Through Central Borneo; an Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters Between the Years 1913 and 1917Lumholtz, Carl
History
Through Central Borneo; an Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters Between the Years 1913 and 1917
Lumholtz, Carl
Borneo -- Description and travel; Ethnology -- Borneo; Natural history -- Borneo
The woman bore him many children. One day, when in a friend's house,
people were eating punai, and he also ate some of it. His wife learned
this and said to him: "I hear that you have eaten punai. You don't like
me. I shall become a bird again." Since then her descendants have never
eaten this bird, because they know that their great, great, great
grandmother was a punai.
NOTE.--The punai is a light-green pigeon. Mata Punai (the eye of punai) is
one of the most common decorative designs of many Dayak tribes.
23. RETRIBUTION
In the beginning there were mountain-tops and sea between them. Gradually
the sea subsided and the land appeared. A man and a woman living on such a
mountain-top had a son. One day a typhoon lifted him in the air and
carried him off to Java, where he arrived in the house of a rich Javanese.
This was long before the Hindu kingdom of Modjopahit. In this house he
remained many years, and showed much intelligence and industry in his
work, which was to cut wood, fish, look after the poultry, and clean the
rooms. It was not necessary to give him orders, for he understood
everything at a glance. By and by he became a trader, assisting his
patron. Finally he married the rich man's only daughter, and after living
happily a long time he remembered his parents, whom he had left in Borneo,
desired to visit them, and asked his wife to accompany him.
They went in two ships, and, after sailing a month or more, came to a
mountain, for there was no river then. When the ships arrived, prahus came
out to ask their errand. "I am looking for my father and mother whom I
left long ago," said the owner. They told him that his father was dead,
but that his mother still lived, though very old.
The people went and told her that her son had come to see her. She was
very poor, for children there were none, and her husband was dead. Wearing
old garments, and in a dilapidated prahu, she went out to the ships, where
she made known that she wanted to see her anak (child). The sailors
informed the captain that his mother was there, and he went to meet her,
and behold! an old woman with white hair and soiled, torn clothing. "No!"
he said, "she cannot be my mother, who was beautiful and strong." "I am
truly your mother," she replied, but he refused to recognise her, and he
took a pole (by which the prahus are poled) and drove her off.
She wept and said: "As I am your mother, and have borne you, I wish that
your wife, your ships, and all your men may change into stone." The sky
became dark, and thunder, lightning, and storm prevailed. The ships, the
men, and the implements, everything, changed into stone, which today may
be seen in these caves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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