Monica Janowski, 2014, Tuked Rini, Cosmic Traveller. Life and Legend in the Heart of Borneo.

Sather, Clifford

Monica Janowski, 2014, Tuked Rini, Cosmic Traveller. Life and Legend in the Heart of Borneo. Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series, No. 125, Copenhagen; and Sarawak Museum, Kuching, viii +174 pp. Nias Press ISBN 978-87-7694-130-7 and Sarawak Museum ISBN 978-87-7694-130-6. 19.99 [pounds sterling].

Tuked Rini, Cosmic Traveller is in equal parts an account of a Kelabit epic, an anthropological introduction to the Kelabit themselves, and a personal story of the author's own engagement with the Kelabit over a period of nearly thirty years. The book was written not for specialists, but, the author tells us (p. vi), for a general audience, including the Kelabit themselves. To this end it was published simultaneously by both the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS), a press that has become in recent years as a major publisher of books relating to Borneo, and, for local Malaysian readers, by the Sarawak Museum.

The author begins with the personal. She first arrived in the Kelabit Highlands in September, 1986, as a young Ph.D. student in social anthropology. Accompanied by her husband, Kaz, and their one-year-old daughter, Molly, they settled at Pa' Daleh, in the southern Highlands. After a brief stay with the primary school headmaster, the Janowskis established a hearth of their own in the dalim, the unpartitioned 'interior' of one of two longhouses comprising the Pa' Daleh settlement. Here, they remained until mid-March 1988. The choice of a field site was clearly felicitous as was the author's willingness to pursue the unexpected. While she came to study rice farming, like the good anthropologist she obviously is, she "ended up," she tells us, "being interested in everything about life in Pa' Dalih" (p. 2). This wide-ranging interest is admirable reflected here.

Fittingly in an age of Instagram, she describes her family's experience of longhouse life not so much in words, as through photographs, showing herself, for example, at work in the rice fields, Molly at her desk in the village school, and her family at their hearth or sharing a ceremonial meal on the longhouse gallery. She also uses photographs to convey a sense of how the Kelabit have transformed themselves over the last 80 years, drawing in particular on the excellent photographic archives of the Sarawak Museum. In addition, before leaving the UK, she arranged with the British Museum to make two collections of Kelabit material artifacts, one for the British Museum, the other for the Sarawak Museum, and here she uses photos and line drawings of these objects to great effect to enhance the visual impact of her book, as well as ten original paintings by the Kelabit artist, Stephen Baya, depicting scenes from the Tuked Rini epic.

Following her initial fieldwork, the Janowskis returned to Pa' Dalih for a few months in 1992-93 and, again, in 2006. During this time, the author worked on her own. Later, from 2007 through 2011, her research was part of a multidisciplinary study, the "Cultured Forest Project," involving archaeologists, environmental scientists and others, concerned with the long-term history of human adaptation to the central highlands of Borneo. While the author tells us that she completed her analysis of the Tuked Rini saga during the Cultured Forest Project, she recorded it much earlier, at the very beginning of her initial fieldwork. The saga, she explains, was related over a single night, 25 November 1986, by the former Pa' Dalih headman, Balang Pelaba ('Very Much a Spirit-Tiger'), who in his younger days had been a shaman and whose hearth adjoined the Janowski's. It is not clear why he recited the saga, but the story appears to have been meant, at least in part, for the author's benefit. Although she tells us that, in coming to Pa' Dalih, she "hadn't expected to gather stories" (p. 10), she clearly recognized the epic's significance and so recorded it in its entirety. During the year and a half that followed she worked up an English translation of the main story, leaving its more formulaic elements, called sedarir, for later. Having completed her analysis, in the present book, she reverses the order and transcribes and translates in full only the sedarir, outlining the remainder by means of a brief English synopsis. For the serious reader, NIAS Press provides an audio recording of the story plus a provisional transcription of the lull text on a companion website [http://tuked-rini-online.niaspress.dk].

While the story of Tuked Rini forms the centerpiece of her book, the author tells us that her intent here is to "use the story," not as an end in itself, but "as a springboard to discuss the way of life and the cosmology of the people of the Kelabit Highlands" (p. vi). Thus, much of her analysis focuses on traditional Kelabit cosmology, particularly on the role of lalud, which she variously translates as 'power,' 'life force,' or 'the power to do amazing things' (pp. 24, 25, 88), in configuring the traditional Kelabit social and cosmological world. In this connection, Tuked Rini, the principal hero of the story, serves as a model of how to 'live strongly' (kail muluii), that is, of how to capture and channel the power that flows through the cosmos into daring acts of travel, warfare and head-hunting.

The story of Tuked Rini represents a type of narrative that the Kelabit call a sekono '. This the author translates as a 'legend.' A better translation, however, would be a 'saga,' 'epic,' or 'hero-epic.' Thus, Tuked Rini is described by the author as a "culture hero ... who establishes fundamental rules about the way in which people should live" (p. 10). He is less a rule-giver, however, than an exemplary figure. Similar epics, with the heroes often bearing different names, are said to have been told in the past all across the central Borneo highlands, not only by the Kelabit, but also by other linguistically related groups on both sides of the Malaysian-Indonesian border. The story recorded here tells essentially of how Tuked Rini, together with his cousin, Balang Katu, and their close kin, all of them powerful heroes, traveled with their lesser followers from their home at Luun Atar ('on the Flat River Terrace'), in the present-day Kelapang River region, to the highest part of the sky called Langit Temubong. Here they make war on the people of Spirit Tiger Rock. Eventually, the Luun Atar people prevail, but only with the help of Great-Grandmother Sinah Sapudan, who, at a critical moment, calls for reinforcements from the Kerayan. Returning home, the heroes celebrate their victory with feasting. After that, they harvest their rice and the story ends with a new rice ceremony.

The epic, according to Janowski, consists of two elements: 1) the story itself, which is related by the storyteller in a normal speaking voice, and the sedarir, which, she tells us, are "learned by heart" and chanted (p. 94). The sedarir are considered to be the actual words of individual heroes in the story and are composed in 'deep' language. Reciting them, in itself, evokes power and can be done independently of the story itself. (1) In contrast, the story is highly variable. In reciting it, Balang Pelaba told the author that he could make it last as long as his audience wanted. Fortunately, a decade earlier, in 1972, the American poet Carol Rubenstein recorded from a different Kelabit storyteller a longer, rather more complex version of the Tuked Rini saga and a comparison of the two demonstrates that it is not just one story, but "a multitude of [different, possible] stories," united by "certain central themes" (p. 91).

In 1986, when Balang Pelaba recited the Tuked Rini epic, he had not recited it for a very long time, since at least the 1950s. It is impossible therefore to know with certainty the circumstances in which it might have originally been told. The author suggests that the story was probably recited in the past before a party departed on a headhunting expedition as a form of encouragement (p. 90). This seems possible, but there is no way of knowing whether this occurred in a ritual context, or whether the story was simply recited by a lay performer.

In some ways, the Tuked Rini story resembles an Iban ensera. These latter, too, are narrative epics that tell of the adventures of major culture heroes and heroines. Known as Orang Panggau, literally, 'People of Panggau,' these beings are believed to have once lived together with the ancestors of the Iban. In time, however, they separated and migrated to a raised world of their own known as Panggau, or Panggau Libau, located immediately above, but partially interpenetrating, this world. Tuked Rini is similarly considered to be "a common ancestor to all the people of the Kelapang River area, where present-day Pa' Dalih is located, although there are no genealogies linking him directly to anyone living" (p. 8). He, too, eventually departs, but leaves behind marks on rocks and other landscape features testifying to his former presence. Like the Orang Panggau, the adventures of Tuked Rini and his hero-kin are thus associated with a time before the present. This time, according to Janowski, is described by the Kelabit as the getoman lalud, the 'joining with power.' During this epoch the quantity of power suffusing the cosmos was far greater than it is at present (p. 112). Hence, the power of these heroes far exceeds that of present-day Kelabit leaders. Indeed, their power and perfection is so dazzling that ordinary people have difficulty seeing them, and, like the Orang Panggau, they are able to perform miraculous deeds, such as flying and changing their shape, that are far beyond the power of people living today.

For the Iban, the Orang Panggau are closely bound up with social constructions of personal achievement and status differentiation. Moreover, they not only appear as actors in the ensera epics, but also exist as spirit agents capable of intervening in human affairs, particularly in the past as patrons of successful male warriors, war leaders, and of skilled women weavers. Success flows from their favor. At the same time, they are also evoked by Iban priest bards during major Gawai rituals, especially those that serve to valorize the acquisition of wealth and achieved status. In the words of the chants sung by the priest bards, the ritual itself is depicted as if it were occurring, not in the human world, but in the raised world of the Orang Panggau. Thus, the leading couple sponsoring the ritual assumes the role of Keling and Kumang, the leading couple in the Panggau world, while through the various formalities observed, the longhouse is recreated to resemble the house of Keling in the raised world where precedence and status differences are given heightened recognition. At one level, these rituals thus celebrate social differentiation, but, at another, they confine this celebration to a formalized ritual occasion, thereby preserving the strong egalitarian tenor that otherwise characterizes everyday longhouse life. (2)

There is no evidence that Tuked Rini was ever perceived by the Kelabit as intervening in human affairs, nor does he appear to have played a role like Keling and his Orang Panggau followers in pre-Christian Kelabit ritual. On the other hand, status differentiation is clearly a prominent feature of the Tuked Rini epic, although the author does not explicitly discuss it as such. She does note, however, that during the mythic time in which the saga is set, the leading heroes not only possessed far more power than their followers (the anak adi or 'lesser people'), but also more power than leading families do today. In other words, as with the Orang Panggau, status differences were heightened. As leaders, the heroes easily achieved whatever they set out to accomplish, without apparent effort, while their followers had only roughly the same power as people do today. Thus, during Tuked Rini's cosmic travels, only the heroes fly, while their followers travel by hanging onto the sheathes of their swords. Throughout the narrative, the anak adi are inept, timid and indecisive and constantly want to give up and return home. In telling the saga, "listeners," the author argues, "identify with the leaders," but, at the same time, also "with the frailities and comic interaction of the lesser characters" (p. 88). Tuked Rini and his wife belong to the highest social stratum--the 'very good people' (lun doo ' to 'oh)--and so, because of all they are able to accomplish, they are the appropriate ones to lead. By the same token, however, they are also obligated to feed and protect their followers.

A point the author makes repeatedly throughout the book, as well as in her other writings, is that social groups among the Kelabit are constituted by the sharing of rice meals. The minimal grouping created in this way is the hearth group. Its discreteness is maintained by a rule that in everyday life one should avoid eating rice grown by other groups. There are times, however, when this rule is set aside. The most important of these are occasions of ceremonial feasting. What is interesting here is that the larger groups that take form as a result reflect the same tension that was noted among the Iban, i.e., between association based on status differences as opposed to a common, undifferentiated relatedness. One form of feasting, called knman peroyong ('eating together'), thus generates, the author tells us, a sense of communalify between 'kinfolk' (relatives, lun royang, lit., 'people together'). Here, individual hearth groups bring packets of cooked rice, which are then redistributed so that each group consumes rice during the feast belonging to another group. Today, the most important occasions of human peroyong occur at Christmas and Easter. By contrast, irau feasts are organized by well-to-do hosts who provide their guests with food and drink in what are typically highly competitive displays of wealth and social standing. As the author notes, in both versions of the Tuked Rini epic the story begins and ends with a rice meal. In Rubenstein's version it ends with an irau feast, in her own, a human peroyong meal.

Since World War II, Kelabit society has changed dramatically and is now very different from that portrayed in the Tuked Rini epic. Notably, this transformation was initiated largely by the Kelabit themselves. The late Tom Harrisson famously described the Kelabit Highlands as a "world within." At an elevation of some three thousand feet and above, the Highlands form the highest inhabited part of Borneo and in former times, were extremely difficult for outsiders to reach. This has not meant, however, as the author stresses here, that the Highlands have ever been unconnected to the world beyond. Far from it. For centuries, Kelabit men have traveled to the coast and brought back innovations. Of these, Christianity, which, in the absence of European missionaries, the Kelabit adopted for themselves during World War II, has been the most profoundly transformative. The Kelabit adopted a notably charismatic form of Christianity which offered them, as they themselves describe it, a "new life" (ulun beruh), representing, as they perceived it, a total break with the past. As the Kelabit anthropologist Poline Bala has written, (3) Christianity provided the Kelabit "an entry way into modernity," bringing the community, as they saw it, directly into the modern world. As Bala writes, Christianity gave the Kelabit "a cultural disposition towards the future, namely future progress and success" (2009:175). Thus, they enthusiastically embraced all that represented "progress," especially formal education, and within two generations, they became the best educated and most economically successful of all the indigenous ethnic groups, not only of Sarawak, but, very likely, of Malaysia as a whole. Today, as Bala writes, "To be Kelabit is to be successful."

The majority of Kelabit today no longer live in the Highlands, grow rice, or in other ways practice what might be called a "traditional" Kelabit way of life. For all that, the author sees continuities. "Many Kelabit," she writes, "have made their way down the Baram River to the coast, following in Tuked Rini's footsteps, daring to explore new and powerful parts of the cosmos" (p. 144). While in the story of Tuked Rini, "men ... venture out into the cosmos and women ... remain behind and grow rice, ... These days ... both young men and young women venture out into the world of the coast, as cosmic travelers like Tuked Rini, seeking success" (p. 148). Consequently, "the value attached to remaining behind in the Highlands and growing rice is being lost." More than that, the very hallmarks of traditional Kelabit culture--longhouses and rice cultivation--are no longer, strictly speaking, "traditional." Longhouse design has undergone considerable innovation and is now, as Janowski notes, highly variable, while rice farming, which once focused on multiple strains of rice and combined swidden and wet-rice cultivation, now centers almost exclusively on a single wet-rice variety, grown mainly for urban market sale and cultivated largely by contract labor from across the Indonesian border. The author ends her book with the hope that Kelabit readers "will strike the right balance between venturing out into the cosmos and maintaining a homeland in which they belong" (p. 148). Here, one cannot help but wonder whether the author hasn't underestimated the Kelabits' embrace of the modern. Large numbers of Kelabit not only live in the nearby coastal city of Miri, but also in other urban centers throughout Malaysia, and, indeed, in countries beyond, including Great Britain and the US. As urban professionals, many have married non-Kelabit spouses. Yet, through the internet, smart-phones, and Kelabit cultural and informational websites, including those initiated by the E-Bario Project founded by Poline Bala herself, the Kelabit continue to interact and engage with one another, oftentimes today as a virtual community, its far-flung members interconnected electronically.

(Clifford Sather, Professor Emeritus, University of Helsinki/BRB Editor)

(1) It is worth noting that the anthropologist Poline Bala, herself a Kelabit, gives a different definition of sedarir. These she defines as "epic songs composed and sung by men to describe their expeditions ... into the world outside the Highlands" (see 2002, Changing Borders and Identities in the Kelabit Highlands, p. 110 fh138). Bala also notes that modern sedarir are performed today in groups, as "rap," with the composer taking the lead, while the rest of the group echoes his or her words, line by line. Modern sedarir are composed by women as well as men and in her book, Bala records an extended example of a sedarir composed by a women (p. 110-13).

(2) See Clifford Sather, "All threads are white": Iban egalitarianism reconsidered. In: James J. Fox and Clifford Sather, eds., Origins, Ancestry, and Alliance:Explorations in Austronesian Ethnography, 1996.

(3) An engagement with "modernity"? Becoming Christian in the Kelabit Highlands of Central Borneo, Borneo Research Bulletin, 20 (2009): 173-85.