Next to the rain on the right is a double row of tortoise[143] eggs (double=many), as indicative of the tortoise, which is a representative of dampness, moisture, and mud.
The middle row of figures represents young “piyung” fruit. The piyung has fruit when the rainy season begins, and loses the ripe fruit at its close. Hence it is drawn as symbolic of the rainy season. There now are, as a matter of fact, piyung trees that have fruit in the other months. Stevens showed some of these to the Orang Bĕlendas, and was informed that in the time of their ancestors the piyung trees had ripe fruit at the rainy season. Whether that was the case in their original home, or whether another variety existed, has yet to be settled. Probably the tradition of the Orang Bĕlendas is correct, even if it cannot be cleared up on all points.
The decoration of one bamboo is a formula to enable a man who wishes to build a house to easily find the necessary materials. Below is a band filled with cross-hatching, like trellis-work, meant for the wall of a house, and standing for the whole house; above this are several very diagrammatic representations of burnt trees which have remained after the firing of the jungle, a forked branch of tree which is used as a prop, palm leaves for thatching, etc. The rest of the bamboo is divided into longitudinal bands, most of which look like attempts at decorative patterns, but they really signify a liana with many leaves, the frame-work of the roof of the house, a ladder, split leaves interlaced for thatching rattans, while a zigzag line means the long path which goes from side to side, and thus indicates the obstacles which befall the leaves for the thatch whilst they are being carried through the jungle.
One design is supposed to protect the harvest and the plantations round the house from injurious animals. In it is represented a very diagrammatic house. On the one side are plants with tubers growing on the sides of a hill, for the Orang Bĕlenda generally clear the sides of a hill for their plantations and houses. On the other side of the house are depicted maize, the kĕlâdi (caladium) with its edible tubers, three sugar-canes with the edible shoots at the roots, another plant of maize, tapioca with its edible roots, a variety of yam with its tubers, and a banana; in addition there are six immature trees, and the punctate background denotes grass. The upper part of the bamboo represents those animals which may destroy the gifts of the soil. These are a caterpillar, a rat, two iguanas (monitors or lace-lizards, which go after hens’ eggs); next each lizard is a tree with leaves where they like to hide; a row of dots on each side of the tree-trunks denote the upward and downward tracks of the animals at night. There is also a tortoise with its young one, and a pair of crescentic lines indicate the pool where the reptile lives.
Another carved bamboo helps women to catch fish, and also protects them from poisonous ones.
To the uninitiated many patterns would appear to be simple decorative devices, but Mr. Stevens has found that they have definite meanings; for example, rattan may be conventionally represented by a straight or a waved line, or by two waved or zigzagged lines which, when applied together, form a series of ovals or diamonds. A cross-hatched band may stand for a house, the marking indicating a wall or the floor. Zigzags, like those in Fig. [122], B, indicate frogs’ legs, these stand for frogs themselves, and these again are symbolic of water.
From the foregoing it is evident that it is only by making careful inquiries from the natives themselves that the meaning of most of the devices of savages can be elucidated. What we are apt to consider as mere decoration may have a very definite magical or symbolic significance.
Mr. Goodyear states[144] that Lieutenant Frank Cushing informed him that the patterns which the Zuñis borrow from foreign ware are supposed to endow their own pottery with the virtues of the foreign material and manufacture, and that their use of borrowed patterns has this purpose.
The same author,[145] referring to the decorative art of Ancient Egypt, quotes as follows from Professor Maspero:—“The object of decoration was not merely to delight the eye. Applied to a piece of furniture, a coffin, a house, a temple, decoration possessed a certain magical property, of which the power or nature was determined by each word inscribed or spoken at the moment of consecration. Every object, therefore, was an amulet as well as an ornament.”
The tying of magic knots is a common expedient in sorcery, as the following extracts from a short paper by Dr. March[146] will prove. The malevolent tying of a knot brought mischief upon a man, to be averted only by counter-plotting and counter-knotting. Sickness was caused by the invasion of a demon, or by spells wrought by an enemy; and evil spirits had to be exorcised, and the knot of the spell-bound to be loosed.