IN BORNEAN FORESTS [chap. 



the ethnic type of many inland tribes, such as the Muruts, Kayans, 

 and others, yet it appears that there are no traces of their peculiar 

 monosyllabic language in the dialects of the above-mentioned tribes. 

 Mr. Low, however, in his Journal, already quoted by me, notes 

 that the songs of the Kayans, whose meaning he did not make out, 

 had a singular resemblance to the inflections of the Chinese language. 

 But however great and undeniable be the ethnic affinities between 

 the less civilised people of Borneo and those of Indo-China, it is 

 not less obvious that the dialects spoken by the former have nothing 

 in common with those of the latter. The Indo-Chinese are all 

 derived from the Chinese languages, the Bornean from the Malay. 



Remains of Buddhist or Brahman monuments or idols, have 

 not, as far as I am aware, been found in Sarawak, with the exception 

 of those mentioned by Mr. St. John {Op. cit., i., p. 227) consisting 

 of a Yone, and the mutilated body of an animal, which might 

 have been a " Nandi " or sacred bull of the Hindoos. Dalton, 

 quoted by Crawfurd, 1 appears to have found ruins of temples 

 similar to those of Java, on the Upper Koti, and, like these, showing 

 highly finished workmanship, with the peculiar emblematic orna- 

 mentation of Hindoo temples. At Negara near Banjarmasin and 

 in the neighbourhood of Pontianak, remains of Hindoo antiquities 

 are also found. This would prove that in Eastern and Southern 

 Borneo a higher civilisation gained a footing in the past than is 

 shown by documentary evidence to have existed in the other 

 districts of the islands. 



After my residence in Borneo I visited several of the wild tribes 

 of head-hunters in Celebes, and found there natives who in very 

 many respects resembled the Dyaks and Kayans. 2 This would 

 seem to show that it was by the Koti river that communications 

 were kept up in the past between Celebes and the interior of Borneo. 

 But the Kayans, in spreading from the east towards the west 

 and the north of Borneo, came in contact (perhaps not for the first 

 time) with the Chinese and Mellanaos living along the coast. The 

 Sea-Dyaks, on the other hand, have had more constant contact 

 with the piratical tribes of the Sulu Sea and with the Malays. 



I think there can hardly be any doubt that Borneo was invaded 

 by various civilised races coming from different countries at a very 

 remote epoch, so remote as to explain the great rarity in Borneo 

 of those implements which characterise that primitive stage of 

 human culture known as the " Stone Age," and which are found in 



1 A Descriptive ^Dictionary of the Indian Archipelago, p. 62. 



2 On the origin of the name Kayan only conjectures can be made. An 

 interesting statement is made by Fea {Op. cit., p. 446), that the name of the 

 Karins of Burma is also pronounced Kayn or Kayen, showing a singular 

 analogy to Kayan. The manners and customs of the Karins are also very 

 similar to those of the Land-Dyaks of Borneo. 



366 



