Sweet Colors, Fragrant Songs: Sensory Models of the Andes and the Amazon

Author(s): Constance Classen

Source: American Ethnologist, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Nov., 1990), pp. 722-735
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
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sweet colors, fragrant songs: sensory models of the
Andes and the Amazon

CONSTANCE CLASSEN-McCill University

Every culture has its own sensory model based on the relative importance it gives t
different senses. This sensory model is expressed in the language, beliefs, and custom
culture. In our own visualist culture, for example, we use expressions like "worldview" a
see what you mean."1 In cultures with different sensory orientations one might speak rat
a "world harmony" or say "I smell what you mean." These sensory biases have profound
plications for the way in which a culture perceives and interacts with the world. Walter
(1967:6) goes so far as to say that "given sufficient knowledge of the sensorium exploited wi
a specific culture, one could probably define the culture as a whole in virtually all its asp
While this, as we shall see, may be an overstatement, Ong's (1969:636) point that we
gain a truer understanding of other societies if we were to allow that their conceptions o
world may very well not fit into our visualist paradigms is undoubtedly valid.
This point is eloquently illustrated by Steven Feld in "Sound as a Symbolic System: The
Drum." Feld (1986:147) describes how Papuan drums, whose essential meaning for the
uans lies in the sounds they make, are reduced to a mere visual exhibit in Western muse
Similarly, many artifacts employed in dynamic and multisensory contexts by their cultu
origin are transformed into static objects of sight when they enter our sensory domain.2
than any other discipline, anthropology should seek to counter our tendency to perceive
cultures through our own sensory model by attempting to understand them through thei
sory models. A start in this direction is evidenced in the work of many of the leading an
pologists of the 1950s and 1960s, such as Rhoda Metraux (1 953), Edmund Carpenter (Car
ter and McLuhan 1960), and Claude Levi-Strauss (1969) (Howes In press). Levi-Strauss's
ysis of the sensory codes in myths (1969:147-163) could have provided a basis for anal
the sensory codes of whole cultures. In its preoccupation with hermeneutics and with re

The indigenous peoples of South America culturally code sensory perceptions in

varied and complex ways. This article outlines and compares the sensory models
of indigenous cultures from two contrasting South American regions: the central
Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands. While the various peoples of the
Andes appear to share the same basic sensory model, those of the Amazon mani-
fest significant differences in the symbolic values they accord the different senses.
One common factor among the Amazonians, which also distinguishes them from
the Andeans, is the importance given to the senses dependent on proximity, par-
ticularly smell. Such differences can be attributed to a variety of causes and are
seen to have a variety of cultural effects. In conclusion, the anthropological im-
plications of examining indigenous theories and modes of perception are explored.
[South America, Andes, Amazon, anthropology of the senses]

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cultures as texts, however, contemporary anthropology has instead tended to increase the vi-
sual bias inherent in our perception of other cultures.3
This preoccupation can be traced to Geertz's work The Interpretation of Cultures, in which,
following Ricoeur (1971), he describes culture as an "ensemble of texts . . . which the anthro-
pologist strains to read over the shoulders of those to whom they properly belong" (1973:452).
The drawback to Geertz's approach, an approach that can be very informative in many re-
spects, is not only that it reduces the multisensory dimensions of a culture to a flat, visual sur-
face, but that it turns dynamic, interactive events into static, passive texts, which need only be
properly interpreted by the ethnographer to be understood (Howes 1988b).4
There are a number of anthropologists who have criticized the dominance of the visual in
contemporary anthropology and have argued for the development of an "anthropology of the
senses" (see Howes 1988a, 1988b; Seeger 1981; Stoller 1989). In "The Shifting Sensorium: A
Critique of the Textual Revolution in Anthropological Theory," David Howes writes:
The ethnographer who allows his or her experience of some foreign culture to be mediated by the model
of the text will have no difficulty in coming to think of the natives as enacting a particular "interpreta-
tion" of the world in their ritual and other activities. But it would be more accurate to regard them as
sensing the world. What is involved in "sensing the world" is experiencing the cosmos through the mold
of a particular sense ratio and at the same time making sense of that experience. [1 988b:91

The present article contributes to the developing field of the anthropology of the senses by
examining how the sensory models of the indigenous peoples of two contrasting South Amer-
ican regions, the central Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands, are expressed in their
cultures. It should be emphasized that the purpose of this investigation is not to analyze native
sensory data according to Western theories of perception, after the manner of those interested
in the cross-cultural psychological study of perception (for example, Bolton, Michelson, Wilde,
and Bolton 1975), or to situate the sensory models of the cultures studied within a single ex-
planatory perceptual framework. It is rather to explore and compare indigenous theories of
perception and the role these play in symbolic and social systems and, I hope, to indicate the
potential for further research in this field.
My discussion of sensory models in the Amazon is largely based on work done on the Desana
Indians of northwestern Colombia over the last two decades by the brilliant and perceptive
ethnographer Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff. This is supplemented by data on other Amazonian
cultures drawn from the writings of various sensorially aware ethnographers of the region. The
ethnographic data available on the cultural role of the senses in the Andes is more limited than
that available for the Amazon.5 In any case, modern Andean culture is generally more closely
linked to Western culture than is Amazonian culture, and can hence be suspected of having
adopted many Western sensory modes. In order to arrive at a more authentically Andean sen-
sory model, therefore, I will augment the modern Andean material with data taken from the
richly detailed corpus of Inca traditions recorded after the Spanish Conquest in the 16th cen-
tury. The juxtaposition of the Inca and modern Andean data reveals that, although present-day
Andeans have to contend with the impact of the dominant Western sensory order, in the more
traditional communities of the Andes the senses are ordered much as they were in Inca times.

II

Creation myths are often a useful guide for discovering which senses are deemed most im-
portant by a particular society. In the Inca cosmogony, which still survives in various forms in
the Andes, sound is the primary medium of creation: the world is called into being and ani-
mated by the voice of Viracocha, the creator:
Viracocha . . . drew on some large stones all the nations he thought to create. This done, he ordered his
two servants to commit to memory the names he told them of the peoples he had painted and of the
valleys and provinces and places from where they would emerge, which were those of all the earth. He

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 ordered each of them to take a different route and call the aforementioned peoples and order them to
come out, procreate, and swell the earth.
The servants, obeying Viracocha's command, set themselves to the task.... On hearing their calls,
every place obeyed, and some people came out of lakes, others out of springs, valleys, caves, trees,
caverns, rocks, and mountains, and swelled the earth and multiplied into the nations which are in Peru
today. [Sarmiento de Gamboa 1965:207-210]

An Inca prayer puts it more succinctly: "O Viracocha, who . . . said, 'let this be a man and let
this be a woman,' and by so saying, made, formed, and gave them being" (Molina of Cuzco
1943[1575]: 20). Viracocha is, above all, the one who speaks. He knows all languages better
than the natives do (Pachacuti Yamqui 1950[1613]:215). He names all the plants and animals
(Molina of Cuzco 1943[1 575]:14). With his word alone he is able to make the corn grow (Cobo
1964[16531:150). In the cosmogony, the first order given to humans is to "hear and obey" the
command of Viracocha; the transgressions listed there result from a refusal to hear and obey
the creator.

This emphasis on orality pervaded Inca religion. The primary characteristic of the Inca priest
was his ability to make anything talk-that is, to establish communication with anything in this
world, the upper world, or the underworld. The priest would then report the information gained
in this way to the people. The Inca high priest, in fact, was called Villac Umu, "The One Who
Tells."

The religious importance of the sense of hearing is exemplified in an Inca myth in which an
Inca, who is suffering from an earache caused by the piercing of his ears, prays for a river for
the Inca capital, Cuzco. As he is praying he hears a clap of thunder and falls down in fright,
putting his ear to the ground. Suddenly he hears the sound of running water under the earth.
He orders the spot dug up until a spring is found and then builds a canal to carry the water to
Cuzco (Cieza de Le6n 1985[1553]:118-119). The Inca's earache can be understood to have
been caused by a lack of sacred aural communication-of symbolic fluidity. This metaphorical
drought is relieved by the thunderclap that comes in response to his prayer. With his newly
pierced ears the Inca hears both the sacred thunderclap, signaling the presence of water, and
the water running underground. Cuzco is provided with an irrigation canal, and the Inca es-
tablishes a channel of oral communication between himself and the deities.
Inca men had their ears pierced during the male puberty rite, the male counterpart to first
menstruation and thus an inauguration of fertility. However, the fact that the organ "opened"
up was not the penis but the ear suggests that men were supposed to control their sexuality by
listening to and obeying oral tradition. Piercing the ears, then, can be understood as both in-
augurating male fertility and opening up the ear to be fertilized by sound-in particular, the
oral communications of the sacred. The distinctive large gold ear ornaments exclusive to the
Inca nobles may well have been a sign of their privileged access to sacred oral information.6
Inca holy objects, huacas, from rocks to mummies to mountains, were oracles that above all
spoke to their worshipers. At the time of the Conquest an Inca leader urged his people to forsake
the false religion of the Spanish, declaring, "[The Christian God] is a painted cloth .... [T]he
huacas speak to us" (Titu Cusi Yupanqui 1985[1570]:2). In this proclamation we find a rejec-
tion not only of the religion of the Spanish, but also of their visual, surface-oriented culture.
Modern Andeans continue to resist the extreme visualism of the West. A good example of
this is provided by the Andean writer Jose Marfa Arguedas in his novel Yawar Fiesta: when the
Peruvian government decrees that professional bullfighters must be hired for the traditional
local bullfights, the Andeans protest, "And what's the bullfight going to be like? Aren't the In-
dians going to do anything but watch it? ... Is the bullfight just going to be held in silence?"
(1985:45). Many Andeans today look nostalgically back on the pre-Conquest period as a
golden aural/oral age when the world was animated by sound. An Andean from the town of
Pinchimuro, Peru, comments: "The people of old used to help Ausangate [a mountain deity]
quite a bit. They respected him very much. In those days they didn't go to mass and they weren't
baptized. They simply spoke with Ausangate" (Condori and Gow 1982:56). This golden age of

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orality ended with the Conquest and the introduction of the European sensory order. The tran-
sition from speaking to writing, from hearing to sight, is movingly described in an account given
by another contemporary Peruvian Andean:7

God had two sons: the Inca and Jesus Christ. The Inca said to us, "Speak," and we learned to speak.
From that time on we have taught our children to speak .... The Inca visited our Mother Earth. He con-
versed with her and took her gifts and asked her for favors for us. The Inca married Mother Earth. He had
two children....
When they were born it made Jesus Christ very angry and unhappy .... The moon took pity on h
"I can help you," she said, and sent him a paper with writing. Jesus thought: "This will certainly frigh
the Inca." He showed him the paper in a dark field. The Inca was frightened because he didn't und
stand the writing. ... He ran far away. ... He slowly died of hunger.
When the Inca was no longer able to do anything, Jesus Christ struck Mother Earth and cut her n
Then he had churches built on her. [Ortiz Rescaniere 1973:239-243]

The Andean world of today is still primarily an oral one. For contemporary Andeans, as fo
Incas, religious specialists are those who are able to speak with the deities. Andean stories
myths, like Inca myths, are dominated by orality. The characters reveal themselves thro
dialogue: the earth tells people how they should act toward her, animals have conversa
with humans, the sun speaks when it rises, and so on (Condori and Gow 1982).
In his article "The Coherence of Social Style and Musical Creation among the Aymar
Southern Peru," Thomas Turino (1989:29) shows how the Andean social ideal of group
darity is expressed musically through integrated ensemble performance, so that "the sonic
sult of musical performance becomes an iconic reproduction of the unified nature of the c
munity." Andean life has, in fact, been described as a musical composition. Therese Bo
Cassagne writes of the Aymara:

The sung word marked and continues to mark the high point of Aymara social life. They sang to gl
the victor or bury the dead. Hunters enhanced their hunts with their songs.... Each activity and
sex expressed itself according to a specific rhythm, and music had distinct movements according t
rhythm of the seasons, so that each song had a particular meaning and place within the ritual cy
[1987:171]

Into this musical composition, Western culture introduces discordant notes. Some Andeans
believe that the sounds produced by industry mimic those produced by a mythical monster,
the Pishtaco, when he crushes his human victims and sucks out their fat (Sullivan 1986:15-
16). To the Andeans, the relentless whining of Western machinery represents an endless pro-
cess of death. The sounds of Andean culture sustain life; the sounds of Western culture destroy
it.

Notwithstanding the emphasis placed on hearing, sight is also of great symbolic importance
in Andean culture. In the cosmogony, light is not brought forth until the second stage of crea-
tion, when Viracocha calls the luminaries out of a lake (Sarmiento de Gamboa
1965[1572]:208), but with light the world acquires its definitive structure. It is not until light
(and thereby sight) has been created that Viracocha is able to order the world.
Light and sight were particularly important to the Incas because the patron deity of their state
was the sun. The following myth, recorded after the Conquest by a native Andean, describes
how the Incas, using the power of their sight, dominated the orality of their subjects:

The Inca Capac Yupanqui wanted to see how the huacas spoke with their followers. The ministers of a
huaca took him into a dark hut and called on their huaca to speak to them. The spirit of the huaca entered
with the sound of the wind, leaving everyone afraid. The Inca then ordered the door to be opened so
that he could see the huaca. When the door was opened the huaca hid his face. The Inca asked him
why, if he was so powerful, he was afraid to raise his eyes. The figure, who was repulsive, then shouted
like thunder and rushed out. [condensed from Pachacuti Yamqui 1950(1613):229-230]

Sight here is demonstrated to be more powerful than hearing. The huaca, who is evidently a
thunder god, intimidates his ministers through sound, but the Inca is able to dominate him
through sight. The Inca's purpose, however, is not to negate the power of sound and hearing,
but to control it. Later on in the myth we learn that after Capac Yupanqui defeats the huaca,

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the Incas oblige all the huacas of their empire to respond to their queries in the name of "the
one with strong eyes" (Pachacuti Yamqui 1950[1613]:230).
Many of the Inca huacas were situated along sight lines radiating out from the central Inca
temple, which may have been one way in which the Incas controlled the huacas through sight.
These sight lines, called ceques, also served to order Inca social structure, for different Inca kin
groups were associated with different lines (Zuidema 1964). Another way in which society was
structured through sight was through visually perceived distinctions such as land boundaries
and regional differences in dress. Oral traditions were visually structured through the use of the
quipu, a mnemonic device consisting of a cord from which different colored threads with knots
were hung. Finally, through observation of the stars, the Incas used sight to structure time. En-
abling the recognition and constitution of categories, so essential to Inca cosmology, and hav-
ing symbolic dominance over hearing, sight would thus seem to have been the most important
sense for the Incas.
Modern Andeans do not claim the reputed power of the Incas to dominate the huacas
through sight. In the present-day Andes, communication between huacas and their followers
generally takes place in the dark, much as described in the Inca account given above. Compare
that account, for example, with the following account of a modern Andean curing ritual:

The brujo [sorcerer] darkens the room and calls on his tutelary Auki [mountain spirit]. The door is closed,
the brujo whistles three times, and the Auki responds by entering through the roof .... Then, by the aid
of ventriloquism, a conversation is held between the brujo and the Auki in which the Auki reveals the
cause of the illness and advises a remedy. Moving his wings, the Auki leaves again by the way of the
roof. [Mishkin 1946:469-470]

No strong-eyed Inca appears here to stare down the voluble spirit. Modern Andeans, in fact,
are afraid to see spirits, as they believe that to do so will hurt their eyes (Tschopik 1951:191).
Superior visual power would now seem to belong to the westernized literate elite in the Andes.
Nonetheless, although the Inca emphasis on visual dominance and on light is no longer evi-
denced in modern Andean culture (and the sun is no longer an important deity), sight continues
to be used in ways similar to those of Inca times-creating sight lines, structuring time, and so
forth. Some data suggest that the Andeans of today continue to consider sight the highest sense.
Billie ean Isbell (1978:139), for instance, reports that in the Andean community she studied,
the term for eye, iaui, also means "first" and "best." Regina Harrison (1982:85) suggests that
sight is the sense most closely linked to knowledge among both the Inca and the present-day
Andeans.
It would be incorrect, however, to think of sight as somehow set apart from the other senses.
Even the most visualist of Andean practices, observing the stars, is intimately related to other
sensory perceptions. In his book on Andean astronomy, Gary Urton writes:

It is important to note that the divisions and passages of time are related to different crops and activities,
and that these in turn are related to the different senses. Since the astronomical reckoning of time de-
pends primarily on vision, the above material suggests that the total perception of time and space will
involve the union of all sensual perceptions of change in the environment. [1981:32]

The Andeans are, in fact, attentive to all the senses, not simply hearing and sight. In a dictionary
published in Peru in 1608 we find terms in Quechua, the language of the Incas and of millions
of modern Andeans, for "to see subtly," "to hear subtly," "to smell subtly," "to taste subtly,"
"to touch subtly," and "to understand subtly" (suggesting that reason was considered a sense).
A ccazcaruna, in Quechua, was "one who used all his senses sharply and subtly" (Gonzalez
Holgufn 1952[1608]:63-64).
Inca ritual customarily engaged all of the senses through the use of brightly colored clothes,
song and dance, food and drink, and incense. Charlene and Ralph Bolton (1976) have exam-
ined how modern Andean rituals too make use of all the senses. They find that a ritual intended
to please and attract employs agreeable sensory stimulants-sweet flavors, pleasant odors, and
so forth-while one intended to harm and repel employs disagreeable stimulants, such as bitter

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flavors and foul odors. Given that the proximity senses of taste, smell, and touch are not well
represented in Andean myth, why are they so well represented in Andean ritual? This may be
because in ritual it is considered necessary that all the senses be engaged in order for the cer-
emony to be completely effective. The use of the proximity senses in ritual, however, is usually
meant to underscore the message conveyed through the dominant media of hearing and sight.
A prayer offered to a deity, for example, may be accompanied by incense.
Isbell writes that synesthesia, the translation from one sensory modality into another, is used
in South American indigenous rituals to help individuals accomplish the transition from one
social stage to another:
analogies or synesthetic essences are created across sensory domains; visual experiences are linked to
auditory, tactile and even olfactory experiences to create stereotypes and emblems that provide models
for the individual's journey. [1985:305]

There is evidence of such "modeling" in Inca times. In the Inca male puberty rite, for instance,
the elders whipped and lectured the initiates at the same time, possibly in the belief that their
words would thereby physically penetrate the boys' bodies (Molina of Cuzco 1943[1575]:51).
Similarly, in another rite, after an oath of allegiance to the Inca was sworn, food symbolizing
the oath would be eaten by the participants (Molina of Cuzco 1943[1575]:37).
An interesting example of synesthesia in the modern Andes is that of the kisa. The Aymara-
speaking residents of the Chilean Andes use this term, which means the concentrated sweetness
of dried fruit and also pleasant speech and a soft tactile sensation, to refer to a rainbow effect
in weaving. (This penetrating "sweetness" of the rainbow, along with the transgression of cat-
egorical boundaries it manifests in its gradations of color, may be why the Incas believed that
looking at a rainbow caused one's teeth to decay [Garcilaso de la Vega 1945(1609): 175].) The
rainbow is such a powerful image that it automatically stimulates all the senses. An Andean
healer can make use of the rainbow's power by creating a rainbow out of wool in order to
diffuse a patient's illness through the gradual transformation of colors and sensory perceptions
(Cereceda 1987:200-204).
Synesthesia in Andean ritual is perhaps best illustrated by an Inca harvest rite in which hear-
ing was united to sight. In this rite the Incas would go before dawn to a plain outside Cuzco.
As the sun began to rise they would start to sing in chorus. The higher the sun rose, the louder
they would sing. As the sun set they would sing more and more softly, stopping when it dis-
appeared from sight (Molina el Almagrista 1968[1552]:82). Orality was ultimately so basic to
Andean culture that the Incas had to add an auditory dimension to even the preeminent visual
symbol, the sun.

Ill

Whereas in the Andean cosmogony the world is created by sound and the creator speaks
with his creation, in the cosmogony of the Desana Indians of the Colombian Amazon, the world
is created by light, and the creator watches over his creation:

The Sun created the Universe with the power of his yellow light.... While the dwelling place of the
Sun has a yellow color, the color of the power of the Sun, the dwelling place of men and animals is of
a red color, the color of fecundity and of the blood of living beings.... [The] world below is called
Ahpikondia, Paradise. Its color is green....
Seen from below, from Ahpikondia, our earth looks like a large cobweb. It is transparent, and the Sun
shines through it. The threads of this web are like the rules that men should live by, and they are guided
by these threads, seeking to live well, and the Sun sees them. [Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971:24-25]

The Desana believe that the light of the sun contains various color energies with various
properties. All people receive an equal amount of color energies at birth, and at death these
color energies return to the sun. Animals and plants also contain chromatic energies, with one
or two colors predominating. These colors are both actual (the external coloring of an animal)

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and imagined (the symbolic colors attributed to it). The Desana see the whole process of the
distribution, procreation, and growth of people, animals, and plants as a chromatic energy flow
that has to be carefully watched over and controlled by shamans (Reichel-Dolmatoff
1978a:246-271).
The Desana shaman is characterized by his penetrating gaze, with which he is able to discer
the occult. The shaman observes the world at large by looking into a rock crystal that function
as a microcosm. He then blends and balances the different colors of the spectrum within t
crystal to maintain an equilibrium of forces without. Similarly, the shaman can detect colo
imbalances in a person who is ill by looking at the patient through this crystal. He then us
the chromatic energies contained within the crystal to restore the proper balance of colors a
cure the patient (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1978a:265-268; 1979).
This emphasis on vision does not preclude an elaboration of the other senses. Colors const
tute a primary set of energies; odor, temperature, and flavor constitute a secondary set. O
is thought to be the result of a combination of color and temperature. The Desana classify p
ple, animals, and plants according to their odors. Human odors include one's natural od
odors acquired through the food one eats, odors caused by emotions, and periodic odors pro
duced by bodily changes such as menstruation (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1978a:257, 271-274;
1985b:124-125). Flavor, thought to arise from odor, is less important than the latter but st
culturally elaborated. The Desana recognize five major flavor categories: sweet, bitter, ac
astringent, and spicy. Different flavors are assigned to different kin groups and used to regulat
marriage. Compatible marriage partners are those with opposite flavors (Reichel-Dolmato
1978a:274-275).
The senses are evoked by Desana ritual in a variety of ways. Prepubescent boys, for instan
must take a purificatory bath in the river every morning. Before bathing they eat chili in orde
to make their skin oily and facilitate face painting, and in the river they vomit several times to
cleanse themselves. While they bathe they drum on the surface of the water, producing
"male" sound, and blow through their cupped hands, producing a "female" sound. At interv
they play a tune on a flute: "The odor of the tune is said to be male, the color is red, and t
temperature is hot; the tune evokes youthful happiness and the taste of a fleshy fruit of a cert
tree. The vibrations carry an erotic message to a particular girl" (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1981:91
After bathing the boys paint their faces and place bundles of fragrant herbs under their be
(Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971:141-142).
The ways in which the Desana interrelate the senses undoubtedly derive in large part from
their experience with hallucinogens. The narcotic used by the Desana, Banisteriopsis caapi,
commonly known as ayahuasca or yage, produces hallucinations characterized by colorful
imagery and a synesthetic mingling of sensory perceptions. The synesthesia prevalent among
the Desana is also found among other tribes that make ritual use of this drug, such as the Shi-
pibo-Conibo who live on the eastern Peruvian border of the Amazon. Among the Shipibo-Con-
ibo a shaman's power is believed to reside in the fragrance of certain songs, which in turn
embody visual designs (Gebhart-Sayer 1985:172). According to the Desana, the vine that pro-
duces this narcotic was born when the sun impregnated a woman through the eye with his
light. The child-the narcotic-was made of light and overwhelmed men with its brilliance.
"Everything happened through the eye," the myth proclaims (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1978b:4).
Desana men take narcotics on almost all ritual occasions.8 The visions the narcotics produce
are believed to provide a glimpse of the creation of the universe and the iconic images that
embody original ideals. At the same time, they are thought to induce states of consciousness
that will lead an individual to act in accordance with social norms. The senses primarily in-
volved in this process are sight, hearing, and smell. Through the use of hallucinogens and a
controlled sensory environment, shamans attempt "to make one see, and act accordingly," "to
make one hear, and act accordingly," "to make one smell, and act accordingly," and "to make
one dream, and act accordingly" (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1981:76-77, 95).

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 The Desana believe that the universe consists of two parts, the material world of the senses
and the divine world of pure, abstract ideals. The two halves of the brain are conceived of in
similar terms: the right hemisphere, called "existential-first," is concerned with practical affairs
and biological processes, while the left hemisphere, called "abstract-first," is the seat of moral
law. The function of the right hemisphere is, in essence, to put the ideals of the left hemisphere
into practice. The Desana help the right hemisphere do this by coding virtually all sensory
impressions to serve as reminders of the original ideals. The colorful patterns seen by the De-
sana in hallucinations, for example, provide the basis for design motifs that are culturally coded
to serve as reminders of behavioral norms (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1981:86-93).
According to the Desana, the two cerebral hemispheres are coordinated by a process called
"to hear-to act," whereby the right side listens to what the left side demands and puts it into
practice (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1981:86-88). Hearing is considered to be the most cultural of the
senses. For this reason menstruating women, who are said to be outside culture, are told that
they cannot hear (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1978a:274). The most natural or anticultural of the senses
is touch. Sexual touching in particular is severely repressed and the subject of deep anxiety
among the Desana (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971:19-20). Touch, at least in its sexual dimension,
would therefore seem to be the symbolic opposite of hearing for the Desana. Significantly, if a
person is not paying attention to a shaman's speech, the shaman may rebuke him by telling
him he is "listening like a penis" (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1981:89).
Despite their emphasis on light and color, then, the Desana in fact accord a greater cultural
value to hearing than to sight. The Desana say that sight recognizes categories while hearing
leads to an understanding of them; to see is to perceive, to hear is to conceive. Everything has
an "echo," and "only by being able to 'hear the echo' can one truly know what is being seen
and what it symbolizes" (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1978b: 152). A Desana term similar to "free will"
is pe mahsiri yiri, which literally means "to hear-to know-to act." The opposite of this is inya
mahsibiri, "to see-to know not" (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1981:94). In Desana ritual as well, sight is
ordered through sound: the shaman orally directs and explains the narcotic visions that reveal
divine reality and uses spoken incantations to control the color energies that animate the cos-
mos (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1978b:152).
The sensory model of the Suya Indians of central Brazil, as described by Anthony Seeger
(1975, 1981, 1987), displays some similarities to that of the Desana. The Suya, like the Desana,
consider hearing the highest sense; to hear is to understand and to follow Suya social codes as
expressed in the ritual speeches of the community leaders (Seeger 1981:83-85). The Suya too
contrast hearing with sight. But while the Desana consider the relation of sight to hearing to be
one of inferior to superior knowledge, the Suya understand it rather as one of antisocial to social
knowledge.
In Suya culture, extraordinary powers of vision are attributed to witches. A witch is one who
is literally able to see everything: the other tribes in the forest, the villages of the dead in the
sky, and the fires of the people who live underground. A person becomes a witch by "failing
to hear"-that is, by failing to obey social norms. It is then, when one has metaphorically made
oneself deaf (placed oneself outside society), that a "witch-thing" (wayanga) comes to lodge in
one's eyes and gives one supernatural vision and the power to cause and cure illnesses (Seeger
1981:87).
Sight is not otherwise symbolically elaborated by the Suya. During rituals, for instance, it is
much more important for the performers to be heard than seen. In fact, most major ceremonies
take place at night: while the men sing, the women listen, often from within their hammocks
(Seeger 1981:87). One possible reason for the Suya's relative lack of visual symbolism is that,
whereas the Desana use hallucinogens which intensely stimulate the visual cortex, the Suya
make no use of hallucinogens (Seeger 1981:66).
While the Suya do not focus on sight to the same extent as the Desana, they do place a
considerable emphasis on smell. As among the Desana, people, animals, and plants are class-

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ified according to their odors. In general, strong odors are associated with nature and bland
odors with culture: adult men, thought to be the highest exemplars of culture, are said to be
bland-smelling or to have no smell; women, who are considered to subvert culture by distract-
ing men from their ideal activity, singing, are said to be strong- or rotten-smelling (Seeger
1981:107-108). One's odor can also vary according to one's position in the community and
one's age. The community leader, for instance, is said to be strong-smelling because his power
is believed to be derived from the natural world. Infants are considered strong-smelling both
because they are not yet socialized and because they are associated with strong-smelling se-
men and milk (Seeger 1981:112, 202). The Suya thus use odor classes not only to categorize
species and tribes, as do the Desana, but also to represent social classes.
The Bororo, another people of central Brazil, have an equally elaborate classificatory system
of odors. Jon Crocker (1985:158-159) writes that the Bororo separate odors into eight principal
classes, which theoretically comprehend everything in the world. Occupying one extreme of
the classificatory system is jerimaga, a musky, rotten smell, and at the other end is rukore, a
sweet smell. lerimaga is the characteristic smell of raka, the life force, which is associated with
organic fluids. While essential to life, raka is also highly polluting and dangerous; the agency
of pollution is its jerimaga smell-taste. For this reason foods strong in raka, such as meat, are
boiled to the point of tastelessness to ensure that no jerimaga remains. Menstruating women
are said to reek of jerimaga, as do people who have just had sex, sick people, and shamans
when they are possessed. After death a person's body continues to give off raka for a certain
period of time, which explains the jerimaga odor of corpses (Crocker 1985:42, 56, 59, 159-
160). The dangerousness of the stench associated with organic transformation is contrasted
with the "invigorating and life-sustaining" nature of the sweet smell associated with structure
(Crocker 1985:343-344). Whereas the bope, the spirits that govern transformation, are offered
strong-smelling foods, the aroe, those that govern structure, are offered only sweet or bland
foods (Crocker 1985:85). Odors are thus so intrinsic to Bororo culture that they not only serve
to regulate social life, they also express the two most fundamental principles of Bororo cos-
mology, transformation and structure.
For the Bororo, taste appears to be a secondary property of odor. According to Seeger
(1981:105), taste has little symbolic meaning for the Suya. The Desana make symbolic use of
taste primarily as a means of classifying kin groups. For the Mehinaku of the Brazilian Amazon,
however, taste is culturally central.
The Mehinaku posit a direct relationship between eating and sex. The literal meaning of the
Mehinaku verb "to have sex," in fact, is "to eat to the fullest extent." The penis is said to be
like a tongue and the vagina like a mouth, and terms such as "succulent" and "delicious" are
used to describe sexual activity (Gregor 1977:20, 132; 1985:65-91). Eating and taste also have
wider cultural connotations. Among the Suya, memory is said to be located in the ear (Seeger
1981:85). The Mehinaku say that women cannot recall myths because the words will not stay
in their stomachs (Gregor 1985:177).
The Mehinaku use one word for pain and for harsh-tasting foods, such as pepper and salt.
Gossiping with the intention to give pain, in fact, is called "adding pepper" (Gregor 1977:85).
Painful foods are associated with power and sweet foods with sensitivity. The apprentice sha-
man eats honey to make his lips sensitive to the presence of the foreign objects that he sucks
out of his patients' bodies, and pepper to make his lips and throat powerful so as to be able to
communicate with the spirits. His sense of taste is heightened by the fact that his other senses
are restricted during his apprenticeship; he is kept in semidarkness and his physical contact
and oral communication with others are limited (Gregor 1977:236, 335).
Adolescent boys are secluded in a similar fashion. A secluded boy is at first allowed to eat
only "tasteless" foods such as manioc bread. Later, he is allowed sweet tapioca porridge, which
he sips slowly in order "to let the sweetness reach him gradually." Painful and other foods are
then carefully introduced until the boy is allowed an ordinary diet (Gregor 1977:233-234).

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Taste would therefore seem to provide a step-by-step initiation into Mehinaku culture, which
is characterized by its inclusion of both painful and sweet foods, both power and sensitivity.

IV

While the various peoples of the central Andean highlands appear to share the same basic
sensory model, those of the Amazon differ significantly from one another in the symbolic value
they accord the different senses. One common factor among the Amazonians, which also dis-
tinguishes them from the Andeans, is the importance placed on the proximity senses, particu-
larly smell. How is this basic difference between the sensory models of the Andes and the Am-
azon to be explained?
It may be that the Andeans believe the proximity senses to be too close to the "savage sen-
suality" they consider alien to their culture to merit much symbolic elaboration.9 The environ-
ment may also exert an influence, though probably not a determining one (as the very diversity
of our material attests), on this difference. In the barren Andean highlands touch is dulled by
the cold and by layers of clothing, odors are poorly diffused through the thin atmosphere, and
the range of foods is limited. Hearing, however, is heightened by the acoustics of the moun-
tains, and sight is engaged by the open sky and the vista of mountain peaks. In the tropical
entanglement of the Amazonian rain forest, on the other hand, odors, tastes, and textures
abound. Hearing is continually engaged by the myriad sounds of the forest, but vision is limited
by the forest's closeness and darkness. The Desana's use of vision-enhancing hallucinogens
may, in part, be a way of compensating for the reduced visibility of their environment. The
Suya's ascription of a negative cultural value to sight may represent another form of response
to this reduced visibility.
As we have seen, both the Desana and the Andeans place sight and hearing above the other
senses. While in their cosmologies the Desana emphasize sight and the Andeans hearing, how-
ever, the Desana in fact consider hearing the highest sense, and the Andeans, sight. With re-
spect to the Andeans, this duality may occur because, while sight is considered more powerful
than hearing, sound and hearing are thought to be of more use in uniting people, land, and
gods and in animating the cosmos. In the case of the Desana, the reason for the distinction may
be that, while hearing is considered superior because it produces understanding, only sight can
perceive the colors and designs that form the basis of the universe.
Nevertheless, in both cultures the two senses are often so closely interrelated that it is difficult
to separate the functions of one from those of the other or to determine which is more important.
We have seen how sight and hearing are united in Andean ritual. The Desana, for their part,
merge the two senses not only in ritual but also in terms such as penyori, which means "to
hear" and "to feel the effects of a penetrating glance" (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971:138), and pe-
sfr6, which means "to hear" and "to illuminate" (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1981:94). When an in-
dividual consults with a shaman, hearing (also meaning understanding) and sight (also meaning
insight) play off each other until the individual is temporarily transported to paradise. The term
for this altered state, pepiri, is based on the verb "to hear." However, when asked to describe
the experience, one of Reichel-Dolmatoff's informants simply said, "one sees, one is there"
(Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971:138).
The Suya differ from the Andeans and the Desana in that they perceive hearing and sight not
as working together, but as opposing each other. For the Suya, hearing characterizes the social
person and sight the antisocial person. By performing their major rituals at night, the Suya at
once minimize the role of vision in their symbolic life and at the same time give prominence
to their ceremonial songs, thereby enhancing hearing. Whereas witches cultivate sight by mak-
ing themselves ritually deaf, the socialized Suya cultivate hearing by making themselves ritually
blind.

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 From this comparison of various South American indigenous cultures it can be seen that non-
literate societies, while often grouped indiscriminately together as oral/aural cultures by schol-
ars concerned with the cultural and cognitive effects of literacy (for example, Goody 1977; Ong
1982), can in fact have a wide variety of sensory orders. Furthermore, one cannot assume, as
Ong does, that certain cultural effects will necessarily follow from a particular sensory order.
While each sensory modality may have specific inherent properties-for instance, sight is uni-
directional, hearing is multidirectional (Lowe 1982:5-7; Ong 1967:117-118)-cultures re-
main free to emphasize certain of these properties and imbue them with their own values. The
visualism of the West, with its emphasis on surfaces and detached observation (Foucault
1975:107-109; Ong 1967:128-129), for example, is quite different from the visualism of the
Desana, with its emphasis on integrating and animating color energies.10 While it may be pos-
sible to make certain general statements about the character of "eye-minded" or "ear-minded"
societies, therefore, it would not seem to be possible to constitute any conclusive typology of
cultures according to their sensory models. To conclude, sensory perception is a cultural as
well as a physical act, insofar as certain cultural values are ascribed to different sensory per-
ceptions. These values are directed, but not determined, by the inherent characteristics of the
different modalities. The senses, therefore, can be thought of as both shapers and bearers of
culture.

In light of this, we may then ask: By what means and to what ends is sensory perception
"socially regulated" (Jackson 1977:209)? We tend to think of perception as an objective means
of gathering information about the world. In the cultures of the Andes and the Amazon, as we
have seen, perception would appear to be governed by the same principles that govern society
and the cosmos. Thus, the Suya regulate hearing and sight by denoting the former a social sense
and the latter an antisocial sense. The Incas justified their dominant social status in part by
attributing greater powers of sight and hearing to themselves than to their subjects. In the mod-
ern Andes superior sight (that is, literacy) is one of the characteristics of the westernized elite.
Desana men maintain their dominant status in their society by claiming transcendent vision
and denying women the hallucinogens that are the means of attaining sensory superiority. In
short, the sensory models of the Andes and the Amazon would seem to be involved in an in-
teractive relationship with their cultures of origin, both expressing and affecting the paradigms
and conflicts manifested by the latter.
What are the implications of the preceding account for the anthropology of the senses? The
sensorially minded anthropologist would strive to be attentive not only to the different sensory
expressions of other cultures, but also to what those expressions reveal about the symbolic and
social orders of those cultures. The fact that among the Desana, for instance, flavors are part of
the exogamic system (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1978a:275) and odors play a basic role in rituals of
exchange (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1985a:33), indicates that the exploration of sensory perception
can be relevant even to the study of such subjects as kinship and exchange. Many interesting
and important questions arise when one examines the interaction between perception and cul-
ture. Does one's sensory model vary according to one's sex, age, or social class in a particular
culture? How is cognition affected by the relative cultural importance given to each sense?
What different modes of consciousness are created by constituting olfaction or touch as a fun-
damental way of knowing? In sum, exploring the role of sensory perception in other cultures
would, I suggest, allow us to more authentically perceive and analyze the world of the "other"
and, at the same time, increase our awareness of the means and ends of the social regulation
of the senses in our own culture.

notes

Acknowledgments. The research on which this article is based was supported in part by a generou
(no. 410-88-0301) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and by a do

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fellowship from the same organization. I gratefully acknowledge the many helpful suggestions I received
from the reviewers of this article and, in particular, David Howes, director of the "Varieties of Sensory
Experience" Research Project.
'Various aspects of the visual bias of the West have been explored in such works as Michel Foucault's
The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (1975) and Margaret Miles's Image as In-
sight: Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and Secular Culture (1985).
2This process is often reversed when artifacts from our culture enter other sensory orders. In A Musical
View of the Universe, for instance, Ellen Basso (1985:64) relates that her glasses were understood by a
member of the "ear-minded" Kalapalo tribe of central Brazil not in terms of their visual function, but in
terms of the sound they made on being put on: "nnguuruk."
3Our extreme visualism can also distort our perception of our own culture by leading us to downplay
the role other senses have had in our cultural development (see, for example, Corbin 1986).
4In contrast to anthropologists' relative neglect of the senses, biologists and psychologists have con-
ducted extensive research on sensory perception in the last few decades (Rivlin and Gravelle 1984). This
article, however, is concerned with the cultural rather than the physiological functioning of the senses.
5Some interesting work on the role of the senses in rituals involving the use of hallucinogens has been
undertaken among the native and mestizo populations of Peru's north coast (Joralemon 1984; Sharon
1978). This work is not directly relevant to the present study, however, as the highland Andeans examined
here do not use hallucinogens.
6Anthony Seeger (1975) examines the relationship between body ornamentation and sensory ratios
among the Suya and other Ge tribes of central Brazil in "The Meaning of Body Ornaments."
71 discuss this myth and the Andean experience of literacy in "Literacy as Anti-Culture: The Andean
Experience of the Written Word" (Classen In press).
8Desana women are not allowed to take hallucinogens and experience narcotic visions. They may com-
pensate for this by emphasizing senses other than sight, such as touch. Significantly, Desana women take
the taboos surrounding sexual activity much less seriously than men do (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1985a:4-5).
9Evidence of the Andeans' aversion to what they deem the "savagery" of the Indians of the jungle can
be found in both Inca and modern times. See, for instance, Bastien (1978:97) and Cieza de Le6n
(1985[1553]:184-185).
'1Although in the West sight is held to be limited to mere appearance, it is used as a metaphor for
derstanding; on the other hand, among the Desana, only hearing is believed capable of comprehen
the principles revealed by sight. In one sense it might be said, therefore, that in the West sight is though
understand what it does not perceive, while among the Desana sight is thought to perceive what it d
not understand.

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submitted 22 June 1989

revised version submitted 11 October 1989
second revised version submitted 13 March 1990
accepted 9 April 1990

sweet colors, fragrant songs 735

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