The Toraja way of death is a fascinating mix of ritual, custom and spectacle. For the Toraja, the dead are as much a part of society as the living. At Lemo, cliffs rise precipitously from the rice fields like stonework condominiums. Crypts, carved with prodigious manual labour, high into the solid rock, house the mortal remains of Toraja nobility. Set among the crypts, the striking tau tau, life-size wooden effigies representing the deceased, look impassively on the world below. Tau means ‘man’ and tau tau ‘men’ or ‘statue’.

Of the 300,000 Toraja, a tribal people who live in Torajaland, a mountainous area on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, about 100,000 continue to follow the ‘way of the Ancestors’. The precise name for their homeland is Tana Toraja. The Toraja believe that they can take possessions with them to the afterlife, and the dead generally go well equipped to their grave. Since this led to grave plundering, the Toraja started to hide their dead in caves or niches hewn out of rock faces. These caves were hollowed out by specialist cave builders who were traditionally paid in buffalo, and since the building of a cave would cost several buffalo, only the rich could afford it. Although the exterior of a cave looks small, the interior is large enough to entomb an entire family. Coffins go deep inside the caves, while the tau tau look down from their balconies in the rock face.

The making of tau tau appears to have been a recent innovation, possibly originating in the late 19th century. Traditionally, the statues only showed the deceased’s gender, but now they attempt to imitate the likeness of the person’s face. Also, the type of wood used reflects the status and wealth of the deceased (jackfruit wood being the most expensive). Most tau tau seem to be in a permanent state of disrepair but, in a ceremony after the harvest, bodies are re-wrapped in new material and the clothes replenished. So many tau tau have been stolen that some Toraja now keep them in their own homes. If there are no rocky outcrops of cliff faces to carve a niche, wooden house graves are created, or coffins are hung from high cliffs, although many of these have rotted away, while others are placed at the foot of a mountain. Babies who have died are placed in hollowed-out sections of living trees (examples of these graves can be seen at Pana).

The unique culture of the Toraja is based upon an age-long tradition. They live dispersed in little villages throughout the steep and sloping mountain area, in traditional houses with large roofs. Each village has cultivated land, waste land and two festival grounds. One of these festival grounds, the rante patunuan, is for funeral rituals. The other, the rante kala’paran, is for rituals concerning life, people, animals and crops.

The first part of the funeral festival takes place in the tongkonan (a traditional longhouse built on poles) and is not open to visitors. When a person has died their body is cleansed, the intestines are emptied and the corpse injected with formaline. The body is neatly dressed, wrapped in drapes and covered by expensive tissues. The mourners recite elegies and prayers and bring the deceased with their head turned to the west into the tongkonan. In this period they do not speak of the ‘deceased’ but of the ‘sick’. When enough money has been saved it is time for the second part of the festival. The relatives start building festival stands for their guests and figure out how many buffalo and pigs will be sacrificed, how many people will be invited, how many dancers and servants will attend the festival and so on. When the second part begins the deceased is placed in the central compartment of the tongkonan with their head turned to the south. From this moment on they are considered actually dead, officially ‘deceased’. Women start an elegy and men butcher a buffalo in the courtyard. The following day the visitors arrive, sometimes thousands of them: members of the family, friends, acquaintances, officials. They bring gifts of livestock, firewood, palm wine and money. The most important visitors are offered sirih by eight or twelve girls in traditional dress carrying a golden knife or kris and a kandaure or bead adornment. At the end of the first day it is time for buffalo and cock fights. The next day the deceased is ‘aroused’, a ritual which resumes the festival: a priest sings funeral songs and members of the family lament. The corpse is taken to the floor underneath a rice store in front of the the tau-tau. Then it is placed on a stretcher and a procession starts to move towards the festival ground. On arrival the sacrificial buffalo (sometimes more than fifty!) are shown to the guests and then butchered. Thereafter the deceased is transported to a tomb in the rocks next to his ancestors. The position of the tomb depends on the status of the deceased in his lifetime. The tau-tau is placed near the other wooden statues of the family in the rocks. From this moment on the deceased will guard his descendants.

Photographs: Patrick Blanche.