Agricultural Rituals

Te Rabu (te Kaoanikai)
Tabaua, Tarawa

A very common practice to prevent the theft of fruit from coconut trees is to put a rabu 1 [taboo] upon them. This is done by preparing sections of coconut leaf as described below, arranging them in front of you, and, with a circular motion (away from the body) from right to left, sprin­kling over them the water of a drinking nut. At the same time you recite:

This is repeated three times, sitting in the middle of the piece of land to be treated, facing east. Each rabu is then tied around the trunk of a tree.

When you wish to gather nuts yourself you have to release the charm, so that you yourself do not suffer from its effects. You go to one tree and undo the knot that you have made, reciting:

Preparation of material for the rabu

Te Rabu (te Bue)
Butaritari

A special method of protecting a tree from use by another was used at Butaritari by chiefs. The worn-out riri of a wife would be tied around the trunk about twelve feet from the ground. The tree then became exactly the same as the wife of the chief to whom it belonged. If another passed near or under the riri, he was therefore considered to have offended the modesty of a married woman and had to pay the forfeit of land called te bainaine, just as if he had committed adultery with her or had insulted her modesty. This form of rabu was called te bue ‘the heat’ because a man was considered to have burned himself by approaching the forbidden object.

Te Bitanikai ‘the Magic Staff’
Marakei

A man wishing to steal his neighbour’s fruit, in spite of the rabu put upon it, protects himself from evil by the aid of a magic staff called te bitanikai. Bita means change or reverse, the word bitanikai thus signifying the reversal of the kaoanikai and applying not only to the magic staff but also to the whole ritual concerned with the desecration of a rabu.

The performer cuts a straight wand, about six feet long and an inch thick, from any convenient tree and peels it. Holding this staff by the middle in his right hand, he stands by the east side of his house, facing 9east, just clear of the eaves and in a line with the central rafter, at any time between sunrise and noon, 4 but preferably on a day when both the sun and the moon are seen together in the sky. Waving the staff over his head in a circular sweep and looking up towards the sun, he chants in a low monotone:

This formula having been repeated three times, the performer sharpens the staff at both ends and carries it with him to the land where he desires to steal the fruit; there he plants it in the ground while he desecrates the 10legitimate owner’s rabu. Having done this, he takes the staff home with the stolen fruit and plants it in the ground, up against the eastern side of his house, where he performed the bitanikai ritual. There it must remain until used again. It may on no account be used as an implement or brought into the house, the belief being that sudden death will visit the man who fails to observe these avoidances.

When you have performed the protective ceremony on the staff it becomes your natural protector in all kinds of danger or necessity. You carry it with you wherever you go, but you must be careful never to use it as an implement. For example if you use it as an amoamo, i.e., to sling a weight over your shoulder, you will die a sudden death.

If a thief goes to the owner of a tree and confesses to having dese­crated a rabu, the owner may, if he wishes, save him from the curse by waving over him a magic staff prepared according to the above ritual. In such a case only the staff of the legitimate owner is held to be effec­tive, but even this will be of no avail when once the curse has begun to work upon its victim. 8

A Spell to Make Your Land Fruitful

If you wish your land to be fertile and rich, visit it alone and walking over it from east to west wave your right hand before you over it, as if distributing the blessing of your words upon it, and chant aloud:

This is repeated thrice. The time is the dark before dawn; the season, any time of the year. No ornaments are used. You must be careful to keep your eyes within the boundaries of your own land.

The Fructification of the Pandanus

A highly interesting ritual, in which the Sun and the Moon played a large part, was formerly used for the purpose of ensuring a rich pan­danus 11 harvest. The ceremony could be performed only by members of three clans, Karongoa, Ababou, and Maerua. 9

The season for the fructification ritual is between July and Septem­ber, when the south-east trade winds are expected to give way to the westerly rains. The seasonal arrival of these rains is anxiously awaited, because upon it depends the quantity and quality of the pandanus har­vest, which is gathered towards the beginning of October.

The ceremony is undertaken in two stages—the first on the seventh night of the lunar month, and the second on about the thirteenth night.

The time of commencement is the hour of sunset. For the first stage, the moon must be approaching the meridian just as the sun is over the western horizon. For the second stage, the moon must be just risen as the sun is on the point of setting. The essential point is that both luminaries should be visible in the sky when the ritual is begun.

The place is a cleared space on the east side of the performer’s dwell­ing-house, in a straight line with the middle rafter of the roof. 10

The material prepared for the ritual consists of the parts of a magic tree—a trunk and two branches. The branches are two round wands of pandanus wood, each a span long and as thick as a man’s thumb. 11 The trunk is a rounded and tapered shaft of coconut timber, two spans long and about two inches thick at the base. The shaft is decorated at its point with a tuft of five upstanding frigate-bird feathers; the string with which this tuft is lashed on is made of alternate strands of coconut fibre and human hair. Both the feathers and the string have the same impor­tant underlying sun idea: the frigate-bird is believed to be the bird of the sun and the spiral pattern of black hair running through the string is believed to be pleasing to the sun. The tuft, when lashed in place, is said to be “the body of the Sun at the crest of the tree.” At equal intervals around the base of the sun-tuft are attached four strings of hair and fibre, each a span and a half long, in the manner of maypole strings. Each string is then garnished with frigate-bird feathers in the following arrangement:

These feather decorations are technically named buka; the strings which carry them are destined to be draped over the branches of the tree, when the moment comes to lash these latter into position; the technical name of the branches is therefore manga-ni-buka ‘branches of buka’.

When the decorated pole and the separate branches have been pre­pared 12 they are taken to the space made ready for them on the east side of the maker’s dwelling. A small hole for planting the magic tree is dug, andjustas the sun’s “lower limb” is about to touch the western horizon, the first part of the ritual begins.

Stage 1 (Moon’s seventh day)

The performer plants the trunk of the tree in the hole. Holding the shaft upright with both hands before him, he throws his head as far backwards as he can, and fixes his eyes upon the sun-tuft above him. He stands silent in this posture for about half a minute, then intones in a low voice the following formula:

The formula is recited three times, after which the performer turns his face to the ground and remains immobile, holding the shaft upright before him, for perhaps another half-minute. He then proceeds to push loose soil with his feet into the hole at the tree’s root, and to stamp it firm.

Only when the tree can stand alone does he release his hold upon the stem, and seat himself at its base, still facing east. The position of his legs is of great ritual importance. His right leg lies doubled before him, knee to ground, tailorwise; but his left thigh is thrust forward, and the lower leg doubled back beside his hip, so that the sole of his foot is presented to the sunset. He believes that, unless the left foot be thus “given to the Sun,” he will incur the luminary’s displeasure by having the appearance of wholly turning his back upon him.

The performer’s first business when seated is to finish with his hands the practical work of making the tree firm in its hole. When that is done, he holds the base of the stem and, throwing back his head to regard the sun-tuft on high, intones: 13

After reciting this formula three times, the performer turns his face towards the ground, remains still for a few seconds, and then arises. The branches of the tree are now fixed in position: they are first lashed middle to middle with hair and fibre string, in the form of a symmetrical cross. The cross is made fast by its middle to the trunk of the tree, shoul­der high, so that its branches are parallel to the earth, and point north, south, east, and west, the orientation being controlled by the position of the sun at its setting. Over the ends of the branches are draped the four strings of buka ‘feathers’ attached to the sun-crest, with their terminal tufts dangling earthwards. The completed tree is left standing until the moon’s thirteenth night ushers in the second stage of the ritual.

Stage 2 (Moon’s thirteenth day)

Just before sunset, the performer sits on the ground at a distance of about two paces from the tree, back to the sun and face upturned as before, to gaze at the sun-tuft. The sitting attitude already described is once more adopted but, instead of holding the base of the trunk, the performer stretches his arms forward, and lays his loosely opened hands, palms upward, upon the ground beside his thighs. He intones:

After three recitations of this formula, the performer remains for a short period of time in his attitude of supplication, then drops his head for­ward to look upon the ground, and finally rises to his feet. The cere­mony is complete. The magic tree may be left where it stands for an indefinite time and may therafter be used for other magico-religious purposes. Barren women are brought to the place, to be rendered fer­tile; and persons desiring to be blest with good luck (especially in love), good health, and long life may there receive ritual treatment at the hands of the owner. For such ceremonials, the persons receiving atten­tion sit facing eastwards towards the tree, while the performer sits before them in the position already described.

The tree may also be used to remove the curse of a desecrated rabu. There cannot be much doubt that the magic staff (te bitanikai), which was used for the same purpose, is but a simplified form of the tree. The ceremony of the magic staff could be performed by anyone (if he can learn the ritual and formula), but that of the magic tree was strictly reserved to three privileged social groups. It is therefore probable that the staff represents a popular attempt to achieve the benefits of the tree without too dangerously trenching upon the form and substance of the Sun-Moon ritual.

The Kabubu First-Fruits Ritual
Marakei

After the pandanus harvest, which usually occurs during September-October, it was formerly forbidden to partake of any product of the new crop until first-fruits had been offered up, and a ritual rneal eaten at the boua ‘stone pillar representing the “body” of the ancestral deity’ of the totem group. Members of the Karongoa, Ababou, and Maerua clans made the offering to the Sun and Moon, but included the names of 15Auriaria and other ancestral deities in their dedication. Other social groups offered the first-fruits direct to their ancestral deities.

The boua of the Karongoa group on Marakei—now, like most of its kind, unhappily destroyed by Christian iconoclasts—was an upstanding monolith of coral rock hewn from the reef and planted in the ground to eastward of the village of Rawanawi. As described by elders who, in pre-Christian days, actually performed the clan rituals, it “stood as high as a man’s shoulder” and was about as “broad and thick as a man”; it was, moreover, waisted like a man in the middle, although it seems to have had no definitely marked head. This monolith stood in the centre of a circle of flat stones set edgeways in the ground, so as to form a kerb about a hand’s breadth high. The diameter of the circle was, according to the account, “three or four paces”: its exact size was not, as it would seem, a matter of importance. The space within the cir­cle was dressed with white shingle and therein were buried the skulls of successive generations of clan elders, all males. The crania of the skulls remained uncovered by shingle, so that they might be anointed with oil on occasions when the cult of the ancestral deity was being observed. Care was taken to avoid burying any skulls due west of the boua, because this portion of the circle was reserved for food offerings.

For all everyday and overt purposes, including the normal cult of ancestor, the boua represented the body of an ancestral being named Teweia. 21 But for the particular and secret purpose of the first-fruits rit­ual, it represented no longer Teweia, but the spirit Auriaria. Upon its crest were then perched three red coral blocks, each about the size of two fists, one on top of the other. This addition was known as the bara ‘hat’ of Auriaria.

The date of the first-fruits offering was the second day of the next new moon after the pandanus harvest had been gathered. The hour of the ritual was that of sunset, when both sun and moon were seen together in the sky, the moon setting almost together with the sun. The material of the offering was a ball of the sweet food called te korokoro made of boiled coconut toddy and the desiccated pandanus product called kabubu. 22 The kabubu used for the purpose was, of course, manufactured from the newly harvested crop.

The ball of korokoro was carried to the boua by the senior male of the Karongoa clan, all the other men and women of his group following him. The leader wore upon his head a fillet of coconut leaf called the “fillet of the sun.” At the place of offering, the whole company assumed the sitting posture adopted by the performer of the fructification ritual, with their backs to the sunset and faces to the stone. The leader took his place a little in advance of the others, right up against the kerb of the circular enclosure. Being seated in the ritual posture, he leaned forward 16and set the ball of korokoro at arm’s length before him on the shingle near the base of the stone. Throwing back his head to gaze into the sky immediately above the boua, and laying his open hands, palms upward, on the ground by his knees, he intoned:

The formula was recited three times. Through the entire ritual that followed, the leader never for a moment ceased to look up into the sky above the stone. Leaning forward, he first groped for the ball of korokoro and, having taken it upon the palm of his left hand, returned to an upright posture. Still sitting, he plucked out with his right fingertips a piece of the sticky ball and moulded it into a pellet, which he then laid on the shingle before the stone as “the portion of the Sun and Moon, and Auriaria.” This was called the tarika. 24 The first portion having thus been given, he proceeded to mould a series of similar pellets, passing each one as it was made back over his right shoulder, where it was taken by the man behind him, and sent along the ranks of sitting people, until every member of the company had a portion. Absolute silence was observed until the distribution was complete, when the man behind the leader whispered, “A toa baia” (“Their hands are all full”). Thereupon the leader made for himself a pellet of the food, and raised it in his right hand above his still-upturned face. At once, the whole company threw their heads back to gaze at the sky above the boua and lifted their right arms in a similar attitude. Having allowed time enough for everyone to adopt this posture, the performer dropped the pellet into his mouth and swallowed it whole. The company followed suit. It was essential to the ritual that the bolus should not be bitten.

After a short pause with arm still uplifted, the leader, imitated by the whole assembly, dropped his hand to his side and turned his face to the ground. The “looking downward” lasted for a few seconds only. Finally, the leader arose and, without special ceremony, placed what­ever remained of the ball of korokoro up against the boua, beside the small tarika, for the remnant (nikira) was the “portion of the Sun, the Moon, 17and Auriaria.” In a lesser degree, this nikira also belonged to the other ancestral spirits, Riki, Nei Tewenei, Nei Tituabine, together with the ghosts of those clan elders whose skulls were buried by the boua.

Before leaving the spot, the leader anointed the crania of the buried skulls with oil. After he had performed this rite, any other member of the group might do likewise, choosing at his pleasure any or all of the skulls for anointment.

Offering of Pandanus First-Fruits to Karongoa
Tarawa

On all islands of the northern Gilberts, and probably of the southern Gilberts also, the various social groups sent a portion of their newly col­lected pandanus harvest to the senior male of the local Karongoa clan before offering first-fruits to their own ancestral deities. On Tarawa this practice is associated with an interesting local tradition concerning a very famous high chief named Kirata the Eldest, a member of the Karongoa group, who flourished between twenty-five and thirty gener­ations ago. It is said that Kirata’s favourite food was te kabubu, and that the pandanus tree was his anti. This is held to be the reason why, even nowadays, the first portion of every local clan’s pandanus harvest is set aside each year as a gift to the senior living descendant of Kirata in the male line. The fundamental reason, of course, is that the line of Kirata represents the essence of Karongoa on Tarawa.

No formalities were observed in submitting the first portion of the first-fruits of Karongoa’s acceptance: it was enough to send the gift (consisting of any product whatever of the new pandanus harvest) in a basket, by the hand of a small boy, to the house of the proper recipient. But the penalty for neglecting to make such an offering, before the pri­vate clan ritual was undertaken, was believed to be death by lightning-flash or thunderbolt, or other visitation from heaven.

A Ritual Meal in Time of Famine

Each separate Gilbertese totem group, as a rule, practised the cult of its own ancestral deities independently of all others; but in time of famine, a form of ritual meal was practised. All groups united, with the senior male of Karongoa n Uea as the officiating priest, at a stone pillar repre­senting the body of a being named Tabakea, within a maneaba of a par­ticular style called Maungatabu. The Maungatabu name, meaning “sacred mountain,” is also attached to a variety of pandanus tree, and to a volcano, on which grew the Ancestral Pandanus of the head-hunt­ing Gilbertese forefathers.18

Carrying home the pandanus harvest. (Maude photo)

The being called Tabakea, upon whom the ritual to be described was centred, is associated with four totems: (1) A mythical beast called te kekenu, described as “a lizard as big as two men” (no doubt a crocodile or alligator); (2) the common noddy; (3) a small tree called te ibi, which bears a scarlet almond-like fruit; and (4) a turtle. Of these, the last is considerably the most important, the name Tabakea itself meaning “parrot-bill turtle.” In a widespread series of traditions, Tabakea is represented as the Eldest of All Beings, the First of Things; and in all the tales relating to the adventures and voyages of Auriaria, he appears as Auriaria’s father. This doubtless explains why Auriaria’s name is linked with Tabakea’s in the prayer associated with this ritual.

When famine threatened the community, the elder of Karongoa n Uea would fix a day when food offerings and tataro ‘supplication’ should be made to Tabakea. A stone monolith about six feet high, representing the body of the god, would be erected against the Karongoa sun-stone in the maneaba. The monolith was wreathed with coconut leaves by the acolyte group, Karongoa Raereke. Just before dawn on the appointed day, the community would enter the building, bringing with them offer­ings of food, and sit in their respective clan places. Exactly at sunrise, a 19watcher posted to observe the eastern horizon would call, “E oti Tai” (“The Sun appears”), and a portion of food was laid by the elder of Karongoa n Uea before the stone of the god, to the accompaniment of the following tataro ‘prayer’:

During the ceremony, all present, whether of the clan of Karongoa or not, wore the fillet of coconut leaf known as the fillet of the Sun (bunan Tai). The formula having been recited three times, the fillets were put off, and the remaining food was eaten by the assemblage, which then dispersed.