Words, poetics, and the disclosure of meaning in

Saribas Iban healing rituals (1).

Link/Page Citation

Introduction

My interest in this paper is with the use of words in rituals. In part, I am concerned with indigenous
notions regarding language, that is to say, with what we might call the "ethnosemantics" that informs the
understandings which ritual actors hold concerning the part words play in ritual and with the ways in
which these understandings mediate, or help to shape, cultural and pragmatic constructions of ritual itself.
In particular, I am concerned with Saribas Iban rituals of healing in which the outcome of a ritual
performance is always, to some degree, problematic or uncertain. At its outset, the causes of affliction are
unknown, or at least open to question, with the result that diagnosis and the therapeutic strategies
adopted by the shaman are always an emergent part of the ritual process itself. Here, words, as I hope to
show, play a preeminent role in shaping this process.

My purpose here is not to argue that ritual is only about words, or, even less, about metalinguistics--the
words people use when talking about language. Language, however, is a significant component, not only
of Iban healing rites, but of most ritual practice, which tends, by its nature, to be characterized, as Webb
Keane (1997:48) has noted, by "highly marked and self-conscious uses of linguistic resources."

In this connection, as many observers have noted, the language employed in ritual is frequently viewed
by those who employ it as a vehicle of sacred power (cf. Tambiah 1968). However, even where this is
explicitly so, "[t]here is no reason to assume," as Robert Hefner (1985:212) has cautioned, "that the
conditions sustaining faith in the efficacy of ritual language are necessarily the same in all societies."
Indeed, these conditions vary decisively. Thus, Hefner, in his book Hindu Javanese (1985), describes one
extreme case exemplified by the liturgical prayers of Javanese Tengger priests in which "ritual words are
accorded power" even though "they are not in any propositional sense, directly accessible or intelligible"
to Tengger audiences (1985:212). Power in this instance derives not from what ritual words "say," but
from the institutionalized authority of the priest who speaks them; from the legitimacy of his position as
the "primary intermediary between the living and their gods"; and from notions which the Tengger share
concerning the pragmatics of prayer itself. Thus, "authority," Hefner argues, "is ... established outside of
[and] prior to any single instance of ritual performance" and "is little influenced by the propositional value
of ritual words." Ritual performances, he maintains, are organized in a way that minimizes the relevance
of "discursive meaning." In fact, Tengger priests may perform prayers without anyone else seeing or
hearing what they do. "The efficacy of ritual speech [thus] depends ... not on [an audience's]
understanding of what is being said, but," as Hefner puts it, "on the prayers being performed by the right
person in the right fashion under the right circumstances" (1985:213). This, in turn, is consistent with
Tenggar popular understandings, which assert that prayers are addressed to the gods, not to human
listeners. Hence, Hefner (1985:214) states, "the pragmatics of prayer ... are premised on a model of
speech interaction ... that serve[s], in effect, to elevate the priest's speech above the demands of
immediate accountability."

The use of language in Saribas Iban healing rituals is very different. Here, the pragmatics of ritual speech
use places the accountability of a speaker to his audience at center stage. While ritual speech is also
thought to be directed primarily to unseen powers, even to the extent that it is said by Saribas informants
to give these powers an audible voice and direct agency in the visible world, its effectiveness depends
more crucially upon the speaker's ability to engage the attentions and sensibilities of his human audience
through his skillful use of language. Words in this instance matter greatly. In both cases, notions
regarding the efficacy of ritual speech are related to the larger social context in which such speech
functions. Among the Tengger, Hefner insists, the authority of the priest is "systematically
institutionalized," with the result that, even before it is performed, "the effectiveness of ritual prayer [is] ...
a foregone conclusion" (1985:214). (2) Hence, it is the unquestioned acceptance of priestly authority that
helps sustain popular faith in the power of ritual speech. In Iban society, the situation is roughly reversed.
The Iban are a comparatively egalitarian people (cf. Sather 1996) and the authority of the shaman, in
contrast to that of the Tenggar priest, must be earned and continually demonstrated in practice through
his command of a textual repertoire, his skillful use of language and his ability to mount a convincing
performance. (3) Moreover, the efficacy of ritual speech is never merely a question of whether or not the
words in question have "propositional meaning," but is equally a matter of aesthetics, verbal imagery,
acoustics, and the capacity of language itself for dramatic enactment.

The Iban themselves foreground the significance of words in ritual. Thus, Saribas Iban informants
describe these words as the leka main, meaning, literally, the 'seeds' or 'gist of a ritual.' At the outset of a
healing session, the causes of a patient's affliction are open to question, with the spirits, human souls,
plant images, and other generally invisible forces upon which affliction and conditions of health are
thought to depend being intelligible, for the most part, only through a medium of verbal discourse. Dealing
with such unseen forces, the shaman's task is to make intelligible an imperceptible world of causal
interactions that is always, by its nature, hidden, and which, in any case, can only be partially fathomed at
best, at least by non-shamans. But the realms of intelligibility that the shaman creates in his songs, and
extends into the unseen, he also makes tangible through the enactment of his words, translated into
action, and by the sensory, tangible, and poetic qualities of his songs themselves. The effectiveness of
ritual depends upon the performer's ability to recreate an imaginal reality. (4) Being only indirectly
"known," this reality must always, in Nancy Munn's (1973) terms, be "symbolically mediated," and
language, for Saribas Iban shamans, represents the principal medium by which this mediation is effected.
(5) For the Iban, this tension, or interplay, between intelligibility and tangibility is couched, as we shall
see, in an ethnosemantic idiom, between paired contrasts of "deep" and "shallow," and of "hidden" and
"transparent," which apply, at once, to both verbal discourse and to cultural meanings. Textual knowledge
is central to the shaman's performance of healing rituals, but by enactment, this knowledge becomes both
contextualized and embodied, while the shifting dimensions of discourse and meaning thereby brought
into play draw attention to the ways in which varying relations of experience and knowing emerge as part
of the ritual process itself.

The Iban Manang

The Iban are an upland, mainly riverine people of west-central Borneo who number today, in the east
Malaysian state of Sarawak, just over 603,000 (Sather 2004:623). An additional 14,000 live in the
Indonesian province of West Kalimantan, and roughly the same number in Brunei Darussalam. Despite
growing urban migration, the majority of Iban continue to live in the countryside, chiefly, although in
declining numbers, in longhouse communities, most of them located along major rivers and smaller
tributaries, particularly those of the central Rejang, Batang Lupar, and Saribas river systems (Freeman
1970; Sather 1993a, 1996, 2004; Sutlive 1992). The data presented here come entirely from the lower
Saribas and Saratok districts. (6)

Iban shamans are called manang and the principal rituals they perform are known as pelian (see Sather
2001a). In these rituals the manang is believed to dispatch his soul (semengat), aided by a spirit guide [or
guides] (yang), out into the cosmos--into unseen dimensions of what the Iban describe as 'this world'
(dunya tu'), or beyond it--into the unseen land of the dead (menua sebayan). Contrary to Eliadian notions
of shamanic journeying, Iban shamans never send their soul directly to the upper world or 'sky' (langit).
Instead, they dispatch spirit messengers who, acting as proxies, travel there on their behalf to summon
the shamanic gods, who thereupon descend to this world to assist them in treating the sick. While
journeying within the unseen cosmos, the shaman's soul, in the company of his spirit guide and other
spirit shaman companions, is thought to perform a number of feats, most of them associated with healing,
such as retrieving a lost or captured soul, defeating or slaying malevolent spirits, erecting cosmic barriers,
tending the plant image of an ailing patient, or effecting a proper separation between the living and the
dead (Sather 2001a: 10-13).

At the heart of every pelian is a sung narrative. The words of this narrative are known as its leka main or,
more specifically, in the case of shamanic songs, its leka pelian. Literally, leka means 'seed' or 'gist of';
main, 'play,' 'action,' or 'doing' (Richards 1981:201-2; Sutlive 1994:132, 144). By itself, main, like the
English word "play," has strongly dramaturgical connotations, relating to notions of performance, or even
entertainment (see Barrett 1993; Sather 1993a, 2001a:134-35). (7) Taken together, leka main refers to
ritual poetry (cf. Richards 1981:202). As a general language genre, leka main is used in a wide array of
cultural contexts. Thus, most adult Iban make occasional use of leka main, employing it, for example, in
family prayers, during public entertainment, or in songs and oratory. However, public mastery of leka main
was traditionally the special domain of three major categories of ritual specialists: 1) shamans (manang),
2) priest-bards (lemambang), and 3) soul-guides (tukang sabak). Each specialist is the master of a
different leka main tradition (Sather 2001a:5-13). Thus, the bards, who perform a largely priestly role,
command the principal ceremonial liturgy of Iban traditional religion; while the soul-guides, who in
contrast to the bards and shamans, are almost always women, sing the sabak or 'lamentation' by which
the soul of the newly dead is conducted to its place in the otherworld. Singing the leka pelian is the
exclusive province of the manang.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Words of Healing and the Staging of Pelian Performances

Every pelian has a narrative line described as its jalai, meaning literally, its 'journey' or 'pathway.' The
particular nature of this journey gives each pelian its name and identifying purpose. Thus, for example, in
the pelian munggu raran, the manang's spirit guide, under the direction of the shaman's soul, rescues a
captured soul from an outdoor cooking rack, called the raran, where the demonic spirit-hunters (antu
gerasi) are in the process of roasting it over a fire. Once rescued, the recovered soul is brought back to
the safety of the longhouse, where it is later pressed into the patient's body by way of the anterior
fontanelle (bubun aji). To take another example, in the pelian merau, the shaman's soul goes in search of
a missing soul, which is thought to have been lost in water, using a canoe orperau. While singing this
particular pelian, the shaman sits inside a mat, the sides and ends of which are drawn up and fastened in
the shape of a canoe (see Photo 2). Experienced manang typically command a personal repertoire of
between 30 to 60 pelian. (8)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Essentially, the jalai of each leka pelian relates the travels and encounters of the manang's soul, or, less
often, those of his spirit messengers, or the shamanic gods, as they journey through the cosmos. These
are never solitary journeys, but, rather, the shaman's soul, or its proxy, is always accompanied by a spirit
guide [or guides], and usually by additional spirit shaman companions, and much of their traveling unfolds
dialogically, through an exchange of greetings, conversations, questions about directions, or by having
landmarks pointed out and their significance explained. For the Iban, then, the words of the leka pelian
not only describe or recreate these travels, but they also quite literally bring them to life. Using spoken
dialogue, the manang takes on the voice of the spirits, souls, gods, or animal persona--the various
unseen interlocutors his soul encounters--thereby verbally enacting these unseen meetings and
encounters, while at the same time, using verbal imagery, he depicts the visual landscape through which
his soul and its companions travel (cf. Sather 2001b:156ff). Words, in this case, by being spoken or
'voiced' (benyawa), become, in effect, not simply words, but are materialized as 'voice' (nyawa), thereby
becoming a source of active agency, capable of effecting material and spiritual transformations in the
tangible world. By singing the words of the leka pelian, the shaman is thus able to summon the gods,
causing them to descend to this world as 'visitors' (pengabang); to activate his spirit guide; and, most
important of all, to dispatch and recall his own soul, which, as a conscious agent, is thought to command
and orchestrate these various travels.

Pelian are always performed before an audience with careful attention given to props and staging. In the
staging of a pelian session, a clear demarcation is maintained between the area in which the manang
sings and enacts his leka pelian and the area in which he treats the patient's bodily symptoms and
conducts his initial diagnosis. The leka pelian are always sung on the unpartitioned gallery (ruai) of the
longhouse, representing the community's main communal space, while the sick person always remains
inside the family apartment, the household's chief domestic space. Here, the patient is attended by the
manang at the beginning of a session and again at the end of each individual pelian (cf. Sather 2001a:
141ff).
At the center of the gallery, the participants, under the manang's instruction, erect a special shrine called
the pagar api or, literally, the 'fence of fire.' This is constructed of materials supplied by the patient's
family. Symbolically, it is a complex structure (Sather 2001a:144-53; Barrett 1993:250-53). Its base
consists of a jar containing a stone and a small amount of water. Among other things, this jar represents
the pugu' ayu or 'rootstock' of the human plant image (ayu) and the water and stone, the longhouse 'boat-
landing' or 'bathing place' (pendai'), a point of arrivals and departures and a primary source of ritual
cooling. An upright spear is inserted into the mouth of the jar and to its shaft is fastened a freshly-cut
sapling, a banana leaf, or a stalk of bamboo. The spear shaft represents the 'pathway' along which souls
and spirits are thought to travel. The blade of the spear is secured to a transverse pole that is tied
between the house pillars, with the tip of the blade marking the exact center of the longhouse gallery.
When the men have finished constructing the pagar api, the women contribute their share to the shrine, a
basket full of offerings called the dekuh. This is placed beside the base of the pagar api and the
completed structure is then wrapped in a ritual ikat cloth. Once completed, the pagar api defines the
center stage on which the manang performs his pelian, with his audience seated on the gallery floor
around him.

Sessions take place at night. The manang opens the session by leaving the gallery, where, until then, he
has been entertained by his longhouse hosts, and enters his client's apartment. Here, he begins by
attending to the sick person, waving him (besampu') with his medicine kit (lupung), asking after his
symptoms, and then palpating and massaging his body with charms (begama'). Treatment during this
initial phase is directed at the body (tubuh) and is meant to restore its integrity, either by extracting
intruding objects from beneath the skin or by sealing its surface with 'patching medicines' (ubat
penampal). The act of patching the body is said to close invisible 'wounds' (abi) made on its surface by
the spears and knives of the spirits. The manang concludes by questioning the patient and his family
regarding their dreams and omens, and, finally, he 'scans' (ninjau) with his crystal (batu karas) or 'seeing
stone' (batu ilau), holding it before an open flame in order to determine the condition and whereabouts of
the patient's soul. This scanning action is called ninjau semengat, literally, 'to scan' or 'view the soul from
afar.' Its purpose is described as bepandang reti, literally, 'to disclose meaning.' Based on its
determinations, and also what is disclosed by dreams and omens, the shaman sums up this initial stage
of his diagnosis by announcing the particular set of pelian he intends to perform and the materials and
stage preparations he will need in order to conduct them.

Singing the Leka Pelian

Having completed his diagnosis, the manang then leaves the apartment and re-enters the gallery. This
movement, which is called the tama' ke ruai, marks an important transition. From this point onward, the
manang makes use of his leka pelian and his treatment addresses, not the patient's body, but unseen
elements of the self--primarily the plant image, or syu, and the semengat, or soul. Scanning and the
manang's entry onto the gallery also signal a shift from diagnosis to therapy and from the body, as the
focus of affliction, to the patient's soul and plant image. (9) Significantly, the patient does not accompany
the manang onto the gallery, but remains behind throughout the remainder of the session, offstage, inside
the family apartment. From this point onward, curing takes place primarily through a medium of words and
their enactment played out before a listening audience on the longhouse gallery. (10)

Anthropological interpretations of shamanic curing often rest upon a view that shamanic practice "works"
at a psychological level by restructuring a patient's cognitive understanding of the experience of affliction
(see Crapanzano 1977, Levi-Strauss 1963). Here, it is important to note that such an interpretation, in a
narrow sense at least, is both alien to Iban folk belief and is very largely precluded by the way in which
pelian sessions are staged. Being offstage, inside the apartment, the patient is not expected to hear or to
follow the words of the pelian, nor to witness the song's enactment on the gallery. In fact, very ill, and
especially elderly, patients frequently sleep through a performance, and, under special circumstances, a
session may be held for a patient who is not actually present in the longhouse at all. (11) This is possible,
and makes sense from an Iban perspective, because the words of the leka pelian are not addressed to
the sick person directly, that is, to the still embodied aspects of the self that remain inside the apartment.
Rather, they are addressed to the patient's separable unseen aspects, namely to his soul and plant
image. Thus, it is these unembodied, or, in the case of the soul, temporarily disembodied, components of
the self that are the focus of the shaman's concern in the leka pelian that he sings for the remainder of the
night on the longhouse gallery.

To the Saribas Iban, pelian "work" because words are not only symbolic, having discursive meaning, but
they are also thought to be physically efficacious (bisa). Thus, the words of the leka pelian both depict
and represent the unseen realities experienced by the shaman's soul, and also are thought to be
transformative as well, capable of bringing about genuine spiritual and material transformations, the
outcomes of which may be seen in the tangible world. In other words, the actions of the manang's soul,
as related in the leka pelian, while ostensibly performed in invisible regions of the cosmos, are believed to
bring about parallel effects in the visible, sensory world, manipulating and simultaneously transforming
the conditions affecting this-worldly life and well-being. At the heart of Iban shamanism is thus a belief in
the co-existence of two parallel yet interconnected realities--one seen, the other unseen. (12) Within the
ritual context of the pelian--its "virtuality"--chanted words are used to connect these two realities, primarily
by means of their power of representation, and through their capacity for dramatic enactment.

Thus, the poetic imagery of the chants depicts, and so "represents" to the shaman's audience, elements
of the unseen realities that are acted upon by the manang's soul, his spirit guide and other invisible
companions, while, at the conclusion of most pelian, the manang "faints" and, very briefly, just as he falls
into a fainted or unconscious state (luput), he physically "enacts" the principal actions depicted in the
preceding words of the chant. Thus, for example, when a manang performs the pelian munggu raran
mentioned earlier, he does so seated beside a specially constructed model of the spirits' 'cooking rack'
(raran) fashioned in this case of rice-pounding pestles (alu) and covered, like the pagar api, with a ritual
ikat cloth (pua'). Concluding his singing, just as he falls unconscious, the manang knocks downs this rack,
toppling over the pestles, while simultaneously he seizes the patient's soul in his hand. Thus, pelian
performances comprise not just words, but rather they conjoin efficacious words with action. Action,
however, is always prefigured and performed first in words. As the Iban say, the journey narrative related
first in the leka pelian is then 'followed' or 'imitated' (nunda') by the manang, who 'mimics' or 'acts out'
(bemain) its main narrative events in what can only be described as a highly condensed, abbreviated
form of ritual drama lasting

no more than a matter of seconds. In this way, seen and unseen realities are momentarily brought into
conjunction. What takes place at an unseen level is fleetingly manifested in physical form. Again,
however, words are prior to, and prefigure, physical action. More than that, words empower, or lend
authority to, the ritual drama that follows by making what is visibly imitated by the shaman efficacious at
an unseen level, within the parallel reality of the souls, spirits, plant images, and gods. At the same time,
the temporal priority of words works to envelop the manang's subsequent actions with an aura of seeming
ineffability.

Although Iban shamans engage in soul journeys which they enact in a fainted state, it is worth noting that
the idea of possession, or ecstatic trance, is absent from Saribas Iban shamanism. Indeed, the idea of
possession itself is foreign and there is no notion that invading spirits may take over the physical body of
a human being, whether that of the patient or of the shaman himself. (13) Instead, during a pelian
performance, the shaman engages with the inhabitants of the unseen world--souls, spirits, and the dead--
primarily through the discursive medium of words. Within these rituals, complete spontaneity, or an
absence of conscious control, is neither sought, nor would it be appropriate, for the intended purpose of
each pelian is very largely pre-defined by its "pathway" and is accomplished only if the journey this
pathway defines is undertaken and completed correctly, without the shaman's soul straying, losing its
way, or passing by landmarks out of sequence.

This brings us back to the question of accountability. Early observers of the Iban tended to describe the
chants of the manang as being either incomprehensible or couched in an esoteric idiom inaccessible to
all but the shamans themselves (see Graham 1987:27ff for an account of this literature, also Sather
2001a:3). In discussing the chants with Saribas informants, I soon found that, far from being
incomprehensible, these oral texts were, in reality, highly structured verbal performances that are seen by
both Iban shamans and laymen alike as being not only meaningful, but as constituting the primary source
of efficacy attributed to the pelian. Not only are the chants intelligible, and closely followed by Iban
audiences, but the words of the leka pelian are themselves thought to be a source of curative power, and
despite the dramatic impact of the shaman's enactment, it is, significantly, the sung words that most often
hold the greatest interest to Iban audiences.

The leka pelian can be described as largely memorized and orally transmitted texts. They are composed
in a highly structured, poetic form, and taken together, constitute the necessary core of knowledge
required of a practicing manang. By singing them and faithfully recreating in words their narrative
journeys, shamans are thought to be capable of actively intervening in the lives of their clients. In the
course of a curing session, a shaman usually sings a number of pelian, up to six or seven during a single
night, ending typically, just before sunrise, with a recall of his own soul (mulai ka semengat).

Initially, a novice shaman, once he has received a dream call, and through this call, has gained a spirit
guide or yang, normally apprentices himself to an older manang, from whom he begins to study the
wording of the leka pelian. At first, he is expected to learn these texts accurately, more or less by
memory, but once he has mastered a working repertoire, a shaman is expected to manipulate them to
suit the particular circumstances of each performance. Thus, no two performances of a pelian are ever
entirely identical. An experienced manang is expected to use his poetic skills to create or embellish the
imagery, add descriptive detail, and to heighten the narrative drama and inject changes of tempo and
novel elements into his dialogue. Although some manang are more skilled at this than others, poetic and
performance skills are prominent features of all pelian sessions. Verbal artistry is highly valued in
shamans, not only for the interest and pleasure it gives, but also, significantly, because it is thought to
enhance the effectiveness of a pelian performance, and so the curative powers of the shaman himself as
a performer (Sather 20001a: 191). In this sense, efficacy and aesthetics are inseparably linked.

While texts are not, by any means, unalterable, every pelian is, nevertheless, constructed around the
relatively invariant jalai. This "journey" is not, as I have stressed, a spontaneous narrative, the momentary
product of a single, passing performance, but rather it takes a structured form, patterned poetically by
assonance, end and internal rhyme, and propelled, in terms of its content, along a well-defined itinerary
by an ordered procession of places, encounters, and dialogic episodes. In the course of his performing
career, each shaman characteristically traces and retraces these jalai again and again. While individual
performances, as events, are profoundly "existential" in the sense that they can be said to exist only in
their momentary practice, they are more, however, than a mere epiphenomenon of the experiences and
emotions of the moment. As Don Handelman (1990:19) observes, writing of public events generally, the
capacity for "doing," or for "making something happen," inherent in such events, depends upon the
existence of a prior sense of "how the doing is to be done." "There is no performance," as John MacAloon
(1984:9) notes in a similar vein, "without pre-formance," that is to say, without a form by means of which a
performance is "done." For the manang, the basic jalai narratives are not only performed, but can be
described, in MacAloon's sense, as "pre-formative," providing the shaman with a guiding design through
which he is able to constitute, again and again, though, of course, with variation, innumerable living
performances. To a significant degree, these narratives are thereby objectified, in the sense that they are
named and the manang is consciously aware of them, and so is able to control their "fixity" across time
and place, adapting them to the particular circumstances of each performance, while, at the same time,
preserving their basic integrity. (14)

In episodes of dialogue, the manang assumes the voice of a multitude of different persona, even inserting
his own voice at times. In doing so, he not only gives his narratives immediacy, but he also conveys a
sense of the varied spatio-temporal contexts different persona occupy in the narrative, while, at the same
time, he reinforces an image of his own role as that of a transformative intermediary, capable of
dispatching and recalling his soul, and so of moving at will between seen and unseen realities. Since the
pelian's words are prefigurative and imbued with power, the essential characteristics of each text, most
importantly its jalai, must be reproduced in successive performances; or otherwise, this power, and the
prefigurative force of the text as a basic blueprint for enactment is lost. In particular, since these words
depict a journey, it is essential that the basic itinerary of this journey be reproduced in what the Iban
describe as its correct 'sequential order' or ripih. While individual encounters may be deleted or added to
a text, the basic sequence in which they occur must be preserved, or else the journey itself becomes
'disordered' (salah atur or nadai ripih), and so, the Iban say, 'ineffective' (nadai bisa).

Through the words of the leka pelian the shaman creates an intermediating reality between the seen and
unseen, within which he is thought to be able to alter his own ontological status, and so to intercede on
behalf of his clients, replacing a state of suffering and loss existing in the external world, with one in which
'meanings' (reti) can be sought, and in which, to borrow Greg Urban's terms, the otherwise
"imperceptible" can be made "intelligible" (1996), at least provisionally, and so acted upon. From this, the
dramaturgical connotations of the term main as 'entertainment' become obvious. (15) But, the pelian are
serious entertainments that are meant to illuminate and transform, and to make the imperceptible not only
intelligible, but also to render it sensate. Moreover, the words of the leka pelian not only create an
intermediating reality, but they also animate the shaman himself. Words shape and express the purpose
of the journeys his soul undertakes. And through words, the manang ultimately transforms himself, and so
escapes the limitations of his human nature, transcending the boundaries that, for others, separate seen
and unseen realities. Transformed by words into a skilled intermediary, the manang is thus able, in the
pragmatic understanding of his clients, to intervene on their behalf in unseen worlds that are beyond their
own everyday powers to penetrate and directly experience.

Poetics and Power

Within the chants, poetics and power are inseparably linked. Here I want to explore this connection
through the use of several brief examples drawn from two pelian.

Let me begin with the opening stanza of a ritual called the pelian anchau bidai, 'The Rite to Spread a
Working Mat.' For the late Manang Asun, one of my principal sources and the performer from whom I
recorded this particular version of the pelian in the late 1970s, this was the first pelian he normally
performed when he began a series of pelian aimed at recovering a lost soul. It can be described,
therefore, as a "stage-setting" or "overture" rite. Seated beside the pagar api on the longhouse gallery, he
first bit the blade of a bushknife, an act called 'biting the soul-strengthener' (ngetup kering semengat),
then touched the blade to each shoulder, and began:
Awa ... Awa....
Deru'-deru' guntur mabu', Rumble, rumble, the crash of
nearby thunder,
Munyi ke mabak gerugu', The sound of boulders tearing loose,
Batu galang menyadi. The shattering of solid stone.
Awa ... galang menyadi Awa.... of solid stone.

Tu' baru lama' lemai, The time has now come,

Udah alai kami Jelapi, Late in the evening, for us Jelapi,
Bali' Gendai, ngansau semengau Transformed Gendai, to search for the
soul
Tepejuhjauh liar ke tisi. That has grown timid and bolted away
far to the edge [of the world].

The opening line, Deru'-deru' guntur mabu' ('Rumble, rumble, the crash of nearby thunder'), dramatically
stills the conversation of the manang's audience on the gallery. Its onomatopoetic nature at once draws
the listeners' attention to the sensory, acoustic quality of his voice, while the words themselves go on to
create a compelling image of the power of sound, here portrayed as capable of tearing loose boulders
and of shattering stone. This power is embodied, of course, in the manang's own voice, the dominant
sound that the listeners experience as he begins to sing. (16)

Note, too, how the next lines, moving from the metaphoric opening stanza, situate us in the immediate
here-and-now, locating us in the present ("the time has now come/late in the evening") and define the
work at hand ("to search for the lost soul/grown timid"). At this point the stanzas are fairly short and are
drawn out by pauses, repeated syllables, and considerable melodic ornamentation. But soon the tempo
begins to build and the melodic contours of the shaman's voice flatten.
The words next evoke a series of visual and auditory actions,--striking a pestle into a mortar, hitting metal
against metal, and so on--which, in most cases, the manang himself performs, so that his actions are
integrated directly into the song he sings. What is seen and heard is also sung; what is perceptible is also
made intelligible. The crucial link between words and action is thus affirmed, while words, by the same
token, are given "an air of operational reality" (Tambiah 1968:198) by being conjoined to what the listener
directly witnesses. At the same time, a subtle transformation begins. Striking metal and so on are meant
to recall the errant soul, and in depicting these actions the vantage gradually moves beyond what the
audience immediately sees and hears, as the sound begins to traverse the boundaries of immediate
experience and to reverberate finally in the upper reaches of the sky and out into the furthest edges of the
visible world. In this way, verbal imagery, rooted initially in the here-and-now, cuts free, moving the
audience's perspective from the familiar and immediate to the increasingly unseen and remote.

The next example comes from the midpoint of the pelian nyembayan, a ritual in which the manang's soul,
accompanied again by his yang and spirit shaman companions, journeys to the otherworld of the dead
(menua sebayan) in order to bring back a straying soul which has prematurely journeyed there. As the
shaman's soul goes in search of the missing soul, it encounters a series of birds, each of whom it
interrogates. (17) None, however, has seen the missing soul. Instead, each bird answers the shaman's
soul with a riddle. The audience is drawn at once into the decipherment of these riddles. The answer to
each "explains" why that particular bird failed to see the passing soul. The correct ordering of the birds is
also critical, for each marks a way station along an itinerary that moves us from the vicinity of the
longhouse, through rice fields and forests, finally, to the borderlands that separate this world from
Sebayan. In terms of time, the movement also transports us from daytime to dusk, signaling the inversion
of time that marks the transition from this world to the counter-world of the dead, where night and day are
reversed. Thus, in this instance, the next to last bird that the manang's soul meets is the Sebalangking
Bird:
"Kati ku' nuan deh burung "What say you, Red-brown
sebalangking biting? Sebalangking bird?
Bisi' nuan deh nemu Gemitan, Do you know anything of the
Lost One,
Kaban kami Menani, adi' Linsing?" Kin to us Menani, younger
brothers of Linsing?"
"Au'" ku' jaku' burung "Truly," says the red-brown
sebalangking biting, sebalangking bird,

"Kami tu' nadai nemu utai "We know nothing of this

[matter],
Laban kami rindang nyerumba' linda', For we pass our time in the dim
twilight,
Nyang kuning benyawa beketaing Calling to the yellow-crimson
sunset,
Ngemata kaputing jamban Titi Like a ringing [bell], we guard
Rawan" the end of the Bridge of
Fear."

Awa.... Titi Rawan. Awa.... the Bridge of Fear.

The solution to this riddle is familiar to most longhouse-dwelling Iban in the Saribas and relates to the
special habits of the sebalangking bird which, in the evening, makes a bell-like call that is said to signal
the coming of nightfall. When farmers working in their fields hear the sebalangking's call, they know that it
is time to stop work and start for home. But twilight is also the time in which the souls of the newly dead
cross into the otherworld. The Bridge of Fear (Titi Rawan) crosses a chasm, called Limban Deep (Limban
Dalam), that is believed to divide this world from Sebayan (Sather 2003:190). Moving on, the shaman's
soul next meets the Bubut Bird, the guardian of this bridge, and learns from her that a party of souls has
recently crossed into the otherworld.
"Tu' baru kati nuan burung bubut? "What, now, say you, Bubut Bird?
Bisi' deh nuan nemu Gemitan, kaban Do you know of the Lost-One, our
kami, kindred,
Tepejuh jauh anyut ke buntut jalai Who has bolted away, and so
danjan?" drifted to the end of the path
that leads to the Land of the
Dead?"

"Au' deh Lansu, kaban Likup, "Truly, Lansu, kindred of Likup,

Lebuh aku duduk ba pala' tangga' When I sat at the head of the
lemai kemar', entry ladder yesterday evening,
Bisi' aku ninga nyawa. There I heard sounds, like the
din of a large crowd,
Sida' iya bejaku' bekegut. The sound of many people
speaking.

Kangau ka aku, enggai nyaut. I called out, but none would

answer.

Tangkap aku rapas jeput, Catching one of them, I snatched

whomever it was for a moment,
Nama pengujung enda' telechut But, in the end, the tips of his
shoulders
Ari julut bau nandan. Came loose from my hands.
Awa.... Awa....

Beguai betundi' enggau endu' data He was hurrying so that he might

Lemaie, flirt with Maid Lemaie,
Nya' kumbai Kumang Sebayan." Also called Kumang of the
Otherworld."

The bubut bird depicted here is thought by the Iban to call out to the souls of the dead in an attempt to
persuade them not to cross over into the otherworld; hence, in the visible world, the call of the burung
bubut (the common coucal, Centropus sinensis Stephens) is said to signify that someone has just died.
Maid Lemaie is a spirit of Sebayan who welcomes the newly dead. (18) Following his yang, the manang's
soul now crosses into the otherworld. In doing so, the longhouse of the dead emerges into visibility.
..., rumah panjai Sebayan danjan dulu' ...., then the longhouse of
nadai, the dead,
Tampai Matai tambai ti' dipansik. Invisible before, can now be
.... seen by Matai, Who
approaches it....

In the leka pelian, the manang's soul enters the house of the dead, and there, by a dramatic deception (or
substitution), snatches away the patient's soul, which, with the help of its spirit guide, it then carries back
to the living world. Alter the slow, elaborate search for the soul during the first half of the pelian, this return
is swift and is typically accomplished by flight.

Encoded in the final stanzas of the shaman's song is a dramatic movement through social and ritual
space. Having accomplished its task in the unseen cosmos, the manang's soul now returns to the pagar
api, at the very heart of the communal social space of the longhouse. Back in the visible world, the
manang, having completed his song, and after briefly enacting its narrative, then leaves the gallery and
re-enters the bilik, signifying a further level of social and cosmological movement. Here, in most pelian, he
re-inserts the momentarily visible soul of the patient, (19) pressing it back into the patient's head, together
with a few grains of rice, where, upon entering the body, it becomes properly invisible again. Once again,
a dramatic conjunction occurs of seen and unseen realities and of the major divisions of the Iban social
world--the longhouse, the bilik family, and the person--and within the person, a reunion of body and soul.
Here, again, words are decisive. The manang's actions, first sung in words and then translated into
action, thus transcend the major categorical divisions of the Iban cosmos, bringing them back, at its
conclusion, into proper realignment.

In concluding a pelian session, the manang sets about re-establishing the integrity of these cosmological
and social divisions. He begins first by re-embodying the patient's soul, which he typically does several
successive times in the course of the night. He then collects together the souls of his client's family,
gathering them from undyed cotton thread hung from the pagar api, and re-inserts them into their bodies.
After this, he erects a series of unseen barriers enclosing, progressively, first the bilik and then the larger
community.

Song Poetics and Iban Ethnosemantics

In order to understand how the words of the leka pelian function in Iban shamanic rituals, it is important to
begin by relating features of the pelian texts to Iban notions of language. The songs are structured
primarily around two interrelated contrasts: between what the Iban call 'deep' (dalam) and 'shallow'
(mabu') and between 'hidden' (karung) and 'clear' (terang) varieties of speech (jaku') (see also Barrett and
Lucas 1993, Sather 2001a:167-70).

Jaku' mabu', literally, 'shallow speech,' refers to the supposedly transparent language of everyday
conversation. In contrast, jaku' dalam, or 'deep language,' is employed in special speech registers, in
registers of respect, for example; in oratory, and, above all, in ritual. (20) Deep language conveys multiple
and often layered meanings and requires an interpretative effort to comprehend. However, while the leka
pelian employ jaku' dalam, they are not, it is important to note, composed entirely of 'deep language.' On
the contrary, there is, in the development of each pelian narrative, a constant shifting across language
depth, from shallow to deep and back again. At times, lines of leka pelian may be so deep that even the
manang claim not to be able to understand them fully. Rare, such times occur mainly during spirit
dialogues or, most especially, in the names and poetic descriptions of unseen landscapes, gods, or other
supernatural agents. At other times the language is shallow, particularly at points of dramatic action or of
rapid movement in time or space, as, for example, during the flight of the shaman's soul or when the spirit
guide snatches back a patient's soul from unwary spirit captors and inserts it into the shaman's hand so
that he can return with it to the longhouse. Above all, language tends to be transparent in situations of
revelation when hidden meanings are disclosed, or when the imperceptible is made intelligible. The
manang is therefore able, by manipulating language, to signal movement between seen and unseen
realities, and also transitions from narrative action to poetic representation.

The second contrast is related to the first in the sense that deep language is said to hide meaning. But
the two contrasts also cross-cut in the sense that, through interpretation, what is hidden may also be
made clear. Jaku' karung means to speak with hidden meaning. The term karung refers, literally, to a
'cage' or 'cover' (Richards 1981:140). The term also signifies a 'host' or 'habitation,' such as envelops, for
example, a spirit, when the latter disguises itself in the outward form of an animal, reptile, or bird (Sather
1978). Similarly, a pregnant woman is said to be the karung of the developing fetus she carries inside her
body. The poetics of pelian composition characteristically involves the gradual revelation of meaning.
First, the cover or habitation is mentioned. Only later is the agent or object revealed. Thus, for example, in
the opening lines of the first pelian we discussed, a poetic image is presented, i.e. thunder and shattering
stones, whose meaning the audience must interpret. This is followed by a series of transparent lines that
describe the time of night, the condition of the manang, the illness, and the situation at hand that the
manang must deal with. The first lines or stanzas of the leka pelian typically allude to deep meanings, the
second lines or linked stanzas typically reveal and describe, alluding oftentimes to what is simultaneously
made visible or audible by the manang's actions or by the physical staging, such as the "cooking rack"
made of pestles or the mat "canoe" in which the shaman sits while singing the pelian merau.

By shifting between hidden and transparent language, and by playing upon these contrasts, the audience
is encouraged to join the manang in a collaborative process of exploration and revelation, of bringing to
light and making clear the unseen causes of the patient's affliction. The audience is thus engaged in the
process, with the result that a well-performed pelian works much like a bird augury or the reading of a
pig's liver. It involves a collective scrutiny of signs and a working out of interpretations. In the process,
understandings are transformed, as the likely hidden sources of illness are revealed, and so made
known, at least as plausible hypotheses upon which to act. (21) For the Iban, the terms "shallow" and
"deep" refer to both words and meanings. Depth refers to the degree of difficulty of interpretation; the
deeper the meaning (reti), the harder it is to interpret. The audience is drawn in by the use of shallow
language, by references to the immediately visible and audible, to the outwardly manifest actions of the
manang, and to descriptions of the longhouse and even of the audience itself contained in the leka pelian.
But they are also attracted by the poetic imagery of the songs, the allusions in deep language to invisible
realities, to the Bridge of Fear, for example; the crowd of souls crossing it in the gloom; the travel of the
shaman's soul by boat as it searches for a missing soul, or to its dialogue with the birds who answer it in
riddles. For the Iban, "shallow"/"deep" and "clear"/"hidden" thus describe not only dimensions of
language, but also dimensions of human experience and understanding.

Through the leka pelian, by means of its powers of representation, words make the imperceptible reality
of the souls, gods, and spirits intelligible, while, at the same time, what is made intelligible is also made
tangible, through the sensual qualities and enactment of these words, and so becomes, for the gallery
audience, an object of direct experience. The musicality, rhyme, and other aesthetic features of the songs
bring the sensory, perceptible qualities of discourse to the audience's awareness, thereby playing on the
"ability of the listener to focus alternatively on the meanings and the sounds" (Urban 1996:182). The
sound dimensions of discourse are heightened and so distract an audience from its tendency toward what
Urban calls "referential consciousness," opening it instead to "experiences other than those permitted by
the overt meaning of words" (1996:185), hence, in this context, to the possibilities of "deep" or "hidden"
interpretations. At the same time, sound foregrounds "nonreferential signs, embodied experience, [and]
immediate encounter with the world," and so exercises a magnetic pull, drawing the audience directly into
its unfolding narrative. Physical sound also points up the contrast between the seen and the unseen:
between the here-and-now realm of the senses and the reality beyond contained in meanings and
imagery. Through sound, as Urban (1996:86) notes, "meaning diffuses into the world, illuminating the
surroundings, allowing us to peer into an otherwise inscrutable darkness."

The boundaries of deep and shallow shift as they are manipulated by the shaman in the course of
performing his pelian. Deep speech may at times include common words, which may have a shallow
meaning in one context, but a deep meaning in another. (22) When the Iban speak in a register of
respect, they use deep words, for example, when talking about or addressing rice, or when speaking
while hunting, fishing, or firing their rice farms. (23) Interpretation of deep speech is arduous, but not
because meanings are maintained as esoteric knowledge, or as the exclusive prerogative of a priesthood,
as in the Tengger case. Iban society is notably competitive and non-ascriptive (Sather 1996) and
everyone, including non-specialists, is equally entitled to attempt an interpretation. The role of the
manang is to promote, not monopolize, interpretations, and to surprise and challenge his audience and,
through the discursive medium of his words, and by their acoustic and physical enactment, to enlist their
engagement with this intermediating reality in a common search for meaning. This search is never final,
but goes on from one performance to another, and beyond, extending into the everyday life of its
participants. Not just anthropologists, but local discourse, too, interprets meaning, and in the end, it is this
process of sense-making, of bepandang reti, 'disclosing meaning,' most notably through the use of words,
that, for the Iban, comprises the very core of the ritual process. (24)

Conclusion

Words, quite simply, through their circulation in ritual, are powerful. The transformations and imagery
embodied in the poetic language of the leka pelian clearly empower the pelian as treatment. They
"transform," for example, the ritual cloth that the manang drapes over his shoulders as he sings into
'wings' (sayap) and they turn his act of swinging in a barkcloth swing into cosmic flight. Most centrally,
words transform his fainted dramatization into an efficacious act in the unseen world. By being sung, the
leka pelian, a symbolic medium, becomes, in the intermediating reality its words help to create, not merely
a source of imitation and action, but also of creative agency, transforming the very context that calls it into
existence.

Poetic language is powerful at other levels as well. Through its descriptive power, it moves the listener
from the familiar and immediate to the invisible and remote and back again. Poetic descriptions of the
unseen reflect the power of words to represent and invoke. They also attest to the shaman's ability to see
the invisible, to transform himself, and to speak in the voice of a multitude of unseen beings. The dramatic
peaks in the chants occur at points when the manang seemingly makes the invisible seen. Thus, for
example, after the long series of interrogations, at last the final bird the shaman's soul meets, the Burung
Bubut, reveals that the soul he is seeking has crossed into the otherworld. As the manang's own soul
enters Sebayan, what was previously invisible emerges into visibility, and, as we approach the dramatic
climax of the narrative, the place where the soul has hidden itself is at last revealed, making possible its
recovery and return to its visible container, the offstage physical body of the patient.

Encoded in the words of the leka pelian are also depictions of the more enduring contours of the Iban
social and cosmological worlds. While stressing here the emergent, open-ended nature of pelian
performances, counterposed against the endlessly varied role that the manang must play as a curer and
ritual intercessor, there are also more enduring messages contained in the words of the leka pelian,
conveying what Rappaport (1992:250) has called a "canonical" or "liturgical order," relating, not
"indexically" to the immediate conditions of the patient and other participants in a pelian session, but
"symbolically" to more enduring aspects of nature, society, and the cosmos. To perform this order is, in
effect, to conform to it, and for at least the duration of a performance, "to bring this order to life" and "to
become," in Rappaport's words, "part of it" (1992:253).

Finally, it is important to keep in view the sociological aspects of ritual language use. The pelian are
always performed before an audience and take place within a context of heightened sociality in which the
patient's family, longhouse members, and outside visitors have all assembled out of their collective
concern for the afflicted person, or for those threatened by or suffering misfortune, or the grief of death.
This assembled audience joins with the manang in a joint quest for meanings, for disclosing the unseen,
and so for bringing to bear the therapeutic power of words in order, if possible, to return the patient to a
state of health, to overcome misfortune, dispel danger, or to alleviate a family's sense of loss. At the same
time, through his skillful use of language, the manang also seeks to affirm his own power, and to gain
audience endorsement of his effectiveness as a healer. Accountability works both ways, and through his
skillful use of words, staging, and drama--the coupling of language skills with performance aesthetics--the
shaman gains authority and public acknowledgement of his own effectiveness. In both regards, words,
quite literally, comprise the "gist" of ritual.

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Clifford Sather

Social and Cultural Anthropology

University of Helsinki

Finland

brb-editor@comcast.net

(1) I first gave a much briefer version of this paper at the 1994 BRC conference in Pontianak. An
expanded form, making a somewhat different argument, was presented at a symposium on "Rethinking
Indonesian Rituals" in Osaka, Japan, in 1997. An abbreviated version of the present paper was given at a
Department of Social Anthropology seminar at the University of Oslo in May 2004. I thank the participants
on all these occasions for their many useful comments. The remaining shortcomings are mine alone.

(2) Although, perhaps, never entirely so. Over time, Hefner concedes, some attempt is made, at least by
Tengger priests, "to render accountable what is said," so that prayers, over long periods of time, appear
to undergo self-conscious revision, with the result that a "demand for propositional accountability" has, as
Hefner puts it, "left its mark" on them (1985:214).
(3) Indeed, as I have discussed elsewhere (1993b, 2001a:21-23), considerable ambiguity surrounds the
status of shamans in Iban society and their authority, particularly as individual practitioners, is far from
unquestioned.

(4) Imaginal in the sense of humanly constructed and distinct from what Bruce Kapferer calls "quotidian
realities," i.e. "the chaotic actualities of the paramount world of everyday life" (Kapferer in press, see also
1997). As I will stress presently, words and the internal dynamics of Iban shamanic rituals act to create
what I have called an "intermediating reality" which, in Iban cultural logic, can be thought of as situated
between interconnected "seen" and "unseen" worlds. In characterizing this reality, I find particularly
illuminating Kapferer's concept of "virtuality." Thus, in Kapferer's terms, ritual, as a virtual reality, is neither
a representational ideal nor a modeling of external realities, but is, rather, as Kapferer puts it, a
thoroughgoing reality in itself that draws external realities, including human participants, into its dynamic
field in order to change and transform them (Kapferer 2000:29, 1997).

(5) This is not to deny the importance of material objects, stage settings and other media, only that these
things gain their symbolic significance, or, in Kapferer's terms, their virtuality, largely through the
shaman's use of ritual speech.

(6) The research on which this essay is based was carried out in Sarawak, intermittently, between 1977
and 2004, under the auspices initially of the Universiti Sains Malaysia and later the Tun Jugah
Foundation, and, during 1993-1994, with additional support of a Fulbright Research Fellowship. I wish to
thank each of these institutions, and especially Datuk Amar Leonard Linggi Jugah, the Director of the Tun
Jugah Foundation, for making this work possible. I also thank the Sarawak State and Malaysian Federal
Governments for granting me permission to carry it out. Fieldwork was done in the lower Saribas and
Krian Districts of the Sri Aman Division, and, in particular, I am indebted to Manangs Jabing anak Incham,
Asun anak Janta, Bangga anak Anggat, and Digat anak Kotak for their good humor and patience in
working with me through many hours of pelian recording, questions, commentary, and explanation.
Today, all, sadly, have passed away. Although shamanism remains a living practice among the Saribas
Iban, very few younger men are taking up the calling and today, like other features of indigenous religion,
it is declining rapidly in the face of large-scale Christian conversion.

(7) Trangganu Malays use the same term and similarly describe shamanic rituals as main (or, more
specifically, mainputeri or mainpeteri) (Laderman 1991a, 1991b). In this light, Laderman (1991 a: 14)
describes main peteri as "drama whose elements are played out before the onlookers' eyes with a force
of reality and truth that rivals the spell of other entertainments." This description, at least for older
audiences, aptly fits Iban pelian as well.

(8) For an account of these repertoires, see Sather (2001 a: 136-140).

(9) The plant image, in this connection, while its condition of mortality and healthful vigor is thought to
mirror that of the individual, is said to exist separately from the body. While many Iban believe that a
person possesses multiple souls, some of them also existing outside the body, only one soul is of
significant concern to shamans. This is generally called the 'body soul' (semengat tubuh). While it
normally resides inside the body (tubuh), as its name implies, it is precisely at times when it is suspected
of being absent that its owner becomes the object of ritual attention. Hence, in the leka pelian, the
patient's soul is depicted as being temporarily disembodied, and so, in the reversed unseen world, of
being temporarily visible to its inhabitants, including malevolent spirits, and part of the shaman's task is to
recover it and restore it to a state of spiritual invisibility inside the body. For a detailed account of these
components of the self and their relationship to notions of health, mortality, and well-being see Sather
(2001a:48-65).

(10) The Iban term for "audience," peninga', means, literally, 'listener,' from the verbal root ninga', 'to
hear.'

(11) This may happen, for example, if a patient falls ill while working or traveling outside the longhouse, a
not uncommon experience today, with many young men working in timber camps or on urban
construction sites. Such illness may be seen as due to the traveler's soul having become lost or
disoriented in its new surroundings. The sick person's family at home may invite a manang to the
longhouse to perform a curing session on the sick person's behalf. Here, the shaman's soul typically
travels over long distances to catch the patient's soul, which is then placed for temporary safekeeping
inside the head of another family member. It remains there until it can be returned, at some later date, to
the traveler's body. In such performances, an article of clothing, or today often a photograph, may be
used as a stand-in for the absent patient (Sather 2001 a:53).

(12) For a more extended discussion, see Sather (1993 and 2001a:82ff).

(13) The Saribas Iban are not the only Southeast Asian people for whom notions of spirit possession are
absent (see also, for example, Thomas Gibson 1986:126ff).

(14) This is not to say, of course, that new journeys, novel landscapes, or other innovations are not
introduced from time to time. They are, but they only become part of an ongoing repertoire when they are
accepted by Iban audiences. In this, again, clearly, accountability is crucial.

(15) Victor Turner, in his preface to Kapferer's study of Sri Lankan exorcism (1991), points out the
intermediating, or "liminal," nature of entertainment. Thus, he notes that "To entertain is, etymologically,
'to hold between', that is, to place in a 'liminal' condition, on the threshold between mundane spaces and
times" (1991:xxv). The idea of entertainment, or main, runs throughout virtually all of Saribas Iban ritual
life.

(16) Again, the salience of sound, as mentioned earlier, is inherent in the Iban term for 'audience,'
peninga', deriving, as it does, from the root ninga', 'to hear.'

(17) In the performed version cited here the shaman's soul encountered a sequence of 13 birds (Sather
2001a:278-291).

(18) The name also plays on the word lemai, meaning 'evening.'

(19) Characteristically, at this point, the soul takes the form of a tiny mustard seed (leka ensabi), which
the manang displays to his audience in the palm of his hand after he has regained consciousness (see
Photo 3).

(20) It should be noted that this varying "depth" occurs within spoken Iban (jaku' Iban). Differences
represent, in other words, poles of variation, or different speech registers, within the Iban language itself.
This situation contrasts with other ritual speech genres in Borneo that reportedly rely more on shifts
between vernacular, borrowed, and, in some cases, archaic lexicons, often employing, for example,
vernacular and borrowed words, alternately, in parallel lines, to signify differing temporal, spatial, or ethnic
sources of sacred knowledge and/or of textual authority (see, for example, Metcalf 1989, Tsing 1993).
This is rarely done in Iban ritual speech (leka main), which employs, instead, an extremely extensive
"deep language" lexicon.

(21) For reasons discussed at the outset of this paper, interpretations are never entirely conclusive. Thus,
for example, if soul loss is indicated by his initial diagnosis, the shaman, in the course of a night-long
session, will typically recover the patient's soul in more than one way, restoring it to the body often three
or four times before the session ends. In addition, he typically performs other pelian as well, for example,
to weed or clear around the patient's plant image, or to barricade the soul against possible spirit
assailants. Also, as we have noted, in concluding a session, he additionally gathers together the souls of
other members of the patient's family and, for safety's sake, reinserts them into their bodies.

(22) Notions of deep and shallow extend beyond speech. They also apply, for example, to the objects
used in ritual, including at times utilitarian objects of everyday use. For example, in the agricultural rite of
initial clearing (manggul), ordinary bushknives and clearing hooks are used, which, when placed within an
explicitly framed ritual context, take on a "deep," and for the Iban, highly interpretable meaning (see
Sather 1992:125-27).

(23) In these latter situations, a special 'hidden language' called jaku' lalai is used so that animals and
spirits cannot understand what is said, and so endanger the lives, or jeopardize the success of those
taking part in these undertakings. For example, in the upper Paku region of the Saribas District, when
hunting parties are in the forest, the common word makai, 'to eat,' is replaced by matah ka lengan,
meaning, literally, 'to break an arm'; pagila, 'tomorrow,' by bali' batang, 'turn over a log,' and so on (Sather
2001a:168fn).

(24) This process has also a more general bearing on anthropological theories of ritual. As Kapferer
(2000:8) has noted, contemporary theories, particularly postmodern or deconstructionist approaches to
ritual have tended to shift attention away from generalizing arguments that concentrate on deep
structures or central organizing principles towards the performance surface of rituals, "their open-
endedness, dialogical ambiguities, and their diversity of interpretative possibility." While these latter
qualities are clearly at work in Iban shamanic rites, an examination of the pelian demonstrates, at the
same time, the limitations of this debate, and like the Sinhalese exorcistic rites that concern Kapferer, it
highlights, instead, "the complementarity rather than negating aspects of depth versus surface discourse."
In the same way, this examination leads us to an understanding of ritual practice as inherently a dynamic
of both surface and depth.
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No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 2005, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

Iban Shamanism: An Analysis of the

Ethnographic Literature.
Link/Page Citation

By P. Grahame. An Occasional Paper. Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific Studies,

The Australian National University, Canberra, 1994. (1987). Pp. x + 174. Price $A20.00

Published in 1987, Grahame's Iban Shamanism has undergone its first reprinting. Its availability now is
particularly appreciated as it brings attention to a region of Southeast Asia that in recent years has
received limited consideration. Based entirely on secondary sources, Grahame's synthesis brings clarity
and coherence to a collection of largely ahistorical accounts that span over a century of socio-cultural
change in Sarawak.

The book takes the form of five chapters plus introduction and conclusion. The exploration of `tine cultural
logic of Iban shamanism' is Grahame's aim and it is in the first chapter that the most interesting questions
are raised and longstanding theories challenged. Popular notions of shamanism as a haven for those
physically or psychologically impaired or sexually deviating from the norm are dispelled: `manang are
called to the profession and reborn, rather than born, into it' (p.25). Yet in a seemingly contradictory way
these disabilities can become assets, enhancing the manang's ability to commune with the spirit world.

Chapters two and three comprise an analysis of the range and nature of the powers ascribed to the Iban
manang. This is aided through a close examination of ritual language and action across a comprehensive
array of healing and initiation rites. Grahame sees the Iban shaman as having a dual role. The ability to
`deal directly with other disembodied souls and malevolent spirits' underlies manang practice but in
addition to converging with the spirits the manang also plays a vital role in maintaining a separation
between the Iban and `certain antithetical aspects of the cosmos' (p.148).

The entirely of chapter four is devoted to a discussion of the manang bali or transformed shaman (male
and female) who assumes the identity of the opposite gender. Although the existence of a manang bali
has not been reported for many years, these shamans constituted a major focus of attention and
fascination in the earlier literature. Grahame's analysis here is insightful as she attends to the importance
of gender in Iban society revealing the manner in which gender and prestige are intertwined and intrinsic
to an understanding of Iban shamanism. Acting within the `gender-marked conventions of the Iban
prestige system', the pursuit of social prestige for the manang bali could be problematic but in crossing
over `fundamental dichotomies of Iban ideology and experience' the manang bali is attributed with skills
that facilitate passage into the spirit world (p.119). However, Grahame dismisses suggestions that the
manang bali constitutes the highest rank in a formal hierarchy of manang. Above all it is individual
prowess that is the determinant of success and social standing.

In chapter five Grahame situates shamanism in its social and cultural context, identifying a dialectical
interaction between Self and Other that finds analogous forms throughout Iban society. It is unfortunate,
here, that her broader social context is confined to `traditional Iban culture'. Although brief mention is
made of an expanding socio-political environment (p.117), there is a marked lack of consideration of the
relationship between the manang and state dynamics. The shaman as political actor is neglected but this
is reflective of a continuing trend in the ethnographic writing on Sarawak, a trend that marginalizes the
political dimension of shamanic practices.

Since the initial publication of Iban Shamanism, a handful of papers have appeared on the practice of the
manang. Most notable are those by Robert Barrett in which a number of Grahame's interpretations are
extended and challenged. Barrett (1994, `Hot and Cold in transformation: Is Iban Medicine Humoral?' in
Soc. Sci Med. 38[2]. pp383-393) suggests that Grahame's dichotomous reading of healing ritual is
oversimplified, and fails to account for processes of linguistic transformation.

In the light of more recent analyses, Iban Shamanism does have some theoretical shortcomings, but
nonetheless it has proven to be an invaluable foundation for further research in shamanism, ritual and
gender extending well beyond Sarawak. Grahame manages to remove many of the distortions and
ambiguities surrounding the Iban manang that have arisen due to the highly partial and regional nature of
the literature. The achievements of this text are particularly impressive considering the fractured nature of
the available material. Iban Shamanism remains a significant text, highly relevant to Southeast Asian
research and shamanism in general.
COPYRIGHT 1995 University of Sydney
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.

Copyright 1995 Gale, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.

Timang (pengap), pelian, and sabak: Iban leka

main singing styles.
Link/Page Citation
Strong lines of communication between the seen and the unseen worlds are established through the
singing of specific ritual poetic texts in the Iban society of Sarawak. The lemambang (bard) singing the
poetry called timang or pengap, the manang (shaman) chanting the ritual poetry called pelian, and the
tukang sabak (soul guide) singing the sabak poetry for a funeral are all part of a matrix of specialized
singers who perform extraordinary texts for extraordinary purposes in Iban culture. These genres of sung
ritual poetry, in particular, are often referred to as leka main, a repertory of sung ritual poetry to
accomplish specific purposes. (2) Timang or pengap chants, performed for high ritual festivals (Masing,
1997), invoke the spirit world to join those in the community engaged in a celebratory event such as the
gawai. The manang sings pelian poetical texts (Sather, 2001) in order to heal an afflicted person or group
of people, while the soul guide sings a sabak dirge (Sutlive, forthcoming) to ensure that the soul of the
deceased finds its appropriate place in the hereafter.

The power inherent in the words expressed by each of these specialist performers is unquestionable, and
the means (or vehicle) with which the words are expressed by each specialist helps to make those texts
highly efficacious. The vehicle for the actual aural expression of the words is the human singing voice,
which is of the utmost importance in the performances by these specialist practitioners. The performance
of each type of leka main projects a unique singing style (patah nyawa) that is particular and differs from
one type to another. This study begins to describe and document the musical style in the singing of these
three types of ritual poetry. Through aural investigation, musical transcription and determination of the
musical characteristics of each type, a comparative view of these singing styles reveals distinct musical
vocabularies for each of these specialists and, in the end, a distinct musical definition of each. in addition,
determining the ideal sound characteristics that are appropriate in Iban culture for the singing of the
timang (pengap), or the sabak dirge, or the pelian healing chant will give some insight into the way the
connection is made from the seen world to the unseen pantheon of spirits and places, which has a
profound effect on the performer and on those for whom the ritual chants are performed.

The Singer Specialists

Lemambang. The master practitioner/singer of leka timang (or leka pengap) is the lemambang or bard
(bards around the world sing poetic verse and are usually itinerant). In Iban culture, most bards are male.
They learn their art in an oral tradition within an apprenticeship system. Today this singer of leka timang
(or pengap) conducts the rituals of the gawai (religious ceremonies with feasting and festivity, Sutlive, V.
and J. 1994:79), and he also leads public invocations. The ritual poetic narratives that are sung or
chanted by the lemambang are called timang in the Upper Rejang and Batang Ai areas (Masing, 1997),
and in Saribas, Krian and Skrang they are called pengap (Sandin, 1977). In the Saribas, the term 'timang'
denotes special invocations and praise songs to honor sacred objects or special people (Sandin, 1977:
6).

The master practitioners of timang usually perform in a troupe (called bala), and each bala has a principal
bard known as the tuai lemambang. He performs with a second bard, the saut lemambang or penyaut. (3)
In the Baleh River region this assistant is referred to as the orang nimbal or 'answering bard,' who is
usually a full-fledged lemambang (Masing, 1977) and who sings an answer (or response) to the principal
lemambang. As the lemambang sings the ritual poetry, he accompanies his singing with a percussive
pattern that he plays with a stamping wood or bamboo pole (Photo 1).

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The troupe also includes a small chorus of male singers, who are junior or apprentice lemambang, called
pengelembung in Saribas (Sandin 1977). In the Baleh River region this chorus is the orang nyagu
(persons who support) and comprises 2 singers who are apprentice lemambang (Masing 1997), while in
the Saribas area the chorus may consist of 3, 5 or 6 singers, and in other areas the number varies
(Sather 1977 and 2001). In his work on the Timang Gawai Amat in the Baleh River region, Masing (1997)
notes that in the mid-1990s only 3 performers usually sang the timang ritual poetry, that is, a lemambang
and a 2-man chorus, indicative of the general decline in the number of lemambang in the late 20th
century onward.

Tukang Sabak. The master practitioner/singer of sabak poetic verse is the tukang sabak or lemambang
sabak, who is the spirit guide for the soul of a deceased person. The tukang sabak is most always a
woman who sings ritual poetic verse throughout the night before the burial. She sits near the body of the
deceased person who is placed in an enclosed area on the ruai (public gallery) of the longhouse. This
enclosed area is made of temporarily erected walls of pua' kumbu' cloth, and the tukang sabak sits inside
this enclosed area next to the body. Usually she holds a small piece of cloth in her hand (to sometimes
cover part of her face), and she braces her foot against a piece of metal such as an adze, knife, or other
object (this serves as a soul-strengthener, or kering semengat). (4)

The tukang sabak sings alone, without any accompaniment (Photo 2). She sings a long poem of
lamentation--the sabak (from nyabak, 'to weep, cry, lament'), (5) through which her soul journeys out
among the already departed spirits to guide the soul of the deceased person to its proper place in the
unseen world. The poem relates details about all the departed spirits (antu sebayan) who arrive from the
other world to accompany the soul of the deceased to its resting place. In addition, the deceased person's
apartment (bilik) in the longhouse is described, as are the landmarks and experiences during his/her
lifetime in the seen world. The poem proceeds in the form of paired stanzas (or sometimes couplets) of
text, in which the details about his/her home environment, events, objects and daily activities are
recounted in considerable detail, so much so, that the content is usually extremely emotional and often
heart-wrenching for the immediate family and friends to hear. The sabak ritual poetry is sung all night
long, ending just before dawn when the body is taken to the cemetery for burial.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Manang. The master practitioner/singer of leka pelian is a manang or shaman, who sings ritual poetry for
healing purposes. He conducts his ceremonies using a poetic narrative referred to as leka pelian. Most
manang are men, but women may also be manang or shamans.

The leka pelian is a poetic text that is always sung. The words tell about the journey of the shaman's soul
to various parts of the unseen world to retrieve a lost or captive soul, usually that of the sick person for
whom the ritual is carried out. By relating the events and communicating with various elements in the
unseen world, the manang is able to reveal the causes of an illness or possible psychological problems
that trouble a patient.

The pelian sung poetic narrative has a specific structure that takes shape in a series of sections or
stanzas of variable length (genteran or enteran), and the stanzas themselves are structured by a strict
pattern of accented end-rhymes that are carefully followed by the manang (see further, Sather, Seeds of
Play, Words of Power, 2001:162ff). Musically, each sung stanza concludes with a pattern of specific
melodic figures as well as a distinct pause of several seconds duration signifying the end of each stanza
throughout the chant. To begin a new stanza, the manang repeats all or part of the final line of text from
the preceding stanza using a standard opening melodic motive, and then proceeds with new text and
melody, in effect connecting one stanza to the next in a continuous chain of thoughts, ideas and melodies
as his soul travels to the far edge of the world to find the lost or errant soul of his patient. Poetic and
verbal skills are very important in the performance of leka pelian because these qualities increase the
effectiveness of the ritual, and they project the manang as a good ritual healer in his community (Sather,
2001:3).
In contrast to the performance of the timang, the manang himself performs the leka pelian. Only in very
few instances do more than one manang sing as a group, for example, during the rite of installation and
for the Gawai Betawai as noted by Sather (2001). Although the shaman uses physical objects to carry out
his ritual, he does not use a musical instrument to accompany his singing and chanting. He either sits on
the floor or on a barkcloth swing as he begins to sing, and when he reaches the main part of his narrative,
he often walks while singing (Photo 3).

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The genres of leka main discussed in this study exist in a folk tradition in which oral transmission and
learning is the norm. Within the lengthy process of learning by rote or imitation, careful attention is paid to
detail in passing down knowledge from master practitioner to student about all aspects of the ritual event
or ceremony, including the appropriate material items and bodily movements necessary to carry out the
ceremony, the composition of poetic texts and the rules that govern their structure, and the composition of
melodies needed to convey the poetic texts during the ceremony. The texts, within the same genre of
ritual narrative poetry, are different in various degrees from one performance to another, depending upon
the circumstances for the ritual. The composition of melodic motives and phrases within the same type of
leka main are also varied and different in each performance. While variation is typically characteristic of
the music from one given genre to another, the vocal style and the overall musical soundscape of the
given type of ritual narrative is constant, with little change occurring over very long periods of time. All
three singers of narrative poetry noted here are master practitioners in their respective communities, and
each one may be thought of as a poet-singer-composer, for the composition of the poetic text and the
melody, as well as the performance of it, happen at one and the same moment in time when the given
ritual narrative is being performed. The following discussion focuses on the musical style that
distinguishes each of these leka main genres.

The Musical Style

In the existing literature on Iban ritual poetry, the vocalizations of the singers/master practitioners have
been called "song" or "chant," with "chant" being the most frequently used term, whether it be pelian,
sabak or timang. The term "chant," in its very basic meaning, is "to sing" or "to utter with a melodious
voice." (6) In the context of this paper, the term "chant" is understood as a vocal musical piece with lines
of text structured in couplets or stanzas and with other structural parameters, sung in free or
indeterminant musical rhythm with reciting tones on which an indefinite number of syllables or words may
occur. Additionally, melodic motives (or formulas) of various kinds are incorporated in the textual
lines/melodic phrases, and a specific melodic motive comprising a closing cadence for each stanza in the
chant. In effect, the melodic phrases (the longer melodic units) are generated by the use of the reciting
tones along with short melodic motives or formulas.

In an oral tradition, the singer of narratives chooses from a repertory of motives or formulas to create full
melodic phrases with which to sing the poetic text (Lord, 1973:12ff). The singer chooses certain melodic
motives from the repertory of motives that he knows, and combines them in various ways. Some melodic
motives are appropriate for the beginning of a textual line, while others are appropriate for the middle or
the end of a line, a verse or a complete chant. In addition to the main melodic motives, other motives
serve to connect musical ideas and lines of text, and yet other motives serve to ornament or decorate the
musical lines. Hence, in addition to the use of reciting tones, the main musical building blocks for a given
chant, as discussed in this paper, are the "main" melodic motives that surround the reciting tone, and the
special "ornamenting" motives (often in the form of melismas--a single syllable of text sung on several
pitches) that enhance the overall melodic line.

Other musical elements to consider in examining the musical style of the chant are the tonal vocabulary
and the scale patterns used to generate the melodic motives, and the interval structure (or distance from
one pitch to another) within the motives resulting in various types of melodic motion that reveal the
characteristic flow of the musical lines in a given stanza or entire chant. Also important are the contour (or
shape) of the melodic phrases, the rhythm in the motives and phrases, and the kind of vocal production
and the technical singing style (whether syllabic, melismatic, responsorial, and so on). These elements
will be used in this analysis to define the vocal as well as the overall musical style, and, wherever
possible, to point out relationships between certain aspects of melody and the meaning of the text found
in the genres of Iban sung ritual poetry discussed in this brief study.

The Timang (Pengap) (7)

The Timang Nempalai Kasai is one of the last episodes from the timang gawai amat, which is a chant for
a ritual of high significance, one of the four main categories of Baleh Iban timang--the others being timang
beintu intu (for man's welfare and life), timang tuah (for fortune), and timang benih (for padi seed)
(Masing, Vol. 2, 1997). James Masing tells us, further, that the timang is both an invocation and a
description of "a journey to the world of the gods, and the gods' subsequent adventures while coming to
the ritual feast in the world of humans" (Masing, Vol. 2, 1997:55). The content of the timang noted in this
paper takes form as an allegory with a basis in hill padi farming, and the final episode is the planting of
cotton, or nempalai kasai.

As noted earlier, a lemambang (bard) performs the timang. In past times there was a head lemambang
(the tuai lemambang), an assistant (the saut lemambang) and a small chorus of apprentice lemambang.
Today, however, because of the decline in the number of bards in the Baleh region, Masing (1997) notes
that in the mid-1990s only 3 performers chanted the timang, that is, a lemambang and a 2-man chorus. In
the recording noted in this paper, from which a lengthy portion of the timang Nempalai Kasai was
transcribed, only one lemambang sang each stanza (this may have been a special situation in order to
make the recording, or perhaps it was simply that another lemambang was not available at the time).

When performing the timang or pengap, the lemambang holds a tungkat penimang, (a wooden or
bamboo stamping pole, and James Masing (1997) notes that sometimes aluminum pipes have also been
used). The pole is about 2-3 cm in diameter (about 1 inch) and slightly over 1.5 m (5 feet) long. It is often
engraved with geometric designs, and the feathers of a cock or other bird decorate the top along with a
few small bells. The tungkat is held vertically by the lemambang and struck on the floor in a regular
rhythm to accompany his chanting of the timang. In addition to the percussive sound of the pole, the bells
also jingle when the base end of the pole is struck on the floor (see Photo 1 above).

In past times, the performances by these singers in the Baleh region featured a head (or lead)
lemambang who would sing the first stanza (the genteran) and then a 2-man chorus would respond to
him by singing the last few words of the first stanza followed by a refrain passage (Masing 1997).
Immediately following, the assistant lemambang would sing a second stanza (timbal or 'answer' to the
head lemambang), and this would then be followed by the refrain sung by the chorus. Alternating solo
with a responding chorus is the format for responsorial (or call-and-response) style, and it continues to
the end of the timang.

In the Saribas a slightly different performance format is found, in which the head lemambang sings the
genteran (first stanza) and is then answered by the assistant lemambang (the second stanza as an
answer or response to the first). Then these two stanzas by the two solo singers are followed by a refrain
passage by the chorus (Sandin 1977). This format is also responsorial style, but the arrangement of the
respondents is slightly different than described above in the Baleh region. In any case, the main task of
the singers is to call or invoke the gods to attend the ritual. Part of a transcribed performance of the
Timang Nempalai Kasai is shown in Example l, recorded in 1995 in the Upper Rejang River region, and
found in the collection of the Tun Jugah Foundation.
The basic vocal production in the performance of this timang is consistently loud and firm, and there are
very few special or unusual vocal techniques used by the lemambang. The singing style is highly syllabic
with predominantly one note sung on each syllable of text, as is evident in Example 1. The tonal
vocabulary of the timang in the musical transcription consists of five tones (or pitches) forming a
pentatonic scale. This 5-tone scale serves as the tonal basis for the creation of all the melodic motives
throughout the chant, and the first scale tone functions as the pitch center as well as the main reciting
tone and the final tone of each stanza in the chant.

In this timang, the repeated reciting tone is predominant and is contrasted only by an occasional leap
upward, occasionally at the interval of a 3rd (that is, two tones that are 3 notes apart), or more frequently
by an upward leap at the interval of a 5th (two tones that are 5 notes apart, see the oval marked notes in
Ex. 1, lines 1-5). The widest melodic range in this chant is the interval of a 5th, which is usually sung at
the outset of a stanza, or occasionally in the middle to change the reciting tone (see Ex. 1, line 4). The
melodic motion in the textual phrases tends to be mainly undulating or flat with the repetition of the same
pitch in long passages of chanting. A contrasting disjunct motion by leaps happens often within a given
stanza (as in Ex.1, line 2), while the leap upward of a 5th occurs mainly at the beginning of the stanza as
noted earlier. Because of the many vocal leaps, there is not a feeling of smooth, lyrical flow in the melodic
line, but rather, we hear long, undulating (or flat) passages of reciting tones followed by leaps to other
reciting tones.

The use of melodic motives is minimal in many of the stanzas of this rendition of Timang Nempalai Kasai,
although sometimes connecting or linking motives serve to change from one reciting tone to another
within the same stanza. An example of a connecting motive is seen in the use of a descending vocal glide
from one pitch to another (Ex. 1, line 3). Other "ornamenting" motives that enhance a given melodic line
are usually quite short in duration and consist mainly of short melismas (more than one note sung to a
syllable or word of text, see Ex. 1, lines 2 and 4). No special musical cadences or ending motives are
heard in this rendition of the chant.

The overall melodic contour is "descending," in which a given stanza begins with a leap to the highest
note of the scale and gradually descends through several notes to the lowest note (Ex. 1, line 3). The
descent tends to be "terraced," focusing on successive passages of reciting tones that start high and end
low (seen also in Ex. 1, line 3).

In the timang (or pengap) the stamping pole (tungkat) is used to accompany the chanting by the
lemambang throughout the entire sung ritual event (shown in Ex. 1, lines 1-5). In this chant, the
lemambang stamps the base end of the tungkat on the floor on each main downbeat of the sung part.
The stamping is very strict and steady, and since the tungkat is stamped with equal stress on each beat,
a specific musical meter is difficult to determine (although other rhythmic parts might suggest duple or
quadruple meter--repeated rhythmic units of 2- or 4-beats in length). A more important feature of the
rhythm is heard within the sung lines of text--where the singer frequently uses a note of short duration
followed immediately by a note of long duration. This rhythm is, at least in part, derived from the language
used, and is manifest as a 2-syllable unit with a "short-long" time pattern (Ex. 1, line 1 and other
subsequent lines). This rhythm may be described as a "2-beat stress unit" with a pattern of weak stress
(or short duration) followed by strong stress (or long duration), that is, a "weak-strong" stress pattern. The
strong stress, in effect, becomes the main downbeat in the music, and the tungkat is stamped on each of
these main downbeats (this stress pattern is transcribed in the music notation as a "dotted" rhythm--a
note of short time-value followed immediately by a dotted note of long time-value). Overall, the
lemambang uses a highly syllabic, little-ornamented singing style. The musical phrases tend to be rather
straight-forwardly dramatic as the lemambang communicates with the spirit world.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The Sabak (8)

A solo singer, with no instrumental accompaniment, performs the sabak or funeral chant. The singer,
called the tukang sabak, sits next to the body of the deceased, sometimes on a stool and sometimes with
a small cloth in one hand (see Photo 2 above). As noted earlier, both the deceased and the tukang sabak
are enclosed by "walls" created from suspended panels of fine cloth that encompass the deceased and
the singer. The tukang sabak sings about the journey her soul makes to accompany the soul of the
deceased to its place in the unseen world.

In contrast to the singing style of the lemambang, the tukang sabak sings in a rather soft voice. The
situation of her chanting is very intimate as she sits next to the deceased body in an enclosed area. In
general, her vocal production is soft and steady and is broken by passages of extended vocal glides that
can be likened to wailing. Furthermore, a unique trait of the tukang sabak transcribed here is the use of
vocalized sobs, oftentimes performed at the end of a stanza, which not only expresses intense grief but
also gives the singer time to pause momentarily before beginning the next stanza. In effect, the long
series of sobs separates one stanza from another (Ex. 2, lines 2 and 4). To render moments of extreme
emotion in the chant, the singer enhances the melodic line with vocal glides sung through several pitches
(descending from high to low) followed by a number of sobs (Ex. 2, end of line I through mid-point of line
2). In this passage, immediately prior to the long vocal glide, the singer mentions the deceased using the
prestigious title, "Tan Sri," by which he was known in his lifetime, and she strongly laments the fact that
he left her ("his daughter Sani, to go live in the city" (Sutlive, forthcoming), using the long vocal glide as if
she were wailing (see Ex. 2, lines 1-2: "... rari ari ... anak (glottal stop) iya (short-long stress) Sani (long
descending vocal glide) ... di-au di negeri ... (many sobs). With these concluding remarks in the couplet/
stanza, the tukang sabak ends on the main reciting tone of the chant, which is then followed by a deep
intake of breath and several poignant sobs. As the singer proceeds to recount the life and work of the
deceased in this and subsequent stanzas, her skill and artistry is evident and striking throughout this very
long lament.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The singing of the sabak is mainly syllabic (one note to one syllable of text). However, short melismatic
motives (several notes sung to one syllable of text) serve to ornament the melodic lines (Ex. 2, end of line
3), and when the melismas are interspersed with passages of glides, the result is an intense wailing
effect. Occasionally, the tukang sabak interjects a kind of heightened speech in which only approximate
tones can be determined in order to proceed quickly through lines of text (Ex. 2, lines 6-7).

The chanting of the sabak in the present example is performed in a scale structure of seven distinct tones
from which two similar pentatonic scales are derived. The opening melody of the transcribed section of
the chant ("An Evil Wind Arrives," Sutlive, forthcoming) is based on a specific 5-tone scale, and at the
ninth stanza of this section of the chant the singer lowers all original scale tones by about one semitone
(half-step) to form a new 5-tone scale at a slightly lower pitch level (the semitone). It is always the first
scale tone (of either of these two scales) that functions as the pitch center of the chant, as well as the
main reciting tone and the final tone of each stanza.

The repetition of the reciting tone is often bounded (in the melodic line before and after it) by other notes
that proceed in stepwise succession (using the small intervals of whole and half steps) that give the
individual melodic lines fluidity and a lyrical quality. The smooth flow of the melody is also a result of the
liberal use of vocal glides through two or more notes, so that even within the rather narrow vocal range of
this chant (the interval of a fifth) the lyrical effect is maintained. Although some couplets are sung using
many vocal glides and sobs along with some melismas, which render a highly emotional effect upon
those close friends and relatives hearing the chant, in other couplets the singer relies on a more
straightforward, highly syllabic singing style, which not only contrasts with the "ornamented" melodies, but
also allows the singer to convey, more quickly and directly, additional details about the life and
circumstances of the deceased. In these syllabic, non-ornamented melodic couplets (Ex. 2, lines 5-6) we
hear flat or undulating melodic contours, sometimes spoken text (as noted above), and a mixture of
evenly stressed rhythmic passages alternating with a short-long rhythmic stress pattern in the sung lines
of text, the same kind of short-long stress unit that was seen in the singing of the timang.

The typical melodic motive to begin a couplet or stanza of text is a vocal glide up to the starting note (Ex.
2, end of lines 2, 4), and then a repetition of that high starting note in various rhythmic configurations. (9)
Overall, a moderate number of melodic motives are used within a line and these include the occasional
triplet figure (Ex. 2, line 3) and a few short melismas of one or two beats in duration (Ex. 2, line 3). The
typical ending of the stanzas is characterized by the repetition of the first and lowest scale tone (the pitch
center of the chant) in various rhythms, however, the most frequently used ending rhythm is a short-long
stress pattern as seen in Example 2, end of line 3 on the syllables 'ring-gang'. The final note of the
couplet is invariably followed by the intake of breath and several sobs (Example 2, lines 3-4). The melodic
contours in the lines of the sabak are generally undulating or descending (Ex. 2, line 5) in smooth, fluid
passages of melody and text, as the tukang sabak spins out the details of the life of the deceased, and
her journey to accompany his or her soul to the final resting place in the unseen world.

The Pelian (10)

The pelian transcribed and discussed here is the section known as Anchau Bidai (spread a working mat),
and is one of the first, if not the first, pelian the manang performs when he begins a healing session,
which can easily last all night (Sather, 2001). This is an opening rite and an opening chant that sets the
stage, so to speak, for the coming ceremony and its accompanying sung poetry. This pelian was
recorded by Clifford Sather in 1991 in the Saribas region.

The manang (shaman) is a solo vocalist with no instrumental accompaniment. He sits on the floor or on a
swing in the early part of the chant, and also walks about during the subsequent part of his chant. He
sings a complex poetic text that tells of a journey his soul makes to search for an errant or lost soul at the
far edge of the world in order to heal the sick person (or persons) at hand. The poetic text is cast in
stanzas of variable length, with the repetition of the final phrase of text at the end of each stanza used to
begin the next stanza.

The vocal production by the manang features a moderate to soft voice, always with a firm and steady
quality. The especially unique features of his vocal style (patah nyawa) are the use of glides from one
note to another, as well as the extensive use of a shaking technique with the vocal chords to produce
slight gradations of pitch on certain sustained tones within a given melodic line (the term "tremolo" is used
for this technique in the musical transcription seen in Example 3). This tremolo may occur on any scale
tone in the melodic line and generally creates a sense of great tension, when required in the text. Overall,
the singing is a combination of syllabic (one tone on a single syllable of text) and melismatic styles
(several tones sung on a single syllable of text), with a substantial degree of melismatic singing especially
in the early part of the chant.

The melodic motives and phrases result in a tonal vocabulary of ten distinct tones, from which a core of
four tones comprise a tetratonic (4-tone) scale. The first and second scale tones are the principal reciting
tones in this chant. The 4-tone scale changes later in the chant to a 5-tone scale with the addition of one
note a whole step above the highest note of the original scale. Several stanzas into the chant, the entire
pitch level rises by a semitone to form a new 4-tone scale, and later on the pitch level reverts back to the
original scale structure. The primary reciting tones in the various sections of this chant ascend and
descend by semitone and whole tone, and even though the vocal range is very narrow, the manang
creates tension at the various points in the chant by the rising tonal framework.
Like the sabak singing style discussed above, the conjunct (or stepwise) melodic motion in each line of
text creates a smooth and flowing melodic line. The total melodic range is limited to the interval of a 6th (6
notes apart from the lowest to the highest note), which is rather narrow, but by comparison with the other
types of chant discussed here, this is the widest melodic range used by a ritual singer.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The motives used to generate the melodic lines are numerous and varied in this very long pelian chant.
They include special opening motives, a variety of short motivic figures used within a melodic line, and
ornamenting motives that feature melismas and special vocal techniques. To begin a stanza, the typical
opening motive consists of a short 2- or 3-note figure that ascends by whole step from the first scale tone
to the note above it, which is repeated a number of times (Ex. 3, beginning of lines 1 and 5). This short
opening motive is found at the beginning of most stanzas, and even though there is some variation in the
rhythm or duration of the repeated notes, this opening melody might be thought of as a "standard"
melodic opener for the manang. The text at the beginning of a new stanza is usually the final line of text
from the preceding stanza, however, the melodic line from the preceding stanza is not necessarily carried
over to the newly begun stanza. Nevertheless, the repetition of text itself provides the continuity from one
stanza to the next. As the manang continues singing about the numerous aspects of his journey, the main
melodic motives used within the lines of text and melody (as seen in Example 3) may incorporate short
melismas (line 6), short trills (line 3, alternation of two tones) or triplet figures (lines 1 and 5-7). The
melisma (several notes sung to a single syllable or word of text), and also the vocal technique notated as
a "tremolo," may occur at any point within a melodic line depending upon the text that is sung and the
intent of creating poignancy or stress. As noted above, the tremolo on a sustained tone is a slight
wavering of the pitch that intensifies the musical sound, and may be used by the manang to make the
meaning of a particular passage ring with special significance, as at the beginning of Example 3, lines 2-3
("... guntur (short melisma) nuan mabu (tremolo).... mabak gerugu (tremolo) ... o-o (trill) ... o-o (downward
release of final pitch). In this instance, the richly ornamented melodic line underpins the opening text "...
rumble, rumble ... the crash of nearby thunder" ... "the boulders tearing loose" (Sather 2001: 201,691).
Although not shown in Example 3, the vocal glide is sometimes incorporated into the melodic line, usually
in a descending contour to a final reciting tone in the music, and grace notes (Ex. 3, lines 4-5) sometimes
occur before pitches of long duration to keep the melodic line in motion.

In any given stanza of the pelian, the melodic contour may be slightly ascending, descending, a
combination of these, or undulating (as in Ex. 3, line 5). Finally, the end of a stanza is typically signified by
the repeated main reciting tone (the lowest scale tone) and with a deliberate downward, slightly explosive
release of the final pitch as seen in Ex. 3, lines 4, 5 and 6.

Rhythmically, the pelian does not have a particular musical meter. The meter is basically free, however,
the internal rhythm at the word and syllable level is much like that of the timang. The predominance of a
short syllable followed by a long syllable (the short-long stress) corresponds musically to a weak stress
followed by a strong stress in a 2-beat pattern that is repeated in various ways throughout the chant. In
contrast, the sabak is distinguished by many passages of evenly stressed syllables, with only a few
passages of the uneven short-long stress pattern.

Conclusion

A summary and comparison of the musical features of the three leka main genres discussed above is
given in Table l: Comparison of the Musical Stylistic Features in the Performance of Leka Main Genres.
Assuming that each of the examples of leka main discussed here are typical, then the major musical
characteristics of the vocal style and, indeed, the overall musical style of each chant is evident. Some
commonalities may be noted among the three genres. The stability of the scale tones is consistent
throughout all of the recorded chants discussed in this paper. None of the performers has a musical
instrument to give a pitch or tone reference. It is only his or her voice and ear that brings each performer
to a given tonal level and that particular level is maintained, with great consistency, throughout each of
the respective chants noted and transcribed. The texture is monophonic, in which a single melodic line is
sung by a solo singer or, in the case of the timang chorus part, the same melodic line is sung by two or
more singers in unison. In any case, only a single melodic line is heard at any given time in the singing of
these genres of ritual poetry. The formal structure of the music itself is generated by the way the melodic
motives (or formulae) are combined to produce a given melodic line, which, in turn, is determined by the
text. At the time the singer/ritual specialist is composing and simultaneously performing the lines of text
and melodic lines, some repetition of motives occurs. However, the configuration of the motives is
different in each line of melody and text as well as in each stanza (with the exception of the repetition of
certain lines of text as noted above in the pelian). Hence, the musical form may be described as
progressive (or throughout composed) in all three kinds of chant studied here. The voice is the primary
sound vehicle in all three genres of leka main. The vocal dynamic (or volume) in the timang is moderate
to loud and mainly unchanging throughout the chant, while the tukang sabak vocal dynamic is also
unchanging, but is always soft, perhaps because she performs in a very intimate setting with the body of
the deceased present. In contrast, the pelian chanting sees a variable dynamic that is changing
throughout the chant, sometimes moderate and at other times soft.

Other musical features, noted in the foregoing discussion of the three genres of chant, are different from
one genre to another, and these features give a distinct sound quality and character to each respective
type of leka main. The characteristics of the vocal style (the patah nyawa) are unique in each of the three
kinds of chant discussed here. The lemambang tends to sing in a very straightforward way with a very
firm voice and little melodic ornamentation throughout. His singing style is highly syllabic (a single syllable
or word of text is sung on a single note), and there is little divergence from this style of singing. The
timang chant is unique in its use of responsorial (or call and response) singing when there are two
lemambang or when a chorus performs along with the head and assistant lemambang.

The tukang sabak, on the other hand, sings entirely alone and with a rather soft but tense solo voice.
Some tukang sabak (including the example studied in this paper) sing melodic lines that are punctuated
by a sequence of sobs, occurring especially near or at the end of a stanza or couplet. While some
melismatic passages are heard (many notes sung to a single syllable or word of text), the sabak singing
style is still mainly syllabic. A unique feature heard in this singer's vocal production, and that of others as
well, is an extreme use of the vocal glide from one pitch to another, which is very effective in creating a
wailing (and sometimes a moaning) sound. This wailing may occur within the textual/melodic line or at the
end of a line, and the wail, along with the sobs and the meaning projected in the sung words, generates
high emotion, grief and anxiety for the singer and the listener alike.

In contrast to the predominantly syllabic singing of the lemambang and tukang sabak, the manang's
singing style is characterized by a mixture of syllabic and melismatic singing. In some sections of the
pelian chant there is a great deal of melismatic singing, but even more important are the special vocal
techniques employed by the singer. The many melismas and other ornamenting motives heard in the
chant contrast sharply with a substantial use of the glottal stop in the sung text. The glottal stop is
inherent in the language and is manifested musically by very short stops (or rests), and then continuation
of the vocal sound. A rather special vocal technique peculiar to the manang is a shaking (or tremolo) of
the voice on sustained tones. This shaking sometimes changes the pitch slightly, but most often does not
and can be likened to a trembling that creates much tension in the music. Finally, the manang
distinguishes his vocal style by frequently using a downward, almost explosive, release of a pitch,
especially at the end of a given line or stanza. In the case of the manang transcribed in this study, this
technique is consistently used to end a stanza and the melodic line.

In all the genres discussed here, the scales used are 3-, 4-, or 5-tone scales and the vocal range is
generally quite narrow. The melodic motion in the timang tends to proceed in small leaps or jumps
(disjunct motion) from one reciting tone to another in descending contours and in rather "terrace-shaped"
phrases. In contrast, the tukang sabak's melodic lines are smoother because of the predominance of
stepwise (or conjunct) movement from note to note, along with the use of the descending vocal glide
technique noted earlier. The manang sings extremely smooth and fluid melodies with movement mainly
by half steps and whole steps (conjunct motion). The melodic range is only a 6th, but it is the widest
melodic range of the three types of chant discussed here. In the pelian, the melodic contours are
ascending, descending and a combination of these two types.

The rhythm in the melodic lines of the three kinds of chant is dependent upon the rhythm inherent in the
language of the poetry. An overall musical meter is not discernible in any of the genres noted in this
study. Typically heard, however, is a 2-beat stress pattern of a weak stress (or a note of short duration)
followed by a strong stress (a note of long duration), which overall contributes to an end-accented, 2-beat
rhythmic pattern in the musical lines. In his work on the timang, Masing (1997) notes that lemambang
search for 2-syllable words for use in their chants. The weak-strong stress pattern is used most prolifically
in the timang, while the sabak chant features long passages of evenly stressed rhythmic patterns. The
pelian chanted by the manang uses a mixture of weak-strong stress patterns and evenly-stressed
patterns, depending upon the text that is sung at any given time and the degree of stress and poignancy
the manang wishes to place on his sung text.

The lemambang uses the fewest of actual motives, and his chanting is characterized mainly by leaping
upward to a given reciting tone, and in some instances, gliding downward from one reciting tone to
another. The tukang sabak uses more motives than the lemambang, and these are usually the vocal glide
and short melismas. The melodic lines in the sabak have a great tendency to begin on a high tone and
proceed to a low tone, usually spanning the interval of a fifth. The manang's chant is filled with melodic
motives, including a standard opening melodic motive, various ornamenting motives, and a closing
pattern or formula that is characterized by the downward, explosive release of the last pitch at the end of
the given textual/melodic line, and especially at the end of a stanza. The melodic lines are thick with
ornamenting motives in the form of long and short melismas (many notes per syllable or word) or
embellishment by use of trills and the tremolo on sustained notes.

Summary. These details of the singing style and melodic passages begin to distinguish the three kinds of
chant involving ritual poetry. We see that the lemambang is very direct, communicating with the spirit
world by using predominantly a moveable reciting tone in a descending and terraced contour or pattern,
very few melodic motives, a simple vocal technique and the predominance of a weak-strong stress
pattern in the melodic line, along with the regular stamping of the tungkat on each main beat in the
musical line. Furthermore, when a small chorus is present, there is responsorial performance between the
lemambang and the chorus.

In contrast, the tukang sabak projects a highly emotional and grief-stricken state not only by the textual
content relating the events and circumstances to accompany the soul of the deceased to its place in the
unseen world, but also by the use of the wail-like vocal glides from note to note in cascading lines of
melody. The chant is made even more sorrowful by the use of sobs that are interjected frequently within a
melodic line and also at the end of a line, especially at the end of a stanza or couplet where many sobs
often occur.

Finally, using a rather ornate and complex vocal style, the manang's sung texts take his soul deep into
the unseen world. The use of the tremolo, trills and melismas, and the highly fluid and intense melodies
serve as a vehicle to tell us about the manang's journey to the far edge of the world to search for and
retrieve a wandering, lost soul in order to cure the patient at hand. Both the tukang sabak and the
manang, in particular, present an intense and emotion-charged journey into the unseen world to
communicate with invisible beings in order to accomplish their respective missions.
Ethnographers in the 20th-21st centuries have documented the cultural context of these vocal narratives
in very rich description and analysis. The poetic texts of many healing, burial and celebratory rites have
been transcribed, translated, described and analyzed, including the performance settings, verse
structures, internal rhyme schemes, and the meaning of the texts. Focusing predominantly on the
performative aspects of these genres, and especially the vocal style (thepatah nyawa), this discussion
contributes yet another dimension to the body of writings on the leka main repertory.

References

Lord, Alfred 1973 The Singer of Tales. New York: Atheneum.

Masing, James Jemut 1997 The Coming of the Gods, An Iban Invocatory Chant (Timang Gawai Amat) of
the Baleh River Region Sarawak. Canberra: The Australian National University, 2 volumes.

Matusky, Patricia 2004 The Iban Pantun--Poetry and Song Wacana Seni- Journal of Arts Discourse
(Universiti Sains Malaysia), Jil./Vol. 3:61-85.

Robert Menua Saleh, ed. 1997 Pantun Iban. Kuching: The Tun Jugah Foundation.

1998 Pantun Iban II. Kuching, The Tun Jugah Foundation.

Sandin, Benedict 1974 The Iban Music. In: Mohd. Taib Osman, ed., Traditional Drama and Music of
Southeast Asia. Kuala Lumpur, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.

1977 Gawai Burong: The Chants and Celebrations of the Iban Bird Festival. Penang: Penerbit Universiti
Sains Malaysia.

1980 Iban Adat and Augury. Penang: Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia.

Sather, Clifford 1977 Introduction. In: Benedict Sandin, Gawai Burong, pp. vii-xvi.

2001 Seeds of Play, Words of Power, An Ethnographic Study of Iban Shamanic Chants. Kuching: The
Tun Jugah Foundation and the Borneo Research Council.

Sutlive, Vinson Forthcoming The Iban Sabak.

Sutlive, Vinson and Joanne, eds. 1994 Handy Reference Dictionary of Iban and English. Kuching: The
Tun Jugah Foundation.

(1) A somewhat condensed version of this paper was delivered at the Borneo Research Council
Conference, July, 2006, in Kuching, Sarawak.

(2) The sung oral literature of the Iban also includes entertainment songs, courtship songs (pelandai),
secular stories (renong and sugi), repartee called jawang, pantun poetry (Matusky, 2004:61-85), ensera
legends and taku songs sung by women to encourage warriors.

(3) From saut, 'to answer.'

(4) Sather, Seeds of Play Words of Power, An Ethnographic Study of Iban Shamanic Chants. Kuching,
The Tun Jugah Foundation, 2001.

(5) Sutlive, Vinson and Joanne, eds., Handy Reference Dictionary of Iban and English. Kuching, The Tun
Jugah Foundation, 1994.

(6) The term "chant" is derived from the Latin cantare, meaning "to sing' or 'to utter with a melodious
voice' (Webster's Universities Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, 1940). Furthermore, the
term "chant" is described as song, or it is noted as a short musical piece generally with a reciting tone. In
contrast, the term "song" is more general, and may be noted as a short piece for solo voice in a simple
style in which the melody enhances a poetic text. In a folk tradition a song usually develops anonymously
in a given community and exists in an oral tradition (Harvard Dictionary of Music, 2nd edition revised,
1969).

(7) The comments and analysis of the music in the timang noted here are based on observations taken
from my transcription of the Timang Nempalai Kasai. This timang, in recorded and transliterated form, is
in the collection of the Tun Jugah Foundation, recorded in March 1995, and is from the Upper Rejang
River area. Additional sources of information about the timang in general are works by James Masing
(1997), Benedict Sandin (1977, 1980) and Clifford Sather (2001).

(8) The sabak transcribed here was recorded on July 8, 1981 and sung by Minda anak Janting (the soul
guide or tukang sabak). This recording is in the Tun Jugah Foundation collection.

(9) The technique of the glide sung through several tones that produces a wailing effect is considered to
be a melodic motive in this discussion.

(10) The pelian transcribed and analyzed here is from the collection of Clifford Sather. It is known as
Anchau Bidai (spread a working mat) and is one of the first pelian the manang performs when he begins
a healing session, which may last all night. It was recorded in 1991 in the Saribas region (Ulu Paku).

Seeds of Play, Words of Power: an ethnographic

study of Iban shamanic chants. (Reviews).
Link/Page Citation

By Clifford Sather

Kuala Lumpur: Tun Jugah Foundation in cooperation with the Borneo Research Council. 2001

Pp. xvii +753

Price: US $49. RM95 pb RM120 hb

This treatise on Ibanic shamanic songs and their role in traditional Iban healing is based on intensive and
extensive research spanning several decades. The songs (leka pelian) are the core part of the rituals
performed by Iban shamans (manang) which are intended to recover wayward souls, cultivate the human
plant image, create protective spirit-barriers, slay spirits, or promote a fitting separation between the living
and the dead. This meticulous work is the highlight of the already extensive shamanic literature on
Borneo, providing a comprehensive and illuminating analysis of an absorbing topic.

In the first eight chapters, Sather provides the cultural context of the shamanic chants (leka pelian); the
staging, structure, and performance of the pelian is described in fine detail. The starting point for his
analysis is the observation that what was often seen as incomprehensible by earlier observers who were
not fluent in Iban, can often be explained by close attention to the texts. Contrary to assumptions by
classic social anthropologists who were seldom fluent in indigenous languages, a knowledge of the text
illuminates the performance of the manang and enables observers to understand the ritual and its
significance. Sather clearly distinguishes three major categories of Iban ritual performers: shamans
(manang), bards (lelembang) and soul guides (tukang sabak). A crucial feature of the predominantly male
Iban shaman is that he performs pelian. Unlike the shamans of Eliade's well known classification, manang
do not become possessed by the spirits but remain autonomous agents communing with the spirits .

In the following chapters of the introductory section, Sather explores the nature, significance and lengthy
process of becoming a manang, and contextualises notions of illness and health within Iban concepts of
personhood. In more analytical mode, he delves deeply into the esoteric: the symbolic and metaphorical
representations of the 'journey' and the cosmos contained in the leka pelian. Chapters 5 and 6 examine
the curing ceremony and the use of longhouse space during a pelian ritual. The final two chapters of the
first section are devoted to an analysis of the song texts, conventions of presentation, and the efficacy of
performances. These eight chapters are neatly contained within a little over 200 pages, about the ideal
length for a modern academic text.

The bulk of the book, however, is the other nine chapters which describe nine specific pelian rituals. Each
includes the Iban text version, with interlinear glosses, and English translations, supplemented by
occasional passages contextualizing the songs. All bar one chapter are based on live performances and
include Pelian Ngambi' Semengat Baruh Jerangku Kara' (To Recover the Soul from Under the Roots of
the Kere' Tree), a simple ritual performed to capture a lost soul, and Pelian Beserara Bunga (Severing the
Flower), a rite to mark the end of mourning. The Gawai Betawai, the longest and most complex pelian is
based on a reconstructed account as the actual ritual has not been performed since the mid-1940s. A
group of shamans under direction from a leader and with the occasional assistance of bards performed
this rite usually for a chronically ill child who had failed to respond to previous means of healing. Even for
someone with little knowledge of Iban, reading aloud a few lines of the text provides a powerf ul
representation of the rhythm and rhyme of the verse songs. The interlinear gloss will be of particular
interest to linguists and the English translation supplies images of peculiarly Ibanic ideas, philosophy,
legends and oral history. To round off the study Sather adds a glossary, and three appendices, one by
the musicologist Patricia Matusky on the musical elements of the Pelian.

This first, 'introductory' part of this work is essential reading for everyone with an interest in Borneo and in
my view could stand alone as a work of broad general appeal. However, in the interests of focussing
attention on the texts and the translation, the author has chosen to incorporate them in the same book.
This makes for a somewhat bulky volume, in which the latter part is designed to appeal both to a more
esoteric audience with a highly developed interest in textual presentation, as well as current and future
generations of Iban. I found Sather's description and analysis of Iban shamanic rituals helped me
understand similar events I witnessed among other indigenous groups in Sarawak who lack similar
records of their oral traditions. The author has played a particularly prominent role in stimulating
indigenous Sarawakians to record, transcribe and analyse their epic poems, stories, myths and legends
which are rapidly disappearing under the onslaught of modernity and Christianity.

Seeds of Play, Words of Power: an ethnographic study of Iban shamanic chants, is a fine example of
scholarship and ethnographic research, and a tribute to the Ibanic people of Sarawak.