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.