Читать книгу Seventeen Years Among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo - Edwin Herbert Gomes - Страница 9

Table of Contents

Dyak village house—Tanju—Ruai—Bilik—Sadau—Human heads—Valuable jars—Paddy-planting—Men’s work—Women’s work—House-building—Boat-building—Kadjangs—Dyak tools—Bliong—Duku—Weaving—Plaiting mats and basket-making—Hunting—Traps—Fishing—Spoon-bait—Casting-net—Tuba-fishing—Crocodile-catching.

Among the Dyaks a whole village, consisting of some twenty or thirty families, or even more, live together under one roof. This village house is built on piles made of hard wood, which raise the floor from six to twelve feet above the ground. The ascent is made by a notched trunk or log, which serves as a ladder; one is fixed at each end of the house. The length of this house varies according to the number of families inhabiting it; but as the rooms occupied by the different families are built on the same plan and by a combination of labour, the whole presents a uniform and regular appearance.

The roof and outside walls are thatched with the leaves of the nipa palm, which are first made into attap. These are made by doubling the leaves over a stick about six feet long, each leaf overlapping the other, and sewn down with split cane or reeds. These attap are arranged in rows, each attap overlapping the one beneath it, and thus forming a roof which keeps off the rain and sun, and lasts for three or four years.

The long Dyak village house is built in a straight line, and consists of a long uncovered veranda, which is called the tanju. The paddy is put on the tanju to be dried by the sun before it is pounded to get rid of its husk and convert it into rice. Here also the clothes and a variety of other things are hung out to dry. The family whetstone and dye vat are kept under the eaves of the roof, and the men sharpen their tools and the women do their dyeing on the tanju. The flooring of this part of the house is generally made of bilian, or iron-wood, so as to stand exposure to the weather.

Next to the tanju comes the covered veranda, or ruai. This also stretches the whole length of the house, and the floor is made of bamboo, or nibong (a kind of palm), split into laths and tied down with rattan or cane.

This ruai, or public hall, is generally about twenty feet wide, and as it stretches the whole length of the house without any partition, it is a cool and pleasant place, and is much frequented by men and women for conversation and indoor pursuits. Here the women often do their work—the weaving of cloth or the plaiting of mats. Here, too, the men chop up the firewood, or even make boats, if not of too great a size. This long ruai is a public place open to all comers, and used as a road by travellers, who climb up the ladder at one end, walk through the whole length of the house, and go down the ladder at the other end. The floor is carpeted with thick and heavy mats, made of cane interlaced with narrow strips of beaten bark. Over these are spread other mats of finer texture for visitors to sit upon.

The length of this covered veranda depends upon the number of families living in the house, and these range from three or four to forty or fifty.

Each family has its own portion of this ruai, and in each there is a small fireplace, which consists of a slab of stone, at which the men warm themselves, when they get up, as they usually do, in the chill of the early morning before the sun has risen.

Over this fireplace hangs the most valuable ornament in the eyes of the Dyak, the bunch of human heads. These are the heads obtained when on the warpath by various members of the family—dead and living—and are handed down from father to son as the most precious heirlooms—more precious, indeed, than the ancient jars which the Dyaks prize so highly.

The posts in this public covered veranda are often adorned with the horns of deer and the tusks of wild boars—trophies of the chase. The empty sheaths of swords are suspended on these horns or from wooden hooks, while the naked blades are placed in racks overhead.

On one side of this long public hall is a row of doors. Each of these leads into a separate room, or bilik, which is occupied by a family. The doors open outwards, and each is closed by means of a heavy weight secured to a thong fastened to the inside. If the room be unusually large, it may have two doors for the sake of convenience.

Dyak Making a Blow-pipe

He is seen here shaping the outside of the blow-pipe. The hole is bored while the wood is about six inches in diameter, and it is then pared down to about two inches.

Dyak Village House in course of Construction

This picture shows the arrangement of pillars and rafters of a Dyak house. The floor nearest the earth is divided into the long open veranda and the rooms in which the different families live. Above this is the loft, where the paddy is stored away. Part of the roof in the picture has been covered with palm-leaf thatch.

This room serves several purposes. It serves as a kitchen, and in one corner there is a fireplace where the food is cooked. This fireplace is set against the wall of the veranda, and resembles an open cupboard. The lowest shelf rests on the floor, and is boarded all round and filled with clay. This forms the fireplace, and is furnished with a few stones upon which the pots are set for cooking. The shelf immediately above the fireplace is set apart for smoking fish. The shelves above are filled with firewood, which is thoroughly dried by the smoke and ready for use. As the smoke from the wood fire is not conducted through the roof by any kind of chimney, it spreads itself through the loft, and blackens the beams and rafters of the roof.

This room also serves as a dining-room. When the food is cooked, mats are spread here, and the inmates squat on the floor to eat their meal. There is no furniture, the floor serving the double purpose of table and chairs.

This bilik also serves as a bedroom. At night the mats for sleeping on are spread out here, and the mosquito-curtains hung up.

There is no window to let in the air and light, but a portion of the roof is so constructed that it can be raised a foot or two, and kept open by means of a stick.

Round the three sides of this room are ranged the treasured valuables of the Dyaks—old jars, some of which are of great value, and brass gongs, and guns. Their cups and plates are hung up in rows flat against the walls. The flooring is the same as that of the veranda, and is made of split palm or bamboo tied down with cane. The floor is swept after a fashion, the refuse falling through the flooring to the ground underneath. But the room is stuffy, and not such a pleasant place as the open veranda. The pigs and poultry occupy the waste space under the house.

From the bilik there is a ladder which leads to an upper room, or loft (sadau), where they keep their tools and store their paddy. If the family be a large one, the young unmarried girls sleep in this loft, the boys and young men sleeping outside in the veranda.

Both men and women are industrious and hard-working. With regard to the paddy-planting on the hills, the work is divided between the men and women in the following manner. The men cut down the jungle where the paddy is to be planted. When the timber and shrubs have been burnt, the men and women plant the grain. The roots of the trees are left in the ground. The men walk in front, with a long heavy staff in the right hand of each, and make holes in the ground about a foot apart. The women walk behind them and throw a few grains of seed in each hole.

When the paddy has grown a little, the ground has to be carefully weeded; this work is done by the women. When the crop is ripe, both men and women do the reaping. They walk between the rows of standing grain, and with a sharp, oddly-shaped little knife they cut off the heads one by one, and place them in their baskets, which are tied in front of them. The carrying home of the paddy thus reaped is mostly done by the men, who can carry very heavy loads on their backs, though the women help in this to some extent. The next thing is to separate the grain from the little tiny stems to which it is still attached. This is done by the men. The grain is put on a large square sieve of rattan fixed between four posts in the veranda of the Dyak house, and the men tread on it and press it through the sieve. The paddy that falls through is taken and stored in the loft in large round bins made of bark.

Dyak Girls Pounding Rice

After the paddy has been passed through the husking mill it is pounded out in wooden mortars. Here are two girls at work. Each has her right foot in the upper part of the mortar to kick back any grains of paddy that may be likely to fall out.

A Husking Mill (Kisar)

After the paddy is dried and before it is pounded, it is generally passed through a husking mill made in two parts—the lower half having a stem in the middle which fits into the upper part, which is hollow. The paddy is put into a cavity in the upper half, and a man or woman seizes the handles and works the upper half to the right and left alternately. The paddy drips through on to the mat on which this husking mill is placed.

Drying Paddy

Before it is possible to rid the paddy of its husk and convert it into rice, it has to be dried in the sun. Here a woman is seen spreading out the paddy on a mat with her hands. She is on the outside veranda of the Dyak house (tanju). The long pole over her head is used by her to drive away the fowls and birds who may come to eat the paddy put out to dry.

When rice is wanted for food, the paddy is dried, and then pounded by the women in wooden mortars, with pestles five feet long. As a rule two or three women each use their pestles at one mortar, which is cut out of the trunk of a tree. I have seen as many as six girls using their pestles in quick succession at one mortar. In this way the grain is freed from husk, and is made ready for food.

Each family farms its own piece of land. Much of such work as cutting down the jungle and planting is done by a combination of labour, several families agreeing to work for each other in turn. By this means all the planting on the land belonging to a particular family is done in one day, and all the grain ripens at the same time.

When the Dyaks wish to abandon an old habitation in favour of a new one, a general meeting of the inhabitants is held to consider the matter, and the desirability of building a new house is fully discussed. Sometimes it happens that some families do not agree with the wishes of the majority, and these families split off and join another house. If a move be decided on, a few experienced men are deputed to choose a site, and to report on its adaptability. There are several matters to be taken into account. The site must be for preference on rising ground, and be near a good supply of water. There must also be some jungle near, where the inmates can get their firewood, and there must be large tracts of land not far away where they can plant their paddy.

When the new house has to be built on the low-lying, marshy ground in the lower reaches of the river, the choice is not difficult. All that is necessary is to choose a part of the river where the current is not very strong. But in the hill country it is not easy to find a site where the ground is fairly level, and can accommodate a large house of thirty or forty families.

Before building on the chosen site the omen birds are consulted. If the omens be favourable, all the men and lads turn out immediately with axes and choppers to cut down the trees of the jungle, which are then left to dry. Another meeting is then held to decide who is to be the tuai, or headman, of the new house, and to settle the size and the sequence of the rooms. The next move is to appoint a time for all the people to meet at the site of the new village. The ground is then cleared. All the timber is carried off, as it is considered unfortunate to burn it. The ground is measured out for the different rooms belonging to the different families, and pegs are put in where the posts have to stand. A piece of bamboo is then stuck in the ground, filled with water and covered with leaves. A spear and a shield are placed beside it, and the whole is surrounded by a wooden rail. The rail is to prevent the bamboo from being upset by wild animals, and the weapons are to warn strangers not to touch it. A few people remain to keep watch, and to make a great deal of noise with brass gongs and drums to frighten away the evil spirits. If in the early morning they find there is much evaporation, the place is considered unhealthy, and is abandoned. If all be well, the building of the house is begun. Each family must kill a fowl or a pig before the holes for the posts can be dug, and the blood must be smeared on the sharpened ends and sprinkled on the posts to propitiate Pulang Gana, the tutelary deity of the earth. They begin by making the holes for the headman’s quarters, and then work simultaneously to left and right of it. The posts, of which there are a great number, are about twelve inches or less in diameter, and are of bilian or other hard wood so as not to rot in the earth. A hole four feet deep is made to receive each post. They must be planted carefully and firmly, for if one were to give way subsequently it would be regarded as foreboding evil, and the house would have to be abandoned and a new house built.

All the men combine to labour collectively until the skeleton of the house is complete, and then every family turns its attention to its own apartments. During the building of the house, there is a great deal of striking of gongs and other noisy instruments to prevent any birds of ill omen being heard. I have sometimes argued with the Dyaks that if the warnings of the birds are to be trusted, then why make so much noise to prevent hearing them? The Dyak’s reply to this was that as long as they did not hear the warning, the spirits would not be displeased at their not regarding it; so to spare themselves the trouble of choosing another site and building another house, they make so much noise as to drown the cries of any birds.

When the building is sufficiently advanced to receive the inmates, they pack up their possessions and convey them to the house, halting on the way till they have heard some favourable omen, after which they proceed joyfully. Their belongings must not be moved into the house before themselves, but must be taken with them when they move into the new house.

House-building is considered the work of the men, and another important work the men have to do is the making of boats. These are of all sizes, from the dug-out canoe twelve feet long to the long war-boat eighty to ninety feet in length.

The ordinary boats of the Dyaks are cut out of a single log. Some of my schoolboys, under the guidance of the native schoolmaster, once made a small canoe for their own use, so I saw the whole process. A tree having a round straight stem was felled, and the desired length of trunk cut off. The outside was then shaped with the adze to take the desired form of a canoe. Then the inside was hollowed out. The next thing to do was to widen the inside of this canoe. This was done by filling the boat with water and making a fire under it, and by fastening weights to each side. When the shell had been sufficiently opened out, thwarts were placed inside, about two feet from each other, to prevent the wood shrinking when the wood dried. The stem and stern of the canoe are alike, both being pointed and curved, and rising out of the water. The only tool used for the making of a boat of this kind is the Dyak axe or adze (bliong).

This is the usual type of Dyak boat, and the method of making a smaller or larger canoe is exactly the same. Even a war-boat, ninety feet long, is made from the trunk of one tree. In the longer boats planks or gunwales are stitched on the sides, and the seams are caulked so as to render the boat watertight. These boats are covered with awnings called kadjangs, which make a very good covering, as they are at once watertight, very light, easily adjusted, and so flexible that if necessary each section can be rolled up and stored in the bottom of the boat. These kadjangs are made of the young leaves of the nipa palm. The leaves are sewn together with split cane, each alternate leaf overlapping its neighbour on either side, until a piece about six and a half feet square is made. This section is made to bend in the middle crosswise, so that it can be doubled and rolled up, or partly opened, and made to serve as a roof. Sometimes kadjangs are made from the leaves of the Pandanus palm.