John's land was filled with many fruits and fountains that bestowed long life, and he ruled with a fabulous emerald scepter.
For another possible connection involving the Green King and al-Khidr, see my article on Qingtong, the Blue-Green Lad, (and here also) who was an early Daoist messianic figure expected to arise from a region to the southeast of China; as well as my article on Mount Qaf.
- Lapita, Taotie and other Face/Head Motifs (1 of 3)
- Lapita, Taotie and other Face/Head Motifs (2 of 3)
- Lapita, Taotie and other Face/Head Motifs (3 of 3)
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Ambrosio, Dante L. "Bakunawa and Laho," Philippine Daily Inquirer, 02/08/2009, http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/talkofthetown/view/20090208-188046/Bakunawa_and_Laho.
Chang, Kwang-chih. Art, myth, and ritual: the path to political authority in ancient China. Cambridge, Mass. u.a: Harvard Univ. Press, 1983, 72-3.
Healy, Tim. "The Missing Link?" The Green Man Trail, 2007, http://www.bejo.co.uk/greenmantrail/html/missing.html.
Roggema, Barbara. The legend of Sergius Baḥīrā: eastern Christian apologetics and apocalyptic in response to Islam. Leiden: Brill, 2009.
Riesenfeld, Alphonse. The Megalithic Culture of Melanesia, Brill, 1950.
Scott, William Henry. Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society. Quezon City, Manila, Philippines: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1997, 252.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Lapita, Taotie and other Face/Head Motifs (Part 2)
If the "simplified" Lapita face motifs can be traced back to similar designs in red-slipped and other early wares from Southeast Asia, then the simple design probably predated the realistic version. However, since the face motif appears to be derived from a mask, in which the mouth area is often left open for vocal reasons, then there may have been a realistic earlier mask version that did not survive. Since masks tend to be made of perishable materials, they would not endure in tropical environments like clay pottery.
"Simplified" face motifs suggested by Chiu, and the tumpal motif design in the bottom right corner that was discussed in the last post.
Red-slipped and Neolithic pottery fragments with designs similar to the "simplified" Lapita motifs. From top to bottom, left to right, Gua Sirih, Sarawak; the next two from Saipan, Marianas; the next two from Kamassi, Sulawesi, Indonesia; Minanga Sipakko, Sulawesi; Batungan, Masbate, Philippines; next two from Saipan.
According to Madeleine Colani, a design consisting of a hachured triangle with a small circle on top found in jewelry of Laos and Vietnam was said by locals to represent the Sun. As mentioned before, the tumpal or triangle design in Insular Southeast Asia is often said to represent hills or mountains. The idea of the circle, double circle, or circle dot motif as a symbol of the Sun is found widely in many cultures including some in the Austronesian region. For example, Florentin-Étienne Jaussen, mentions that the circle dot symbol in Easter Island, or at least parts of that island, represented the Sun.
Earlier in this blog, I suggested that the triangle with a circle at its apex was a symbol for an erupting volcano, and specifically the sacred volcanoes on Luzon that erupted in the Neolithic period.
When we look at the Lapita face motif consisting of two of these triangle-circle combinations linked together, the circles would represent both the Sun and also the eyes of the face motif. The space between the two triangles, or mountains, would form the nose, beak, snout, tongue, or combination of these features on the face motif.
The connection between eye and Sun is supported by the widespread use of related words or phrases found in the Austronesian region. For example, the word for Sun in Malay is mata hari or mata wari meaning literally "eye of the day." In the Pacific, some examples include mata ni siga of Fiji and San Cristoval meaning "shining eye," and Western Eromangan nipmi-nen "eye of the day."
Use of mountains and Sun to create a face design may relate again to pantheistic beliefs discussed earlier -- the idea that the universe exists in the form of a universal deity's "body." That this deity is sometimes represented in human form and sometimes in animal or composite form, often in the same culture, could also suggest that the people believed that these forms were interchangeable, i.e., part of the same being.
Face motifs before the appearance of the Kirtimukha image
After the period of Lapita and Taotie face motifs, the most important evidence for a continuation of this tradition in the realistic versions comes from the Pejeng and moko type bronze drums, and the Roti axes, found in Indonesia and Malaysia. Face motifs, which stylistic similarities, also appear on megaliths and certain other artifacts that are mostly related to megalithic sites in the same region.
The famed "Moon of Pejeng" or "Moon of Bali" drum is the most noteworthy of these artifacts. However, the face motif here is similar to the full Lapita face designs rather than those that lacked a lower jaw.
Face motif from the Moon of Pejeng bronze drum in Bali. The mask-like motif has double circle eyes, and the whole jaw is represented. (Source: Wikipedia)
While difficult to date, the Moon of Pejeng and the other early bronze drums in Insular Southeast Asia are thought to be at least 2000 years old. Some of the Roti axes, which have a similar face motif, may be older than the bronze drums.
One interesting thing about the moko drums found in Alor and similar drums found elsewhere in the region is the form of a triangle used in the area where the mouth should be located, or else the whole head has a triangular or heart-like shape. As noted in the Lapita designs, the "nose" is often triangular, and is sometimes formed by two linked triangles. In other examples, the whole head is triangular in shape.
In describing early mokos found at various museums around the world, August Johann Berne Kempers states: "There is also the indication of a mouth, triangular or oval — or rather something in-between suggestive of a nose and a mouth simultaneously." Kempers also notes that on one of the mokos the mouth has been "swallowed up by the lines and triangles (tumpal)," while another face lacks a mouth entirely.
A triangular form placed in the lower part of the face together with the absence of a mouth are certainly suggestive of a relationship with both the more realistic and "simplified" Lapita forms. We find a similar type of design in the mask-like tattoos of Borneo's Dayaks.
Dayak tattoo pattern with inverted double spiral forming eyes, and triangular lower face. (Source: http://www.indonesiatraveling.com/Indonesia%20traveling%20over%20Land/Pages_arts/kalimantan/sculptures_ii.htm)
The often obscure triangular shape found on moko drums and Dayak tattoos may have been related to an image that developed into the lotus bud that drops from the mouth of many Kirtimukha motifs in India. Mercia MacDermott, in her book Explore Green Men, suggests that the fir cones, leaves, and grape bunches dropping straight down from face images in Romanesque Europe are derived directly from the lotus bud of the Kirtimukha.
A 12th century carving at Abbey of St George, Saint-Martin-de-Boscherville showing a pine cone hanging from the upper jaw of a human-like face. MacDermott suggests that this was derived from the lotus bud that hangs from the mouth of Kirtimukha images. (Source: http://www.beyond-the-pale.org.uk/column.htm)
Click here for continuation.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Kempers, A. J. Bernet. The Kettledrums of Southeast Asia: A Bronze Age World and Its Aftermath, Rotterdam and Brookfield: A.A. Balkema, 1988, 371-3.
Macdermott, Mercia. Explore Green Men. Loughborough: Heart of Albion Press, 2003.
Miksic, John N. Earthenware in Southeast Asia: Proceedings of the Singapore Symposium on Premodern Southeast Asian Earthenwares. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2003.
Solheim, Wilhelm G., David Bulbeck, and Ambika Flavel. Archaeology and Culture in Southeast Asia: Unraveling the Nusantao. Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2006, 112.
Wolff, Werner. Island of Death: A New Key to Easter Island's Culture Through an Ethno-Psychological Study. New York: J.J. Augustin, 1948, 65.
Zahorka, Herwig. "The mystery of the twin masks on megaliths at Long Pulung in East Kalimantan: prehistoric wax modeling molds for casting bronze moko drums? An interpretative attempt" The Free Library 01 January 2004. 06 August 2010 <http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The mystery of the twin masks on megaliths at Long Pulung in East...-a0134382058>.
"Simplified" face motifs suggested by Chiu, and the tumpal motif design in the bottom right corner that was discussed in the last post.
According to Madeleine Colani, a design consisting of a hachured triangle with a small circle on top found in jewelry of Laos and Vietnam was said by locals to represent the Sun. As mentioned before, the tumpal or triangle design in Insular Southeast Asia is often said to represent hills or mountains. The idea of the circle, double circle, or circle dot motif as a symbol of the Sun is found widely in many cultures including some in the Austronesian region. For example, Florentin-Étienne Jaussen, mentions that the circle dot symbol in Easter Island, or at least parts of that island, represented the Sun.
Earlier in this blog, I suggested that the triangle with a circle at its apex was a symbol for an erupting volcano, and specifically the sacred volcanoes on Luzon that erupted in the Neolithic period.
When we look at the Lapita face motif consisting of two of these triangle-circle combinations linked together, the circles would represent both the Sun and also the eyes of the face motif. The space between the two triangles, or mountains, would form the nose, beak, snout, tongue, or combination of these features on the face motif.
The connection between eye and Sun is supported by the widespread use of related words or phrases found in the Austronesian region. For example, the word for Sun in Malay is mata hari or mata wari meaning literally "eye of the day." In the Pacific, some examples include mata ni siga of Fiji and San Cristoval meaning "shining eye," and Western Eromangan nipmi-nen "eye of the day."
Use of mountains and Sun to create a face design may relate again to pantheistic beliefs discussed earlier -- the idea that the universe exists in the form of a universal deity's "body." That this deity is sometimes represented in human form and sometimes in animal or composite form, often in the same culture, could also suggest that the people believed that these forms were interchangeable, i.e., part of the same being.
Face motifs before the appearance of the Kirtimukha image
After the period of Lapita and Taotie face motifs, the most important evidence for a continuation of this tradition in the realistic versions comes from the Pejeng and moko type bronze drums, and the Roti axes, found in Indonesia and Malaysia. Face motifs, which stylistic similarities, also appear on megaliths and certain other artifacts that are mostly related to megalithic sites in the same region.
The famed "Moon of Pejeng" or "Moon of Bali" drum is the most noteworthy of these artifacts. However, the face motif here is similar to the full Lapita face designs rather than those that lacked a lower jaw.
While difficult to date, the Moon of Pejeng and the other early bronze drums in Insular Southeast Asia are thought to be at least 2000 years old. Some of the Roti axes, which have a similar face motif, may be older than the bronze drums.
One interesting thing about the moko drums found in Alor and similar drums found elsewhere in the region is the form of a triangle used in the area where the mouth should be located, or else the whole head has a triangular or heart-like shape. As noted in the Lapita designs, the "nose" is often triangular, and is sometimes formed by two linked triangles. In other examples, the whole head is triangular in shape.
In describing early mokos found at various museums around the world, August Johann Berne Kempers states: "There is also the indication of a mouth, triangular or oval — or rather something in-between suggestive of a nose and a mouth simultaneously." Kempers also notes that on one of the mokos the mouth has been "swallowed up by the lines and triangles (tumpal)," while another face lacks a mouth entirely.
A triangular form placed in the lower part of the face together with the absence of a mouth are certainly suggestive of a relationship with both the more realistic and "simplified" Lapita forms. We find a similar type of design in the mask-like tattoos of Borneo's Dayaks.
Dayak tattoo pattern with inverted double spiral forming eyes, and triangular lower face. (Source: http://www.indonesiatraveling.com/Indonesia%20traveling%20over%20Land/Pages_arts/kalimantan/sculptures_ii.htm)
The often obscure triangular shape found on moko drums and Dayak tattoos may have been related to an image that developed into the lotus bud that drops from the mouth of many Kirtimukha motifs in India. Mercia MacDermott, in her book Explore Green Men, suggests that the fir cones, leaves, and grape bunches dropping straight down from face images in Romanesque Europe are derived directly from the lotus bud of the Kirtimukha.
A 12th century carving at Abbey of St George, Saint-Martin-de-Boscherville showing a pine cone hanging from the upper jaw of a human-like face. MacDermott suggests that this was derived from the lotus bud that hangs from the mouth of Kirtimukha images. (Source: http://www.beyond-the-pale.org.uk/column.htm)
Click here for continuation.
- Lapita, Taotie and other Face/Head Motifs (1 of 3)
- Lapita, Taotie and other Face/Head Motifs (2 of 3)
- Lapita, Taotie and other Face/Head Motifs (3 of 3)
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Kempers, A. J. Bernet. The Kettledrums of Southeast Asia: A Bronze Age World and Its Aftermath, Rotterdam and Brookfield: A.A. Balkema, 1988, 371-3.
Macdermott, Mercia. Explore Green Men. Loughborough: Heart of Albion Press, 2003.
Miksic, John N. Earthenware in Southeast Asia: Proceedings of the Singapore Symposium on Premodern Southeast Asian Earthenwares. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2003.
Solheim, Wilhelm G., David Bulbeck, and Ambika Flavel. Archaeology and Culture in Southeast Asia: Unraveling the Nusantao. Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2006, 112.
Wolff, Werner. Island of Death: A New Key to Easter Island's Culture Through an Ethno-Psychological Study. New York: J.J. Augustin, 1948, 65.
Zahorka, Herwig. "The mystery of the twin masks on megaliths at Long Pulung in East Kalimantan: prehistoric wax modeling molds for casting bronze moko drums? An interpretative attempt" The Free Library 01 January 2004. 06 August 2010 <http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The mystery of the twin masks on megaliths at Long Pulung in East...-a0134382058>.
Monday, August 02, 2010
Lapita, Taotie and other Face/Head Motifs
The possibility of a relationship between the Taotie face motif that dates back to the Shang Dynasty in China, and the previously discussed Kirtimukha images of India and the Kala images of Southeast Asia, has been explored in previous literature. Joseph Campbell in The Mythic Image (pp. 118-130) believes these motifs along with the Mesoamerican jaguar mask and the Greek Medusa all owe their similarities to diffusion.
Stella Kramrisch and Raymond Burnier also apparently see a direct relationship between the Kirtimukha/Kala images and the Taotie, and also the "Green Man" motif from medieval Europe (foilage spewers-column swallowers).
The earliest of these images is the Taotie, however, it has a possible contemporary match in the Lapita face motif, which to my knowledge has not been explored. The Taotie and Lapita images date from about the same period -- from the middle of the second millennium BCE to the beginning of the first millenium BCE -- the dates for the Erligang Culture in Henan and the Lapita Culture in eastern Melanesia and Western Polynesia. The face motifs appear to date to the earliest phases of both Lapita and Erligang cultures.
Examples of Lapita faces taken from Chiu 2007 and Spriggs 1993
Examples of Taotie face motif from Erligang Culture in Henan, China from Allan 1991.
While there are significant stylistic differences between these contemporary motifs, there are also some important similarities:
Three sets of Lapita face motifs showing two pairs of eyes sharing the same "nose." The outermost pair of eyes is found in the "horns" of the smaller eye set. From Spriggs 1993.
Below are leaf and other foliage-like eye motifs from Lapita artifacts.
Origin of the motifs
Both Spriggs and Chiu refer to the large number of "simplified" face motifs on Lapita artifacts suggesting that these motifs are latter developments of the earlier more realistic face designs.
However, at least one these simplified versions may have a very ancient origin. The dentate or linked triangular pattern with circles at the top of the triangle is very similar to designs found on red-slipped wares in the Philippines that may date back to before 5000 BCE. Such patterns are found widely in Southeast Asia by the Late Neolithic period.
Here is an example of the motif found in Lapita culture:
The triangular design in latter times is known at tumpal and is often said to represent hills or mountains. However, this would not preclude its use in face designs. The use of vegetative motifs in other Lapita forms as well as in the Taotie face motifs could suggest these faces or mask have a pantheistic or fractal identity, which is something we shall examine in future posts.
Click here for continuation.
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Allan, Sarah. The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early China. SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991.
Campbell, Joseph, and M. J. Abadie. The Mythic Image. Princeton/Bollingen paperbacks. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981, 118-128.
Chiu, Scarlett, Detailed analysis of Lapita Face Motifs: Case Studies from Reef/Santa Cruz Lapita Sites
and New Caledonia Lapita Site 13A, http://epress.anu.edu.au/terra_australis/ta26/pdf/ch15.pdf, 2007.
Kramrisch, Stella. The Hindu Temple 2. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publ, 1996, 322-25.
Miksic, John N. Earthenware in Southeast Asia: Proceedings of the Singapore Symposium on Premodern Southeast Asian Earthenwares. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2003.
Spriggs, M. "How Much of the Lapita Design System Represents the Human Face?" In P. Dark and R. Rose (eds), Artistic Heritage in a Changing Pacific, Bathurst: Crawford House Press, 1993, 7-14.
Stella Kramrisch and Raymond Burnier also apparently see a direct relationship between the Kirtimukha/Kala images and the Taotie, and also the "Green Man" motif from medieval Europe (foilage spewers-column swallowers).
The earliest of these images is the Taotie, however, it has a possible contemporary match in the Lapita face motif, which to my knowledge has not been explored. The Taotie and Lapita images date from about the same period -- from the middle of the second millennium BCE to the beginning of the first millenium BCE -- the dates for the Erligang Culture in Henan and the Lapita Culture in eastern Melanesia and Western Polynesia. The face motifs appear to date to the earliest phases of both Lapita and Erligang cultures.
Examples of Lapita faces taken from Chiu 2007 and Spriggs 1993
Examples of Taotie face motif from Erligang Culture in Henan, China from Allan 1991.
While there are significant stylistic differences between these contemporary motifs, there are also some important similarities:
- In both cases, the face normally consists of defined eyes and nose, whether realistic or stylized, but the mouth, or at least the lower jaw, is missing or not clearly defined.
- Opposing spirals are an important element in both types of face motifs. With the Lapita face, the spirals often define or border the eyes, but in some cases they appear as "horns" to the side of a set of eyes.
- Leaf-like eyes with pointed edges or tips are found in both regions.
- A "face within a face" motif is found often involving the "horns" of the image in some Lapita images, and this also appears to be clearly defined in some Taotie motifs from the Shang-Zhou period.
- The presence of flanking decorative elements that occasionally take on a clearly independent identity, and which may be related to later images in Oceania, Asia and Europe.
- The presence of scrolling patterns, spirals, and leaf-like or flower-like designs can be seen as suggestive of foliage in both cases.
Three sets of Lapita face motifs showing two pairs of eyes sharing the same "nose." The outermost pair of eyes is found in the "horns" of the smaller eye set. From Spriggs 1993.
Below are leaf and other foliage-like eye motifs from Lapita artifacts.
Origin of the motifs
Both Spriggs and Chiu refer to the large number of "simplified" face motifs on Lapita artifacts suggesting that these motifs are latter developments of the earlier more realistic face designs.
However, at least one these simplified versions may have a very ancient origin. The dentate or linked triangular pattern with circles at the top of the triangle is very similar to designs found on red-slipped wares in the Philippines that may date back to before 5000 BCE. Such patterns are found widely in Southeast Asia by the Late Neolithic period.
Here is an example of the motif found in Lapita culture:
The triangular design in latter times is known at tumpal and is often said to represent hills or mountains. However, this would not preclude its use in face designs. The use of vegetative motifs in other Lapita forms as well as in the Taotie face motifs could suggest these faces or mask have a pantheistic or fractal identity, which is something we shall examine in future posts.
Click here for continuation.
- Lapita, Taotie and other Face/Head Motifs (1 of 3)
- Lapita, Taotie and other Face/Head Motifs (2 of 3)
- Lapita, Taotie and other Face/Head Motifs (3 of 3)
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Allan, Sarah. The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early China. SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991.
Campbell, Joseph, and M. J. Abadie. The Mythic Image. Princeton/Bollingen paperbacks. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981, 118-128.
Chiu, Scarlett, Detailed analysis of Lapita Face Motifs: Case Studies from Reef/Santa Cruz Lapita Sites
and New Caledonia Lapita Site 13A, http://epress.anu.edu.au/terra_australis/ta26/pdf/ch15.pdf, 2007.
Kramrisch, Stella. The Hindu Temple 2. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publ, 1996, 322-25.
Miksic, John N. Earthenware in Southeast Asia: Proceedings of the Singapore Symposium on Premodern Southeast Asian Earthenwares. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2003.
Spriggs, M. "How Much of the Lapita Design System Represents the Human Face?" In P. Dark and R. Rose (eds), Artistic Heritage in a Changing Pacific, Bathurst: Crawford House Press, 1993, 7-14.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Chams show closer matrilinear link to Mainland vs. Insular Southeast Asians
A new study (abstract below) suggests that the Austronesian-speaking Cham people are more closely related in terms of mtDNA to Mainland Southeast Asians as compared to other Austronesian speakers in Island Southeast Asia.
"...our results suggested that the origin of the Cham was likely a process of assimilation of massive local Mon-Khmer populations accompanied with language shift, thus indicating that the Austronesian diffusion in MSEA was mainly mediated by cultural diffusion, at least from the matrilineal genetic perspective, an observation in agreement with the hypothesis of the Nusantao Maritime Trading and Communication Networks (NMTCN)."
Wilhelm Solheim something similar happened in the Neolithic period further north along the coast of Southeast and East Asia, with evidence of the NMTCN turning up at various coastal archaeological sites. However, in this case any linguistic influence either vanished or was submerged as adstrata.
Would be interesting to see what the Y chromosome data reveals about the Chams, who created an ancient kingdom in central Vietnam.
Mol Biol Evol. 2010 May 31. [Epub ahead of print]Tracing the Austronesian Footprint in Mainland Southeast Asia: A Perspective from Mitochondrial DNA.
State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, P.R. China.Abstract
As the relic of the ancient Champa Kingdom, the Cham people represent the major Austronesian speakers in Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) and their origin is evidently associated with the Austronesian diffusion in MSEA. Hitherto, hypotheses stemming mainly from linguistic and cultural viewpoints on the origin of the Cham people remain a welter of controversies. Among the points of dissension is the muddled issue of whether the Cham people arose from demic or cultural diffusion from the Austronesians. Addressing this issue also helps elucidate the dispersal mode of the Austronesian language. In the present study, we have analyzed mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control-region and coding-region sequence variations in 168 Cham and 139 Kinh individuals from Vietnam. Around 77% and 95% matrilineal components in the Chams and the Kinhs, respectively, could be assigned into the defined mtDNA haplogroups. Additionally three common East Eurasian haplogroups B, R9, and M7 account for the majority (>60%) of maternal components in both populations. Entire sequencing of 20 representative mtDNAs selected from the thus far unclassified lineages, together with four new mtDNA genome sequences from Thailand, led to the identification of one new haplogroup M77 and helped to re-evaluate several haplogroups determined previously. Comparing the Chams with other Southeast Asian populations reveals that the Chams had a closer affinity with the Mon-Khmer populations in MSEA than with the Austronesian populations from Island Southeast Asia (ISEA). Further analyses failed to detect the potential homelands of the Chams in ISEA. Therefore, our results suggested that the origin of the Cham was likely a process of assimilation of massive local Mon-Khmer populations accompanied with language shift, thus indicating that the Austronesian diffusion in MSEA was mainly mediated by cultural diffusion, at least from the matrilineal genetic perspective, an observation in agreement with the hypothesis of the Nusantao Maritime Trading and Communication Networks (NMTCN).
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
Thursday, June 03, 2010
Mandala and fractal thinking in Southeast Asia and the Pacific
The term "mandala" is often used in scholarly literature to describe the polities, the temple architecture and other aspects of Southeast Asian culture. The same word could be extended into the cultures of the Pacific where both mandala and fractal types of thinking also prevail.
A mandala again, in this analysis, is a way of viewing or representing the cosmos, or a part of the cosmos seen as the whole in microcosm. The term fractal refers to a geometric shape that can be broken into fragments that are copies or approximations of the whole. In sociology and ethnology, the term fractal applies to ways of visualizing the cosmos as consisting of parts that are smaller copies or approximations of the whole -- the macrocosm.
Indeed, in Southeast Asia and Oceania, one can view the entire culture from polities and family relationships to iconography and orality through the prism of the mandala and the fractal. Such concepts are defining in identifying what is indigenous in these regions.
Fractal Cosmos, Fractal Person, Distributed Person
Thomas Reuter in Sharing the Earth, Dividing the Land: Land and Territory in the Austronesian World describes Austronesian society using indigenous metaphors that relate the self and the community to trees and other plants.
The idea of the "trunk" and the "tip" takes on fractal dimensions as Mark S. Mosko points out in "The Fractal Yam: Botanical Imagery and Human Agency in the Trobriands":
The generation of self-similarity at every new tip applies quite broadly not only to Austronesian society, but also to the other non-Austronesian societies in the region.
In Kapampangan culture, the trunk or source is known as pun, which can also mean the chief or leader, who in ancient times was likely a "fractal chief." One's relatives or siblings can be known as capsi from the word apsi "small branches." Bergano defines capsi as "el un hermano, o pariente porque vienen de un tronco." The "tronco" or 'trunk" here again is the pun.
The most ancient ruler was likely the clan leader, or pun, who like the latter chiefs, kings and emperors was seen as a personification of the community, kingdom or world, and like the original Cosmic Being was expected to "distribute" him or herself, at least ritually, to his or her followers.
According to Bergano, the opposite of pun is sepu -- a word referring among other things to the tip of a leaf. The word sepu can also mean "history" as in one's clan history, the history of a village or nation, or history in general. From this word, Bergano mentions the derived form casesepuan "ultimisimo de la historia" (the last part of history), which might also be related to one of his definitions for the word suku as "the end of time."
The Rurutu deity Tangaroa or A'a represents the "Fractal Person" at the cosmic level -- the pantheistic concept of the cosmos as a person or other microcosmic form that generates similar smaller forms in the "creation" of the cosmos. In the sculpture above, A'a generates other deities and humans as his eyes, nose, knees, etc. (Source: http://detoursdesmondes.typepad.com/dtours_des_mondes/anthropologie_de_lart/)
The depiction of fractal thinking appears quite early in this region. For example, the Lapita motif below, dated to about 1000 BCE, shows "face" motifs that are believed to have been widely used by the Lapita culture.
Source: http://picasaweb.google.com/JTeddyT/LapitaFace?authkey=Gv1sRgCMfAr6DEpafBVg&feat=flashslideshow#5221186924082589314
The image above shows both larger and smaller face motifs as demonstrated below.
You can also rotate the image 180 degrees to double many of the face images. Note that the highly stylized face motif that borders this "mandala" creates many face images. Click on image for larger view.
The image to the left is taken from Art and Agency showing Marquesan tattoos with "hand faces."
From Art and Agency, tattoos and mask showing mata hoata "faces," and ipu "eyes."
Mata hoata faces on leg, from the Marquesas. For more images, see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/runningafterantelope/sets/72157608481767555/
Variations of the etua motif (squatting figure motif, etua = deity, deified ancestor) from the Marquesas showing the number of ways the local artists could represent the "Distributed Person."
Fractal tortoise
Knots, knotted cords and carvings with knots are also used to portray the interconnected objects/persons in the family, community or world. Some examples are the Malangan sculptures of New Ireland and the to'o knots of Tahiti.
The Malanggan sculpture from New Ireland with carved knots represents the distributed or fractal self. During death ceremonies, the breaking up and distributing of the carving is essential in passing on the land of the deceased to the involved parties. A bird is carved at the top of the sculpture. (Source: http://detoursdesmondes.typepad.com/dtours_des_mondes/anthropologie_de_lart/)
In Masantol, Pampanga, the myth of Mangatia or Mangetchay describes the Creator as a net-maker, which is the meaning of "mangatia," and the cosmos is described as a great interwoven net. The image of a net stresses the interconnection of all things.
Imagining the world as mountain, tree
Earlier in this blog, I have described how the concept of the cosmos as a mountain was quite widespread in this region, if not throughout the world.
The depiction of this world mountain may come very early in this region depending on how one interprets symbols like concentric circles, triangles, spirals, etc. that appear in the very early Neolithic phase.
During the megalithic period, we see the rise of many types of terraced structures that in latter times where widely viewed throughout the SEA-Oceania region as representing mountains, and in many cases the World Mountain.
The megalithic period dates to around 3000 BCE from the Peinan Culture in Taiwan, with the specific evidence of terracing dating to about 2000 BCE from sites like Gio-Linh in Vietnam. Megalithic monuments in Island Southeast Asia associated with Neolithic culture also show evidence of terracing that increases during the Bronze Age.
Many of the well-known Hindu-Buddhist temples in Southeast Asia are actually built over older pre-Hindu-Buddhist structures. For example, Borobudur in Java is built over an indigenous Javanese pyramid with three great stone terraces. Pre-Hindu-Buddhist terraced pyramids and platforms used for burial and ritual are found all over Java.
The use of terracing for both practical and ritual purposes is widely found during the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods in Southeast Asia. Such forms also extend out into the Pacific where we find marae, the often cruciform-shaped paepae and similar platforms. On some small islands of the Pacific there are hundreds or even thousands of these stone platforms.
At some point, it may be that the terraced mountainside became associated with depictions of the World Mountain.
A house built on a terraced paepae in Hakaui, Nuku Hiva. (Source: http://www.insidemystery.org/hakaui-1971/arrival.html)
A massive paepae on Nuku Hiva. (Source: http://www.insidemystery.org/hakaui-1971/arrival.html)
The building plan of Borobudur in Java from overhead showing the cruciform staircases leading from the four directions to the apex or summit of this stone mountain-pyramid. The slightly cruciform lower terraces lead to the circular terraces near the summit. (Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Borobudur_Mandala.svg)
The top of this Dongson bronze drum (northern Vietnam) might be a representation of a mandala with concentric circles showing depictions of the world. Click on image for larger view. (Source: http://www.asianart.com/asianartresource/d10479.html)
The Borobudur stupa from Java has often been described as a mandala in stone. Although a Buddhist monument, Borobudur possesses characteristics of Southeast Asian temple architecture including the terraced pyramid form and the use of a cruciform building plan that were evident in pre-Hindu-Buddhist structures.
On many Tibetan cloth mandalas (thangkas), we see depictions of "palaces" from an overhead view with the "gates" and other features that need to be displayed shown in a "flattened" out manner.
Kalachakra Mandala depicting palace as seen from above with gate towers flattened out. There are three concentric levels of terraces with the gates leading to the apex of the palace. Click here for larger image.
The cruciform staircases at the four quadrants of Borobudur lead through gates with foilage-spewing carvings of Kala, the demon of time. The word "kalacakra" means cycle of time, and we can note also the gates of the palace in the Kalacakra Mandala. (Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Borobudur_entrances_and_stairs)
Borobudur gate with Kala at the top "devouring" the worshipper as they climb through the galleries to reach the stupa at the top. The galleries at the bottom depict everyday life from the Jataka tales, and as one moves higher we see reliefs of the journey to become a boddhisattva. The topmost terraces contain Buddhas, and thus, the mandala represents a movement in time toward ultimate enlightenment and Nirvana, which is possibly symbolized by the empty stupa at the apex. The Kalacakra Deity is the pantheistic source (Adibuddha) -- the Fractal Self -- in Kalacakra Buddhism and is seen as a personification of time, a belief that also is found in indigenous systems of Southeast Asia. (Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Borobudur_entrances_and_stairs)
Click on image for full size. (Source: http://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/document/Volume_48_1939/Volume_48,_No._189/The_Tuamotuan_creation_charts_by_Paiore,_by_Kenneth_P._Emory,_p_1-29/p1?action=null#)
In the image above, "creation" is shown as a stepwise process through time and space represented in the form of a concentric mandala. Click on image for larger view.
(Source: http://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/document/Volume_48_1939/Volume_48,_No._189/The_Tuamotuan_creation_charts_by_Paiore,_by_Kenneth_P._Emory,_p_1-29/p1?action=null#)
The Cosmic Person or Fractal Person that represents the cosmos can be a human, an animal like a dog, lizard or whale, a tree, or an "inanimate" object like a mountain since all these entities were viewed as fractal copies and parts of the greater Cosmic Being.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Chiu, Scarlett, Detailed analysis of Lapita Face Motifs: Case Studies from Reef/Santa Cruz Lapita Sites
and New Caledonia Lapita Site 13A, http://epress.anu.edu.au/terra_australis/ta26/pdf/ch15.pdf, 2007.
Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998.
Mosko, Mark S. 2009. "The Fractal Yam: Botanical Imagery and Human Agency in the Trobriands". The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 15, no. 4: 679-700.
Reuter, Thomas Anton. Sharing the Earth, Dividing the Land: Land and Territory in the Austronesian World. Canberra: ANU E Press, 2006, 25.
Schellinger, Paul E., and Robert M. Salkin. Illustrated Encyclopedia of Historic Places: Asia and Oceania. New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 1997, 147.
Smith, Ralph Bernard, and William Watson. Early South East Asia: Essays in Archaeology, History and Historical Geography : [Papers ... Submitted to a Colloquy on Early South East Asia Held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, in September 1973]. New York: Oxford U.P., 1979, 180.
A mandala again, in this analysis, is a way of viewing or representing the cosmos, or a part of the cosmos seen as the whole in microcosm. The term fractal refers to a geometric shape that can be broken into fragments that are copies or approximations of the whole. In sociology and ethnology, the term fractal applies to ways of visualizing the cosmos as consisting of parts that are smaller copies or approximations of the whole -- the macrocosm.
Indeed, in Southeast Asia and Oceania, one can view the entire culture from polities and family relationships to iconography and orality through the prism of the mandala and the fractal. Such concepts are defining in identifying what is indigenous in these regions.
Fractal Cosmos, Fractal Person, Distributed Person
Thomas Reuter in Sharing the Earth, Dividing the Land: Land and Territory in the Austronesian World describes Austronesian society using indigenous metaphors that relate the self and the community to trees and other plants.
Botanic metaphors are among the most commonly used metaphors for social relationships in the Austronesian world. The source ancestor of a clan or founding clan of a village, for example, may be referred to as the ‘trunk’ or ‘root’ and his descendant or newcomer clients as the ‘leaves’ or ‘tips’ of the same tree. Similarly in a topogeny, the place of origin is usually the ritual centre or ‘trunk’ of the domain, to which a path of origin is ceremonially traced back along one or several ‘branch’ villages, beginning from the newest settlements or ‘tips’. The people who reside at, or in some other way can lay claim to, the origin site tend to maintain a position of ritual precedence or of political authority in the domain, but rarely both. Botanic metaphors generally suggest a segmentary process of spatial expansion due to organic growth from within, but can and are applied also within local societies featuring a population with multiple origins
....an underlying Austronesian territorial concept that envisages a shared social identity based on a specific ‘foundation event’. Many Gumai villages in the South Sumatran highlands are thought to have been established by, and thus trace their ‘origin’ to, a single ancestor, the puyang Ketunggalan Dusun. Villages contained a small ancestor house (lunjuk or rumah puyang) for the spirits of the founding ancestors, where rituals would be held to commemorate the village origins. The morpheme pu in puyang could be a reflex of puqun, which is a Proto-Malayo-Polynesian reconstruction meaning ‘tree’, ‘trunk’, ‘base’ or ‘source’. Villages are inhabited by the descendants of the puyang and their affines. The population is divided into origin groups called jungkuk which are ranked in order of precedence based on birth order and ritual seniority.
The idea of the "trunk" and the "tip" takes on fractal dimensions as Mark S. Mosko points out in "The Fractal Yam: Botanical Imagery and Human Agency in the Trobriands":
As Jim Fox and his collaborators on the Comparative Austronesian Project have amply demonstrated, the arboreal idiom of ‘base’, ‘branch’ and ‘tip’ animates the origin structures of precedence of many if not most societies of the Austronesian world...Based on recent ethnographic enquires at Omarakana, the site of Malinowski’s original fieldwork, this paper argues that the sequential recursiveness of base-branch-tip across North Kiriwinan contexts is fractally structured – borrowing a notion from chaos theory. The production of every ‘tip’, in other words, becomes the condition or ‘base’ of further base-branch-tip transformation, and so on.
The generation of self-similarity at every new tip applies quite broadly not only to Austronesian society, but also to the other non-Austronesian societies in the region.
In Kapampangan culture, the trunk or source is known as pun, which can also mean the chief or leader, who in ancient times was likely a "fractal chief." One's relatives or siblings can be known as capsi from the word apsi "small branches." Bergano defines capsi as "el un hermano, o pariente porque vienen de un tronco." The "tronco" or 'trunk" here again is the pun.
The most ancient ruler was likely the clan leader, or pun, who like the latter chiefs, kings and emperors was seen as a personification of the community, kingdom or world, and like the original Cosmic Being was expected to "distribute" him or herself, at least ritually, to his or her followers.
According to Bergano, the opposite of pun is sepu -- a word referring among other things to the tip of a leaf. The word sepu can also mean "history" as in one's clan history, the history of a village or nation, or history in general. From this word, Bergano mentions the derived form casesepuan "ultimisimo de la historia" (the last part of history), which might also be related to one of his definitions for the word suku as "the end of time."
The Rurutu deity Tangaroa or A'a represents the "Fractal Person" at the cosmic level -- the pantheistic concept of the cosmos as a person or other microcosmic form that generates similar smaller forms in the "creation" of the cosmos. In the sculpture above, A'a generates other deities and humans as his eyes, nose, knees, etc. (Source: http://detoursdesmondes.typepad.com/dtours_des_mondes/anthropologie_de_lart/)
The depiction of fractal thinking appears quite early in this region. For example, the Lapita motif below, dated to about 1000 BCE, shows "face" motifs that are believed to have been widely used by the Lapita culture.
Source: http://picasaweb.google.com/JTeddyT/LapitaFace?authkey=Gv1sRgCMfAr6DEpafBVg&feat=flashslideshow#5221186924082589314
The image above shows both larger and smaller face motifs as demonstrated below.
You can also rotate the image 180 degrees to double many of the face images. Note that the highly stylized face motif that borders this "mandala" creates many face images. Click on image for larger view.
The image to the left is taken from Art and Agency showing Marquesan tattoos with "hand faces."
From Art and Agency, tattoos and mask showing mata hoata "faces," and ipu "eyes."
Mata hoata faces on leg, from the Marquesas. For more images, see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/runningafterantelope/sets/72157608481767555/
Variations of the etua motif (squatting figure motif, etua = deity, deified ancestor) from the Marquesas showing the number of ways the local artists could represent the "Distributed Person."
Fractal tortoise
Knots, knotted cords and carvings with knots are also used to portray the interconnected objects/persons in the family, community or world. Some examples are the Malangan sculptures of New Ireland and the to'o knots of Tahiti.
The Malanggan sculpture from New Ireland with carved knots represents the distributed or fractal self. During death ceremonies, the breaking up and distributing of the carving is essential in passing on the land of the deceased to the involved parties. A bird is carved at the top of the sculpture. (Source: http://detoursdesmondes.typepad.com/dtours_des_mondes/anthropologie_de_lart/)
In Masantol, Pampanga, the myth of Mangatia or Mangetchay describes the Creator as a net-maker, which is the meaning of "mangatia," and the cosmos is described as a great interwoven net. The image of a net stresses the interconnection of all things.
Imagining the world as mountain, tree
Earlier in this blog, I have described how the concept of the cosmos as a mountain was quite widespread in this region, if not throughout the world.
The depiction of this world mountain may come very early in this region depending on how one interprets symbols like concentric circles, triangles, spirals, etc. that appear in the very early Neolithic phase.
During the megalithic period, we see the rise of many types of terraced structures that in latter times where widely viewed throughout the SEA-Oceania region as representing mountains, and in many cases the World Mountain.
The megalithic period dates to around 3000 BCE from the Peinan Culture in Taiwan, with the specific evidence of terracing dating to about 2000 BCE from sites like Gio-Linh in Vietnam. Megalithic monuments in Island Southeast Asia associated with Neolithic culture also show evidence of terracing that increases during the Bronze Age.
Many of the well-known Hindu-Buddhist temples in Southeast Asia are actually built over older pre-Hindu-Buddhist structures. For example, Borobudur in Java is built over an indigenous Javanese pyramid with three great stone terraces. Pre-Hindu-Buddhist terraced pyramids and platforms used for burial and ritual are found all over Java.
The use of terracing for both practical and ritual purposes is widely found during the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods in Southeast Asia. Such forms also extend out into the Pacific where we find marae, the often cruciform-shaped paepae and similar platforms. On some small islands of the Pacific there are hundreds or even thousands of these stone platforms.
At some point, it may be that the terraced mountainside became associated with depictions of the World Mountain.
A house built on a terraced paepae in Hakaui, Nuku Hiva. (Source: http://www.insidemystery.org/hakaui-1971/arrival.html)
A massive paepae on Nuku Hiva. (Source: http://www.insidemystery.org/hakaui-1971/arrival.html)
The building plan of Borobudur in Java from overhead showing the cruciform staircases leading from the four directions to the apex or summit of this stone mountain-pyramid. The slightly cruciform lower terraces lead to the circular terraces near the summit. (Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Borobudur_Mandala.svg)
The top of this Dongson bronze drum (northern Vietnam) might be a representation of a mandala with concentric circles showing depictions of the world. Click on image for larger view. (Source: http://www.asianart.com/asianartresource/d10479.html)
The Borobudur stupa from Java has often been described as a mandala in stone. Although a Buddhist monument, Borobudur possesses characteristics of Southeast Asian temple architecture including the terraced pyramid form and the use of a cruciform building plan that were evident in pre-Hindu-Buddhist structures.
On many Tibetan cloth mandalas (thangkas), we see depictions of "palaces" from an overhead view with the "gates" and other features that need to be displayed shown in a "flattened" out manner.
Kalachakra Mandala depicting palace as seen from above with gate towers flattened out. There are three concentric levels of terraces with the gates leading to the apex of the palace. Click here for larger image.
The cruciform staircases at the four quadrants of Borobudur lead through gates with foilage-spewing carvings of Kala, the demon of time. The word "kalacakra" means cycle of time, and we can note also the gates of the palace in the Kalacakra Mandala. (Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Borobudur_entrances_and_stairs)
Borobudur gate with Kala at the top "devouring" the worshipper as they climb through the galleries to reach the stupa at the top. The galleries at the bottom depict everyday life from the Jataka tales, and as one moves higher we see reliefs of the journey to become a boddhisattva. The topmost terraces contain Buddhas, and thus, the mandala represents a movement in time toward ultimate enlightenment and Nirvana, which is possibly symbolized by the empty stupa at the apex. The Kalacakra Deity is the pantheistic source (Adibuddha) -- the Fractal Self -- in Kalacakra Buddhism and is seen as a personification of time, a belief that also is found in indigenous systems of Southeast Asia. (Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Borobudur_entrances_and_stairs)
Click on image for full size. (Source: http://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/document/Volume_48_1939/Volume_48,_No._189/The_Tuamotuan_creation_charts_by_Paiore,_by_Kenneth_P._Emory,_p_1-29/p1?action=null#)
In the image above, "creation" is shown as a stepwise process through time and space represented in the form of a concentric mandala. Click on image for larger view.
(Source: http://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/document/Volume_48_1939/Volume_48,_No._189/The_Tuamotuan_creation_charts_by_Paiore,_by_Kenneth_P._Emory,_p_1-29/p1?action=null#)
The Cosmic Person or Fractal Person that represents the cosmos can be a human, an animal like a dog, lizard or whale, a tree, or an "inanimate" object like a mountain since all these entities were viewed as fractal copies and parts of the greater Cosmic Being.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Chiu, Scarlett, Detailed analysis of Lapita Face Motifs: Case Studies from Reef/Santa Cruz Lapita Sites
and New Caledonia Lapita Site 13A, http://epress.anu.edu.au/terra_australis/ta26/pdf/ch15.pdf, 2007.
Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998.
Mosko, Mark S. 2009. "The Fractal Yam: Botanical Imagery and Human Agency in the Trobriands". The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 15, no. 4: 679-700.
Reuter, Thomas Anton. Sharing the Earth, Dividing the Land: Land and Territory in the Austronesian World. Canberra: ANU E Press, 2006, 25.
Schellinger, Paul E., and Robert M. Salkin. Illustrated Encyclopedia of Historic Places: Asia and Oceania. New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 1997, 147.
Smith, Ralph Bernard, and William Watson. Early South East Asia: Essays in Archaeology, History and Historical Geography : [Papers ... Submitted to a Colloquy on Early South East Asia Held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, in September 1973]. New York: Oxford U.P., 1979, 180.
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