v] DIVINITIES OF THE LAND-DYAKS 



induced to accompany travellers. They fear the spirits which they 

 firmly believe to be always prowling about such places. The 

 Dyaks imagine the " Kamang " as having bodies covered with 

 reddish hair like the orang utan. It is for this reason that hairiness 

 in man is not only considered unclean, but also uncanny : a feeling 

 of repulsion which may possibly have originated generations ago 

 amongst the ancestors of these people, in consequence of a hostile 

 invasion of a hairy race. An instinctive abhorrence to red hair 

 was felt also by the ancient Romans. 



It may be hardly possible to trace the origin of the Dyak 

 divinities, although the origin of gods is doubtless subject to fixed 

 rules. I have no doubt that, if the Land-Dyaks were for the future 

 to be completely isolated from civilisation, the memory of Sir 

 James Brooke would be transmitted to their descendants in the 

 shape of a new deity. Low, in fact, asserts that in addition to 

 " Tuppa," "Jeroang," the sun, the moon, and the stars, the Land- 

 Dyaks worship Rajah Brooke, the elder. 



What especially strikes all who have studied the ways and habits 

 of these people are the patent and abundant traces of Hinduism 

 which they retain, and which may be looked upon as the remnants 

 of a former Hindu- Javanese domination in Borneo. I do not, 

 however, believe, as some do, that the Land-Dyaks are derived 

 from the Javanese colony of the epoch corresponding to the great 

 Indo-Javanese dominion, when Hindu civilisation flourished in 

 that island. That hypothesis is based on the discovery of ruins of 

 Brahmanistic buildings in Sarawak, which doubtless are referable 

 to that period. The manners and customs of a people do not, any 

 more than their religion, necessarily show their origin. Just as 

 there are at present in Borneo missionaries of different religions, 

 Mussulman and Christian, so it was probably in olden times ; and 

 the apostles of Hinduism may have left scant traces of their pre- 

 sence in the shape of descendants modifying the physical characters 

 of the people amongst whom they lived, but may have been com- 

 pletely successful in substituting their own for the original belief 

 of the natives. 1 



The houses of the Land-Dyaks are built much in the same way 

 as those of the Sea-Dyaks, but have a lesser number of " pintu " or 

 apartments. A Land-Dyak village, instead of consisting, as is 

 often the case with those of the Sea-Dyaks, of one huge long house, 



1 It may be suggested with some certainty that, if the Dyaks came ori- 

 ginally to Borneo from over the sea, they must have had the same ancestors 

 as the savage tribes who can still be traced on the islands off the West Coast of 

 Sumatra. The remarkable similarities which exist between the customs of 

 the Land-Dyaks and those of the natives of Nias, so well described by Elio 

 Modigliani, almost suffice to prove this. Most important of these is the 

 constructing of a special house in which bachelors sleep and the trophy-heads 

 are hung. 



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