Austronesian discourse on origins is based both on a semantics of recognizable cognate terms and on a variety of similar metaphoric idioms. The combination of similar idioms and common metaphors, often bolstered by recourse to folk etymologies, is discernible in various papers in this volume.

Sather provides an excellent example of this usage in his discussion of the Iban understanding of the concept of pun. Pun means “source, basis, origin, or cause”. Quoting Freeman, he notes that its root meaning “is that of stem, as of a tree, from which development of any activity springs”. Pun may thus describe a person who initiates an action, such as a pun bejelai, who organizes and leads an expedition, but it may also apply to the founder of a family, pun bilik, the originator of a house, pun rumah, or the main line of a genealogy, pun tusut. These usages all imply a focus of reference, a point of initiation and a locus of continuity. As such they evoke an entire epistemology of origins. It is within these terms that Sather is able to differentiate between equality and hierarchy in Iban social practice.

The term, pun, derives from proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) * puqun: “tree, trunk, base, source” and is one of a number of terms in Austronesian discourse on origins. The metaphoric linkage of “origin” and “cause” with the “base”, “trunk” or “(tap)-root” of a tree and the implied sense of growth that derives from this botanic idiom may also be applied to life in general and to social life in particular. For examines reflexes of * puqun (fun, pun, hun, un) in six societies of the Timor area, taking this term for origin as a “marker” to distinguish “progenitor lines” in each society and to point to the social transformations these lines have undergone from one society to another. As an essay in regional comparison, the paper considers alternative possibilities for viewing groups in relation to their “origin structures”.

The occurrence of reflexes of * puqun as a botanic origin category is common and wide-spread in both Western and Central Malayo-Polynesian languages (see Adelaar 1992:48; Fox 1980:14; Sugishima 1994:156) but it is by no means the only term that links origins to a base, trunk or root. Thus, in Madagascar, among different Malagasy-speaking populations, fotora (“trunk”) or fototra (“origin root”) as in the expression, fotoran’razan’ay (“root of our ancestors”) figures prominently in the identification of origins (see Feeley-Harnik 1991:132-137; Thomas 1994:9). The equivalent terms among the Karo Batak would be benakayu; among the Minangkabau, pangkalan; among the Javanese and Balinese, wit (kawitan); among the Tontemboan of Minahasa, tu’ur (see Graafland 1898,I:215; Schwarz 1908:553); or as in the case of Bislama, the pidgin of Vanuatu, where the term stamba, “root-place” (from English, stump) is used, this botanic term may derive from an outside source (Bonnemaison 1985:41).

It is possible also to identify reflexes of other origin categories that can be traced back to and reconstructed as proto-Malayo-Polynesian. Besides * puqun, reflexes of * t-u(m)pu (or * epu), “ancestor, master, second generation relative”, and * tu(m)buq, “growth”, figure prominently in metaphoric statements about origins (Fox 1995a:36). Together these reflexes interrelate the notions of origin as “trunk”, as “ancestor” and as “growth”. Such reflexes may be used in various combinations. The Kedang of Lembata, for example, combine a reflex of * epu with a term for trunk, puén, to designate the affinal position of the mother’s brother (epu puén) (Barnes 1980:79). The neighbouring Lamaholot utilize a different combination to a similar end by combining the term belaké, “wife-giver”, with pukén, to identify the “stem or source wife-giver” (belaké pukén) while relying on opu as a reciprocal of belaké to designate wife-taking affines (Graham 1994:346-352). In the Pacific, reflexes of * tu(m)buq and * t-u(m)pu combine, in various forms, to create a semantics of origins. Writing on ideas about ancestors (tipuna, tupuna) among Maori, Ann Salmond has examined the semantic use of such terms as tupu, “generative force with an individual growth, bud, shoot” and the related term, puu, which, in Maori, has come to mean “origin, cause, source, root of a tree or plant, heart, centre, main stock of a kin group” to argue that “plant growth and the growth of human beings are often held parallel in the semantic patterns of the Maori lexicon” (1991:344).

Lewis takes up this discussion of origin structures and examines the differences between progenitor and progenitrix lines in Sikka and Tana ’Ai. In these societies, the term for source or trunk is pu’an/puang. Similarly, Grimes considers the way in which people of the island of Buru “express ideas of origin and cause using metaphors based on the imagery of a living plant or tree”. The word for trunk and root in Buru is lahin and among the population of the island, all things grow, develop and are traced from root (lahir) to tips (luken).

Biersack examines the concept of origin in Tonga focusing in particular on the Tu‘i Tonga as the tefito, or original “root” of society. Cognates of the word, tefito, also figure prominently in other Pacific island societies and are referred to in some of the classic ethnographies of the region. In his Tikopia-English Dictionary (1985:466-467), Firth reports that tafito means “base, basis, origin, reason, cause”. Tafito is the principal term used to identify social or ancestral origin and can also refer to a person who is a principal figure in any formal proceeding or a major participant in an exchange transaction. According to Firth, the notion of tafito that applies to ritual officiants takes its reference from the gods:

Each god was regarded as having his basis (tafito) in a special ritual officiant, who himself might have several titles (rau) by which he addresses the god in different contexts: by his temple in Uta; in his canoe yard; for curing illness. Like the botanical principle of postulating the origin of a species near where most of its varieties are found, the “owner” of a god often has more titles than other men do … (Firth 1970:144).

Thus, in Tikopia as in Tonga, the notion of origin has direct relevance to a system of titles. It is also relevant to a sacred geography that identifies places where rituals are performed. From the term tafito are derived the word tafitoanga (“place of origin”) and tafito-ranga (“beginning”) (see Fox 1995a:45-47 for a further discussion of these and other terms in the epistemology of Tikopian ideas of origins).

Another critically important term for designating origins in many Polynesian societies is tumu (Hawaiian: kumu), which carries a similar configuration of botanic meanings. In Rarotongan, for example, tumu signifies “foundation, root, cause, origin, source, that which introduces, the reason or cause of anything; the trunk or the main part of anything from which something springs or is made, created or fashioned”. Tumu thus forms the base for a variety of other crucial terms: tumu-enua (“chief” or “leader”), tumu-karakia (“principal priest”) or tumu-emu (“leading part of a recitative”) (Savage 1962:413).

Siikala, in his paper, refers to the tracing of origins among the Cook Islanders through path and genealogy as “expressions of the same process, the extension of the ancestral tumu in space and time”. In his monographic exposition of indigenous ideas of origin, ‘Akatokamanāva, Siikala (1991) has provided a much more extended examination of these notions of tumu and in particular of the Cook Islanders’ genealogical conceptions of the “origin of all things” from Atea and Papa-i-te-’itinga through their child, Te Tumu.

All these various distinctive botanic metaphors that combine notions of growth and succession, of derivation, division and differentiation are relied upon for heuristic purposes: to trace and distinguish features of social and religious life. Reliance on such botanical analogies is in no way unique to the Austronesians. In Biological Metaphor and Cladistic Classification (1987), Hoenigswald and Wiener have assembled a remarkable collection of essays that chart the use of botanical metaphors in the history of western sciences from the ancient Greeks to modern taxonomists who are concerned with the rigorous methodologies of what is referred to as “phylogenetic systematics” or “cladistics”. In this respect, it is evident that ancient Greek thinkers were as much concerned with the processes of change and the origin of things as are many Austronesians and that they relied on similar organismic analogies and on their own forms of folk etymologizing — Plato’s primordial words: prōta onomata — to intuit and articulate relationships (see Percival 1987). Austronesian concerns with origins and all the varied discourse on such origins may thus be viewed as particular articulation of a near universal orientation to the world.

A common effect of the variety of Austronesian botanic metaphors is to give physical representation to temporal processes. As is reiterated by contributors to this volume, these metaphors conflate temporal and spatial modes of comprehension. This relates to the analytical notion of precedence that is developed throughout this volume. As is implied by the term, precedence connotes a priority in time but also a priority of position, rank or status. This double aspect is crucial to an understanding of this notion.

During the course of the Comparative Austronesian Project, precedence was the subject of much discussion. There was a “working paper” on precedence (Fox 1990) which was eventually published in a somewhat revised form (Fox 1994), but more importantly there were a number of detailed ethnographies that developed ideas of precedence in specific Austronesian societies. The publication of Lewis’s People of the Source (1988) provided the first extended use of precedence in a study of an eastern Indonesian society. This was followed by a succession of other equally important theses that utilized ideas of precedence: McWilliam on the mountain Timorese (1989); Graham on Lewotala in east Flores (1991); Vischer on the population of Palu’é of Flores (1992), Grimes on Buru (1990, 1993) and Reuter on Sumatra (1993).^[2]

All of this work was as much directed to the practice of precedence as to the language of precedence. One concern was to distinguish precedence from hierarchy. Whereas it is theoretically possible to conceive of precedence as either coincident with or supportive of hierarchy, the focus of most of these initial studies of precedence was on the continuous positioning among groups and individuals, using a variety of mixed criteria, to argue for their place within society. The concern was more with competition and contention; the creation of orders of precedence that were subject to dispute and revision; and with the possibilities of a variety of outcomes locally in different groups within similar cultural contexts. It is these ideas of precedence as discourse and practice that are also considered in various papers in this volume.