DECORATIVE ART 265 



Kayan exhibit the most primitive form of tatu known in 

 Borneo. It differs from every other form in that the tatued 

 surface of the skin is not covered uniformly with the ink, 

 but the design, such as it is, is merely stippled into the 

 skin, producing an appearance of close-set irregular dots. 

 Two aspects of the forearm of an Uma Long woman are 

 shown on PL 142, Fig. 5. No other part of the body is 

 tatued, and the practice is confined to the female sex. 



{b) Dusun. — The men only tatu. The design is simple, 

 consisting of a band, two inches broad, curving from each 

 shoulder and meeting its fellow on the abdomen, thence 

 each band diverges to the hip and there ends ; from the 

 shoulder each band runs down the upper arm on its exterior 

 aspect ; the flexor surface of the forearm is decorated with 

 short transverse stripes, and, according to one authority, 

 each stripe marks an enemy slain [7, p. 90]. This form of 

 tatu is found chiefly amongst the Idaan group of Dusuns ; 

 according to Whitehead [ii, p. 106] the Dusuns living on 

 the slopes of Mount Kina Balu tatu no more than the 

 parallel transverse stripes on the forearm, but in this case 

 no reference is made to the significance of the stripes as a 

 head-tally. The Dusun women apparently do not tatu. 



{c) Murut. — The Muruts of the Trusan river, North 

 Sarawak, tatu very little ; the men occasionally have a 

 small scroll design just above the knee-cap and a simple 

 circle on the breast ; the women have fine lines tatued from 

 the knuckles to the elbows [7, p. 93]. The Muruts of 

 British North Borneo appear to be more generally tatued ; 

 the men are tatued like Dusuns, though, according to 

 Hatton, they have three parallel stripes running from the 

 shoulders to the wrists and no transverse lines on the fore- 

 arm.^ Whitehead [11, p. ^6^ figures a Murut woman of 

 the Lawas river tatued on the arms from the biceps to the 

 knuckles with numerous fine longitudinal lines ; a band of 

 zigzag design encircles the arm just above the commence- 

 ment of the longitudinal lines. The design on a man of 

 the same tribe is given on page 73 [11], it resembles "a 

 three-legged dog with a crocodile's head, one leg being 

 turned over the back as if the animal was going to scratch 

 its ear." The part of the body on which the design was 

 tatued, is not specified and the sketch is rather inadequate, 



^ The same author states that " a sometime headman of Senendan had two 

 square tattoo marks on his back. This was because he ran away in a fight, 

 and showed his back to the enemy." This explanation seems to us most 

 improbable. 



