The Land of the Siraya — A People Without Writing, and the Xin'gang Manuscripts

Why can we now read the words of a people said to have had no writing of their own? Let me begin there. Long before the Han Chinese crossed over, the plains of Tainan were home to the Siraya people. There were four great settlements: Xinggang, Bakloan, Soulang, and Mattau — roughly where today's Xinshi, Shanhua, Jiali, and Madou lie. Many of the place names you encounter in Tainan are Chinese characters chosen simply for their sound, borrowed to render Siraya words. Not their meaning, but only their sound, has survived. The Siraya people had no script of their own. It was the Dutch who brought one. Missionaries devised a way of writing the Siraya language in Roman letters, so that they could teach the Bible. It was a tool meant to spread the faith. That tool would come to be used in a way no one had foreseen. After the Dutch departed, the Siraya people continued to write their land contracts with the Han Chinese in romanized Siraya — Siraya on one side of the page, Chinese characters on the other. These documents came to be known as the "Xinggang Manuscripts," though locally they were long called the "aborigine contracts." Some examples that have been found date as late as the nineteenth century. A script given for the sake of conversion was, after the missionaries had long gone, used for a hundred and fifty years to protect the people's own land. When you stand in the park, take a moment to look slowly around you. The low, flat plain stretches on into the distance. This plain was once full of deer. The Dutch bought up deerskins here and exported them to Japan. The deer are gone now. Only their name remains, living on in the names of these places.