Três estilos diferentes de Uma Luliks!!!

Proud East Timorese Elders (photograph by Andrea K. Molnar)

[...] East Timorese place a great value on their sacred houses, uma lulik, which are generally located in the origin village. When such a village is relocated the first house to be built is the uma lulik. Sacred ancestral heirlooms are stored in the uma lulik. During 2002 there was a fervent effort to rebuild sacred houses that were destroyed and ransacked by the militias during 1999 throughout East Timor. The East Timorese identify three different styles of uma lulik which they roughly categorize as representing the cultures in the western, central, and eastern parts of the country. In Atsabe this categorization was explained as follows. In the eastern part the sacred house stands of tall 2+ meter posts, in the central part the uma lulik is round and has a domed roofing, in the western part the house is more rectangular in shape. In Atsabe both the central and western styles of uma lulik can be found. In Atsabe, uma luli, is usually the founding house of a group, the most senior house, also called the uma pun (source house). Its sacredness is conceptualized as bansa (hot) since it houses the sacred (luli) ancestral heirlooms and objects (siak). Siak can only be taken out of the house in a ritual context where drops of sacrificed animal blood are sprinkled on them. Uma luli has a number of significant divisions and all luli objects are on the back wall, on the soro tete side. There are also two doors; the main door and one on the left side of the house, a small door that leads directly into the soro tete. This door has also been referred to as the female door, and interestingly in some instances, as the door by which God should enter during ritual. The front partition of the house holds the hearth as well and it is the soro rema. When facing the back wall the hearth is in the right hand front corner of the house. There are many posts on which the house lays, but the four main posts at four corners of the inner house are the most inauspicious in the uma luli. The central post is actually part of the back wall. It is on this post that the sacred heirlooms are hung on a pronged rack. The main hearth stone must face this central post. Also during harvest ritual corn is taken inside the house and placed against this post. [...]" (Andrea K. Molnar)

Fonte: EAST TIMOR: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY, POLITICS AND CULTURE OF SOUTHEAST ASIA’S YOUNGEST NATION by Andrea K. Molnar, Northern Illinois University -Department of Anthropology and Center for Southeast Asian Studies, May 2005. Disponível online em http://www.seasite.niu.edu/EastTimor/default.htm#TOC