We next quote from the Family Magazine, 1836, page 439, as follows:
“Many of the Dayaks have a rough, scaly scurf on their skin, like the
Jacong of the Malay Peninsula. * * * The female slaves of this race,
which are found among the Malays, have no appearance of it. * * * With
regard to their funeral ceremonies, the corpse * * * remains in the
house till the son, the father, or the next of blood, can procure or
purchase a slave, who is beheaded at the time the corpse is burned, in
order that he may become the _slave_ of the deceased in the next world.
* * * Nobody can be permitted to marry till he can present a human head
of some other tribe to his proposed bride. * * * The head-hunter
proceeds in the most cautious manner to the vicinity of the villages of
another tribe, and lies in ambush till he can surprise some heedless,
unsuspecting wretch, who is instantly decapitated. * * * When the hunter
returns, the whole village is filled with joy, and old and young, men
and women, hurry out to meet him, and conduct him, with the sound of
brazen cymbals, dancing, in long lines, to the house of the female he
admires, whose family likewise come out to greet him with dances, and
provide him with a seat, and give him meat and drink. He holds the
bloody head still in his hand, and puts part of the food into his mouth,
after which the females of the family receive the head from him, which
they hang up to the ceiling over the door. If a man’s wife die, he is
not permitted to make proposals of marriage to another till he has
procured another head of a different tribe. The heads they procure in
this manner, they preserve with great care, and sometimes consult in
divination. The religious opinions connected with this practice are by
no means correctly understood: some assert they believe that every
person whom a man kills in this world becomes his _slave_ in the next. *
* * The practice of stealing heads causes frequent wars among the tribes
of the Idean. Many persons never can obtain a head; in which case they
are generally despised by the warriors and the women. To such a height
is it carried, however, that a person who has obtained eleven heads has
been seen, and at the same time he pointed out his son who, a young lad,
had procured three.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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