missioned by the Museum für Völkerkunde in Dresden to investigate the mayasa sculptures on Buton Island. Starting from Pasarwajo, he combed through the villages of the highlands and found Kombeli and Limbo, the villages where Elbert had seen the mayasa sculptures with boats. However, the forest where the graves were located had burned in the 1970s, according to local informants, and with it all the mayasas on the graves within it. He found the village of Hendeya with some remaining graves in the nearby forests and was able to retrieve the last mayasas for the Museum für Völkerkunde in Dresden before they were destroyed by slash-and-burn. According to Schneider, mayasa means “grave post” or “gravestone” in the language of the local Laporo people and a mayasa with a boat on top is called mayasa banka. Today, other examples of these sculptures are in the collections of the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam (Gortzak et al. 1987); the Haus der Völker in Schwaz, Austria; and the National Museum of Indonesia in Jakarta (Haryati 1993). The only independent and original information on mayasa is provided by Elbert, Schoorl, and Schneider. All subsequent sources refer to the first two researchers, as Schneider did not publish on the subject. Two mayasa sculptures were placed on each grave, one at the head and one at the foot. In many cases, the two posts were similar in structure, size, and level of detail. However, often the post at the foot was shorter and undecorated save for some notches. Ornate mayasas for men and women were different in the more southern villages (Kombeli, Limbo, Wakahau, and Kampong Boegi), the women’s being more “organic” looking and lacking a superstructure. For men, boats surmounted the posts. Carved with seamen, they represent Butonesian vessels with several decks at the rear. According to Elbert, the boat indicates that the deceased was a seaman. In the northern villages (Hendeya, Kongkeongkea) the boat is replaced by a multilayered head-like superstructure, resulting in an anthropomorphic aspect of the post. Mayasas for men and women don’t seem to differ here. The “body” of the post consists of a relief carving of a traditional pile-dwelling with its ladder used to enter the raised main floor. The carving also depicts the load-bearing beams of the raised floor reinforced in the angles by diagonal elements, as is done in real timber structures. A similar angled reinforcement is apparent in the middle layer of the head-like superstructure, which could therefore be interpreted as another stylized dwelling. The piledwelling of the “body” is inhabited by spirits (the souls of the deceased) and animals that serve as steeds for the spirits on their way to the afterlife. Both the spirits and their animals are carved in low relief—the spirits are shown climbing the ladder or in wall recesses and in the entrance. The piles, on the other hand, are detached from the pole core and permit diagonal views through this layer. The carving on opposing faces of the post is the same, with two opposing faces showing a ladder and entrance and the other two an animal below the house. According to Schneider, this represents a horse. Below the pile-dwelling, a gong (mbololo) is carved on all four faces of the post. Gongs are struck when the spirits enter the upperworld (batula). These spirits have to be dressed in white, the clothing of the dead, if they are approaching god, who is known as Kawasana Ompu. This may explain why the mayasas in Hendeya were painted white. On some mayasas in museums (Amsterdam, Leiden, Jakarta), parts of the relief are black colored. These, however, look “new” and, although acquired as long ago as 1902–1931, do not appear to have ever been on graves. The head-like superstructure of some of them (in Amsterdam and Jakarta) is composed of four small houses on a multilayered platform. Mayasa of this type do not appear in field photos and were not described on graves by Schneider or Schoorl. These posts appear to have been carved specifically to be exhibited in museums. The previous paragraphs summarize the information collected by Elbert (1911) and Schoorl (1985), which, though more or less consistent, is somewhat limited and contains little analysis regarding the cosmology and beliefs of the population. The region where mayasas were made is populated by the Laporo, a subgroup of the Cia-Cia people. Around the fifteenth century, immigrants from Johore, Malaysia, established the kingdom of Buton. In the sixteenth century, conversion to Islam started and a sultanate was formed, which remained independent until 1960, when the Republic of Indonesia was founded. MAYASA FIGS. 10 and 11: Mayasa (full view and detail). Collected in Hendeya, Buton Island, 1992. Detail shows a pile-dwelling with entrance, ladder, and three figures. A gong is carved below. H: 113 cm. Wood, remnants of white pigment. Private collection. Photo: Alain Herzog.
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