CANNIBALISM IN THE MALAY WORLD: MYTH OR FACT?

“It is perfectly possible to argue that some distinctive objects are made by the mind, and that these objects, while appearing to exist objectively, have only fictional reality. A group of people living on a few acres of land will set up boundaries between their land and its immediate surroundings and the territory beyond, which they call 'the land of barbarians.' In other words, this universal practice of designating in one’s mind a familiar space which is 'ours' and an unfamiliar space beyond 'ours' which is 'theirs' is a way of making geographical distinctions that can be entirely arbitrary. I use the word 'arbitrary' here because imaginative geography of the 'our land-barbarian land' variety does not require that the barbarians acknowledge the distinction. It is enough for 'us' to set up these boundaries in our own minds; 'they' become 'they' accordingly, and both their territory and their mentality are designated as different from 'ours'.”

[Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books, 1979, p.54.]

History of European encounter with the community of peoples that consumed their equals (human flesh) was popular to the medieval Europeans in view of the fact that this phenomenon had been known since the ancient times. Herodotus, famous Greek historian had described a group of people who consuming the deceased bodies that belonged to their own communities known as the Androphagoi or Androphopagoi and this group of people lived in the northern parts of Scythian, which was ‘far away’ from Greece (Iris Gareis, “Cannibals, Bons Sauvages, and tasty white men: Models of alterity in the encounter of South American Tupi and Europeans,” The Medieval History Journal, 5, 2, (2002), pp. 251-252.). In the modern context, the act of consuming human flesh is commonly known as cannibalism and this practice is usually pictured “while dismembering or cutting up human bodies and busy with the roasting or cooking of their victims” (Iris Gareis, p.252).

The origin of the word cannibal which is associated with the practice of eating human flesh could be traced back to 1492 C.E., during the historical voyage of Christopher Columbus who discovered America. Based on the information that was given by his interpreter who gathered the story from the indigenous group of Arawak of Cuba, the Arawak is defining their rivals, the Carib, as having only one eye with heads like dogs and they ate human flesh. At this very early stage, Christopher Columbus had second hand information concerning some of the inhabitants on the Caribbean Island (Frank Lestringant, Canibals: The discovery and representation of the Canibal from Columbus to Jules Verne, trans. by Rosemary Morris, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997, p. 15).

The word cannibal then is believed to have come from the misinterpretation of cariba, the word which portrays the barbarity of the Carib, which was given by their neighboring enemy, the Arawak. For the Carib themselves, cariba means ‘bold’ and ‘courage’. Through time, the Arawak had transformed this word to caniba where the Spanish recognized it as cannibal (Iris Gareis, p. 250). The latter word by the Spanish reflects the meaning of cannibalism which was familiar with the modern sense of its usage.

Does the practice of cannibalism exist in the Malay World? Accounts by European travelers to this archipelago kept mentioning the Europeans encounter with peoples from this region who consume the flesh of their equals. This group of peoples from the Malay World was depicted as beast, savages and idolaters; to some extent this group even was described as having heads like dogs!. Is it this notion is a myth or fact?

As stated in Itinerario of Varthema in describing the cannibalistic tradition which occurred in Java during the first quarter of the 16th century, was as follows:

“The people in this island who eat flesh, when their fathers become so old that they can no longer do any work, their children or relations set them up in the market-place for sale, and those who purchase them kill them and eat them cooked. And if any young man should be attacked by any great sickness, and that it should appear to the skillful that he might die of it, the father or the brother of the sickman kills him, and they do not wait for him to die. And when they have killed him they sell him to others to be eaten. We, being astonished at such a thing, some merchants of the country said to us: “O your poor Persians, why do you have such charming flesh to be eaten by the worms?” My companion hearing this immediately exclaimed: “Quick, quick, let us go to our ship, for these people shall never more come near me on land.”[Ludovico di Varthema, The travels of Ludovico di Varthema in Egypt, Syria, Arabia Deserta and Arabia Felix, in Persia, India and Ethopia, A.D. 1503-1508, translated by J.W. Jones & edited by G.P. Badger. In Fuat Sezgin (ed.), In The Islamic World in foreign travel accounts, vol II. Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, 1994. (Reprint of the Edition London, 1853), 255-257.]

Then, Sir John Mandeville in his Travels which was published between 1357 and 1371, in elaborating the custom that belonged to the man-eaters in Andaman Island, which was portrayed as:

“They live here a people of evil customs, for fathers eat their sons and sons their fathers, husbands their wives and wives their husbands. For if it chance that a man’s father is sick, the son goes to the priest of their religion and ask him to inquire of their god-who is an idol-whether his father will live or die of that sickness. And the devil within that idol may answer that he will not die at that time, and indicates some medicines to heal him with; then the son returns to his father and does as instructed until he is well again. But it says he will die, the priest and the son and the wife of the sick man come to him and throw a cloth over his mouth and stop him breathing, and kill him. When he is dead they take his body and cut it in little pieces, and summon all his friends, and all the musicians they can get, and make a solemn feast and eat the dead man’s body. And when they have eaten all the flesh, they collect all the bones together and bury them according to their custom with great solemnity and loud singing. And thus each friend does to another; and if so happen that a man who is a relation of the dead man keeps away from the feast and comes not to the funeral, all the family will accuse him of a serious fault, and he will never after be counted among their friends. They say that they eat the flesh of their friend so that worms should not eat him in earth, and to release him from the great pain that his soul would suffer if worms gnawed him in the earth. They also say, when they find his flesh lean through long illness, that it would be a great sin to allow him to live longer or suffer pain without a cause. If they find his flesh fat, they say they have done well to have killed him so quickly and sent him to Paradise, not allowing him to be tormented too long in is world.” [John Mandeville, The travels of Sir John Mandeville, translated by C.W.R.D. Moseley, (London: Penguin Classics, 1983), 136-137.]

And finally, account by the famous Venetian merchant and traveler, Marco Polo, in picturing the custom of consuming human flesh in the kingdom of Dagroian, which he located in Sumatra during the 13th century as stated:

“When one of them is ill they send for their sorcerers, and put the question to them, whether the sick man shall recover of his sickness or no. If they say that he will recover, then they let him alone till he gets better. But if the sorcerers foretell that the sick man is to die, the friends send for certain judges of theirs to put to death him who has thus been condemned by the sorcerers to die. These man come, and lay so many clothes upon the sick man’s mouth that they suffocate him. And when he is dead they have him cooked, and gather together all the dead man’s kin, and eat him. And I assure you they do suck the very bones till not a particle of narrow remains in them; for they say that if any nourishment remained in the bones this would breed worms, and then the worms would die for want of food, and the death of those worms would be laid to the change of the deceased man’s soul. And so they eat him up stump and rump. And when they have thus eaten him they collect his bones and put them in fire chests, and carry them away, and place them in caverns among the mountains where no beast nor other creature can get at them. And you must know also that if they take prisoners a man of another country, and he cannot pay a ransom in coin, they kill him and eat him straight away. It is a very evil custom and a parlous.” [Marco Polo, The book of Ser Marco Polo,vol. II, Henry Yule & Henry Cordier (ed. and trans.), (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1993), 294].

Now come to the arguments to see whether this notion is simply as myth or fact. First of all, Varthema, Sir John Mandeville, Marco Polo or other travelers did not generalize all inhabitants of the Malay World lived in gore and cannibalistic atmosphere, but it confined to certain areas in the region. As Marco Polo as a case study, peoples who live in remote areas and islands as Sumatra, Java, Nicobar and Andaman were consider as beast and idolaters, and some of them practiced cannibalism. Marco Polo illustrates beast and idolaters in his accounts did exist in different places in Sumatra, in particular, the hill-people of Ferlec or Perlak who lived like beasts where they ate human flesh (Marco Polo, The book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. II, Henry Yule & Henry Cordier (ed. and trans.), New Delhi: Munshiram manoharlal, 1993, p. 284). The people of Basma then were just like beast without laws and religion (Marco Polo, p. 285), while the people of Fansur and Lambri were both considered as idolaters (Marco Polo, p. 299). Syed Manzurul Islam in his book The Ethics of Travel from Marco Polo to Kafka attested that the term of ‘beast’ or ‘idolaters’ in medieval European travel narratives were generally as metaphors to portray the savagery of the people. This term also appears as a reflection of majority of medieval European understanding on the population of the world. During the medieval times, the off-limits of the East/Asia known to them is Taprobane (Greek word, originally from Sanskrit tamraparn means cooper leaf, located in Ceylon or Sri Lanka today). Region beyond and farther than Taprobane was considered as unknown land/ terra incognita. The inhabitants of this terra incognita were totally different and unequal to Europe, whether in the way of life, or even the physical beings. In order to describe the dwellers of terra incognita, there are no choices for them to present this population as normal as human beings, or as normal as European. As result, there exist a people as having heads like dogs/ cynocephali who ate human flesh and series more monstrous beings/ homo monstrum. Terra incognita must have been described as ‘others’!.

Second argument has a relation with the former. Descriptions of strangeness such as European encounter with monstrous races, cynocephali or man-eaters (cannibals) usually could be spotted in new found land. Herodotus described Androphagoi lived ‘far away’ from Greece, that is in northern Scythian. This is probably happened because the northern Scythian is unknown to the people of Greece, or Greece chooses to isolate themselves from the Northern Scythian. This phenomenon indirectly gives a notion that the farther Europeans/ human beings explore their world, the enormous chances they will confront the strangeness. That is the reason why in different epochs of medieval European history of exploration, they will discover a lot and new version of strangeness. Strangeness founded in India, than move to Persia, further to Scandinavia, then to Asia, to South America so on and so forth (nowadays it perhaps evolved to a new level after entire world already discovered, that is Mars).

Finally, as stated in accounts of Varthema in 16th century, Sir John Mandeville in 14th century and Marco Polo in 13th century in describing of cannibalistic rituals in the Malay Archipelago, these accounts have a consistency in structure and story line. You don’t have to be a genius to notice this similarity. What is the explanation for this ‘similarity’? Travelers might continue the tradition of their predecessors in jotted down their descriptions on cannibalism in this region. Travelers might find a ‘short-cut’ by copying and putting a strange tradition to fulfill the thirst of European for the story of new exotic things. And perhaps the farthest these travelers go is a nearest library to their home.

In short, based on these arguments, the story of cannibalism in the Malay World is just might a story and the story that ahistorical one. Malay World in 13th to 16th century is hardly to perceive as an idolaters region, moreover as a region that practice cannibalism. Marco Polo in 13th century had described his encounters with Saracen/ Muslims in Perlak. Islam also was recorded to have been established in Sulu Archipelago, an area located in modern Philippines. Sulu Archipelago which is comprised of islands namely Basilan, Jolo and Tawi-tawi, were believed to receive Islam as early as the 14th century. The establishment of the Muslim Sultanate here started with the inter-marriage between Shariful Islam, an Arab Muslim trader and the daughter of the Jolo king and Shariful Islam later established the Islamic Sulu Sultanate in the 15th century. While in 16th century, Varthema described his meeting with Malacca Sultan who is a Muslim, so as his kingdom. Long story short, is that cannibalism in the Malay World is a myth or fact? I consider the former.

PLUS: Mitos cannibalism adalah fenomena universal. Cerita cannibalism wujud di merata tempat seperti di Kepulauan Melayu, India, Selatan Brazil etc. Mitos ini melahirkan banyak versi filem2 cannibal macam Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Ferox etc. Mitos2 ini juga menjadi dasar kepada pemikiran colonial2 barat yang rasa terpanggil untuk memajukan bangsa2 ‘primitif’ di seluruh dunia dengan ‘White’s Man Burden’ sebagai justifikasi mereka. Mitos2 ini berkembang sejajar dengan peredaran masa. Orang2 British mula mencipta mitos bahawa penduduk kepulauan Melayu masih bersikap dengan penuh ‘kelanunan’, dan penduduk kepulauan Melayu juga pemalas. Allahyarhan Syed Hussein Alatas menulis sebuah buku yang bagus bagi mereka yang ingin mengetahui cerita mitos orang2 putih dalam The Myth of Lazy Natives.

SOURCE: zulkifli ishak, before December 2009.