 |
3. The forming of a family In order to bring a family 'into service', it is necessary to enter into a sexual relationship, something that must take place within the framework of a marriage. This 'precondition' for the creation of progeny is expressed by means of boat symbolism. Imagery is one of the forms in which the symbolism is expressed. The woman is usually compared with a boat with an open drainage hole lying on the beach, waiting for a man who wants to go sailing. Only when the man, the helmsman, boards the boat and, as it were, 'seals up' the drainage hole can the boat set sail, that is to say, can a family come into being. Life and death Although this image may seem familiar - the 'ship of marriage' leaving the quayside - there is a concept involved which is much less easy for outsiders to understand. In the ideology of the islanders, namely, the creation of new life is related to the killing of existing life, an old religious concept common throughout Indonesia. This concept finds expression in the tradition that before a man can marry and beget children, he must have killed life existing in the 'outside world'. In so doing he makes his contribution to the process of creation. When he has returned with his hunting trophies he may marry and his wife can then make her contribution to the creative process; developing and giving birth to new life. Apart from the imagery, this is very explicitly expressed in a ritual in which the founding of a family is represented nautically. | |
