36 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap. 



cover for the coffin, and this is often elaborately 

 carved (see Pis. 152, 153). In some cases two, and 

 in others even four, smaller poles are used for the 

 support of the coffin, but this usually only to avoid 

 the labour of erecting one very large one. The 

 coffin is lifted into this cleft by the aid of a scaffold- 

 ing which is built around the large pole, and which 

 afterwards falls away when the lashings are cut. 

 On landing at the graveyard the mourners carry 

 the coffin between the two parts of a cleft pole 

 which are fixed in the ground so as to make a large 

 V (this is called nyring, the wall), and all the 

 mourners are expected to pass through this cleft, 

 each, in doing so, placing his foot upon a fowl 

 which is laid bound upon the ground. The coffin is 

 then lifted to its cleft, and the weapons, implements, 

 and war clothes, the large hat, the cooking-pot, and 

 in fact any articles of personal property that may be 

 of use to the departing soul, are hung upon the 

 tomb.^ If a gong is hung up, it may be cracked 

 or pierced beforehand, but it is not usual among 

 Kayans to spoil other articles before hanging them 

 on the tomb.^ The scaffolding about the tomb is 

 then caused to fall away, and it only remains for 

 the mourners to purify themselves. This they do 



^ Small articles specially valued by the deceased are enclosed in the coffin ; 

 thus, Oyang Luhat^ a Kaiyzxi penghulu (see Chap. XXIL), who bled slowly to 

 death from an accidentally inflicted wound, gave strict instructions as he lay 

 dying that his certificate of office bearing the Rajah's signature and his 

 Sarawak flag, the public badge of his office, should be put in his coffin with 

 his body ; and there can be no reasonable doubt that he hoped to display 

 them, or rather their ghostly replicas, in the other world. As a clear instance 

 of such belief it seems worth while to mention the following case. One of us 

 had given some coloured prints to a Kayan boy, an only son to whom his 

 parents were much attached. On a subsequent visit he was told by the 

 bereaved mother that the child had been very fond of the pictures, and that 

 she had put them in his coffin because she knew that he would like to look at 

 them in the other world. 



2 Among Klemantans it is usual to spoil all articles hung upon a tomb ; 

 and they give the reason that in the other world everything is the opposite of 

 what it is here : the spoilt shall be perfect, the new and unspoilt shall be old 

 and damaged, and so on. It is probable that the real or original motive for 

 this practice is the desire to avoid placing temptations to theft in the way of 

 strangers. 



