Igor Sitnikov: Paiwan Knives Bronze Handles and Igorot Hand Drums: Two Relict Artifacts from the Asia-Pacific Bronze Age

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Paiwan Knives Bronze Handles and Igorot Hand Drums: Two Relict Artifacts from the Asia-Pacific Bronze Age

Abstract

In 2008 in ethnology museum of Academia Sinica in Taipei (Taiwan) first time I saw knives bronze handles, which are considered one of the three cultural treasures of the Paiwan ethnic group. Two others are ancient pottery vessels and glass beads. These cultural treasures were family heirlooms of the Paiwan upper classes. At the same time the ethnography has not clear information about bead-making skill among the Paiwan or other indigenous peoples in Taiwan. The same is supposed for the knives bronze handles. Paiwan myths however suggest that their ancestors brought all these treasures with them when they settled on Taiwan. The origin of Paiwan treasures is an interesting puzzle. In this article I try to find a hypothetical answer to this question. Another interesting puzzle, which seems to be connected with the question of Paiwan knives bronze handles, is the origin of Igorot bronze drums. I saw these drums also in Taipei, but they were brought there by the Filipino foreign workers, who use them in the performances at their Sunday meetings. Igorot is the collective name of several Austronesian speaking ethnic groups from the mountainous area of Northern Luzon. Almost all Igorot groups use bronze drums in their spiritual ceremonies. Beside the Northern Luzon bronze drums until now are used in the southern Philippines. Drums types are clearly distinguished between northern and southern traditions. Northern traditions relate to music cultures in continental Southeast Asia while southern relate to the insular Southeast Asia.

To find the traces of the two studying artifacts origin it is reasonable address the Bronze Age cultures of Southeast Asia. North Vietnam was the home of a Bronze Age culture called Dong Son. The best-known artifacts created in this culture are large bronze “kettle drums”. Working with bronze was practiced in Vietnam probably from the second millennium BC and reached its technical and artistic peak around 500 BC – 100 AD. These drums became objects of trade and heirlooms. More than 200 bronze drums have been found across an area from Southern China and Vietnam to eastern Indonesia. Did the drums come to the Philippines by trade routes? Or maybe the ancestors of Igorot migrated to Northern Luzon from somewhere, where a tradition of bronze drums production was flourished? The similar questions appeared in connection to the Paiwan knives bronze handles. Paiwan language is closer related to Malayo-Polynesian group compare to other Formosan languages. This fact suggests that the Paiwan chieftains and nobles could come to Taiwan later than other Formosan peoples and probably from the South-East Asia, where they used Malayo-Polynesian lingua franca. Paiwan knives bronze handles style is very similar to those of Dong Son. Igorot hand drums are very similar to the drums of the same area. This fact suggests very high probability of the same area of origin of both artifacts, which could be dated around 2000 years ago, when ancestors of nowadays Paiwan nobles and Igorot were forced to leave their homes because of Qin Empire (221-207 BC) military activity.

Igor Sitnikov

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Igor Sitnikov and Miklukho-Maklai

I was born in Ryazan city (Russia, 3 hours from Moscow) in 1961. 30 years I lived in the Soviet Union on the bank of Oka-river, which is a border between a huge forest and a wide steppe. Then 12 years I spend in the Russia on the same bank, under the same sky. I like Oka, and the steppe with multitude of small slow rivers, and the forest, that carries the name of vanished people “Meshchera”. When I was a schoolboy I had read a book about the famous Russian anthropologist Miklukho-Maklai, who studied peoples of Papua New Guinea. His life was amazing for my childish imagination. I dreamed about long voyages in vast waters of the Pacific Ocean. I was envious of Tur Heyerdal, who could travel along the Pacific islands and to Charles Gogin, who could draw beautiful Tahiti women.If I could imagine that I will become an artist and will live in Pacific?

Saisiyat (賽夏)

The Saisiyat believe that a long time ago, a tribe of three-foot tall, dark-skinned dwarfs once taught them to farm, sing, and dance, but also harassed and threatened the women.
Long ago, a tribe of dark-skinned pygmies arrived in the area inhabited by the Saisiyat. They were skilled in the arts of magic. The Taai (known as the Short People) gave the Saisiyat seeds and taught them the knowledge of agriculture, how to hold ceremonies and offer sacrifices to gods or ancestors.
Therefore the Saisiyat regarded the Taai as their benefactors. Whenever rituals and ceremonies were held, the Saisiyat always invited the Taai to be their guests, and they enjoyed drinking and having fun together.
The Taai, however, gradually began to encroach upon the Saisiyat women. To avoid disrupting harmonious relations between the tribes, those women who were violated remained silent. The Saisiyat tribal elders urged patience for the good of the whole tribe. The Taai, however, stepped up their encroachments on the Saisiyat. When the Saisiyat had had enough, they swore to avenge the insult on the Taai.
The Saisiyat knew that the Taai were particularly fond of climbing on a loquat tree that overhung a precipice. Two Saisiyat youths thereupon took it upon themselves to saw the tree halfway through. That evening, the Taai, not suspecting a thing, climbed one-by-one up into the tree. As more and more Taai scaled the tree, it could no longer take the weight and the trunk snapped. All of the Taai who had been sitting in the tree went over the edge. Those that weren't killed in the initial fall were drowned.
However two Taais, who had escaped the ambush, placed a curse on the Saisiyat tribe, leading to a succession of disasters and poor harvests. In an effort to lift the curse, the Saisiyat sang Taai songs and performed Taai dances to plead for forgiveness while also appealing for fair weather and a bountiful harvest. That is the origin of the Saisiyat tribe's pygmy spirit ritual.

The pygmy spirit ritual gives raise a hypothesis by a Japanese archeologist, Kano Tadao, that the prehistoric peoples living in Taiwan included Negritoes.