SPIRITUAL EXISTENCES 15 



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 Penyalongy 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 principal 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 assigned to him, 

 or at least one of the posts rudely carved to suggest 

 the human figure is specially associated 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 gods 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 god 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 Draccena plant (whose deep red 

 leaves are generally to be seen growing in a clump 

 not far from them) and a number of large spherical 



