The Importance of the roof

Throughout Indonesia, most accentuation and elaboration is placed on the roof, which is pervasively understood as being the most sacred part of the house and thus is the most grandiose. The great curved, arching and peaking roofs of the minagkabau houses are known world wide as an architecture feat, as are the roofs of the batak people of Sumatra. Which are similar in their upturned ands to those of the Toraja. Even the houses of south Nias, one of the more isolated island of west Indonesian, show a predilection for elaborate roof form. The same extended, outward sloping roof is found as far away as Micronesia and new guinea. In the Purari Delta are of New Guinea, the ravi o men’s club houses share this stylistic feature, as do Sepic River area meeting houses and some Trobriand Island clan houses. The earliest known representation of similar architecture styles are found on bronze age Dong Son drums, from ancient Dong Son culture in that is today Vietnam. That structures with saddle roofs are found throughout Oceania and Micronesia may provide evidence of the reaching of dong son culture as far away as Micronesia and New Guinea. Other evidence supporting the arrival of Dong Son culture in New Guinea are the skeuomorph exes, imitations of bronze exes carved in stone, found in New Guinea by Karl Heider.

Some Toraja say that the roofs of their houses are shaped to represent the horns of a buffalo – the most prized animal in Toraja view and ritual. Exterior decoration such as carvings of buffalo heads, ears and hoof prints are commonly seen adorning the house of high Ranking Toraja. Buffalo tails are used as door handles, and wooden “KABONGO” or figures of buffalo heads are attached to the front of prominent houses. Buffalo trophies displayed on the exterior post supporting the extended eave are symbols of wealth and “generosity” – each trophy is a memento for a past feast given – and coofins are often built in the shape of the Buginese prahu or bots which some believe brought the first toraja to sulawesi from Burma, China, and Melanesi. Still others believe that the upsweeping ends of the house are proof that the Toraja descend from the heavens. The first Toraja reportedly slid down one end of the out – stretched roof end when he first came to the earth, and the same Toraja believe the one day theywill slide up the other side back to heaven, thereby completing the circle of life.

Traditionally , the roofs of the houses were covered with thatch, but today, corrugated zinc largely replace the natural fiber. In the case of the toraja, minangkabau, and toba batak, the use of iron and zinc has made it possible to extend upwards even more dramatically the ends of the house. The traditional low slope which is found on older houses has been replaced by an upsweep in the eaves so acute that the eaves no longer protect the house from rain as they once did . On the other land, an increasing need to reaffirm a sense of toraja identity seems to be correlated with the ever increasing lope of the roof in a more and more deliberate and marked fashion. Various aspects thet constitute toraja identity will be taken into consideration in a final section of the paper in an attempt to understand how toraja identity evolves in relation to changing architecture and culture.

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Variations in house forms

Difference in status and wealth of the occupants is reflected in the height of the house, in the amount and styles and in the number of posts upon which a granary is built, usually varying between four, six, and more rarely eight. Not all Toraja live in ancestral houses of the same magnitude, although all claim trace affiliation to one. Originally, the Toraja were divided into your lineages: the “gold stake” caste know as tana bulaan, the “iron stake” or tana bassi, the “palm stake” caste, tana karurung and finally the tana kuakua or “grass stake” lineage which was the traditional slave caste. The word tana signifies the posts marking a boundary, symbolic perhaps of the posts used in the construction of a particular caste’s dwelling. Toraja of the lower caste usually live in houses called banua soba, small one or two room dwelling supported by four posts and without carvings. Others live in slightly bigger houses called banua tamben characterized by a blog house base. Still other Toraja of higger caste live in the banua galompin. House in the shape of tongkonan, but which are distinguished through their lack of decoration.

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Anthropomorphic in Toraja

The house is an anthropomorphic structure. Many of its rafters and beams are named after bones in the human body. The house is compared to a womb, has a navel, and a head and a posterior, metaphors for the front and back door. Carvings on the outside walls of the house, such as buffalo ears and heads, are believed to add visual and auditory capacities. The posts supporting the structure are referred to as the feet of the house. The breasts that are in some cases ( although seldom today ) carved in the wals of the house further reinforce the association between houses and women.

In the construction of a house, specific woods most be used for different parts of the house, in particular those parts of the house which carry heavy symbolic meaning. The wood of the jackfruit tree for example is used in the fashioning of the a’riri posi or “ navel post”, the source of the sumange within the house, this post, although lacking in architecture function, is considered one of the most important features of the house, for it represent the cosmic axis which joins the three separate levels or “worlds” within the house, and firmly anchors them to the ground. The post pierces the house floor directly at its center, and comes up into the sali ( see detailed sketch of house plan). A house which lacks an a’riri posi is thought to wander aimlessly about, as a lost soul.

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house and traditional ceremony in Toraja

Toraja ritual is divided equally between the rites of the east and those of the west, also know as rambu tuka’ and rambu solo’ translated as “smoke rising” and “smoke descending” ceremonies. The smoke rising ceremonies are associated with life, rising sun, birth, fertility, the deities of the north and the east, and with the renewal of life energies in the case of the house blessing ceremonies. Smoke descending ceremonies on the other hand deal with death, the setting sun, the west, and ancestors and spirits of the south.

The Toraja strive to accomplish a series of expensive, power-generating rituals that deal explicitly with the house. The ma’bua ceremony for instance is the last and highest ritual which can be performed for the house. This expensive ritual once conducted, future generations of the clan will continue to benefit from enhanced prosperity, fertility and well being, as well as from the prestige and status that such a ceremony affords in the eyes of other villagers. Not only does the ma’bua serve individual and clan-specific interest, it also serves as a way to strengthen social ties among villagers, as the completion o the ma’bua in one house is enough to bring good fortune to the entire village. Its mere organization, which may take monts of planning (not to mention the years the family may have spent accumulating necessary wealth), requires the help of the entire village as the dwelling must be refurbished and decorated, food must be prepared, and a variety of animist priests and officiating Toraja must be present.

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