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In a myth from Ceram (Molucca Islands), a beautiful girl, Hainuwele, has grown up out of a coconut plant. After providing the community with their necessities and luxuries, she is killed and her body cut into several pieces, which are then thrown over the island. From each part of her body a coconut tree grows. It is only after the death of Hainuwele that mankind becomes sexual; that is, the...
in myth: Justification or validation )...Ceram (in Indonesia), in the beginning life was not complete, or not yet “human”: vegetation and animals did not exist, and there was neither death nor sexuality. In a mysterious manner Hainuwele, a girl with extraordinary gift-bestowing powers, appeared. The people killed her at the end of their great annual celebration, and her dismembered body was planted in the earth. Among the...
The most widely quoted example of the dema deity complex is the version of the Ceramese myth of Hainuwele, by the Danish anthropologist Adolf E. Jensen. According to this myth, a dema man named Amenta found a coconut speared on a boar’s tusk and in a dream was instructed to plant it. In six days a palm had sprung from the nut and flowered. Amenta cut his finger, and his blood...
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