Weiner Mihályné szerk.: Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei 12. (Budapest, 1970)

HOPP FERENC MÚZEUM — MUSÉE FERENC HOPP - Bodrogi, Tibor: The Art of the Sadang Toriadja in Central Celebes

is placed approximately at the centre of the square. The dais has two platforms : the upper is occupied by the coffin and by the female members of the family together with the children, while a life-sized figure of a demon, the tau-tau, is placed on the lower platform. There is a smaller platform near the dais; the upper end of one of its six legs is carved in the shape of a human head; it is from this platform that the meat of the animals is distributed. The distribution is performed by the speaker who, while reciting the legend of the clan's history, calls up the families in the sequence of the events narrated in the legend. The water buffaloes are tethered near the platform or, if the ceremony is not held around the monoliths, tied to thick bamboo stakes. The climax of the feast is the slaughter of the buffaloes and the distribution of meat. Sixty buffaloes were killed at the ceremony witnessed by me. Meanwhile, a monotonous round dance is performed by the younger males; there is, however, no part of the ceremony that would contain a special reference to the defunct person. On the day after the banquet the corpse, its jewelry and weapons are carried to the final resting place, a crypt hollowed out in the steep cliff or beneath a projecting rock. A noteworthy feature of the burial grounds is that the tau-tau figure is erected either in a niche of the rocky wall or in a separate hut applied to the wall (fig. 3). The tau-tau is made of wood, its arms are movable, the facial features are carved and painted. They aspire to achieve likeness which is also brought out by the apparel. If but a single is erected for several dead persons, they cover its head with a separate hat for each defunct. (Hats are, by the way, sacrificial objects.) The coffins, lying freely in the cemeteries at the foot of cliffs (these are the burial grounds of the poor who cannot afford the expenses of crypts hollowed in the wall of the rock) deserve special attention: the boat-shaped roof seems to evoke the concept of the ship of the dead. This view is supported by historical tradition, to according which the Toradja arrived overseas; the members of the clans still refer to themselves as "belonging to one and the same boat".