242 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap. 



the gods, and omens are always read from the 

 slaughtered animals ; those who die in battle and in 

 childbirth are assigned to special regions of the 

 other world ; the women are tatued (on chest) to 

 facilitate recognition in Hades ; in felling the jungle 

 preparatory to burning it to make ^padi farm, they 

 always leave at least one tree standing for the 

 accommodation of the spirits of the place. 



Other of the instruments, arts, and customs of the 

 Kayans are found widely spread in south-eastern 

 Asia. Such are the small axe or adze with lashed 

 head ; the musical instrument of gourd and bamboo 

 pipes with reeds ; the bamboo guitar ; the use of old 

 beads and of hornbill feathers for personal adorn- 

 ment ; the making of fire by friction of a strip of 

 rattan across a block of wood. 



II. Whether this people, of whom the Kayans, 

 Karens, Chins, Kakhyens, and Nagas, seem to be 

 the principal surviving branches, came into the 

 Irrawadi basin and adjacent areas by migration 

 from Central Asia by way of the Brahmaputra valley, 

 as Cross and McMahon (accepting the tradition of 

 the Karens) believe, or came, as Logan suggested, 

 eastward from Bengal, it seems certain that it has 

 been divided into fragments, driven away from the 

 main rivers, and in the main pushed southwards by 

 successive swarms of migration from the north. 

 This pressure from the north seems to have driven 

 some of the Karens down into the Malay Peninsula, 

 where they are still found ; and it may well be that, 

 before the rise of the Malays as an aggressive people 

 under Arab leadership, the ancestors of the Kayans 

 occupied parts of the peninsula farther south than 

 the Karens now extend, and possibly also parts of 

 Sumatra. If this was the case, it was inevitable 

 that, with the rise to dominance of the Mohammedan 

 Malays in this region, the Kayans must have been 

 either driven out, exterminated, or converted to 



