The Andamanese, when first observed by E. The Negritos belong to a stock thought to have been among the first inhabitants of southeast Asia but confined in recent centuries to the Andaman Islands and pockets of peninsular Malaysia and the Philippines like the Australians, they are mainly hunters and gatherers. Possession by a tiger may not be indigenous to the Malay belian but borrowed from the shamanistic Negrito or Senoi (Endicott 1970, 22 cf.
If not quite a master of spirits (since the possessing tiger-spirit is thought to act through him), he is far more than a "telephone exchange" for their messages, and although his familiar spirit is inherited, he may establish communication with it through tuntut (Endicott 1970, 16), a vision quest involving solitary vigil beside an open grave or in the dark forest. The Malay belian actively combats his spiritual foes. To a platform of his house where he seeks visions in a deliberate quest for transcendent knowledge (Leenhardt, 28).īut it is in the Malay peninsula and Indonesian archipelago that the prevalent spirit mediumship of these regions most strikingly intermingles with practices similar to those of northern Eurasia.
0 kommentar(er)
