252 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap. 



according to Nieuwenhuis (9, p. 453), a woman cannot be 

 tatued during seed time nor if a dead person is lying 

 unburied in the house, since it is lali to let blood at such 

 times ; bad dreams, such as a dream of floods, foretelling 

 much blood-letting, will also interrupt the work. A tatued 

 woman may not eat the flesh of the monitor lizard 

 ( Varanus) or of the scaly manis {Manis javanicd)^ and 

 her husband also is included in the tabu until the pair 

 have a male and a female child. If they have a daughter 

 only they may not eat the flesh of the monitor until their 

 child has been tatued ; if they have a son only they cannot 

 eat the monitor until they become grandparents. Should 

 a girl have brothers, but no sisters, some of her tatu lines 

 must not be joined together, but if she has brothers and 

 sisters, or sisters only, all the lines can be joined. 



Tatu amongst Kayan women is universal ; they believe 

 that the designs act as torches in the next world, and that 

 without these to light them they would remain for ever in 

 total darkness ; one woman told Dr. Nieuwenhuis that after 

 death she would be recognised by the impregnation of her 

 bones with the tatu pigment. The operation of tatuing 

 amongst Kayans is performed by women, never by men, and 

 it is always the women who are the experts on the signifi- 

 cance and quality of tatu designs, though the men actually 

 carve the designs on the tatu blocks. Nieuwenhuis states 

 (9, p. 452) that the office of tatuer is to a certain extent 

 hereditary, and that the artists, like smiths and carvers, are 

 under the protection of a tutelary spirit, who must be pro- 

 pitiated with sacrifices before each operation. As long as 

 the children of the artist are of tender age she is debarred 

 from the practice of her profession. The greater the 

 number of sacrifices offered, or in other words, the greater 

 the experience of the artist, the higher is the fee demanded. 

 She is also debarred from eating certain food. It is 

 supposed that if an artist disregards the prohibitions 

 imposed upon her profession, the designs that she tatus 

 will not appear clearly, and she herself may sicken and 

 die. 



The tools used by a tatu artist are simple,^ consisting of 

 two or three prickers, ulang or ulang bra7ig^ and an iron 

 striker, tukun or pepak^ which are kept in a wooden case, 

 bungan. The pricker is a wooden rod with a short pointed 

 head projecting at right angles at one end ; to the point of 



^ Cf. Ling Roth (7, p. 34) and Nieuwenhuis (9, PI. 32). 



