中文

The Kavalan

Mythological Background

In the ancient past, there were a brother and his younger sister who were traveling in a boat looking for a place where they might settle down and cultivate the land. Eventually, they discovered that Ilan was the perfect place for their purpose. So they landed on the coast of Ilan and built a house to live in. Then each of them went in search of a plot of land of their own that they might cultivate. The brother found a spot that was rather arid, but the younger sister hit upon a much better place where the soil was very fertile. Upon returning home, the sister told her brother how she had discovered a great spot that was ideal for farming. She added that she had marked the spot with a bunch of reeds tied into a knot. The brother went to have a look at his sister’s plot, and he found it to be every bit as good as she had described it, ideal for growing crops. Thinking of his own arid plot, he was filled with envy, and he destroyed the bunch of reeds and took the spot for his own.

Then he went back home and told his sister, “I didn’t see the sign you were talking about!” Hearing this, the sister went to see for herself, and she found that the bunch of reeds had been cut down. She was deeply hurt when she realized what had happened, and she told her brother, “I’m very sad, because your heart is black. From now on, you are no longer my brother…” Then she went away, up into the deep mountains to live there on her own.

The place where the sister lived from that day on did not boast any fertile soil, and all she could grow there was millet. Her brother, on the other hand, was growing rice now. One day, one of the brother’s offspring discovered that someone was living up in the mountains. He became curious and went up to find out who it was. The sister became aware that somebody was secretly observing her. She pulled him out of his hiding spot and asked him who he was. When he declared that he was one of her brother’s offspring, the sister became very angry. Still feeling the old hatred for her brother, she got so upset that she took a knife and chopped off the unbidden visitor’s head. When news of this reached her brother back at his place, he also began to seethe with rage. So he took a long knife and went to seek out his sister and take revenge. In the end, he decapitated her. Legend has it that this old grudge was never resolved, and simmers on with undiminished force to this very day. And to this day, the story is still being told among the Kavalan, who declare that the people in the mountains (i.e. the Atayal) are the descendants of the legend’s younger sister, while the people living in the plains (i.e. the Kavalan now living in Hsin She, the “New Community”) are the descendants of the elder brother. The story also serves as an explanation of an old Kavalan taboo: the tribe does not grow any millet.

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