The Diatribe of 'Ajo Bupu and the Oration of Lowa Bata

Like other eastern Indonesians, the Nage of central Flores possess a rich tradition of parallelistic ritual speaking. This article introduces the Nage genre by way of an analysis of three texts. While two texts exemplify a form of military oratory, the third replicates a compact between an immigrant group and its land-granting hosts. All three texts reveal formal patterns consistent with principles of numerical symbolism completely general to Nage culture, and a pervasive dualism further evidenced in several aspects of local social morphology. In addition, each text represents a declaration, a public speech forming part of a longer clan history and functioning as a sort of historical charter, particularly in regard to territorial claims and rights to land. Keywords: Nage (Flores, Eastern Indonesia)Parallelistic SpeakingMilitary OrationHistorical NarrativeClanshipDualistic Social OrganisationEntextualisationLinguistic Anthropology Notes Gregory Forth is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta. This essay draws on Indonesian research supported at various times by a number of bodies, including the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Nusa Cendana and Artha Wacana universities in Kupang, St. Paul's Seminary in Ledalero (Flores), the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada, and the University of Alberta. To all of these I am most grateful for their assistance and support. Texts representing a variety of these traditions are recorded and analysed in Fox (Citation1988). More recent studies of eastern Indonesian ritual speaking, focusing on the contextual deployment of parallelistic speech canons to achieve particular ends and effects, are exemplified by Kuipers’ (Citation1990) and Keane's (Citation1997) work on western Sumba. Nage words are transcribed in accordance with the orthography outlined in Forth (Citation1998). For present purposes, I would reiterate that /'/ before an initial vowel indicates a glottal stop, as it does between two vowels. An acute accent distinguishes the long /e/ (as in léwa, ‘long, tall’, pronounced roughly as ‘lay-wa’) from a shorter /e/ or schwa. Since terminal /e/ is always long, as is /e/ followed by /'/ (indicating a glottal stop) or another vowel, I do not ordinarily mark these. Towards the end of the paper, however, I have done so in the case of the terms bhé and 'é'e, in order to articulate cases of vocalic rhyming (see also note 15). Deu base their position on the further claim that 'Ajo Bupu's biological father was 'Oga Ngole, the first raja of Nage, who engaged 'Ajo's mother, a woman named Bupu Déku, as a temporary mistress (ana bu'e) sometime before she married 'Ajo's social father, Mite 'Uda, a man of Tegu. However, Deu also argue that Mite 'Uda who, as they recognise, married Bupu Déku while 'Ajo Bupu was still in the womb, was himself a man of Deu rather than of Tegu. According to Tegu, Mite 'Uda was in fact 'Ajo's biological father as well, the idea that this was 'Oga Ngole having been concocted to justify 'Ajo Bupu's marriage to a long-standing wife-giver of Deu. I have been unable to identify the hanga plant scientifically. As I have discussed elsewhere, such compounds serve to disambiguate homonyms. As tana also means ‘to ask’, tana watu, ‘land, earth’ thus contrasts with tana ngale (‘to ask, enquire’, also the meaning of ngale). An instance of tana in the sense of ‘to ask, enquire’ is found in Text 3 (Appendix 3). Actually the two terms are more synonymous than the glosses would suggest. Particularly in proper names (for example, Wolo Méze, Kéli 'Ua), wolo can also refer to a ‘mountain’ and kéli to a ‘hill’. As partly illustrated by the present text, the synonymity of the two lexemes is qualified by the fact that, whereas négha can occur before or after a verb, peka normally follows the verb. The pairing of synonymous terms from different dialects is of course a feature well known from other eastern Indonesian traditions (Fox Citation1971). Here it should be noted that male animals are preferred, even prescribed, sacrificial animals, and that mosa applies equally to buffalo (bulls) and pigs (boars). The translation of mosa in lines 5 and 6 as ‘bull’ is therefore somewhat arbitrary, although it is a fact that Nage associate high-ranking males, or mosa laki, with bull buffalo significantly more than with other male animals (see Forth Citation1998). The narrator in this case was A. 'Iwu, a man of clan Dhuge, but in accordance with Nage notions of ‘descent’ (Forth Citation1998, p. 18) also recognising a relationship to Lowa's Bata's clan, Deu, through several generations of married women. Assisting me in the translation of this kadha was Cornelis Kodhi Lejo of clan Nila, a direct descendant of Koi To, and nephew (ZS) of the present leader of clan Deu in Tolo Pa. Sepa is the name in several central Flores languages for Caesalpinia sappan (Verheijen Citation1990, pp. 14, 39), the Sappan tree, also known as the East Indian Redwood. The wood of the tree is used to produce a red dye. For example, the front and back surfaces of rectangular houses and the two longer sides are typically specified as comprising respectively odd and even numbers of ‘fathoms’ (zepa), or nowadays metres. According to the clan myth, the Nila people abandoned the settlement, also called Nila, owing to an invasion of land snails (Forth Citation1998, pp. 74–5). While four (wutu, butu) is of course an even total, Nage do not always consider the number as negative or inauspicious (Forth Citation1993, pp. 48–9)—in sharp contrast to eight. Reflecting the inauspicious ‘completeness’ of eight and its association with death, Nage say that zua butu, the term for ‘eight’ (literally ‘two times four’), should not be used at night, and should be replaced with gena, ‘complete’. What might be considered instances of partial rhyming between syntagmatically related elements include leo (pronounced léo) and kéli and kema and koka, particularly in regard to the way these contrast with parallel rhymings (see co ... wolo and é'e ... wéke). As the second case indicates, with compounds formed by juxtaposing synonyms which may otherwise be counted as couplets, a combination can alternatively be construed as either paradigmatic or syntagmatic. The single instance of partial vocalic rhyming between members of couplets in Text 3 is teo (pronounced téo)//edo. In Text 1, partial rhymes, as it were supplemented by alliteration, may be discerned in wawo watu (line 12) and laga ... laki (line 13). A partial rhyme is discernible in the couplet méze//léwa and, similarly in the phrases négha késo (line 5) and négha méze (line 6). It is noteworthy as well that in the consecutive lines 5 and 6, which do not pair, mosa rhymes vocalically with mona. Among these I include kizu gili and mea méze (which occur in the paired lines 6 and 8), paki dhangi dhangi ... tangi (line 10), 'o ... ko wolo (line 13), Ghai ... kasi (line 11) and Soda ... soba (line 14). Although not rhyming, a particular rhythmic effect is produced by the alliterative contrast of the couplet dhangi dhangi//dhona dhona (lines 10//13). See also momo//mata in lines 5//7. Additional informationNotes on contributorsGregory Forth Gregory Forth is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta

Traditional medicine · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Medicine · Multilingual Education and Policy

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