Various parts of the order of service and some gospels were
translated into the Tikopia language, and the communion
service was always conducted in the local language. However,
accretions that were purely Tikopian crept into the religious
practice. Women, allowed no voice in political, economic,
or even domestic matters in Tikopia, were not allowed a role
in the church, and women’s groups like Mothers’ Union
were actively discouraged. Menstruating women, excluded
from traditional rituals and even from dances, were techni-
cally prohibited from attending church in that state, some-
thing that was seen more as a relief than an exclusion.
The earlier priests were more doctrinally rigid, and cere-
monies associated with the Work of the Gods were specifical-
ly prohibited. However, by 1980 the turmeric-making cere-
mony was reinstated. Turmeric is the culinary spice made
from the rhizomes of a lilylike plant. The yellow lees from
the process are used in food, but the bright orange part of
the spice is mixed with coconut oil to make a body and cloth
paint. Turmeric was used to mark the body in every life pas-
sage ceremony, as well as in the decoration of dancers and
their bark-cloth skirts or loincloths. Referred to as “the per-
fume of the [old] gods,” it was traditionally believed to draw
the kindly attention of the gods to whatever activity was in
progress. During the time it had not been made on the is-
land, turmeric, judged inferior but necessary, was imported
from another island. The making of the turmeric in Tikopia
involved ritual withdrawal from everyday life and a series of
elaborate taboos and restrictions to be followed over the two
to three weeks the process took. Once again chiefs or their
ritual elders took up their traditional roles in directing the
process.
In 1980 the oldest of the four chiefs, the Ariki Tau-
mako, was still alive and was the only one who had taken part
in the traditional rituals. His ritual paraphernalia was kept
in a small house, which he referred to as a “museum,” behind
his main dwelling place, and he regularly threw a small offer-
ing of food toward the museum. He still remembered and
used his invocations to the gods of the sea, who had been the
responsibility of his clan when people were to take the in-
terisland ship away from Tikopia. However, he has subse-
quently died, and two or three generations have passed since
the forebears of the present chiefs practiced the old rituals.
Their memory exists only in Firth’s record.
The interventions by the first missionary in Tikopian
birth-control measures resulted in an increase in the popula-
tion that was unsustainable for the island. From the late
1960s on, people left the island for other parts of the Solo-
mons, forming permanent settlements first in the Russell Is-
lands, later on Makira, and increasingly in the capital of the
Solomon Islands, Honiara. There, Tikopia men sometimes
married Melanesian women whose exposure to Christianity
and practices inclusive of women differed from the Tikopia
experience. In the Tikopia village of Nukukaisi on Makira,
an in-marrying Melanesian woman became president of the
Mothers’ Union for the top half of the island. Some Tikopia
women (mainly those related to this woman’s husband)
joined and took responsibility for matters like church linen,
something that was not used in Tikopia itself because no
money economy existed there. Meanwhile, Tikopia in Honi-
ara have been exposed to a variety of sects, and young men
especially have been attracted to religions that provide youth
activities such as dances. While Anglicanism remains virtual-
ly the only religion on the home island, Tikopia in other
parts of the Solomons have begun to espouse other religions,
including Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormonism, whereas
others have ceased religious observances.
SEE ALSO Atua.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Firth, Raymond. We, the Tikopia. London, 1936.
Firth, Raymond. The Work of the Gods in Tikopia. London, 1940;
2d ed. London, 1967.
Firth, Raymond. The Fate of the Soul: An Interpretation of Some
Primitive Concepts. Cambridge, U.K., 1955.
Firth, Raymond. History and Traditions of Tikopia. Memoirs of
the Polynesian Society no. 33. Wellington, New Zealand,
1961.
Firth, Raymond. Tikopia Ritual and Belief. Boston, 1967.
Firth, Raymond. Rank and Religion in Tikopia. Boston, 1970.
Firth, Raymond, and James Spillius. Study in Ritual Modification:
The Work of the Gods in Tikopia in 1929 and 1952. Royal
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Occa-
sional Paper no. 19. London, 1963.
Macdonald, Judith. “The Tikopia and ‘What Raymond Said.’” In
Ethnographic Artifacts: Challenges to a Reflexive Anthropology,
edited by Sjoerd R. Jaarsma and Marta A. Rohatynskyj,
pp. 107–123. Honolulu, 2000.
RAYMOND FIRTH (1987)
JUDITH MACDONALD (2005)TILAK, BAL GANGADHAR (1856–1920), was an
Indian political leader. Known by his followers as Loka-
manya, “revered by the people, ” but as the “father of Indian
unrest” by the British authorities in India, Tilak had a crucial
role in defining Indian nationalism by an appeal to Hindu
religious and cultural symbols. He was born on July 23,
1856, in the Ratnagiri district of the Bombay Presidency.
His family belonged to the Citpa ̄van subcaste of Brahmans,
members of which had been influential as both religious and
secular functionaries under the Marathas, the last indigenous
rulers of the region, and Tilak had a proud consciousness of
the greatness of Hindu civilization. He began his career in
the recently established Fergusson College in Poona, where
in 1881 he and his friend G. G. Agarkar established two
newspapers: Kesari, in Marathi, and Maratha, in English.
The papers criticized many aspects of British rule and called
for a rejuvenation of India’s national life.
Tilak’s rise to prominence as a nationalist leader must
be seen in the context of movements for social and religious9198 TILAK, BAL GANGADHAR