Stirring scenes in savage lands : $b An account of the manners, customs, habits and recreations, peaceful and warlike, of the uncivilised worldGreenwood, James
History
Stirring scenes in savage lands : $b An account of the manners, customs, habits and recreations, peaceful and warlike, of the uncivilised world
Greenwood, James
Anthropology
Among both Land and Sea Dayaks dreams are regarded as actual
occurrences. They think that in sleep the soul sometimes remains in the
body and sometimes leaves it and travels far away, and that both when
in and out of the body it sees and hears and talks and altogether has
a presence given it which when the body is in a natural state it does
not enjoy. Fainting fits or a state of coma are thought to be caused
by the departure of the soul on some expedition of its own. Elders and
priestesses often assert that in their dreams they have visited the
mansion of the blessed and seen the Creator dwelling in a house like
that of a Malay, the interior of which was adorned with guns and gongs
and jars innumerable, Himself being clothed like a Dayak.
A dream of sickness to any member of a family always ensures a
ceremony; and no one presumes to enter the priesthood, or to learn
the art of a blacksmith, without being or pretending to be warned in
a dream that he should undertake to learn it. A man has been known to
give one of his two children to another who has no children because he
dreamed that unless he did so the child would die.
In dreams also, “Tapa” and the spirits bestow gifts on men in the shape
of magic stones, which being washed in cocoa milk the water forms one
of the ingredients in the mass of blood and tumeric which is considered
sacred and is used to anoint the people at the harvest-feasts. They are
ordinary black pebbles, and there is nothing in their appearance to
give a notion of their magic power and value.
On the banks of one of the rivers Mr. St. John discovered the effigy
of a bull cut in a sort of stone said to be unknown in the country;
its legs and part of its head had been knocked off. Its history is as
follows:--Many years ago on being discovered in the jungle the Malays
and Dayaks removed it to the banks of the river preparatory to its
being conveyed to the town, but before it could be put into a prahu
they say a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning, wind and rain,
arose, which lasted thirty days. Fearing that the bull was angry at
being disturbed in his forest home they left him in the mud, and there
Sir James Brooke found it and had it removed to his own house. Several
of the Dayak tribes sent deputations to him to express their fears of
the evil consequences that would be sure to ensue--everything would go
wrong, storms would arise, their crops would be blighted, and famine
would desolate the land. Humouring their prejudices, he answered that
they were mistaken, that the bull on the contrary would be pleased to
be removed from the dirty place in which the Malays had left him, and
that now he was kept dry and comfortable there would be no show of his
anger. This reply satisfied them. Occasionally the Dayaks would come
and wash the stone bull, taking away the precious water to fertilize
their fields.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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