Can Animals Break Taboos?: Applications of 'Taboo' Among the Nage of Eastern Indonesia‪.‬

A continuing anthropological interest in the classic topic of 'taboo' is evidenced by a series of recent writings dealing with Malayo-Polynesian speaking societies (Ellen 1999; Lambek 1992; Valeri 2000; Walsh 2002). The purpose of the present exercise is to draw attention to words that translate as 'taboo' in a variety of Malayo-Polynesian languages, but which refer not only to disapproved human actions but also to the behaviours of certain animals. Writing on Moluccan societies, both Ellen (1999:64) and Valeri (2000) describe situations where 'taboo' appears to encompass animal as well as human actions. Such usages immediately raise the question of whether these words always mean 'taboo', that is, whether they might sometimes be better translated as 'ominous' or 'dangerous' rather than 'taboo'--essentially the solution proposed by Valeri (ibid.:128) to one Moluccan instance of what he interprets as a lexical conflation of distinct yet similar concepts. On the other hand, the suggestion that non-human creatures might yet be conceived as subject to taboos, and hence might breach taboos, obviously bears on culturally conceived relationships between humans and other animate creatures, particularly in a part of the world long known for quite remarkable proscriptions on human activity concerning animals (see Freeman 1968; Forth 1989; Needham 1964). Before addressing these broader issues, however, it is useful to review a single ethnographic case of such 'animal taboos' (as I hereafter call them) and to locate these within the general conceptual scheme of a particular society and culture. With reference to the Nage of eastern Indonesia, I demonstrate how animal taboos are ultimately metaphors. They are metaphorical not in the sense that 'taboo' in this case does not really mean taboo, but signifies instead a concept of inauspiciousness. Rather, animal behaviours deemed taboo are so precisely because they are too suggestive of human behaviour and thus, for Nage, threaten the boundary between the categories 'human' and 'animal'. Otherwise expressed, instead of disclosing a fundamental equivalence of humans and animals, the Nage usages actually articulate their essential difference.