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PECULIARITIES 199 



All the other peoples also, except the Punans, 

 punish incest with death. Among the Sea Dayaks the 

 most common form of incest is that between a youth 

 and his aunt, and this is regarded at least as seriously 

 as any other form. It must be remembered that, 

 owing to the frequency of divorce and remarriage 

 among the Sea Dayaks, a youth may find himself 

 in the position of step-son to half a dozen or more 

 divorced step-mothers, some of them perhaps of his 

 own age, and that each of them may have several 

 sisters, all of whom are reckoned as his aunts ; 

 therefore he must walk warily in his amorous 

 adventures. 



Sexual perversion of any form is, we think, ex- 

 tremely rare among the pagan tribes of Borneo. 

 We have never heard of any case of homosexuality 

 on good authority, and we have never heard any 

 reference made to it ; and that constitutes, to our 

 thinking, strong evidence that vice of that kind is 

 unknown among most of the tribes. It is not un- 

 known, though not common, among the Malays and 

 Chinese, and, if cases occur sporadically among the 

 pagans, they are presumably due to infection from 

 those quarters. 



Homicide 



Kayans, as we have seen, have no scruple in 

 shedding the blood of their enemies, but they very 

 seldom or never go to war with other Kayans ; and 

 the shedding of Kayan blood by Kayans is of rare 

 occurrence. To shed human blood, even that of 

 an enemy, in the house is against custom. Never- 

 theless murder of Kayan by Kayan, even by 

 members of the same house, is not unknown. In 

 a wanton case, where two or more men have de- 

 liberately attacked another and slain him, or one 

 has killed another by stealth, the culprit (or culprits) 



VOL. II o 



