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W I L D V I C T I M S :
HUNTING AS SACRIFICE
AND SACRIFICE AS
HUNTING IN HUAULU
The origin from which beings proceed is also the end toward which
their destruction proceeds according to necessity; for they offer sat-
isfaction and expiation to one another for their injustice according
to the order of time. [ANAXIMANDER, Diels, fragment B 11
My field research in Huaulu and other areas of central Seram in 1971-73, 1985, 1986,
and 1988 was sponsored by L.I.P.I. (the Indonesian Institute of Sciences) and the Uni-
versitas Pattimura in Ambon. Funding was provided by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the
Social Science Research Council, the Institute for Intercultural Studies, and the Lichtstern
Fund. The analysis and write-up were facilitated by fellowships from the J. S. Guggen-
heim Foundation and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. I am deeply indebted-
and grateful-to all these institutions. But my greatest thank you goes to my hosts, the
Huaulu people. One of the avatars of this essay was presented at the Conference on Sac-
rifice in Eastern Indonesia, held at Oslo University in June 1992. I wish to thank Signe
Howell for inviting me and the participants for their remarks.
empty. A number of real issues that crowded its unhealthy halls are
gone. The reduction of the relationship between totem and group merely
to the relationship between two differences-a difference in the series
of the natural species and a difference in the series of social groups-
consigns to nonexistence or irrelevance the phenomena of cult that may
link a totem to its corresponding social units, turns its taboos purely into
differentiating devices, and obscures the processes of objectification
and fetishization through which animals, vegetables, or minerals be-
come totems in the first place.1
This impoverishment should stand as a warning to those who feel too
easily tempted to follow LCvi-Strauss's example and do to "sacrifice"
what he did to "totemism." Indeed we have seen of late some Franco-
Belgian inexistentialists and a few Anglo-American deconstructionists
break a couple of lances, and even a bone or two, in totemistically
inspired jousts with this venerable-and venerably questionable-con-
cept. Marcel DCtienne, for one, proclaims from the heights of an
"aujourd'hui" echoing that of Le tote'misme aujourd'hui that the death of
"sacrifice" will not be long in coming after that of "totemism": "Au
jourd'hui, today . . . it seems important to say that the notion of sacrifice
is indeed a category of the thought of yesterday, conceived of as arbi-
trarily as totemism-decried earlier by LCvi-Strauss-both because it
gathers into one artificial type elements taken from here and there in the
symbolic fabric of societies and because it reveals the surprising power
of annexation that Christianity still subtly exercises on the thought of
those historians and sociologists who were convinced they were invent-
ing a new ~ c i e n c e . "But
~ is this claim of arbitrariness as justified for
"sacrifice" as it is for "totemism"? Has the construct no theoretical jus-
tification and is it only due to the secret dominion of Christianity over
the minds of historians and sociologists?
I agree with Dttienne that too many of the classical treatments of sac-
rifice suffer from the tendency "to minimize the alimentary customs, the
details of the killing, the status of the victim^,"^ and to dissolve the ac-
tual complexity of form and motivation of the rites, into the "spirit of
sacrifice," that is, into an immutable essence that is supposed to coincide
with the essence of society itself. Thus in Durkheim's view sacrifice
constitutes the moral subject-and with it society-by inculcating the
habit of renunciation and abnegation. But taking refuge in particularistic
analyses of sacrificial practices in concrete societies is not an adequate
response to Durkheim's bulldozer universalism. For surely we need
some general idea of what to put under the term "sacrifice" if we are to
identify concrete rituals in different societies as "sacrificial." DCtienne's
preface to La cuisine du sacr@ce en pays grec may well denounce "sac-
rifice" as an arbitrary construct, an ethnocentric projection of Christian
obsessions; nonetheless the essays that follow it do presuppose a general
definition of "sacrifice," since they call a ritual "sacrificial" when it con-
sists in the public killing and eating of domesticated animals. But not
only is this definition not made explicit: it is not even properly moti-
vated. For nowhere in the book can one find an answer to the obvious
question that the definition raises: What is it that makes the "alimentary
customs, the gestures of putting to death, the status of victims" among
the Greeks or elsewhere worthy of being called "sacrificial"? What is
specifically sacrificial about them that is not found, say, in one of our
slaughterhouses or restaurants? How does sacrificial ritual differ from
mere table manners or the prescriptions of the Anti-Cruelty Society?
But leaving these contradictions aside, the issue raised by DCtienne
remains valid: Is sacrifice a useful notion or should it be "dissolved"?
And if the latter, should it be just dissolved (as DCtienne seems to
argue) or be dissolved into something else, as LCvi-Strauss dissolved
totemism into a more general phenomenon? My short answer to these
questions is that sacrifice, when properly defined, remains a useful no-
tion, and thus it should not be dissolved or be dissolved into something
more comfortably general but less informative. Nevertheless, it must be
stressed that sacrifice identifies, in a very relative way, only certain mo-
dalities of a number of relations (between humans and animals and
more generally other forms of life, between humans and gods, between
friends and enemies or rivals), whose other modalities are apprehended
by other notions such as taboo, totemism, fetishism, animal symbolism,
gift, and so on. Sacrifice cannot, therefore, be turned into a distinct
thing, but must take its place in a family of notions, none of which has
any validity except if it is relativized by the others.
So what can a useful notion of sacrifice be? Faced with the bewildering
variety of phenomena that go under the name "sacrifice," it is possible
This is an approach that has found increasing favor in recent years. See W. Burkert,
"The Problem of Ritual Killing," in Violent Origins, ed. R. G . Hamerton-Kelly (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987), p. 180; C. Grottanelli and N. F. Parise, eds.,
Sacrificio e sociera' nel mondo anrico (Bari: Laterza, 1988); L. de Heusch, Sacrifice in Af-
rica: A Srructuralist Approach (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985).
M. Ruel, "Non-sacrificial Ritual Killing," Man, n.s., 25 (1990): 323-35.
On the ideas of family resemblance and centrality in categorization, see G. Lakoff,
Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987),
pp. 12-21.
History of Religions
that are often its correlate. In vegetal sacrifice, there is taking of life, but
not killing, unless the plant has a special theomorphic, anthropomor-
phic, or theriomorphic status.16
3 . Renunciation. This term designates the cutting off from human
consumption of part (and sometimes of the whole) of the victim. The
renounced part may be just abandoned, or buried, or immersed, or even
thrown away. But it may also be made unusable by combustion-a
common procedure.17 The latter may be also associated with the idea
that the smoke brings a share of the victim, or the entire victim, to a god
who is the addressee of the sacrifice. In this case, the sacrifice may also
be conceived as a gift to him. But the idea of the gift is less widespread
and less fundamental than the ideas of renunciation or prescribed im-
molation.l8 Indeed it is illegitimate to infer a giving to from a giving
up.19 The gift presupposes a renunciation, but the renunciation does not
necessarily imply a gift. And even when the idea of gift is present, the
identity of the recipient may be a matter of indifferen~e.~'The "other"
that is supposed to appropriate the renounced share of the sacrifice is
often unfocused.21 What is focused is that something has to be given up
or destroyed so that something may be obtained.
l6 Thus the Indian sages say that the some plant-which is conceived as a god-is
"killed" when it is sacrificed (Heesterman, The Broken World, p. 9). See also the sac-
rifice of the kava (a plant that originated from the body of a human) in western Polynesia
(E. R. Leach, "The Structure of Symbolism," in The Interpretation of Ritual, ed. 3. La
Fontaine [London: Tavistock, 19721; V. Valeri, "Death in Heaven: Myths and Rites of
Kinship in Tongan Kingship," History and Anthropology 4 (1989): 209-47).
" AS for instance the cremation of the long bones and the fat of the victims in the
Olympian sacrifice of the Greeks (Hesiod Theogony 540-41; see J.-P. Vernant, "A la
table des hommes: Mythe de fondation du sacrifice chez Hbsiode," in DBtienne and Ver-
nant, eds., La cuisine du sacrijce).
l s The idea of sacrifice as gift is not very noticeable in some of the paradigmatic sac-
rificial traditions. Far from seeing the essence of sacrifice in the gift, the Indian sages
"make a clear-cut distinction" between them, as they belong to different ages of the world
(Heesterman, The Broken World, p. 13; see Manu 1.85).At best one can say that "le don
est une forme du sacrifice (loin que le sacrifice soite une forme du don)" (C. Malamoud,
"Terminer le sacrifice: remarquer sur les honoraires rituels," in Biardeau and Malamoud,
pp. 189-90. The gift-to-a-god element is absent in many Greek sacrifices, such as the
"ox-slaying" festival of Magnesia, which was nonetheless called thusia (sacrifice) (R. K .
Yerkes, Sacrijice in Greek and Roman Religions and in Early Judaism [New York: Scrib-
ners, 19521, pp. 74-79). Among the Hebrews too, as Heesterman (The Broken World,
p. 11) notes, there was at least one "sacrifice" (zebach)that was definitely not a gift, but
just a prescribed immolation followed by consumption (the pesach lamb, see Exod. 12:1
27; Deut. 16:2).
l9 See Valeri, Kingship and Sacrijce (n. 1 above), p. 61.
20 Thus it was usually "quite irrelevant" to whom and how first fruit offerings went in
ancient Greece (W. Burkert, Structure and Change in Greek Mythology and Ritual [Ber
keley: University of California Press, 19791, p. 52).
21 This is precisely why, although it is generically defined as divine, it may in fact
take any form of otherness: the bird, the rat, the foreigner, the outcast that actually con-
sume the offering.
108 Hunting as Sacrifice
22 It may also be the whole, if the part reserved for the god is simply the invisible
"essence." Then one can say that gods and humans consume different "wholes" that re-
produce their distinct forms of being: the spiritual whole and the material whole. This
view may or may not imply the blending of the consumption stage with the renunciation
one, that is, the idea that gods and humans eat together. When there is blending, sacrifice
becomes essentially a banquet with the god or gods, as is the case with thepesach sacrifice
of the Hebrews and with Roman sacrifice (C. Santini, "I1 lessico della spartizione nel sac-
rificio romano," in Grottanelli and Parise, eds., p. 299; cf. P. Veyne, Bread and Circuses
[Harmondsworth, England, Penguin, 19901, pp. 93-94, 168, n. 108). These banquet or
even communion sacrifices are ways of confirming the alliance of gods and humans, but
also-more subtly-ways of lowering the gods to one's level as much as raising oneself
to theirs (see L. Feuerbach, "Das Geheimnis des Opfer, oder der Mensch ist, was er isst,"
in Kleinere Schriften (1851-1866) [Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 19721, 4:26-52).
23 The desire for meat is a recognized element of Vedic sacrifice (Heesterman, The
Broken World, p. 28). Sacrifice is represented as a meal of meat in Hesiod and else-
where; further, the Greek verbs that indicate the killing of an animal for meat are identi-
cal to those that refer to its immolation in sacrifice (Vernant, pp. 43, 44-45).
24 The paradigmatic case is here Vedic sacrifice: "Non seulement le sacrifice efface le
caractere violent du meurtre rituel, mais il contribue k laver toute souillure causde par la
violence" [Biardeau [n. 11 above], p. 126).In Manu's words, "Killing in a sacrifice is not
killing" (MHnavadharmasHstra v, 39; trans. W. Doniger and B. Smith, The Laws of Manu
[Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 19911, p. 103).
25 It is also much more important and widespread than is usually recognized. Sacrifice
is the only legitimate way of eating animals or even plants when these have, for whatever
reason, a "sacred status. This "sacredness" is minimally a sign of the reciprocity that ex-
ists among humans and animals, particularly when the latter are very close to humans, as
is almost universally the case with cattle among pastoralists and agriculturalists (the la-
boring ox in ancient Greece is a case in point; see P. Vidal-Naquet, "Chasse et sacrifice
dans l"0restie' d'Eschyle," in J.-P. Vemant and P. Vidal-Naquet, Myrhe er tragbdie en Gr2ce
History of Religions 109
gone. Of the Hebrew sacrifice, little is left but the prescription that all
meat consumed should come from animals that are still killed according
to the ancient sacrificial prescription, that is, with the attribution of
blood-of life-to God. The old idea that a person who kills an animal
nonsacrificially is guilty of bloodshed, indeed of murder, and should
thus, by right, be "cut off," is thus still around, and not only in Jewish
and Islamic practice.26 Indeed, as Vialles has suggested, its presence is
still felt in the Christian world, which has evidently not completely lost
touch with its most remote, Mosaic sources.27
Finally, interhuman relations play a fundamental role in sacrifice.
The sequential structure of the ritual indicates this. It starts with an
induction of the victims, which signifies competition or conflict with
other humans: either because their different abilities in procuring vic-
tims is demonstrated, or because the rivals are themselves turned into
(human) victims, or because they are forced or persuaded to contribute
victims. The ritual ends with a banquet, which should stress reconcili-
ation and reaffirm existing hierarchies or validate new hierarchies as
displayed by the sacrificial event, but may provide instead an opportu-
nity for new conflicts and contests. In the extreme, sacrifices become
struggles to death-in which the true victim may be the sacrificer. In
fact, all fundamental relations involved in sacrifice are permeated by
the spirit of contest: not only interhuman relations, but also relations
between humans and gods and between animals and humans. There are
ancienne [Paris: Maspero, 19771, p. 139; J.-L. Durand, Sacrijce et labour en Grice an-
cienne [Paris: Editions de la dkcouverte; Rome: kcole francaise de Rome, 1986]), and
with the largest game among hunters. In those cases, the taking of a life that is so closely
intertwined with human life evokes the possibility of a reversal, of a revenge: the taking
of the human life by powers that represent those animals.
26 "Any Israelite who slaughters an ox, a sheep, or a goat, either inside or outside the
camp, and does not bring it to the entrance of the Tent of the Presence to present it as an
offering to the LORD before the Tabernacle of the LORD shall be held guilty of blood-
shed: that man has shed blood and shall be cut off from his people" (New English Bible,
Lev. 17:3-5). This passage clearly shows that the killing of the three main domesticated
animals is equated to murder unless the animal is sacrificed to God (see C. Grottanelli,
"Aspetti del sacrificio nel mondo greco e nella Bibbia ebraica," in Grottanelli and Parise,
eds., p. 130). One could not find a more perfect statement of the idea of sacrifice as au-
thorization of killing for human consumption.
" N. Vialles, Le sang et la chair: Les abattoirs des pays de I'Adour (Paris: Editions de
la maison des sciences de llHomme, 1987). Leach has also noted that "a curious usage
suggests that we are ashamed of killing any animal of substantial size. When dead, bul
lock becomes bee$ pig becomes pork, sheep becomes mutton, calf becomes veal, and
deer becomes venison" (E. R. Leach, "Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal
Categories and Verbal Abuse," in New Directions in the Study of Language, ed. E . H.
Lenneberg [Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 19641, p. 47). On these issues, see also
S. dalla Bernardina, "Une personne pas tout h fait comme les autres: L'animal et son
statut," L'Homme 31 (1991): 33-50; C. MBchin, "Les rkgles de la bonne mort animale en
Europe occidentale," I.'Homme 3 1 (1991): 5 1-67.
110 Hunting as Sacrifice
tion, then it is quite evident that the relationship with the gods must be
emphasized. Or if the main purpose of the rite is to legitimize the kill-
ing and eating of animals that are forbidden for ordinary consumption,
then it stands to reason that the idea of a do ut des transaction with the
gods plays a secondary role at best.
But in introducing the above scheme of sacrifice, my purpose was
not to trace all its permutations. I only wanted to lay down the prem-
ises for developing the real topic of this article: the relationship of
hunting and sacrifice.
40 Even, of course, in .modern Europe (see J. Ortega y Gasset, "A 'Veinte aRos de caza
mayor' del conde de Yebes," Obras Completas, vi (1941-6), 3d ed. (Madrid: Revista de
Occidente, 1955); C. Fabre-Vassas, "Le partage du ferum: un rite de chasse au sanglier,"
Etudes rurales 87-88 (1982): 377-400; B. Hell, Entre chien et loup: Faits et dits de
chasse duns la France de I'Est (Paris: Editions de la maison des sciences de l'Homme,
1985); V. Padiglione, Le cinghiale cacciatore: antropologia pimbolica della coccia in
Sardegna (Rome: Armando, 1989); G. von Rezzori, The Snows of Yesteryear (London:
Chatto & Windus, 1990), p. 158.
41 Vidal-Naquet (n. 25 above), pp. 138-39.
114 Hunting as Sacrifice
HUNTING AS SACRIFICE
Huaulu is the name of a small population that lives in the forested in-
terior of central ~ e r a mUndomesticated
.~~ resources predominate by far
in their diet. Food grown in gardens only plays a small role. Naturally
propagating sago is the staple, but the most liked and prestigious food
is meat, or ayokuam. The term properly refers to the flesh of terrestrial
or arboreal animals that are hunted by men but is extended to fish and
crustaceans that are procured, in part or entirely, by women. No meal is
complete without "meat" in this extended sense. But it is taboo for the
Huaulu to raise animals for food. Meat must always be wild and thus,
one way or another, procured through predation. The three domesti-
cated species (dogs, cats, and chickens) that live with the Huaulu are
strictly taboo and so are, with very few exceptions, individual wild an-
imals that are brought back to the village alive, and even those that
humans, in Huaulu eyes. But there are many more sources to the sense
of affinity between these animals (among others) and humans. The cas-
sowary, for instance, is the only purely terrestrial animal known to the
Huaulu that is bipedal like man. It appears more like a man in plumes
than a bird (although it is classified as manu-"bird"). The wild pig is
highly intelligent, combative, and resourceful-all human qualities to
the Huaulu. Furthermore, the sow is very caring of her piglets, which
she ferociously defends against dogs and hunters. The pig is, in fact, the
most anthropomorphized of all animals, even more so than the cas-
sowary and the kuskus-although the latter looks more human.47
Anthropomorphization and economic significance explain that wild
pig, deer, and cassowary form a very special group in Huaulu practices
and beliefs. It is not just the killing, but the entire process of appropri-
ation of these animals that is highly codified and dense with significa-
tions. It is a process that, as I have anticipated, parallels the ideal-typical
scheme of sacrifice because it represents one of its permutations. It rep-
resents, more precisely, the "authorization of consumption" aspect of
sacrifice. Sacrifices always involve a confrontation between humans and
the sacred (gods, spirits, or less definite powers) but with two opposite
purposes-as was recognized by Hubert and Mauss: they either "sa-
cralize" or " d e ~ a c r a l i z e . "And
~ ~ their victims may be means or ends (or
both means and ends) in these sacralizations or desacralizations. An
animal may be sacralized or desacralized so that the sacrificer may be
sacralized or desacralized through it, as in all sacrifices that involve the
idea of substitution. Or the sacralizations and desacralizations may con-
cern the animal alone and have consequences for what humans can do
with it. All wild animals, and particularly pig, deer, and cassowary, are
imbued with sacredness for the Huaulu. What this means is that they are
intangible, forbidden, and that there are nonhuman, occult forces that
represent that intangibility and actively enforce it. To appropriate the
animals, then, humans must desacralize them, which means persuading
these occult forces to let them go. Or perhaps it is more correct to say
that every time a Huaulu kills an animal, he commits a sacrilegious act
and thus becomes vulnerable to retaliation from the occult forces that
protect his victim. These forces must therefore be neutralized and pro-
pitiated through a variety of ritual means, some of which are sacrificial
by any definition of the term "sacrifice." The main one is a metonymic
47 See R. Ellen, "The Marsupial in Nuaulu Ritual Behaviour," Man, n.s., 7 (1972):
223-38.
48 H. Hubert and M. Mauss, "Essai sur la nature et la fonction du sacrifice" (1899), in
M. Mauss, Oeuvres, 1: Les fonctions sociales du sacrt (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1968).
pp. 256-66. I should say that in my view these two terms are acceptable only as short-
hands for the ritual affirmation or negation of the "forbidden" or "restricted" character of
an object, which in turn depends on the object's symbolic and moral status.
History of Religions
49 Kaitahu refers to land in general, but more specifically to wild land, which is al-
ways covered with forest in Huaulu experience. While kaitahuupuem may be translated
as "the lords of the land," I think that "the lords of the forest" is more appropriate in that
"forest" evokes the environment in which game animals are found. The suffixes -am
(sing.) and -em (pl.) function very much like definite articles. The suffixed form of a
noun is the normal one in Huaulu usage.
See Malamoud (n. 18 above), pp. 205-6. The idea finds its expression in the cele-
brated etymology of Sanskrit mdmsa, "meat," provided by Manu: it allegedly derives
from mdm, "me," and sa, "he." Charles Lanman's translation captures this pun in En-
glish: "He whose meat in this world do I eat will in the other world me eat" (Doniger
and Smith, trans. [n. 24 above], p. 104).
See Heesterman, The Broken World (n. 13 above), p. 211.
52 "And, in truth, whoever, this knowing, offers the agnihotra, makes himself master
of everything, conquers everything" (Satapatha Brahmana xi, 6,1,1 ff., translated from
the French translation by Malamoud (Cuire le monde, p. 208).
53 See Heesterman, The Broken World; and J . C. Heesterman, The Inner Conflict of
Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1985).
118 Hunting as Sacrifice
struggle and reciprocity of all beings. Moreover, the lords of the forest's
retaliation may take a form in which humans become the accomplices
of their own destruction. This happens when the lords of the forest
chase humans not as food, but as sexual objects. They then appear as
panic figures that, assuming the illusory form of a lover or husband or
even wife, assault or seduce humans, driving them to death through the
madness of insatiable longing and desire. Eating thus becomes "eating"
(a Huaulu metaphor for sexual intercourse). The arrow shot at the ani-
mal bounces back at the human. But at the end of its loop, it takes a
genital form: it penetrates humans at the point of their greatest vulner-
ability-sex.
I cannot go into details-however fascinating they would prove to be.
As evidence for some of my claims, a statement of my friend Patakuru
may suffice:
Only the akaniam, "head" [in reality the head without the jaws], of wild pig
and deer are put on the trees for the lord of the forest (si kaitahu upuam). Not
that of the cassowary or of the kuskus. The jaws are hung in the kitchen for
people to count them (ala i sehere, "so that they will count them"). The skulls
of deer and wild pig are put on the trees for the lord of the forest so that he will
grant game to us again (ala ia rulu ["make descend"] leku peni si ita). The
deers, wild pigs, and cassowaries are the dogs of the lord of the forest (kaitahu
upuam ia rahe wasuem hini maisarale pohi hahuem, asualiem). The game
hunted by the lord of the forest are the humans (kaitahu upuam ia rahe peni
hini manusia). His aspect is like that of humans (ita oi wahi manusia). He is
like us. As big as us. Some are male others are female. The male lord of the
forest screws women and screws men (ia polo hini hihina pohi hini manawa).
Because he appears deceptively (ia hali ruwana) as man or as woman. He or
she appears as our husband or as our wife, just like the lusi kinaem (literally:
"the evil eagleshawks": a category of evil "spirits"). If we [men] screw her
(holo hini erne), or he screws us [women], we are as good as dead (ita maata'
naunam). After you havelare screwed, you don't know it any more. You forget
what happened, but then you die. Only the Sewaem (spirit familiars of the sha-
mans) can discover what happened and cure us so that we do not die.54
But, as I have said, there are more sacrificial aspects to the Huaulu ap-
propriation of animals than the offering alone. The offering is not just a
religious icing put on the practical cake of hunting for meat and eating
it. It is the culmination of a process that bears comparison as a whole
with the ideal-typical sacrificial ritual. Let us compare stage by stage.
Just as the first stage ("induction") of sacrifice has elements that are
strongly reminiscent of the hunt (the victim must often be pursued and
55 For eastern Indonesian instances of this idea, see H. G. Schulte-Nordholt, "The Sym-
bolic Classification of the Atoni of Timor," in Fox, ed. (n. 42 above), p. 243; L. Onvlee,
"The Significance of Livestock in Sumba," in Fox, ed., pp. 195-207; J. Hoskins, "Vio-
lence, Sacrifice, and Divination: Giving and Taking Life in Eastern Indonesia," American
Hunting a s Sacrifice
Ethnologist 20 (1993): 159-78; see also the chant in P. Graham, Iban Shamanism: An
Analysis of the Ethnographic Literature (Canberra: Department of Anthropology, Re-
search School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1987). pp. 37-39.
56 U. Sinclair, The Jungle (New York: Penguin, 1985), p. 42.
57 Their anger takes the form of loud and uninterrupted thundering. The belief that the
"mockery of animals" induces thundering is widespread in Southeast Asia. Several inter-
esting explanations have been proposed for it: R. Needham, "Blood, Thunder, and the
Mockery of Animals," Sociologus 14 (1964): 136-49; D. Freeman, "Thunder, Blood, and
the Nicknaming of God's Creatures," Psychoanalytic Quarterly 37 (1968): 353-95;
R. Blust, "Linguistic Evidence for Some Early Austronesian Taboos," American Anthro-
pologist 83 (1981): 294-307; G. Forth, "Animals, Witches, and Wind: Eastern Indone-
sian Variations on the 'Thunder Complex,"' Anthropos 84 (1989): 89-106. The belief has
a variety of motivations in Huaulu culture, only one of which I emphasize here: respect
for animals. Another is that laughter is only appropriate with humans-and closely re-
lated ones at that. The taboo thus emphasizes the otherness of wild animals and thus, in
a sense, the right to kill them. A proof of this is that the animals that one can mock,
namely, the domestic animals, cannot be eaten (and, in the case of the dog, killed)
because they are quasi-human or, more exactly, quasi-Huaulu (see Valeri, "If We Feed
Them" [n. 43 above]).
History of Religions 121
boiled) and thus fully transformed into food does the taboo cease. But
the more severe consequences of the killing are experienced by the
killer, that is, the man who "owns" (rahe) the animal because his ar-
row or his trap58 has killed it. If the animal is one of the three largest,
he cannot eat any of its meat.59 He must give it entirely to others. The
only part of it (or rather, of pig and deer) that he can use is the lower
jaw, which he suspends under the roof in his house so that "it is
countedv-as Patakuru mentions. In other words, all that the hunter
eats of his own kill is the glory of having killed it. Why this avoidance
of eating? It is not connected with a sense of guilt,60 but with a fear of
retribution, I think. It is the clearest indication that killing is a danger-
ous, a "sacrilegous," act, simply because it invites retribution from the
killed, or rather from the powers that stand for it. Hence the double ap-
peasement of the lord of the forest: the collective renunciation of the
head (minus the lower jaw)61 and the killer's renunciation of eating
what he has killed. The killer and the eater must be split to avoid, as
much as possible, the fulfillment of the fearful reciprocity between
animals and humans. The rule thus instills a double sense of reciproc-
ity: reciprocity between humans and animals, and reciprocity among
humans-for a hunter cannot feed himself62 and is thus utterly depen-
dent on other hunters.
We have thus moved, almost by necessity, from the taking of life to
consumption, passing through renunciation. For the human consump-
tion of meat is not made possible by killing alone, but also by its met-
onymic negation: something is not eaten so that the rest may be eaten,
somebody does not eat so that the rest may eat. This negation or renun-
ciation is more radical than the positive counterpart that it usually and
almost inevitably takes: what is renounced, is given back or is even
given to a power that reconstitutes the integrity that has been lost in
the process by which life feeds on life, and thus becomes dependent on
death. Also, most of what is renounced reemerges as gift to others, to
58 Usually a spring trap that releases a short bambu spear (supanam).
59 Smaller animals are dangerous to eat only if they are killed in large quantities. Then
the danger must be reduced and diffused by giving away part of the catch.
60 As Burkert would have it. See Burkert, Homo Necans (n. 35 above) and "The Prob-
lem" (n. 4 above).
6 1 As Patakuru's text mentions, the upper part of the cassowary's head is not offered.
The reason is that the animal does not have much of a skull. What is offered of the cas-
sowary (as of the other two animals) to the lord of the forest are blood clots found in the
carcass when it is butchered. But none of the blood is preserved for eating. In fact, the
meat is completely drained of it, as it is cut in small pieces. The Huaulu themselves as-
sociated this draining with the Koranic idea that blood cannot be consumed because it
belongs to God (in their case, the lords of the forest).
62 Not, at least, until he has killed such a large number of animals that he has acquired
the right to undergo a special rite that purifies once and for all his mouth from the pollu-
tion of eating his own meat. Very few men are able to reach this stage.
122 Hunting as Sacrifice
63 When I first went to Huaulu in the early seventies this rule was always followed,
particularly with respect to animals that fell in traps near the village. In recent years,
however, some people have become less generous, although they are roundly criticized
for being "stingy" (i mohohuku).
64 That is, the married out sisters, their husbands, and their children and sometimes
the children of the female among these children.
65 One looks like a valve of the heart, another is a piece of the spleen, the third I am
unable to identify but it is taken from the genital area.
History of Religions 123
body else to eat. These customs show that, just like the meat of sac-
rificed animals, the meat of hunted animals is not just meat. It has
differential values, different degrees of sacredness, and different pow-
ers, which signify different social relations and reproduce them in the
various prestations through which that meat is appropriated.
In sum, the evidence that I have presented suggests that similar
schemes, in turn dependent on similar ideas, may underlie the appropri-
ation of wild and domesticated animals in different societies. It is mis-
leading, therefore, to radically separate the two. By associating them,
moreover, we can bring out more clearly a dimension of sacrifice that
has not received the attention it deserves, perhaps because its very im-
portance makes it mute, at least to the religiously minded scholar of re-
ligion. It is the aspect I have called "authorized consumption." Sacrifice
should not be reduced to its substitution or sacralization dimensions,
which admittedly are best served by domesticated animals. But even
this dimension is by no means incompatible with the use of a hunted
victim. This is what I wish to show, again through Huaulu evidence, in
the next section.
SACRIFICE AS HUNTING
The offering of parts of the victim, wild or domesticated, may be used
to make the rest of its meat available for human consumption. But it
may also be used to obtain benefits that have nothing to do with eating.
Of course, as the Huaulu rites that we have just considered show, these
nonalimentary benefits are always in some measure implied even in the
most alimentary-minded offering, since eating is not a purely material
act but involves the maintenance of complex moral relations between
society and cosmos. Still, there is no doubting that the main purpose of
the offering is to authorize the eating of animals. But in other sacrifices
the eating of the victim is excluded or its symbolic signification is em-
phasized over its alimentary one. These are the sacrifices that are ad-
dressed to powers that, contrary to the lords of the forest, have more to
do with humans than with animals. These powers are characterized by
a stable social relationship with Huaulu society as a whole or some of
its parts or members. They could therefore be called "bound spirits" or,
since they frequently visit the village or even reside in houses, "spirits
of the inside." T o call them "tame" by opposition to the "wild" spirits
of the forest would be quite misleading, though. They are anything but
tame, and they have to be placated by, among other things, offerings
and prayers.
Their main categories are: ailaem ("the ancients," "the old men,"
i.e., the progenitors), lumaupuem (the lords of the house), and sewaem
(shamanic spirits). The category ailaem refers to ancestors proper but
124 Hunting a s Sacrifice
also to any spirit that has been handed down-often through an object
(utuam) that is the connecting point between spirit and owner-by the
ancestors. It is therefore frequently used to encompass all spirits from
the three categories. It is also used, of course, to refer to the ultimate
ancestors: ita amare Lahatala ("our father Lahatala"), who is associ-
ated with the sky, ikta inare Puhum ("our mother Puhum"), who is
associated with the earth. The luma upuem are the spirit protectors of a
house (here understood as an equivalent of an ipa, a descent group) but
the term may also be used to include its ancestral shades and even its
hereditary sewaem. The term also includes the spirit protectors of the
village as a whole, who reside in a sacred house (luma makuwoliam),
which embodies Huaulu society as a whole. Because of these more en-
compassing references, I find it convenient to use "lords of the house"
as the generic term for the bound spirits and "lords of the forest" as the
generic term for the wild spirits.66
Just like the lords of the forest, the lords of the house receive offer-
ings. But a number of important differences exist between these offer-
ings. The offerings to the lords of the forest are meant to make the
consumption of "their meat" possible. The offerings to the lords of the
house serve to neutralize misfortune (sickness, sterility, lack of food,
constant thundering, excessive rain) or to obtain success in hazardous
enterprises (such as hunting and war). In both cases the basic idea is
that the benefits follow from the neutralization of the power's anger.
But the anger of the lords of the forest is due to the fact that humans
kill their animals, while the anger of the lords of the house is due to
transgressions that have to do with the interhuman relations over which
they preside.
Corresponding to these differences in purpose, and in the character
of the powers addressed, there are differences in the nature and treat-
ment of the offerings. The offering to the lord of the forest is more a
symbolic restitution than a compensation. Indeed it consists in the re-
nunciation of an unprocessed part of the animal (the head), which is
symbolically the most important but is also largely inedible. The rejec-
tion away from the human world is thus strongly marked and is further
emphasized by the absence of any verbal accompaniment. No prayer or
invocation is pronounced when the head of the animal is put on a tree
for the lord of the forest. Nothing is requested in exchange for what is
given. The offering is mute because it is self-explanatory and has no
motives beyond that of sending the lord of the forest away so that hu-
mans can enjoy their meat in peace.
66 It should be kept in mind, however, that these terms, and particularly kairahuu
puam, are not usually employed by the Huaulu with as wide an extension as I give to
them.
History of Religions 125
with wild animals is indicated by the belief that plates and other valuables-which are
normally hidden in caches in the forest-have a tendency to turn into pigs, deer, and cas-
sowaries. These may be wounded by the hunters and run back to the cache, where they
retransform into valuables, and expire (they will then be found cracked, or "dead," as it
is said). The connection of valuables and successfully hunted enemies is demonstrated
by the fact that the head of an enemy could function as a substitute for bridewealth ac-
cording to Huaulu traditions. The fundamental analogy between head and "hard" valu-
ables such as plates and armshells is that-in the Huaulu view-they were all "stolen"
(amanae) from enemies (and one should add that outsiders with whom no pact exists are
ipso facto enemies for the Huaulu). Alternatively, they were obtained as blood money,
that is, as ransom for prisoners of war, or as "protection price," for not raiding a certain
people, or as payments for giving help in war. Valuables and heads are thus, one may
say, enemy blood in different forms.
69 In this, Huaulu differ from some other peoples of Seram, including the neighboring
people of Openg, who until recently used to sacrifice cocks in the course of the initiation
of boys (now discontinued).
O' Each of the two parties held one side of the animal while they called on Lahatala
and Puhum and their other ancestors to witness the swearing of the pact and to sanction
it. The animal was then cut in two, as the Gordian knot of war itself (i toto lisam, "they
cut the war"), and each party cooked and ate the half it was holding. After which if any
of the two parties broke the peace they were "killed" (in the form of deadly misfortunes)
by the guaranteeing powers that had been invoked.
" In all of the most ancient instances of the rite, as reported in Huaulu historical nar-
ratives, the victim was an old lady or, in the more serious cases, the nubile daughter of the
Latunusa, the ritual chief of an autonomous community. These victims had to be provided
by the losing side.
History of Religions 127
even meat (ayokuam). They also say that certain territories constitute
their hunting grounds for procuring human victims. The expression
head-hunt is inappropriate, however, if it suggests that only the head is
the object of the hunt. In reality, the head is a token of the whole person
and it is the latter, his blood and his flesh, that is indirectly offered to
the "masters of the house," and in particular to Lahatala and Puhum,
"to eat" (ala ia kae).
Outsiders are offered to these spirits to eat in exchange for insiders,
though, and from this point of view the efficacy of human victims lies
precisely in their being human, not animal. It seems fair to say, then,
that the whole point of choosing them is that they are both similar and
dissimilar to the sacrifiers (the Huaulu) in a way that no animal can be.
Nevertheless the fact that they are hunted, subjugated like animals, is
absolutely crucial. Hunting is not just a practical preface to their sac-
rifice-it is their sacrifice. It is, in fact, the most efficacious act of the
ritual. The reason is that an analogy is established between the success-
ful subjugation of a hostile force outside society and the subjugation of
constantly angry and threatening spirits that are "bound" and "of the
house" only for as long as they are fed human victims.72 Otherwise they
eat the Huaulu. Indeed, it is to their inability to offer human sacrifices
that the Huaulu attribute their present weakness and their frequent mis-
fortunes: they are being "eaten" by their lords of the house-by the very
powers that should make them strong and prosperous. These powers
cannot give life except through the sacrificial principle-at the expense
of some life. If it is not somebody else's, it must be the Huaulus'.
The blood-sacrifice complex of the Huaulu was extremely compli-
cated and I cannot treat it here even by way of summary. I only want to
indicate, very briefly, that the appropriation of human victims and their
incorporation into society closely parallels the appropriation and incor-
poration of wild animals. In both cases, the induction stage is well de-
veloped, due to the obvious fact that the victim must be found and
subdued. But head-hunting is a much more elaborate process than hunt-
ing, as one may expect from the fact that the stakes are much higher. The
elements of struggle and reversibility are also much more developed
than in hunting: struggle with an enemy who can always turn out to be
the victor and struggle with rival headhunters. Indeed head-hunting was
connected with a hierarchy of grades based on a ~ h i e v e m e n tAs
. ~ ~in the
hunt, the pursuit and capture of the victim were not viewed in purely
'' Thus it is subjugation (which implies a resisting, wild, opponent), rather than sub-
jection (which implies a docile, domesticated, counterpart), that must characterize the re-
lationship with the victim.
73 The number and quality of the heads taken (of children, women, and warriors, in
rough order of increasing value) determined the grade to which a headhunter could as-
pire. For instance, the grade kapitane required the killing of at least ten people.
128 Hunting a s Sacrifice
74 Thus these spirits were also "fed" by the Huaulu, albeit more passively than those
to whom they presented the victims' heads in the village.
75 Valeri, "Autonomy and Heteronomy" (see n. 42 above).
History of Religions 129
addressed and referred to with the same term (ailaem) that is employed
for the ancestors. Thus, although there is no formal offering of these
marsupials to the lords of the house that I could ascertain, they may be
regarded as mediating between the human flesh that is the food of those
lords exclusively and the cooked animal flesh that is the food of humans
exclusively. Human consumption and ancestral consumption meet in
the makilem; which are, therefore, the edible appendage of the hu-
man victim. It is interesting that, while the human offering has disap-
peared-at least officially-from the final banquet of the kahua feast,
the five makilem must still be present-and I almost said presented.
However this may be, in the past human and ancestral consumptions
were linked through the idea that the abundant supply of meat at the ban-
quet was due to ancestral intervention, itself motivated by pleasure at
having been fed with human flesh. So humans ate, because the lords of
the house ate. Not only were the hunt and the head-hunt similar in struc-
ture, they also converged in the concluding banquet of the kahua feast.
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