Bunun Sky God Belief (Dihanin)

The most celebrated Bunun legend is the tale of Shooting the Sun. In the earliest age, two suns took turns lighting the earth, and their blazing heat dried up the rivers, scorched the crops, and left the people in misery. A warrior of the tribe resolved to take his young son and walk toward the place where the suns rose, to shoot one down. Father and son crossed range after range and walked so long that the orange seed the father had idly planted on the day they set out had grown into a great tree. At last, reaching the edge of the sky, the warrior drew his bow and struck one of the suns. The wounded sun bled, staining the heavens fiery red — and this, the Bunun say, is the origin of the sunset glow; the injured sun slowly dimmed until it became the moon we know today. From then on one sun and one moon shared the sky, and the earth came back to life. Seeing the courage of the Bunun warrior, Dihanin gave the people the seeds of millet and taught them to farm, so that the Bunun would never go hungry again.

Bunun offerings are chiefly millet wine and game meat, with tribal elders or ritual specialists leading the people in prayer to the Sky God Dihanin. The Bunun possess a unique "painted calendar" — pictographic symbols recording each month's farming tasks and ceremonies, which makes them the only indigenous people in Taiwan to have developed a form of written record. But the most unforgettable element of their worship is the Pasibutbut (Eight-Part Polyphony): the people form a circle and, with harmonies layered one upon another, sing out the prayer for a bountiful millet harvest. It is no performance, but a whole community giving voice, as one, to its wish before the Sky God.

The most important Bunun ceremony is the Ear-Shooting Festival (Malahtangia), held annually in April or May. The festival serves as both a coming-of-age rite and a hunting ceremony for Bunun men, who must shoot deer ears hung on a wooden rack to demonstrate their marksmanship. During the festival, participants perform the internationally celebrated Pasibutbut (Eight-Part Polyphony) — also known as the "Prayer for a Bountiful Millet Harvest." Using a distinctive vocal technique in which singers produce layered harmonies, the performance creates an otherworldly sound that rises as a prayer to Dihanin. In 1952, Japanese musicologist Kurosawa Takatomo sent a recording of this singing to UNESCO, where it astonished the international music community and has since been hailed as one of the great treasures of human musical heritage.