Formosan

The beliefs of the Austronesian peoples of Taiwan were never one system: every people kept its own spirits, gods, symbols and myths. The Paiwan and other southern peoples revered the hundred-pace snake and carved its diamond pattern into their designs.

Among many of the plains peoples only women, called inibs, could speak to the spirit world. The Siraya honoured the ancestral spirit Alid, represented by water jars on household altars. Under Dutch rule from 1624 the inibs were removed from the villages to clear the way for missionaries.

After the Zheng regime of 1662 and the Qing conquest of 1683, Han settlers brought Taoism and Buddhism to the plains, and many Siraya took up Han practices. Their fertility spirit Ali-zu entered the local Han pantheon.