Books: The Pagan Tribes of Borneo

C >> Charles Hose and William McDougall >> The Pagan Tribes of Borneo

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Punans certainly ascribe significance to the behaviour of a few animals
other than those observed by the other peoples. Thus, if they see
a lizard of any kind upon a branch before the shelter in which they
are encamped, and especially if it utters its note, they regard this
as a sign that enemies are near.

The Sea Dayaks or Ibans

The Ibans do not seem to have any conception that corresponds closely
to the Supreme Spirit of the races with which we have already
dealt. Archdeacon Perham[140] has given an account of the Petara
of these people, showing how it is a conception of one god having
very many manifestations and functions, each special function being
conceived vaguely as an anthropomorphic deity. He has described also
the mythical warrior-hero and demi-god Klieng, and the god of war,
Singalang Burong. As Archdeacon Perham has said, this last deity has
a material animal form, namely, the white-headed hawk, which is the
Bali Flaki of the Kenyahs, and plays a somewhat similar part in their
lives. But Singalong Burong is decidedly more anthropomorphic than Bali
Flaki; he is probably generally conceived as a single being of human
form living in a house such as the Ibans themselves inhabit; whereas
Bali Flaki, even if sometimes conceived in the singular as the great
Bali Flaki, is very bird-like. We have seen that the Kayans describe
their hawk-god, Laki Neho, as dwelling in a house, which, though in
the top of a tree, has a landing-stage before it on the river-bank.

In the case of the Kayans, the conception is only half-way on the road
to a full anthropomorph; whereas with the Ibans the change has been
completed and the hawk-god is completely anthropomorphic. Corresponding
with this increased importance and definition of the anthropomorphic
hawk-god, we find that for the Mans the virtue has departed out of the
individual hawks, and that they are no longer consulted for omens;
for the Ibans say that Singalang Burong never leaves his house,
and that for this reason they do not take omens from the hawks when
going on the war-path. Nevertheless, he is the chief or ruler over all
the other omen birds, who are merely his messengers. He thus seems
to have come to occupy almost the supreme position accorded to Bali
Penyalong by the Kenyahs. The following notes are the statements made
upon this subject by a very intelligent Iban of the Undup district:
Once a year they make a big feast for Singalang Burong and sing for
about twelve hours, calling him and Klieng and all the Petara to the
feast. (This is the ceremony known as BURONG GAWAI. It is a most
tedious and monotonous performance after the first few hours.) In
olden days Singalang Burong used to come to these feasts in person
as a man just like an Iban in appearance and behaviour. At the end of
the feast he would go out, take off his coat, and fly away in the form
of a white-headed hawk. Now they are not sure that he comes to their
feast, because they never see him, Singalang Burong is greater than
Klieng, although, it is Klieng that gives them heads in war. Singalang
Burong married an Iban woman, Kachindai Lanai Pantak Girak, and he
gave all his daughters in marriage to the omen-birds. Dara Inchin
Tembaga Monghok Chelabok married Katupong (SASIA ABNORMIS); Dara
Selaka Utih Nujut married Mambuas (CARCURENTIS); Pingai Tuai Nadai
Mertas Indu Moa Puchang Penabas married Bragai (HARPACTES); Indu
Langgu Katungsong Ngumbai Dayang Katupang Bunga Nketai married Papau
(HARPACTES DIARDI); and, lastly, Indu Bantok Tinchin Mas Ndu Pungai
Lelatan Pulas married Kotok (LEPOCESTES). He had also one son, Agi
Melieng etc., who married the daughter of Pulang Gana, the god of
agriculture, her name being Indu Kachanggut Rumput Melieng Kapian.

It was amusing and instructive to hear this Iban rattle off these
enormous names without any hesitation, while another Iban sitting
beside him guaranteed their accuracy.

In the olden days, it is said, there were only thirty-three individuals
of each kind of omen-bird (including Singalang Burong). But although
these thirty-three of each kind still exist, there are many others
which cannot be certainly distinguished from them, and these do not
give true omens. It would be quite impossible to kill any one of
these thirty-three true representatives of each kind, however much
a man might try.

Nevertheless, if an Iban kills an omen-bird by mistake, he wraps it
in a piece of cloth and buries it carefully in the earth, and with
it he buries rice and flesh and money, entreating it not to be vexed
and to forgive him, because it was all an accident. He then goes home
and will speak to no one on the way, and stays in the house for the
rest of that day at least.

The Ibans read omens not only from the birds mentioned above as the
son-in-law of Singalang Burong, but also from some other animals. And
it is interesting to note that they have made a verb from the
substantive BURONG (a bird), namely, BEBURONG (to bird), I.E. to take
omens of any kind, whether from bird or beast. An excellent account
of the part played by omens in the life of the Ibans has been given
by Archdeacon Perham in the paper referred to above, and we have
nothing further to add to that account.

The hornbill must be included among the sacred birds of the Iban,
although it does not give omens. On the occasion of making peace
between hostile tribes, the Ibans sometimes make a large wooden
image of the hornbill and hang great numbers of cigarettes upon it;
and these are taken from it during the ceremony and smoked by all the
men taking part in it. On the occasion of the great peace-making at
Baram in March 1899, at which thousands of Kenyahs, Kayans, Klemantans,
and Ibans were present,[141] the Ibans made an elaborate image of the
hornbill some nine feet in height, and hung upon it many thousands of
cigarettes, and these were smoked by the men of the different tribes,
all apparently with full understanding of the value of the act.

A special deity or spirit, Pulang Gana, presides over the rice-culture
of the Ibans, but the crocodile also is intimately concerned with
it. The following account was given us by an intelligent Iban from
the Batang Lupar: --

Klieng first advised the Ibans to make friends with Pulang Gana, who is
a PETARA and the grandfather ("AKI") of PADI. Pulang Gana first taught
them to plant PADI and instructed them in the following rites: --

On going to a new district Ibans always make a life-size image of a
crocodile in clay on the land chosen for the PADI-farm. The image is
made chiefly by some elderly man of good repute and noted for skilful
farming. Then for seven days .the house is MALI, I.E. under special
restrictions -- no one may enter the house or do anything in it except
eat and sleep. At the end of the seven days they go to see the clay
crocodile and give it cloth and food and rice-spirit, and kill a fowl
and a pig before it. The ground round about the image is kept carefully
cleared and is held sacred for the next three years, and if this is not
done there will be poor crops on the other farms. When the rites have
been duly performed this clay crocodile destroys all the pests which
eat the rice. If, in a district where Ibans have been long settled,
the farm-pests become very noxious, the people pass three days MALI and
then make a tiny boat of bark, which they call UTAP. They then catch
one specimen of each kind of pest -- one sparrow, one grasshopper,
etc. -- and put them into the small boat, together with all they need
for food, and set the boat free to float away down the river. If this
does not drive away the pests, they resort to the more thorough and
certainly effectual process of making the clay crocodile.

Many Ibans claim the live crocodile as a relative, and, like almost
all the other peoples, will not eat the flesh of crocodiles, and will
not kill them, save in revenge when a crocodile has taken one of their
household. They say that the spirit of the crocodile sometimes becomes
a man just like an Iban, but better and more powerful in every way,
and sometimes he is met and spoken with in this form.

Another reason given for their fear of killing crocodiles is that
Ribai, the river-god, sometimes becomes a crocodile; and he may become
also a tiger or a bear. Klieng, too, may become any one of five beasts,
namely, the python, the maias, the crocodile, the bear, or the tiger,
and it is for this reason that Ibans seldom kill these animals. For
if a man should kill one which was really either Ribai or Klieng,
he would go mad.

The Ibans are by nature a less serious-minded and less religious
people than the Kenyahs and Kayans, and they have a greater variety of
myths and extravagant superstitions; nevertheless, they use the fowl
and the pig as sacrificial animals in much the same way as the other
tribes. They eat the fowl and both the wild and domestic pig freely,
except in so far as they are restrained by somewhat rigid notions of
economy in such matters. The fowl plays a larger part than the pig in
their religious practices, and its entrails are sometimes consulted
for omens.

Ibans will kill and eat all kinds of deer, but there are exceptions
to this rule. The deer are of some slight value to them as
omen-givers. Horned cattle they will kill and eat, but they are not
accustomed to their flesh, and few of them relish it.

Ibans have numerous animal fables that remind one strongly of AEsop's
fables and the Brer Rabbit stories of the Africans. In these KORA,
the land-tortoise, and PLANDOK, the tiny mouse-deer, figure largely
as cunning and unprincipled thieves and vagabonds that turn the laugh
always against the bigger animals and man.[142]

The NGARONG or Secret Helper

An important institution among some of the Ibans, which occurs but
in rare instances among the other peoples, is the NGARONG[143]
or secret helper. The NGARONG IS one of the very few topics in
regard to which the Ibans display any reluctance to speak freely. So
great is their reserve in this connection that one of us lived for
fourteen years on friendly terms with Ibans of various districts
without ascertaining the meaning of the word NGARONG, or suspecting
the great importance of the part played by the notion in the lives
of some of these people. The NGARONG seems to be usually the spirit
of some ancestor or dead relative, but not always so, and it is not
clear that it is always conceived as the spirit of a deceased human
being. This spirit becomes the special protector of some individual
Iban, to whom in a dream he manifests himself, in the first place
in human form, and announces that he will be his secret helper; and
he may or may not inform the dreamer in what form he will appear in
future. On the day after such a dream the Iban wanders through the
jungle looking for signs by which he may recognise his secret helper;
and if an animal behaves in a manner at all unusual, if a startled
deer stops a moment to gaze at him before bounding away, if a gibbon
gambols about persistently in the trees near him, if he comes upon a
bright quartzcrystal or a strangely. contorted root or creeper,[144]
that animal or object is for him full of a mysterious significance
and is the abode of his NGARONG. Sometimes the NGARONG, then assumes
the form of an Iban and speaks with him, promising all kinds of help
and good fortune. If this occurs the seer usually faints away, and
when he comes to himself again the NGARONG will have disappeared. Or,
again, a man may be told in his dream that if he will go into the
jungle he will meet his NGARONG in the form of a wild boar. He will
then, of course, go to seek it, and if by chance other men of his
house should kill a wild boar that day, he will go to them and beg
for its head or buy it at a good price if need be, carry it home
to his bed-place, offer it cooked rice and kill a fowl before it,
smearing the blood on the head and on himself, and humbly begging
for pardon. Or he may leave the corpse in the jungle and sacrifice a
fowl before it there. On the following night he hopes to dream of the
NGARONG again, and perhaps he is told in his dream to take the tusks
from the dead boar and that they will bring him good luck. Unless he
dreams something of this sort, he feels that he has been mistaken,
and that the boar was not really his secret helper.

Perhaps only one in a hundred men is fortunate enough to have a secret
helper, though it is ardently desired by many of them. Many a young man
goes to sleep on the grave of some distinguished person, or in some
wild and lonely spot, and lives for some days on a very restricted
diet, hoping that a secret helper will come to him in his dreams.

When, as is most commonly the case, the secret helper takes on the
form of some animal, all individuals of that species become objects
of especial regard to the fortunate Iban; he will not kill or eat
any such animal, and he will as far as possible restrain others from
doing so. A NGARONG may after a time manifest itself in some new form,
but even then the Iban will continue to respect the animal-form in
which it first appeared.

In some cases the cult of a secret helper will spread through
a whole family or household. The children and grandchildren will
usually respect the species of animal to which a man's secret helper
belongs, and will perhaps sacrifice fowls or pigs to it occasionally,
although they expect no help from it; but it is asserted that if
the great-grandchildren of a man behave well to his secret helper,
it will often befriend them just as much as its original protege.

The above general account of the secret helper is founded on the
descriptions of many different Ibans, and we will now supplement it
by describing several particular instances.

Anggus (an Ulu Ai Iban of the Batang Lupar) says that every Iban who
has no NGARONG hopes to get some bird or beast as his helper at the
BEGAWAI, the feast given to the PETARA. He himself has none, but he
will not kill the gibbon because the NGARONG of his grandfather,
who died twenty years ago, was a gibbon. Once a man came to his
grandfather in a dream and said to him, "Don't you kill the gibbon,"
and then turned into a grey gibbon. This gibbon helped him to become
rich and to take heads, and in all possible ways. On one occasion,
when he was about to go on the war-path, his NGARONG came to him in
a dream and said, "Go on, I will help you," and the next day he saw
in the jungle a grey gibbon which was undoubtedly his NGARONG. When
he died he said to his sons, "Don't you kill the gibbon," and his
sons and grandsons have obeyed him in this ever since. Anggus adds
that when a man dreams of a NGARONG. for the first time he does not
accept it, and will still kill animals of that kind; nor is a second
dream enough; but when he dreams the same dream a third time, then
his scepticism is overcome and he can no longer doubt his good fortune.

Anggus himself once shot a gibbon when told to do so by one of us. He
first said to it, "I don't want to kill you, but the TUAN who is
giving me wages expects me to, and the blame is his. But if you are
really the NGARONG of my grandfather, make the shot miss you." He
then shot and missed three times, and on shooting a fourth time he
killed a gibbon, but not the one he had spoken to. Anggus does not
think the gibbon helps either his father or himself.

Payang, an old Katibas Iban, tells us that he has been helped by
a python ever since he was a youth, when a man came to him in a
dream and said, "Sometimes I become a python and sometimes a cobra,
and I will always help you." It has certainly helped him very much,
but he does not know whether it has helped his children; nevertheless
he has forbidden them to kill it. He does not like to speak of it,
but he does so at our request. Payang concluded by saying that he
had no doubt that we white men have secret helpers, very much more
powerful than the Iban's, and that to them we owe our ability to do
so many wonderful things.

Imban, an Iban who had recently moved to the Baram river from the
Rejang, had once when sick seen in a dream the LABI-LABI, the large
river-turtle (TRIONYX SUBPLANUS), and had made a promise that if he
should recover he would never kill it. So when he settled on the Baram
river as head of a household, he attempted to impose a fine on his
people for killing the LABI-LABI, insisting that it was MALI to kill it
or bring its carcase into his river. They appealed to one of us as the
resident magistrate, and it was decided that if Imban wished to insist
on this observance he must remove to a small tributary stream. This
he has done, and a few of his people have followed him; and on them
he enforces a strict observance of his cult of the river-turtle.

A still more interesting case is the following one: -- A community of
Ibans were building a new house on the Dabai river some years ago,
and one day, while they were at work, a porcupine ran out of a hole
in the ground near by. During the following night one of the party
was told by the porcupine in a dream to join their new house with
his (the porcupine's). So they completed their house; and ever since
that time they have made yearly feasts in honour of the porcupines
that live beneath the house, and no one in the house dare injure one
of them, though they will still kill and eat other porcupines in the
jungle. They have had no death in the house during the seven years that
it has been built, and this they attribute to the protecting power of
the porcupines; and when any one is sick, they offer food to them, and
regard their good offices as far more important than the ministrations
of the MANANG (the medicine-man). Last year some relatives of these
Ibans moved to this village, and for three months the knowledge of
the part played by the porcupines was hidden from them as a mysterious
secret. At the end of that time this precious mystery was disclosed to
the new-comers, and the porcupines were feasted with every variety of
cooked rice, some of it being made into a rude image of a porcupine,
and with rice-spirit and cakes of sugar and rice-flour, salt and
dried fish, oil, betel-nut, and tobacco. Several fowls were slain,
and their blood was daubed on the chin of each person in the house,
a ceremony known as ENSELAN. The liver of one fowl was carefully taken
out and put with the food offered to the porcupines, that they might
read the omens from it; and they were then informed of the arrival of
the new-comers. The fowls were waved over the heads of the people by
the old men, while they prayed the porcupines to give them long life
and health, and a token of their goodwill in the form of a smooth
rounded pebble. On an occasion of this sort it is highly probable
that the required token will be found; for the secret helper would no
doubt be surreptitiously helped by some member of the household who,
being deficient in faith, prefers to make a certainty of so important
a matter rather than leave it entirely to the NGARONG.

Inquiries made since the publication of the facts reported in the
foregoing paragraphs have shown us that the cult of the NGARONG
or secret helper is probably not common to all branches of the Sea
Dayaks people. We have heard of its occurrence amongst the Ulu Ai
Dayaks both of the Batang Lupar and Rejang districts, but we have no
positive knowledge of its occurrence among other branches unless the
custom known as NAMPOK has some connection with it.

Conclusion

We have now to discuss some problems suggested by a review of the
facts set forth above, and to bring forward a few additional facts
that seem to throw light on these questions.

The question that we will first discuss is this: Are all or any of the
instances of peculiar regard paid to animals, or of animals sacrificed
to gods or spirits, or of the ceremonial use of their blood, to be
regarded as institutions surviving from a fully developed system of
totemism now fallen into decay? It will have been noticed that many of
the features of totemism, as it occurs in its best developed forms,
occur among the people of one or other of the tribes of Sarawak. We
have, in the first place, numerous cases in which a whole community
refuses to kill or eat an animal which is believed to protect and
aid them by omens and warnings and in other ways, and in which the
animal is worshipped with prayer and sacrifice (E.G. the hawk among
various tribes); we have at least one instance of a community claiming
to be related to a friendly species (Long Patas and the crocodile),
and having as usual an extravagant myth to account for the belief; we
have the domestic animal that is sacrificially slain, its blood being
sprinkled on the worshippers and its flesh eaten by them, and that is
never slain without religious rites (pig of the Kenyahs and Kayans); we
have the animal that must not be killed tatued on the skin of the men
(the dog), or its skin worn by fully grown men only (the tiger-cat), or
images of it made of clay or carved in wood and set up before the house
(the hawk and crocodile); we have also the animal that is claimed as
a relative imitated in popular dances (the Dok-monkey of the Kayans);
the belief that the souls of men assume the form of some animal that
must not be killed or eaten (deer and the ARCTOGALE among Klemantans);
the observance by invalids of a very strict avoidance of contact with
any part of an animal that must not be killed or eaten in any case
(horned cattle among many Kenyahs and Kayans).

Not only do we see these various customs, which in several parts of
the world have been observed as living elements of totem-cults, and
which in other parts have been accepted as evidence of totem-worship in
the past, but in the agricultural habits of the people we may see an
efficient cause of the decay of totemism, if at some time in the past
it has flourished among them. For it has been pointed out, especially
by Mr. Jevons in his INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF RELIGION, that
totemism seems to flourish most naturally among tribes of hunters, and
that the introduction of agriculture must tend towards its decay. Now
there is some reason to suppose that the introduction to Borneo of
rice and of the art of cultivating it is of comparatively recent
date. Crawford reckoned that the cultivation of PADI was introduced
to the southern parts of Borneo from Java some 300 years ago, and
into the northern parts from the Philippine Islands about 150 years
ago. But whatever the date of the occurrence may have been, it seems
to be certain that, by the introduction of PADI cultivation from some
other country, most of the tribes of Sarawak were converted, probably
very rapidly, from hunting to agriculture. This conversion must have
caused great changes in their social conditions and in their customs
and superstitions; and, if totemism flourished among them while they
were still simple hunters, its decay may well have been one of the
chief of these changes.

A second factor that would have tended to bring about this change is
the prevalence of a belief in a god or beneficent spirit more powerful
than all others, and more directly concerned with the welfare of
his worshippers, however this belief may have come into being. And a
third factor that may have tended in the same direction is the custom
of head-hunting, and the important part played by the heads in the
religious life of the people. For there is some reason to think that
head-hunting is a comparatively young institution among the tribes
of Sarawak.

But in spite of all this, and although we do not think it is possible
completely to disprove the truth of the hypothesis that some or all
of these animal cults are vestiges of a once fully developed totemic
system, we are inclined to reject it. We are led to do so by four
considerations. In the first place, if by totemism we mean a social
organisation consisting in the division of a people into groups or
clans, each of which worships or holds in superstitious regard one
or more kinds of animal or plant, or other natural objects to which
the members of the group claim to be related by blood or by descent,
then it seems to us sufficiently wonderful that this system should
have existed among peoples so remote from one another in all things,
save certain of the external conditions of life, as the Indians
of North America and the natives of Australia. And it seems to us
that to invoke the aid of the hypothesis of totemism in the past to
explain the existence of a set of animal or plant superstitions in
any particular case is but to increase the mystery that shrouds their
origin; for unless it can be shown that the adoption or development
of totemism by any people brings with it immense advantages for them
in the struggle for existence, every fresh case in which the evidence
compels us to admit its occurrence, whether in the past or as a still
flourishing institution, can but increase the wonder with which we
have to regard its wide distribution.

Secondly, we have in the total absence of totemism among the Punans
very strong ground for rejecting the suggestion of its previous
existence among the Kenyahs. For in physical characters, in language,
and, as far as the difference in the mode of life permits, in customs
and beliefs, the Punans resemble the Kenyahs so closely that we must
assume them to be closely allied by blood; and it seems probable
that the Punans have merely persisted in the cultural condition from
which the Kenyahs and other tribes have been raised by the adoption
of agriculture and the practice of building substantial houses. Yet,
as we have said, the Punans, although in that condition of nomadic
hunters which is probably the most favourable to the development and
persistence of totemism, observe hardly any restrictions in their
hunting, and in fact seem to kill and eat with equal freedom almost
every bird and beast of the jungle, shooting them with the blow-pipe
and poisoned darts with consummate skill. The only exceptions to
this rule are, so far as we know, the omen-birds, a carnivore, and
a lizard, and, as we have said, it seems doubtful whether even these
are excepted in the case of Punans who have not had much intercourse
with other peoples.