Seeds of Play, Words of Power: An ethnographic study of Iban shamanic chants, Clifford Sather. Kuala Lumpur: The Tun Jugah Foundation in cooperation with The Borneo Research Council, 2001, xvii+753 p., 24 plates & tables, 3 append., glossary, index.
Pascal Couderc
September 1, 2004 DOI: 10.4000/moussons.2528 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis |
|---|---|
| Population | Iban shamans and their chants from the Saribas region of Sarawak |
| Topics | Shamanism |
| Key points | Argues that the Iban shaman's healing role involves taking on patients' illnesses, which may overload the shaman, requiring a ritual of 'bailing' to ease the burden. The book presents a corpus of approximately 3,300 lines of chants, collected over 25 years, as a significant contribution to understanding Iban ritual. |
Abstract
Sometimes, “overloaded” with the illnesses that he has taken upon himself in healing his patients, the Iban shaman falls ill. He must then perform a rite to ease his burden, “bailing” it like water out of a boat. It certainly is a heavy burden that, so to say, Clifford Sather has eased off himself by writing this book, the materials for which he began to collect in the Saribas region of Sarawak twenty-five years ago. The corpus presented here, totaling some 3,300 lines of chants with interlin...
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| Cognitive Neuroscience, Shamanism and the Rock Art of Native California | 1998 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| From Culture to Experience: Shamanism in the Pages of the Soviet Anti-Religious Press | 2020 | Historical analysis | |
| Anthropology, Shamanism, and Alternate Ways of Knowing–Being in the World: One Anthropologist's Journey of Discovery and Transformation | 2010 | Reflective essay or personal narrative |