Part 20 (1/2)
The Kayans are not clear whether Laki Tenangan is the creator of the world. He does not figure in the Kayan creation myth.[92] There seems to be no doubt about his supremacy over the other G.o.ds; these are sometimes asked by Kayans to intercede with him on their behalf.[93]
As regards the minor departmental G.o.ds, it is difficult to draw the line between them and the spirits of the third cla.s.s distinguished above. All of them are approached at times with prayers and with rites similar to those used in addressing LAKI TENANGAN. Several wooden posts, very roughly carved to indicate the head and, limbs of a human form, stand before every Kayan house. When the G.o.ds are addressed on behalf of the whole household, as before or after an important expedition, the ceremony usually takes place before one of these rudely carved posts.[94] But the post cannot be called an idol. It is more of the nature of an altar. No importance attaches to the mere posts, which are often allowed to fall away and decay and are renewed as required. A similar post may be hastily fas.h.i.+oned and set up on the bank of the river, if a party at a distance from home has special occasion for supplication.
An altar of a rather different kind is also used in communicating with the G.o.ds. It seems to be used especially in returning thanks for recovery of health after severe illness. It consists of a bamboo some four or five feet in length fixed upright in the ground. The upper end is split by two cuts at right angles to one another, and a fresh fowl's egg is inserted between the split ends (Pl. 145). Leaves of the LONG, (a species of CALADIUM), a plant grown on the PADI field for this purpose, are hung upon the post. These leaves serve merely to signalise the fact that some rite is going forward; they are also hung, together with a large sun hat, upon the door of any room in which a person lies seriously ill, to make it known as LALI or tabu; and in general they seem to be used to mark a spot as pervaded by some spiritual influence, or, in short, as ”unclean.” The bodies of fowls and pigs sacrificed in the course of the rites performed before such an altar-post are generally hung upon sharpened stakes driven into the ground before it, I.E. between it and the house, towards which the post, in the case of posts of the former kind, invariably faces; and the frayed sticks commonly used in such rites are hung upon the altar-post. Such posts are sometimes fenced in, but this is by no means always the case (Pl. 144).
The Kayans seek to read in the behaviour of the omen birds and in the entrails of the slaughtered pigs and fowls indications of the way in which the G.o.ds responds to their prayers. For they regard the true omen birds as the trusty messengers of the G.o.ds. After slaughtering the pigs or fowls to whose charge they have committed their pet.i.tions, they examine their entrails in the hope of discovering the answer of the G.o.ds; and at the same time they tell off two or three men to look for omens from the birds of the jungle.[95] If the omens first obtained are bad, more fowls and pigs are usually killed and omens again observed; and in an important matter, E.G. the illness of a beloved child, the process may be repeated many times until satisfactory omens are forthcoming. Whatever may have been the origin and history of such rites, it seems to be quite clear that the slaughtering of these animals is regarded as an act of sacrifice in the ordinary sense of the word, I.E. as an offering or gift of some valued possession to the spiritual powers; for, although on some occasions a pig so slaughtered is eaten, those stuck upon stakes before the altar-post are left to rot; and the idea of sacrificing, or depriving oneself of, a valued piece of property is clearly expressed on such occasions in other ways; E.G. a woman will break a bead of great value when her prayers for the restoration to health of a child remain unanswered, or on such an occasion a woman may cut off her hair.[96]
The custom of approaching and communicating with the G.o.ds through the medium of the omen birds, seems to be responsible in large measure for the fact that the G.o.ds themselves are but dimly conceived, and are not felt to be in intimate and sympathetic relations with their wors.h.i.+ppers. The omen birds seem to form not only a medium of communication, but also, as it were, a screen which obscures for the people the vision of their G.o.ds. As in many a.n.a.logous instances, the intercessors and messengers to whose care the messages are committed a.s.sume in the eyes of the people an undue importance; the G.o.d behind the omen bird is apt to be almost lost sight of, and the bird itself tends to become an object of reverence, and to be regarded as the recipient of the prayer and the dispenser of the benefits which properly he only foretells or announces.[97]
We have little information bearing upon the origin and history of these Kayan G.o.ds. But a few remarks may be ventured. The names of many of the minor deities are proper personal names in common use among the Kayans or allied tribes, such as JU, BALARI, ANYI, IVONG, URAI, UKA; and the t.i.tle LAKI, by which several of them are addressed, is the t.i.tle of respect given to old men who are grandfathers. These facts suggest that these minor G.o.ds may be deified ancestors of great chiefs, and this suggestion is supported by the following facts: --
First, a recently deceased chief of exceptional capacity and influence becomes not infrequently the object of a certain cult among Klemantans and Sea Dayaks. Men will go to sleep beside his grave or tomb, hoping for good dreams and invoking the aid of the dead chief in acquiring health, or wealth, or whatever a man most desires. Sea Dayaks sometimes fix a tube of bamboo leading from just above the eyes of the corpse to the surface of the ground; they will address the dead man with their lips to the orifice of the tube, and will drop into it food and drink and silver coins. A hero who is made the object of such a cult is usually buried in an isolated spot on the crest of a hill; and such a grave is known as RARONG.
Secondly, all Kayans, men and women alike, invoke in their prayers the aid of ODING, LAHANGand his intercession with LAKI TENANGAN. That they regard the former as having lived as a great chief is clearly proved by the following facts: firstly, many Kayans of the upper cla.s.s claim to, be his lineal descendants; secondly, a well-known myth,[98] of which several variants are current, describes his miraculous advent to the world; thirdly, he is regarded by Kayans, Kenyahs, and many Klemantans as the founder of their race.
The Kenyahs also invoke in their prayers several spirits who seem, like ODIN LAHANG, to be regarded as deceased members of their tribe; such are TOKONG and UTONG, and PA BALAN and PLIBAN. From all these descent is claimed by various Kenyah and Klemantan sub-tribes; and that they are regarded as standing higher in the spiritual hierarchy than recently deceased chiefs, is shown by the prefix BALI,[99]
commonly given to their names, whereas this t.i.tle or designation is not given to recently deceased chiefs; to their names the word URIP is prefixed by both Kayans and Kenyahs. The word URIP, means life or living; the exact meaning of this prefix in this usage is obscure, possibly it expresses the recognition that the men spoken of are, though dead, still in some sense alive.
A further link in this chain of evidence is afforded by the Kenyah G.o.d of thunder, BALINGO. This spirit, it would seem, must be cla.s.sed among the departmental deities, being strictly the Kenyah equivalent of LAKI BALARI of the Kayans; and all the Kenyahs and many Klemantans seem to claim some special relation to BALINGO,[100] while one Madang (Kenyah) chief at least claims direct descent from him.[101]
The last mentioned instance completes the series of cases forming a transition from the well remembered dead chief to the departmental deity, the existence of which series lends colour to the view that these minor G.o.ds have been evolved from deceased chiefs. The weakness of this evidence consists in the fact that the series of cases is drawn from a number of tribes, and is not, so far as we know, completely ill.u.s.trated by the customs or beliefs of any one tribe.
There is, then, some small amount of evidence indicating that the minor G.o.ds are deified ancestors, whose kins.h.i.+p with their wors.h.i.+ppers has been forgotten completely in some cases, less completely in others. If this supposition could be shown to be true, it would afford a strong presumption in favour of the view that LAKI TENANGAN also has had a similar history, and that he is but PRIMUS INTER PARES. For among the Kayans, as we have seen, a large village acknowledges a supreme chief as well as the chiefs of the several houses of the village; and in the operations of war on a large scale, a supreme war chief presides over a council of lesser chiefs. And it is to be expected that the social system of the superior powers should be modelled upon that of the people who acknowledge them.
On the other hand, none of the facts, noted in connection with the minor G.o.ds as indicating their ancestral origin, are found to be true of LAKI TENANGAN, except only his bearing the t.i.tle LAKI, which, as we have seen, is the t.i.tle by which a man is addressed as soon as he becomes a grandfather. The name TENANGAN is not a proper name borne by any Kayans, nor, so far as we know, does it occur amongst the other peoples. LAKI in Malay means a male. The name is possibly connected with the Kayan word TENANG which means correct, or genuine. The termination AN is used in several instances in Malay (though not in Kayan) to make a substantive of an adjective. The name then possibly means -- he who is correct or all-knowing; but this is a very speculative suggestion.
It is possible that the Kayans owe their conception of a supreme G.o.d to their contact. with the Mohammedans. But this is rendered very improbable by the facts: firstly, that the Kayans have had such intercourse during but a short period in Borneo, probably not more than 300 years, (though they may have had such intercourse at an earlier period before entering Borneo); secondly, that among the Sea Dayaks, who have had for at least 150 years much more abundant intercourse with the Mohammedans of Borneo than the Kayans have had, the conception has not taken root and has not been a.s.similated.
The Kenyah G.o.ds and the beliefs and practices centering about them are very similar to those of the Kayans. This people also recognises a princ.i.p.al G.o.d or Supreme Being, whose name is BALI PENYLONG, and a number of minor deities presiding over special departments of nature and human life. The Kenyahs recognise the following minor deities: BALI ATAP protects the house against sickness and attack, and is called upon in cases of madness to expel the evil spirit possessing the patient. A rude wooden image of him stands beside the gangway leading to the house from the river's brink; it holds a spear in the right hand, a s.h.i.+eld in the left; it carries about its neck a fringed collar made up of knotted strips of rattan; the head of each room ties on one such strip, making on it a knot for each member of his roomhold. Generally a wooden image of a hawk, BALI FLAKI, stands beside it on the top of a tall pole.
The Kenyahs carve such images more elaborately than the Kayans, who are often content merely to indicate the eyes, mouth, and four limbs, by slas.h.i.+ng away with the sword chips of wood from the surface of the log, leaving gashes at the points roughly corresponding in position to these organs. The Kenyahs treat these rude images with rather more care than do the Kayans; and they a.s.sociate them more strictly with particular deities. The children of the house are not allowed to touch such an image, after it has been once used as an altar post; it is only when it is so used, and blood of fowls or pigs sprinkled upon it, that it seems to acquire its uncleanness.”[102]
BALI UTONG brings prosperity to the house. BALI URIP is the G.o.d of life; he too has a carved altarpost, generally crowned with a bra.s.s gong. BALINGO is the G.o.d of thunder.
BALI SUNGEI is the name given to a being which perhaps cannot properly be called a G.o.d. He is thought of as embodied in a huge serpent or dragon living at the bottom of the river; he is supposed to cause the violent swirls and uprushes of water that appear on the surface in times of flood. He is regarded with fear; and is held to be responsible for the upsetting of boats and drownings in the river. It is not clear that he is the spirit of the river itself; for floods and the various changes of the river do not seem to be attributed to him.
BALI PENYALONG, like Laki Tenangen, has a wife BUNGAN. She is not so distinctly the special deity of the women folk as is DOH TENANGAN among the Kayans.
A special position in the Kenyah system is occupied by BALI FLAKI, the carrion hawk, which is the princ.i.p.al omen bird observed during the preparation for and conduct of war. Something will be said of the cult of BALI FLAKI in a later chapter; but we would note here that this bird is peculiar among the many omen-birds of the Kenyahs, in that an altar-post before the house is a.s.signed to him, or at least one of the posts rudely carved to suggest the human figure is specially a.s.sociated with BALI FLAKI, and in some cases is surmounted by a wooden image of the hawk. It seems to us probable that in this case the Kenyahs have carried further the tendency we noted in the Kayans to allow the omen birds to figure so prominently in their rites and prayers as to obscure the G.o.ds whose messengers they are; and that BALI FLAKI has in this way driven into the background, and more or less completely taken the place of, a G.o.d of war whose name even has been forgotten by many of the Kenyahs, if not by all of them.
Peculiar adjuncts of the altar-posts of the Kenyahs are the DRACAENA plant (whose deep red leaves are generally to be seen growing in a clump not far from them) and a number of large spherical stones, BATU TULOI. These are perpetual possessions of the house. Their history is unknown; they are supposed to grow gradually larger and to move spontaneously when danger threatens the house. When a household removes and builds for itself a new home, these stones are carried with some ceremony to the new site (Pl. 144).
We reproduce here a pa.s.sage from a paper published by us some ten years ago[103] in which we ventured to speculate on the development of the Kenyah belief in a Supreme Being.
We cannot conclude without saying something as to, the possible origin of their conception of a beneficent Being more powerful than all others, who sends guidance and warnings by the omen birds, and receives and answers the prayers carried to him by the souls of the fowls and pigs. It might be thought that this conception of a beneficent Supreme Being has been borrowed directly or indirectly from the Malays. But we do not think that this view is tenable in face of the fact that, while the conception is a living belief among the Madangs, a Kenyah tribe that inhabits a district in the remotest interior and has had no intercourse with Malays, the Ibans, who have had far more intercourse with the Malays than have the Kayans and Kenyahs, yet show least trace of this conception. As Archdeacon Perham has written of the Ibans, there are traces of the belief in one supreme G.o.d which suggest that the idea is one that has been prevalent, but has now almost died out. We are inclined to suppose that the tribes of the interior, such as the Kenyahs and Kayans, have evolved the conception for themselves, and that in fact Bali Penyalong of the Kenyahs is their G.o.d of war exalted above all others by the importance of the department of human activity over which he presides; for we have seen that they had been led to conceive other G.o.ds -- Balingo, the G.o.d of thunder, Bali Sungei, the G.o.d of the rivers, whose anger is shown by the boiling flood, and Bali Atap, who keeps harm from the house, while the Kayans have G.o.ds of life, a G.o.d of harvesting, and other departmental deities. It seems to us that the only difficult step in such a simple and direct evolution of the idea of a beneficent Supreme Being is the conception of G.o.ds or spirits that perform definite functions, such as Bali Atap, who guards the house, and the G.o.ds that preside over harvesting and war, as distinct from such G.o.ds or nature-spirits as Balingo and Bali Sungei. But there seems to be no doubt that this step has been taken by these peoples, and that these various G.o.ds of abstract function have been evolved by them. And it seems to us that, were a G.o.d of war once conceived, it would be inevitable that, among communities whose chief interest is war and whose prosperity and very existence depend upon success in battle, such a G.o.d of battles should come to predominate over all others, and to claim the almost exclusive regard of his wors.h.i.+ppers. Such a predominance would be given the more easily to one G.o.d by these people, because the necessity for strict subordination to their chiefs has familiarised them with the principles of obedience of subjects to a single ruler and of subordination of minor chiefs to a princ.i.p.al chief; while the beneficence of the Supreme Being thus evolved would inevitably result; for the G.o.d of battles must seem beneficent to the victors, and among these people only the victors survive. Again, this conception is one that undoubtedly makes for righteousness, because it reflects the character of the people who, within the community and the tribe, are decent, humane, and honest folk.
We are conscious of presumption in venturing to adopt the view that the conception of a beneficent Supreme Being may possibly be neither the end nor the beginning of religion, neither the final result of an evolution, euhemeristic, totemistic, or other, prolonged through countless ages and generations, nor part of the stock-in-trade of primitive man mysteriously acquired. Yet we are disposed to regard this conception as one that, amid the perpetual flux of opinion and belief which obtains among peoples dest.i.tute of written records, may be comparatively rapidly and easily arrived at under favourable conditions (such as seem to be afforded by tribes like the Kenyahs and Kayans, warlike prosperous tribes subordinated to strong chiefs), and may as rapidly fall into neglect with change of social conditions; and we suggest that it may then remain as a vestige in the minds of a few individuals only to be discerned by curious research, as among the Ibans or the Australian blacks, until another turn of Fortune's wheel, perhaps the birth of some overmastering personality or a revival of national or tribal vigour, gives it a new period of life and power.