It is said that the Saisiyat were forced away
from their traditional homeland near the shores deep into the mountains. Here,
in unknown territory, lacking access to their traditional sources of food and
lacking the knowledge to exploit the mountainous terrain, they suffered and
dwindled. Hope was in short supply.
It
was in this sorry state that they met a race of short, dark-skinned people, the
Da'ai. They were only three or four feet tall, but their arms were strong, and they
knew the mountains well. They shared their knowledge with the Saisiyat, saving
them from starvation. Through the Da'ai, the Saisiyat learned a considerable
number of things, none more important than how to cultivate rice. The two tribes
thrived together, but their bonds of friendship were soon tested.
A
terrible tragedy struck the Da'ai, who were left without enough womenfolk to
carry a new generation. Facing their own doom, the Da'ai turned to the Saisiyat
and placed their fate in the hands of their friends. If the Saisiyat could
agree to present the Da'ai with wives, their demise could be avoided. But the
Da'ai were short, black creatures, and the Saisiyat had strong rules against
marrying outside the tribe. Fear drove a wedge between the peoples, and the Da'ai’s request was refused.
The
Da'ai were skilled in magic. They could speak to animals and understand the
language of the trees, their healing lore was vast, but they were still men,
prone to the failings of men. They began to victimize the Saisiyat’s young
women, and the Saisiyat feared the Da'ai’s black arts too much to confront
them. With their black magic, the Da'ai would make all evidence of their crimes
disappear, leaving the Saisiyat no proof of wrongdoing. Lust slipped into the
wedge Fear had created, and the two people were driven further apart.
One
Saisiyat man, driven by Anger, decided that the time had come to cut ties with
the Da'ai. By destroying the bridge connecting the two peoples, he would at
least afford the women a reprieve, and hopefully it would teach the Da'ai a
lesson. While the Da'ai were celebrating a festival with the Saisiyat, he
weakened the bridge, planning to destroy it once the Da'ai had crossed back into
their lands. Before he could do so, while the Da'ai were crossing the deep
precipice, the weakened bridge collapsed. All of the remaining Da'ai plunged to
their deaths. Or not quite all, two remained. The Da'ai’s two elders, Ta’ai and
Tuowai, saw their people shattered on the rocks below, and they channeled all
of their power on a curse cast at the Saisiyat.
They
were afflicted with calamity upon calamity. The world with which the Da'ai had
once communed so extensively turned against the Saisiyat. The sun was blotted
from the sky by dark clouds, their crops shriveled and died, the water became
brackish and foul, and diseases struck mercilessly. All that the Saisiyat had
learned from the Da'ai was unavailing, and the Saisiyat were once again left despondent
and broken. Anger had pushed both peoples on the verge of oblivion.
Finally
breaking the vicious downward spiral of betrayal and revenge, Chu, the Saisiyat
who had weakened the bridge and destroyed the Da'ai, climbed the highest peak
of the mountain (Wufeng) and asked for forgiveness. To apologize to all of the
Da'ai, he created a spell that melded dance and song. The charm took seven days
to perform, and it succeeded in placating the spirits of the Da'ai.
Ever
since, the Saisiyat perform the Pasta’ai festival every second year. Every
fifth incantation of the conciliatory spell is specially meant to not only
appease the spirits of the Da'ai, but also to express repentance and comfort
the spirits. The next grand ceremony will be in 2016.
As great of a tale as
it is, there is more to the festival than I can hope to understand, as
demonstrated by the fact that the songs are about a wide range of issues, including modern ones. One
of the 15 songs is about the pressure the Saisiyat feel to embellish their
rituals for the sake of foreign tourism, another is about their current
economic struggles, and there is one about their ambiguous feelings towards
modernization. Each song is a poem, with each verse pertaining to a certain
theme. Each poem is highly complex, every word holding special significance and
playing off the others. Since I am not Saisiyat, I can neither fully comprehend
it nor retell the Pasta’ay festival’s story with authority. I think it’s a
story worth sharing though, and hopefully by sharing it I can encourage others
to discover it more completely than I have. I would be very happy to correct any incongruities or mistakes that are sure to have cropped up, so please tell me if you see something wrong.
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