Dressed in colorful outfits, their black eyes watching over the shimmering emerald rice fields of the valley below them, the Tau Tau guard the liang, the graves of the dead in Toraja Land. They seem like observers on a grandstand. The Tau Tau are life-sized effigies that stand in rows on balconies on the sheer cliffs of Toraja Land. In the early morning sunlight our guide explains their presence: "The people of Toraja began to bury their dead in these cliffs in the seventeenth century to prevent strangers from robbing the graves. The Tau Tau are effigies of the dead put by the tombs as guardians. They are taboo to touch except by relatives who come to renew their clothes or place offerings in their hands when they want to communicate with the ancestor whom they represent."
On a closer look we see that the Tau Tau have one hand extended in a welcoming gesture and the other pointed toward themselves, signifying the give and take between the living and the dead. The dead bless the living; on the other hand, the living must take care of the dead. Even today, when most of the Torajans are Christian, they believe in the connection between the living and the departed.
This link is evident in both the story of their origin and the traditions of the "old religion"--Aluk Todolo--of the Torjan people. According to some sources, the first ancestors sailed from Southern China around 3000 B.C. to the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. They traveled up the Saqdan River into the valley that is now known as Toraja Land. However, some believe that their ancestors were a group of people called tomanurung, which means "people who have descended from heaven," who came in spaceships and landed on top of the mountains that circle the valley of Toraja Land. The tomanurung were led by Tamborolangiq, who introduced this people to agriculture, established the caste system, and prescribed the ancestor worship and complicated death rituals practiced even today.
Toraja society is divided into four classes: the nobles, the lower nobles, the commoners, and the "slaves." During the Dutch occupation from 1905 to 1948, slavery was abolished, but a poor underclass still remains. Community leaders and administrators are chosen only from the two upper classes. Priests who perform ceremonies pertaining to daily life, such as the blessing of a new construction, or harvest festivals, or birth or wedding celebrations, come from the commoners' class. However, priests who handle the dead and officiate at funerals come from the lowest class, and although much needed, they are actually looked down on and poorly paid.
The Torajans' wealth is measured in buffalo, and the number of animals a ceremony or ritual will cost depends not only on the wealth of the family but also on their caste. The richer a family, the more buffalo and other animals they must contribute. The value of buffalo depends on their size and color. For example a "black but not too black" animal of average size can cost about four hundred thousand rupiahs ($235 U.S.), a very big, dark and shiny animal one to two million rupiahs ($600 to $1,200 U.S.), and a spotted buffalo, unique to the region, up to four million rupiahs ($2,000 U.S.). Torajans believe that a man who dies will have the same life-style and class "in the eternal life" as in his "temporary life" on earth, provided he fulfills all the requirements of custom and ritual pertaining to his class in this life.
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