高砂族の宗教生活(<特集>台湾研究)

抄録

The Formosan aborigines are dry-farming agriculturists par excellence as most of the primitive peoples in Indonesia. However, their staple food is not the rice, but the millet (Setaria italica), and the agrarian rites relating to the millet cultivation have the most important place in their religious life. During such rites, various taboos are imposed upon the members of the community, of which the organization varies between tribes or ethnic groups. Among the Bunun of central Formosa, the observance of rites and taboos concerned as a whole covers occasionally about 100 days a year. The offering of "premices" to the divinities, spirits or ancestral spirits is found widely among the aborigines. They had been headhunters, except the Yami of the Botel Tobago Island, and they still remember fairly well of the rites and taboos concerning headhunting practised until relatively recent time. Various rites of passage bearing upon the life of the individuals are still observed widely, whereas the initiation ceremony combined with the men's house and ageclass system is found especially among the Ami and Puyuma in the eastern coast. Formerly, the medicine man and woman, simultaneously the shaman and shamaness in not a few cases, were most important and were more numerous than in the present day.