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The Tau Tau of the Toraja Tana

The Toraja live in the mountainous southern region of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. There is a belief in Toraja that when you die you won't be separated directly from the family - you are expected to bring them good luck and so the family must respect you. When we think of our ancestors, we respect them as individuals, rather than as a group.

The most important ceremony in a person's life cycle is the funeral. For this reason, there is often a lengthy interval between a person's death and their burial. Time is needed to ensure that all family members can attend and to save money to buy buffalo. In some cases, the deceased may be kept in the house for years.

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’. In the past, the body would be laid on a mat in a special room, with bamboo pipes under the floor to catch and divert body fluids.

Death is a gradual process rather than an abrupt event. The deceased is referred to as to mamma (sleeping person) or to masaki (sick person) until the commencement of funeral rites when they are called to membali puang (person who has become one of the gods) or to mate (dead person).


Tau Tau

Wooden human figures called tau tau accompany the deceased on their journey from the funeral house to the burial ground, where they watch over both the living and the dead. Once carved only for wealthy families, they are now status symbols used by a range of families.

Prior to the 17th century, Torajans were buried in elaborate, boat-shaped wooden coffins stored at the base of cliffs. After heirlooms were extensively plundered, Torajans began burying their dead in high cliff-face vaults.

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.