Dukduk
Tolai · numen · Tolai traditional religion; continuing · numen
The Dukduk is the male masked spirit of the Tolai ceremonial society, the son and companion of the Tubuan. He appears in pairs as a towering cone of leaves surmounted by a face, his human bearer wholly hidden, and unlike the immortal Tubuan he is short-lived: each dukduk is made, danced, and destroyed within a single ceremonial cycle, so that his kind is forever dying and being born anew. He enforces the will of the society, collecting fines in tabu shell-money, policing conduct, and terrifying the uninitiated and the women from whom his nature is concealed. His name, a reduplicated form, is the source of the wider term by which the whole institution came to be known.
Parentage
Domains
- initiation
- law and sanction
Powers
- police conduct and collect fines in tabu
- die and be reborn within each cycle
Relations
- parent: Tubuan