The Kenyahs carve such images more elaborately than the Kayans, who are often content merely to indicate the eyes, mouth, and four limbs, by slashing away with the sword chips of wood from the surface of the log, leaving gashes at the points roughly corresponding in position to these organs. The Kenyahs treat these rude images with rather more care than do the Kayans; and they associate them more strictly with particular deities. The children of the house are not allowed to touch such an image, after it has been once used as an altar post; it is only when it is so used, and blood of fowls or pigs sprinkled upon it, that it seems to acquire its uncleanness."[102]
BALI UTONG brings prosperity to the house. BALI URIP is the god of life; he too has a carved altarpost, generally crowned with a brass gong. BALINGO is the god of thunder.
BALI SUNGEI is the name given to a being which perhaps cannot properly be called a god. He is thought of as embodied in a huge serpent or dragon living at the bottom of the river; he is supposed to cause the violent swirls and uprushes of water that appear on the surface in times of flood. He is regarded with fear; and is held to be responsible for the upsetting of boats and drownings in the river. It is not clear that he is the spirit of the river itself; for floods and the various changes of the river do not seem to be attributed to him.
BALI PENYALONG, like Laki Tenangen, has a wife BUNGAN. She is not so distinctly the special deity of the women folk as is DOH TENANGAN among the Kayans.
A special position in the Kenyah system is occupied by BALI FLAKI, the carrion hawk, which is the principal omen bird observed during the preparation for and conduct of war. Something will be said of the cult of BALI FLAKI in a later chapter; but we would note here that this bird is peculiar among the many omen-birds of the Kenyahs, in that an altar-post before the house is assigned to him, or at least one of the posts rudely carved to suggest the human figure is specially associated with BALI FLAKI, and in some cases is surmounted by a wooden image of the hawk. It seems to us probable that in this case the Kenyahs have carried further the tendency we noted in the Kayans to allow the omen birds to figure so prominently in their rites and prayers as to obscure the gods whose messengers they are; and that BALI FLAKI has in this way driven into the background, and more or less completely taken the place of, a god of war whose name even has been forgotten by many of the Kenyahs, if not by all of them.
Peculiar adjuncts of the altar-posts of the Kenyahs are the DRACAENA plant (whose deep red leaves are generally to be seen growing in a clump not far from them) and a number of large spherical stones, BATU TULOI. These are perpetual possessions of the house. Their history is unknown; they are supposed to grow gradually larger and to move spontaneously when danger threatens the house. When a household removes and builds for itself a new home, these stones are carried with some ceremony to the new site (Pl. 144).
We reproduce here a passage from a paper published by us some ten years ago[103] in which we ventured to speculate on the development of the Kenyah belief in a Supreme Being.
We cannot conclude without saying something as to, the possible origin of their conception of a beneficent Being more powerful than all others, who sends guidance and warnings by the omen birds, and receives and answers the prayers carried to him by the souls of the fowls and pigs. It might be thought that this conception of a beneficent Supreme Being has been borrowed directly or indirectly from the Malays. But we do not think that this view is tenable in face of the fact that, while the conception is a living belief among the Madangs, a Kenyah tribe that inhabits a district in the remotest interior and has had no intercourse with Malays, the Ibans, who have had far more intercourse with the Malays than have the Kayans and Kenyahs, yet show least trace of this conception. As Archdeacon Perham has written of the Ibans, there are traces of the belief in one supreme God which suggest that the idea is one that has been prevalent, but has now almost died out. We are inclined to suppose that the tribes of the interior, such as the Kenyahs and Kayans, have evolved the conception for themselves, and that in fact Bali Penyalong of the Kenyahs is their god of war exalted above all others by the importance of the department of human activity over which he presides; for we have seen that they had been led to conceive other gods — Balingo, the god of thunder, Bali Sungei, the god of the rivers, whose anger is shown by the boiling flood, and Bali Atap, who keeps harm from the house, while the Kayans have gods of life, a god of harvesting, and other departmental deities. It seems to us that the only difficult step in such a simple and direct evolution of the idea of a beneficent Supreme Being is the conception of gods or spirits that perform definite functions, such as Bali Atap, who guards the house, and the gods that preside over harvesting and war, as distinct from such gods or nature-spirits as Balingo and Bali Sungei. But there seems to be no doubt that this step has been taken by these peoples, and that these various gods of abstract function have been evolved by them. And it seems to us that, were a god of war once conceived, it would be inevitable that, among communities whose chief interest is war and whose prosperity and very existence depend upon success in battle, such a god of battles should come to predominate over all others, and to claim the almost exclusive regard of his worshippers. Such a predominance would be given the more easily to one god by these people, because the necessity for strict subordination to their chiefs has familiarised them with the principles of obedience of subjects to a single ruler and of subordination of minor chiefs to a principal chief; while the beneficence of the Supreme Being thus evolved would inevitably result; for the god of battles must seem beneficent to the victors, and among these people only the victors survive. Again, this conception is one that undoubtedly makes for righteousness, because it reflects the character of the people who, within the community and the tribe, are decent, humane, and honest folk.
We are conscious of presumption in venturing to adopt the view that the conception of a beneficent Supreme Being may possibly be neither the end nor the beginning of religion, neither the final result of an evolution, euhemeristic, totemistic, or other, prolonged through countless ages and generations, nor part of the stock-in-trade of primitive man mysteriously acquired. Yet we are disposed to regard this conception as one that, amid the perpetual flux of opinion and belief which obtains among peoples destitute of written records, may be comparatively rapidly and easily arrived at under favourable conditions (such as seem to be afforded by tribes like the Kenyahs and Kayans, warlike prosperous tribes subordinated to strong chiefs), and may as rapidly fall into neglect with change of social conditions; and we suggest that it may then remain as a vestige in the minds of a few individuals only to be discerned by curious research, as among the Ibans or the Australian blacks, until another turn of Fortune's wheel, perhaps the birth of some overmastering personality or a revival of national or tribal vigour, gives it a new period of life and power.
We still regard as highly plausible the view suggested in this passage. We would add to what we have written only a few words in explanation of what may seem to be a difficulty in the way of this view. It was mentioned above that the Kayans recognise a god of war, TOH BULU. This fact may seem incompatible with the view that the idea of LAKI TENANGAN has been reached by exalting the god of war above his fellow-departmental deities; but it is not, we think, a fatal objection. For TOH BULU seems to be a god of but small account with the Kayans; his name figures but little in their rites; and the name itself indicates his subordinate position; for TOH is, as we have seen, the generic name for spirits of minor importance, and BULU is the Kayan word for feather; TOH BULU, literally translated, is then the feather-spirit or spirit of the feathers. It seems possible, therefore, that TOH BULU was nothing more than the spirit concerned with the hornbill's feathers, which are the emblems or badges of acknowledged prowess in battle; and that with the exaltation of the original god of war above his fellows, this minor spirit concerned in warfare has acquired a larger sphere and importance.