The third feast[14] is held after the end of the harvest, when the year’s crop has been carefully stowed away. A pig and fowls are killed, for four days gong-beating and dancing are kept up, and the taboo lasts for eight days. Sometimes no stranger may approach the village for sixteen days. At this period also the soul of the rice is likewise secured, which is to ensure the non-rotting of the crop. At this feast there is a general physicking of the children. They are washed with cocoa-nut water, and then laid down in a row in the common room where the feast is held, and scarcely suffered to move about for four days. At this time also the elder priestesses physic their younger sisters, and children of a tender age are entered among the number of this learned and accomplished body; partly because admission into it is supposed to secure them against violent sickness. For each one who is now to be initiated, a young cocoa-nut is obtained, and their elder sisters cause those on whom they are to exercise their power to lie down in a line along the room, and to cover themselves with long sleeping sheets. The cocoa-nuts belonging to the patients are then taken into the hands of the priestesses, and with them they run violently about the long room, tossing them up and down and to and fro. In some villages they are rolled in soot and oil, and then kicked furiously about from one priestess to the other. During this part of the process the room presents a curious scene. Here some six or seven gaily-dressed women are rushing frantically up and down, tossing in their hands the heavy young cocoa-nuts; there a dozen old women are moving to and fro on a rude swing suspended from the rafters, and howling dolefully round the altar. A number of others are shrieking and dancing; while from the farther end of the room beyond the line of prostrate patients resounds a clatter of gongs and drums, beaten as vigorously as twenty pair of young hands can apply themselves to the work.
One by one the old priestesses cease their wild running backwards and forwards, and each in succession presents herself before an elder of the tribe, who stands, chopper in hand, over a mortar, into the hollow of which each in turn places her cocoa-nut. With one blow the old man splits the nut, and out gushes the water. If it simply fall into the mortar, the prospect is good, but if it shoot up towards the roof, then evil is the lot of the patient whose cocoa-nut it may be, for there is sickness before her in the coming year. When a cocoa-nut is split, she to whom it belongs is raised from her recumbent position and the water is poured over her; she is then laid down again and carefully wrapped up in her sheet. When all have been so treated a lighted taper is waved over the prostrate, motionless patients, and a form of words chanted, and then the ceremony is concluded by the head priestess going round and blowing into the face of each of the patients; after which they are allowed to chatter and amuse themselves, but are confined to the long room, in company with the elders and such of the children as had been previously subjected to the ceremony, until the close of the interdict.
Head Feasts.—These are held only after some new heads have been added to the ghastly trophies of the bachelor’s house; consequently among the Dayaks of Sarawak there has not been a feast for many years, except those celebrated over the heads of the rebellious Chinese killed in 1857, who, confident in their fire-arms, attempted to capture the villages on the mountain, their chief object being to burn down Sir James Brooke’s cottage. They offered to cease their attack if the Dayaks would put fire to it themselves; but they refused, and defended their steep paths by the aid of barricades. The Chinese were foiled and driven back to the plain, and were pursued by the mountaineers, who inflicted heavy loss upon them. Chinese heads, however, are esteemed of little value in comparison with those of their ancient enemies. The head feast is the great day of the young bachelors. The head-house and village are decorated with green boughs, and the heads to be feasted are brought out from their very airy position, being hung from one of the beams, where they rattle together at every breath of wind, and are put into a rice measure in some very prominent place. The whole population are robed in their best, the young men in red jackets, yellow and red head-dresses, and gay waist-cloths or trousers.
For four days and four nights an almost incessant beating of gongs and drums is kept up, and dances are performed by the young men only. The priestesses are decked out in their usual style, but upon this occasion their occupation is gone. Strong drinks, made from rice or the fruit of the tampui-tree, and also from the gomuti palm, flow freely; shrieks, yells, laughter, and shoutings, are heard in all directions, and the whole village seems given up to riot and dissipation. The interdict lasts eight days, two pigs are killed, and as many fowls as they can afford. An offering of food is made to the heads, and their spirits, being thus appeased, cease to entertain malice against, or to seek to inflict injury upon, those who have got possession of the skull which formerly adorned the now forsaken body.
A curious custom prevails among the young men at this feast. They cut a cocoa-nut shell into the form of a cup, and adorn it with red and black dye. Into one side of it they fasten a rudely carved likeness of a bird’s head, and into the other the representation of its tail. The cup is filled with arrack, and the possessor performs a short wild dance with it in his hands, and then with a yell leaps before some chosen companion, and presents it to him to drink. Thus the “loving cup” is passed around among them, and it need not be said that the result is in many cases partial, though seldom excessive, intoxication.
Before leaving the subject of feasts and incantations, I will mention some of their occasional ceremonies. They perform some on account of a bad dream, any threatening evil, or because of actual sickness; sometimes also by way of precaution, but this is only after harvest when they have nothing better to do. The theory of their ceremonies appears to be this: that the offering of food made to the spirits assuages their malice and secures their departure, these spirits being considered the proximate cause of nearly all the evils to which they are subjected.
The minor ceremonies are called “nyirañgan,” because a bamboo altar[15] is erected by the roadside, and a fowl killed near it, part of which, with rice and betel-nut, is offered upon it: the taboo is only for a day. If any one meets with an accidental death in the jungle, a ceremony is gone through near the spot; at this a pig is occasionally killed, but in all such cases the taboo lasts only one day. If during farming time a tree fall across the path, a ceremony is held, and all whose farms are in that direction are tabooed. If during harvest the basket into which the ears of rice are cut be upset, a fowl is killed, and the family to whom the basket belongs is tabooed. Again, when the Government rice-tax is paid, there is a ceremony. On this occasion a shed is erected just at the entrance to the village, and in addition to the offerings of food, it is hung with a number of split cocoa-nut shells, which the spirits are supposed to appropriate as gongs.
Images.—Although the Dayaks adhere with great strictness to the command not to make any graven image for purposes of worship, yet in some tribes they are in the habit of forming a rude figure of a naked man and woman, which they place opposite to each other on the path to the farms. On their heads are head-dresses of bark, by their sides is the betel-nut basket, and in their hands a short wooden spear. These figures are said to be inhabited each by a spirit who prevents inimical influences from passing on to the farms, and likewise from the farms to the village, and evil betide the profane wretch who lifts his hand against them,—violent fever and sickness are sure to follow.
Among the tribes of Western Sarawak the priestesses have made for them rude figures of birds. At the great harvest feasts they are hung up in bunches of ten or twenty in the long common room, carefully veiled with coloured handkerchiefs. They are supposed to become inhabited by spirits, and it is forbidden for any one to touch them, except the priestesses.
Dreams.—The Dayaks regard dreams as actual occurrences. They think that in sleep the soul sometimes remains in the body, and sometimes leaves it and travels far away, and that both when in and out of the body it sees, and hears, and talks, and altogether has a prescience given it, which, when the body is in its natural state, it does not enjoy. Fainting fits, or a state of coma, are thought to be caused by the departure or absence of the soul on some distant expedition of its own. When any one dreams of a distant land, as we exiles often do, the Dayaks think that our souls have annihilated space, and paid a flying visit to Europe during the night. Elders and priestesses often assert that in their dreams they have visited the mansion of Tapa, and seen the Creator dwelling in a house like that of a Malay, the interior of which was adorned with guns and gongs and jars innumerable, Himself being clothed like a Dayak.