타이완 쩌우족(Tsou)의 머리사냥 신화에 나타난 폭력과 생태윤리

Abstract

Like other Austronesians, the native Taiwanese people had headhunting customs, which lasted until the early twentieth century. It is known that the headhunting was an active and widespread custom among Taiwan’s Tsou People, whose traces can still be found in the various music, dance, and rituals that are performed during their annual Mayasvi Festival to this day. Tsou myths that deal with the origin of headhunting custom have a number of distinct characteristics that are different from those of other tribes. First, flood is always set as the background, against which the headhunting initially occurs in the Thou myths. People who fled to high mountains to escape the flood commit the initial violence of headhunting. Oftentimes, they were not committed as part of hunting that serves the purpose of collecting food, but as sheer violence that contributes to human pleasure and entertaining purposes. In some myths, the ultimate sacrifice is described as the grandmother who raised the agents of this violence, in which case the entertainment evokes the most extreme level of excitement and ecstasy. When these Tsou people came down from the mountain and scattered to different villages after the flood was gone, they missed the ecstasy of this sheer violence that they felt on the mountain that they went onto conduct the headhunting custom to cut the heads of those from other tribes. How are we to understand this violent narrative, which was motivated by sheer entertainment and pleasure, and not for either revenge or practical purpose such as collecting food? And what mechanism lies behind this violent memory serving as the center of their identity, culture and religion of this community? Using these questions as the starting point, this paper categorizes the types of headhunting myths of Taiwan’s Tsou People and conducts structural analysis. In doing so, it unfolds that the violence, in fact, brings about the reversal of nature and culture through the greatest sacrifice of the agents of violence. Also, it also reveals that the headhunting myths are rooted in the ecological ethics and worldview that treats human beings as an extension of the wildlife or livestock in a world which encompasses the worlds of gods, the deceased, and spirits all as a whole.