Taiwan Today

The upland population in Taiwan is cultur­ally and linguistically Malay-Polynesian. Those who still preserve their original culture and language are grouped into 10 tribes:

Saisiat, Atayal, Thao, Bunun, Tsou, Ami, Yami, Puyuma, Rukai, and Paiwan. Their cultures and languages are similar though not identical, signifying origin from varying localities and migration to Taiwan by dif­ferent routes and at different times.

Close cultural affinities between the Tai­wan aborigines and other peoples in the Pacific area are seen in many aspects of aboriginal life. Wood carvings of the Paiwan group provide one clue. Wood carvings of similar style are widely distributed through­ out the Pacific region and are also found in ancient Chinese designs of the Shang (1766­-1122 B. C.) and Chou (1122-256 B. C.) dynasties.

The Paiwan group of aborigines, found in the mountains of southern Taiwan, consist of the Paiwan, the Rukai and the Puyuma. Their total population of about 60,000 repre­sents the largest group of aborigines. It is only in these three tribes that a social class system exists in which the upper class or nobility enjoys such exclusive privileges as body tattooing and house carving.

Paiwan nobles decorate their houses and most of their household utensils with carved designs. Motifs used in Paiwan woodcarving are mainly human figures, human heads, snakes and deer. Geometrical patterns, fre­quently found in border decorations, may be considered as having been evolved from human head and snake designs.

The human figure being the most important and one of the earliest themes in the plastic arts, most of the wood sculptures made by primitive people are human figures. So also with the Paiwan group. The signifi­cance of the statues carved by the Paiwan is uncertain. Some may represent their ancestors. Most are conventional in form, in­dicating a long tradition of figure carving. While realistic figures have no religious or social significance and may be owned by com­moners, possession of conventional figures are the exclusive privilege of the nobility. Con­ventional figures have round heads, long noses, small eyes and small mouths. Hands are raised in front of the chest or stretched out at shoulder level; legs are straight or slightly bowed; the feet point outward and the sex is clearly indicated. Snake designs some­times occur on the chest and arms, indicat­ing tattoo marks.

Human head carvings are also thought to represent ancestors, but may be connected with headhunting. The Paiwan, as well as other aboriginal tribes in Taiwan, were headhunters up to the 19th century. The headhunting theory derives from the carved figures in which heads are separated from their bodies and carried in the hands.

Wild game is the source of much of the protein element in the Paiwan diet. Since deer is the most abundant animal in southern Taiwan, it turns up as a common motif in Paiwan artwork.

The snake, however, surpasses the deer as an important design element. In the Pai­wan language, the snake is called qacuvi or sura. But the Hundred Pace snake (Trigonocephalus) is called vorovoron or sura pulunu; vorovoron meaning "elder" and pulunu meaning "spirit." Thus, the Hundred Pace snake was venerated by the Paiwan as being the elder or spirit of all snakes. It was believed to be the ancestor of the Paiwan nobles and thus was accorded special re­spect. The nobility observed many taboos concerning this snake, giving it a religious and social meaning similar to that of the totem.

The Paiwan have been on the island of Taiwan for a long time. Their arts have naturally evolved throughout the ages and differ from those at the time their ancestors migrated to Taiwan. Because art styles have changed, it is impossible to find an exactly similar art in other areas. But basic elements remain unchanged. Thus, it is pos­sible to reconstruct the relations between dif­ferent tribes and areas through the similari­ties in their art forms.

Treatment of motifs and their composition in Paiwan woodcarving resemble those found in the whole Pacific area.

Paiwan woodcarvings are two dimensional rather than the carved-in-the-round figures of the African natives. Most, even those carved in high relief, give no feeling of depth. It is meant to be viewed from the front, as with a painting. House posts, usually ideally suited to three-dimensional sculpting, have relief designs on the front faces only. One wooden post has an identical frontal view of a standing human figure on each of its four sides.

Use of the two-dimensional technique has caused Paiwan woodcarving to become mere decoration. Most designs are rendered in low relief or line incising on the surface of the object. Effigy utensils are rare. A recent innovation has pipe bowls carved in the form of figures.

Flattish and decorative treatment in woodcarving allows an art style in which void spaces are filled in with various designs. This is achieved through repetition of a single motif or through widening and distortion of a figure to fill the available space. On eaves, beams and lintels, where spaces are long and horizontal, space filling is achieved by repeating the same motifs or by lining up different motifs. Flattening and widening is most clearly seen on wall planks, wooden screens and door panels.

Designs on household objects follow the same pattern. Wooden pillows, boxes, double-cups, and knife sheathes are the same as those on eaves, beams or lintels. Those on cylindrical cups, buckets, mortars, wooden shields and cases for divination instruments resemble those on wall planks and wooden screens. Spoon handles are decorated with a single carved figure or a single snake de­sign, but sometimes are carved with design units arranged in a vertical series similar to those on a totem pole. Backs of wooden combs are carved with human heads, human figures or either of the two in combination with snakes in a horizontal series as on house beams.

For convenience of design arrangement, a single motif unit may be dissected into parts to fit the design area. Thus, a head may be separated from its body to accommodate the space available. At other times, several motifs are combined into a single design, as in human head and snake, human head and deer, and human figure and snake combina­tions.

The snake motif lends itself well to geometrical adaptation. The snake design has produced such diverse patterns as the fol­lowing: triangle, rhomboid, concentric cir­cle, zigzag, saw-tooth, bamboo, joined cup, comb, Chinese coin, sun-ray, flower, and spiral patterns.

Besides the common characteristic of being two-dimensional and decorative, Paiwan art work shares specific woodcarving motifs with the primitive peoples of the Pacific and of areas adjacent to Taiwan.

The following motifs are found in figure carving throughout the area:

* Figures in squatting posture. The natural resting posture of human beings, be­fore floor coverings and the chair or stool were widely used, was the squatting position. Today, squatting is still the most common resting posture in aboriginal Taiwan and some parts of the Pacific. It consistently appears in their carvings.

Squatting figures are divided into four types: with arms raised in front of the chest; with hands holding the flexed legs; with arms folded and resting on the knees; and a variety of unconventional forms.

Carved squatting figures similar in type to those of the Paiwan are also found in these Pacific areas: Luzon, Borneo, Mias, Engano, Sumatra, Kisar, Leti, Damma, Atnebar, Babar, Tanimbar, New Guinea, Ebony, the Solomon Islands, Tokobei of Micronesia, New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Tahiti and the northwest Pacific coast of North America.

A noteworthy fact is that similar squatting forms were also found in ancient China. A stone statue, excavated from Hsiao-tun in Honan province by the Academia Sinica in 1929, shows an incom­plete statue of a squatting figure with hands holding its flexed legs. Another unearthed from Hou-chia-chuang shows a figure in a kneeling position with the buttocks resting on the heels.

An interesting sidenote is that sculpture of figures in such positions can serve as an index to estimate the length of time that floor coverings have been used in China. Squatting is thought to be the most ordinary resting posture before the Shang period. The kneeling-sitting position was probably used by the Shang people as the ceremonial pos­ture for ancestral offerings, worship and guest receiving. Also interesting historically is that the kneeling-sitting custom was after­ward diffused through Korea to Japan, but declined in China itself.

* Frog-shaped figures. Figures re­sembling frog-like shapes are a result of the limitations of the two-dimensional technique of Pacific carvings. The easiest way to render a figure in a squatting posture on a flat surface is to move the arms and legs from in front of the body to the sides, resulting in a frog-shaped figure.

Frog-shaped figure designs in the Pacific area are found among the Paiwan and in Luzon, Borneo, Nias, Engano, Minahasa, Timor, Roti, New Guinea, Mioko, the Solomon Islands, the Marquesas, along the north­west coast of America, at Manbi in Ecuador and Cocle in Panama. They are also seen on the pottery of the Shang period and on bronzes of the Chou period.

* Figures with marks on their joints. Many squatting and frog-shaped figures have dots, eye-designs and face designs at the joints or peg-like connections between joints. Carved joint marks probably have the same meaning as the body tattoos and scarification designs of the Pacific islanders which they resemble.

Distribution of figures with marks on their joints is more or less identical to that of the squatting and frog-shaped figures. They are found among the Paiwan, in Borneo, Nias, Minahasa, Timor, Roti, Leti, Tanimbar, New Guinea, the Bismarck Archi­pelago, the Solomon Islands, the New Hebrides and New Zealand. Joint marks are also clearly indicated on the frog-shaped figures of the Chou bronzes.

* Figures with joined limbs. Frog-shaped figures lined up in a row often have their limbs joined as a space-filling technique. This is found in textile designs as well as in the woodcarving of the Pacific area. The figures are either lined up in a row and connected horizontally, or are arranged in a brick-laying relationship and connected like network.

Examples of joined limb figures can be seen on carved objects of the Paiwan, the Yami of Botel Tobago, in New Guinea, the Admiralty Islands, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia and the Hervey Islands. On tex­tile specimens, the same design disposition can be found on Hainan, Mindanao, Celebes and Kisar.

* Figures arranged in vertical series. Motifs are often arranged in vertical series like those on totem poles if the surface available is vertical and long. Arrangement of this kind is best known on the northwest coast of North America and is also widely found among the Paiwan, in Luzon, Suma­tra, New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland, New Hebrides, the Marquesas, Micronesia and New Zealand.

Existence of totem poles in the Shang dynasty is not certain, but totem pole arrangements are found on the carved bones of that period.

* Bilateral splitting of animals. This is one of the most widely distributed designs in the Pacific area and is usually shown as two profiles joined at the forehead. Bilaterally split animal designs found are of four types: Profiles of two figures opposite each other without being joined together, forming a mask design in the center; two profiles with a head or figure, sometimes evolving into a disk or circle, in between; two profiles joined at the head but without the central mask design; profiles of the head with a mask design in the center but with the body parts secondary or eliminated.

This design is found in Hainan, Borneo, Sumatra, Sunda, Roti, New Guinea, New Zealand and Easter Island as well as among the Paiwan.

A corresponding art motif is found in ancient China where junction of profiles of the animal body is often seen on Shang bronzes. Called a tiao tieh, the resultant beast is explained as a fierce animal having a head and no body or as a glutton. The tiao tieh has many explanations—it has variously been thought to represent a lion-griffin, tiger, dragon or other kinds of totemic animals. A more satisfactory explanation would be that the tiao tieh is a method of design treatment. It may repre­sent a certain kind of animal or a combina­tion of different animal designs. The design elements of many animals that lived in north China in the Shang period can be detected in the tiao tieh—water deer, sika deer, bos, water buffalo, goat, sheep, tiger and elephant.

* Joined human figures. These are composite designs differing from the split animal pattern in formative principle, but similar as both are formed to widen the design element to fill the space to be decorated. Joined human figures are seen from a frontal view instead of in profile and are joined at the feet instead of at the heads or tails. The split animal design is used for decorating a horizontal space, while the joined human figure design is used vertically.

Pairs of human figures joined together are usually of a man and a women. They are in standing or squatting position, accord­ing to the length of the decorative space. In case of space shortage, the legs of the figures may be eliminated and the two torsos joined together. In some cases, the figures are so close as to portray a state of sexual intercourse. If even less space is available, the lower parts of the torsos are eliminated so that the resultant figure has no feet but has two heads, one on each end of the torso. Still less space to work on results in elimination of the entire body so that the design shows only two heads joined at the neck.

The various developmental stages of the design of human figures joined at the feet are seen in approximately the same areas as the designs previously mentioned—among the Paiwan, in Borneo, Lesser Sunda, Halmahera, Aru, New Guinea, New Britain and New Zealand.

* Human figures with protruding tongues. This motif is also widely distributed. It is seen among the Paiwan, in Borneo, New Guinea, New Zealand, on the northwest coast of America and among the Aztecs of Mexico. A similar design motif has also been found among artifacts unearthed from the Chu tombs at Changsha in Hunan.

* Human head with serpent's body. Human heads are sometimes depicted with a pair of serpents forming the body or with a human figure but with serpentine legs. This motif has had a long history in Chinese art as it is described in the Shan-hai-ching, an ancient geographical book with records of many mythical animals.

The human head with serpents forming the body resembles a design traced from the remnants of a disintegrated wooden article in one of the Hou-chia-chuang tombs. The human figure with serpentine legs is similar to the figures which appear on Wu-liang-tzu stone carvings and silk paintings from Khotan.

The design is also found in the Solomon Islands and on the pottery painting of the Txintzuntsan of Mexico.

Design motifs in the Pacific area have not all originated in the Far East. Some have been adapted from the West. Scholars have postulated the existence of a basic, pre­historic culture, called the "Old Pacific Style," native to eastern Asia as early as the third millennium B. C. or even earlier.

Around 1800 B. C., this style was in­fluenced by the Dniestro-Danubian style, characterized by spiral motifs and the technique of bronze casting, and formed the "Shang" style, which lasted until 1100 B. C. The Shang style developed into the "Early Chou" style, lasting from about 1100 B. C. to 750 B. C. Western cultural waves, mainly late Danubian and Caucasian elements, again influenced eastern Asian art and developed a "Late Chou" style lasting to 200 B. C. Contemporary with the Late Chou style and more or less similar in origin was the "Dongson" style in Indo-China.

The Old Pacific, Shang, Late Chou and Dongson styles were diffused into Southeast Asia, the Pacific and some parts of the Americas. The first branch passed through the Batak of Sumatra, the Toradja of the Celebes, Alar and Tanimbar and finally reached western South America. The second branch passed through the Dayak of Borneo, the Massim area of New Guinea, the Ngada of Flores, the Maori of New Zealand and then entered Central America as the Tajin style of Mexico and the Ulua style of the Honduras. The third branch passed through the Marquesas and spread to the northwest coast of America, the Amazon Basin and Panama.

Study of the Paiwan woodcarvings adds support to the theory of diffusion. Because the nine design motifs mentioned above are widely distributed throughout the whole Pacific area, they can be regarded as basic or native to the area—the "Old Pacific" style. The most primitive forms of these motifs are evident in Paiwan wood carvings since the Paiwan have remained until quite recent times in the older stage of art development without much change.