Beschrijving

This volume presents a collection of oral religious texts gathered from indigenous communities in Western New Guinea (Irian Jaya). The texts range from ritual speeches, sacred narratives, creation myths, and invocation formulas, each recorded and translated so that the voices of the local oral tradition are preserved. The book shows how religion in these communities is deeply embedded in spoken word — performance, memorization, and communal enactment — rather than formalized scripture, offering insight into the region’s cosmology, ancestral relationships, and the role of speech in ritual. Beyond the text-collection, the author provides commentary and translation notes that illuminate how these oral religious practices function within the society: how transmission occurs, how ritual specialists use language to effect transformations, and how myth and ritual are intertwined with environment, kinship, and social order. The work is valuable for scholars of anthropology, religious studies and linguistics, giving a rare glimpse into lesser-documented oral literatures and their structural, social, and cultural dimensions.