480
Reimar Schef° ld
are we to explain certain striking commonalities in
the reports of head-hunting practices in premodem
times throughout the Southeast Asian region. In this
article an attempt is made to explore an answer to
this question. The past tense which is used through
out most of its arguments indicates that I am not
aiming at an essentialist constmction of a time
less phenomenon, a phenomenon that in fact was
subject to local transformations everywhere it oc
curred. What I am in search of is an understanding
of the ideological backgrounds of various recurring
features reported to have been part of head-hunting
practices before they were suppressed by the colo
nial governments.
Of course, there were also private rather than
collective motives. There is a variety of statements
that the soul of the person beheaded is supposed
to serve the successful headhunter or some promi
nent member of the community here and in the
Hereafter. 3 * Local elaborations of this idea include
certain Southeast Asian construction rituals which
alternatively involve the killing of a captive slave
from outside the domain or the providing of a head
hunting trophy. The souls of the victims are said
to become guardians; they are ritually prompted
to protect the structure and its inhabitants (see
Wessing and Jordaan 1997). However, such ani
mistic elaborations are too sporadic to shed light
on Southeast Asian head-hunting in general.
2 Reasons for Head-Hunting
in Southeast Asia
Did there ever exist any specific aims and goals
which motivated people to embark on a head-hunt
ing raid? An ethnographical survey soon reveals
that there are no general answers to this question to
be found. There are nearly always concrete reasons
for taking a head, but these are so diverse that it
is instead this phenomenon as such which needs
explanation. Fertility, for instance, is often men
tioned, in a marriage or for the crops; there is the
death of a chief, there is the averting of disaster,
and, of course, there is retaliation. In more general
terms, the idea that new life requires the taking of
life recurs. However, one particular theme, to which
I shall come back later, has a pervasive prominence:
The motivation of a headhunt being coincident with
the completion of a communal building. From ev
ery corner of the area there are reports of captured
3 See Stohr (1965: 198) and for early sources Schuster (1956:
64-69) and Downs (1977: 117).
heads being buried under the foundations of saC
major constructions (see Schuster 1956: 70-82)-
This profusion of aims elicits a second questi 013 ’
What is the basis of this many-stranded ritual e
ficacy attributed to head-hunting? In other
what warrants the confidence that there is hop e
attaining whatever the headhunt is aimed to acco# 1
plish? Why do Southeast Asians believe that t
capturing of a head from outside one’s own
main induces propitious consequences of the n tu
at home?
In contrast to the second question, scanting
not diversity marks the answers to this question
anthropological literature. Rodney Needham, in ,
often quoted article of 1976, departs from Kr^y
(1906:18; see also Nooy-Palm 1986:318)
known explanation that the “soul-substance” w
lestof) of a slain enemy can be captured by f
ing his head and can be used to effectuate fe rtl1 ^
and other beneficial influences. Against this B ene ^
theory, and taking the reports about the Keny
Dayak by Elshout (1926) as an example, Needh ^
demonstrates that it has not proved possible to P
duce direct evidence of indigenous notions poim
in the direction of such a general explanation ( ^
also Metcalf 1982: 113). Indeed, a closer reading ^
Elshout and other authors reveals that, according.^
their informants and despite their own Kruyti aI3
terpretations, in most instances it is not the tr°P n . j
themselves which are said to elicit the benen
effects.
At this point, Needham’s argumentation — ^
surprising turn. His failure to find an indig eil< ^
tak eS (
theory such as that of the soul-substance to exp ^
“just how the cause produced the effect” (1976-
brings him to the conclusion that what we are s® ^
gling with is in fact not a lack of sufficient
information. It is instead an example of a ^
for which we have to accept the existence of a 131 jt
of thought which is alien to European traditi 0 ^’’
represents an “alternative conception of causa ^d
(1976: 71) in which something can cause an 6
without any intermediary element in between-
nothing but the tacit preconceptions of the an ^
pologist, triggered by a contemporaneous sC '■$
tific idiom derived from physics” (1976: 82) ^ 0 {
inspires the researchers to assume the existen ^ ^
a quasi-physical mediating agent which reafi 205
desired result. .
Although Needham is probably right in p o1
out the circumstantial tinges in Kruyt’s i n | a ijc£
theory, his alternative assumption of ass ° c ^ t ^ 1 ’
head-hunting with an alien causality seems ^
odd to me. Firstly it should be said that
is somewhat categorical in denying any use
102
Anthropos