ETHNOLOGY OF BORNEO 255 



a distinct group whose vocabulary has little in 

 common with those others.^ 



In conclusion, we venture to make a suggestion 

 which we admit to be widely speculative, and by 

 which we wish only to draw attention to a remote 

 possibility which, if further evidence in its favour 

 should be discovered, would be one of great interest. 

 We have throughout maintained the view, now 

 adopted by many others, of which Professor Keane 

 has been the principal exponent, namely, the view 

 that the Indonesian stock was largely, probably 

 predominantly, of Caucasic origin. In our chapter 

 on animistic beliefs concerning animals and plants, 

 and in the chapter on religion, we have shown that 

 the Kayans believe in a multiplicity of anthropo- 

 morphic deities which, with Lake Tenangan at the 

 head of a galaxy of subordinate gods and goddesses 

 presiding over special departments of nature, 

 strangely resembles the group of divine beings who, 

 in the imagination of the fathers of European culture, 

 dwelt in Olympus. And we have shown that the 

 system of divination practised by the Kayans (the 

 taking of omens from the flight and cries of birds, 

 and the system of augury by the entrails of sacrificial 

 victims) strangely resembles, even in many details, 

 the corresponding system practised by the early 

 Romans. Our suggestion is, then, that these 

 two systems may have had a common root ; that, 

 while the Aryans carried the system westward into 

 Europe, the Indonesians, or some Caucasic people 

 which has been merged in the Indonesian stock, 

 carried it eastward ; and that the Kayans, with their 

 strongly conservative tendencies, their serious 

 religious temperament, and strong tribal organisa- 

 tion, have, of all the Indonesians, preserved most 

 faithfully this ancient religious system and have 



^ See the vocabularies of the Kayan, Kenyah, and Kalabit (Murut) 

 languages recently published by Mr, R. S. Douglas, Resident of the Baram 

 district, in iht Journal of the Sarawak Museum^ Feb. 191 1. 



