The taboo against visiting the house did not extend to Dr. Hose and myself, nor to Dr. Hose’s Iban crew; none of us belonged to the household; so we left the Kayans at their sacred encampment, and were soon settled for the night amid all the comforts the house of Abun could afford.
THE RETURN FROM A HEAD-HUNT.
THE CAMP OF ABUN’S FOLLOWERS ON THE EVENING BEFORE THE RETURN TO THEIR HOUSE WITH THE BORROWED HEAD, WHICH WAS TO REMOVE THE RESTRICTIONS IMPOSED BY THE MOURNING FOR A DEAD CHIEF.
At the very first faint glimmer of dawn I was awakened by an unusual stir throughout the house. The women and children and the few men who were so unfortunate as to have been obliged to remain behind, were all collecting along the edge of the veranda below the eaves, whence they could get a view of the river. Just at the very instant that the sun sent its first shaft of level light down the long expanse of river we heard coming from up-stream, a solemn, low, deep-toned chant, or rather humming, in harmony. There were no articulate words, only a continuous sound, in different keys, from treble to bass, of the double vowel oo, as in boom. A minute later the long line of canoes, lashed three abreast, slowly rounded the turn, and drifted toward the house. The men were all standing erect on the thwarts arrayed in all their many coloured war-clothes, with bands of plaited palm leaves around their knees and elbows and also on every spear and paddle. Only a few were at the paddles, merely enough to steer the procession, while all the others stood as motionless as statues, holding their spears upright and the point of their shields resting at their feet. On and on they slowly glided, propelled, it almost seemed, by this inexpressibly solemn dirge, which was wafting this sacred skull to a home it must for ever bless. The brilliant colours of the war-coats flashed brighter every minute as the sun rose higher, and lit up the framework of the wondrous pageant;—the cloudless blue sky over-head, the myriad spangled ripples of the glistening river beneath the dark masses of heavy foliage, suggesting, yet hiding, the ever-mysterious jungle, the hushed, awe-stricken group of women and children, awaiting the warriors’ return, and over all, the silence of earth and sky, broken only by the modulated cadences of that impressive harmony. On, on, they glided until the three foremost canoes touched the bank; then Abun alighted and unloosed the skull, still in its coverings of palm leaves, from the bow of his boat. In order to watch the ceremony more narrowly, I left the veranda as the boats neared the beach, and I shall not soon forget Abun’s solemn, absorbed demeanour. I could not catch his eye, and, unlike his usual self, he took not the smallest notice of my presence, nor did any of the others. Every face wore the wrapt expression of a profoundly religious rite. Without intermitting the chant, Abun, bearing the skull, led the procession in single file to the up-river end of the house. [The skull was now representing a freshly taken head, and there was no longer any danger to those who touched it.] When they were all gathered, still chanting, in a close group, the old ‘fencing-master’ stepped out to the front with a blow-pipe, and, looking in the direction of the Tinjar River (still chanting), addressed a vehement warning to the enemy, and then (still chanting) raised the blow-pipe to his lips, and blew a dart high in the air to carry the message to them. The chanting instantly ceased, and all gave a wild, exultant shout! The skull was placed upon the ground and its wrappings broken, and on four stakes near by were placed the bleeding fragments of a chicken which the ‘fencing-master’ had torn apart as if it were a piece of paper. Each warrior, in turn, then advanced and gravely brandished his parang over the skull, and, walking past the four stakes, smeared the blood of the chicken on his knees, and addressed the spirit of the fowl in a prayer to ‘protect him from all dangers, to impart strength and courage, and drive out all pains and stiffness from his bones.’ After they had passed the last stake they gave a loud, shrill shout, leaped high in the air, and ran quickly up the notched log into the house.
By this ceremony each one cast off the taboo of mourning. When all those who had actually been on the expedition had performed it, then followed those who had been obliged to remain at home; and after them, the small boys, even those who were scarcely able to walk. Everyone, without exception, must be adorned with bands of palm-leaf strips bound round their knees and elbows, and must be dressed in war-clothes. The small boys, however, wore only war-caps, not decorated with horn-bill feathers, but with the skull of a horn-bill, or the long feathers of the Argus pheasant. Those who were too tiny to hold a parang were carried by their fathers, and their little hands were guided while a feeble stroke was made at the head. Between their little lips several grains of rice, boiled in a bamboo joint, were then put, to symbolize that they too had been in a warriors’ camp and partaken of warriors’ fare. Then they were carried past the stakes, and smeared with the blood, while the father uttered the prayer for them, and, in place of the leap and manly shout, gave a bound in the air, and an explosive exclamation, before carrying them hurriedly up to the veranda.
As soon as every male inmate of the house, from feeble age to toddling infancy, had performed this rite, in a flash the charm of the taboo was snapt! In a twinkling, every corner in the house seemed turned into a barber’s chair. Ever since the death of Oyang Luhat, the late Chief, no hair had been trimmed, and long locks, so unsightly to Kayan eyes, had grown on the temples of the exquisite youths and fastidious loungers, who, before the taboo, figured as the ‘glass of fashion,’ as they certainly are always the ‘mould of form.’ Turn and turn about they scraped each other, and when the operation was finished, (which, judging from the character of the knives, must have been a fine lesson in the endurance of agony,) each one carefully gathered up the hair, and, rolling it in a ball, spit vigorously on it, and threw it as far as he could out of the veranda. I imagine this was done with the idea of preventing any one from collecting the hair, and thereby working a charm against the owner; or it may be that spitting upon the hair exorcises any evil Spirit lurking in it. I asked many a one why it was done, but the only reply was, ‘Adat seja’—merely custom.
WAR-CAPS OF RATTAN AND SPLIT BAMBOO.
[In connection with this instance of a possible survival of primitive religion, let me mention that in this remote region I found an example of another well-known ancient custom:—wooden images are fashioned in the likeness of an enemy, and placed in the jungle; as the wooden representative decays the original sickens and dies.[11] In ‘The Free Museum of Science and Art,’ in Philadelphia, two of these images are preserved. They represent Dr. Hose and Tama Bulan. They were made by the Lerons after the killing of Tinggi, to be revenged on these two arch-foes. They were discovered by a friendly native and brought to Dr. Hose, whose image happily shows as yet no sign of decay; from the last reports the original also was in excellent health. See next page.]