One evening, an hour before sunset, at the time when in every direction, the angular outlines of the huge fruit-bats, with bodies as large as a cat, are silhouetted against the sky, as they make an unswerving and majestic flight toward their nocturnal feeding-grounds, we halted our dug-out canoes at the muddy sloping bank in front of the house of Aban Avit, an influential Chief on the Tinjar River.
We were uninvited, and, as far as we knew, unexpected, but the host, upon whom we were thus unceremoniously forcing ourselves, advanced to meet us, as we ascended the unsteady, plank walk, raised on piles, leading to his house, and, with a warmth unusual among an undemonstrative people, welcomed us with a smile that revealed every one of his thirty-two coal-black teeth. We were, to be sure, old friends, having stopped at his house on our way up-river; but, as he had afterward heard that we were going to make the ascent of Mount Dulit, where all varieties of evil Spirits and dragons have their haunts, he said he had really never expected to see us again; and had we not returned just when we did, he, good soul, had planned to go with a party of his bravest men in search of us; but here we were again safe and sound, none the worse for the dreadful journey, and not one of us marked with the scar of ‘Gum Toh,’ a ghost’s-clutch,—a cutaneous tumor, to which these dark-skinned people are subject, well known to us as a Keloid of Addison, but which the Borneans aver is due to the clutch of a ghost’s hand. As soon as we were within the veranda of the house, Aban Avit insisted that his own private room should be resigned to us; accordingly, his manifold possessions were moved to one side, and clean rattan mats spread upon the floor; his fireplace, heaped with dry wood, was put at the disposal of our Chinese cook, and several long bamboo water-jars were brought from the river so that there should be no delay in the preparation of our evening meal. Ah, the hospitality of a head-hunter!
ABAN AVIT, A BERAWAN CHIEF OF THE TINJAR RIVER.
When all our numerous boxes and bundles had been brought up from the boats, we wandered inquisitively about the long-house, asking endless questions of our host and of his brother; and, as they both spoke Malay fluently, our conversation drifted into all sorts of channels. Aban Avit is a widower, as the Aban in his name declares, and Avit was the name of his wife. The Kayans, and allied tribes, adopt names to suit the varying events of their lives. Thus, a widower always takes his dead wife’s name prefixed by Aban; a father bears the name of his first-born child prefixed by Tama, or Ma, meaning father, as long as the child lives; should the child die, Tama is changed to Oyang. For instance, Tama Bulan means the father of Bulan. Oyang Batu means he who is bereft of his son Batu. Bulan is a girl’s name, meaning Moon; Batu is a boy’s name, and means Stone, equivalent to our Peter. If Bulan, the daughter of Tama Bulan, should have a son named Madang, Tama Bulan, whose original name was Wang, would then adopt the grandfather’s title of Laki, and be known as Laki Madang.
Our host [whose photograph is given on the opposite page] was one of the best types of the inland tribes.
Throughout his house, on partition walls and on rafters, there was scroll-work in black and white paint, the black lines evidently made with a finger and the dots of white with a thumb. On the wall of his private room, just above his sleeping-place, were two much conventionalised and interlaced figures with arms and legs like long tendrils. These figures, Aban Avit explained, represented ‘Wawa’ monkeys (the Gibbon Ape), animals held sacred by his family for certainly three generations, and never killed by any member of the household; he regarded them as his best of friends, and that day was sure to be lucky when they crossed his path in the jungle, or when their musical, almost bird-like, call was heard near the house.
This hereditary veneration of an animal suggests a trace of totemism, otherwise rare in Borneo. Aban Avit, in telling us about his veneration for the Wawa, cast down his eyes and spoke in a voice so low we could hardly hear him, as if the very breathing of a name so sacred were profanation. He told us the painting was the work of his own hands.
From this private apartment, which even at high noon was dark, but as soon as the sun had set was verily as dark as the proverbial pocket, we made our way to the veranda, where daylight still lingered; here again we noticed our host’s love of decoration; the rack whereon visitors as soon as they enter the veranda, hang their parangs, instead of being a customary row of pegs or merely crotched sticks, was a board, whereof the lower edge, as it hung horizontally from the rafters, about half way up the slant of the roof, had been carved by the Chief himself into graceful double-headed hooks and loops, so that the belts attached to the parangs could be easily hung on them and the weapons would be out of the way, yet conveniently at hand. It is an unequivocal insult for a guest to enter a friendly veranda with his parang about his waist; etiquette demands that it be unfastened before stepping into the house; it should be then laid aside or hung on the rack while the owner is engaged in friendly gossip. The house was new at the time of our visit, in fact, it was not yet wholly finished; at the up-river end, five or six huge piles had been planted for its further extension; these posts, about fifteen feet out of the ground and eighteen inches in diameter, were likewise carved, but with grotesque devil-faces, from whose grinning mouths tusks like the wild boar’s protruded, below them snakes, and spiral curves representing the recurved protuberance on the beak and head of the Horn-bill,—the war-bird of all the Kayan and Kenyah tribes. Here and there, of course, conventionalised figures of the Wawa were to be detected. It seems an inviolable rule with all Bornean decoration that the representation of any living thing must be hinted at so grotesquely, that it takes a subtle imagination to discern what it really represents; possibly, this is due to the idea, so widely scattered throughout the far East, that to make a life-like image of any animal involves a risk of danger to the maker,—a danger which may be vague or otherwise as chance may interpret it,—and of which we see an intimation, possibly, in the second commandment of the Decalogue.
When twilight suddenly deepened into night and blazing brands were brought to replenish the fire on the hearth opposite the Chief’s door, we squatted round about it, not for warmth, but for the cheer of its flicker, and because,—well, does a pipe ever taste as good as when lit by an ember?