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.