The Pagan Tribes of Borneo / A Description of Their Physical Moral and Intellectual Condition, with Some Discussion of Their Ethnic Relations

by Charles Hose; William McDougall

A design just below the biceps of a Punan tatued in the Kayan manner is shown on Pl. 142, Fig. 10, and we were informed by the Punan that this also was a LUKUT, an excellent example of the indifference paid to the significance of design by people with whom such design is not indigenous.

On the forearm and thigh the UDOH ASU or dog pattern is tatued, and four typical examples are shown on Pl. 136, Figs. 1, 2, 5, 6. Nieuwenhuis has figured a series of these designs [9, Pl. 82][73] showing a transition from a very elongate animal form to a rosette form; we have occasionally met with the former amongst Sarawak Kayans, but it is a common thigh design amongst the Mendalam Kayans; the forms numbered B and C are unusual in Sarawak. Of the four examples given in Pl. 136 — and it may be noted that these met with the high approval of expert tatu artists — Figs. 1, 2, and 5 may be considered as intermediate between Nieuwenhuis' very elongate example F and the truncated form E which is supposed to represent the head only of a dog. Fig. 2 is characteristic of the Uma Balubo Kayans, and is remarkable in that teeth are shown in both jaws; whilst, both in this example and in Fig. 5, the eye is represented as a disc, in Figs. 1 and 6 the eye is assuming a rosette-like appearance, which rosette, as Nieuwenhuis' series shows, is destined in some cases to increase in size until it swallows up the rest of the design. Fig. 6 may be compared with Nieuwenhuis, Fig. E, as it evidently represents little more than the head of a dog. Although a single figure of the dog is the most usual form of tatu, we have met with an example of a double figure; it is shown in Fig. 7; it will be observed that one of the dogs is reversed and the tails of the two figures interlock. Fig. 8 represents a dog with pups, TUANG NGANAK; A is supposed to be the young one.

The dog design figures very prominently in Kayan art, and the fact that the dog is regarded by these people and also by the Kenyahs with a certain degree of veneration may account for its general representation. The design has been copied by a whole host of tribes, with degradation and change of name (Fig. 62).

On the deltoid region of the shoulders and on the breast, a rosette or a star design is found (text, Figs. 63 and 64). As already stated, it seems in the highest degree probable that the rosette is derived from the eye in the dog pattern, and it is consequently of some interest to find that the name now given to the rosette pattern is that of the fruit of a plant which was introduced into Borneo certainly within the last fifty or sixty years. The plant is PLUKENETIA CORNICULATA, one of the Euphorbiaceae, and it is cultivated as a vegetable; its Kayan name is JALAUT. We have here a good example of the gradual degradation of a design leading to a loss of its original significance and even of its name, another name, which originated probably from some fancied resemblance between pattern and object, being applied at a subsequent date. IPA OLIM, I.E., open fruit of a species of MANGIFERA, is another name occasionally applied to the rosette pattern, but JALAUT is in more general use (cf. Pl. 140, Fig. 4, Pl. 141, Fig. 7, and Pl. 142, Fig. 9).

On Pl. 141, Fig. 1, is shown a hand tatued in the Kayan manner; the figures on the phalanges are known as TEGULUN,[74] representations of human figures or as SILONG, faces, and they are evidently anthropomorphic derivatives. The triangles on the carpal knuckles are termed SONG IRANG, shoots of bamboo, and the zigzag lines are IKOR, lines.

Kayan women are tatued in complicated serial[75] designs over the whole forearm, the backs of the hands, over the whole of the thighs and to below the knees, and on the metatarsal surfaces of the feet. The tatuing of a Kayan girl is a serious operation, not only because of the considerable amount of pain caused, but also on account of the elaborate ceremonial attached to this form of body ornamentation. The process is a long one, lasting sometimes as much as four years, since only a small piece can be done at a sitting, and several long intervals elapse between the various stages of the work. A girl when about ten years old will probably have had her fingers and the upper part of her feet tatued, and about a year later her forearms should have been completed; the thighs are partially tatued during the next year, and in the third or fourth year from the commencement, I.E. about puberty, the whole operation should have been accomplished.

A woman endeavours to have her tatu finished before she becomes pregnant, as it is considered immodest to be tatued after she has become a mother. If a woman has a severe illness after any portion of her body has been tatued, the work is not continued for some little time; moreover, according to Nieuwenhuis (9, p. 453), a woman cannot be tatued during seed time nor if a dead person is lying unburied in the house, since it is LALI to let blood at such times; bad dreams, such as a dream of floods, foretelling much blood-letting, will also interrupt the work. A tatued woman may not eat the flesh of the monitor lizard (VARANUS) or of the scaly manis (MANIS JAVANICA), and her husband also is included in the tabu until the pair have a male and a female child. If they have a daughter only they may not eat the flesh of the monitor until their child has been tatued; if they have a son only they cannot eat the monitor until they become grandparents. Should a girl have brothers, but no sisters, some of her tatu lines must not be joined together, but if she has brothers and sisters, or sisters only, all the lines can be joined.

Tatu amongst Kayan women is universal; they believe that the designs act as torches in the next world, and that without these to light them they would remain for ever in total darkness; one woman told Dr. Nieuwenhuis that after death she would be recognised by the impregnation of her bones with the tatu pigment. The operation of tatuing amongst Kayans is performed by women, never by men, and it is always the women who are the experts on the significance and quality of tatu designs, though the men actually carve the designs on the tatu blocks. Nieuwenhuis states (9, p. 452) that the office of tatuer is to a certain extent hereditary, and that the artists, like smiths and carvers, are under the protection of a tutelary spirit, who must be propitiated with sacrifices before each operation. As long as the children of the artist are of tender age she is debarred from the practice of her profession. The greater the number of sacrifices offered, or in other words, the greater the experience of the artist, the higher is the fee demanded. She is also debarred from eating certain food. It is supposed that if an artist disregards the prohibitions imposed upon her profession, the designs that she tatus will not appear clearly, and she herself may sicken and die.

The tools used by a tatu artist are simple,[76] consisting of two or three prickers, ULANG or ULANG BRANG, and an iron striker, TUKUN or PEPAK, which are kept in a wooden case, BUNGAN. The pricker is a wooden rod with a short pointed head projecting at right angles at one end; to the point of the head is attached a lump of resin in which are embedded three or four short steel needles, their points alone projecting from the resinous mass (Fig. 68). The striker is merely a short iron rod, half of which is covered with a string lashing. The pigment is a mixture of soot, water, and sugar-cane juice, and it is kept in a double shallow cup of wood, UIT ULANG; it is supposed that the best soot is obtained from the bottom of a metal cooking-pot, but that derived from burning resin or dammar is also used. The tatu designs are carved in high relief on blocks of wood, KELINGE[77] (Fig. 62), which are smeared with the ink and then pressed on the part to be tatued, leaving an impression of the designs. As will be seen later, the designs tatued on women are in longitudinal rows or transverse bands, and the divisions between the rows or bands are marked by one or more zigzag lines termed IKOR.

The subject who is to be tatued lies on the floor, the artist and an assistant squatting on either side of her; the artist first dips a piece of fibre from the sugar-palm (ARENGA SACCHARIFERA) into the pigment and, pressing this on to the limb to be tatued, plots out the arrangement of the rows or bands of the design; along these straight lines the artist tatus the IKOR, then taking a tatu block carved with the required design, she smears it with pigment and presses it on to the limb between two lines. The tatuer or her assistant stretches with her feet the skin of the part to be tatued, and, dipping a pricker into the pigment, taps its handle with the striker, driving the needle points into the skin at each tap. The operation is painful, and the subject can rarely restrain her cries of anguish; but the artist is quite unmoved by such demonstrations of woe, and proceeds methodically with her task. As no antiseptic precautions are taken, a newly tatued part often ulcerates, much to the detriment of the tatu; but taking all things into consideration, it is wonderful how seldom one meets with a tatu pattern spoilt by scar tissues.