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

It is against custom to draw the blood of a friend (PESU DAHA), and therefore, when first blood is drawn in tatuing, it is customary to give a small present to the artist. The present takes the form of four antique beads, or of some other object worth about one dollar; it is termed LASAT MATA, for it is supposed that if it were omitted the artist would go blind, and some misfortune would happen to the parents and relations of the girl undergoing the operation of tatu.

When the half of one IKOR has been completed the tattier stops and asks for SELIVIT; this is a present of a few beads, well-to-do people paying eight yellow beads of the variety known as LAVANG, valued at one dollar apiece, whilst poor people give two beads. It is supposed that if SELIVIT was not paid the artist would be worried by the dogs and fowls that always roam about a Kayan house, so that the work would not be satisfactorily done; however, to make assurance doubly sure, a curtain is hung round the operator and her subject to keep off unwelcome intruders. After SELIVIT has been paid a cigarette is smoked, and then work recommences in earnest, there being no further interruptions for the rest of the day except for the purpose of taking food. The food of the artist must be cooked and brought to her, as she must not stop to do other work than tatuing, and her tools are only laid aside for a few minutes while she consumes a hurried meal. Fowls or a pig are killed for the artist by the parents of the girl who is being tatued. The fees paid to the artist are more or less fixed; for the forearms a gong, worth from eight to twenty dollars, according to the workmanship required; for the thighs a large TAWAK, worth as much as sixty dollars if the very best workmanship is demanded, from six to twenty dollars if only inferior workmanship is required.[78] For tatuing the fingers the operator receives a MALAT or short sword. Nieuwenhuis (8, p. 236) states that it is supposed that the artist will die within a year if her charges are excessive; but we have not met with this belief amongst the Kayans of the Rejang and Baram rivers.

The knee-cap is the last part to be tatued, and before this is touched the artist must be paid; as this part of the design is the keystone, as it were, of the whole, the required fee is always forthcoming. A narrow strip down the back of the thigh is always left untatued; it is supposed that mortification of the legs would ensue if this strip was not left open.

The time at which to begin tatuing a girl is about the ninth day after new moon, this lunar phase being known as BUTIT HALAP, the belly of the HALAP fish (BARBUS BRAMOIDES); as the skin of the girl being tatued quickly becomes very tender, it is often necessary to stop work for a few days, but it is a matter of indifference at what lunar phase work recommences, so long as it was originally begun at BUTIT HALAP.

A Kayan chief of the Mendalam river informed Dr. Nieuwenhuis [9, p. 4551 that in his youth only the wives and daughters of chiefs were permitted the thigh tatu, women of lower rank had to be content with tatu of the lower part of the shin and of the ankles and feet. The designs were in the form of quadrangular blotches divided by narrow untatued lines, and were known as TEDAK DANAU, lake tatu. The quadrangles were twelve in number, divided from each other by four longitudinal and two transverse untatued lines, 6 millimetres broad, two of the longitudinal lines running down each side of the front of the leg, and two down each side of the calf, approximately equidistant; the forearm was tatued in the same style. This manner of tatu is obsolete now, but Dr. Nieuwenhuis was fortunate in finding one very old woman so tatued.

Nowadays the class restrictions as regards tatu are not so closely observed, but it is always possible to distinguish between the designs of a chiefs daughter, an ordinary free-woman, and a slave, by the number of lines composing the figures of the designs, — the fewer these lines, the lower being the rank of the woman. Moreover, the designs of the lower-class women are not nearly so complex as those of the higher class, and they are generally tatued free-hand.

A very typical design for the forearm of a woman of high rank is shown on Pl. 140, Fig. 3; it is taken from a Kayan of the Uma Pliau sub-tribe dwelling on the Baram river, and may be compared with the somewhat similar designs of the Mendalam river Kayans figured by Nieuwenhuis [9, Pl. 85], one of which is a design for a chiefs daughter, the other for a slave. The zigzag lines bounding the pattern on both surfaces of the forearm are the IKOR, and these, as already stated, are marked out with a piece of fibre dipped in the tatu ink before the rest of the pattern is impressed by a wood-block or KLINGE. Taking the flexor surface of the forearm first, the units of the designs are: three bands of concentric circles (AAA) termed BELILING BULAN or full moons; a triangle (B) each, limb formed by several parallel lines, DULANG HAROK, the bows of a boat; spirals (CC) ULU TINGGANG, the head of the hornbill. On the supinator surface BELILING BULAN and ULU TINGGANG occur again, but instead of DULANG HAROK, there are two other elements, a bold transverse zigzag known as DAUN WI (D), rattan leaves, and at the proximal end of the pattern an interlacing design, TUSHUN TUVA (E), bundles of tuba root (DERRIS ELLIPTICA). The fingers are very simply tatued with a zigzag on the carpal knuckles and transverse lines across the joints; the thumb is decorated in a slightly different way. In Dr. Nieuwenhuis' designs cited above, we find much the same elements; in one of them the BELILING BULAN are more numerous and more closely set together, so that the concentric circles of one set have run into those of the next adjoining; the TUSHUN TUVA pattern is termed POESOENG, evidently the same as TUSHUN; the spirals are much degraded in one example and are called KROWIT, or hooks, whilst in the more elaborate example they are known as MANOK WAK, or eyes of the SCOPS owl; the PEDJAKO PATTERN is an addition, but the meaning of the word is not known; the pattern on the fingers is much more complex than in the Uma Pliau example, and is perhaps a degraded hornbill design.

Nieuwenhuis [8, Pl. XXIV.] figures the hand of a low-class woman tatued with triangular and quadrangular blotches, and with some rude designs that appear to have been worked in free-hand.

On Pl. 140, Fig. 1, is shown the design on the forearm of a high-class woman of the Uma Lekan Kayans of the Batang Kayan river, Dutch Borneo; in our opinion these elegant designs are quite in the front rank of the tatu designs of the world. In spite of the elaboration, it is quite possible to distinguish in these the same elements as in the Uma Pliau specimen, viz.: BELILING BULAN ULU TINGGANG DAUN WI and TUSHUN TUVA; but the DULANG HAROK is absent, and the SILONG or face pattern appears.

Nieuwenhuis [9, Pl. 93, b] figures the arm-tatu (supinator surface only) of a Kayan woman of the Blu-u river, a tributary of the Upper Mahakkam; the main design is evidently a hornbill derivative, the knuckles are tatued with quadrangular and rectangular blotches. The hornbill plays an important part in the decorative art of the Long Glat, a Klemantan tribe of the Mahakkam river, and we suspect that, if these Blu-u Kayans are of true Kayan stock, they have borrowed the hornbill design from their neighbours.