Soul board made of softwood with depiction of a soul ship "telun"

Estimated Value:

4.000 € - 6.000 €

Result:

incl. Premium and VAT

Description:

Indonesia, Borneo, Kalimantan East, Ngadyu or Bahau-Dayak, 20th cent.
26 x 60 cm
Wood, pigments. A very rare, ritually significant object. Depicted in its entirety is a ship in the shape of a stylised dragon with bared teeth and outstretched tongue. The dragon aso symbolises the ancestral community. The soul ship is executed in the colours red, black and white. The pigments in black are probably burnt unripe coconut shells, white is the juice of the Ficus religiosa and red is dragon's blood rubbed on with coconut oil. The people at the bow and stern are busy warding off evil spirits. In the centre of the ship's deck you can see the canopy with the funeral urn and the gongs suspended above it, which accompany the dead as sacred heirlooms pesaka and emphasise his prestige.
Collected from an old German private collection since the 1950s
The soul ship telun is a concept of the Dayak on Borneo, which probably originally goes back to the Egyptian sun barque of Ra. It was believed that souls, like the sun, rise from the underworld in the east and “set” in the west, entering the underworld Apulagan. The deceased travels on a river, which first begins wide and then leads through a narrow gorge with a whirlpool of fire at the end into the realm of the dead. The soul stays in the little house depicted in the middle section; the objects hanging on the frame are precious pusaka, heirlooms, which were given to the deceased. They shine on the way to the afterlife, which is why they are important for the journey. The ships with a hornbill bow are called banama tinggang (“great/high name”) and represent nobles, while the dragon bow (aso) is the “standard model”. While the deceased awaits redemption in the afterlife, his soul remains in a wooden board on which a ship of the dead is painted and which is located at the house of the deceased. The second burial, tiwah (“celebration of redemption”), takes place months or even years after death. The long period between the two funerals is due to the fact that tiwah is a very elaborate and expensive celebration and can last up to a month. For this reason, several burials are often combined. Blood was believed to strengthen the sun or the boat along the way, probably originally because of its red color at rising and setting. This is why headhunting, for which the Dayak were once notorious, was essential for the burial of nobles

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