248 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap. 



the neighbourhood of Bruni, who, from contact with 

 their Malay neighbours, have become in large part 

 Mohammedans of Malay culture. 



The I bans (Sea Dayaks) 



The I bans stand distinctly apart from all the 

 other tribes, both by reason of their physical and 

 mental peculiarities and of the many differences of 

 their culture ; we have little doubt that they are 

 the descendants of immigrants who came into the 

 south-western corner of Borneo at no distant date. 

 We regard them as Proto- Malays, that is to say, 

 as of the stock from which the true Malays of 

 Sumatra and the Peninsula were differentiated by 

 the influence of Arab culture. A large number of 

 the ancestors of the present I bans were probably 

 brought to Borneo from Sumatra less than two 

 hundred years ago. Some two centuries ago, a 

 number of Malay nobles were authorised by the 

 Sultan of Bruni to govern the five rivers of Sarawak 

 proper, namely, the Samarahan, the Sadong, the 

 Batang Lupar, the Saribas, and the Klaka rivers. 

 These Malays were pirate leaders, and they were 

 glad to enrol large numbers of pagan fighting men 

 among their followers ; for the latter were glad to 

 do most of the hard work, claiming the heads of the 

 pirates' victims as their principal remuneration, 

 while the Malays retained that part of the booty 

 which had a marketable value. These Malay 

 leaders found, no doubt, that their pagan relatives 

 of Sumatra lent themselves more readily to this 

 service than the less warlike Klemantans of Borneo, 

 and therefore, as we suppose, they brought over con- 

 siderable numbers of them and settled them about 

 the mouths of these rivers. The co-operation 

 between the piratical Malay Tuankus and the 

 descendants of their imported protdg^s continued 



