A KENYAH GRAVE.
FOOTNOTES
[1] See Folk-lore in Borneo, p. 29.
[2] The substance of the following paragraphs appeared in a Paper which I read before the American Philosophical Society, 1896.
[3] J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, p. 413.
[4] For instances elsewhere of the observance of similar purification, see The Golden Bough, Frazer, vol. iii., p. 398 et seq.
[5] I asked to have these words repeated to me after the ceremony; they are as follows: ‘Nilang megang beleuer, tebuku urip lakip makun alun!’ This ‘tebuku’ (knotted cord) illustrates a custom among the Kayans and Kenyahs which, I think, is noteworthy. When they wish to make a record of days or of things, they do so by tying knots either in a thin strip of rattan or in a cord of bark-fibre; this strip is called a ‘tebuku.’ It was a source to me of never-failing wonder to note how accurately and for what a length of time the maker of the strip can remember what every knot represents. I have seen a ‘tebuku tali’ (‘tali’ here means strip) wherein there were possibly three hundred knots, recording every article seized in a raid on a long-house; every knot or group of knots represented an article or collection of articles, and the itemized list was read off months and months afterward by the man who tied the knots, and, for aught I know, he could have remembered them for years. Of course, none could read it but the man who made it.
[6] The words ‘laram,’ cool, and ‘manin,’ hot, are used idiomatically; if a man is told to do anything, he need not instantly obey, as long as the command is, as he says, still ‘manin;’ if a man lay down a tool for which another has been waiting, the tool must not be instantly picked up, it is still ‘manin.’ A heavy, or, perhaps, an unjust fine, is termed ‘manin.’ The sense in which the old Dayong here used the word ‘laram’ is, I think, quiet and firm, like Tama Bulan, not hot-headed and inconstant.
[7] Aban Avit did not translate this, and I believe it is ancient Kayan, retained for its onomatopoetic sound.
[8] ‘Snappang,’ the Malay name for a gun, imitates the sound of the discharge. In the years following our Civil War the name, ‘Ku Klux Klan,’ was formed, it is said, from the sound of the cocking of a firearm.