Abstract
Central to food culture are food practices that encompass any activity in which food is involved. Furthermore, food culture studies analyse the many meanings generated by these practices. This article explores food culture in precolonial Taiwan. It charts the meanings generated by the food practices of the Siraya, a Formosan ethnic group who lived in southwest Taiwan and had intensive contact with Dutch East India Company colonisers and an array of Chinese in the seventeenth century. The article analyses the rich variety of edible animals, plants, and fish, and drinks available in Taiwan before focusing on Siraya food practices and the meanings generated by these practices. These include the use of food for sacrifice, funeral rites, gifting, and exchange. The article also examines taboos around food and their social function. Furthermore, it compares Siraya food culture with that of other Formosan groups and pre-Columbian America.
1 Introduction
Food culture studies is an emerging field of enquiry that concerns the study of practices involving food, broadly understood to refer to all ingestibles, including their cultivation, preparation, and consumption, as well as the meanings generated by those practices. It analyses food ‘in its representational form, as a system of communication, which creates meanings for its consumers’ (Malhotra, Sharma & Dogra, 2021: xvi, vii). It takes seriously Roland Barthes’s response to his own question, ‘For what is food?’ in his seminal essay ‘Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption’: ‘It is not only a collection of products that can be used for statistical or nutritional studies. It is also, and at the same time, a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations, and behaviour’ (Barthes, 2013: 24, quoted in Malhotra et al., 2021: vii).
This article analyses food culture in ‘Aboriginal Taiwan’, that is, precolonial Taiwan before European colonisation in the seventeenth century (Ferrell, 1969). It takes as a case study the food practices of the Siraya, a Formosan ethnic group that inhabited the plains in southwest Taiwan. It begins by analysing the sources available for this study. These include texts by both Chinese authors and Europeans employed by the Dutch East India Company (voc), which was in Taiwan between 1623 and 1662. Recent archaeological excavations of Siraya sites around Tainan add to our understanding of their food culture.
I then provide details of the food that the Siraya consumed before analysing their food practices and the meanings generated by these practices. Foods that were central to Siraya life were rice, a rice-based alcoholic beverage, and pork. These and other types of food were used for gifting, exchange and trade, propitiatory sacrifice to the Siraya deities, blessing new houses, healing the sick, and funeral rites. Taboos also played a significant role in the Siraya’s socio-religious life, and the article examines the social function of these taboos.
One aim of this article is to contribute to our understanding of food practices outside Europe before they were radically changed by encounters with European colonists. Therefore, before concluding, the article places the case of the Siraya in a broader context by comparing their food practices with those of other Formosan ethnolinguistic groups and people in pre-Columbian Meso- and South America.
This is, therefore, not simply a study of food per se. Rather, it examines what anthropologists and sociologists call ‘foodways’. These ‘explore the cultural, social and economic practices of the acquisition, production, preparation, distribution and consumption of food in order to better understand society’ (Bickham, 2020: 9). So, the study of food and food practices offers a fresh way into thinking about a given society. In the present case, it helps us to better understand Siraya society and culture and the construction of Siraya societal identity, which would be disrupted by the arrival of Dutch colonists.
2 Sources
Several Chinese and European authors wrote ethnographic studies that describe Siraya food practice.1 In the fourteenth century, a Chinese traveller and author Wang Dayuan (汪大淵) (fl. 1311–1350) described Taiwan, which he called Ryukyu or Liuqiu (琉球), in Daoyi Zhilue (島夷誌略) (Brief Accounts of the Island Barbarians, 1349) and included a short account of indigenous food practices. Wang does not name the Formosans whose food practices he describes. He does, however, describe the Penghu Islands (澎湖群島), which are adjacent to the territory of several Formosan ethnic groups in western Taiwan, including the Siraya, and indicates that the Formosans in question lived by the sea. The possibility that he is describing the Siraya cannot be ruled out (Thompson, 1964: 165–170).
After a naval expedition to Taiwan in 1603 to deal with wako pirates, the Chinese military adviser, scholar, and author Chen Di (陳第) (1541–1617) compiled a short ethnography of Formosans that the expedition encountered entitled Dongfan Ji (東番記) (An Account of the Eastern Barbarians).2 It was summarised in reference works for travellers and administrators in Taiwan including appendices to the Song-era text Zhufan Zhi (諸番志) (Annals of Various Barbarians) and the 1696 Taiwan provincial gazetteer.
Chen does not name a Formosan tribe. He does, however, reference Da Yuan (大員). This probably corresponds to Tayouan, which in Dutch sources references the spit of land and bay where the voc established its base at Fort Zeelandia, an area now occupied by Anping (安平). This indicates that Chen is most probably describing the Siraya, who inhabited this area (Jenco & Tremml-Werner, 2021: 219).
In October 1623, voc forces undertook a reconnaissance mission from the Penghu Islands to the Siraya region of Taiwan. One voc employee, the Swiss captain, Elie Ripon, made a report in French on the Siraya whom he encountered, above all in the village of Mattau (Andrade, 2009: 33, n. 1).3 Two Dutch voc employees on the same expedition were Jacob Constant and Barend Pessaert. Assisted by Chinese intermediaries, they had contact with another Siraya village, Soulang, and made a report.4 Both reports provide further insights into Siraya food practices.
Early reports by the first two Dutch Governors of Formosa, Martinus Sonck and Frederick de Witt, include several references to Siraya food and food practices (Blussé, Everts & Frech, 1999–2010 [henceforth tfe], vol. 1: 37–43). The Dutch missionary, Georgius Candidius (in Taiwan 1627–1631 and 1633–1637), included an extensive description of Siraya food culture in his ethnography, Discours ende Cort verhael van’t Eylant Formosa (Discourse and Short Description of the Island of Formosa). This was subsequently published in several versions.5 An extensive version appeared in Olfert Dapper’s Gedenkwaerdig Bedryf der Nederlandsche Oost-Indische Maetschappye (Memorable Activity of the Dutch East India Company), printed in Amsterdam in 1670, while an English version of Candidius’s report was included in Atlas Chinesis, printed in London in 1671 by Arnoldus Montanus (Dapper, 1670: 9–16; Montanus, 1671: 10–17). Candidius compiled the ethnography within two years of his arrival in Taiwan, drawing on his experience of living in the Siraya village of Sinckan. Therefore, although he and his fellow missionaries would eventually convert the Siraya to Christianity, he provides us with a view of their customs and practices as they would have been before the arrival of the voc. Nevertheless, as the next section makes clear, how he and other authors describe Siraya food culture is influenced by the fact that they are conceptualised as the ‘other’.
While in ‘Aboriginal Taiwan’ the Siraya did sell food such as pork and venison to Chinese merchants, an important shift in the Dutch colonial period was that surpluses of food such as rice were produced expressly for export. As Candidius had observed, this was possible because the Siraya possessed an abundance of fertile land, which could easily support much more rice cultivation than they undertook (Campbell, 1903: 10).
Candidius describes in detail practices involving rice and a rice-based alcoholic beverage. He also explores the meaning generated by other food practices, such as gifting. One practice that draws his attention as a missionary is the offering of food to propitiate the Siraya deities. Further details of this practice, and the Christian rejection of it, are provided in catechisms and sermons compiled by Candidius’s successor, Robertus Junius (in Taiwan 1629–1643). One other author who wrote extensively on Siraya food practices is the Scottish voc employee, David Wright. He compiled an observational report on the Siraya, which was first published in Dutch in Dapper’s Gedenkwaerdig Bedryf, and then in English in Montanus’s Atlas Chinensis (Dapper, 1670: 17–51; Montanus, 1671: 17–49; Shepherd, 1986: 56–81).6
There can be little doubt that these authors compiled their texts with the help of unnamed Formosan informants. The same is probably true of the Utrecht Manuscript (um), an anonymous Siraya-Dutch wordlist containing more than one thousand words, dating to circa 1635. It was first published in 1842 by C. J. van der Vlis.7 This provides valuable lexical evidence for Siraya food practices. It can be divided into two parts. The first, larger part groups words by theme, while the second part consists of verbs. Van der Vlis gives titles to the thematic sections in the first part. Those relating to food include ‘Food and Drink’, ‘Valuable Things, Spices [and] Plants’, ‘Animals’, ‘Birds’, and ‘Fish’ (Van der Vlis, 1842: 465–469). Some verbs in the second section offer further insights into Siraya food practices. In Siraya, ‘to cook (lit. burn) something in a pan’ is king kinging and ‘to make a drink’ is dmiho (Van der Vlis, 1842: 476–483; Joby, 2021).
Archaeological evidence adds to our understanding of Siraya food culture. Since 2000, much archaeological work has been done in Siraya areas around Tainan. By 2015, 60 archaeological sites had been recorded and salvage excavations were carried out at 34 sites in Tainan Science Park (tnsp), located to the north of central Tainan, where the Siraya villages of Bacloan and Sinckan had been situated. The artefacts from tnsp sites cover a time span of 4800 to 300 Before Present (bp) and have been chronologically divided into six phases: Tapenkeng Culture, Niuchoutzu Culture, Tahu Culture, Niaosung Culture, Siraya Culture, and recent Han Chinese Culture. It is the Siraya Culture, dated by archaeologists to 500 to 300 bp on sites including Dadaogong, Gangang, and Shenei, that is of most interest for our purposes. Remains of food, pottery vessels, and iron objects used as weapons and for hunting as well as tools of production or for cooking have been found on these sites (Tsang & Li, 2015: 270–271, 277).
3 Food, Identity, and the ‘Other’
In the discourses on food that these authors create, they often distinguish between ‘Them’ and ‘Us’. In other words, they use food to construct their own identity and notions of the ‘other’. As Erica J. Peters observes, ‘people … reference food when signalling what they think of others’ (2019: 43). Jordan D. Rosenblum writes that practices, including food practices, index identity (Rosenblum, 2010: 6, quoted in Friedenreich, 2011: 9).
David M. Friedenreich analyses how the legal frameworks of the three Abrahamic faiths have contributed to constructing the otherness of those who do not adhere to these faiths. He argues that Jewish, Christian, and Islamic foreign food restrictions mark the otherness of those who do not belong to the group (Friedenreich, 2011: 16). Furthermore, he contends, by constructing otherness, we simultaneously imagine the identities of our own communities in relation to those outside our communities, imagining ourselves to be ‘not-Them’ or ‘unlike-Them’ (ibid., 25).
The accounts on the Siraya that this article analyses contribute to a ‘historiography of the other’ (Jenco & Tremml-Werner, 2021).8 In general, there is often a tendency to conceptualise the ‘other’ as a homogenous group (Williamson, 2014: 123). Friedenreich observes that in delimiting ‘Us’ and ‘not Us’ with foreign food restrictions, the Abrahamic faiths do not draw distinctions among the ‘not Us’ (Friedenreich, 2011: 16). However, as Jenco and Tremml-Werner argue, the authors of the accounts on the Siraya manage to avoid what Geoff Wade (1997) references as the ‘topoi’ of otherness. These authors do, nevertheless, fit their observations into their own ‘existing knowledge grids’ informed by very distinct cultural and linguistic forces (Jenco & Tremml-Werner, 2021: 220). To put it another way, each author necessarily views Siraya food practices through the lens of his own experience. This influences the way in which these authors perceive and depict the ‘other’, a fact to which the article will pay attention when interpreting their observations. One question that this article attempts to answer is the extent to which these authors used food practices as a means of constructing a picture of radical otherness or ‘alterity’, to borrow a term from postcolonial studies, or, by contrast, they sought to draw comparisons with food and food practices in their own cultures (Nayar, 2015: 6).9
4 Siraya Food and Drink
The reader’s attention is now drawn to the evidence from the sources described above for the food consumed by the Siraya. This section analyses in turn the staple crops that the Siraya cultivated, edible animals, plants, and fish, and drinks. It concludes with a brief word on stimulants.
Although millet was an important staple crop for many Formosan ethnic groups, no millet has been discovered at a Siraya Culture site (Tsang & Li, 2015: 284). Wang Dayuan does mention millet (黍子, shuzi), but we do not know whether he was referencing the Siraya or a neighbouring Formosan ethnic group (Thompson, 1964: 169). Candidius observed that the Siraya cultivated taraun, which was not unlike the Dutch melie, which may reference millet or another crop (Campbell, 1903: 10; Grothe, 1884–1891, vol. 3: 4). It does not occur in the um.10
There is no doubt, however, that the Siraya cultivated rice. Several sources such as Candidius’s ethnography and the um mention rice cultivation and consumption (Campbell, 1903: 10; Van der Vlis, 1842). Elie Ripon records that rice was the Siraya staple (1990: 108). Archaeological evidence, too, indicates that the Siraya cultivated rice (Tsang & Li, 2015: 284). Chen Di observes that apart from rice (米), ‘their grains include the soya bean and lentils [literally, large and small beans], sesame, and pearl-barley. They do not, however, have wheat.’ Regarding his last comment, there is also lexical evidence for the lack of wheat. The um has paul for bread. This is not a native Siraya word. It may derive from the Portuguese pão, via Hokkien (Adelaar, 2011: 355). As a loanword, it marked bread as ‘other’ within Siraya culture. As new foods and food practices are introduced into a culture, a new, specific vocabulary is formed. One unusual example in Siraya is a verb incorporating paul: viz., paha-papa-ul-auh (normalised form: paha-pa-paul-aw). This means ‘to turn into bread’ and occurs in a biblical text, the Gospel of Matthew (4:3) (Adelaar, 2011: 177; Sagart, 2011). Finally, Elie Ripon identifies another staple, which he calls blé lombard. A modern editor has written that this is ‘without doubt corn’ (Ripon, 1990: 108).11
Chen Di observed, ‘the [Siraya] women are sturdy and active; they work constantly while the men are usually idle’ (Thompson, 1964: 175). This is not quite the whole story but does point to a clear division of labour between women and men in Siraya culture. Several authors record that it was the Siraya women who cultivated rice, while men undertook warfare and hunting.12 David Wright references the hunting of ‘every sort of Wild Creatures’ (Montanus, 1671: 35). Chen Di lists animals that the Siraya men hunted as ‘tigers, bears, leopards, and deer’. Similarly, Wright records that the Siraya ‘have … Tygers, Bears, Apes, and the like’ (Montanus, 1671: 21).
The sources frequently reference deer-hunting. Wright observes, ‘[the Siraya] often kill at one of these great Hunting-Matches … sometimes two thousand Head of Deer; so that the Netherlanders could buy there the best and fattest Hanch of Venison for a Shilling’ (ibid., 21, 36). Siraya men also hunted wild pigs or boars. Wright distinguishes between ‘tame and wild Swine’ (ibid., 20–21). Likewise, the um has entries for vavoy ‘pig’ and kavoulon ‘wild pig/boar’. The former were domesticated pigs, while the latter were hunted by the Siraya (Ferrell, 1969: 148–149). The Siraya also ate the meat of goats and hares (Montanus, 1671: 20–21, 35–36). Elie Ripon saw ‘hares as big as small billy goats’, which were very tasty (1990: 108). Finally, Chen Di observed that the Siraya had domesticated cats, dogs, and chickens.13 Chen does not indicate whether the Siraya ate the meat of cats or dogs. He does though note that they did not eat chicken meat but used their feathers for decoration.14 In fact, the Siraya vomited when they saw the Chinese eating chicken meat. For their part, the Chinese, Chen observes, wretched when they saw the Siraya eat not only the meat of deer but also the undigested grass and faeces in the deer carcass (Thompson, 1964: 175–176). Food, as Erica J. Peters observes, represents what we are willing to incorporate into our bodies (2019: 45). Here, Chen tells us what the Siraya and Chinese were not willing to incorporate into their bodies through the reactions of the ‘other’. David M. Friedenreich observes ‘foreign food restrictions construct powerful and nuanced distinctions between Us and Them … they contribute in significant ways to communal conception of both otherness and self-identity’ (2011: 8). Arguably, Chen is using what the Siraya and Chinese find repugnant in the others’ consumption practices as a means of distinguishing between Us and Them.
Turning to archaeological evidence, 11 species of mammal bones have been identified at the Siraya Culture site at Shenei (社内), including cattle, deer, pig, muntjac, dog, rabbit, and cat. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that the Siraya ate the meat of all these animals, although the presence of pig and deer bones supports the written evidence. Deer bones were the most abundant, followed by pig then muntjac bones (Tsang & Li, 2015: 281). Chen Di states that the Siraya did not have cattle, and so these were probably introduced by the Dutch or Han Chinese (Thompson, 1964: 175).15
There was a wide variety of edible plants in ‘Aboriginal Taiwan’. Chen Di wrote, ‘their vegetables include onions, ginger, sweet potatoes, and taro; they have no others. Their fruits include coconuts, persimmons, Buddha’s-hand, and sugarcane’. ‘Buddha’s-hand’ (佛手柑, foshougua) is, like other citrus fruits, probably not native to Taiwan.16
Georgius Candidius observes that the Siraya cultivated three types of fruit or crop, ptingh, quach, and taraun, mentioned above, and two kinds of vegetable. He does not name these but notes that they resemble ‘our Dutch beans’. He also records that the Siraya have three kinds of root, ‘which they use instead of bread’. Elie Ripon, too, mentions roots ‘as big as a leg’, which the Siraya cook and are very tasty. Ripon observes that they are almost like a thick bread. Both Candidius and Ripon, therefore, help their readers understand Siraya food culture by referencing their own experience of food in Europe. So, in these cases at least, rather than constructing a picture of radical otherness or alterity, they seek to draw comparisons between Siraya food culture and their own.
As for vegetables, Ripon mentions cabbages, which he describes as ‘comme à la façon de la Chine’, possibly referencing Chinese cabbages. He also mentions fruit ‘such as oranges and lemons and coconuts and dates’ (1990: 108). Additionally, Candidius mentions ginger, sugarcane, melons, bananas, coconuts, various types of lemon, pinang, or betel nut, and cinnamon (Campbell, 1903: 9; Grothe, 1884–1891, vol. 3: 2, 4). Candidius concludes his list by mentioning that there are other kinds of fruit, the names of which he cannot give in Dutch (Campbell, 1903: 10–11). One of the ‘various types of lemon’ was possibly the pomelo (citrus maxima), which is native to southeast Asia, including Taiwan, and at this time not cultivated elsewhere in the world. If so, this is an example of Candidius fitting his observations into his own existing knowledge grid.
Constant and Pessaert write little about edible plants, although they do observe that each house had 5, 10, or 15 coconut or calappus palm trees and that some had a few lemon or lime trees (tfe, vol. 1: 16). The um includes words for various types of edible plant such as schey ‘radish’ and adach ‘onion’, and trees with edible fruits such as riari ‘lemon tree’ and kameia ‘fig tree’ (Van der Vlis, 1842: 466–467).
As for archaeological evidence, the Siraya continued to use plants from the Niaosung Culture, which preceded their own (1800–500 bp). Apart from rice, these include chinaberry, legumes, bird lime tree (cordia dichotoma), and Job’s tears. Job’s tears probably reference the same plant as Chen Di’s pearl-barley (薏仁, yiren). The number of seeds dispersed in the cultural levels and ashpits indicates that plant-growing techniques employed by the Siraya were already quite advanced (Tsang & Li, 2015: 284, 248).
Candidius observes that the rivers were teeming with fish (Campbell, 1903: 9). Furthermore, Siraya women caught fish, crabs, and shrimps in sampans (Campbell, 1903: 11; Grothe, 1884–1891, vol. 3: 5). This points to contact with Chinese traders but also genders the collection of edible aquatic animals. Likewise, Constant and Pessaert observe that the women gather fruits in the forest and oysters, shellfish, and small fish on the shoreline or in the river.
Constant and Pessaert also make a distinction of social rank. Women of lesser means or status walked into the water up to their necks fishing for jellyfish, snails, and other ‘rubbish’ to eat. They did this without the company of men (tfe, vol. 1: 7, 16). The um lists aliag ‘shark’, pagig ‘ray fish’, pigick ‘bream’, and toula ‘eel’, and indicates that fish were salted or dried (Van der Vlis, 1842: 469).
Candidius observed that the women salted the fish with their scales and entrails still on. After the fish had been left for a while, they were consumed ‘with all the filth included’. He expands on the trope of ‘filth’ by asserting that ‘it is difficult to distinguish the fish when taken out of the jars on account of the worms and mites, but in this condition the people consider them more palatable and more delicious than ever’ (Campbell, 1903: 11). Constant and Pessaert observed that ‘strangely’ the Siraya did not have fresh fish (tfe, vol. 1: 7, 16).
Other edible aquatic animals in the um include gnile ‘crab’, tarivatip ‘mussels’, and coudo ‘oysters’ (Van der Vlis, 1842: 469). David Wright observes, ‘the circumjacent Sea … abounds with Fish, especially the Harder, or Shepherd-Fish, and another call’d the Kings-Fish’. Chinese sailed to Taiwan to fish the harder, a type of mullet (Montanus, 1671: 20–21; dkz, vol. 1: 82). The um gives the Siraya for the harder as dourong. Finally, remains of 13 species of fish have been found at the Shenei Siraya Culture site. The most common is cod, followed by porgy or bream, listed in the um. Other fish remains include stingray, carp, and spotted catfish. Additionally, remains of crustaceans including crabs, also in the um, and molluscs have been identified (Tsang & Li, 2015: 281).
Apart from water, the Siraya drank coconut milk. Constant and Pessaert record that the Siraya picked young coconuts from the trees by their houses and drank from them (tfe, vol. 1: 16). The um lists hakey ‘milk’, but as it does not specify a source, this may simply be a generic term. Elie Ripon observes that the Siraya have two or three sorts of drink, which he likens to beer, thus fitting Siraya drinks into his existing knowledge framework. One is presented white like thick milk, while another is a little clearer. The third sort of drink is simply ‘very good like beer’ (Ripon 1990: 108). Other sources name the alcoholic beverages. The um defines massichauw as a ‘clear drink’, while David Wright describes it as an alcoholic drink made of rice and water (Montanus, 1671: 32).17 Other alcoholic drinks were kutgeij, which the um defines as a ‘thick drink’, and makousagh, a ‘ripe, strong drink’ (Chiu, 2008: 178). The um also lists mangoude, a ‘green, new drink’. The Siraya therefore had several alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.
Finally, the reader’s attention is drawn to stimulants. Prior to the arrival of the Dutch, the Siraya had begun to smoke tobacco. At the Shenei archaeological site, a partial smoking pipe has been discovered (Tsang & Li, 2015: 300). In 1623, Constant and Pessaert reported that the Siraya were keen to obtain Chinese tobacco, and Governor de Witt observed that they were easy to please with a pipe of tobacco (tfe, vol. 1: 20, 44). By the 1650s, tobacco-smoking had become established among the Siraya. David Wright observed that ‘the Inhabitants also take Tobacco although it grows not there, but is brought to them from China: Their Pipes are thin Reeds or Canes, with Stone Heads’ (Montanus, 1671: 25).
5 Food Practices Involving Rice and Rice-Based Alcohol
They clear an area by fire and then plant their crop; when the mountain flowers bloom then they plough. When the grain is ripe then they pluck the ears. The grains of rice are somewhat longer than those of China, and also tastier.
These contrasts are examples of the construction of the ‘other’ or of a picture of alterity, which, Leigh Jenco and Birgit Tremml-Werner argue, is at the heart of Chen’s discourse in Dongfan Ji (Jenco & Tremml-Werner, 2021). So important was grain (禾, he) in general to the Siraya, that if anyone should steal it, Chen writes, ‘they are slain at the village altar (杜 she). Therefore, at night the doors are not closed, and no one dares to pilfer where the grain is piled up in the threshing yard’ (Thompson, 1964: 175).
Rice cultivation, harvesting, storage, and preparation were largely gendered as it was women, whom Candidius described as ‘drudges’, who did most of this work. When the rice plant broke through the soil, it was transplanted. When it ripened, the women did not use sickles or scythes to cut the stalks. Rather, they used ‘a certain kind of instrument in the form of a knife’, which, Candidius observed, they used to ‘cut off each stalk separately at about a handbreadth from the ear’. When the rice had been cut, the women took it to their houses without threshing it or taking the husks off, and then stored it until they prepared it for consumption. They would get up two hours before daylight, pound the rice, and prepare the quantity needed for that day and no more (Campbell, 1903: 10, 11).
In one detail-filled sentence, Constant and Pessaert record how rice is prepared, who prepares it, its colour, and its texture: ‘the women … cook and steam their rice (which is red) until it resembles porridge’ (tfe, vol. 1: 7, 16).19 Similarly, Elie Ripon notes that the Siraya cooked rice as a ‘thick paste’, and that it was ‘quite good [to eat]’ (1990: 108).
While, in Candidius’s eyes, the women who undertook all the processes involving rice, as far as consumption, were ‘drudges’, another view is that this gendering of rice practices had symbolic significance. The cycle of pregnancy and childbirth has something in common with the cycle of rice cultivation. Furthermore, in Claude Lévi-Strauss’s view, those who deal with cooking gain a prestigious status in society as they transform food from the material and natural to the symbolic and cultural (Corvo, 2015: 12).
They take a quantity of rice, which, after simmering for some time, is kneaded into a dough. They then chew rice flour and spit it into a pot or jar until a pint of liquid is obtained.20 This is mixed with the dough just mentioned, in order to be leavened, after it has become as fine as the baker’s dough of which we bake our bread. The dough having been thus prepared, is afterwards put into a large jar, water is poured over it, and it is allowed to stand for about two months, fermenting like new must in a cask; by the end of which time it becomes a beautiful, strong, and delicious beverage.
When the beverage does come to be used it seems to consist of two parts, that at the top being as clear as the purest water from a fountain, while the part at the bottom of the vessel is as thick as pulp. This thick part is usually supped with a spoon; when used as a beverage, it must be mixed with water.
when the people go to their fields, they always take with them some of this mash in a jar or piece of bamboo, and a quantity of water, this forming their food and drink for the whole day. [The top part] they take only in very small quantities to strengthen and cheer them, not to quench their thirst.
He concludes his description of this beverage by observing that the Siraya in fact devote most of the rice crop every year to its preparation. The Siraya, therefore, consumed rice quite differently from other ethnic groups such as the Chinese.
5.1 Food and the Siraya Calendar
Here their Priestess pretends to speak with, and receive Answers from their gods, offering them Swines-flesh, Rice, Masakhaw, and Pisang, with Prayers to send them store of Rain for the forwarding the growth of their Corn, or if it be already grown, to keep it from hurtful Winds. After their Sacrifices ended, they sit down … and fall a Drinking to excess.
The elders then sprinkle a whole reed in one hand and a lance in the other with massichauw. Wright does not, however, state why they do this.22
The second festival, Warabo Lang varolbo, was held in June. Both men and women made sacrifices. The women prayed to gods for good fortune and security against fire and deadly beasts. The men prayed to other gods, offering them massichauw, steamed rice, pinang, siri, and pork (Dapper, 1670: 31; Montanus, 1671: 32). During the third feast, Sickariariang, held in July, a sacrifice was made near the sea. It was ‘as one of the Bacches and Venus’s Feasts so that it differs much and exceeds the rest, in perpetrating unheard of Abominations’. In layman’s terms, it probably looked like an extended orgy, although it could also be framed as a fertility rite for a good harvest. The inib, or shamaness-priestess, made sacrifices to the gods and prayed that the women’s crops might be preserved from strong winds, storms, and wild beasts (Dapper, 1670: 32; Montanus, 1671: 33).
The fourth festival, Lingout, began at harvest time. During this festival, men sought to win a maiden’s favour. On a spiritual level, men and women prayed to the gods for rain, to keep the corn in the husks, and to banish storms. On a human level, men would run naked to the river. Whoever won the race would enjoy the pleasures of the prettiest girl (Chiu, 2008: 210). Wright does not make explicit the function of the fifth festival, Piniangh, held in October. After noting that the participants come to ‘their place of Offering’, he observes that this festival was ‘no less polluted by vicious [i.e. lascivious] performances than the other’. The sixth festival, Itaoungang, involved young and old men performing various rituals over two days. They made offerings and then engaged in heavy drinking for a whole night. The seventh festival, Karouloutaen, was held in November. Here, the Siraya ‘adorn their Arms and Heads with white Feathers’, possibly plucked from chickens (Dapper, 1670: 32; Montanus, 1671: 33).
6 Meanings Generated by Food and Drink
The article now analyses other food practices and the meanings generated by them. It then analyses taboos, which prohibited the consumption of certain food and drink for specific periods of time.
6.1 Gifting Food
The French sociologist Marcel Mauss analyses the concept of gift and the relations generated by the exchange, identifying three characteristics: the acts of giving, receiving, and reciprocating. He observes that not only do objects circulate but so too does the spirit of the donor. This generates a bond between individuals that goes beyond purely economic exchange (Mauss, 1950, quoted in Corvo, 2015: 59, 76). Furthermore, the act of gift-giving establishes recognition between social groups (Hénaff, 2013: 19; Satlow, 2013: 8).
In their description of the liquors placed by graves, Constant and Pessaert observe that they caused tipsiness or drunkenness, which may have offended their Calvinist sensibilities. The Siraya offered the same alcoholic beverage to them ‘over and over again’, even pushing it down their throats against their will, thinking they were doing the Dutchmen a special favour (tfe, vol. 1: 13, 22). The Siraya may have believed that it was not only the drink that moved from donor to recipient, but also their spirits. One possibility is that this is an example of what Luc Boltanski describes as ‘the gratuity of Agape action’. The Agape action is a ‘gift that ignores counter-gift’ and ‘makes possible a world where individuals are saved from the obligation to establish relations of equivalence’ (Boltanski, 1990: 75, quoted in Corvo, 2015: 66). On the other hand, as Mauss cautions, there is no ‘free’ gift (Mauss, 1950: 39, quoted in Satlow, 2013: 5).
In 1630, the Governor of Formosa, Hans Putmans (in office 1629–1636), wrote to the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, Jacques Specx, referencing quantities of massichauw, which the Dutch planned to give as a present to the Sinckan villagers, or Sinckanders, as well as ‘grand feasts’ (Campbell, 1903: 102). This example illustrates well a point made by Mary Douglas, that food can function as a means of expressing social relationships (Douglas, 1984, quoted in Corvo, 2015: 13). Indeed, Mauss asserted that all gifts are embedded in a set of social relationships (Mauss, 1950: 39; Satlow, 2013: 5). It is interesting, though, that it was the Dutch giving massichauw to the Siraya and not vice versa.
Taking food in its broadest sense as something ingested, above I noted that Governor de Witt believed that it was easy to keep the Siraya satisfied with a pipe of tobacco (tfe, vol. 1: 44). Constant and Pessaert reported that the Siraya were eager to obtain Chinese tobacco, which they sometimes handed to them along with pipes. They underline how strange smoking tobacco was to the Siraya and how unusual it was that tobacco did not grow in Taiwan (tfe, vol. 1: 20).
Finally, Chen Di recorded that after defeating the Japanese wako pirates, the Chinese fleet weighed anchor in Tayouan Bay and met the Siraya, who presented the sailors ‘with deer and liquor, joyful at having been delivered from harm’ (Thompson, 1964: 178). Here, perhaps, gifting functions as an act of reciprocating, whereby the Siraya express their gratitude at the ‘gift’ of being delivered from harm by offering in return food and drink to the Chinese. This would, in turn, generate more gratitude.
6.2 Food for Exchange and Trade
Wang Dayuan wrote that among the products that could be obtained from Taiwan were yellow beans, millet, the hides of deer, leopards, and moose (Thompson, 1964: 169). One of Constant and Pessaert’s duties was to identify commercial opportunities in Taiwan. They recorded that in times of need they could support the nearby Pescadores, or Penghu Islands, from Taiwan with fresh food such as lemons, wild apples, bananas, onions, pigs, poultry, deer, and hundreds of other sorts of food. This could be supplemented by food brought from China by Chinese merchants (tfe, vol. 1: 12, 21). They also reported that the Chinese traded salt with the Siraya. They asked their Chinese interpreter why the Chinese brought salt from the mainland, when they could easily make saltpans on the coast of the Siraya territory. He replied that if the Chinese did so, the Siraya would know how to extract salt from the sea and they would then lose a lucrative trade (tfe, vol. 1: 5, 14).23
In an early report on the commercial possibilities of Taiwan, Martinus Sonck estimates that the Siraya traded some 200,000 deerskins each year with the Chinese, as well as dried venison, dried fish, and fruit (tfe, vol. 1: 37, 42). Sonck focused on whether Taiwan could sustain a large influx of Dutch settlers. He concluded that it could, for Taiwan was, he observed, very fertile, abundant in game such as deer, serows, wild pigs, pheasants, and hares, and there were many (freshwater) fish in an inland lake and in the sea (ibid., 39).
Elie Ripon recorded that the Siraya would exchange dried deer meat for ‘Indian’ clothing from Chinese merchants (1990: 107). Unusually, Ripon records exchanges between Siraya and Chinese merchants, probably with the assistance of a Chinese interpreter. In the Siraya village of Mattau, he heard a Siraya ask a Chinese merchant, ‘chorque baboue chorque rouca’. This is a mix of Hokkien and Siraya. Chorque comprises chiah (Hokkien = eat) and possibly ki, the Siraya default case marker (Adelaar, 2011: 79). Baboue is a version of the Siraya word for ‘pig’ (cf. vavoy above), and rouca comes from the Hokkien for ‘deer’ lok/loka.24 So this means ‘do you eat pork, do you eat deer?’ (Ripon, 1990: 108).25 Other phrases that Ripon records also mix Hokkien and Siraya. The question therefore arises as to whether this is simply code switching or rather points to something more profound such as a traders’ sociolect or jargon. In short, we do not know, but it provides further evidence of trading between the Siraya and southern Chinese traders and, moreover, suggests that the Siraya and Chinese traders knew something of each other’s language. It also illustrates the importance of food in commercial exchange between Siraya and Chinese merchants and the type of discourse generated by this food practice. In the Dutch colonial period, the Siraya traded with voc employees. As noted above, one product that they sold to the Dutch was venison (Montanus, 1671: 35–36).
6.3 Food for Propitiatory Sacrifice
Context and instrumentalisation generate religious meaning for food and drink. In ‘Aboriginal Taiwan’ food was instrumentalised to propitiate the gods. As with other food practices, the meaning generated by this practice was transitive. Raleigh Ferrell writes that Dutch sources are silent as to the possible ritual importance of rice during the seventeenth century (1969: 10). Nevertheless, Dutch authors observe that rice was one of the food offerings made to deities. Candidius reports that the inibs offered sacrifices to the Sinckanders’ gods. These included slaughtered pigs, cooked rice, pinang, and a great quantity of ‘their beverage’, that is, the rice-based alcoholic drink (Campbell, 1903: 24). Robertus Junius, too, references the sacrifices that the Siraya made in his sermons and catechisms. In one sermon, he asks rhetorically whether the Judaeo-Christian God wants the sacrifices that the Siraya make to their gods: ‘Does He say: “Serve me with pinang, siry, beverage, cooked rice, or the flesh of swine?”’ The answer is of course negative (Campbell, 1903: 331).26 Junius makes a similar point in a catechism. Question 27 runs, ‘But would the flesh of swine, pinang, stewed rice, and other things not be acceptable to [God]?’ The answer is ‘No; if he desired these He would simply take them.’ The prominent role played by the staple rice in Siraya religious practices mirrors that of the role of maize in religious rituals in Meso-America described below.
Junius also attempted to change Siraya food practice through the Ten Commandments in his catechisms. In one catechism, he modifies the fourth commandment, the injunction to observe the Sabbath, by adding, ‘do not enter your fields on Sunday’. In another catechism, he adds that it is sinful to draw water or go fishing on the Sabbath, even after sunset (Campbell, 1903: 337, 369).
David Wright, too, describes the Siraya food offerings (Dapper, 1670: 35; Montanus, 1671: 17). He writes: ‘Their chiefest Offerings are Stags and Boars Heads, presented in a Charger, upon steamed Rice, Pynang, and other strong Drinks, as a Condiment.’27 Wright also briefly describes the offerings made at harvest time. He mentions ‘corn’ but probably uses this term to reference all crops, including rice, ‘when the Corn is ready to be cut, they thresh one Bundle, and … implore the Gods to fill and make weighty the Ears of all the rest’. After taking the corn to their houses, they performed many rituals as they killed a pig, which they then offered to their gods (Montanus, 1671: 34–35).28 In relation to the modern-day Amis, Shu-ling Yeh observes that pig sacrifices constitute ritual exchanges with the ancestors and are ‘a traditionally generative source of life, social identity and village solidarity’ (2014: 41, 45). Something similar could probably be said of the pig sacrifice practised by the Siraya.
Finally, Wright observed that Siraya men made sacrifices to their deities during hunting, which could be understood as acts of thanksgiving (Montanus, 1671: 35–36):
6.4 Offerings for the Blessing of New Houses
Before they go to work upon the main House, they offer to their gods a Box of Pinang, steamed rice, and a dry’d Shepherd, or some other the like Fish … he who is judg’d to have had the best Dream, begins the Work first, and offers strong Drink, and Pinang to the gods, praying them to grant him two quick Hands to perform his Labor. When the Walls are made, the Master of the Work first entring the House, makes an Offering to the gods before all the People. When they raise the Roof, three or four Women stand ready with Callibashes full of Water, out of which drinking, they spit some part into the Mouths of each other, which if deliver’d cleanly, and receiv’d without sprinkling, they count it a good Omen, that their Houses will prove stanch and long lasting.
The inibs performed rituals in which they drank copious quantities of massichauw and then urinated to symbolise rain from a god (Chiu, 2008: 184–187). One possibility here is that the women spitting water are again symbolising rain. The fact that if it is received without sprinkling is a good omen may symbolise the ability of the house to withstand rainfall and thus prove ‘stanch and long lasting’. Finally, alcohol was never far from Siraya mouths during celebrations. Wright concludes that when the house is finished, ‘they Tope at such a free and plentiful rate, that they conclude these Ceremonious Rites in the heighth of Ebrity’.
6.5 The Use of Food and Drink for Healing the Sick and Funeral Rites
But before the Tamatatah (for so they call their Doctress) comes to the Patient, she Sacrifices to their gods; if the Distemper be small, then only with Masakhaw; but if the sickness be dangerous, with Pinang and Siry.
If the initial actions of the tamatatah and the inibs prove successful, the inib makes an offering of a pot full of massichauw. If they prove unsuccessful, then the inib, who ascribes illness to the devil (Siraya: Schytinglitto), takes a pot of massichauw, and having drunk ‘a good Soope out of it’, throws the rest of the pot after the devil, and says, ‘Take that, and return not to the Patient from whom I expell’d you’.
If efforts to restore a sick person are in vain, the inib commits the person ‘to their gods’ by pouring ‘so much strong Liquor down their Throats, that running out at their Mouth and Nostrils, it drowns and suffocates’. The corpse is prepared for burial ‘and Rice and Masakhaw proffer’d to him’. Friends and most villagers come to see the corpse, each with a pot of massichauw, and there is a period of mourning, which includes mournful singing and prayer. Such communal acts illustrate how food practice engenders cultural memory and is intrinsic to the formation of societal identity (Malhotra et al., 2021: xv).
Wright then records an important social distinction. After the corpse had lain on rushes for two days, it was taken to a place called Takay, where it was washed several times with water. However, if the person was rich, they washed it with massichauw. Later, ‘they make a great Feast call’d Gahalhal, killing ten or twelve Swine, some for offerings to the gods, others for Taghimihe, or Provisions for the departed Souls Journey’. Some of the pork was cut into small pieces and offered to mourners in what may be understood as a Totenmahl (funerary feast). This has echoes of the funerary meals carried out at the graveside in ancient Rome (silicernium) and Greece (deipnon). Here, too, food offerings were shared ‘equally’ between the living who consumed them at the graveside and the dead. Again, if the deceased was rich, the corpse was kept some years before it was buried ‘and serv’d every day as if living, setting fresh Meat and Drink before it’. In ancient Rome and Greece, the deceased were also given food gifts. One reason for this was simply because the dead like good food and drink (Lewis, 2013: 126–128). The same reason may be at work for the Siraya. Finally, bodies were buried near to the ‘temples’ next to the Siraya houses.
Constant and Pessaert record that the Siraya put two kinds of liquor around the grave of the deceased. One was coloured like ‘kielangh or Spanish wine’ and of a rare taste, while the other was probably massichauw. It was as white as milk but very cloudy and was mixed with many rice grains, of which it was made, distilled, and brewed (tfe, vol. 1: 13, 22).
The Siraya food practices or rituals around death and burial illustrate well how food was ‘deeply and historically rooted in structures of power, knowledge and location’ (Benbow & Perry, 2019: 1). The role of the inibs, the distinction between wealthy and less wealthy, the knowledge of which food to administer or consume at which stage of this process, and the importance of place including Takay and the ‘temples’ for burial underline this point. Furthermore, they illustrate how food is a source of memory, identity, and encounter and a symbol of social status (Corvo, 2015: 2).
7 Taboos around Food
William Robertson Smith provides a dated but still useful definition of taboos as restrictions on ‘man’s arbitrary use of natural things, enforced by dread of supernatural penalties’ (Robertson Smith, 1889: 142, quoted in Douglas, 1993: 10). Paolo Corvo observes that taboos represent ‘the limits that each culture establishes’ (2015: 13). This is true within a culture, to ward off the supernatural penalties to which Robertson Smith refers. However, it is also true between cultures as taboos, which can also be understood as laws, reinforce the categories of ‘Us’ and ‘not-Us’ or ‘self’ and ‘other’ (Friedenreich, 2011: 16).
They are not permitted to take Tobacco in the Seed-time, lest (as their Priestesses tell them) all their Seed should turn into that stinking Vapor. They are forbidden in that time to throw the Bones of Salt Fish, or Peels of Onions on the Ground; but must carry them in a Talangack, or Pot, into the Woods, to prevent the devouring of their Corn by Poysonous Serpents. They must keep no Fire, lest the Corn should be burnt. Sugar-Canes or Pomegranates they may eat onely in the Evening; but they may not during that Season taste any Roast-meat, for fear the Corn should be set on Fire by wild Swine; nor any Mahall, that is, Powder’d Flesh, lest it should be devour’d by Worms: They must also abstain from Kanging and a Hay, both Fishes, because they believe, if they should eat of them, that the Corn would have no Ears. They conceit, that if they should sleep in the Field during their Seed-time, their Corn would not grow upright, but lodge on the Ground; and if they drink any Water, except mix’d with Masakhaw, that the Grain would never ripen, but be green and watery.
While some of these taboos, such as the prohibition on lighting fires, have some practical basis, others, such as not eating fish to ensure that the corn ripens, seem to lack such a basis (Douglas, 1993: 30–31). The taboo on using tobacco seems to be based on analogy: if tobacco leaves can be turned to a ‘stinking Vapor’, then there is a danger, so the thinking might go, that this could happen to the seed, on which the very existence of the Siraya depends.
Candidius writes that when the rice is half ripe, the Sinckanders may not become intoxicated, nor touch sugar, pietang, or any kind of fat. He asked the Sinckanders why they did this and received the answer that if they got drunk or ate any of these things, the deer would get into the rice fields and destroy them. These taboos have a practical but also an analogous function. By not eating, they are symbolising the hope that the deer will not eat the rice. Furthermore, by not becoming intoxicated, they will better be able to guard the rice crop. Candidius adds that if they did not adhere to this taboo, others would look down on them (Campbell, 1903: 16; Grothe, 1884–1891, vol. 3: 14). David Wright records taboos observed at harvest time. One of these is that ‘they never cut their Corn before they have made Offerings to their Gods’ (Montanus, 1671: 34–35).
An important set of reverential acts, including taboos, were performed during the monthly solemn period of karichang. According to Siraya tradition, Farihhe, Fikarigo Gougosey had been a Sinckander who was transformed into a deity. After his apotheosis, Farihhe returned to earth with 27 ‘articles’ that the Siraya had to observe. These articles, such as not building houses, can be understood as taboos or laws (Dapper, 1670: 36–38; Montanus, 1671: 34–37; Lin, 2014: 62, 173–174).
David Wright describes these taboos, several of which concern food practices. The eighth taboo is that ‘No Clothes, Gangans, Rice, Rice-Stampers [rice pummels], Black Pots with two Ears [handles], nor any other Drinking Vessels, shall be brought into the Houses’, and the ninth: ‘Thou shalt not plant Pinang, nor Clapper-Trees, nor Canes, nor Potatoes, nor any other Plant’. ‘Potatoes’ (Dutch: patatis) references a type of tuber; probably not the common potato, Solanum tuberosum, which is native to the Americas, but the sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas (地瓜, digua), which is an important ingredient in contemporary Taiwanese cuisine.29 The fourteenth taboo runs, ‘thou shalt not kill any Swine, though one of thy chiefest Friends come to visit thee, unless at Obits [i.e. someone has died]’, and the sixteenth, ‘thou shalt not put any Swine in the new Houses made before the Karichang if there were none in before’. The twenty-seventh and final taboo prohibits the making of Mariche thad Kaddelangang, which Montanus glosses as ‘a kind of their meat or drink’, during karichang (Montanus, 1671: 37; Lin, 2014: 173–174). While it would be difficult, if not impossible, to establish a practical basis for these taboos, it is more important to focus on the broader social function that they serve, which, as Mary Douglas argues, is to reinforce the social bonds of a community and consolidate the symbolic value of reference values and norms (Corvo, 2015: 12).
Finally, on a slightly different note, Constant and Pessaert observe that while some Siraya ate pork, others seemed frightened to do so. They liken the former to pagans and the latter to Muslims, in so doing placing the Siraya consumption of pork in their existing knowledge grid (tfe, vol. 1: 9, 18).
8 The Food Culture of Other Formosan Groups
Due to their geographical location, the Siraya were the Formosan group who had most intensive contact with non-Formosans. They are therefore the group about which we know the most in the precolonial period. While this means that we have plenty of source material for constructing a picture of their precolonial food practices, we must be cautious about reading across from the Siraya to other Formosan groups. Two other groups about whom we have information are the Favorlang and the Basay. The article now analyses their food practices in the precolonial period.
8.1 Favorlang Food Culture
The Favorlang lived to the north of the Siraya, with their main village probably located near present-day Huwei (虎尾) in Yunlin County about 50 miles north of the Bay of Tayouan (Andrade, 2005: 295, 306, 296, n. 1). Their language, which is now extinct, is possibly an earlier form of Babuza, which is classified as a Central Western Plains language by Robert Blust (Blust, 1999: 45). Due to unrest in this area resulting from Chinese immigration, the Dutch had intensive contact with the Favorlang in the 1640s and 1650s. Dutch missionaries followed, and they compiled doctrinal texts and a Favorlang-Dutch lexicon as part of their attempt to convert the Favorlang to Christianity. These texts give us a few insights into Favorlang food culture.
Wheat is not indigenous to Taiwan, so there is no Formosan word for wheat bread. Therefore, when Christian missionaries needed to reference bread, in for example the Lord’s Prayer (‘Give us today our daily bread’), they came up with different solutions. Those who worked with the Favorlang used uppo (Li, 2019: 327). The Favorlang-Dutch lexicon defines this as ‘indigenous people’s cake made from crushed rice, bread’ (Happart, 1842: 345). The lexicon has words which manifest different food practices involving rice such as lalla for ‘boiled rice’ and lallama for ‘pap made from rice and water’. Unlike the Siraya, the Favorlang cultivated millet. It was then exported from their region by Chinese merchants (dkz, vol. 1: 377, 350). Unlike the Siraya texts, the Favorlang-Dutch lexicon, therefore, has a word for ‘millet’ (Fav. batŭr; Dutch: gierst) (Campbell, 1896: 126–127; Happart, 1842: 113, 362).
As with the Siraya, pigs were important in Favorlang food culture. The Favorlang-Dutch lexicon gives babo(e) for ‘pig’, a cognate of the Siraya word for domesticated pig, vavoy. One example of food practice involving pigs is that, according to Favorlang custom, the ransom for a murderer was a pig (Campbell, 1896: 125, 130).
Finally, one alcoholic beverage that the Favorlang consumed was chamma. The lexicon defines this as ‘a drink made of water and dregs, also sugar beer’ (Happart, 1842: 63). In contrast to the Siraya massichauw, we do not, however, have any information about the occasions on which the Favorlang might have consumed chamma.
8.2 Basay Food Culture
The Basay lived in coastal areas of northern Taiwan. Between 1626 and 1642, they had intensive contact with Spanish colonists and missionaries. Their language, which is now extinct, is classified along with Siraya as East Formosan (Blust, 1999: 45).30 We might therefore expect to find similarities between the Basay and Siraya cultures including food culture. We have two reports on the customs and practices of the Basay, both written in 1632. They tell us much less about the Basay food practices than Candidius or Wright do about the Siraya food practices, but still demand our attention. One report was written by the Dominican missionary Jacinto Esquivel and the other may also have been written by him (Borao, 2001–2002, vol. 1: 162–198). According to Esquivel, the natives of Quimaurri and Taparri, two villages near modern-day Jilong, lived on fishing, hunting, and salt-making. Above, I mentioned that the Siraya did not know how to make or pan salt. One possibility is that the Basay learned salt-panning from the Chinese (Borao, 2001–2002, vol. 1: 166).
As for the staple crop of the Basay, like the Siraya they only grew enough rice for their own needs, for, Esquivel reports, planting required great effort (Borao, 2001–2002, vol. 1: 170–171). Neither report on the Basay mentions millet. Of course, the fact that millet is not mentioned does not per se mean that the Basay did not cultivate it. Nevertheless, its absence is worthy of note. Further investigation may reveal whether there is any archaeological evidence for the cultivation of millet in precolonial northern Taiwan.31
In the mountains in northwest Taiwan, there were many fruit trees. Two varieties that Esquivel explicitly mentions are peach and orange (Borao, 2001–2002, vol. 1: 166). Peaches originated in China (Thacker, 1985: 57; Zheng, Crawford & Chen, 2014). Oranges originated in an area encompassing southern China, northeast India, and Myanmar (Morton, 1987: 134). Neither fruit is therefore native to Taiwan, and so they are alien or exotic plants in Taiwan.
The Basay ate sea food and venison. Esquivel remarks that the Basay consumed venison raw, which may suggest that this differed from Spanish food practice. Furthermore, they ate deer entrails without first cleaning these of excrement. This has echoes of Chen Di’s observation that the Siraya ate the undigested grass and faeces in the deer carcass and Candidius’s comment that they ate fish with the scales and entrails and ‘with all the filth included’.
Pigs were important in Basay food practice, as they have been in that of other Formosan groups, including the Siraya.32 During feasts they killed pigs. Furthermore, the men and women would dance in circles around a group of majuorbol, the old women whose function in Basay society was like that of the inibs for the Siraya. They would perform a ritual slaughter of a pig. For ‘pig’, Esquivel switches to use the Basay word babuy, which is a cognate of the Siraya word for domesticated pig, vavoy (Borao, 2001–2002, vol. 1: 180).
Again, like the Siraya, the Basay consumed much alcohol during their feasts. These would last for three days, during which they would do nothing other than masitanguistanguich. This involved singing, dancing, and drinking all the time ‘with jars of wine all around’. The base of the wine is not mentioned. One possibility is rice, for the Basay got drunk at harvest time and when the rice grains appeared, as well as after headhunting expeditions. The jars may have come from China, for Esquivel reports that the Basay traded jars of wine from China with Chinese sangleys (Borao, 2001–2002, vol. 1: 175).
Esquivel also writes about Basay food and drink practices around illness and death. When someone fell ill, they would call upon the majuorbol. First, the sick person would need to make a payment, butcher a pig, and hold a drunken feast. Then, the person would be exorcised of the evil spirit causing the illness. The exorcism involved the majuorbol lying on the ground and spitting on a plate of boiled rice, while mumbling incantations. One funerary food practice that Esquivel mentions is that the Basay place some rice porridge next to the head of the deceased for food. This may simply be because the dead like good food and drink, or to give the dead food for the journey to the spirit world (Lewis, 2013: 126–128).
Finally, the Basay had thousands of ‘omens’. These can be understood as taboos. They believed that if they ate one kind of food and not another, pigs would eat up the rice, or the rice fields would dry up. We are not, however, told which food they should not eat to prevent this happening (Borao, 2001–2002, vol. 1: 179–180).
Concluding, these three Formosan ethnic groups have food and food practices in common, for example, they all rear pigs and consume alcohol: the Siraya and Basay, at least, in large quantities. One striking result is that while the Favorlang cultivated millet, there is no evidence that the Siraya and Basay did so. The fact that the Favorlang belong to a different Formosan language group to the Siraya and Basay may be a coincidence or may suggest that they came to Taiwan at different times.
9 Pre-Columbian Meso- and South America
One aim of this article is to contribute to our understanding of food practices of indigenous peoples outside Europe before they were radically changed by encounters with European colonists. It will therefore be instructive to analyse briefly what Spanish authors wrote about food culture and practices in the Caribbean, Meso-, and South America in the early years of Spanish colonisation. One feature of the indigenous diet that drew attention was that it lacked what Rebecca Earle describes as ‘the structural elements’ of the Spanish diet: wheat, bread, wine, oil, and meat. The core of the indigenous diet was, rather, maize, potatoes, and cassava (Earle, 2012: 41, 142; Pérez Samper, 2014: 22). Maize not only functioned as a staple but was also a sacred substance within indigenous cultures. For this reason, Catholic priests denounced its use in healing rituals and divination rites (Earle, 2012: 152). Like Dutch authors in Taiwan, some Spanish authors worked with the trope of abundance. Whereas fruit in Europe was a seasonal treat, so much fruit grew in the Americas that unwanted pineapples and guavas were left abandoned in huge piles (ibid., 106). The colonists encountered many other foods, such as chocolate and chilli peppers, which would in time spread across the world. How they prepared and consumed chocolate, chillies, and other ingestibles such as tomatoes was fundamentally shaped by indigenous practices contributing to the emergence of a Spanish-creole culture (Earle, 2012: 142, 136; Pérez Samper, 2014: 34).
Authors also observed that the indigenous people typically ate much less than the Spanish. This abstemiousness, above all in eating little meat, led Spanish authors to view their own people as gluttons by comparison (Earle, 2012: 42–43). One ingestible from which the indigenous people did not abstain was alcohol. Several Spanish authors contrasted this with the proverbial Spanish sobriety (Earle, 2012: 43–44). So, to compare food practice in Meso- and South America with that of precolonial Taiwan, on the one hand there were similarities, such as the consumption of much alcohol, but on the other hand there were differences, as in the consumption of meat.
10 Conclusion
The aim of this article has been to provide insights into food culture in ‘Aboriginal Taiwan’ using a case study of Siraya food practices and the meanings that they generated. It has analysed texts compiled by several authors and supplemented these with archaeological and lexical evidence. The authors, who included Chinese, Dutch, a Swiss, and a Scot, wrote in several languages, including Classical Chinese (文言, wenyan), Dutch, and French. Furthermore, they had a range of backgrounds and would often try to fit their observations of Siraya food culture into their own existing knowledge grids. While Chen Di used food practices to construct a picture of alterity or radical otherness, other authors attempted to draw parallels between their own culture and Siraya culture. Chen Di observed that the Siraya, in contrast to his fellow Chinese, did not eat chicken. Furthermore, they engaged in dry-field rice cultivation, whereas the Chinese used paddy fields. While recognising differences between their own cultures and that of the Siraya, Candidius, Ripon, and Constant and Pessaert nevertheless often preferred to make comparisons between Siraya food and food practices and those of their own cultures. Furthermore, this article has analysed the multiple meanings generated by Siraya food practices. Moreover, it has demonstrated that the same food used in different food practices could generate different meanings. The use of the rice-based alcoholic beverage in different food practices is a good example of this.
The study of food and food practices offers a fresh way into thinking about society. One result from this analysis is that gender roles formed an essential element of Siraya society. Apart from hunting, most Siraya food practices were performed by women. Another result is that Siraya society was marked by social rank based on wealth. Women of lesser means had to wade into the sea to collect less appetising aquatic animals. Likewise, the corpses of less wealthy Siraya were washed with water, while massichauw, the production of which represented a high point in Siraya food technology, was used to wash the corpses of the rich. One other result is that food formed a vital part of trade and exchange between Siraya and Chinese merchants and provides a way into analysing their trade jargon.
This article has placed the analysis of Siraya food culture in a broader context. One result that requires further investigation is the lack of archaeological, lexical, and textual evidence for millet cultivation by the Siraya. This does not mean for certain that they did not cultivate millet, and one wonders whether Candidius had stumbled across a variety of millet when he referenced a crop ‘not unlike melie’, but the possibility is there. Furthermore, there is no mention of millet in the Spanish sources on the Basay, whose language, like Siraya, is classified as East Formosan. This contrasts with the Favorlang, whose language is not East Formosan, and who did cultivate millet. The lack of evidence for millet cultivation in the sources on the Siraya and Basay is certainly striking, although not conclusive. It raises interesting questions, such as whether the Siraya and the Basay came to Taiwan at a different time from other Formosan ethnic groups. If, on further investigation, this proves to be the case, the lack of millet cultivation would point to the ‘otherness’ of the Siraya and Basay within the Formosan context.
In some cases, though, all three Formosan groups had similar food practices. One example is the keeping of pigs and consumption of their meat. The article also analysed several foods and food practices in pre-Columbian Meso- and South America. One parallel between the Formosan groups and the indigenous Americans was that they both liked to consume alcohol. This drew the attention of the more abstemious Spanish and Dutch authors. It may be instructive in future research to compare foods and food practices of these Formosan groups with those of other indigenous groups in the Asia-Pacific region.
Inevitably, Siraya food practice changed with the arrival of the voc. One change already mentioned is that whereas in the precolonial period, the Siraya only cultivated enough rice for their own needs, the voc cultivated surplus rice for export to increase its revenues.
This is an example of how local food practices change because of contact with transnational actors. Other changes to food practice occurred in the realm of religion. The rice-based alcoholic beverage and indeed rice were central to Siraya religious practice in ‘Aboriginal Taiwan’. As the Christian missionaries gradually converted the Siraya to Reformed Christianity, so the use of these foods diminished, and their religious significance lessened. Water, used for Christian baptism, would gain a new meaning for the Siraya. In 1631, shortly before he left Taiwan for the first time, Candidius baptised 50 Formosans. By 1639, more than 2,000 Siraya had been baptised, a figure that would rise to more than 7,000 by 1644 (Cha, 2011: 176).
As for the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper, John Calvin, a seminal figure in the Reformed tradition, advocated that this sacrament should be celebrated six times a year. Details on the Siraya partaking of the Eucharist, often called the Lord’s Supper in the Reformed tradition, are sketchy and they may contra Calvinum only have been allowed to partake of the sacrament once or twice by the Dutch missionaries (Chiu, 2008: 291). Nevertheless, those who did partake of it would have ingested bread and wine, in which, according to Calvin, Christ was spiritually present, and which fed Christians with the spiritual food of union with Christ (Cottret, 2000: 339). The Siraya would therefore have needed to ingest new types of food and become acquainted with the meanings generated by these new practices. These uses of bread and wine, and indeed water, subverted the existing power structures built up by the inibs, with the use of rice and rice-based alcohol.
Finally, I hope that this article increases our understanding of society and culture in ‘Aboriginal Taiwan’. The results of this investigation have been placed within the broader matrix of other food cultures in Taiwan before and during the European colonial period and the food cultures of other indigenous peoples prior to contact with Europeans. Further work could productively be done in investigating the food cultures of other groups in precolonial Taiwan, using for example archaeological evidence, and comparing those with the food cultures of the groups analysed in this article. More generally, I hope that it contributes in some way to the developing field of food culture studies and illustrates how this field of enquiry can help us better understand the societies in which food practices take place.
Acknowledgements
This article has been supported financially by a grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation (rg002-U-19).
Notes on Contributor
Christopher Joby is Research Associate at the Centre of Taiwan Studies, soas, University of London, and Honorary Research Fellow and Associate Tutor, School of History, University of East Anglia. Much of his research focuses on the intersection of the Dutch language and culture and other languages and cultures in a historical context. He is currently writing a book on the reception of the Christian Gospel in seventeenth-century Taiwan, which is under contract with Brill. His recent publications include The Dutch Language in Japan 1600–1900 (Brill, 2020), ‘Revisions to the Siraya lexicon based on the original Utrecht Manuscript: A case study in Source Data’, (2021), Historigraphia Linguistica 48(2/3): 177–204, and ‘Religious Beliefs in Indigenous Taiwan’, (2024), International Journal of Taiwan Studies 7(1): 118–152.
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‘Siraya’ is used as something of a shorthand term to denote both the ethnic group with which the Dutch had intensive contact in villages that shared the same manners, customs, and religion, near their base at Fort Zeelandia and the language they spoke. It is probably related to the terms Sideia and Sideis, which appear in Dutch texts.
Jenco and Tremml-Werner (2021: 221, n. 4) note that although Dongfan is typically translated as ‘eastern barbarians’, the term was often used in the Ming period to reference the island of Taiwan itself. See Jenco and Tremml-Werner (2021: 223) for the biographical details of Chen Di.
The manuscript was discovered in a Swiss attic in 1865 (Ripon, 1990: 7).
We have two versions of Constant and Pessaert’s report: a shorter, probably official version, identified as Text A by Blussé and Roessingh, and a longer version identified as Text B (Blussé & Roessingh, 1984: 66–67; tfe, vol. 1: 9–22, 25–31).
For an article in Chinese on this text, see Cheng (2002).
See https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A36730.0001.001/1:7.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext (accessed 21 April 2024). Wright’s report is in the section, ‘A Second Embassy or Application to the Emperor of China’.
Anonymous, c. 1635, Vocabularium Formosanum, Library of the University of Utrecht, Depository-S mag: Hs 1 E 23.
Jenco and Tremml-Werner (2021: n. 1) use ‘indigenous peoples’ and ‘Taiwan aborigines’ to translate the concept Taiwan yuanzhumin (臺灣原住民), ‘an officially used term deriving from the self-identification of these groups’. This article, by contrast, merely references ‘indigenous Formosans’, as the term ‘aborigines’ seems to have gained a negative connotation in modern discourse on these people.
Pramod Nayar observes that in postcolonial studies, ‘alterity’ conveys ‘the sense of a radical racial-cultural otherness and the processes through which this “otherness” is constructed’ (Nayar, 2015: 6).
Melie occurs in the authoritative Dutch lexicon Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal under inzamelen (to gather in, harvest). This reference is from the Batavia dagregisters in 1657 (Heeres et al., 1887–1931, vol. 9: 120). However, it is not clear from the context whether this references millet or another crop. The standard Dutch word for millet is gerst.
This suggestion is problematic as corn or maize is indigenous to Meso-America.
Candidius observes that the younger men seldom assisted their wives in the fields, as their principal duties were hunting and fighting (Campbell, 1903: 11).
Chen also observes that the Siraya did not have horses, donkeys, cattle, sheep, geese, or ducks. The absence of sheep in Aboriginal Taiwan is underlined by the fact that a Hokkien loanword, yuko, is used for ‘sheep’ in Siraya translations of the Gospels by the Dutch (Adelaar, 2011: 26).
In the early twentieth century, the American Janet McGovern observed that the Amis, who are probably distantly related to the Siraya, also never ate chicken. She was told that the reason for this was that the ‘souls of good and gentle people dwell in chickens’ (McGovern, 1972: 117).
Already in 1625, the Dutch rented a piece of land close to Zeelandia, where their cattle could graze (Blussé, 1989: 50; dkz, vol. 1: xvi).
As the name suggests this fruit is probably native to India.
Massichauw may have been borrowed from Ambon by voc employees to reference the wine-like local alcoholic beverage (Chiu, 2008: 286).
Other visitors observe that until the Japanese colonial period, there were no indigenous irrigated rice fields in Taiwan (Sagart, 2011: 123).
The um has mey for ‘steamed rice’ (gewalmde rijst) and rouvog for ‘boiled rice’ (gekoeckte rijst). It also has pchag for ‘crushed rice’ (gestamte rijst) (Van der Vlis, 1842: 465). Mey is a reflex of the Proto-Austronesian *Semay (cooked rice/rice as food), cf. Kavalan mːay (Blust & Trussel, 2020; Sagart, 2011: 122). Sagart suggests that if the pre-Austronesians and pre-Japonics were in contact in Shandong in eastern mainland China, *Semay is related to the proto-Japonic *kəmai or *kəməi, of which the modern Japanese kome is a reflex (2011: 127).
April is according to the solar calendar. Chiu gives lunar calendar equivalents for this and other festivals (Chiu, 2008: 185).
Given the shape of a reed and a lance, there may be some phallic symbolism at work here.
Wang Dayuan writes that Formosans boil sea water to get salt (Thompson, 1964: 168). If he is referencing the Siraya, this would seem to contradict the observation by Constant and Pessaert.
Adelaar (2011: 395) gives vavoei (vavuy) (cf. vavoy in the um) for ‘pig’ in Siraya. As for ‘deer’, for lok, see http://niawdeleon.com/hokkien-dictionary/?searchTerm=deer, deer = lok (accessed 21 April 2024). Loka is suggested by Edgar Macapili, a speaker of Taiwanese Hokkien/Southern Min (臺灣閩南語, Taiwan minnanyu). Penang Hokkien has lók for deer and chiah to eat.
Ripon translates this as ‘Voulez-vous acheter de la chair de pourceau ou de cerf?’ (Do you want to buy pig or deer meat?).
According to the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, siri references plants of the genus Piper. Their leaves and fruit are chewed. The word comes from the Malay sirih. The um gives the Siraya as gnaraaw (Dutch: cyrer).
Montanus (1671: 17) has ‘boyl’d Rice’, whereas Dapper (1670: 16) has gewalmde rijs (steamed rice).
The Dutch text has koren. Elsewhere, the Dutch has zaet (seed) (Dapper, 1670: 35).
Another name for the sweet potato is 番薯 fanshu, which Chen Di used.
Robert Blust (1999: 45) divides East Formosan languages into three groups. Basay belongs to the northern branch of this subgroup of Formosan languages, while Siraya belongs to the southwest branch of the subgroup.
In 1936, the Japanese linguist Erin Asai 浅井恵倫 collected Basay words from some of the last speakers of the language. He recorded several words relating to rice such as rice cake and rice harvest. He did not, however, record any words relating to millet. Again, this is not per se evidence that the Basay did not cultivate millet but is at least noteworthy (Tsuchida, Yamada & Moriguchi, 1991: 248–249).
