The
Toraja Tribe of South Sulawesi, Indonesia, is known for the cheerful way of
treating death, and its unique burial grounds carved in sheer
rock.
One of
the most beautiful tourist destinations of Indonesia, the green hills of South
Sulawesi are home to the Toraja, a tribe that still honors the old Austronesian
lifestyle, similar to Nias culture. Most tribe members are Christians,
converted during Dutch colonization, but traces of their old beliefs still
remain and are most visible during funeral festivities and burial customs. The
Toraja are obsessed with death, but not in a tragic sense; to them funerals are
a lot like going-away parties celebrated by sacrificing dozens of buffaloes and
pigs for a feast enjoyed by the entire community.
The main
concern of a Toraja tribe member is to make sure he raises enough money so his
family can throw the best party in town, when he leaves this world. Their
bodies are stored under the family home for years after their death. During
this time the remaining relatives refer to that person not as “the deceased”
but as “the sick”, and raise money for the actual funeral, which is usually
attended by hundreds of guests. Tourists are welcome to attend the festivities,
as long as they don’t wear black or red.
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While
churches dot the Toraja countryside, tribe members are rarely buried in the
ground. They are either placed in tombs dug into nearby cliffs, or in wooden
coffins hanging on the side of mountains. Lemo, one of the most popular burial
sites in the area, looks like a big piece of rock Swiss cheese, with holes
carved to fit coffins and balconies for the “tau tau” – life-size wooden
effigies representing the deceased. In the old days, effigies only showed the
deceased’s gender, but now master carvers try to make them look like the actual
person. After the body has been placed in its rock tomb, the dead’s effigy is
placed along others, in a carved balcony, so his spirit can watch over his
descendants. Unfortunately, so many tau tau effigies have been stolen to be
sold to tourists that people have started to keep them in their house.
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At Ke’te’
kesu’, the dead are not placed in cliff-dug graves, but in wooden caskets
hanging from the side of cliffs. The coffins are beautifully decorated with
geometrical shapes, but over time the wood begins to rot and the bleached bones
of the deceased often exposed. Some Toraja members are so resourceful that they
pack the bones of several family members into a single coffin, which eventually
causes the sustaining poles to break under the weight. But, judging by the
piles of wood and bones at the bottom of the suspended burial ground, this
doesn’t seem to bother anyone.
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The
smallest of the Toraja burial grounds are the “Baby Trees” where the tribe’s
young are placed. If a child dies before he has started teething, its mother
wraps his body in cloth, makes a another hole in the Baby Tree and places the
dead infant inside. The hole is then sealed and as the tree begins to heal, the
child is believed to be absorbed.
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As
bizarre as these burial customs may seem to us, the Toraja regard them as a
huge part of their tradition, and are struggling to keep them alive in a modern
world.
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The
Unique Burial Customs of Tana Toraja was originally posted at Oddity Central
