DECORATIVE ART 255 



The time at which to begin tatuing a girl is about the 

 ninth day after new moon, this lunar phase being known as 

 butit halap^ the belly of the halap fish {Bai'bus brmnoides)\ 

 as the skin of the girl being tatued quickly becomes very 

 tender, it is often necessary to stop work for a few days, 

 but it is a matter of indifference at what lunar phase work 

 recommences, so long as it was originally begun at butit 

 halap. 



A Kayan chief of the Mendalam river informed Dr. 

 Nieuwenhuis [9, p. 455] that in his youth only the wives 

 and daughters of chiefs were permitted the thigh tatu, 

 women of lower rank had to be content with tatu of the lower 

 part of the shin and of the ankles and feet. The designs 

 were in the form of quadrangular blotches divided by narrow 

 untatued lines, and were known as tedak danau^ lake tatu. 

 The quadrangles were twelve in number, divided from each 

 other by four longitudinal and two transverse untatued lines, 

 6 millimetres broad, two of the longitudinal lines running 

 down each side of the front of the leg, and two down each 

 side of the calf, approximately equidistant ; the forearm 

 was tatued in the same style. This manner of tatu is obso- 

 lete now, but Dr. Nieuwenhuis was fortunate in finding 

 one very old woman so tatued. 



Nowadays the class restrictions as regards tatu are not 

 so closely observed, but it is always possible to distinguish 

 between the designs of a chiefs daughter, an ordinary free- 

 woman, and a slave, by the number of lines composing 

 the figures of the designs, — the fewer these lines, the lower 

 being the rank of the woman. Moreover, the designs of the 

 lower-class women are not nearly so complex as those of 

 the higher class, and they are generally tatued free-hand. 



A very typical design for the forearm of a woman of 

 high rank is shown on PI. 140, Fig. 3 ; it is taken from a 

 Kayan of the Uma Pliau sub-tribe dwelling on the Baram 

 river, and may be compared with the somewhat similar 

 designs of the Mendalam river Kayans figured by 

 Nieuwenhuis [9, PI. 85], one of which is a design for a 

 chiefs daughter, the other for a slave. The zigzag lines 

 bounding the pattern on both surfaces of the forearm are 

 the ikor^ and these, as already stated, are marked out with 

 a piece of fibre dipped in the tatu ink before the rest of the 

 pattern is impressed by a wood-block or klinge. Taking 

 the flexor surface of the forearm first, the units of the 

 designs are : three bands of concentric circles (AAA) 



