Argonauts of the Western Pacific - Bronisław Malinowski (darmowa biblioteka online .TXT) 📖
Argonauts of the Western Pacific to rozprawa naukowa autorstwa Bronisława Malinowskiego. Jest ona efektem wyprawy badacza na wyspy Toulon i wyspy Trobriandzkie.
Malinowski opisuje w niej przede wszystkim rytuał Kula, ukazujący zdolności handlowe ludów tam żyjących. Rytuał polega na wymianie biżuterii, opierającej się na pewnych szytwno ustalonych regułach związanych m.in. z równą wartością wymienianych przedmiotów. Malinowski upatruje w przedstawicielach społeczeństw pierwotnych wcielenia Argonautów z mitologii greckiej, którzy udali się po Złote Runo. Rozprawa Malinowskiego została oparta na wynikach jego metody badań antropologicznych — metody uczestniczącej, a nie wyłącznie obserwacyjnej. Jego działalność była przełomowa dla antropologii, która do tej pory bazowała na prowadzeniu obserwacji, a także rozszerzaniu założeń na kolejne wyniki badań.
Bronisław Malinowski był polskim antropologiem i socjologiem publikującym w pierwszej połowie XIX wieku. Prowadził badania społeczeństw pierwotnych w różnych zakątkach świata.
- Autor: Bronisław Malinowski
- Epoka: Współczesność
- Rodzaj: Epika
Czytasz książkę online - «Argonauts of the Western Pacific - Bronisław Malinowski (darmowa biblioteka online .TXT) 📖». Wszystkie książki tego autora 👉 Bronisław Malinowski
One incident in the above narrative might have struck the reader as contradictory of the general theory of the mulukwausi belief, that, namely, where the narrator declares that the party on the beach have to wait till nightfall before they enter the village. The general belief expressed in all the mulukwausi legends, as well as in the taboos of the kayga’u, is that the witches are really dangerous only at night, when they can see and hear better. Such contradictions, as I have said, are often met in native belief, and in this, by the way, the savages do not differ from ourselves. My informant, from whom I had this version, simply said that such was the rule and the custom, and that they had to wait till night. In another account, on the other hand, I was told that the party must proceed to the village immediately after having performed the several rites on the beach, whether night or day.
There also arises the main question, regarding this narrative, to which allusion has been made already, namely, how far does it represent the normal behaviour in shipwreck, and how far is it a sort of standardised myth? There is no doubt that shipwreck in these seas, surrounded in many parts by islands, is not unlikely to end by the party’s being saved. This again would result in some such explanation as that contained in our narra- tive. Naturally, I tried to record all the actual cases of shipwreck within the natives’ memory. Some two generations ago, one of the chiefs of Omarakana, named Numakala, perished at sea, and with him all his crew. A canoe of another Eastern Trobriand village, Tilakaywa, was blown far North, and stranded in Kokopawa, from where it was sailed back by its crew, when the wind turned to the North-West. Although this canoe was not actually shipwrecked, its salvation is credited to kayga’u magic, and to the kind fish, iraviyaka. A very intelligent informant of mine explained this point of view in answer to some of my cavillings: „If this canoe had been wrecked, it would have been saved also”.
A party from Muyuwa (Woodlark Island) were saved on the shore of Boyowa. In the South of the Island, several cases are on record where canoes were wrecked and saved in the d’Entrecasteaux Islands or in the Amphletts. Once the whole crew were eaten by cannibals, getting ashore in a hostile district of Fergusson Island, and one man only escaped, and ran along the shore, south-eastwards towards Dobu. Thus there is a certain amount of historical evidence for the saving power of the magic, and the mixture of fanciful and real elements makes our story a good example of what could be called standardised or universalized myth — that is, a myth referring not to one historical event but to a type of occurrence, happening universally.
VLet us now give the text of the remaining spells which belong to the above narrative, but have not been adduced there, so as not to spoil its flow. First of all there is the kaytaria spell, that which the toliwaga, drifting alongside his crew on the detached canoe float, intones in a loud, slow voice, in order to attract the iraviyaka.
Kaytaria spell„I lie, I shall lie down in my house, a big house. I shall sharpen my ear, I shall hear the roaring of the sea it foams up, it makes a noise. At the bottom of Kausubiyai, come, lift me, take me, bring me to the top of Nabonabwana beach”.
Then comes a sentence with mythological allusions which I could not succeed in translating. After that follows the main part of the spell:
„The suyusayu fish shall lift me up; my child, the suyusayu shall lift me up; my child’s things, the suyusayu shall lift me up”; my basket, etc.; my lime pot, etc.; my lime spoon, etc.; my house, etc.; repeating the words „the suyusayu fish shall lift me up” with various expressions describing the toliwaga’s equipment as well as his child, presumably a member of the shipwrecked crew.
There is no end part to this spell, as it was given to me; only the beginning is repeated after the main part. It is not impossible that Molilakwa himself, my informant, did not know the spell to the end. Such magic, once learnt by a native, never used, and recited perhaps once a year during a mortuary ceremony, or occasionally, in order to show off, is easily forgotten. There is a marked difference between the vacillating and uncertain way in which such spells are produced by informants, and the wonderful precision and the easy flow with which, for example, the spells, year after year performed in public, will trip off the tongue of the garden magician.
I cannot give a correct commentary to the mythological names Kausubiyai and Nabonabwana, in the first part of the spell. What this part means, whether the reclining individual who hears the noises of the sea is the magician, or whether it represents the sensations of the fish who hears the calling for help, I could not make out. The meaning of the middle part is plain, however Suyusayu is another name for iraviyaka, indeed, its magical name used only in spells, and not when speaking of it in ordinary conversations.
The other formula to be given here is the other giyorokaywa spell, which would be used in spitting the ginger on the beach after rescue, and also in medicating the herbs, which will be put on the beach and beaten with a stone. This spell is associated with the myth of the origin of kayga’u, which must be related here, to make the formula clear.
Near the beginning of time, there lived in Kwayawata, one of the Marshall Bennetts, a family strange to our ideas of family life, but quite natural in the world of Kiriwinian mythology. It consisted of a man, Kalaytaytu, his sister, Isenadoga, and the youngest brother, a dog, Tokulubweydoga. Like other mythological personages, their names suggest that originally they must have conveyed some sort of description. Doga means the curved, almost circular, boar’s tusk used as ornament. The name of the canine member of the family might mean something like Man-with-circular-tusks-in-his-head, and his sister’s name, Woman-ornamented- with-doga. The eldest brother has in his name the word taytu, which signifies the staple food (small yams) of natives, and a verb, kalay, signifying „to put on ornaments”. Not much profit, however, can be deduced from this etymology, as far as I can see, for the interpretation of this myth. I shall quote in a literal translation the short version of this myth, as I obtained it first, when the information was volunteered to me by Molilakwa in Oburaku.
Myth of Tokulubwaydoga„They live in Kwayawata; one day Kalaytayta goes to fish, gets into a small canoe (kewo’u). Behind him swims the dog. He comes to Digumenu. They fish with the older brother. They catch fish! The elder brother paddles; that one again goes behind; goes, returns to Kwayawata. They died; came Modokei, he learned the kayga’u, the inside of Tokulubwaydoga. The name of their mother, the mother of Tokulubwaydoga, is Tobunaygu”.
This little fragment gives a good idea of what the first version is, even of so well fixed a piece of narrative as a myth. It has to be supplemented by inquiries as to the motives of the behaviour of the various personages, as to the relations of one event to the other. Thus, further questions revealed that the elder brother refused to take the dog with him on this fishing expedition. Tokulubwaydoga then determined to go all the same, and swam to Digumenu, following the canoe of his brother. This latter was astonished to see him, but none the less they went to work together. In fishing, the dog was more successful than his brother, and thus aroused his jealousy. The man then refused to take him back. Tokulubwaydoga then jumped into the water, and again swam and arrived safely in Kwayawata. The point of the story lies in the fact that the dog was able to do the swimming, because he knew the kayga’u, otherwise the sharks, mulukwausi, or other evil things would have eaten him. He got it from his mother, the lady Tobunaygu, who could teach him this magic because she was a mulukwausi herself. Another important point about this myth, also quite omitted from the first version volunteered to me, is its sociological aspect. First of all, there is the very interesting incident, unparalleled in Kiriwinian tradition: the mother of the three belonged to the Lukwasisiga clan. It was a most incongruous thing for a dog, who is the animal of the Lukuba clan, to be born into a Lukwasisiga family. However, there he was, and so he said:
„Good, I shall be a Lukuba, this is my clan”.
Now the incident of the quarrel receives its significance in so far as the dog, the only one to whom the mother gave the kayga’u, did not hand it over to his brother and sister who were of the Lukwasisiga clan, and so the magic went down only the dog’s own clan, the Lukuba. It must be assumed (though this was not known to my informant) that Madokei, who learnt the magic from the dog, was also a Lukuba man.
Like all mythological mother-ancestresses, Tobunaygu had no husband, nor does this circumstance call forth any surprise or comment on the part of the natives, since the physiological aspect of fatherhood is not known among them, as I have repeatedly observed.
As can be seen, by comparing the original fragment, and the subsequent amplification by inquiries, the volunteered version misses out the most important points. The concatenation of events, the origin of the kayga’u, the important sociological details, have to be dragged out of the informant, or, to put it more correctly, he has to be made to enlarge on points, to roam over all the subjects covered by the myth, and from his statements then, one has to pick out and piece together the other bits of the puzzle. On the other hand, the names of the people, the unimportant statements of what they did and how they were occupied are unfailingly given.
Let us adduce now the kayga’u, which is said to be derived from the dog, and ultimately from his mother:
Kayga’u of tokulubwaydoga„Tobunaygu (repeated), Manemanaygu (repeated), my mother a snake, myself a snake; myself a snake, my mother a snake. Tokulubwaydoga, Isenadoga, Matagagai, Kalaytaytu; bulumava’u tabugu Madokei. I shall befog the front, I shall shut off the rear; I shall befog the rear, I shall shut off the front”.
This exordium contains at first the invocation of the name of the mulukivausi, who was the source of the spell. Its pendant Manemanaygu is, according to my informant, derived from an archaic word nema, equivalent to the present dayjyawa, hand. „As the right hand is to the left one, so is Tobunaygu to Manemanaygu”, which was expressed as a matter of fact in the less grammatically worded form; „this right hand, this left” (clapped together) „so Tobunaygu, Manemanaygu”.
Whether this analysis of my informant is correct must remain an open question. It must be remembered that magic is not taken by the natives as an ethnographic document, allowing of interpretations and developments, but as an instrument of power. The words are there to act, and not to teach. Questions as to the meaning of magic, as a rule, puzzled the informants, and therefore it is not easy to explain a formula or obtain a correct commentary upon it. All the same there are some natives who obviously have tried to get to the bottom of what the various words in magic represent.
To proceed with our commentary, the phrase „My mother a snake” etc., was thus explained
Uwagi (0)