INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES SPRING 2016
expressing these structural unities and oppositions modeled off of the asymmetric marriage system . They express the importance of dualistic systems of metaphor , the pairing of complementary yet opposition concepts , triadic divisions and the rearrangement of all these orderings of reality .
House and island
Physical aspects of the house ( not the household ) have been interpreted several times by structuralists in Eastern Indonesia . Though the house can be read symbolically , I can see little evidence from these analyses that succinctly demonstrates that the specific asymmetric marriage systems with its concentric dualism explains its underlying structure or terminology of the house . Likely many Eastern Indonesian cultures , the Savunese who live on the island of Savu approximately 100 km east of Sumba , have a set of metaphors linking the social and physical world . They have a double system of metaphors which are both complementary and opposing about the landscape and house ( Kana 1980 ). The island is spoken about and referenced with both aspects of a body and a ship . The island has a head , mouth , tongue and tail ( Kana , pp . 222 ). The Savunese also refer to it as a ship with a bow where hilly and stern where flat and rudder where mountainous ( ibid , pp . 223 ). 17
The house should follow this pattern because when placed on an east-west axis facing west making it is metaphorically “ sweet ”— a desirable state according to the Savunese . If a house does not follow this prescription , it is believed to be cursed . The only constructions built on a north-south axis are graves for those who died in ways contrary to the natural order such as drowning , being struck by lightning , committing suicide , or falling from the important lontar palm ( ibid , pp . 225 ). Such deaths , and the tombs for the victims , are called “ salty ”. Elements of the house share both ship and body names . Houses have tails and heads as well as hulls and masts ( ibid , pp . 228 ). The theme of unity and division expressed in kinship terms and marriage arrangements finds form in the division of the house between male and female . Women are associated with the part of the house that is dark and in the back . It is either the area where guests do not visit or an area that is literally dark such as the attic where women ’ s goods such as cloth and food are storied ( ibid , pp . 229 ).
Village
The metaphor of the ship extends to the organization of the village . I will use Moni Adams ’ s Symbols of the Organized Community in East Sumba , Indonesia ( 1974 ) instead of the example from Savu because of the greater detail and symbolic cohesion of the example and further analysis . In East Sumba the ship is paired with the tree instead of the body but there remains the dual metaphor pattern in Eastern Indonesia ( Fox 1971 , Lévi-Strauss 1963 , van Wouden 1968 ). Adams analyzed the ritual village of Paraingu Bakulu ( Big Capital City ) of the
17
Flat and hilly has no necessarily geometric relations to shape of the bow or stern of a ship . Kana and the Savunese do not explain why there is this connection .
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