424 ETHNOGRAPHY OF SARAWAK. 



The average Malay is intelligent and vivacious, and his man- 

 ners are gentlemanly; but he is decidedly indolent. 



Sea Dayaks. — These people are generally considered to be 

 direct descendants of the original Malay stock and as such are 

 of a much purer racial type than the Alalay: their language is 

 merely a dialect of Malay. For centuries they have dwelt in 

 the interior and have not come under the influence of civilising' 

 foreigners. At the present time, the Sea Dayaks are consider- 

 ably more numerous than any other tribe in Sarawak, and every 

 year their sphere of influence increases. Their houses are built 

 of wood with palm thatch and are elevated from the ground to 

 a height of seven or eight feet; unlike the Malay houses, how- 

 ever, they are very long and compound, that is to say, they 

 afford accommodation for many families, sometimes fifty, each 

 family having a separate compartment. Needless to say, such a 

 house is not encumbered with furniture. These elevated and 

 compound houses are built thus for the sake of the better de- 

 fence they afford when the community is attacked by head- 

 hunting enemies. 



A man's attire, apart from mere ornaments, such as bead 

 necklets, or fibrous leglets, consists simply of the loin cloth 

 made of the beaten bark of an artocarpus tree : the women 

 wear a short petticoat of homespun cloth, supported round the 

 waist by rattan bands. 



Their food is principally rice, the cultivation of which con- 

 .^titutes the chief work of the men; they have the extravagant 

 custom of felling- and firing fresh patches of jungle each year to 

 act as their rice fields and after the crop the clearing is deserted 

 not to be used again until perhaps ten years afterwards a fine 

 secondary jungle occupies the area. They have no system of 

 irrigation, such as is so widely employed in Java. 



In his spare time the Dayak amuses himself by carving bam- 

 boo tubes and wooden planks ; this work is often highly artistic 

 and excellent in every way. The patterns he figures are nearly 

 all phyllomorphs, and the names he assigns to them are " Kara 

 jangit "' (the climbing fig), " beringka sengang "" (roots of 

 the ginger, Hornstedtia), " akar klait " (the creeper Uncaria). 

 " Entaduk " (a caterpillar), and the like. The leisure hours of 

 the women are occupied in plaiting mats or large sunhats and in 

 weaving", the finished product in each case being effectively 

 decorated with a pattern which strangely enough is entirely 

 different from the patterns of the men; in fact, the patterns on 

 blankets are usually zoomorphic, being crude representations 

 of crocodiles or of human beings. It is worthy of remark that 

 the Dayaks grow their own cotton, spin it and dye it with verget- 

 able extracts yielding fast colours — they cultivate indigo for 

 this purpose — and finally weave it into material which is of 

 great durability. 



To most people, I suppose, the Sea Dayak is known on 

 account of his bellicose instincts and morbid habit of collecting 

 human skulls. In every Dayak house the collection of skulls 

 fi.nds a prominent place on the verandah, and on special feast 

 davs these skulls are carried bv the voung women of the house 



