io6 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap. 



dug to receive the first of the piles that are to 

 support the house, and to allow the end of the pile 

 to fall upon the fowl so as to kill it. The Kenyahs 

 admit that formerly a girl was usually killed in this 

 way, and there is reason to believe that in all cases 

 a human victim was formerly the rule, and that the 

 fowl is a substitute merely.^ 



In the following cases, too, we see the idea of 

 substitution of fowls or pigs for men. 



It is customary with the Malanaus of Niah to 

 kill buffalo, and also to kill fowls, and put them 

 together with eggs on poles in the caves in which 

 the swifts build the edible nests, in order to secure 

 a good crop of nests. One year, when the nests 

 were scanty they bought a slave in Brunei, and killed 

 him in the cave, in the hope of increasing the 

 number of nests. 



It was formerly the custom to exact a fine of one 

 or more slaves as punishment for certain offences, 

 e,g. the accidental setting fire to a house. At the 

 present time, when slaves are scarcer than of yore, 

 they are rarely given in such cases, but usually brass 

 gongs ; and the gongs are always accompanied by 

 a pig. 



Now, when slaves were killed and nailed to the 

 tomb of a chief, the purpose was perfectly clear and 

 simple. It was done in just the same spirit in 

 which the weapons and shield and clothing are still 

 always hung on the tomb of a deceased warrior, in 

 order, namely, that his shade may not be without 

 them on the journey to the other world. On the 

 introduction of the domestic pig it may well have 

 become customary for the poorer classes, who could 

 not afford to kill a slave, or for families which owned 

 no slaves, to kill a pig as in some degree a compen- 

 sation for the want of human victims. If such a 



^ Now that the sacrifice of human victims is forbidden, Kenyahs and 

 Klemantans sometimes carve a human figure upon the first of the main piles 

 of a new house to be put into the ground. 



