Goroi

Somebody mentioned a very interesting piece of information about the Dusun's 'goroi'(large jar) today. She said that in one of the Dusun villages she visited, very old gorois are used as rice-wine containers, when once upon a time they were used for burial purposes. (Goroi, by the way is just one of the many types of jar that the Dusun people kept. I don't really know how many types are there, but the common ones are called the 'kakanan' (tajau in Malay). These are used for keeping rice wine).

Goroi, on the other hand, refers to the large type. Very large indeed that an adult body can be fitted in one(sitting down, naturally). Instead of coffins, gorois were what used to keep the deads then. They would be buried somewhere near the house of the family, as there were no burial plots back then.

This is where my knowledge of this stop. I wonder what would happen to the buried gorois. Perhaps they would remain buried until somebody from the next generations stumbled upon them and decided to keep them again (??).

Anyhow, the thought that somebody is keeping rice-wine in burial gorois (no matter that it was done long time ago), is a bit distasteful. I just hope it's not one of my foreparents that were kept in whatever gorois they now use for rice-wine making...