The Bunun are one of the Indigenous peoples of Taiwan, living mostly in the mountains and valleys of the central and eastern island. Their traditional religion is described below in the past and present tense as the sources give it. Beliefs and terms differ between Bunun regional groups, and spellings vary in published accounts. Today most Bunun are Christian, and published sources document only part of the older tradition. Yushan National Park, Religion
Worldview
The Bunun hold that all things in the world have a spirit. Their own term for it is hanitu, and a person's hanitu is inherited from the father. Each person carries two of them, one on each shoulder, and a third element, the is-ang (also written isang), which belongs to neither parent and which coordinates the two. The Yushan National Park page names the left-shoulder spirit as the evil one, mankwan hanitu, which can make a person greedy and rude, and the right-shoulder spirit as the good one, mashia hanitu, which calms a person and prompts unselfish acts. Yushan National Park, Religion
A published summary of research on the Bunun adds that isang is also glossed as the soul, breath and heart, and that hanitu can mean the spirit of any living thing and of land, rocks and plants. It also says the hanitu may leave the body in dreams and that ancestral hanitu depend on how descendants treated them in life. The IPCF article glosses isang as "breath of life", and gives asang as the word for a settlement. Wikipedia, Hanitu Indigenous Peoples Cultural Foundation, Learning about the Bunun from Forestry Plants
Deities and Spirits
Published sources do not describe a pantheon of named Bunun gods. They describe a few categories of spirit.
Dihanin (also written dehanin) is the term the Yushan National Park page uses for the gods to whom ritual specialists pray. That source does not describe their characters or domains. Yushan National Park, Religion
Hanitu are the spirits described above, and the Wikipedia summary lists several kinds: left and right spirits of people, wandering spirits, spirits of land and objects that existed before people, ancestral spirits, and troublesome spirits that can cause illness. The same summary says the dead hanitu are fed but not worshipped, and that they are said to return to a western homeland, which it names Lamungan or Mai-asang. This comes from a single secondary summary of academic work, so treat the details as one published account. Wikipedia, Hanitu
Myths and Stories
The best-documented Bunun story is the tale of the two suns. In the Indigenous Peoples Cultural Foundation's retelling, as told by the Bunun guide Dahu, two suns took turns in the sky, so there was no night, and the heat made farming nearly impossible. A couple left their baby in the shade of a Formosan palm while they worked, and returned to find that the child had been dried into a lizard. The father set out eastward with his older son to shoot the sun. After some years of travel he shot it in the eye and the sky darkened. When the fallen sun asked why, he explained the heat and the loss of the child, and the sun took pity and became the moon. In this telling it made a pact with the people to follow the moon's phases for important rituals and to notify the moon when new fields are cleared. Before clearing a field, the Bunun place two pieces of wood on the ground in the shape of the moon and pray for a good harvest. This is presented as the origin of the Bunun lunar calendar. Indigenous Peoples Cultural Foundation, Learning about the Bunun from Forestry Plants
The same article records a custom attached to the mountains: a person who sneezes there stops and rests so that nearby spirits can pass first. Indigenous Peoples Cultural Foundation, Learning about the Bunun from Forestry Plants
Published sources record no other Bunun stories (for example flood or origin accounts).
Creatures and Spirit Beings
Beyond the shoulder spirits above, the Wikipedia summary of hanitu names two kinds of giant or monstrous beings drawn from academic work: qanasilis, giant spirits, and mamantainga, spirits with big ears and large torsos that like to eat children. It also describes homeless malevolent spirits with set forms that can cause illness, for instance by producing bamboo needles to stab people. These come from one secondary source, and their forms and tellings may vary by community. Wikipedia, Hanitu
The Taiwan japalure lizard that the baby becomes in the two-suns story is the only animal figure recorded in published sources. Indigenous Peoples Cultural Foundation, Learning about the Bunun from Forestry Plants
Ritual, Specialists and the Millet Year
Millet is the center of the Bunun ritual year. A community member of Kanding told the Indigenous Peoples Cultural Foundation that all annual rituals follow the millet cycle, with separate rituals for plowing, seed planting, storing grain and the New Year, and a rock-throwing ritual to scare away evil spirits. At the Harvest Ritual the community sings pasibutbut, a prayer song for the millet harvest popularly called the "eight-part chorus". In that account, the better the voices sound, the more the gods are pleased and the more likely they are to grant a good harvest. Seeds are planted in February and harvested in June in the Kanding account. Indigenous Peoples Cultural Foundation, Working Together to Reintroduce and Create a New Millet Culture
A Taiwanese government tourism page describes the pasibutbut as a traditional prayer for blessings, sung by a group of men standing in a circle, each producing a sound that imitates nature to create a harmony. The same page describes the Ear Shooting Festival, in which hunters thank the animals they hunted and teach the children Bunun culture, and notes that hunters honor their ancestral spirits before setting out. East Longitudinal Valley National Scenic Area, Sanungung Community
The Yushan National Park page says that traditional ritual specialists prayed for rain or sunshine, performed exorcism and epidemic control, and treated illness, and that their prayers and instruments were handed down over generations. It adds that these specialists were not a separate social class, because the skills were something anyone might try to learn. A priest presides over ceremonies and begins the agricultural rituals before households start farming. The post is held for life by public consensus, though it often passes within families. Yushan National Park, Religion
Millet also shapes household life. Only those who had shared a pot of millet were considered family, so a new bride was accepted into her husband's family after eating millet cooked in his house for some time. Indigenous Peoples Cultural Foundation, Working Together to Reintroduce and Create a New Millet Culture
Today
According to Yushan National Park, Christianity has been incorporated into Bunun society since 1945, and most Bunun are now Christian. Many churches sing hymns in the traditional Bunun polyphonic style. The same page says Christianity and Western medicine have reduced the role of traditional ritual specialists. Wikipedia's summary adds that some scholars see Christian ideas as added to older concepts rather than replacing them. Yushan National Park, Religion Wikipedia, Hanitu
Millet farming declined as younger people moved to cities. In Kanding community in Guanshan, a family began growing millet again in 2011, and the Kaiana Workroom now holds tours and workshops on millet, with nearly three hectares planted. In Sanungung community in Taitung, a workshop offers cultural tours that include the songs and stories of the Bunun. Indigenous Peoples Cultural Foundation, Working Together to Reintroduce and Create a New Millet Culture East Longitudinal Valley National Scenic Area, Sanungung Community