XII 



DECORATIVE ART 267 



at our behest he carved on some wooden models of arms 

 and legs the tatu designs of these people, but he was 

 unable to supply any information of the names or signi- 

 ficance of the designs. The men of the tribe apparently 

 were not tatued, and the designs reproduced on PL 141, 

 Figs. 5, 6, are those of the women. The essential features 

 of the designs are spirals and portions of intersecting circles ; 

 the intersecting circles are frequently to be met with in the 

 decorative art of Kenyahs, e.g. on the back of sword-handles, 

 round the top of posts, on carved bamboos, etc., and in these 

 cases the design is supposed to be a representation of the 

 open fruit of a species of mango, Mangifera sp. It is not 

 improbable that the design had the same significance 

 amongst the Long Utan, for we have met with one or 

 two representations of the same fruit amongst other 

 Klemantan tribes. 



(/) Biajau. — The Dutch author C. den Hamer [5, 

 p. 451] includes under this heading the tribes living in the 

 districts watered by the rivers Murung, Kahayan, Katingan, 

 and Mentaja of South-west Borneo. Under this very 

 elastic heading he would include the Ot-Danum, Siang, 

 and Ulu Ajar of Nieuwenhuis, but we treat of these in the 

 next section. The ethnology of the Barito, Kahayan, and 

 Katingan river-basins sadly needs further investigation ; 

 nothing of importance has been published on this region 

 since the appearance of Schwaner's book on Borneo more 

 than fifty years ago. We know really very little of the 

 distribution or constitution of the tribes dwelling in these 

 districts, and Schwaner's account of their tatu is very 

 meagre. Such as it is, it is given here, extracted from 

 Ling Roth's Translation of Schwaners Ethnographical 

 Notes [7, pp. cxci. cxciv.] : The men of Pulu Petak, the 

 right-hand lower branch of the Barito or Banjermasin 

 river, tatu the upper part of the body, the arms and calves 

 of legs, with elegant interlacing designs and scrolls. The 

 people of the Murung river are said to be most beautifully 

 tatued, both men and women ; this river is really the 

 upper part of the Barito, and according to Hamer is 

 inhabited by the Biajau {vide postea), who appear to be 

 distinct from the Ngaju of Schwaner, inhabiting the lower 

 courses of the [ Barito and Kapuas rivers. The men of 

 the lower left-hand branch of the Barito and of the mid- 

 course of that river are often not tatued at all, but such 

 tatu as was extant in 1850 was highly significant according 



