Stirring scenes in savage lands

by James Greenwood

And the land be desolate.”

Dead chiefs sat in state until they gave out an ill odour. Then their bodies were wrapped in mats, put into canoe-shaped boxes along with their meris, and deposited on stages nine feet high, or suspended from trees in the neighbourhood of villages, or interred within the houses where they died. Here, after daylight, for many weeks the nearest relatives regularly bewailed their death with mournful cries. Persons tapued from touching the dead were now made clean. Carved wooden ornaments, or rude human images twenty or forty feet high, not unlike Hindoo idols, were erected on the spots where the bodies were deposited. Mourning head dresses made of dark feathers were worn; some mourners clipped half their hair short, and people talked of the dead as if they were alive.

The bodies were permitted to remain about half a year on the stages, or in the earth, after which the bones were scraped clean, placed in boxes or mats, and secretly deposited by priests in sepulchres, on hill tops, in forests, or in caves. The meris and valuable property of chiefs were now received by their heirs. To witness this ceremony of the removal of bones neighbouring tribes were invited to feasts, called the hahunga; and for several successive years afterwards hahungas were given in honour of the dead, on which occasions skulls and preserved heads of chiefs were brought from sepulchres, and adorned with mats, flowers, and feathers. Speeches and laments delivered at hahungas kept chiefs’ memories alive, and stimulated the living to imitate the dead.

In Borneo when a Dayak dies the whole village is tabooed for a day; and within a few hours of death the body is rolled up in the sleeping mat of the deceased, and carried by the “Peninu,” or sexton of the village, to the place of burial or burning. The body is accompanied for a little distance from the village by the women, uttering a loud and melancholy lament. In one tribe—the Pemujan—the women follow the corpse a short way down the path below the village to the spot where it divides, one branch leading to the burning ground, the other to the Chinese town of Siniawau. Here they mount upon a broad stone and weep, and utter doleful cries till the sexton and his melancholy burden have disappeared from view. Curiously enough, the top of this stone is hollowed, and the Dayaks declare that this has been occasioned by the tears of their women, which, during many ages, have fallen so abundantly and so often as to wear away the stone by their continual dropping.

In Western Sarawak the custom of burning the dead is universal. In the district near the Samarahan they are indifferently burnt or buried, and when the Sadong is reached, the custom of cremation ceases, the Dayaks of the last river being in the habit of burying their dead. In the grave a cocoa nut and areca nut are thrown; and a small basket and one containing the chewing condiments of the deceased are hung up near the grave, and if he were a noted warrior a spear is stuck in the ground close by. The above articles of food are for the sustenance of the soul in his passage to the other world.

The graves are very shallow, and not unfrequently the corpse is rooted up and devoured by wild pigs. The burning also is not unfrequently very inefficiently performed. “Portions of bones and flesh have been brought back by the dogs and pigs of the village to the space below the very houses of the relatives,” says Mr. St. John. “In times of epidemic disease, and when the deceased is very poor, or the relatives do not feel inclined to be at much expense for the sexton’s services, corpses are not unfrequently thrown into some solitary piece of jungle not far from the village, and there left. The Dayaks have very little respect for the bodies of the departed, though they have an intense fear of their ghosts.

“The office of sexton is hereditary, descending from father to son; and when the line fails, great indeed is the difficulty of inducing another family to undertake its unpleasant duties, involving, as it is supposed, too familiar an association with the dead and with the other world to be at all beneficial. Though the prospect of fees is good, and perhaps every family in the village offers six gallons of unpounded rice to start the sexton in his new and certainly useful career, it is difficult to find a candidate. The usual burying fee is one jav, valued at a rupee; though if great care be bestowed on the interment, a dollar is asked; at other places as much as two dollars is occasionally demanded.”

On the day of a person’s death a feast is given by the family to their relations: if the deceased be rich, a pig and a fowl are killed; but if poor, a fowl is considered sufficient. The apartment and the family in which the death occurs are tabooed for seven days and nights, and if the interdict be not rigidly kept, the ghost of the departed will haunt the place.

Among the Sea Dayaks, as we are likewise informed by Mr. St. John, human bodies are usually buried, although, should a man express a wish to share the privilege of the priests, and be, like them, exposed on a raised platform, his friends are bound to comply with his request.

Immediately after the breath has left the body, the female relations commence loud and melancholy laments; they wash the corpse and dress it in its finest garments, and often, if a man, fully armed, and bear it forth to the great common hall, where it is surrounded by its friends to be mourned over. In some villages a hireling leads the lament, which is continued till the corpse leaves the house. Before this takes place, however, the body is rolled up in clothes and fine mats, kept together by pieces of bamboo tied on with rattans, and taken to the burial-ground. A fowl is then killed as a sacrifice to the spirit who guards the earth, and they commence digging the grave from two and a half to four and a half feet deep, according to the person’s rank: deeper than five feet would be unlawful. Whilst this operation is going on others fell a large tree, and cutting off about six feet, split it in two, and hollow out the pieces with an adze. One part serves as a coffin and the other as the lid; the body is placed within, and the two are secured together by means of strips of pliable cane wound round them.