utux
The primary relationship between the Atayals and utux may be revealed by the method of burial in the Atayal tradition. In Bienjing village, when a person died, the family of the deceased would put the body into a squat position and bury it in a hole dug under/next to the person’s own bed, and cover it with wood or stone planks.37 The squat position symbolised that the deceased could still ‘watch over’ the family, as lying down would block their view; and if the bed of the deceased fell down afterwards, that meant the deceased one had already passed the hongu utux to the utuxan and become utux, and the rest of the family needed to find a new place to live,
37 To confirm a person’s death, the Bienjing villagers would put the body in a bag and make sure the
as the house would become the living space for the deceased in another world. Such a custom explains why Atayals had to be much more careful in showing respect to utux when out in the woods, as they might step into some other utux’s territory left years ago without knowing it. For Atayals, burying the dead in the house was a gesture meant to continue the bond between the living and the dead before the latter left for the world of the spirits. Offerings would still be made daily as if the person were still alive. Such a bond would carry on even after the dead person had already arrived at utuxan, when offerings could only be delivered to the world of spirits through rituals such as maho or other daily religious practices, including ‘bazi’ – the practice of spilling food or wine on the ground as offerings for the utux before every meal.
This bond between utux and the Atayal people was a relationship beyond the simple boundary of the sacred and profane and could be as sacred as in the rituals of offering making, and as ‘down to earth’ (as ‘profane’ in Durkheim’s terms) as in other circumstances. In Wang’s study (2008), when illness or bad luck lingered after the atonement ritual (called smyus in this study but with a variety of names depending on the Atayal dialect), utux would sometimes be blamed or threatened using the words of the mahuni, such as: ‘if you do not make him recover from sickness, I will slash you just as slashing a reed’ (M. Wang, 2008: 5). By these offering-making rituals and the Atayals’ attitude towards utux, M. Wang (2008: 6) concludes that the relationship between the Atayals and utux was a ‘contract’ with mutual benefits. This was indicated by the prayers recited in maho from her field of study in Miaoli:
Our ancestors made a contract with you (Lyutux), and today we present you with the harvest. Please bless our people to have an abundant year with no sickness, and we wish to share our joyfulness with you again at the same time next year.
This ‘contract’ was regulated in the articles of gaga, whereby practising the rituals and living principles of gaga could not only construct the relationship between utux and the Atayal people, but also distinguish the identity of the tribe members (M. Wang, 2008). Thus, when someone broke the conditions in the contract (gaga), utux would have the right to inflict the punishment; and when adversity happened even though the gaga had been properly followed and practised, the Atayal people would also vent their discontent by cursing utux for the fact that the relationship between utux and the Atayals was complementary (M. Wang, 2008) rather than one of
opposition, such as that between the sacred and profane. However, although the participants in this study were not aware of such threatening action being allowed and saw it as disrespectful to utux, they also stated that utux was ‘the spirit that follows the people and protects the people, and it is neither ghost nor god’. They held that the relationship between them and utux was ‘just like families’, in which ‘parents (utux) and children (Atayals) would have expectations of each other’. If any of them broke the trust of the other, things could always be mended, as, ‘after all, they were our ancestors’. Of course, there are also many participants who could not explain what the relationship between utux and the Atayals was (or is) like; to them, ‘utux is utux’ – it was the protector, the punisher, the origin of gaga, and it could be scary, sacred or as benevolent as their own family.
Meanwhile, as there is a spatial distinction between ‘the living’ and ‘the spirits’ marked by the ‘hongu utux’, the world of the living for the Atayals was never independent from the world of the spirits. The blessing or punishment of utux were revealed through a good harvest or through individuals suffering from all kinds of illness, and rituals were held either to appreciate the patronage or to pacify the anger of utux. With these forms of the utux’s judgement on the Atayals’ way of life, the visits of the utux in dreams, and practices to avoid the tricks from yaqil utux, the existence of utux would be better interpreted as living ‘along’ with the Atayals rather than ascending to a status beyond them, even though it seizes people’s respect and achieves a certain level of ‘sacredness’. Through the ritual practices, not only could Atayals substantially and spiritually benefit from showing respect and offering foods to the utux, but the authority of utux would also be confirmed, by which the bond between the gaga, utux and the Atayals’ society could be strengthened. Thus, the relationship between the Atayals and utux is not one of opposition between the ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’; it is a closely intertwined relationship that regulated the Atayals’ life through the dialectics between the gaga and utux.
As well as the utux that was closely integrated with the Atayals’ daily lives, there was also a religious existence that dominated the Atayal people’s idea of cosmology – utux kayal. The existence of utux kayal has been a controversial and abstract, though rarely discussed, idea that possesses an obscure status in the life of the Atayals. When Huang (2000) uses the term utux kayal he means the subject of the religious ritual maho – the only being that has the power to bring blessings and punishment to people. He further suggests that when the Atayals spoke of ‘utux’, what they meant was this
‘utux kayal’ rather than the spirits of the deceased ancestors. Yet in Yupas Watan’s research (2005: 26), it is described as ‘the invisible, unexplainable, infinite supernatural mighty power that is evident in every Atayal’s mind’. Here, the meaning of utux kayal before the Atayals’ conversion to Christianity is almost impossible for the participants to explain without recourse to Christian concepts such as ‘God’, ‘Father’ or ‘Lord’. However, one thing we can be certain of is that to the Atayals, utux kayal has always referred to a ‘greater power’ than utux, to the ‘almighty’, the ‘origin of the universe’. However, while they ‘just know this for sure’, they could not accurately point out what the utux kayal actually does in their life. As YH – the son of a tumux – states, ‘it was seldom being brought up in our life in my grandfather’s time’. Utux kayal has always been a distant and respectful – or purely sacred – idea to the Atayals. Watan (2005) also specifies that utux kayal was the factor the Atayals referred to when they failed to understand why things such as natural phenomena, death or serious illness happened. They would say it was the utux kayal’s idea and must be purposeful. However, the utux kayal – this ‘ultimate reality’ of the Atayals – was somewhat detached from their daily lives. It was their final explanation for all the unanswerable questions, the absolute truth and essence of every being, and in some Atayal native clergies’ eyes, it was what the ancestors taught of ‘tminu utux’ – literally ‘the spirit of weaving’, meaning the one who ‘weaved’ all Atayals’ lives. But unlike utux, which was closely tied up to every aspect of life, there was never any form of religious worship towards utux kayal:
No, we did not worship utux kayal … why? I heard that it was because they (the ancestors) did not know what utux kayal really was; they knew there was this great power, but they did not know its name, or how to worship it. But anyway, our parents, and their parents before them, all told us that utux kayal has always been there. Although they seldom mentioned it, they knew it was there and respected it from the bottom of their hearts. Then when the church came, they told us the name of it, so now we call it Christ or God, or Father, but it means the same power that created everything in the world.
In Watan’s study (2005), a few participants stated that they would bring the problems to utux kayal when their tumux or tribal councils could not reconcile the conflicts between individuals or groups, an impasse often resulting in a duel to the death between the two parties. The one survivor would then be on the side of justice by the judgement of utux kayal. Nevertheless, contrary to that observation by Watan, the elderly participants in Bienjing village support the idea that utux was the object of such an act, and that utux kayal served as more of a symbolic than a substantial reference in seeking the driven cause of beings, even though the existence of utux kayal was never merely metaphysical. There is the possibility of the meanings and roles of utux and utux kayal being lost, or confused, in the past or during the theological translation to Christianity. However, on the other hand, unlike the ‘ultimate reality’ being the subject of worship in other religions for its mysterious and unspeakable character, the absence of worshipping activities to utux kayal was precisely due to the Atayals’ intellectual insufficiency in grasping the possible forms of religious service. The lack of rituals or any other form of ‘returning to the sacred’ – as Durkheim (1961: page number?) put it – thus provides evidence of how unimportant utux kayal was not only in the Atayal people’s daily lives, but also in their religious experiences.
Therefore, even though utux kayal was actually the key idea of the Atayals’ construction of the world – the great power that was believed to ‘weave’ the lives of each Atayal from the day they arrived in the world until the day they left – what this weave looked like still relied on the blessings from utux by practising gaga. As Watan states in his study, ‘the goodness and badness of luck or fate was depending on the environmental conditions and (ly)utux’s blessings’ (2005: 32), when this tminu utux ‘put the wisdom of gaga into Atayals’ minds along with its weaving of Atayals’ lives’ (2005: 42), and the society would only be peaceful and harmonious by strictly following gaga. Therefore, the practice of gaga – that is, the daily practices – was in fact the practice of the sacred wisdom bestowed by utux kayal, and overseen by utux. The life of a tayan, we could further say, was the life of sacred practices.