Malinowski – Baloma & After-Life among the Trobrianders (Detailed Notes)

General Orientation

The article – the first of a projected trilogy on Trobriand eschatology – is based on Bronislaw Malinowski’s ten-month residence (May 1915–March 1916) in the northern Trobriand village of Omarakana. During that time he learned the language, lived without interpreters and systematically recorded beliefs about death, spirits, emotion, social organisation and myth. The resulting portrait is of a society in which the fate of the dead (baloma) runs almost independently of the social fate of the survivors, yet still underwrites magic, gardening, warfare, genealogy and the annual ceremonial season known as the milamala.

Dual Post-Mortem Existence: Baloma, Kosi and Mulukuausi

Immediately on death the person ‘splits’. The true spirit – baloma – quits the corpse, embarks in a spirit-canoe and sails roughly 10\text{ miles} across to Tuma Island, where it will live a second life. A second, short-lived emanation – the kosi – haunts the village paths, gardens, water-holes, and the beach for only a few evenings, throwing pebbles, calling names or laughing but never inflicting injury. Natives are watchful yet only mildly alarmed; even children dare the paths at night. Terror is reserved for the mulukuausi, living sorceress-ghouls whose invisible ‘sending’ disembowels corpses, prowls storm-ridden seas and lurks in tall trees. Mulukuausi activity explains the sudden upsurge of nocturnal fear that grips a settlement after bereavement.

The Journey and Life in Tuma

Baloma follow the identical geographic routes that mortals use: inland villagers first make for the coast; coastal baloma step straight into canoes. On arrival each spirit sits on the Modawosi stone, wails for kin left behind, washes in the Gilala well (thereby becoming invisible) and knocks the paired stone Dikumaio’i – the first giving a loud ‘kakupuana’, the second making the ground tremble (‘ioin’). Gate-keeper Topileta, assisted by his wife Bomiamuia, exacts payment (the baloma of personal valuables stripped from the corpse) and allocates one of three roads according to cause of death: (1) war or drowning, a ‘good death’; (2) poison or suicide by poison; (3) silami-sorcery (the commonest and worst). Failure to pay condemns the spirit to become a vaiaba – a hybrid sting-ray–shark. Once admitted, the newcomer weeps; spirit kinsfolk console him, and, besieged by flirtatious spirit-women armed with love-magic, he soon remarries. Baloma retain full bodily likeness, eat, age and eventually undergo a second ‘death’: in extreme old age they bathe in the sea, slough their skin like a snake and shrink into a pre-human embryo (waiwaia).

Contact with the Living: Visions, Spiritism and Dreams

Tuma is regularly visited by mortals who dive for turtle-shell or cowries. They hear voices, glimpse shadows: Gi’iopeulo hailed To’uluwa’s party with “Bu kusisusi bala” (“You stay, I go”). Certain mediums – e.g.
Bwoilagesi (who imported a baloma song) and Moniga’u – claim to travel to Tuma in trance and carry messages home; sceptics like the orator Gomaia expose charlatans by demanding proof or offering money. Less dramatic is the conversational trance of Gumguya’u, who argues with baloma over the adequacy of sagali feasts. Dreams supply personal warnings, pregnancy annunciations and post-mortem news: Kalogusa dreamt his mother’s death at Milne Bay, which correctly foretold the death of Gumigawa’ia’s mother at Omarakana.

Milamala: The Annual Home-Coming of Spirits

From the late-August moon Yapila to second-day post-full Woulo the baloma leave Tuma, camping on beaches or in empty houses. Villagers erect lofty spirit platforms (tokaikaya) for chiefly baloma, roofed show-stalls (bunéiova) for valuables (vaigu’a: polished beku blades, red shell kaboma belts, arm-shells), and food fences (lalogua) draped with bananas, taro, coconuts and giant yams. At katukuala, the opening sagali, cooked food is distributed; thereafter each household presents daily dishes of bubualu’a or silakutuva (“Balom’, kam bubualua!”). Should offerings flag, baloma retaliate: storm, thunder, falling coconuts, drought. If scarcity persists they appear in dreams to demand better treatment, as when chief Vanoi of Olivilevi awoke to find ceremonial beach-sand on his threshold. On the pre-dawn after full moon the ioba beat drives the spirits out: young boys alone drum the kupi and katunenia, shout the formula “Baloma! Bukulousi! Bakalousi ga!”, circle the village, and finish with the kasawaga dance; midday brings a second, ‘lame’ ioba for spirit-women and children. With the baloma gone, mourners perform iwini wowou, ‘washing off the skin’, and dried, blackened widows remove obligatory mud, lime and restrict­ive taboos.

Spirits in Magic and Myth

Garden, fishing, canoe-building, weather, war and healing magic are carried by hereditary experts (towosi, poula, ludiwaga). Spells begin with lists of ancestral spirits whose names, invoked in the u’ula (“root”) of the formula, activate the charm. In Omarakana’s premier garden spell the magician recites: “Vatuvi, vatuvi… tubugu Polu, tubugu Koleko … bilumava’u bilumam tabugu Muakenwa.” Payment (ula’ula) of fish, areca or tobacco is first exposed to the baloma on mats or hearth-stones before the magician consumes it. Fishing rites at Kaibuola and Laba’i feed unmarried spirit-women: “Kamkuamsi kammi ula’ula, Nunumuaia: Ilikilaluva, Ilibualita.” Myths (e.g.
Tudava cycle, Ovavavile grove) provide geographical sanction: sacred wells, earth-emergence holes (buala) and petrified food embed doctrine in landscape.

Reincarnation and the Enigma of Birth

When a baloma becomes a waiwaia it is picked up by a female spirit (usually maternal kin) who inserts it through the vagina of a Kiriwinian woman; the child therefore always reincarnates within its original matrilineal dala and clan. Pregnancy announcements in dreams are common; girls at the seashore fear spirit-children hidden in sea-scum (popewo), tree-trunks (kaibilabala) or pebble-stones (dukupi). Every fourth or fifth moon of gestation the expectant mother undergoes kokowai bathing: female relatives wash her in salt-water and prepare a long ceremonial petticoat (saikeulo) to ensure light skin and easy birth. Underlying these rites is absolute ignorance of physiological paternity. Sperm (momona) is conceived only as pleasurable lubrication; a virgin (nakapatu) must merely be ‘opened’ mechanically by repeated intercourse or digital dilation. Consequently a woman impregnated during her husband’s absence arouses no suspicion, and children of unmarried girls are ‘fatherless’ yet uncontroversial. The father’s social role (inheritance of magic, residence rights, food support) rests on marital co-habitation (“mapula,” repayment for the wife’s services) not on blood.

Mulukuausi: Night Terrors, Witches and Social Sanctions

While baloma inspire mild nostalgia, mulukuausi generate true horror. They are living women whose nocturnal ‘sendings’ (kakuluwala) suck tongues, lungs (lopoulo) and eyes; they feed on corpses and prowl cyclone-ridden seas unless placated by canoe-warding kaiga’u magic. Their mythical link to carrion stench (buraputase) and high trees explains the old practice of village-centre corpse exposure and current dread of grave sites after dusk. The mulukuausi complex reinforces widow purity taboos, night-travel cautions and sorcery fears.

Methodological Reflections: ‘Social Dimension’ of Belief

Malinowski ends with a miniature treatise on ethnographic method. Beliefs manifest on four nested levels: (1) dogma or social ideas, fixed in ceremonial action, spells, myths and emotion-laden behaviour; (2) orthodox commentaries held by technical specialists (magicians, chiefs, myth custodians); (3) popular or village-wide interpretations; (4) individual speculation, often inconsistent yet sociologically revealing. Accurate record must track each stratum, resist the lure of a single ‘average statement’ and note local specialisations (e.g.
thunder lore in Ialaka, shark magic in Kuaibuola). Ethnology that discounts the emotional tone or ignores multiplicity in favour of “pure facts” degenerates into sterile collectioneering.

Broader Significance

The Trobriand material corroborates Spencer and Gillen’s Australian findings: thoroughgoing ignorance of impregnation co-exists with elaborate spiritist theories and matrilineal descent, extending the distribution of this cognitive pattern far beyond Australia. The data also illuminate how beliefs survive colonial intrusion: despite mission schools, sceptical joker-orators, legal suppression of corpse-exposure and the banning of head-hunting, the baloma still sail each August moon. Finally, by linking psychological fear, social tactics (iogba expulsion), economic exchange (ula’ula, sagali) and verbal art (spells, myth, song), Malinowski shows that the “after-life” is less a doctrine than a scaffold that props up gardening schedules, clan solidarity and the annual eruption of festivity – a perfect illustration of functional anthropology.