SKULL OF A CHIEF OF THE KELABIT TRIBE.
IT IS DRAPED WITH STRIPS OF PALM LEAVES, POSSIBLY TO REPRESENT HAIR, AND ORNAMENTED WITH WOODEN EARS, EAR-PENDANTS, AND A LONG WOODEN NOSE. SUCH ORNAMENTATION OF SKULLS IS NOT USUAL, AT LEAST IN THE BARAM DISTRICT.
He turned to appeal to his people sitting near, and they, as many as understood Malay, nodded their heads, glancing from him to us, and murmuring ‘Betúl, betúl!’ [’Tis true, ’tis true] He paused to get an ember out of the glowing heap of ashes to light his cigarette again, which had become much crumpled during the narration of Rajah Tokong’s first head-hunt, and after he had it once more in shape, I asked him if he would not regard it as somewhat of an inconvenience if his own head were to be cut off, just to bring blessings to an enemy’s house. ‘Tuan,’ he replied, ‘I do not want to become dead any more than I want to move from where I am; if my head were cut off, my second self would go to Bulun Matai, [the Fields of the Dead,] where beyond a doubt I should be happy; the Dayongs tell us, and surely they know, that those who have been brave and have taken heads, as I have, will be respected in that other world and will have plenty of riches. When I die my friends will beat the gongs loud and shout out my name, so that those who are already in Bulun Matai, will know that I am coming, and meet me when I cross over the stream on Bintang Sikópa [the great log.] I shall be glad enough to see them. But I don’t want to go to-day, nor to-morrow.’ His faith seemed immovable, but I could not resist the temptation of suggesting a doubt, so I asked him what if the Dayongs were wrong, and there were no Bulun Matai, and that when he stopped breathing he really died and knew no more. He answered me almost with scorn for such a doubt. ‘Tuan, nothing really dies, it changes from one thing to another. The Dayongs must be right, for they have been to the Fields of the Dead and come back to tell us all about it.’ ‘Don’t you feel sorry,’ I asked, ‘for those that you kill? It hurts badly to be cut by a parang; you don’t like it, and those whom you cut down dislike it as much as you do; they are no more anxious to go to Apo Leggan or Long Julán [Regions in Bulun Matai] than you are.’ ‘Ah, Tuan,’ he replied, with the suggestion of a patronizing chuckle in his voice, ‘you feel just as I did, when I was a little boy and had never seen blood. But I outgrew such feelings, as every one should. My father, a very great warrior, and known and feared by the people of many, many rivers, wanted his sons to be as brave and fearless as he was himself. So one day he dragged out into the jungle old Bállo Lahíng, [widow of Lahíng,] and tied her fast to a tree by rattans on her wrists and ankles. She was a slave-woman, captured when she was a young girl, by his grandfather over in the Batang Kayan country, and, at the time I speak of, she was very old, and weak, and very thin, and couldn’t do any work because she was nearly blind. My father told my brother yonder and me, and one or two other boys, all of us, little fellows then, (I remember, my ears were still sore from having these holes for tiger-cat’s teeth cut in them,) well,—he told us we must go out with spears and learn to stick them in something alive, and not to be afraid to see blood, nor to hear screams,—then I felt just as you do. Besides, I was really very fond of old Bállo Lahíng; she it was who tied on my first chawat [waist-cloth] for me, I remembered it well, for she laughed a great deal at me, and then I saw how few teeth she had, and she often used to sing me to sleep with that song about “Tama Poyong with a twisted leg.” I couldn’t bear the thought of hurting her, and sending her away off to Long Julán, so I flatly refused to take a spear with me. But my father said I must; there was no harm in it; that it was right, and I must take one; he pulled me by the arm, and I had to follow. Then I was afraid she might see me, so I sneaked round behind the tree and just pricked her with the point of the iron, then she guessed what my father had tied her there for, and screamed as loud as she could, “Oh, don’t! Oh, don’t! Oh, don’t!” over and over again, and very fast; I pricked her a little harder the next time to hear what she would say, but she only kept on shrieking the same words. Then one of the other boys, smaller even than I, ran his spear right through her thigh, like this, and the old people laughed and said that was good; and the blood ran down all over the wrinkles on her knees; and then I wanted to make it run just in the same way, so I pushed and pushed my spear hard into her; and after that, I never thought whether it was Bállo Lahíng or not, I just watched the blood; and we all ran round her piercing her here and piercing there until she sank right down on the ground with her hands in the rattan loops above her head, which tumbled over to one side, and no more blood came out of her. Then my father praised us all loudly, and me in particular, and said we had been good boys and had done well! How could I feel at all sorry then for the old thing? I thought only that I had obeyed my father and that I was a great warrior and could wear horn-bill’s feathers, and tiger-cat’s teeth. That’s the way to become a Man; a baby is afraid of blood, Tuan. My father was right. No man can be brave who doesn’t love to see his spear draw blood.’
I responded with many nods, drew furiously at my pipe, and fell silent. Aban Avit believed that he had made a convert.
ONE OF THE BELLES OF ABAN AVIT’S HOUSE.
ACCORDING TO THE FEMININE FASHIONS OF THE BERAWANS, THE EAR-LOBES ARE NOT ELONGATED WITH WEIGHTS, BUT ARE STRETCHED AROUND DISCS OF WOOD OR LARGE MUSHROOM-SHAPED PLUGS OF SILVER-WORK, IMPORTED BY MALAY TRADERS FROM BRUNEI, THE METROPOLIS OF NORTHERN BORNEO. FAINT LINES OF TATTOOING MAY BE SEEN ON THE ARMS BELOW THE ELBOW AND ON THE INSTEP OF THE RIGHT FOOT. THE YOUNG WOMAN WAS EXCEEDINGLY WORRIED BY THE APPEARANCE OF MY CAMERA, AND ASSUMED, SO SHE DECLARED, THAT WITH IT I COULD SEE HER THROUGH AND THROUGH AND KNOW HER VERY THOUGHTS.
Aban Avit’s faith in a future life was invincible, and thoroughly characteristic of the Oriental mind, which accepts that faith with an assurance which should put to the blush an Occidental Agnostic. To be sure, to attain the Oriental Paradise does not depend upon the adherence in this life to that morality which distinguishes good and bad actions. It is noteworthy, that in several of these Oriental languages there is no word to express ‘sin.’ A cruel and vindictive man is to be shunned merely because his actions are disagreeable or inconvenient to those about him. But when he dies, and can then cause no more trouble, his memory is as cherished as a Saint’s, and those who knew him will give him the customary amount of profuse wailing, and believe that his spirit passes as surely to the same ‘heaven’ as the kindest and gentlest of them all.
How greatly the faith of the Borneans in eternal life is indebted to their surroundings can be realized perhaps only by one who has lived in that boundless jungle, where, on every hand, Nature is in her wildest, most exuberant, most lavish mood; where life dies and is renewed in an hour. Is it any wonder that the Jungle people, with this eternal loss and eternal gain ever present, think no more of cutting down a human fellow-creature than of chopping down a tree or of plucking a gaudy flower? The jungle is an ever-present ocular proof that life follows life. Here beneath our cold skies we are every year reminded of decay and death in the withering grass, the falling leaves, and the bare branches of winter; the long waiting for Spring bids us look forward to a future away from this scene of death. In the jungle there is no death, the leaves fall while they are still green, and in a night, lo! new ones take their place; an ancient tree falls, but the mighty trunk does not lie arid and stiff to be slowly covered with pale leathery lichens; hardly has it touched the ground before it is covered with a translucent shroud of tender green, which seems but a renewal and continuation of its own life; and before the burning sun shining through the gap can scorch the delicate orchids, the gap is closed by a new eager growth and a young tree springs from the earth upturned by the broken roots. Can any dweller amid such scenes believe otherwise than that death is but an exchange of life?
Of what can be called a religion the Borneans have little; they are, to a certain extent, idolaters, and their projects are banned or blest by omens drawn from certain birds and animals, but mainly by auguries interpreted from the livers of sacrificed swine and from fowls; wherein they are no more barbarous than the ancient Romans. But the one custom, to which they all cling with a tenacity born of what is to them its proved efficacy, is the taking of human heads. Can they not recount indisputable proof after proof, drawn from their own veritable experience, that these precious influences over the domestic hearth bring the very purest of blessings, and health, and wealth to the whole household?