i6 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap. 



stones, Batu tuloL 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 (PI. 144). 



We reproduce here a passage from a paper 

 published by us some ten years ago^ 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 I bans, who have had far more 

 intercourse with the Malays than have the Kayans and 

 Kenyahs, yet show least trace of this conception. As Arch- 

 deacon Perham has written of the I bans, there are traces 

 of the belief in one supreme God 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 god 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 gods — Balingo, 

 the god of thunder, Bali Sungei, the god of the rivers, 

 whose anger is shown by the boiling flood, and Bali Atap, 

 who keeps harm from the house, while the Kayans have 

 gods of life, a god of harvesting, and other departmental 



^ ** The Relations between Men and Animals in Sarawak," J. Anth. 

 Inst. vol. xxxi. 



