DYAKS. HEAD-HUNTING. 2G3 



but affecting allocution the lid is closed and the coffin 

 lowered into the grave, upon which the company returns to 

 the village, where meantime the slaughtered buffaloes have 

 been made ready for the funeral feast. Their horns, skulls, 

 and jaw-bones, fastened to stakes, are placed as ornaments round 

 the grave, which has no other monument or inscription. On 

 each of the two following days some food is carried to it, a 

 welcome treat for the dogs, and then it is consigned to the 

 neglect which is the ultimate fate of all. 



The mystical sowing of rice, and the touching words spoken 

 at the grave, prove that the Battas, though without any fixed 

 religious worship, have still religious feelings, and may serve 

 to confirm the truth of the remark, that there is no nation, 

 however barbarous, which does not show at least some traces of 

 a belief in the Divinity, and reveal, however obscurely, that 

 man has been born for something higher than a mere animal 

 existence. 



Among the Dyaks, a name indiscriminately applied to all 

 the wild people on the island of Borneo, we find no less revolt- 

 ing customs than among the Battas of Sumatra. They are 

 hunters of their kind, not merely for the sake of an unnatural 

 feast, but simply for the sake of collecting heads. Skulls are 

 the commonest ornaments of a Dyak house, and the possession 

 of them is the best token of manly courage. A Dyak youth is 

 despised by all the maidens of his village as long as he has not 

 cut off the head of an enemy or waylaid a stranger ; returning 

 from a successfid chase with one of these ghastly trophies, he is 

 welcomed as a hero. The head is stuck upon a pole, and old 

 and young dance around it, singing and beating gongs. 

 Murder of the most revolting atrocity, which anywhere else 

 would make its perpetrator be considered the enemy of his 

 kind, is thus by a horrible perversity one of the elements of 

 courtship. The same atrocious custom is found among the 

 Harafuras of Celebes, the Mas Islanders, and some other Malay 

 nations of the Indian Archipelago. When the Harafuras go to 

 war, they first steal some heads, boil them, and drink the broth 

 to render themselves invulnerable. 



The Minkokas of Celebes limit the custom of taking heads 

 to funeral or festive occasions, more especially on the death of 

 their rajah or chief. When this occurs they sally forth, with a 



