Sakuddei Myths: “Crocodile, Deer, Joja Monkey, Wild Boar” | Translation & Commentary by Dr. Reimar Schefold
Crocodile, Deer, Joja Monkey, Wild Boar
Translation by Dr. Reimar Schefold
This is a story from the past. Whether I'm telling it right, we don't really know.
Once upon a time, there were a man and a woman. They also had children, a boy, and a girl. One day the man went into the forest to make a dugout. While he was there, his wife prepared mouthfuls of food for him. But behind her back, the little daughter filled something else into the bamboo container without the mother noticing. All the good things the wife had put in, she replaced with banana peels, weeds, and wood shavings.
When the man went back to the forest the next morning, he took the portable bamboo with him. He was working there and got hungry. He opened the bamboo and saw the banana peels and the weeds. "What," he thought, "my wife has cheated me. She has given me bad food, wood chips, weeds, banana peels! In vain, I looked forward to my food, thinking there would be something tasty, but there are only bad things." Disappointed, he went back home, but to his wife, he said nothing. He remained silent.
In the evening, the man went hunting in the area with a torch. By the light of the torch, he killed a snake and stuffed it into a bamboo quiver, and he also put all other kinds of inedible things into the bamboo. When he returned, he said to his wife, "Here, cook this meat for yourself. I went out with the torch and killed some good meat for you."
The next day, when he had gone back to the dugout in the forest, his wife split the bamboo. Thinking it was good meat, she saw that there was snake meat in the bamboo. "What? My husband lied to me. Snakes only he gave me as meat. I thought there was eel, there was trout, there was fish, there was crab, but snake only, python only, lizard only," and she became sad. Equal was the grief of both of them, but they didn't know it; they didn't speak it out.
The man, when he came back from work, called his children to go bathing. They bathed, and then he said to his eldest, a son, "Count how long I can dive." And the boy counted - "one, two, … ten!" - then the father reappeared. "How many?" he asked his child. "I counted up to ten." Now he asked the younger child, "Now you count!" And dived under again. While he was diving underwater, the child counted: "… twenty!" Again he surfaced, "How far did you count?" "Twenty, father." "There, then count again." The children counted and counted, got to a hundred, got to a thousand, but he did not surface again. Their father had become a crocodile.
They returned home. The mother there was sad. She called her children and went with them into the forest. And she took her fishnet and devoured its frame. This was to become her antlers. And she also devoured the net itself. This was to become her stomach. So she went into the forest with her children. When evening came, they lay down between the buttress roots of a tree and slept there. While they slept, the mother pinched her children. She pinched them - "Mother, don't pinch us. You are pinching us!" "No, these are only the mosquitoes of your ancestors, not ordinary mosquitoes." "Oh!" And they slept on. They slept, and there the mother pinched them again, and when they no longer noticed, she went to the other side of the tree to another buttress root.
The children woke up, looked for their mother around the tree, and finally, they found her. They went back to sleep. The next morning when it was light, they continued walking through the forest. Finally, they all went again to sleep, and when the mother thought the children had fallen asleep, she pinched them. "Mother, you're pinching us!" "No, it wasn't me. It was just the mosquitoes of your ancestors, not ordinary mosquitoes." On they slept, again the mother pinched them, but they were tired and did not wake up. The mother slipped away, and when the children awoke and went to look for her, they could no longer find her. The mother had become a deer.
It got light, and the children went astray. They got hungry. Then they saw a rambutan fruit tree by the river. They saw its fruits on the water's surface as if they saw them in the mirror. "Sister, here are rambutans, something to eat for us!" The brother went and dived for it but got nothing in his hands. His little sister saw this and called out, "Brother, look up there. There is something red!" "Oh dear, so I got wet and cold in vain!" And the little brother went and climbed. He climbed and climbed, and up there, he fetched the rambutan. On his head, the boy wore a headband as an ornament. After he had climbed up, he threw down fruit for his sister. He ate it himself at the top while his sister ate it at the bottom. And then he started shouting like a joja monkey; "Mago, mago, gulu gulu gulu." "Brother, why do you keep shouting 'mago'? Don't say things like that!" "Sister, my belly is happy because of all the red rambutan fruits there." And he hung his headband on a branch and climbed back down. Arriving at his sister's place, they continued eating until they had enough. "Oh, girl, my headband - I forgot it upstairs!" He climbed back up, got his headband, and put it on his head. Then he said to his sister, "Girl, don't wait for me anymore. I've become a joja monkey now. And if you have daughters, later on, nieces of mine, they shall not eat me. But if they are boys, nephews of mine, they can eat me." Thus his headband had become the white forehead of the joja monkey. "Ah, brother," cried the girl, "then I must die now. I do not know the way back. I shall be hopelessly lost."
Sad at heart, she wandered through the forest until she finally reached home. There at home, she stayed. She got a husband, moved to his home, and became the mother of a son. One day, there were relatives in a neighboring house who had shot a joja monkey with a bow and arrow. The mother said to her son, "Boy, what do you think they eat over there, your uncles? Why don't you go to them and ask them what kind of meat they are eating?" The boy went and asked, "You uncles, what are you eating? What kind of meat is that?" "What do you think, boy? It's meiku. Why do you ask?" "My mother asked about it. She said, 'Go to your uncles and ask them what kind of meat they eat.'" Now he knew the name: Meiku - that's the name used for the Joja monkey in stories. And as he walked, he repeated, "meiku, meiku," but there he stumbled on the way, forgetting in fright what he had repeated. "Oh, what shall I say now? I don't remember." So he came to his mother, and she asked at once: "What is it that they eat?" "I don't remember, mother. I forgot it on the way. I stumbled." "Then go again, go again!" So he went again and asked, "What is this meat here?" "Meiku, boy, meiku." And he went back again and (repeated), "meiku, meiku," but a dog ran between his feet, and he fell again and forgot everything. Back at his mother's, she asked him, "What kind of meat do they eat there?" "I don't remember, a dog ran between my feet, and I fell." "Then go again. Go once more so that we may know." So her son set off again, "What is that meat there? I forgot, I fell." "Meiku. Meiku." Again he went, he repeated, "Meiku, meiku," he came to his mother and cried, "meiku, mother!" "Oh, boy, that's your uncle then, your mother's brother. Go back there and eat with the others."
She, however, remained and was sad at heart, thinking again of her grief from before. Then the other women in the house, her sisters-in-law, and she herself went fishing with their nets. They went fishing in a little stream. The mother saw bamboo shoots standing there and went and ate them. "Sister-in-law, you are eating bamboo shoots!" "Yes — my heart wants to, it craves for it. They taste good." "So?" They continued fishing, and again she saw bamboo shoots, little children from the big bamboo. She went and put her net on the ground and began to eat them, the bamboo children. She ate, and the others shouted, "Sister-in-law, what are you doing? You are eating bamboo shoots." "Oh, I am doing that because it pleases my heart, good they are, good they taste, the bamboo shoots." "Really?" - the others wondered. But she went and said to them, "me, I am now becoming a wild boar. I will become like a pig, but a wild one. I will not return to the house." And so - "grunt!" - she went over into the undergrowth in the forest, and they saw her no more, for she had become a wild boar.
So the father became the crocodile, the mother became the deer, the older child, the boy, became the joja monkey, and the younger child, the girl, became the wild boar. Here it ends, it really ends. That's what I knew. Whether there is more, I don't know. Am I an old guy?
And if you want to know it exactly: In the Sempungan area in Northeast Siberut, it is still taboo for women to eat joja meat.
Commentary
The crocodile as the source of communally owned magical remedies adds a new nuance to the creative social role that was attributed to that animal in the myth of the earthquake-spirit (see Art of the Ancestors July 2022). Its general significance as founder and guardian of the local communities grants it a pivotal position all over Mentawai. These social concerns also come to the fore in the myth of its origins, variants of which are known throughout the islands of the archipelago.
In the version of Tengatiti from Saibi reproduced here, the story begins with a misunderstanding and its tragic consequences. A woman prepares and fills a portable bamboo-section with supplies for her husband while he works in the plantations, but her little daughter exchanges the contents for inedible scraps behind her back. The husband feels badly treated and takes revenge by bringing his wife home a bamboo filled with distasteful snake and lizard meat from fishing. Both are unhappy but do not speak out. The man takes his daughter and son to the riverbank, makes them count how long he can dive, and then turns into a crocodile before their eyes. The mother sadly devours her fishing net and moves into the forest with the children. She pinches the children while they sleep there at the foot of a buttress root and deceives them with the lie that they have been bitten by the mosquitoes of their ancestors. When they finally fall back to sleep, she leaves them without their taking notice and transforms into a stag; the net frame becomes the antlers, the net itself the stomach.
The children wander around in the jungle, see rambutan fruit, and while the son is picking it from the tree top, he turns into a monkey. The daughter finds her way back home, marries, and becomes the mother of a son. As he has grown up, the mother overhears that the neighbours have captured a monkey and want to eat it. She learns the name of the kind of monkey from her son when she asks after the son had initially forgotten it because he had stumbled on the way. Although it now becomes clear that the monkey is the transformed former brother, she asks her son to join in the neighbours' meal. But sorrow overcomes her, and during a fishing trip together with the other women of the uma, she turns into a wild boar.
A special feature of the story is the legacy of the son on the occasion of his metamorphosis into a monkey: After a hunt, in the future, his kind may only be eaten by men and not by women. I have dealt in detail with a possible symbolic interpretation of this commandment in Lia (Schefold 1988: 574-7). It remains astonishing that according to the narrative, a transformed descendant of a human protagonist identified by his new name is eaten - albeit in animal form. However, this is only a special case in a general motif in the Mentawai mythology that relevant animals and plants originated from humans. The narrators, appalled by my accounts of the existence of cannibalism elsewhere, commented on this as part of a remote, mythical past rather than a concern for them today.
Schefold, R, (1988): Lia; Das grosse Ritual auf den Mentawai-Inseln (Indonesien). Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 695 pp. ill. tables, maps.
Dr. Reimar Schefold
Dr. Reimar Schefold is Professor Emeritus Cultural Anthropology and Sociology of Indonesia at Leiden University. He has a long-standing interest in material culture, art, and vernacular architecture, particularly that of Southeast Asia, which has been the subject of many of his scholarly publications and Museum exhibitions. He has conducted several extensive periods of fieldwork in Indonesia, notably among the Sakuddei of Siberut, Mentawai Islands, where he spent two years from 1967 to 1969 and several shorter stays later; the Batak of Sumatra, and the Sa’dan Toraja of Sulawesi.
He is, with Steven G. Alpert, editor and one of the authors of Eyes of the Ancestors: The Arts of Island Southeast Asia at the Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art; New Haven etcetera: Yale University Press. 2013) and, with Han F. Vermeulen, of Treasure Hunting? Collectors and Collections of Indonesian Artefacts (Leiden: Research School CNWS/National Museum of Ethnology. 2002). His most recent publication is Toys for the Souls: Life and Art on the Mentawai Islands (Belgium : Primedia sprl. 2017) where in the Bibliography more of his writings on Mentawai can be found.
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