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Report n°5 : "Water : symbolism and culture"

Survival and permanence of cultural practices connected to the liquid element

The Baruya are a tribal society in New Guinea, discovered as late as 1951, when they were just emerging from the Neolithic age. Significantly, the boundary of the Baruya territory is a river. The Shaman women change into frogs at night (9), to guard the river and prevent the spirits of sleeping children, women and old people from penetrating enemy territory, for fear they would not be able to return. They are the guardians of the cosmic passage between two worlds.

Maurice Godelier (10), who spent a great deal of time with the tribe on frequent occasions, described their way of life, organisation, myths and cosmogony in a remarkable book.

Water is always and everywhere.

Godelier discovered that the men know about irrigation and how to construct drainage canals. Men alone can own land and natural resources linked to a territory. To explain the social and cosmic order, secret and sacred knowledge, the Baruya teach that the first woman, Kouroumbingac, came from deep in the forest and was accompanied by the dog Djoue with which, after many an incident, she had a boy child. To give birth, she entered the water and went to an island where she constructed a shelter for herself.However, she then thought that she should not give birth in a dry place but that she should be near water. In this myth, the dog finally changes into an eagle -a bird belonging to the sun- and then into a water fowl. He therefore unites water and sky and becomes a force that the Shaman women use secretly in the service of the GreatWarriors and the hunters.

In fact, there used to be bands of wild dogs on the slopes of the Yelia mountain, a volcano which overlooks the Baruya territory.

And so we see that for the Baruya, and this is also true of the Berbers and the Quechuas, understanding the role of water can be part of a culture, "it amounts to shedding light on the work of imagination within a culture: material imagination, or as Bachelard called it, "anthropocosmic" imagination, where humanity and the natural elemental order of the universe join together", to quote the philosopher Yves Cusset.

Godelier studied in minute detail the making of potassium (not sodium) salt by the tribe, using the ashes of specific plants, because the result is a precious commodity to be exchanged between villages and for traditional gifts to relatives.This activity is the exclusive prerogative of the tsaimayes craftsmen who manufacture a filter using elongated gourds which are hollowed out and dried and placed together over a pandanus leaf. They are filled with ash over which pure water, generally collected from the river, is poured. The water is charged with salts as it percolates through the filter. The saline solution drips slowly onto the pandanus leaf and is collected in bamboo canes and then transported near the tsaimaye kiln which no one else is allowed to use.The saline solution is then poured into moulds made of fire-proof clay hollowed out of the oven wall itself. The tsaimaye watches over the fire and the evaporation of the salt solution until a bar of crystallised salt is formed. Throughout this process, the craftsman is separated from his wife with whom he cannot have sexual relations for fear the operation will fail. Women are strictly forbidden from coming near him while he works. This is a kind of primitive chemical process involving salt solutions on a par with those of the alchemists in the Middle Ages, involving hermetic practices, mysteries and cabalistic recipes. Pierre Laszlo describes these practices perfectly when he speaks of the Greek alchemist from Alexandria, Zosimos of Panoplis, who brings together Egyptian and Arab alchemy and who mingled the material and spiritual dimensions of alchemy to produce inspired writings, occult revelations and narratives of dreams... to arrive at the composition of water (11)!

For the Baruya, a man's status is heightened with the birth of each of his children and a special ceremony ensues. "In the morning, the man goes to the river to wash his body and purify it of feminine pollution (langeureuka), the contamination of the feminine sex..." writes Godelier. Since there is total separation of the sexes in this chauvinist society, certain streams are reserved for women. In India also, untouchables of both sexes use separate wells so that this caste can be separated from the rest of the population.

Throughout human history and in most cultures, water reveals many of the prejudices and preconceived ideas of mankind and its social organisation.

"Baruya men have an almost hysterical attitude to menstrual blood" reports Godelier. Blood is a dirty substance which weakens women and would destroy men's strength if it came into contact with their body. That is why women are confined and undergo purification before returning to their husbands. However, for the Baruya blood also represents strength and life so that any letting of blood is viewed with fear and revulsion. The Baruya warrior kills his enemy and smears his blood over his own body, but he cannot go back to the village and normal life until he has washed and ritually purified his body from all trace of blood, this alien blood which was also a symbol of his victory. Apparently, for the Baruya and for Gaston Bachelard, "blood is never propitious". There is also an African saying to the effect that "blood is not washed with blood, but with water (12)".

So we observe that a "Neolithic" community entertains almost the same beliefs about water as the revealed religions. Muslims, male and female, must undergo thorough purification after sexual relations. Muslim women are excluded from the mosque during menstruation which makes them "impure". A woman must be entirely purified at the end of menstruation so that she can "appear before Allah", in other words pray the mandatory five times a day. In the same way, Jewish women must also respect the ritual of the Torah which ordains that seven days after the end of menstruation and six weeks after giving birth (13), they must conform to the dictates of the Tahara or purification and, when night falls, "impure" women must go discreetly to the "mikveh", the special baths which contain kosher water obtained by mixing tap water and "living water" that has never been touched by human hand, such as rain water (14).

The theme of "impure" women is recurrent in many cultures: it is clear that the concept is very ancient since it has Neolithic roots... and is also present in monotheist religions! The Sira (Chronicles of the life of Muhammad) report that the inhabitants of Beersheba, whose well dried up when they expelled Abraham, implored the prophet to return because "The water you drank and that we drank with you, has run dry". So Abraham said to them: "Take these seven ewes and place them near the well. The water will gush up again, abundant and pure as it was before.You may drink it. But the water must not be drawn by a woman in a state of impurity (15)."

(9) The legend of the "night washerwomen" in the Berry, Beauce and Perche regions of France, claims that mysterious washerwomen meet at night near ponds to wash the souls of children who die without baptism or those of the damned. In 1851, George Sand cleared up the mystery in "Les visions de la nuit dans les campagnes": the sound of washerwomen's paddles was produced by a frog, writes Christian Chenault in " L'eau et la vie.Enjeux, perspectives et visions interculturelles ", Dossier for debate n° 97, Editions Charles-Léopold Mayer, Paris, 1999.

(10) Maurice Godelier, "La production des grands hommes. Pouvoir et domination masculine chez les Baruya de Nouvelle Calédonie", Fayard, Paris, 1982.

(11) Pierre Laszlo, "Qu'est-ce que l'alchimie?", Hachette Littératures, Paris, 1996.

(12) Joseph Ki - Zerbo, "A quand l'Afrique?" Meeting with René Holenstein, Edition de l'Aube, Paris, 2004.

(13) The length of time depends on the sex of the new born.

(14) Increasingly, this ritual is used to give spiritual significance to the important events in life: bar mitzvahs, promotions, graduations, treatment of cancer, etc. (Katie Zezima, "A place for a ritual cleansing of all Jews", New York Times, July 3, 2004). The mikveh can be replaced by a lake or a stream.Water is fundamental for the observance of Jewish religious rites. Most Jewish villages in Ethiopa are near streams.

(15) Mahmoud Hussein, "Al - Sîra. Le Prophète de l'Islam raconté par ses compagnons", Grasset, Paris, 2005.