tha bosom, and that of tattooing, exist among the wild inhabitants of Borneo as
among many other savage nations, but there is nothing peculiar about them. Mr.
Dalton s account of the use of poisoned arrows is curious, although I must consider
the effects he ascribes to them as exaggerated, “ Of the sumpits,” says he, “ I need
not say much; they are similar to those used in various parts of the island. The
daris are of various sorts: those used in war are poisoned by dipping them in a
liquid taken from a young tree, called by the Dyaks, upo. The effects are almost
immediately fatal. I have seen in Seiji’s boat, when a man was struck in the hand,
the poison ran^so quickly up the arm, that by the time the elbow was green the wrist
was black. The man died in about four minutes; the smell from the hand was very
ottensive. Each man carries about with him a small box of lime juice. By dipping
the dart into this before they put it into the sumpit, the poison becomes active, in
weich state they blow it. They will strike an object at forty yards, and will kill a
monkey or bird at that distance. When the darts are poisoned they will throw them
sixty yards, as in war, or at some large ferocious animal, which they seldom eat.
However, I have seen them eat of the flesh notwithstanding it was killed with
a poisoned dart. In such cases they boil it before roasting, which, they say, extracts
the poison.”—Vol. v., p. 51. The word sumpit, used by Mr. Dalton, is correctly
sumpitan, the first two syllables making a Malay verb, meaning to perflate with the
mouth; and the last, the tube or instrument through which perflation is performed.
The upo of the Kiiyans is most_ probably a corruption of the Javanese word upas,
poison or venom.
Such, then, are the manners and customs of the most advanced and most powerful of
the native tribes of Borneo. The Kayans cultivate com and cotton; rear the common
fowl, the hog, and the dog; and by the help of an excellent ore, fabricate the best
iron and steel of the whole Archipelago, They have extended their conquests nearly
from sea to sea; and if we would credit the statements of Mr. Dalton, their numbers
cannot be fewer than a quarter of a million. This, however, is the utmost extent of
power and civilisation to which any indigenous tribe of Borneo seems ever to have
reached; while in all the large islands, except New Guinea, and in many of the
smaller ones, a far higher civilisation has sprung up. The race of men in Borneo is
one and the same with that of the other islands, and I imagine the difference in
social progress can only be ascribed to the obstacles which the physical geography of
Borneo has opposed to the development of an indigenous civilisation. These consist
in the absence of untimbered plains, the universal presence of a deep and almost
impenetrable forest, a comparative sterility or stubbornness of soil, and a density of
land which precludes an easy communication with more civilised strangers. The
only advantage which Borneo possesses over the other large islands, consists in its
mineral wealth,-—its gold, iron, and coal; but this would not be available to any
effective extent, in the promotion of an early civilisation. The result has been, that
even the most improved of the aboriginal inhabitants of Borneo are still unlettered
savages, and sometimes cannibals. Even the small advancement which they have
made, may, on the evidence of language, be traced, in no small degree, to their communication
with strangers; as in the instances of the cultivation of corn, roots
cotton, the manufacture of textile materials, and of iron. Few of the savages
of Borneo are in so low a state as the majority of those of tropical America ;
but notwithstanding the great advantage possessed by them in a knowledge of
iron, the most advanced have not attained, by any means, so large a measure of
civilisation as that which sprung up on the elevated and open plateaus of that
continent.
A few of the Dyaks of Borneo have adopted the Mahommedan religion. These
consist of such tribes as have been long in immediate communication with the Malay
settlers of the coasts. This conversion is followed by the adoption of the mannors
customs, and even language of the Malays; so that, in time, they are merged into’
Malays, and come to be considered as such. The Dyak passion for pork is reasonably
stated to prove a serious obstacle to conversion. When this conversion
does not take place, the subjugated Dyaks are always found to be living in a stato
of Helotism.
DYEING. The Javanese, who of all the Malayan race, have certainly made the
highest progress in all the useful arts, have a specific term for dyeing or tinting,_
mfldal; but the Malays express it only by the word for dipping,—chillup. Yet tho
only generic words which either of them possess for “ colour,” are the Sansorit,
warna; and the Portuguese, tinta. Their colours are usually sombre,—little varied,
but generally fast. Blues are always produced from indigo, yielded for the most
part by the Indigofera tinctoria, as in other parts of India ; but in Sumatra, occasionally,
from the Marsdenia tinctoria, a plant of the natural order of the Asclepiadeæ.
Yellows’ are produced from the woods of two species of Artocarpus, the jack and
châmpadah, and from turmeric ; and reda from the bark of the roots of the mangkudu,
the Morinda umbellata,—from the kusumba-jawa, safflower or Carthamus tinctorius,
from the kusumba-kling, which is the arnotto, or Bixa orellana, from the sâpang, or
sapan-wood, Cæsalpinia sappan, and from the nidus of the lac insect Black is
produced from the rinds of the mangostin fruit, and of the kâtapang, Terminalia
catappan, with sulphate of iron. Sails and nets are dyed, and perhaps also tanned
with a wood called in Sumatra ubar, which is the Ricinus tanarius of botanists. The
mordants used are rioe-bran, alkalis from the combustion of some vegetable matters,
as the fruit stalks and mid-ribs of the coco-nut palm, and alum brought from China.
Most of the dyeing materials, but not all, are probably native products. The name
of the indigo-plant, the Indigofera tinctoria, is a native word to all appearance. In
Malay it is tarum, and this, with some corruptions, as talum in the Lampung, tom in
Javanese, tayum in Tagala, and tayung in Bisaya, is universal This would seem to
indicate that the culture of it, at least, had been spread from Sumatra to the
Philippines. The drug, however, is as universally known by the Sanscrit name nila, or
blue, from which it may be conjectured that the art of extracting the dye was taught
the islanders by the Hindus. I t is always manufactured in the Archipelago in a
liquid, and therefore in a rude, form, yet in this state there is a considerable exportation
of it from Java. Safflower and arnotto are, no doubt, both exotics, the last, in
all likelihood, made known by the Portuguese. The name of both is the Sanscrit
kasumba; the safflower having annexed to it the epithet “ Javanese,” and the arnotto
“ kling,” or Hindu, to distinguish them, although the last be undoubtedly American.
Copperas and alum trusi and tawas are native words, yet the articles nowhere produced
within the Archipelago. They are now imported from China, but probably
were so in earlier times from India.
E.
EAGLE-WOOD. See Agila.
EARTHENWARE. See P otteey.
EARTHQUAKE. See Volcano.
EBONY. The kayu-arang, literally, “ charwood ” in Malay and Javanese, and
so called, of course, from its blackness, is found in most of the countries of the
Asiatic Archipelago, from the Peninsula and Sumatra to the Philippine Islands. It
is probably the produce of several species of Diospyrus, but chiefly of Diospyrus
melanaxylon. It is greatly inferior in quality to the ebony of Ceylon and the Mauritius,
the produce of DiospyruB ebenus.
ECLIPSE. The names for an eclipse of the sun or the moon are all th a t is
known about eclipses by the Indian Islanders. The word for an eclipse is the Sanscrit
one, grahana. An eclipse of the sun is, therefore, called grahana-mata-ari, and of
the moon grahana-bulan, in Malay. But eclipses of both luminaries represent
them as “ sick,” and so we have sakit-mata-ari and sakit-bulan, “ sickness of the sun,”
and “ sickness of the moon." An eclipse of the moon is also expressed by the
native phrase bulammakan-rahu,—the moon eaten by the dragon. The word rahu
is Sanscrit, and the name of a monster supposed to aim at devouring the moon.
During an eolipse the rice-stampers are clattered in their mortars, in order to frighten
the monster from his meditated mischief. In Java, for example, there is not a
rioe-mortar among ten millions of people that is not put in requisition on such an
occasion.
ELEPHANT. The elephant is found in abundance, in the wild state, in almost
every part of Sumatra, where they are seen in troops of 80 and even of 60, and in the
Malay peninsula, especially towards its northern portion. I t was long supposed to be
confined to those two countries of the Archipelago; but there is now no question but
that it exists also in parts of Borneo, namely, the districts of Pahitan, and the Sandakan
at its northern end, with the peninsula of Unsang forming its north-eastern extremity.
Tins had been long insisted on by the natives of Borneo ; and although no European
has yet seen the animal itself, the fact of its tusks having been brought as an article
of trade from the places in question to the British settlement of Labuan, would seem