International Journal of Indonesian Studies Volume 1, Issue 3 | Page 65

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES
SPRING 2016
with the tradition of duality in Eastern Indonesia is debatable, but by doing so, he gives a
unique analysis of sacrifice and how it has changed in West Sumba.
Keane noticed that Calvinist missionaries during the 1980s in West Sumba had
emphasized, as they did during the Reformation, that words do not have power in and of
themselves and objects, specifically offerings, are not mystical (see Keane’s Christian
Moderns (2007) for a thorough analysis of this process). Where Calvinists were successful,
ritual sacrifices of buffalo at marriage ceremonies were conducted without ritual words and
became only means of feeding the wedding guests making it a variation of a barbeque. This
transformation did not go unnoticed by older Sumbanese at the event who were distraught
because the spirits did not receive their sacrifice because they can only understand
ritualized speech (Keane 1994, pp. 607). Similarly, prayers made to the spirits (or God) in a
church without offerings leave the spirits hungry and unsatisfied. As with other dualities in
Eastern Indonesia, words and things are connected to other dualisms. The art of verbal
expression, which is highly stylized in pre-existing matching couplets, is the domain of men
while textiles, the major visual art in Eastern Indonesia, it associated with women. Though
some masculine items are exchanged such as swords and gold, the most common and
quintessential item exchanged with other men during marriage ceremonies or spirits during
funerals are textiles (Keane 1994; Forshee 2000; Adams 1969; Hoskins 1989).
Language
Ritualized speech is an integral part of exchange between communities and routinely used
for communal activities like the building of a house or harvests in Eastern Indonesia. The
most common pattern of ritual speech is in the form of rhyming couplets in which the
second line complements the meaning of the first. James Fox described couplets in Roti, an
island east of Sumba, as language in which “semantic elements comprise prescribed dyadic
sets; these sets are structured in formulaic phrases; and as a result, composition generally
consists in production of parallel poetic lines” (1971, pp. 215). Couplet speech was generally
known by most adult members of the community though only certain men perform them.
In West Sumba, the Weyewa have a couplet about the act of performing couplets which will
serve as my example: “The complete sets of eyes; the paired sets of lips” to be followed on
certain occasions with “because of them, I blow my flute; because of them, I pluck my guitar”
(Kuipers1998, pp.6).19 Though couplets are a common form of ritual speech and poetry, the
vast number of couples, (3100 were found in East Sumba)20 and the broad contexts in which
they are used, has been used as evidence for the expression of the unity of asymmetric
duality in Eastern Indonesia (Errington 1989).

19

Completeness/paired & eyes/lips hints at the asymmetrical complementarity between speaker and listener
and inter-sensory perception. Blow/pluck & flute/guitar suggests the harmonic coordination of different
actions.
20
U. H. Kapita, 1987, Lawiti luluku Humba/Pola peribahasa Sumba, Waingapu: Lembaga Penyeledikan
Kebudayaan Selatan Tenri cited in Keane 1994.

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