ANIMISTIC BELIEFS 89 



carefully cleared and is held sacred for the next 

 three years, and if this is not done there will be 

 poor crops on the other farms. When the rites 

 have been duly performed this clay crocodile 

 destroys all the pests which eat the rice. If, in 

 a district where Ibans have been long settled, the 

 farm-pests become very noxious, the people pass 

 three days mali and then make a tiny boat of bark, 

 which they call utap. They then catch one specimen 

 of each kind of pest — one sparrow, one grasshopper, 

 etc. — and put them into the small boat, together 

 with all they need for food, and set the boat free 

 to float away down the river. If this does not 

 drive away the pests, they resort to the more 

 thorough and certainly effectual process of making 

 the clay crocodile. 



Many Ibans claim the live crocodile as a relative, 

 and, like almost all the other peoples, will not eat 

 the flesh of crocodiles, and will not kill them, 

 save in revenge when a crocodile has taken one of 

 their household. They say that the spirit of the 

 crocodile sometimes becomes a man just like an 

 I ban, but better and more powerful in every way, 

 and sometimes he is met and spoken with in this 

 form. 



Another reason given for their fear of killing 

 crocodiles is that Ribai, the river-god, sometimes 

 becomes a crocodile ; and he may become also a 

 tiger or a bear. Klieng, too, may become any one 

 of five beasts, namely, the python, the maias, the 

 crocodile, the bear, or the tiger, and it is for this 

 reason that Ibans seldom kill these animals. For 

 if a man should kill one which was really either 

 Ribai or Klieng, he would go mad. 



The Ibans are by nature a less serious-minded 

 and less religious people than the Kenyahs and 

 Kayans, and they have a greater variety of myths 

 and extravagant superstitions ; nevertheless, they 



