Those who are accustomed to all the complex comforts and resources of civilisation, and to whom all these resources hardly suffice to make tolerable the responsibility and labour of the rearing of a family, can hardly fail to be filled with wonder at the thought of these gentle savages bearing and rearing large families of healthy well-mannered children in the damp jungle, without so much as a permanent shelter above their heads. The rude shelter of boughs and leaves, which is their only house, is perhaps made a little more private than usual for the benefit of the labouring woman. The pregnant woman goes on with her work up to the moment of labour and resumes it almost immediately afterwards. She at once becomes responsible for the care of the infant. The only special treatment after childbirth is to sit with the back close to a fire, so as to heat it as much as can be borne. The delivery is sometimes aided by tightly binding the body above the gravid uterus in order, it would seem, to prevent any retrogression of the process. While the mother goes about her work in camp, the infant is usually suspended in a sling of bark-cloth from a bent sapling or branch, an arrangement which enables the mother to rock and so soothe the child by means of an occasional push. When travelling or working in the jungle the mother carries the infant slung upon her back, either in a bark-cloth or a specially constructed cradle of plaited rattan such as is used by the Kayans. The infant is suckled from one to two years, and then takes to the ordinary diet of boiled wild sago, varied with other animal and vegetable products of the jungle.
The children begin to help in the family work at a very early age. They are disciplined largely by frequent warnings against dangers, actual and suppositious, of which they remain acutely conscious throughout life. This discipline no doubt contributes largely to induce the air and the attitude of timid alertness which are so characteristic of the Punan. Harmony and mutual help are the rule within the family circle, as well as throughout the larger community; the men generally treat their wives and children with all kindness, and the women perform their duties cheerfully and faithfully.
The religious beliefs and practices of the Punans are similar to those of the Kayans, but are less elaborated. They observe a simpler system of omens, of which the behaviour and calls of lizards and grasshoppers and of the civet cat (ARCTOGALE) are the chief. They pray to Bali Penyalong, who seems to be the principal object of their trust. This being is probably conceived anthropomorphically, but his human qualities are not so clearly marked as in the case of the gods of the settled tribes. They make no images in human form, and we do not know that Bali Penyalong is supposed by them to have a wife. The only image used in rites is the wooden image of the crocodile, which is carried from place to place with every change of camp. In communicating with the omen-creatures, fire and the frayed sticks are used in much the same way as by the Kayans. Their rites involve no animal sacrifices, and they do not look for guidance or answer to prayer in the entrails of animals. It seems probable that the Punans in each region have absorbed some of their religious and superstitious notions from the settled tribes of the same region; for in each region the Punan beliefs are different, showing more or less affinity to those of the settled tribes. It is an obscure question whether all their religious belief has been thus absorbed from more cultured neighbours, or whether the Punans represent in this and other respects the perpetuation (perhaps with some degeneration or impoverishment) of a more primitive culture once common to the ancestors of all, or the greater part of, the tribes of Borneo.[175] The fact that the principal divinity recognised by them bears the same name (Bali Penyalong) as the chief god of the Kenyahs is compatible with either view.
Beside Bali Penyalong the Punans are aware of the existence of other divinities, which, however, are very obscurely conceived and seldom approached with prayer or rite. As regards the land of shades and the journey thither, Punan beliefs are closely similar to those of Kenyahs and some of the Klemantans. Their account of the journey of the dead includes the passage of a river guarded by a great fish and a hornbill (see Chap. XIV.). But they practice no burial and no funeral rites. As soon as a man dies in any camp, the whole community moves on to a new camp, leaving his body under one of their rude shelters, covered only with a few leaves and branches.
Their view of the life after death seems to involve no system of retribution and to be wellnigh devoid of moral significance. Their religious beliefs probably influence their conduct less strongly than do those of the Kayans; for among the latter such beliefs certainly make strongly for social conduct, I.E. for obedience to the chiefs and for observance of custom and public opinion; but in the Punan community the conditions of life are so simple and so nearly in harmony with the impulses of the natural man that temptations to wrong-doing are few and weak; external sanctions of conduct, therefore, are but little needed and but little operative.
Danger assails the Punan on every side and at all times, hence alertness, energy, and courage are the prime virtues; courage is rated highest, and a woman looks especially for courage in her husband. But though courageous and active, Punans are not pugnacious; as was said above, they rarely or never fight against one another, and the nomadic groups of each region maintain friendly relations with one another. Within each group harmony and mutual helpfulness is the rule; each shares with all members of the group whatever food, whether vegetable or animal, he may procure by skill or good fortune. On returning to camp with a piece of game, a Punan throws it down in the midst and it is treated as common property. If he has slain a large pig or deer, too heavy for him to bring in unaided, he returns to camp and modestly keeps silence over his achievement until some question as to his luck is put to him; then he remarks that he has left some small piece of game in the jungle, a mere trifle. Three or four men will then set out and, following the path he has marked by bending down twigs on his way back to camp, will find the game and bring it in. If a present of tobacco is made to one member of a group of Punans, the whole mass is divided by one of them into as many heaps as there are members of the band present; and then each of them, men and women alike, takes one heap for his or her own use, the one who divided the mass taking the heap left by the rest.
In spite of their shyness and timidity, they respond readily to kind treatment. They are never seen on the rivers, as they have no boats and cannot easily be persuaded to venture a trip in a boat. It is possible to make many expeditions through the jungle without getting any glimpse of them. One of us (C. H.) had lived in the Baram district six years before succeeding in seeing a single Punan. The history of his first meeting with Punans may serve to illustrate their timidity, caution, and good feeling. On making a long hunting trip on the slopes of Mount Dulit, he took with him a Sebop who was familiar with Punans and their language. For some days no trace of them was seen; but one morning freshly made footprints were observed round about the camp. The following night a cleft stick was set up at some twenty paces from the camp with a large cake of tobacco in the cleft, and on the stick a mark was carved which would be understood by the Punans as implying that they were at liberty to take the tobacco. This is a method of opening communications and trade with them well known to the Klemantans. In the morning the tobacco had disappeared, and fresh foot prints showed that its disappearance was due to human agency. The following night this procedure was repeated, and in the course of the day Punan shouts were heard, coming from a distance of some hundreds of yards. The interpreter was sent out with instructions to parley and, if possible, to persuade the Punans to come into camp. Presently he returned with two shy but curious strangers, who squatted at some distance and were gradually encouraged to come to close quarters. After staying a few minutes and accepting presents of tobacco and cloth, they made off. On the following day they returned with eight male companions, bringing a monkey, a hornbill, and a rare bird, all killed with their poisoned darts; and they enquired how much rubber they should bring in return for the tobacco. They were told that no return was expected, but, understanding that animals of all sorts were being collected, they attached themselves to the party, lent their unmatched skill to adding to the collections, and brought in many rare specimens that now repose safely in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. They soon gained confidence and took up their sleeping quarters under the raised floor of the rough hut; and, when after some weeks the time for parting came, they voluntarily took a prominent part in carrying down the collections to the boats, and went away well satisfied with the simple presents they received.
Punans never build boats or travel on the water of their own initiative and agency. In fact they dislike to come out from the shade of the forest on to a cleared space or the stony bed of the river. They are very conservative in spite of their intercourse with more advanced tribes, and they harbour many irrational prejudices. They entertain a particular aversion to the crocodile, an aversion strongly tinged with awe. They will not kill it or any one of their omen-beasts. They are very shy of whatever is unfamiliar. Many of them will not eat salt or rice when opportunity offers.
The medicine men or DAYONGS of the Punans are distinguished for their knowledge and skill, and are in much request among the other tribes for the catching of souls and the extraction of pains and disease. They are therefore fairly numerous; but, as among the other peoples, the calling is a highly specialised one, though not one which occupies a man’s whole time or excuses him from the usual labours of his community. Their methods do not differ widely from those of the Kayan and Kenyah DAYONGS.
The Punan has great faith in charms, especially for bringing good luck in hunting. He usually carries, tied to his quiver, a bundle of small objects which have forcibly attracted his attention for any reason, E.G. a large quartz crystal, a strangely shaped tusk or tooth or pebble, etc., and this bundle of charms is dipped in the blood of the animals that fall to his blow-pipe.
As regards dress and weapons the Punan differs little from his neighbours. A scanty waist-cloth of home-made bark-cloth, or equally scanty skirt for the woman, strings of small beads round wrists or ankles or both, numbers of slender bands of plaited palm-fibre below the knees and about the wrists, and sometimes a strip of cloth round the head, make up his costume for all occasions.
All his belongings are such as can easily be transported. He carries a sword, a small knife, a blow-pipe with spear-blade attached, and a small axe with long narrow blade for working camphor out of the heart of the camphor-tree. Besides these essential tools and weapons, which he constantly carries, the family possesses sago-mallets and sieves, dishes and spoons or spatulas of hard wood, and tongs of bamboo for eating sago,[176] a few iron pots,[177] large baskets for carrying on the back, a few mats of plaited rattan, and small bamboo boxes.
These are the sum of the worldly goods of a Punan family, and it would, we suppose, be difficult to find another people who combine so great a poverty in material possessions with so high a level of contentment and decent orderly active living.
Although his material possessions are so few, the Punan is not capable of fashioning all of them by his own independent efforts. All his metal tools he obtains from the Kayans (or other tribes) who are his patrons. But everything else he makes with his own hands. The long blow-pipe of polished hard-wood, which is his favourite weapon, he makes by the same methods and as well as the Kayans. But the iron rod which he uses in the process of boring the wood he cannot make. This illustrates his intimate dependence on other tribes, and seems to imply that the blow-pipe, at least in the highly finished form in which it is now used, cannot have been an independent achievement of the Punans. They are especially skilful in the plaiting of rattan strips to make baskets, mats, and sieves. They do little wood-carving, but carve some pretty handles for knives and decorative pieces for the sword-sheaths from the bones of the gibbon and deer. They are expert also in making bamboo pipes with which to imitate the calls of the deer and of some of the birds.
Hunting, tracking, and trapping game are the principal and favourite pursuits of the men; they display much ingenuity in these pursuits and attain a wonderful skill in the interpretation of the signs of the jungle. For example, a Punan is generally able to read from the tracks left in the jungle by the passage of a party of men, the number of the party, and much other information about it. They are expert scouts, and, when their neighbourhood is invaded by any party whose intentions are not clearly pacific, they will follow them for many days, keeping them under close observation while remaining completely hidden.
The Punan has few recreations. His highest artistic achievement is in song. His principal musical instrument is a simple harp made from a length of thick bamboo (Fig. 86); from the surface of this six longitudinal strips are detached throughout the length of a section of twenty inches or more, but retain at both ends their natural attachments. Each strip is raised from the surface by a pair of small wooden bridges, and is tuned by adjusting the interval between these. The only other musical instrument is a very simple “harmonica.” A series of strips of hard-wood, slightly hollowed and adjusted in length, are laid across the shins of the operator, who beats upon them with two sticks. But the finest songs are sung without accompaniment and are of the nature of dramatic recitals in the manner of a somewhat monotonous and melancholy recitative. To hear a wild Punan, standing in the midst of a solemn circle lit only by a few torches which hardly seem to avail to keep back the vast darkness of the sleeping jungle, recite with dramatic gesture the adventures of a departing soul on its way to the land of shades, is an experience which makes a deep impression, one not devoid of aesthetic quality.
In dancing, the Punan attains only a very modest level. The men dance upon a narrow plank (for the good reason that they have nothing else to dance upon); and the exhibition is one of skilful balancing on this restricted base while executing a variety of turning movements and postures. The women dance in groups with very restricted movements of the feet, and some monotonous swaying movements of the arms and body. The men also imitate the movements of monkeys and of the hornbill and the various strange sounds made by the latter.
The most striking evidence of the low cultural standing of the Punan is the fact that he cannot count beyond three (the words are JA, DUA, TELO); all larger numbers are for him merely many (PINA). Yet, although in culture he stands far below all the settled agricultural tribes, there is no sufficient reason for assuming him to be innately inferior to them in any considerable degree, whether morally or intellectually. Any such assumption is rendered untenable by the fact that many Punans have quickly assimilated the mode of life and general culture of the other tribes; and there can be no doubt, we think, that many of the tribes that we have classed as Klemantan and Kenyah are very closely related to the Punans, and may properly be regarded as Punans that have adopted Kayan or Malay culture some generations ago.
CHAPTER 20
Moral and Intellectual Peculiarities
In this chapter we propose to bring together a number of observations which have found no place in foregoing chapters but which will throw further light on the moral and intellectual status of the pagan tribes.
We have seen that among the Kayans the immediate sanction of all actions and of judgments of approval and disapproval is custom, and that the sanction of custom is generally supported by the fear of the TOH and of the harm they may inflict upon the whole house. The principle of collective or communal responsibility of the household, which is thus recognised in face of the spiritual powers, as well as in face of other communities, gives every man an interest in the good behaviour of his fellows, and at the same time develops in him the sense of obligation towards his community. The small size of each community, its separation and clear demarcation by its residence under a single roof, its subordination to a single chief, and its perpetual conflict and rivalry with other neighbouring communities of similar constitution, all these circumstances also make strongly for the development in each of its members of a strong collective consciousness, that is to say, of a clear consciousness of the community and of his place within it and a strong sentiment of attachment to it. The attachment of each individual to his community is also greatly strengthened by the fact that it is hardly possible for him to leave it, even if he would. For he could not hope to maintain himself alone, or as the head of an isolated family, against the hostile forces, natural and human, that would threaten him; and it would be very difficult for him to gain admittance to any other community.
It is only when we consider these facts that we can understand how smoothly the internal life of the community generally runs, how few serious offences are committed, how few are the quarrels, and how few the instances of insubordination towards the chief, and how tact and good sense can rule the house without inflicting any other punishment than fines and compensatory payments.
And yet, when all these circumstances have been taken into account, the orderly behaviour of a Kayan community must be in part regarded as evidence of the native superiority of character or disposition of the Kayans. For though the Sea Dayaks, Klemantans, and Muruts, live under very similar conditions, they do not attain the same high level of social or moral conduct. Among the Muruts there is much drunkenness and consequent disorder, and the same is true in a less degree of the Sea Dayaks; among them and some of the Klemantan tribes quarrels within the house are of frequent occurrence, generally over disputed ownership of land, crops, fruit-trees, or other property. And these quarrels are not easily composed by the chiefs. Such quarrels not infrequently lead to the splitting of a community, or to the migration of the whole house with the exception of one troublesome member and his family, who are left in inglorious isolation in the old house.
But the higher level of conduct of the Kayans is in most respects rivalled by that of the Kenyahs, and some importance must therefore be attributed to the one prominent feature of their social organisation which is peculiar to these two peoples, namely a clearly marked stratification into three social strata between which but little intermarriage takes place. This stratification undoubtedly makes for a higher level of conduct throughout the communities in which it obtains; for the members of the higher or chiefly class are brought up with a keen sense of their responsibility towards the community, and their example and authority do much to maintain the standards of conduct of the middle and lower classes.
We have said that almost all offences are punished by fines only. Of the few offences which are felt to require a heavier punishment, the one most seriously regarded is incest. For this offence, which is held to bring grave peril to the whole house, especially the danger of starvation through failure of the PADI crop, two punishments have been customary. If the guilt of the culprits is perfectly clear, they are taken to some open spot on the river-bank at some distance from the house. There they are thrown together upon the ground and a sharpened bamboo stake is driven through their bodies, so that they remain pinned to the earth. The bamboo, taking root and growing luxuriantly on this spot, remains as a warning to all who pass by; and, needless to say, the spot is looked on with horror and shunned by all men. The other method of punishment is to shut up the offenders in a strong wicker cage and to throw them into the river. This method is resorted to as a substitute for the former one, owing to the difficulty of getting any one to play the part of executioner and to drive in the stake, for this involves the shedding of the blood of the community.
The kind of incest most commonly committed is the connection of a man with an adopted daughter, and (possibly on account of this frequency) this is the kind which is most strongly reprobated. It is obvious also that this form of incest requires a specially strong check in any community in which the adoption of children is a common practice. For, in the absence of severe penalties for this form of incest, a man might be tempted to adopt female children in order to use them as concubines. We find support for this view of the ground of the especially severe censure on incest of this form in the fact that intercourse between a youth and his sister-by-adoption (or VICE VERSA) is not regarded as incest, and the relation is not regarded as any bar to marriage. We know of at least one instance of marriage between two young Kenyahs brought up together as adopted brother and sister.[178] Of other forms of incest the more common (though, it should be said, incest of any form is very infrequent) are those involving father and daughter, brother and sister, and brother and half-sister.
The punishment of the incestuous couple does not suffice to ward off the danger brought by them upon the community. The household must be purified with the blood of pigs and fowls; the animals used are the property of the offenders or of their family; and in this way a fine is imposed.
When any calamity threatens or falls upon a house, especially a great rising of the river which threatens to sweep away the house or the tombs of the household, the Kayans are led to suspect that incestuous intercourse in their own or in neighbouring houses has taken place; and they look round for evidences of it, and sometimes detect a case which otherwise would have remained hidden. It seems probable that there is some intimate relation between this belief and the second of the two modes of punishment described above; but we have no direct evidence of such connection.[179]
All the other peoples also, except the Punans, punish incest with death. Among the Sea Dayaks the most common form of incest is that between a youth and his aunt, and this is regarded at least as seriously as any other form. It must be remembered that, owing to the frequency of divorce and remarriage among the Sea Dayaks, a youth may find himself in the position of step-son to half a dozen or more divorced step-mothers, some of them perhaps of his own age, and that each of them may have several sisters, all of whom are reckoned as his aunts; therefore he must walk warily in his amorous adventures.
Sexual perversion of any form is, we think, extremely rare among the pagan tribes of Borneo. We have never heard of any case of homosexuality on good authority, and we have never heard any reference made to it; and that constitutes, to our thinking, strong evidence that vice of that kind is unknown among most of the tribes. It is not unknown, though not common, among the Malays and Chinese, and, if cases occur sporadically among the pagans, they are presumably due to infection from those quarters.
Homicide
Kayans, as we have seen, have no scruple in shedding the blood of their enemies, but they very seldom or never go to war with other Kayans; and the shedding of Kayan blood by Kayans is of rare occurrence. To shed human blood, even that of an enemy, in the house is against custom. Nevertheless murder of Kayan by Kayan, even by members of the same house, is not unknown. In a wanton case, where two or more men have deliberately attacked another and slain him, or one has killed another by stealth, the culprit (or culprits) would usually be made to pay very heavy compensation to relatives, the amount being greater the higher the social status and the greater the wealth of the culprit; the amount may equal, in fact, the whole of his property and more besides; and he might, in order to raise the amount, have to sell himself into slavery to another, slavery being their only equivalent to imprisonment. The relatives would probably desire to kill the murderers; but the chief would generally restrain them and would find his task rendered easier by the fact that, if they insist on taking the murderer’s life, they would forfeit their right to compensation.[180] The amount of the compensation to be paid would not depend upon the social standing of the murdered man, but the fine paid to the house or chief would be heavier in proportion to his rank. But we have knowledge of cases in which chiefs have, with the approval of the house, had a murderer put to the sword. The murderer who has paid compensation has, however, by no means set himself right with the household; they continue to look askance at him. Set fights or duels between men of the same house are very rare. If a Kayan of one house kills one of another, his chief would see that he paid a proper compensation to the relatives, as well as a fine to his own house. If a man killed his own slave, he would be liable to no punishment unless the act were committed in the house; but public opinion would strongly disapprove.
‘Running AMOK’ is not unknown among Kayans, though it is very rare. If a man in this condition of blind fury kills any one, he is cut down and killed, unless he is in the house; in which case he would be knocked senseless with clubs, carried out of the house into the jungle, and there slain.
Drunkenness during an act of criminal violence is regarded as a mitigating circumstance, and the fines and compensation imposed would be of smaller amount than in a case of similar crime deliberately committed.
Suicide is strongly reprobated, and, as we have seen, the shades of those who die by their own hands are believed to lead a miserable and lonely existence in a distressful country, Tan Tekkan, in which they wander picking up mere scraps of food in the jungle. Nevertheless, suicides occur among Kayans of both sexes. The commonest occasion is the enforced separation of lovers, rather than the despair of rejected lovers. We have known of two instances of Kayan youths who, having formed attachments during a long stay in a distant house and who then, finding themselves under the necessity of returning home with their chief and unable to arrange marriage with their fair ones, have committed suicide. The method most commonly adopted is to go off alone into the jungle and there to stab a knife into the carotid artery. The body of a suicide is generally buried without ceremony on the spot where it is found. Suicides of women are rarer than those of men; desertion by a lover is the commonest cause.
Dishonesty in the form of pilfering or open robbery by violence are of very rare occurrence. Yet temptations to both are not lacking. Fruittrees on the river-bank, even at some distance from any village, are generally private property, and though they offer a great temptation to passing crews when their fruit is ripe, the rights of the proprietor are usually respected or compensation voluntarily paid. Theft within the house or village is practically unknown. Even before the European governments were established, Malay and Chinese traders occasionally penetrated with boat-loads of goods far into the interior; and now such enterprises are regularly and frequently undertaken. Occasionally a trader establishes himself in a village for months together, driving a profitable trade in hardware, cloth, tobacco, etc. These traders usually travel in a small boat with a company or crew of only two or three men, and they are practically defenceless against any small party of the natives who might choose to rob or murder them. Such traders have now and again been robbed, and sometimes also murdered, by roving bands of Sea Dayaks, but we know of no such act committed by Kayans or Kenyahs. The trader puts himself under the protection of a chief and then feels his life and property to be safe.
It would not be true to say that the Kayans or any of the other peoples are always strictly truthful. They are given to exaggeration in describing any event, and their accounts are apt to be strongly biassed in their own favour. Nevertheless, deliberate lying is a thing to be ashamed of, and a man who gets himself a reputation as a liar is regarded with small favour by his fellows.
The Kayans, as we have said elsewhere, are not coarse of speech, and both men and women are strictly modest in respect to the display of the body. Though the costume of both sexes is so scanty, the proprieties are observed. The Kayan man never exposes his GENITALIA even when bathing in the company of his fellows, but, if necessary, uses his hands as a screen. The bearing of the women is habitually modest, and though their single garment might be supposed to afford insufficient protection, they wear it with an habitual skill that compensates for the scantiness of its dimensions; they bathe naked in the river before the house, but they slip off their aprons and glide into the water deftly and swiftly; and on emerging they resume their garments with equal skill, so that they cannot be said to expose themselves unclothed. The same is true of most of the other tribes, with the exception of the men of Kenyah and Klemantan communities that inhabit the central highlands; these, when hauling their boats through the rapids, will divest themselves of all clothing, or will sit naked round a fire while their waist-cloths are being dried, without the least embarrassment.
There is no Kayan word known to us that could properly be translated as justice or just, injustice or unjust. Yet it is obvious that they view just conduct with approval and unjust with disapproval; and they express their feelings and moral judgments by saying laconically of any particular decision by a chief, TEKAP or NUSI TEKAP. But the word TEKAP is of more general application than our word ‘just,’ and might be applied to any situation which evokes a judgment of moral approval; for example, on witnessing any breach of custom or infringement of tabu a Kayan would say NUSI TEKAP; TEKAP, in short, is applicable to whatever is as it ought to be.
Specialised terms for moral qualities of character and conduct are, however, not lacking. A just and wise chief would be said to be TENANG; but this word implies less purely a moral quality than our word justice and more of intellectual capacity or knowledge or accuracy; the word is more especially applied as a term to describe the quality of a political speech which meets with approval. The word HAMAN means skilful, or clever, or cunning, in the older sense of capable both physically and intellectually. A man who fights pluckily is said to be MAKANG, and the same word is applied to any daring or dashing feat, such as crossing the river when it is dangerously swollen. To disregard omens would be MAKANG also; it seems, therefore, to have the flavour of the word rash or foolhardy.
SAIOH means good in the sense of kindly, pleasantly toned, or agreeable. JAAK is bad in the sense of a bad crop or an unfortunate occurrence, or a sore foot, I.E. it conveys no moral flavour. Morally bad is expressed by SALA; this is used in the same sense in Malay and may well be a recently-adopted word. In general the language seems to be very poor in terms expressive of disapproval, adverse judgments being generally expressed by putting nusi, the negative or primitive particle, before the corresponding word of positive import; thus a cowardly act or man would be denounced as NUSI MAKANG.
We think it is true to say that, although they thus distinguish the principal qualities of character and conduct with appropriate adjectival terms, they have no substantival terms for the virtues and vices, and that they have not fully accomplished the processes of abstraction implied by the appropriate use of such highly abstract substantives.
As regards the influence of their religious beliefs on the moral conduct of the Kayans, we have seen that the fear of the TOH serves as a constant check on the breach of customs, which customs are in the main salutary and essential for the maintenance of social order; this fear does at the least serve to develop in the people the power of selfcontrol and the habit of deliberation before action. The part which the major spirits or gods are supposed to play in bringing or fending off the major calamities remains extremely vague and incapable of definition; in the main, faithful observation of the omens, of rites, and of custom generally, seems to secure the favour of the gods, and in some way their protection; and thus the gods make for morality. Except in regard to that part of conduct which is accurately prescribed by custom and tradition, their influence seems to be negligible, and the high standard of the Kayans in neighbourliness, in mutual help and consideration, in honesty and forbearance, seems to be maintained without the direct support of their religious beliefs.
The high moral level attained by individuals among the Kayans and Kenyahs, and less frequently by Klemantans, is, we think, best exemplified by the enlightened and public-spirited conduct of some of the principal chiefs. It might have been expected that the leading chiefs of warlike and conquering peoples like the Kayans and Kenyahs, which, until the advent of the European governments, had never encountered any resistance which they could not break down by armed force, would have been wholly devoted to conquest and rapine; and that a chief who had acquired a high prestige and found himself able to secure the adhesion in war of a number of other chiefs and their followers would have been inspired with the barbarous ideals of an Alexander, a Napoleon, a Chaka, or a Cetewayo. But though some of them have shown tendencies of this kind, there have been notable exceptions who have recognised that chronic hostility, distrust, and warfare, which had always been characteristic of the relations between the various tribes and villages, were an unmixed evil. Such men have used their influence consistently and tactfully and energetically to establish peaceful relations between the tribes. Unlike some savage chieftains of warrior tribes in other parts of the world, such as some of those produced by the Bantu race, or those who established the great confederation of the Iroquois tribes, they have not sought merely to bring about the combination of all the communities of their own stock in order to dominate over or to exterminate all other tribes. They have rather pursued a policy of reconcilement and conciliation, aiming at establishing relations of friendship and confidence between the communities of all languages and races. One such powerful Kenyah chief of the Baram district, Laki Avit, had earned a high reputation for such statesmanship before the district was incorporated in the Raj of Sarawak. His policy was to bring about intermarriages between the families of the chiefs and upper-class people of the various tribes. Tama Bulan (see Pl. 27), the leading Kenyah chief of the same district at a later time, spared no efforts to bring about friendly meetings between chiefs of different tribes, for the purpose of making peace and of promoting intercourse and mutual understanding.[181] It should be added that these peacemaking ceremonies are generally of lasting effect; the oaths then taken are respected even by succeeding generations. Tama Kuling, who a decade ago was the most influential of the Batang Kayan chiefs, had also spontaneously pursued a similar policy.[182]
It has been said of many savage peoples that they recognise no natural death, but believe that all deaths not due to violence are due to black magic. No such statement can be made of the Kayans; few, if any, deaths are ascribed by them to the efforts of sorcerers. Natural death is recognised as inevitable in old age, and disease is vaguely conceived as the effect of natural causes; though as to what those natural causes are they have no definite ideas. This attitude is shown by their readiness to make use of European drugs and of remedies for external application. Quinine for fever, and sulphate of copper for the treatment of yaws, are most in demand. Cholera and smallpox are the great epidemic diseases which have ravaged large areas of Borneo from time to time. The Kayans recognise that both these diseases spread up river from village to village, and that to abstain from intercourse with all villages lower down river and to prevent any one coming up river contributes to their immunity. With this object the people of a tributary stream will fell trees across its mouth or lower reaches so as to block it completely to the passage of boats, or, as a less drastic measure, will stretch a rope of rattan from bank to bank as a sign that no one may enter (Pl. 183). Such a sign is generally respected by the inhabitants of other parts of the river-basin. They are aware also of the risk of infection that attends the handling of a corpse of one who has died of epidemic disease, and they attempt to minimise it by throwing a rope around it and dragging it to the graveyard, and there burying it in a shallow grave in the earth, without touching it with the hands.[183]
The Kayans have some slight knowledge of the medicinal properties of some herbs, and make general use of them. They administer as an aperient a decoction of the leaves of a certain plant, called OROBONG, which they cultivate for the purpose on their farms. The root of the ginger plant is used both internally and for external application. A variety of vegetable products are used in preparing liniments; the basis most in request for these is the fat of the python and of other snakes, but wild pig’s fat is used as a more easily obtainable substitute.
There is a small common squirrel (SCIURUS EXILIS), the testicles of which are strikingly large in proportion to his body. These organs are dried and reduced to powder, and this powder, mixed with pig’s fat, is rubbed over the back and loins in cases of impotence.[184]
Kayan mothers treat colic in their children by chewing the dried root of a creeper (known as PADO TANA) with betel nut, and spitting out the juice on the belly of the patient.
Some of the coastwise Klemantans make use of a bitter decoction of a certain creeper as a remedy for jungle fever. It is asserted by Kayans and others that the Punans make use of the poison of the IPOH tree (the poison used on their darts) as an internal remedy for fever. It is said also (probably with truth, we think) that the Punans also apply the IPOH poison to snake-bites and to festering wounds.[185]
Surgery
Broken limbs are bound round with neat splints made of thin slips of bamboo tied in parallel series. Little effort is made to bring the broken ends of the bones into their proper positions or to reduce dislocations. Abscesses are not usually opened with the knife, but are rather encouraged to point, and are then opened by pressure. A cold poultice of chopped leaves is applied to a bad boil or superficial abscess, and it is protected from blows and friction by a small cage of slips of rattan. Festering wounds are dressed with the chewed leaves or the juice of the tobacco plant, or are washed with a solution of common salt. But a clean wound is merely bound up with a rag; or, if there is much haemorrhage, wood ashes are first applied. They practise no more efficient methods for arresting haemorrhage.
Headache is treated by tugging the hair of the scalp in small bundles in systematic order. Massage of the muscles is practised for the relief of pain, and massage is applied to the abdomen in cases of obstinate constipation; in certain cases they claim to break up hard lumps in the belly by squeezing them with the hands. Bodily aches and fatigue are relieved by pulling and bending the parts of the limbs until all the joints crack in turn.
Cupping is perhaps the most frequently practised surgical operation. Severe internal bruising from falls or heavy blows is the usual occasion. The operation is performed by scratching the skin with the point of a knife, and then applying the mouth of a bamboo cup previously heated over the fire. The cup is a piece of bamboo some five or six inches in length and an inch or rather more in diameter. Its edge is thinned and smoothed. Several of these may be simultaneously applied in a case of extensive bruising. Since this operation, like tatuing, involves the shedding of blood, some small offering, such as a few beads, must be made to the patient by the operator.
The Kayans have distinct numerals up to ten (JI, DUA, TELO, PAT, LIMER, NAM, TUSU, SAYA, PITAN, PULU). Those from eleven to nineteen are formed by prefixing PULU ( = ten) to the names of the digits; and those from twenty to twenty-nine by prefixing DUA PULU ( = two twenty); and so on up to JI ATOR ( = one hundred). Two hundred is DUA ATOR, three hundred is TELO ATOR, and so on up to MIBU ( = one thousand). All or most of the other tribes (except the Punans) have a similar system of numerals, though the numbers beyond the first ten are little used. In counting any objects that cannot be held in the hand or placed in a row, the Kayan (and most of the other peoples) bends down one finger for each object told off or enumerated, beginning with the little finger of the right hand, passing at six to that of the left hand, and then to the big toe of the right foot, and lastly to that of the left foot. When all the names or objects have been mentioned, he holds the toe reached until he or some one else has told off the number; if the number was, say, seventeen, he would keep hold of the second toe of the left foot until he had counted up the number implied by that toe, either by means of counting or by adding up five and five and five and two; unless the count ends on the little toe of the left foot, when he knows at once that the number is twenty. If a larger number than twenty is to be counted, as when, for example, a chief has to pay in tax for each door of his house, he calls in the aid of several men, who sit before him. One of these tells off his fingers and toes as the chief utters the names of the heads of the rooms; and when twenty have been counted in this way, a second man begins on his fingers, while the first continues to hold on to all his toes. A third and a fourth man may be used in the same way to complete the count; and when it is completed, the total is found by reckoning each man as two tens, and adding the number of fingers and toes held down by the last man. The reckoning of the tens is done by addition rather than multiplication. Both multiplication and division are almost unknown operations.
When a chief is getting ready to pay in the door tax of two dollars a door, he does not count the doors and then multiply the number by two: he simply lays down two dollars for each door and pays in the lot, generally without knowing the sum total of the dollars. If a chief were told to pay in the tax for half his doors only, he would not know how to carry out the instruction. Subtraction is accomplished only in the most concrete manner, E.G. if a man wished to take away eight from twenty-five, he would count out twenty-five of the objects in question, or of bits of leaf or stick, then push away eight and count up the remainder. A dodge sometimes adopted, especially by the Kenyah, for counting the persons present, is to take a fern-leaf with many fronds, tear off a half of each frond, handing each piece to one of the men, until every man present affirms that he has a piece, and then to count the number of torn fronds remaining on the stalk.
It will thus be seen that the arithmetical operations of the Kayans are of an extremely concrete character; those of the other tribes are similar (with the exception again of the Punans, who do not count beyond three); though many of the Klemantans get confused over simple counting and reckoning, which the Kayans accomplish successfully.
Tama Bulan, the Kenyah chief whom we have had occasion to mention in several connections, obtained and learnt the use of an abacus from a Chinaman, and used it effectively. This deficiency in arithmetic is, however, no evidence of innate intellectual inferiority, and there seems to be no good reason to doubt that most of the people could be taught to use figures as readily as the average European; those children who have entered the schools seem to pick up arithmetic with normal rapidity.
The Sea Dayaks sometimes deposit sums of money with the Government officers, and they know accurately the number of dollars paid in; but when they withdraw the deposit, they generally expect to receive the identical dollars paid in by them.
Measurement
The Kayans use two principal standards of length, namely, the BUKA and the BUHAK. The former is the length of the span from finger-tip to tip of outstretched arms; the latter is the length of the span from tip of the thumb to tip of the first finger of the same hand. In buying a pig, for example, the price is determined by the number of BUHAK required to encircle its body just behind the forelegs. The half BUKA is also in general use, especially in measuring rattans cut for sale, the required length of which is two and a half BUKA. In order to express the half, they have adopted the Malay word STINGAH, having no word of their own.
Distances between villages are always expressed in terms of the average time taken by a boat in ascending the stream from one to the other. Distances by land are expressed still more vaguely; for example, the distance between the heads of two streams might be expressed by saying that, if you bathe in one, your hair would still be wet when you reach the other (which means about one hour); or a longer distance, by saying that if you started at the usual time from one of the places you would reach the other when the sun is as high as the hawk (which means a journey from sunrise to about 10 A.M.), or when the sun is overhead (I.E. noon), or when it is declining (about 3 P.M.), or when the sun is put out (sunset), or when it is dark.
In order to describe the size of a solid object such as a fish, a Kayan would compare its thickness with that of some part of his body, the forearm, the calf of the leg, the thigh, or head, or the waist. In describing the thickness of the subcutaneous fat of a pig, he would mention one, two, three, or even four fingers.
Cosmological and Geographical Notions
The more intelligent Kayans can give a fairly good general description of the geographical features and relations of the district in which they live. In order to do this a Kayan will map out the principal features on a smooth surface by placing pieces of stick to represent the rivers and their tributaries, and pieces of leaf to represent the hills and mountains; he will pay special attention to the relations of the sources of the various streams. In this way a Kayan chief of the Baram would construct a tolerably accurate map of the whole Baram district, putting in Bruni and USUN APO and the heads of the Rejang, Batang Kayan, Tutong, and Balait rivers. He knows that all the rivers run to the sea, though few Kayans have seen the sea or, indeed, been outside the basin of their own river. To have been to another river, or to have seen the sea, is a just ground of pride. He does not know that Borneo is an island, though he knows that the white men and the Chinese come from over the sea; he will confidently assert that the sea is many times larger than the Baram river, even ten times as large. They seem to regard the sea as a big river of which their main river is a tributary.
Ibans sometimes speak of AIROPA (meaning Europe), which they take to mean the river Ropa, as the home of the white man; and all the tribesmen are apt to think of foreigners as living on the banks of rivers in forest-covered country much like their own.
Although the Kayans do not observe the stars and their movements for practical purposes, they are familiar with the principal constellations, and have fanciful names for them, and relate mythical stories about the personages they are supposed to represent (Chap. XVII.).[186] They seem to have paid no special attention to the planets. Inconsistently with the star myths, the stars are regarded as small holes in the floor of another and brighter world, and it is said that these holes have been made by the roots of plants which have penetrated through the soil of that world.
The sky is regarded as a dome which meets the earth on every hand, and this limiting zone is spoken of as the edge of the sky; but they have no notion how far away this edge may be; they recognise that, no matter how many days one travels in any one direction, one never gets appreciably nearer to it, and they conclude, therefore, that it must be very distant. They understand that the clouds are very much less distant than the sky, and that they merely float about the earth. Neither sun nor moon seems to be regarded as animated.
Two total eclipses of the sun have occurred in Borneo in the last half-century. These, of course, caused much excitement and some consternation.[187] The former of them serves as a fixed date in relation to which other events are dated.
The traditional lore of the Kayans provides answers of a kind to many of the deep questions that the spirit of enquiry proposes whenever man has made provision against the most urgent needs of his animal nature. Yet the keener intelligences among them do not rest satisfied with these conventional answers; rather, they ponder some of the deepest questions and discuss them with one another from time to time. One question we have heard debated is — Why do not the dead return? Or rather, Why do they become visible only in dreams and even then so seldom? The meeting of dead friends in dreams generally leaves the Kayan doubtful whether he has really seen his friend; and he will try to obtain evidence of the reality of the REVENANT by prayer and by looking for a favourable answer in the liver of a pig, the entrails of a fowl, or in the behaviour of the omen birds. They argue that persons who have been much attached to their relatives and friends would surely return to visit them frequently if such return were at all possible.
The relation of the sky to the earth remains also an open and disputed question. One of us well remembers how, when staying in a Kenyah house, he was approached by a group of youths who evidently were debating some knotty problem, and how they very seriously propounded the following question: — If a dart were shot straight up into the air and went on and on, what would become of it? Would it come up against the sky and be stopped by it?
The whereabouts of the home of the white men, and how long is spent on the journey thither, are questions often raised. Tama Bulan once raised the question of the motion of the sun, and having been told that really the earth revolves and that the sun only appears to move round it, he argued that this could hardly be, since we see the sun move every day. For a long time he said nothing more on this topic to us, but it continued to occupy his mind; for some years later he recurred to it and announced that he now accepted the once incredible doctrine, because he had inquired concerning it of every European he had been able to meet, and all had given him the same answer.
The methods of argument of the Kayans are characteristic and worthy of a short description. As we have said, they are great talkers and orators. They are by no means an impulsive people; far less so than the Kenyahs or the Sea Dayaks. Although they are not a vivacious or talkative people in general intercourse, every undertaking of any importance is carefully discussed in all its aspects, often at what we should consider unnecessary length, before the first step is taken; and in such discussions each man likes to have his say, and each is heard out patiently by his fellows. They have a strong belief in the efficacy of words; this is illustrated by the copious flood of words which they pour out whenever they perform any religious or other rite.
In arguing or persuading, or even threatening, they rely largely on indirect appeals, on analogy, simile, and metaphor, flavoured with a good deal of humour of a rather heavy kind. Or they may convey a strong hint by describing a professed dream in which the circumstances under discussion are symbolised.
The following incident illustrates this mode of speech. Two Kayans quarrelled over the sale of a pig. The current price was a dollar a BUHAK (I.E. the span from finger-tip to thumb-tip, see vol. ii. p. 212). The buyer had insisted on measuring it by spans from thumb to tip of second finger, whereas the customary span is to the tip of the index finger. The case was brought before the chief, who of course might have contented himself, but not perhaps the purchaser, by authoritatively laying down the law of custom. He, therefore, being a man of tact and experience, thrust out his second finger and pointed it at the purchaser of the pig, saying, “Suppose any one pointed at you like that, instead of with the index finger; you would all laugh at him.” All the people sitting round laughed, and the purchaser went away convinced of the propriety of using the index finger in measuring a pig.
To illustrate the way in which a chief may exert influence in matters in which he has no footing for the exercise of formal authority, we cite the following bit of history. It is an ancient custom of the Kayans to have in the house a very large LAMPIT (the mat made of parallel strips of rattan), the common property of the household, which is spread on the occasion of the reception of visitors to serve as a common scat for guests and hosts. The Kayans of the Baram, under the individualising influences of trade and increasing stocks of private property, neglected to renew these communal mats; and thus the good old custom was in danger of dying out. This was observed with regret by an influential chief, who, therefore, found an opportunity to relate in public the following story. “A party of Kayans,” he said, “once came over from the Batang Kayan to visit their relatives in the Baram. The latter dilated upon the benefits of the Rajah’s government, peace, trade, and the possibility of fine dress for themselves and their wives and of many other desirable acquisitions, all for the small annual payment of two dollars a door. The visitors looked about them and confessed that they still had to be content with bark clothing, bamboo cups, and wooden dishes; ‘but,’ they added, ‘if you come to our house you will at least find on the floor a good LAMPIT on which we can all sit together.’ ” The story quickly went the round of the Kayan villages in the Baram, with the result that large LAMPITS quickly came back into general use and the good old custom was preserved.
The Kayans have a keen sense of humour and fun. As with ourselves, the most frequent occasions of laughter are the small mishaps that happen to one’s companions or to oneself; and practical jokes are perpetrated and appreciated. For example, at the time when the wild pigs were dying in large numbers, a boat-load of Kayans working up-river encountered a succession of pigs’ carcases floating down, most of them in a state of decomposition and swollen with gases. A practical joker at the bow conceived the notion of prodding the carcases with his spear and thus liberating the foul-smelling gases for the benefit of those who sat in the stern of the boat, to their great disgust and the amusement of those on the forward benches. Again — a Klemantan example — a chewer of betel-nut and lime sometimes prepares several quids wrapped carefully in SIRIH leaf, and sets them aside till they are required. On one occasion, while the crew of a boat landed to cook their dinner, a youngster carefully opened such a quid and substituted a piece of filth for the betel-nut. When the victim of the joke spat out the morsel, spluttering with disgust and anger, the crew was moved to loud laughter, which they tried in vain to suppress out of consideration for the feelings of the victim; for no one likes to be laughed at.
But, although the Kayans have a strong sense of the ridiculous, their laughter is not so violent and uncontrollable as that of Europeans is apt to be, and it is not so apt to recur from time to time at the mere recollection of an amusing incident.
We refer to some of the stories reproduced in Chapter XVII. as examples of the less crude forms of humour appreciated by the people. These stories are repeated again and again, without failing to amuse those who are perfectly familiar with them. AEsop’s fables transposed into a Bornean key were, we found, much appreciated. In a large proportion of the entertaining stories of the Kayans, as well as of the other tribes, the point of the story depends on some reference to sexual relations or actions But such references are not, as a rule, coarsely put, but rather hinted at merely, often in a somewhat obscure way; E.G. such a story may terminate before the critical point is reached with some such phrase as “Well, well, what of it?” and a shrug of the shoulders.
The tendency of the Kayans to laconic speech is well illustrated by their way of referring to well-known stories or fables with one or two words, in order to sum up or characterise a situation — much as we say “sour grapes!”
Like all other varieties of mankind (some few savage tribes perhaps excepted), the Kayans and other tribes are apt to distort the truth in their own favour, in describing from memory incidents that seriously affect their interests. When a party has allowed itself to commit some reprehensible action, such as over-hasty and excessive reprisals, a whole village, or even several villages, may conspire together more or less deliberately to “rig up “some plausible version of the affair which may serve to excuse or justify the act in the eyes of the government. A good PENGHULU[188] will set about the investigation of such an affair with much tact and patience. He will send for those immediately concerned and patiently hear out their version of the incident. If it departs widely from the truth, he will find reason to suspect the fact. But, instead of charging the men with untruthfulness, or attempting to extort the truth by threats, or bullying, or torture (as is so often done in more highly civilised courts), he keeps silence, shrugs his shoulders, and tells them to go away and think it over, and to come back another day with a better story. In the meantime he hears the version of some other group, who view the affair from a different angle, and thus puts himself in a position to suggest modifications of the new version of the former group. When he has in this way gathered in a variety of accounts of the incident, he find himself in a position to construct, by a process of moral triangulation, an approximately correct picture; this he now lays before the party immediately concerned, who, seeing that the game is up, fill in the details and supply minor corrections. Throughout this process the tactful PENGHULU never shuts the door upon his informants or tries to pin them down to their words, or make them take them back; rather he keeps the whole story fluid and shifting, so that, when the true account has been constructed, the witnesses are not made to feel that they have lost their self-respect.
It seems worth while to describe here one of a large class of incidents which illustrate at the same time the workings of the native mind and the way in which an understanding of such workings may be applied by the administrator. The Resident of the Baram having heard of the presence in the central no-man’s land of a considerable population of Kenyahs under a strong chief, TAMA KULING, sent friendly messages to the latter. He responded by sending a lump of white clay, which meant that he and his people recognised that they were of the same country as the people of the Baram and that their feelings were friendly; and with it came an elaborately decorated brass hook (Pl. 184), which was to serve as a complimentary and symbolical acknowledgment of the white man’s power of binding the tribes together in friendship. He sent also a verbal message acknowledging his kinship with the Kenyahs of the Baram; but he added that he and his people were in the dark and needed a torch (I.E. they wanted more explicit information about the conditions obtaining in the Baram). In reply to these representations, the Resident despatched trusty messengers to TAMA KULING bearing the following articles: a large hurricane lamp for TAMA KULING, and smaller ones for the other principal chiefs of the district: smaller lamps again were sent for the heads of houses, and with them a large stock of boxes of lucifer matches, which were to be dealt out to the heads of the rooms of each house. In this way the desired torch was provided for every member of their communities. With these symbols went a large horn of the African rhinoceros, out of which TAMA KULING might fashion a hilt for his sword.[189]
We were afterwards informed that, on the arrival of these symbolic gifts, TAMA KULING called together the chiefs of all the surrounding villages to receive their share, and to discuss the advisability of accepting the implied invitation to migrate into the Baram. The proposition was favourably received, and a large proportion of the population of that region have since acted upon the resolution then taken.
To the disjointed collection of remarks which make up this chapter we venture to add the following observations. It has often been attempted to exhibit the mental life of savage peoples as profoundly different from our own; to assert that they act from motives, and reach conclusions by means of mental processes, so utterly different from our own motives and processes that we cannot hope to interpret or understand their behaviour unless we can first, by some impossible or at least by some hitherto undiscovered method, learn the nature of these mysterious motives and processes. These attempts have recently been renewed in influential quarters. If these views were applied to the savage peoples of the interior of Borneo, we should characterise them as fanciful delusions natural to the anthropologist who has spent all the days of his life in a stiff collar and a black coat upon the well-paved ways of civilised society.
We have no hesitation in saying that, the more intimately one becomes acquainted with these pagan tribes, the more fully one realises the close similarity of their mental processes to one’s own. Their primary impulses and emotions seem to be in all respects like our own. It is true that they are very unlike the typical civilised man of some of the older philosophers, whose every action proceeded from a nice and logical calculation of the algebraic sum of pleasures and pains to be derived from alternative lines of conduct; but we ourselves are equally unlike that purely mythical personage. The Kayan or the Iban often acts impulsively in ways which by no means conduce to further his best interests or deeper purposes; but so do we also. He often reaches conclusions by processes that cannot be logically justified; but so do we also. He often holds, and upon successive occasions acts upon, beliefs that are logically inconsistent with one another; but so do we also.
CHAPTER 21
Ethnology of Borneo
In the foregoing chapters it has been shown that the six groups which we have distinguished by the names Kayans, Kenyahs, Klemantans, Muruts, Nomads or Punans, and Ibans or Sea Dayaks, differ considerably from one another in respect of material and moral culture as well as of mental and physical characters. We have used these names as though the groups denoted by them were well defined and easily to be distinguished from one another. But this is by no means the case. Our foregoing descriptions are intended to depict the typical communities of each group, those which present the largest number of group-marks. Besides these more typical communities, which constitute the main bulk of the population, there are many communities or sub-tribes which combine in some measure the characteristics of two or more of the principal groups. It is this fact that renders so extremely difficult the attempt to classify the tribes and sub-tribes in any consistent and significant fashion, and to which is largely due the confusion that reigns in most of the accounts hitherto given of the inhabitants of Borneo. We believe, however, that the divisions marked by the six names we have used, namely, Kayan, Kenyah, Klemantan, Murut, Punan, and Iban, are true or natural divisions; and that the intermediate forms are due, on the one hand, to crossing through intermarriage, which takes place continually in some degree, and, on the other hand, to the adoption of the customs and beliefs and traditions and to the imitation of the arts and crafts of one natural group by communities properly belonging to a different group. The main groups seem to us to be separated from one another by differences of two kinds: some by racial or ethnic differences, which involve differences of physical and mental constitution, as well as by cultural differences; others by differences of culture only, the racial characters being hardly or not at all differentiated.
We propose in this chapter to attempt to justify these main distinctions, and to define more nearly their essential nature and grounds. This attempt must involve the statement of our opinion as to the ethnic affinities of all the principal tribes. We are fully aware that this statement can be only of a provisional nature, and must be liable to modification and refinement in the light of further observation and discussion. But we think that such a statement may serve a useful purpose; namely, that it may serve as a basis upon which such corrections and refinements may later be made.
The most speculative part of this statement must necessarily be that which deals with the affinities of the tribes of Borneo with the populations of other areas; but even here we think it better to set down our opinion for what it may be worth, not concealing from the reader its slight basis. We state in the following paragraph the main features of the history of the tribes of Borneo as we conceive it.
The wide distribution of remnants of the Negrito race in the islands round about Borneo and in the adjacent parts of the mainland of Asia renders it highly probable that at a remote period Negritos lived in Borneo; but at the present time there exist no Negrito community and no distinct traces of the race, whether in the form of fossil remains or of physical characters of the present population, unless the curly hair and coarse features of a few individuals to be met with in almost all the tribes may be regarded as such traces. These negroid features of a small number of the present inhabitants are perhaps sufficiently accounted for by the fact that slaves have been imported into Borneo from time to time throughout many centuries by Arabs and Malays and by the Illanum pirates; and some of these slaves were no doubt Negritos, and some, possibly, Africans or Papuans.[190]
We leave open the question of an ancient Negrito population, and go on to the statement that the present population is derived from four principal sources. From a very early period the island has been inhabited in all parts by a people of a common origin whose surviving descendants are the tribes we have classed as Klemantans, Kenyahs, and Punans. This people probably inhabited Borneo at a time when it was still connected with the mainland. Their cultural status was probably very similar to that of the existing Punans. It seems not improbable that at this early period, perhaps one preceding the separation of Borneo, Sumatra, and Java from the mainland, this people was scattered over a large part of this area. For in several of the wilder parts, where the great forest areas remain untouched, bands of nomads closely resembling the Punans of Borneo are still to be found, notably the Orang Kubu of Sumatra, and perhaps the Bantiks of northern Celebes. The principal characteristics of this primitive culture are the absence of houses or any fixed abode; the ignorance of agriculture, of metal-working, and of boat-making; and the nomadic hunting life, of which the blow-pipe is the principal instrument. The chief and only important improvement effected in the condition of the Punans since that early period would seem to be the introduction of the superior form of blow-pipe of hard wood. This cannot be made without the use of a metal rod for boring, and, since none of the Bornean tribes which still lead the nomad life know how to work metals, it may be inferred that they have learnt the craft of making the SUMPITAN from more cultured neighbours, procuring from them by barter the iron tools required — as they still do.
It is impossible to make any confident assertion as to the affinities of this widely diffused people from which we believe the Punans, Kenyahs, and Klemantans to be descended. But the physical characters of these tribes, in respect of which they differ but slightly from one another, lead us to suppose that it was formed by a blending of Caucasic and Mongoloid elements, the features of the former predominating in the race thus formed. The fairness of the skin, the wavy and even, in some individuals, the curly character of the hair; the regular and comparatively refined features of many individuals; the frequent occurrence of straight and aquiline noses; the comparatively large, horizontal, or only slightly oblique, palpebral aperture; the not infrequent absence of all trace of the Mongolian fold of the eyelid and its slightness when present — all these characters point to the predominance of the Caucasic element in the ethnic blend.
On the other hand, the smooth yellowish skin, the long dark thick hair of the scalp, and the scantiness of the hair on the cheeks, chin, and lips; the rather broad cheek-bones, the prevailing slight obliquity of the eyes, the rather narrow palpebral aperture, and the presence of a slight Mongolian fold — these characters (all of which are found in a considerable proportion of these peoples) are features that point to Mongol ancestry.[191]
It was said above that the skin of these tribes is of very pale yellow colour. In this respect there is little to choose between them, but on the whole the Punans are of rather lighter colour than the others, and, as was said before, of a faintly green tinge. This difference is, we think, sufficiently accounted for by the fact that the Punan seldom or never exposes himself to full sunlight, whereas the others are habitually sun-browned in some degree. But the lighter colour of this whole group of tribes (as compared especially with the Kayans and Ibans) cannot be explained in this way; for the habits and conditions of life of Kenyahs and Klemantans are very closely similar to those of the Kayans; and it must, we think, be regarded as a racial character.
The name Indonesian is perhaps most properly applied to this people which we suppose to have resulted from the contact and blending of the Caucasic and Mongoloid stocks in this corner of Asia. The systematic ethnographers use this term in a vague and uncertain manner. Deniker defines the Indonesians by saying that they comprise “the little intermixed inland populations of the large islands (Dyaks of Borneo, Battas of Sumatra, various “Alfurus” of Celebes, and certain Moluccas).”[192] He seems doubtful whether the name Indonesian should be applied to the eight groups of aborigines of Indo-China which he distinguishes.[193] He recognises that the Indonesians and the Malayans are of very similar physical characters, but distinguishes them as two of four races which have given rise to the population of the Malay Archipelago — namely, Malayans, Indonesians, Negritos, and Papuans. He regards the Indonesians (used in a wide sense to include Malays) as most closely akin to the Polynesians; but he expresses no opinion as to their relations to the Mongol and Caucasic stocks.
Keane describes the Indonesians as a Proto-Caucasic race which must have occupied Malaysia and the Philippines in the New Stone Age. He separates them widely from the Malays and Proto-Malays, whom he describes as belonging to the Oceanic branch of the Mongol stock;[194] and the “Dyaks” of Borneo are classed by him with strict impartiality sometimes with the Proto-Malays, sometimes with the Proto-Caucasians.
If these oldest inhabitants of Borneo may be regarded as typical Indonesians (and we think that they have a strong claim to be so regarded), then we think that the usage of the term by both Keane and Deniker errs in accentuating unduly the affinity of the Indonesians with the Polynesians, and that Keane’s errs also in ignoring the Mongol affinities of the Indonesians.
The most plausible view of the relations of these stocks seems to us to be the following. Polynesians and Indonesians are the product of an ancient blend of southern Mongols with a fair Caucasic stock. In both the Caucasic element predominates, but more so in the Polynesian than in the Indonesian. We imagine this blending to have been effected at a remote period in the south-eastern corner of Asia, probably before the date at which Borneo became separated from the mainland. If, as seems probable, this blending was effected by the infusion of successive doses of Mongol blood from the north into a Caucasic population that had previously diffused itself over this corner of Asia from the west,[195] the smaller proportion of the Mongol element in the Polynesians may be due to their having passed into the islands, while the Indonesians remained on the continent receiving further infusions of Mongol blood.
The separation of Borneo from the mainland then isolated part of the Indonesian stock within it, at a period when their culture was still in a very primitive condition, presumably similar to that of the Punans. The Proto-Malays, on the other hand, represent a blending of the Mongol stock (or of a part of the Indonesian race) with darker stock allied to the Dravidians of India, which is perhaps properly called Proto-Dravidian, and of which the Sakai of the Malay peninsula (and, perhaps, the Toala of central Celebes) seem to be the surviving representatives in Malaysia. In this blend, which presumably was effected in an area south of that in which the Indonesian blend was formed, the Mongol element seems to predominate.
After the separation of Borneo from the mainland, there came a long period throughout which it remained an isolated area, the population of which received no important accessions from other areas. It is probable that during this period the Indonesian population of the mainland continued to receive further infusions of Mongol blood; for there is abundant evidence that for a long time past there has been a drifting of Mongol peoples, such as the Shans, southwards from China into the Indo-Chinese area.
We may suppose that during this period the knowledge and practice of working iron, of building long houses and boats, and of cultivating PADI, became diffused through the greater part of the population of this corner of the Asiatic continent. This advance of culture would have rendered possible the passage of these peoples to the islands in boats. But it seems probable that no considerable incursion of people from this area was effected until a comparatively recent date.
In Chapter II. we have mentioned the evidences of Hindu-Javan influence on Borneo, to which must be ascribed the existence of the Buddhist court at Bruni before the coming of the Malays, as well as traces of Hindu culture in south Borneo, including the practice of cremation by the Land Dayaks, the burning of the bones by other tribes, stone carvings,[196] and articles of gold and fragments of pottery of Hindu character. There must have been a certain infusion of Javanese and perhaps Hindu blood at this time; but both in physical type and in culture the surviving traces seem to be insignificant.
We have mentioned also in Chapter II. the early intercourse between China and the Buddhist rulers of Bruni and other parts of north and northwest Borneo, and the legend of an early settlement of Chinese in the extreme north.
But these civilised or semi-civilised visitors and settlers were separated from the indigenous Borneans by a great culture gap, and they probably had but little friendly intercourse with them and affected their culture but little, if at all; and though it is possible that they bartered salt, metal, tools, and weapons, for camphor and other jungle produce, their influence, like that of the Malays, probably extended but a little way from the coasts in most parts of the island. The higher culture of the indigenous tribes of the interior has been introduced, we believe, by invasions of peoples less widely separated from them in cultural level, who have penetrated far into the interior and have mingled intimately with them. Three such invasions may be distinguished as of principal importance: that of the Kayans in the south and perhaps in the south-east, of the Muruts in the north, and of the Ibans in the south-west. Each of these three invading populations has spread up the course of the rivers to the interior and has established its communities over large areas, until in the course of the nineteenth century they have encountered one another for the first time. Besides these three most numerous and important invasions, there have been many smaller settlements from the surrounding islands, especially from Java, Celebes, and the Philippines, whose blood and culture have still further diversified the population and culture of the tribes of Borneo and complicated the ethnographical problems of the island.
Of the three principal invasions, that of the Kayans has been of most effect in spreading a higher culture among the indigenous population.
There is good reason to believe that the Kayans have spread across Borneo from the south and south-eastern parts, following up the course of the large rivers until they reached USUN APO, the central highlands, in which (see vol. i. p. 2) all the large rivers have their sources. The tradition of such north-westward migration is preserved among the Kayans of the Baram, who, according to their own account, crossed the watershed into the basins of the western rivers only a few generations ago. This tradition is in accordance with the fact that, within the memory of men still living, they have spread their villages farther westward along the banks of the Baram and the Rejang rivers, driving back the Muruts northwards from the Baram. It is borne out by the accounts of the Bruni Malays to the effect that the Brunis first became acquainted with the Kayans some few generations ago, and had known the Muruts long before the advent of the Kayans; and further, by the fact that the Kayans have left their name attached to many rivers both in the south and east, where the name Batang Kayan (or Kayan River) is the common appellation of several rivers on which Kayan villages are now very few.
The Kayans seem to have entered Borneo by way of the rivers opening on the south coast, and gradually to have penetrated to the central highlands by following up these rivers, pushing out communities every few years to build new villages higher up the river in the course of their unceasing search for new areas adapted to their wasteful farming operations.
There can, we think, be little doubt that the Kayans are the descendants of emigrants from the mainland, and that they brought with them thence all or most of the characteristic culture that we have described. But from what part exactly of the mainland, and by what route, they have come, and how long a time was occupied by the migration, are questions in answer to which we cannot do more than throw out some vague suggestions.
We believe that the Kayans migrated to Borneo from the basin of the Irrawadi by way of Tenasserim, the Malay Peninsula, and Sumatra; and that they represent a part of the Indonesian stock which had remained in the basin of the Irrawadi and adjacent rivers from the time of the separation of Borneo, there, through contact with the southward drift of peoples from China, receiving fresh infusions of Mongol blood; a part, therefore, of the Indonesians which is more Mongoloid in character than that part which at a remote period was shut up in Borneo by its separation from the mainland. During this long period the Kayans acquired or developed the type of culture characterised by the cultivation of PADI on land newly cleared of jungle by burning, the building of long houses on the banks of rivers, the use of boats, and the working of iron.
The way in which in Borneo the Kayans hang together and keep touch with one another, even though scattered through districts in which numerous communities of other tribes are settled, preserving their characteristic culture with extreme faithfulness, lends colour to the supposition that the whole tribe may thus have been displaced step by step, passing on from one region and from one island to another without leaving behind any part of the tribe. The passage of the straits between the Peninsula and Sumatra, and between Sumatra and Borneo, are the parts of this tribal migration that are the most difficult to imagine. But we know that Kayans do not fear to put out to sea in their long war-boats. We have known Kayan boats to descend the Baram River and to follow the coast up to Bruni; and we have trustworthy accounts of such expeditions having been made in former days by large war parties in order to fight in the service of the Sultan of Bruni. The distance from the Baram mouth to Bruni (about 100 miles) is nearly equal to the width of the broadest stretch of water they must have crossed in order to have reached Borneo from the mainland by way of Sumatra. This hypothetical history of the immigration of the Kayans receives some support from the fact that a vague tradition of having crossed the sea still persists among them. We attach some importance to this Kayan tradition of their having come over the sea, as evidence that they are comparatively recent immigrants to Borneo; but the principal grounds on which we venture to suggest this history of the Kayans and of their invasion of Borneo are three: first, the affinities of the Kayans in respect of physical character and culture to certain tribes still existing in the area from which we believe them to have come; secondly, historical facts which go far to explain such a migration; thirdly, their relations to other tribes of Borneo. We add a few words under each of these heads.
I. As long ago as the year 1850, J. R. Logan, writing of highland tribes of the basins of the Koladan and Irrawadi and the south-eastern part of the Brahmaputra, asserted that “the habits of these tribes have a wonderful resemblance to those of the inland lank-haired races of Indonesia… . There is hardly a minute trait in the legends, superstitions, customs, habits, and arts of these tribes, and the adjacent highlanders of the remainder of the Brahmaputra basin, that is not also characteristic of some of the ruder lank-haired tribes of Sumatra, Borneo, the Philippines, Celebes, Ceram, and the trans-Javan islands.”[197]
This assertion, though, no doubt, rather too sweeping, seems to have a large basis in fact, so far as it concerns the tribes of Borneo.
We have not been able to find that any one tribe of this part of the mainland agrees closely with the Kayans in respect of physical characters and all important cultural features. Nevertheless, very many of the features of the Kayan culture are described as occurring amongst one or another tribe, though commonly with some considerable differences in detail. In attempting to identify the nearest relatives of the Kayans among the mainland tribes, it has to be remembered that all these have been subjected to much disturbance, in some cases, no doubt, involving changes of habitat, since the date at which, as we suppose, the Kayans left the continent. And since the Kayans, from the time of their arrival in Borneo, have played the part of a dominating and conquering people among tribes of lower culture, and have imposed their customs upon these other tribes, without blending with them or accepting from them any important cultural elements, it follows that we must regard the Kayans as having preserved, more faithfully than their relatives of the mainland, the culture which presumably they had in common with them a thousand years or more ago.
Of all the peoples of the south-eastern corner of the continent, the one which seems to us most closely akin to the Kayans is that which comprises the several tribes of the Karens.[198] These have been regarded by many authors (3) as the indigenous people of Burma. Their own traditions tell of their coming from the north across a great river of sand and of having been driven out of the basin of the Irrawadi at a later date (1). At present the Karens are found chiefly in the Karen hills of Lower Burma between the Irrawadi and the Salween and in the basin of the Sittang River, which runs southwards midway between those two greater rivers to open into the head of the Gulf of Martaban. But they have been much oppressed by their more civilised neighbours, the Burmese and the Shans, and their communities are widely scattered in the remoter parts of the country and are said to extend into Tenasserim far down the Malay Peninsula. By the Burmese they are called also KAYENS or KYENS, the Y and R sounds being interchangeable in Burmese (1 and 3).
Peoples generally recognised as closely akin to the KARENS are the CHINS (who are also known as Khyens) (14) of the basin of the Chindwin, the large western tributary of the Irrawadi; and the KAKHYENS (also called KACHINGS and SINGPHO), who occupy the hills east of Bhamo and the basin of the river Tapang in the borderlands of Burma and Yunnan (7). The Nagas of Manipur and of the Naga Hills of Assam also seem to belong to the same group of peoples, though less closely akin to the Karens than the Chins and the Kakhyens.
It seems highly probable that all these, together with the Kayans, are surviving branches of a people which occupied a large area of south-eastern Asia, more especially the basin of the Irrawadi, for a considerable period before the first of the successive invasions which have given rise to the existing Burmese and Shan nations. The physical characters of all of them are consistent with the view taken above, namely, that they represent the original Indonesian population of which the Klemantans of Borneo are the pure type, modified by later infusions of Mongol blood. In all these occur individuals who are described as being of almost purely Caucasic type and very light in colour.
Three principal tribes of Karens are distinguished, the Sgan, Pwo, and Bwe. Of these the Bwe are also known as the Hill-Karens and seem to have preserved their own culture more completely than the others, though the Sgan are said to be the purest in blood, the lightest in colour, and more distinctive in type than any other of the tribes of south-eastern Asia (4). Of the Hill-Karens, Mason said, “Some would be pronounced European. Indeed, if not exposed to the sun, some of them would be as fair, I think, as many of the inhabitants of northern Europe.” Yet the commoner type of Karen is said to show distinctly Mongoloid facial characters. Of those Karens who have been least affected by their more cultured neighbours, we are told that they live in small communities, each of which is governed by a patriarch who is at once high priest and judge, and who punishes chiefly by the infliction of fines. He raises no regular tax, but receives contributions in kind towards the expenses of entertainment (3). Several communities join together, sometimes under a leading chief, in order to meet a common foe (3). They build long houses in which a whole community of as many as 400 persons dwell together (4). These houses are described as of Himalayic type. “It (the house) is made by sinking posts of large size firmly in the ground and inserting beams or joists through the posts eight feet from the ground, and on these laying the floor with slats of bamboo.” The walls and partitions are mats of woven bamboo, and the roof is thatched with palm leaves (4). This very incomplete description leaves it open to suppose that the Karen house is very similar to that built by the Kayans when for any reason the latter build in hasty and temporary fashion. But the still more scanty description of another writer (3) implies that the arrangement of the interior of the house is unlike that characteristic of the Kayans. They frequently migrate to new sites.
The Karens cultivate PADI and prepare the jungle land for cultivation by burning down the forest. They prepare from rice a spirit to which they are much addicted. The hill tribes are truculent warriors and head-hunters. Captives are made slaves. They use and make spears and axes, and a cross-bow[199] with poisoned arrows. They rear pigs and poultry, and train dogs to the chase. The men eradicate their beards. They wear many small rings on the forearms and legs. The lobes of the ear are perforated and often enormously distended (3).
They address prayers and supplications for protection and prosperity to a Supreme Being whom they address as “Lord of the heavens and earth” (5). They believe also in a multitude of nature spirits, most of whom are harmful. The fear of them occasions many ceremonial acts. The taking of heads is said to be a means of propitiating these spirits (3). They believe that during sickness the soul departs from the body; and the medicine-man attempts to arrest it and to bring it back to the body of the patient. In this and other rites the blood of fowls (which they are said to venerate) (2) is smeared on the participants. Divination by means of the bones of fowls and the viscera, especially the liver of the pig, is in common use (5). The souls of the dead go to a place in which they live much as in this world. It is called ABU LAGAN[200] (3). In this abode of shades everything is upside down and all directions are inverted (5). There are no rewards and punishments after death (3). Parents take the names of father and mother of So-and-so — the name of their first child. The knife with which the navel cord is cut at birth is carefully preserved (5). Finally, the Karens are said to be distinguished by a lack of humour, a trait which is well marked also in the Kayans.
In respect of all the characters and culture elements mentioned above, the Karens resemble the Kayans very closely. Against these we have to set off a few customs mentioned by our authorities in which they differ from the Kayans.
The Karens eat everything except members of the cat tribe. They bury the bodies of the dead after they have lain in state some three or four days; and they hold an annual feast for the dead at the August new moon. They ascribe two souls to man, one of a kind which is possessed also by animals, tools, weapons, the rice, and one which is the responsible soul peculiar to man.[201]
The bride is taken to the house of the bridegroom’s father. Only one tribe, namely, the Red Karens, practises tatu, and among them a figure which seems to represent the rising sun is tatued on the back of the men only (5). They weave a coarse cloth.
These differences are not very great, and their significance is diminished by the following considerations. The Kayans may have acquired their aversion to killing the dog through contact with Malays. They bury the dead in the ground in the case of poor persons or those dead of epidemic disease. And they have a tradition that they formerly practised the weaving of cloth. They may also have acquired the art of making and using the solid wooden blow-pipe from Malays; and this would account for their having given up the use of the bow and arrow as a serious weapon. On the other hand, the inferior houses of the Karens, the lack of restrictions among them upon animal foods, their earth burial — all these may well be due to decay of custom among an oppressed people; and the fact that they seem to make but little use of boats may well be due to their having been driven away from the main rivers and pushed into the hills. We have little doubt that many more points of resemblance would be discoverable, if we had any full account of the Karens as they were before their culture was largely affected by contact with Burmese and Shans and by the influence of the missionaries who have taught so successfully among them for more than sixty years.
Among the elements of Kayan culture which are lacking or but feebly represented among the Karens, some are reported among the tribes most nearly allied to the Karens, and others among other peoples of the same area.
Thus the peculiar Kayan custom of tatuing the thighs of women has a close parallel in the tatuing of the thighs of men among all Burmese and Shans; and the Kayans may well have adopted the practice from them. Among the Shans there obtains the custom of placing the coffin on upright timbers at some height above the ground (9). Among the Nagas, and especially the Kuki Nagas,[202] who are said to be most nearly allied to the Karens, beside a number of the culture elements which we have noticed above as common to Karens and Kayans, other noteworthy points of resemblance to the Kayans are the following: A system of tabu or GENNA which may affect individuals or whole villages, and is very similar to the MALAN of the Kayans; the practice of ornamenting houses with heads of enemies, the motive of taking the head being to provide a slave in Hades for a deceased chief; the use of human and other hair in decorating weapons.[203]
Their method of attacking a village is like that of the Kayans, namely, to surround it in the night and to rush it at dawn; they obstruct the approach of an enemy to their village by planting in the ground short pieces of bamboo sharpened and fire-hardened at both ends; they use an oblong wooden shield or a rounded shield of plaited cane; their blacksmiths use a bellows very like that of the Kayan smiths; they husk their PADI in a solid wooden mortar with a big pestle A LA Kayan; they floor their houses with similar massive planks; they catch fish in nets and traps, and by poisoning the water; men pierce the shell of the ear in various ways; omens are read from the viscera of pigs, and the cries of some birds are unlucky; they worship a Supreme Deity and a number of minor gods, E.G. gods of rain and of harvest; they often sacrifice pigs and fowls to the gods, and omens are always read from the slaughtered animals; those who die in battle and in childbirth are assigned to special regions of the other world; the women are tatued (on chest) to facilitate recognition in Hades; in felling the jungle preparatory to burning it to make a PADI farm, they always leave at least one tree standing for the accommodation of the spirits of the place.
Other of the instruments, arts, and customs of the Kayans are found widely spread in south-eastern Asia. Such are the small axe or adze with lashed head; the musical instrument of gourd and bamboo pipes with reeds; the bamboo guitar; the use of old beads and of hornbill feathers for personal adornment; the making of fire by friction of a strip of rattan across a block of wood.
II. Whether this people, of whom the Kayans, Karens, Chins, Kakhyens, and Nagas, seem to be the principal surviving branches, came into the Irrawadi basin and adjacent areas by migration from Central Asia by way of the Brahmaputra valley, as Cross and McMahon (accepting the tradition of the Karens) believe, or came, as Logan suggested, eastward from Bengal, it seems certain that it has been divided into fragments, driven away from the main rivers, and in the main pushed southwards by successive swarms of migration from the north. This pressure from the north seems to have driven some of the Karens down into the Malay Peninsula, where they are still found; and it may well be that, before the rise of the Malays as an aggressive people under Arab leadership, the ancestors of the Kayans occupied parts of the peninsula farther south than the Karens now extend, and possibly also parts of Sumatra. If this was the case, it was inevitable that, with the rise to dominance of the Mohammedan Malays in this region, the Kayans must have been either driven out, exterminated, or converted to Islam and absorbed. It seems probable that different communities of them suffered these three different fates.
The supposition that the Kayans represent a part of such a population, which was driven on by the pressure of Malays to seek a new country in which to practise its extravagant system of PADI culture, is in harmony with the probability as to the date of their immigration to the southern rivers of Borneo; for the rise and expansion of the Menangkabau Malays began in the middle of the twelfth century A.D.; and the Kayans may well have entered Borneo some 700 years ago.
III. We have now to summarise the evidence in favour of the view that the Kayans have imparted to the Kenyahs and many of the Klemantan tribes the principal elements of the peculiar culture which they now have in common.
We have shown that the culture of the Kenyah and Klemantan tribes is in the main very similar to that of the Kayans, and that it differs chiefly in lacking some of its more advanced features, in having less sharply defined outlines, in its greater variability from one community to another, and in the less strict observance of custom. Thus the Kayans in general live in larger communities, each of their villages generally consisting of several long houses; whereas a single long house generally constitutes the whole of a Kenyah or Klemantan village. The Kayans excel in iron-working, in PADI culture, in boat-making, and in house-building. Their customs and beliefs are more elaborated, more definite, more uniform, and more strictly observed. Their social grades are more clearly marked. They hang together more strongly, with a stronger tribal sentiment, and, while the distinction between them and other tribes is everywhere clearly marked and recognised both by themselves and others, the Klemantans and Kenyahs everywhere shade off into one another and into Punans.
The process of conversion of Punans into settled communities that assimilate more or less fully the Kayan culture is still going on. We are acquainted with settled communities which still admit their Punan origin; and these exhibit very various grades of assimilation of the Kayan culture. Some, which in the lives of the older men were still nomadic, still build very poor houses and boats, cultivate PADI very imperfectly, and generally exhibit the Kayan culture in a very imperfect state.
On the other hand, the Kenyahs have assimilated the Kayan culture more perfectly than any other of the aborigines, and in some respects, such as the building of houses, they perhaps equal the Kayans; but even they have not learnt to cultivate PADI in so thorough a manner as to keep themselves supplied with rice all through the year, as the Kayans do; and, like the various Klemantan tribes,[204] they suffer almost every year periods of scarcity during which they rely chiefly on cultivated and wild sago and on tapioca. The Kayans, on the other hand, grow sufficient PADI to last through the year, except in very bad seasons, and they never collect or cultivate sago. The view that this relative imperfection of the agriculture of the Kenyahs and Klemantans is due to the recency of their adoption of the practice, is confirmed by the fact that many of them still preserve the tradition of the time when they cultivated no PADI. It seems that most of the present Kenyahs first began to plant PADI not more than two, or at most three, centuries ago. Some of the Kenyahs also preserve the tradition of a time when they constructed their houses mainly of bamboo; this was probably their practice for some few generations after they began to acquire the Kayan culture. At the present day those Punans who have only recently taken to the settled mode of life generally make large use of the bamboo in building their small and relatively fragile houses.
The view that the Kayans have played this large civilising role is supported by the fact that Kayan is the language most widely understood in the interior, and that it is largely used for intercommunication, even between members of widely separated Kenyah communities whose dialects have diverged so widely that their own language no longer forms a medium of communication between them; whereas the Kayans themselves do not trouble to acquire familiarity with the Kenyah or Klemantan languages.
If both Kenyahs and Klemantans represent sections of the aboriginal population of nomadic hunters who have absorbed Kayan culture, it remains to account for the existence of those peculiarities of the Kenyahs that have led us to separate them from the tribes which we have classed together as Klemantans. The peculiarities that distinguish Kenyahs from Klemantans are chiefly personal characteristics, notably the bodily build (relatively short limbs and massive trunks), the more lively and energetic temperament, the more generous and expansive and pugnacious disposition. These peculiarities may, we think, be accounted for by the supposition that the aborigines from whom the Kenyahs descend had long occupied the central highlands where most of the Kenyah communities still dwell and which they all regard as the homeland and headquarters of their race.
Of the Klemantan tribes some, E.G. the Aki, the Long Patas, and the Long Akars, resemble more nearly the Kayans; others, E.G. the Muriks, the Sebops, the Lirongs, the Uma Longs, the Pengs or Pinihings, show more affinity with the Kenyahs. It seems probable that these diversities have resulted from the assimilation of culture directly from the Kayans by the one group and from the Kenyahs by the other. A third group of Klemantan tribes such as the Long Kiputs, the Batu Blah, and the Trings, scattered through the northern part of the island, resemble more nearly the Muruts; and among these are found communities whose culture marks them as descendants of nomads who have assimilated the Murut culture in various degrees.
The Muruts
The Muruts differ somewhat as regards physical features from all the other tribes, especially in having coarser but less Mongoloid features, a longer skull, and a more lanky build of body and limbs. Their intonation is nasal, and the colour of the skin slightly darker and ruddier than that of the Klemantans.
Their culture differs so much as to lead us to suppose that it had a somewhat different origin from that of the Kayans. They build long houses; but these are comparatively flimsy structures, and they are often situated at a distance from any navigable stream. Even those Muruts who live on the river-banks make much less use of boats than the other tribes, and all of them are great walkers. They have very little skill in boat-making. Their most distinctive peculiarity is their system of agriculture (see vol. i. p. 97), which involves irrigation, the use of buffalo, the raising of two crops a year, and the repeated use in successive years of the same land. Other distinctive features are their peculiar long sword and short spear; the absence of any axe and blow-pipe; the custom according to which the women propose marriage to the men (Kalabits).
In the Philippine Islands a system of agriculture similar to that of the Muruts is widely practised; and some of the tribes, though their culture has been largely influenced by Spanish civilisation, seem to be of the same stock as the Muruts; thus the Tagals of Borneo are not improbably a section of the people known as Tagalas in the Philippines, and the Bisayas of Borneo probably bear the same relation to the Visayas of the Philippines.
It seems probable, therefore, that this type of culture has been carried into the north of Borneo by immigrants from the Philippines, whither it was introduced at a remote period, possibly from Annam, the nearest part of the mainland; or possibly it came to Borneo directly from Annam.[205] It is probable that many of the tribes which we have classed with the Muruts, on account of their possession of the Murut culture, are, like the Klemantans and Kenyahs, descendants of the ancient Indonesian population who have adopted the culture of more advanced immigrants. The descendants of the immigrants who introduced this type of culture are, we think, the Muruts proper, who claim that name and dwell chiefly in the Trusan, the Padas, the Sembakong, the Kerayan rivers, and in the head of the Kinabatangan; also the Kalabits in the northern part of the upper basin of the Baram. It is these which display most decidedly the physical peculiarities noted above.
As examples of Klemantan tribes that have partially adopted the Murut culture we would mention the LONG KIPUTS, the BATU BLAHS, the TRINGS, and the ADANGS in the head of the Limbang River; to the same group belong the KADAYANS in the neighbourhood of Bruni, who, from contact with their Malay neighbours, have become in large part Mohammedans of Malay culture.
The Ibans (Sea Dayaks)
The Ibans stand distinctly apart from all the other tribes, both by reason of their physical and mental peculiarities and of the many differences of their culture; we have little doubt that they are the descendants of immigrants who came into the south-western corner of Borneo at no distant date. We regard them as Proto-Malays, that is to say, as of the stock from which the true Malays of Sumatra and the Peninsula were differentiated by the influence of Arab culture. A large number of the ancestors of the present Ibans were probably brought to Borneo from Sumatra less than two hundred years ago. Some two centuries ago, a number of Malay nobles were authorised by the Sultan of Bruni to govern the five rivers of Sarawak proper, namely, the Samarahan, the Sadong, the Batang Lupar, the Saribas, and the Klaka rivers. These Malays were pirate leaders, and they were glad to enrol large numbers of pagan fighting men among their followers; for the latter were glad to do most of the hard work, claiming the heads of the pirates’ victims as their principal remuneration, while the Malays retained that part of the booty which had a marketable value. These Malay leaders found, no doubt, that their pagan relatives of Sumatra lent themselves more readily to this service than the less warlike Klemantans of Borneo, and therefore, as we suppose, they brought over considerable numbers of them and settled them about the mouths of these rivers. The co-operation between the piratical Malay Tuankus and the descendants of their imported PROTEGES continued up to the time of the suppression of piracy by the British and Dutch half a century ago. It was from this association with the sea and with coast-pirates that the Ibans became known as the Sea Dayaks by Sir James Brooke; and to this encouragement of their head-hunting proclivity by the Malays is no doubt due their peculiarly ruthless and bloodthirsty devotion to it as to a pastime, rather than (as with the Kayans and other tribes) as to a ceremonial duty occasionally imposed upon them by the death of a chief.
It seems to us probable that the greater part of the ancestors of the Ibans entered Borneo in this way. But there is reason to think that some of them had settled at an earlier date in this part of Borneo and rather farther southward on the Kapuas River. The BUGAUS, KANTUS, and DAUS, who dwell along the southern border of Sarawak, and some other Iban tribes in the northern basin of the Kapuas River, are probably descendants of these earlier immigrants of Proto-Malay stock. In most respects they closely resemble the other Iban tribes, but they are distinguished by some peculiarities of language and accent; their manners are gentler, their bearing less swaggering; they are less given to wandering, and they have little skill in the making and handling of boats. These are recognised by themselves and by other Ibans as belonging to the same people; but they are a little looked down upon by Ibans of the other tribes as any home-staying rural population is looked down upon by travelled cosmopolitans.
This conjectural history of the immigration of the Ibans explains the peculiar fact that, although all the Ibans of all parts are easily distinguishable from all the other peoples, and although they all recognise one another as belonging to the same people, they have no common name for the whole group. They commonly speak of KAMI MENOA (I.E. “we of this country”) when they refer to their people as a whole; and the Kayan designation of them as IVAN (immigrant or wanderer) has been adopted by large numbers of them in recent years and modified into Iban, so that the expression KAMI IBAN is now frequently used by them.
The identification of the Iban with a Proto-Malay stock is justified by their language and physical characteristics. The former seems to be the language from which Malay has been formed under Arab influence and culture. It employs many words which are no longer current in Malay, but which, as is shown by Marsden’s MALAY DICTIONARY, were in use among Sumatran Malays in the eighteenth century.
Since the Mohammedan populations which now are called Malay are of mixed origin, they present no very well-defined or uniform physical type. But of all Malays those of Sumatra and of the Peninsula are generally recognised as presenting the type in its greatest purity; and it is this type which the Ibans most closely reproduce. The near resemblance of facial type between the Malays and the Ibans is apt to be obscured for the casual visitor by the fact that the Iban puts little or no restraint upon his expressions and is constantly chattering, laughing, and smiling; whereas the Malay is taught from childhood to restrain his expressions and to preserve a severe and grave demeanour in the presence of strangers. But in private the Malay relaxes, and then the resemblance appears more clearly.
The principal features of the Iban’s culture which distinguish it from that of the other tribes may be enumerated here. The Iban closely resembles the Kayan in his method of cultivating PADI, but he is even more careful and skilful, and generally secures a surplus. His house differs characteristically from those of the Kayan type, and resembles the long houses still inhabited by some Sumatran Malays, in being comparatively small, and in having a framework of many light poles rather than of heavy hardwood timbers, and a floor of split bamboo in place of huge planks. In methods of weaving and dyeing cloth and in the character of the cloths produced;[206] in the wearing of ornamental head-cloths; in the weaving of mats and baskets with the PANDANUS leaf and a large rush known as BUMBAN rather than with strips of split rattan; in their methods of trapping and netting fish; in the character of the sword and axe and shield as formerly used;[207] in the use of the fire-piston;[208] in musical instruments and methods; in the custom of earth burial; in the visiting and making of offerings at the graves of noted men in the hope of supernatural aid, — in all these respects the Iban culture differs from that of the Kayans, and closely resembles that of the Malays.
The Iban culture presents also certain features not common to other peoples of Borneo and not found among the Malays; and all or most are such as must have been exterminated among the Malays on their conversion to Islam, if they had formed part of their culture in their pre-Islamic period. Such are the religious beliefs and customs of the Ibans with the cult of the PETARA; the NGARONG; the rite with the clay crocodile for getting rid of farm pests (vol. ii. p. 88); the use in weaving of a number of designs of animal origin; the adornment of the edge of the ear with many brass rings; the lack of any strict avoidance of killing dogs.
Thirdly, of the features of Iban culture which are common to them and to the other tribes of Borneo, many seem to have been borrowed by them from their neighbours, and often in an incomplete or imperfect manner; such are the system of omenreading, the ritual slaughter of fowls and pigs, much of their dancing and tatuing, the PARANG ILANG and wooden shield, the feathered war-coat of skin, the KELURI or small bag-pipe, and the fashion of wearing their hair, — all these seem to have been borrowed from the Kayans; the woman’s corset of brassbound hoops, from the Malohs; the mat worn posteriorly for sitting upon, from the Kenyahs.[209]
Besides the three great invasions of foreign blood and foreign culture, those borne by the Kayans, the Muruts, and the Ibans respectively, there have been numerous minor invasions on all sides. In the following paragraphs we make mention of those that seem to have been of most importance in modifying the population and the culture of Borneo.
In the south there are traces of Javanese culture with its Hindu elements among many of the tribes, but especially among the Land Dayaks who occupy the southern extremity of Sarawak. These cremate their dead; they set apart a separate round house for the trophies of human heads, and in this the bachelors are expected to pass the nights. The Malawis of South-East Borneo seem to be similar in many respects to the Land Dayaks of Sarawak. The Land Dayaks have a reputation in Upper Sarawak for quicker intelligence and more adaptability than the other tribes, and hence are in much request for services of the most various kinds. It is an interesting question whether this may be due to a dash of Hindu blood; the facial type and the more abundant growth of hair on the face would support an affirmative answer.
The Malohs are a well-marked tribe found on the Kalis and Mandai rivers, tributaries of the Kapuas River. Physically they are marked by exceptionally long narrow heads (index about 76). They speak a language very different from those of the central and northern parts of the island, but speak also the Iban language with a peculiar accent. The Malohs alone of all the peoples of Borneo eat the flesh of the crocodile. The most distinctive feature of their culture is their skill and industry in brass working. Malohs supply a large proportion of all the brass-ware to be found in the interior. This addiction to brass-working suggests that they represent an immigration from Java, which has long enjoyed a great reputation for its brass-ware and an extensive market throughout the islands.
On the east coast are many communities of Bugis, who are mostly Mohammedans and seem to have come from Celebes, where they are a numerous people.
In the north and extreme north-west the Dusuns seem to be of Murut stock with an infusion of Chinese blood and culture. They use a plough drawn by buffalo in the PADI fields, which they irrigate systematically.
Round about the northern coasts are to be found many small bands of Lanuns and Bajaus, living largely in boats. They are mostly Mohammedans, and descend from the notorious piratical communities whose headquarters were in the Sulu Islands and other islands off the north-east coast.
In the foregoing pages we have said very little about the languages spoken by the tribes of Borneo. Although one of us has a practical command of the Kayan, Kenyah, Sea Dayak, and Malay languages, and a tolerably intimate acquaintance with a number of the Klemantan dialects, we do not venture upon the task of discussing their systematic positions and relations to languages of other areas. For this would be a task of extreme difficulty and complexity which only an accomplished linguistic scholar could profitably undertake. Nevertheless, we think it worth while to add a few words regarding the bearing of the languages on the foregoing ethnological discussion. It seems clear that in the main the differences and affinities between the many languages and dialects spoken by the pagan tribes bear out, so far as they are known to us, the principal conclusions of our argument. The Sea Dayak or Iban tongue stands distinctly apart from all the rest, and is indisputably very closely allied to the Malay. The Kenyahs, Klemantans, and Punans speak a great variety of tongues, which are, however, so closely similar, and the extreme members of which are connected by so many intermediate forms, that it would seem they may properly be regarded as but dialects of one language. The Kayan language, on the other hand, stands apart from both the Iban and the Klemantan languages, but is much nearer to the latter than the former. The Kenyah dialects especially contain many words or roots that appear also in the Kayan, and seem to be more closely allied to it than is any of the Klemantan tongues. This may well be due to the more intimate contact with the Kayans enjoyed by the Kenyahs, who, as we have seen, have assimilated the Kayan culture more completely than any other of the indigenous tribes, and who may well have taken up many Kayan words together with other culture elements.
The Murut languages again seem to stand apart from the Iban, Kayan, and Kenyah-Klemantan, as a distinct group whose vocabulary has little in common with those others.[210]
In conclusion, we venture to make a suggestion which we admit to be widely speculative and by which we wish only to draw attention to a remote possibility which, if further evidence in its favour should be discovered, would be one of great interest. We have throughout maintained the view, now adopted by many others, of which Professor Keane has been the principal exponent, namely, the view that the Indonesian stock was largely, probably predominantly, of Caucasic origin. In our chapter on animistic beliefs concerning animals and plants, and in the chapter on religion, we have shown that the Kayans believe in a multiplicity of anthropomorphic deities which, with Lake Tenangan at the head of a galaxy of subordinate gods and goddesses presiding over special departments of nature, strangely resembles the group of divine beings who, in the imagination of the fathers of European culture, dwelt in Olympus. And we have shown that the system of divination practised by the Kayans (the taking of omens from the flight and cries of birds, and the system of augury by the entrails of sacrificial victims) strangely resembles, even in many details, the corresponding system practised by the early Romans. Our