228 SEA DYAK RELIGION. 
I must now pass on to a further element of Dyak religion, which 
is yet only another phase of that nature worship which pervades 
all their institutions. The Dyak, like other races, feels his igno- 
rance of, and dependence upon, every part of the world about him. 
Ife feels that nature, which has voices so many and wondrous, 
must have something to say to him, something to tell him. When 
is its voice to him to be heard? He feels a need of some guidance 
from the powers around and above him in his going out and coming 
in, in his precarious farming, in his occupations in the sombre depths 
of the jungle, in his boating over the dangerous rapids, or the 
treacherous tides of the swift rivers. He is aware that death 
and destruction may suddenly confront him in many a hidden dan- 
ger; and he longs for something to hint to him when to advance 
and when to recede. His is a “questioning humanity;’ and he 
has devised for himself an “ answering nature.” 
4 
OMENS. 
Like the aneient Celts, who adored the voice of birds*; like 
the Romans who took auguries from the flight or notes of the 
saven, the crow, the owl, the cock, the magpie, the eagle and the 
vulture, the Dyak has his sacred birds, whose flight or calls are 
supposed to bring him direction from the unseen powers. The law 
and observance of omens occupy. probably, a greater share of 
his thoughts than any other part of his religion or superstition ; 
and I cannot imagine that any tribe in any age ever lived im more 
absolute subservience to augury than do the Dyaks. | 
The system, as carried out by them, is most elaborate and comph- 
cated, involving uncertainties innumerable to all who are not fully 
experienced in the science, and the younger men have constantly 
to ask the older ones how to act in unexpected coincidences of 
yarious and apparently contradictory omens. ‘To give a complete 
account of this intricate system would exceed my lmits, and 
severely tax the patience of the reader; but an attempt to give 
some definite notion of it is necessary. 
‘The birds thus “ used,” as Dyaks say, are not many. I can only give 
* MACLEAR’S “ Conversion of the Celts,” pp. 25, 26. 
