X WAR 165 



shields elaborately. The two surfaces of almost all 

 Kenyah shields (Fig. 27) are covered with elaborate 

 designs picked out in colours, chiefly red and black. 

 The designs are sketched out on the wood with the 

 point of a knife, and the pigment is applied with the 

 finger and a chisel-edged stick. The principal feature 

 of the designs on the outer surface is in all cases a 

 large conventionalised outline of a face with large 

 eyes, indicated by concentric circles in red and black, 

 and a double row of teeth with two pairs of canines 

 projecting like huge tusks. This face seems to be 

 human, for, although in some shields there is nothing 

 to indicate this interpretation, in others the large 

 face surmounts the highly conventionalised out- 

 line of a diminutive human body, the limbs of which 

 are distorted and woven into a more or less intri- 

 cate design. Each extremity of the outer surface is 

 covered by a similarly conventionalised face-pattern 

 on a smaller scale. On the inner side each longi- 

 tudinal half is covered with an elaborate scroll- 

 pattern, generally symmetrical in the two halves ; 

 the centre of this pattern is generally a human 

 figure more or less easily recognisable ; the two 

 halves sometimes bear male and female figures 

 respectively. 



The shields most prized by the Kenyahs are 

 further decorated with tufts of human hair taken 

 from the heads of slain enemies. It is put on in 

 many rows which roughly frame the large face with 

 locks three or four inches in length on scalp, cheeks, 

 chin, and upper lip ; and the smaller faces at the 

 ends are similarly surrounded with shorter hair. 

 The hair is attached by forcing the ends of the tufts 

 into narrow slits in the soft wood and securing it 

 with fresh resin. 



The Klemantan shields are, in the main, varia- 

 tions on the Kenyah patterns. The Murut shields 

 closely resemble those of the Kayans, though the 



