Babakoto

A man hangs at the top of a forest giant with a box full of honey and no way down. He climbed up on a liana that was wound through the branches, and while he hacked at the comb the bees had built there, he cut the very vine he came up on. It has dropped to the forest floor. The trunk below him is far too broad to hug. If he shouts, nobody will hear. He settles in to wait for death, and the bees go on humming around him in the heat. Then two enormous lemurs come through the branches toward him.

That is how the story ran when the missionary James Sibree published it in 1898 as a folk tale of the Betsimisaraka of eastern Madagascar. The male took the man by the head and shoulders, the female by the feet, and between them they carried him to the ground in no time at all. What the honey gatherer did next was lay a curse on his own descendants, should any of them ever kill or eat a lemur, or any of the other leaping creatures of the forest.

The animal at the centre of the tale is the babakoto, the indri, the largest lemur alive. It is black, often patched with white, and almost tailless, which makes it look less like a monkey than like a small person in a fur coat. It clings upright to tree trunks and launches itself from one to the next in long springing leaps. A troop announces itself every morning with a song, a wailing, rising and falling chorus that carries a long way through the wet eastern rainforest. Writers of the nineteenth century and after kept reaching for the same comparison: the cry is sad, and it sounds like a child, or like a man who is suffering. They also noticed that the babakoto sits and stands as people do and lives in bands.

The Betsimisaraka drew the obvious conclusion, and then several different ones. When the French folklorist Arnold van Gennep gathered every account he could find for his 1904 study of taboo and totemism in Madagascar, he counted at least eight separate explanations of why the babakoto must not be harmed, many of them flatly contradicting each other. He did not much mind. To him they were all answers to the same handful of questions: why the animal has its name, why it is honoured and treated as a man, why it may not be killed or eaten, and why people are related to it.

The most famous answer is the honey story in another form. The French doctor Louis Catat heard it among the Betsimisaraka at the end of the nineteenth century. In his version the climber is Koto, the first Betsimisaraka and the father of the whole people, a great lover of honey who went up a forest giant after a swarm and found himself stranded. A good-natured lemur took pity, sat beside him, and then went down to the ground jumping from branch to branch. Koto watched, copied it, and came down the same way. Ever since, the story says, those animals have been called the Father of Koto. Nobody in the story seems bothered that the lemur is named as the father of a man who is himself the father of everyone. It is a rescue story, not a family tree.

A darker family tree comes from Tamatave. In 1893 the colonial agent Gabriel Ferrand printed a short tale dictated to him by a Betsimisaraka woman of that port. A hungry man and woman went into the forest to look for food, and there the woman gave birth to one child, then two, then three, then a very great many. They lived on raw grass and roots. Some of the children began to plant rice. The others, not much inclined to work, carried on eating grass and roots. The rice planters became the ancestors of people, and the rest gave rise to the babakoto. The tale ends with a rule rather than a moral: the babakoto are the brothers of men, and it is forbidden to hunt or kill them.

Other tellings make the lemur a saviour in war. A naturalist’s note of 1863, repeated by later English writers, has a tribe fleeing its enemies into the forest. The pursuers follow what they take for human voices, come upon a troop of babakoto instead, and run, convinced that the fugitives have been turned into howling animals. A version collected by the Swiss zoologist Conrad Keller sets the same scene on the edge of the great forest, with a troop of black babakoto raising such a clamour that the attacking Hova thought thousands of warriors had come to help. In yet another, from the Jesuits Abinal and La Vaissière, a condemned man escapes his executioner, vanishes at the foot of a tree, and leaves only a big grimacing creature on a high branch. The executioner decides the man must have been innocent and goes home. The fugitive’s line lives on in the forest and, after some generations, becomes human again, founding a people at the forest’s edge.

The rules that grew from all this were plain. Travellers recorded villagers buying captive babakoto back from Europeans in order to release them, and burying any that were found dead. When Catat shot one near the Betsimisaraka village of Sahasoa, some twenty people came out shouting that he had killed one of their grandfathers in the forest, and he had to promise to skin it somewhere out of sight. Among the Betsileo, a priest named Pagès shot one and wanted at least the fur. His palanquin bearers demanded the body of their kinsman, carried it to the next village, wrapped it in the customary shroud and a double winding sheet of raffia leaves, and buried it in a grave dug for it, with hair unbound in mourning, lamentation, songs and a few rounds of rum. A man who killed one, the missionary G. H. Smith wrote in 1886, would struggle to find anyone in the tribe who would give him a bed for the night.

The taboo was never universal. One traveller in 1840 found that people inland feared the babakoto while his own porters from Tamatave shot and ate one without a qualm, and another observer listed lemurs among the foods the Betsimisaraka enjoyed. The explanation, already noticed at the time, is that such prohibitions often belonged to particular families rather than to whole peoples. Keller claimed that the souls of the dead lived on in lemurs. Van Gennep could find nothing to confirm it.

Within its own forest, the babakoto’s power is the power of kinship. It rescues those who fall into trouble in the trees, it shelters fugitives simply by being mistaken for them, and its death is mourned with the full rites owed a person. Its weakness is that this protection lives only in human promises. It holds where a family’s oath holds, and not one step beyond.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Babakoto in Malagasy tradition?

The Babakoto is the Malagasy name for the indri, the largest living lemur, which the Betsimisaraka of eastern Madagascar treat as kin to human beings. Their tales make it an ancestor, a brother of people, or the rescuer of a forefather. Because of this it is fady, or taboo, and may not be killed or eaten.

What does the name Babakoto mean?

Babakoto is usually read as baba, meaning father, and koto, a word for a small child not yet named. A Betsimisaraka tale recorded by the French doctor Louis Catat explains it as the Father of Koto, after a lemur that showed Koto, the first Betsimisaraka, how to climb down from a tall tree after he had gathered honey.

Why is it forbidden to kill a Babakoto?

The Babakoto is protected because the tales say it is related to people or once saved an ancestor’s life. In one version recorded by James Sibree in 1898, a honey gatherer stranded at the top of a tree was carried down by two great lemurs and then cursed any descendant who would kill or eat a lemur. Nineteenth-century travellers saw villagers buy captive Babakoto back to free them and bury dead ones like people.

How were people descended from the Babakoto?

In a tale dictated to Gabriel Ferrand by a Betsimisaraka woman of Tamatave and published in 1893, a hungry couple went into the forest and had a great many children. The children who planted rice became the ancestors of human beings, while those who kept eating grass and roots became the Babakoto. The tale ends by saying the Babakoto are the brothers of men and must not be hunted.

Which peoples of Madagascar hold the Babakoto sacred?

The clearest records come from the Betsimisaraka and the Betanimena of eastern Madagascar. Arnold van Gennep, writing in 1904, thought the taboo might also extend to the Betsileo, Bezanozano, Sihanaka and Tanala, and a Betsileo funeral for a shot Babakoto was described by the missionaries Abinal and La Vaissière. The taboo often belonged to particular families rather than to whole peoples.

Related Entries

Malagasy Mythology, Andriambahomanana, Andriamahilala, Kalanoro, Vazimba, Tromba, Zanahary, Andriamanitra, Ratovantany, Andrianerinerina, Ibonia