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

The Kayans seem to have no very clear and generally accepted dogmas about these gods. Some assert that they dwell in the skies, but others regard them as dwelling below the surface of the earth. The former opinion is in harmony with the practice of erecting a tree before the house with its branches buried in the ground and the root upturned when prayers are made on behalf of the whole house; for the tree seems to be regarded as in some sense forming a ladder or path of communication with the superior powers. The same opinion seems to be expressed in the importance attached to fire and smoke in prayer and ritual. Fire, if only in the form of a lighted cigarette, is always made when prayers are offered; it seems to be felt that the ascending smoke facilitates in some way the communication with the gods.

While some gods, those of war and life, of harvest and of fire, are distinctly friendly, others, namely, the gods of madness and fear, are terrible and malevolent; while the god of thunder and those that conduct the souls to Hades do not seem to be predominantly beneficent or malevolent.

LAKI TENANGAN seems to be the supreme being of the Kayan universe. He is conceived as beneficent and, as his title LAKI implies, as a fatherly god who protects mankind. He is not a strictly tribal god, for the Kayan admits his identity with PA SILONG, and with BALI PENYLONG, the supreme gods of the Klemantans and Kenyahs respectively. In this, we think, the Kayan religion shows a catholicity which gives it a claim to rank very high among all religious systems.

LAKI TENANGAN has a wife, DOH TENANGAN, who, though of less importance than himself, is specially addressed by the women. The god is addressed by name in terms of praise and supplication; the prayers seem to be transmitted to him by means of the souls of domestic pigs or fowls;[91] for one of these is always killed and charged to carry the prayer to the god. At the same time a fire is invariably at hand and plays some part in the rite; the ascending smoke seems to play some part in the establishment of communication with the god. As an example of a prayer we give the following. The supplicant, having killed a pig and called the messengers of the god, cries, "Make my child live that I may bring him up with me in my occupations. You are above all men. Protect us from whatever sickness is abroad. If I put you above my head, all men look up to me as to a high cliff."

Similar rites are observed on addressing DOH TENANGAN. The following was given us as an example, "Oh! DOH TENANGAN, have pity upon me; I am ill — make me strong to-morrow and able to find my food."

The Kayans are not clear whether Laki Tenangan is the creator of the world. He does not figure in the Kayan creation myth.[92] There seems to be no doubt about his supremacy over the other gods; these are sometimes asked by Kayans to intercede with him on their behalf.[93]

As regards the minor departmental gods, it is difficult to draw the line between them and the spirits of the third class distinguished above. All of them are approached at times with prayers and with rites similar to those used in addressing LAKI TENANGAN. Several wooden posts, very roughly carved to indicate the head and, limbs of a human form, stand before every Kayan house. When the gods are addressed on behalf of the whole household, as before or after an important expedition, the ceremony usually takes place before one of these rudely carved posts.[94] But the post cannot be called an idol. It is more of the nature of an altar. No importance attaches to the mere posts, which are often allowed to fall away and decay and are renewed as required. A similar post may be hastily fashioned and set up on the bank of the river, if a party at a distance from home has special occasion for supplication.

An altar of a rather different kind is also used in communicating with the gods. It seems to be used especially in returning thanks for recovery of health after severe illness. It consists of a bamboo some four or five feet in length fixed upright in the ground. The upper end is split by two cuts at right angles to one another, and a fresh fowl's egg is inserted between the split ends (Pl. 145). Leaves of the LONG, (a species of CALADIUM), a plant grown on the PADI field for this purpose, are hung upon the post. These leaves serve merely to signalise the fact that some rite is going forward; they are also hung, together with a large sun hat, upon the door of any room in which a person lies seriously ill, to make it known as LALI or tabu; and in general they seem to be used to mark a spot as pervaded by some spiritual influence, or, in short, as "unclean." The bodies of fowls and pigs sacrificed in the course of the rites performed before such an altar-post are generally hung upon sharpened stakes driven into the ground before it, I.E. between it and the house, towards which the post, in the case of posts of the former kind, invariably faces; and the frayed sticks commonly used in such rites are hung upon the altar-post. Such posts are sometimes fenced in, but this is by no means always the case (Pl. 144).

The Kayans seek to read in the behaviour of the omen birds and in the entrails of the slaughtered pigs and fowls indications of the way in which the gods responds to their prayers. For they regard the true omen birds as the trusty messengers of the gods. After slaughtering the pigs or fowls to whose charge they have committed their petitions, they examine their entrails in the hope of discovering the answer of the gods; and at the same time they tell off two or three men to look for omens from the birds of the jungle.[95] If the omens first obtained are bad, more fowls and pigs are usually killed and omens again observed; and in an important matter, E.G. the illness of a beloved child, the process may be repeated many times until satisfactory omens are forthcoming. Whatever may have been the origin and history of such rites, it seems to be quite clear that the slaughtering of these animals is regarded as an act of sacrifice in the ordinary sense of the word, I.E. as an offering or gift of some valued possession to the spiritual powers; for, although on some occasions a pig so slaughtered is eaten, those stuck upon stakes before the altar-post are left to rot; and the idea of sacrificing, or depriving oneself of, a valued piece of property is clearly expressed on such occasions in other ways; E.G. a woman will break a bead of great value when her prayers for the restoration to health of a child remain unanswered, or on such an occasion a woman may cut off her hair.[96]

The custom of approaching and communicating with the gods through the medium of the omen birds, seems to be responsible in large measure for the fact that the gods themselves are but dimly conceived, and are not felt to be in intimate and sympathetic relations with their worshippers. The omen birds seem to form not only a medium of communication, but also, as it were, a screen which obscures for the people the vision of their gods. As in many analogous instances, the intercessors and messengers to whose care the messages are committed assume in the eyes of the people an undue importance; the god behind the omen bird is apt to be almost lost sight of, and the bird itself tends to become an object of reverence, and to be regarded as the recipient of the prayer and the dispenser of the benefits which properly he only foretells or announces.[97]