OMA-SULINGS
(On the Mahakam River)
To marry the daughter of a noble the man must pay her father twenty to thirty gongs (each costing twenty to forty florins). The price of the daughter of a pangawa is from one to three gongs, and to obtain a wife from the family of a pangin costs a parang, a knife, or some beads. Women assist at childbirth, which takes place within the room, near the door, but generally no blian is present.
When a girl has her first menstruation a hen or a pig is killed, and in the evening the blood thus obtained is applied to the inside of a folded leaf which the blian wafts down her arms—"throwing away illness," the meat of the sacrifice being eaten as usual. The same treatment is bestowed upon any one who desires good health.
As many infants die, it is the custom to wait eight or ten days after birth before naming a child, when a similar sacrifice is made, and a leaf prepared in like manner is passed down the arms of the infant by the blian. In selecting a name he resorts to an omen, cutting two pieces of a banana leaf into the shape of smaller leaves. According to the way these fall to the ground the matter is decided. If after two trials the same result is obtained the proposed name is considered appropriate. Also on the occasion of marriage, a similar sacrifice and the same curative practice are used.
When couples tire of each other they do not quarrel. The husband seeks another wife and she another husband, the children remaining with the mother. The sacred numbers of the Oma-Sulings are four, eight, and sixteen. Contact with a woman's garment is believed to make a man weak, therefore is avoided.
The interpretation of designs in basketwork, etc., is identical with the Oma-Sulings and the Penihings, though the women of the last-named tribe are better informed on the subject.
The antoh usually recognised by the name nagah, is called aso (dog) lidjau by the Oma-Sulings and Long-Glats, while among the Penihings and Punans it is known as tjingiru, but nagah is the name used also in Southern Borneo, where I frequently noticed it in designs. On the Mahakam few are the Oma-Suling and Long-Glat houses which are not decorated with an artistic representation of this antoh. Among the Penihings in Long Tjehan I never saw a sword hilt carved with any other motif. On the knife-handle it is also very popular.
There are three modes of disposing of the dead: by burying in the ground a metre deep; by depositing the coffin in a cave, or by making a house, called bila, inside of which the coffin is placed. A raja is disposed of according to either the second or third method, but the ordinary people of the kampong are placed in the ground.