How The Buginese People Study Religion
Religion is a unified system of beliefs, rituals, and practices that typically involve a broader community of believers who share common definitions of the sacred and the profane. Anthropologists study religion because they want to evaluate the relation to other social institutions, and the comparison of religious beliefs and practices across cultures.
In “Around the World in 80 Faiths,” a faith that I learned about is "Islam and spirit worship" the sword stabbing ritual performed by the Bugis people of Sulawesi. The Buginese people are an ethnic group, the most numerous of the three major linguistic and ethnic groups of South Sulawesi, third largest island of Indonesia. Bugis people live in Indonesia, Australasia, which is the biggest Islamic …show more content…
The setting is in the last Indonesian island where the majority of the people still worship spirits and ancestors. The group of people is called The Kodi. They live at the western tip of Sumba where large buffalo feast in the village of Mangganipi. While Kodi is a coastal region most of the 50 thousand Kodinese live inland near their gardens of rice and corn. They also raise chickens, pigs, horses, and water buffalo. Buffalo are the most important form of wealth in Kodi. As part of a complex system of ritual exchange buffalo circulate in bride price payments and are offered as funeral gifts, and to settle debts and disputes. At large feasts many buffalo are contributed to feed the spirits in a ritual sacrifice. The people of Dream Village spent 12 years preparing and planning their buffalo feasts. They set up the gongs in the village to grow corn. They put the drum in place to grow rice to protect the gardens and seal the land. They tell the spirits to sit up at the front gates, and lock closed the rear gates, so the darkness won't come in and the danger won't arrive. Their traditional prayers say to so, so there won't be more deaths. They pray to the highest deity to stop the deaths. They call him "marapu," which are their own spirits and
In “Around the World in 80 Faiths,” a faith that I learned about is "Islam and spirit worship" the sword stabbing ritual performed by the Bugis people of Sulawesi. The Buginese people are an ethnic group, the most numerous of the three major linguistic and ethnic groups of South Sulawesi, third largest island of Indonesia. Bugis people live in Indonesia, Australasia, which is the biggest Islamic …show more content…
The setting is in the last Indonesian island where the majority of the people still worship spirits and ancestors. The group of people is called The Kodi. They live at the western tip of Sumba where large buffalo feast in the village of Mangganipi. While Kodi is a coastal region most of the 50 thousand Kodinese live inland near their gardens of rice and corn. They also raise chickens, pigs, horses, and water buffalo. Buffalo are the most important form of wealth in Kodi. As part of a complex system of ritual exchange buffalo circulate in bride price payments and are offered as funeral gifts, and to settle debts and disputes. At large feasts many buffalo are contributed to feed the spirits in a ritual sacrifice. The people of Dream Village spent 12 years preparing and planning their buffalo feasts. They set up the gongs in the village to grow corn. They put the drum in place to grow rice to protect the gardens and seal the land. They tell the spirits to sit up at the front gates, and lock closed the rear gates, so the darkness won't come in and the danger won't arrive. Their traditional prayers say to so, so there won't be more deaths. They pray to the highest deity to stop the deaths. They call him "marapu," which are their own spirits and