ANIMISTIC BELIEFS 95 



porcupines ; and when any one is sick, they offer 

 food to them, and regard their good offices as far 

 more important than the ministrations of the manang 

 (the medicine-man). Last year some relatives of 

 these I bans moved to this village, and for three 

 months the knowledge of the part played by the 

 porcupines was hidden from them as a mysterious 

 secret. At the end of that time this precious 

 mystery was disclosed to the new-comers, and the 

 porcupines were feasted with every variety of cooked 

 rice, some of it being made into a rude image of a 

 porcupine, and with rice-spirit and cakes of sugar 

 and rice-flour, salt and dried fish, oil, betel-nut, and 

 tobacco. Several fowls were slain, and their blood 

 was daubed on the chin of each person in the house, 

 a ceremony known as enselan. The liver of one 

 fowl was carefully taken out and put with the food 

 offered to the porcupines, that they might read the 

 omens from it ; and they were then informed of the 

 arrival of the new-comers. The fowls were waved 

 over the heads of the people by the old men, while 

 they prayed the porcupines to give them long life 

 and health, and a token of their goodwill in the form 

 of a smooth rounded pebble. On an occasion of 

 this sort it is highly probable that the required 

 token will be found ; for the secret helper would no 

 doubt be surreptitiously helped by some member of 

 the household who, being deficient in faith, prefers 

 to make a certainty of so important a matter rather 

 than leave it entirely to the ngarong. 



Inquiries made since the publication of the 

 facts reported in the foregoing paragraphs have 

 shown us that the cult of the ngarong or secret 

 helper is probably not common to all branches of 

 the Sea Dayaks people. We have heard of its 

 occurrence amongst the Ulu Ai Dayaks both of the 

 Batang Lupar and Rejang districts, but we have no 

 positive knowledge of its occurrence among other 



