It is the aborigines, however, who alone are represented in the group before us—the Dyaks as opposed to the Malays. And the particular Dyak division is not the one with which an Englishman is the most familiar. The Sarebas Dyaks, the Lundu Dyaks, the Sakarran Dyaks, &c., are the best known to us, inasmuch as it is those who come in contact with the Rajahship of Sarawak, and the parts under the influence of Sir James Brooke. But the Dyaks before us come from the south and the south-east, rather than from the north-west and west, and from the Dutch parts of the island rather than from the English.
The aborigines of Borneo belong to the great Malay family, so that they are essentially the same as the aborigines of Sumatra and Java, &c. But they have this important characteristic; they have been the least touched by either Indian or Arabic influences. They are the least Hindu, the least Mahometan, the most Pagan. Neither have they any alphabet; at the same time, some vestiges of Indian culture undoubtedly exist.
The Dyak of Borneo is the Malay in his most unmodified and primitive condition, and it is amongst the Dyaks of Borneo that the characteristic customs are to be found. They are divided into, probably, 100 different tribes, with, probably, 100 dialects; so far are they from the organisation of a concentrated political power. As some tribes, however, are more powerful than others, and as such tribes encroach and conquer, the tendency towards consolidation exists.
Of such tribes, the most important are the Kayans, occupants of the central part of the island, cultivators of the soil, domesticators of animals, forgers of iron. They are a dominant and encroaching population; the Kanawit, and the other tribes more immediately allied, being their tributaries. The names which they give to both the other Dyaks and the Malays, are derisive and insulting; and other circumstances besides this show the extent to which they are a proud, self-respecting population. Their dignity of manner and deportment is favourably contrasted with the comparative servility of the Malays. As to their morals, the accounts are conflicting. The utter absence of female chastity, affirmed by Mr. Law, is denied by Mr. Burns, whose opportunities for acquiring knowledge seem to have been the better, but who writes somewhat in the spirit of an advocate and admirer. The same author considers that their taste for head-hunting has been exaggerated; at any rate, the custom of handing down heads from generation to generation, as honourable heirlooms, wants confirmation, and besides this, has certain positive facts against it. When two of their chiefs changed their residence, an accumulation of 400 skulls was thrown away, instead of being removed with care and honour. Human sacrifices, on the other hand, are admitted by Mr. Burns to exist; with the reservation that the practice decreases, and that the victim is a member of some other tribe.
It was from the parts about the Kayan river that they began their conquests. Successful in holding their own, they suffer from disease rather than war. At intervals of twelve or fifteen years, the small-pox rages as an epidemic; whilst fever, ague, dysentery, and rheumatism, are endemic. To tattoo the body, to bore and stretch the ears, to wear pendant ear-rings of twenty ounces, so that the ears and breasts meet, are the more characteristic elements of the Kayan cosmesis. In the first of these operations the performer pricks the pattern with a needle, and then engrains the smoke of a dammer torch; so that the process is partially that of the simple tattoo, and partially that of inustion. Mutual friendships or brotherhoods, are ratified by the not unusual ceremony of mixing blood. This Mr. Burns considers as peculiar to the Kayan amongst the populations of Borneo. That of drawing omens from the flight of birds is common to them and the other tribes.
After death, the body is kept in the house from four to eight days. Torches are kept burning beside the coffin which contains it; and if one of them go out, bad luck is augured from its extinction. For four or five days, too, after the removal of the corpse, they are still kept alight. Previous, however, to the removal, a feast is prepared; some of the food being placed beside the coffin, whilst the remainder regales the relatives of the deceased. The mourning of the women is loud, passionate, and full of gesticulation. They hug the decomposing body; they inhale its odours, and finally, they attend it to the place of its ultimate disposal, which is the loft of a small wooden house, built on pillars, about twelve feet high.
The burial ceremonies are more elaborate than those which accompany the birth or naming of children; those of marriage are the simplest. To swim, to wrestle, to blow the sumpitan, to use the sword, and to throw the spear, are the chief elements in the training of the Kayan youth.[33]
[33] Burns, in “Journal of the Indian Archipelago.”
This notice has contained some remarkable suggestions. What means the allusion to the head-hunting? No trophy is more honourable among the Dyaks of Borneo, than a human head; the head of a conquered enemy. These are preserved in the houses as tokens; so that the number of skulls is a measure of the prowess of the possessor. In tribes, where this feeling becomes morbid, no young man can marry before he has presented his future bride with a human head, cut off by himself. Hence, for a marriage to take place, an enemy must be either found or made.
It may easily be imagined that this engenders a chronic state of warfare between tribe and tribe; to which, we may add, as another of the scourges of the Dyak population, the piracy that is practised along the whole of the sea-coasts, and on the lower courses of the numerous rivers.