SRA DYAK RELIGION. Doe 
hastily clear out the house in the morning ; and remain away some 
weeks, it may be, in temporary sheds, and then only return when 
. they have heard a nendak, anda beragai on the left. There are 
many omens which make a place unfit for habitation, and among 
them are a beragai flying over a house and an armadillo crawling 
up into it. | 
When visiting the sick, birds on the right are desired, as possess- 
ing more power for health. And here [ may mention another 
ray of communicating the virtue of the good omen to the object. 
When a Dyak hears a good bird on his way to see a sick friend, he 
will sit down, and chew some betel-nut, svzh leaf, lime, tobacco 
and gambier for his own refreshment, and then chew a little more 
and wrap it in a leaf and take it to his friend, and if the sick man 
can only eat, it will materially help the cure; for does it not con- 
tain the voice of the bird, a mystic elixir of life from the unseen 
world? 
To kill one of these birds or insects is believed to bring certain 
disease, if not death. J was told that a woman was once paddling 
her canoe along near the bank of a stream, and saw a little beragat 
on a bough, and not recognising it she caught it, and took it home 
for a child’s plaything. She was soon made aware of her mistake, 
and offered the bird a little sacrifice and let it go. That night she 
had a dream wherein she was told that, if she had killed it, or 
omitted the offering, she would have died. But this idea of sacred- 
ness of life does not apply to the deer, the gazelle, the pelandok, 
the armadillo and iguanas which they freely kill for food, and rats 
as pests. Physical wants are stronger than religious theory. Ano- 
ther inconsistency appears when, in setting up the posts and frame- 
work of a house, they beat gongs and make a deafening noise to 
prevent any birds from being heard. 
This is only the merest outline of the practice, the full treatment 
of which would require a volume; but it is sufficient to show that 
there never was a people in more abject mental bondage to a super- 
stition, than are the Dyaks of Borneo to the custom of bebu- 
rong.* In a race of considerable energy of temperament, like 
* This remark perhaps hardly applies now to Dyaks of the coast, who, being 
subject to other influences, are gradually relinquishing the custom, 
