Kayan Parang
Kayan Folklore.
Naturally enough, of course, creation began on the island of Borneo, or Kalamantan, as they call it, and the first people were Borneans and spoke the language of the tribe that tells the story. Every tribe has a different account of creation, and claims that its people sprang from the first created mortals.
The following account is the story of Genesis according to the Kayans of Northwestern Borneo:—
In the old, old days, when there was nothing but water and sky, there fell from the heavens an enormous rock; that part of it which protruded from the water was hard, slippery, and quite bare, with no soil nor plants upon it of any kind. After a long time, however, the rains produced slime upon the rock, and little worms, called halang, were bred in this slime, and they bored into the rock and left fine sand outside of their burrows; this sand eventually became soil and covered the rock. Again years passed and the rock remained barren of all other life until suddenly there dropped from the Sun a huge wooden handle of a Parang (or sword) known as Haup Malat. This parang-handle sank deep into the rock and taking root in the soil it sprouted and grew into a great tree, named Batang Utar Tatei, whose branches stretched out over the new land in every direction. When this tree was fully grown, there dropped from the Moon a long rope-like vine known as the Jikwan Tali. This vine quickly clung to the tree and took root in the rock. Now the vine, Jikwan Tali, from the Moon became the husband of the tree, Batang Utar Tatei, from the Sun, and Batang Utar Tatei gave birth to twins, a male and a female, not of the nature of a tree, but more or less like human beings. The male child was called Klobeh Angei, and the female was called Klubangei. These two children married and then gave birth to two more children, who were named Pengok N’gai, and Katirah Murai. Katirah Murai was married to old man Ajai Avai, who comes without pedigree into the narration. From Katirah Murai and Ajai Avai are descended many of the chiefs who were founders of the various tribes inhabiting the land of Kalamantan; their names are Sejau Laho, Oding Lahang, from whom the Kayans spring, Tabalan, Pliban, and, finally, Tokong, the father of head-hunting.
Haup Malat - Parang Handle
As time went on, that which formerly had been merely slime on the rock, became moss, and little by little small plants were produced. The twigs and leaf-like appendages of the tree, evidently the female principle in nature, as they fell to the ground, became birds, beasts, and fishes. (Let me mention here that the endowment of leaves with life and locomotion is no more than natural; while in the jungle I have repeatedly seen what, in every respect, appeared to be a leaf fall to the ground and then miraculously put out legs and walk away; it was one of those remarkable insects of the Mantis family, or “walking leaves.”) The inhabitants of the rock had no need of fire in those days, for the sun beat down on them strongly, and there was no night; it was not until many, many years had elapsed that an old man named Laki Oi invented a method of obtaining fire by means of friction produced by pulling a strip of rattan rapidly back and forth beneath a piece of dry wood. This process of making fire he called Musa, and it is still the only method used in obtaining fire for ceremonials, such as the naming of a child, or when communicating with the omen-birds. Laki Oi also taught them the use of the fire-drill, which he called the Nalika.
On the main trunk of Batang Utar Tatei was a large excrescence, from which exuded a resinous gum called Lutong, which, as it dropped to the ground beneath, was immediately transformed into chickens and swine; and it is because they were thus formed out of the very heart and substance of the tree that they are always used in the reading of auguries. From this same cause, there was innate in them an insight into the innermost workings of Nature and a knowledge of the future.
The first beings with any resemblance to man had neither legs, nor breasts, and consisted merely of a head, chest, arms, and a fragment of a body which hung down in shreds and rags, having the appearance of twisted snakes. When they moved they dragged themselves along the ground by their arms. (From this description and from native carvings, I am inclined to believe that a large cuttle-fish or octopus must have suggested this idea to the original narrator of this tradition.) Little by little, the body was brought into more compact form, and, in a later generation, legs appeared, but it was a long time before they became accustomed to legs and able to use them in moving about. A survival of this awkwardness, so say the Kayans, is still noticeable in the way in which children crawl about the floor, and in their clumsy walk when first they learn to stand upright. The heads of these first people were, furthermore, much larger than the heads of the present generation, and, since it was the first part formed, it is the oldest part of the body, and on this account the most important member, and valued accordingly whether dead or alive.
This account is, as far as I know, purely Bornean, inasmuch as had there been any admixture from a foreign source (as we shall see further on was probably the case with the Dyaks) there would have been possibly some reference to a Supreme Creator rather than to this union of a vine and a tree as the original source of life. The Kayans from whom I obtained this account have had exceedingly little communication with the outside world, except through occasional Malay or Chinese traders. There is just a possibility that the idea of the wooden sword-handle being the ultimate fons et origo of all life comes from the fact that the word for chief—”penghulu”—is derived from “hulu,” meaning a sword-handle, and the prefix “peng” denoting agency, so that the whole word means literally “the master of the sword,” and thus the ruler or chief. From association of ideas, the sword-handle, without which the blade is ineffective and useless, may have been suggested to them as the chief of all beings. The sudden appearance of Ajai Avai on the scene as the husband of Katirah Murai, is not at all at variance with the accounts from many other sources of the populating of the world. In Laki Oi, we recognize the Kayan “Prometheus,” whose memory is revered by sanctifying the fire procured after his manner of teaching, and from this tradition it is probable that the procuring of fire by means of the “fire-saw” is the aboriginal method. Should all of the fires in a Kayan house become extinguished and no spark be left, new fires may be started by this method, and by this method alone; even the fire-drill, and flint and steel, which are not unknown to them, are tabooed.
