8 - Metamorphosis and identity: Chewong animistic ontology

Summary

I begin by telling an abbreviated version of a Chewong myth about frog people. Chewong is a small group of hunter-gatherers and shifting cultivators who, at the time of my first fieldwork in the late 1970s, lived deep inside the Malaysian tropical rainforest. At the time, they had minimal contact with the outside world and their way of life and understanding of how the world works was a textbook example of animism (I return to this concept below). According to Chewong cosmology, frogs – as well as many other non-human beings and objects in their forest environment – have consciousness (ruwai) which makes them persons and subjects. When they are in “their own land”, which is also in the jungle but invisible to the hot human eye (see below), they abandon their frog “cloaks” and appear to each other in human shape and behave in a recognizable human rational manner. There is, nevertheless, a unique frog quality which renders them people and frogs at the same time.

BONGSO AND THE FROG WOMAN

Bongso lived alone and was clearing a new swidden. One day, working very hard cutting down trees, he became very thirsty. He picked up a bamboo cylinder and set off to the river to bring some water. A frog woman was in the river. Accidentally Bongso caught her in his bamboo.