Two
colours, red and blue, are used, and the designs are tatued free-hand,
the instrument employed being a piece of copper or brass about four
inches long and half an inch broad, with one end bent down at a right
angle and sharpened to a point. Sometimes thread is wound round the
end of the instrument just above the point, to regulate the depth
of its penetration. Two specimens in the Leyden Museum are figured
by Ling Roth [7, p. 85]. Hamer [5] says that the Ot-Danum women are
tatued down the shin to the tarsus with two parallel lines, joined
by numerous cross-lines, a modification of the Uma Tow design for the
same part of the limb. On the thigh is tatued a design termed SOEWROE,
said to resemble a neck ornament. A disc tatued on the calf of the
leg is termed BOENTOER, and from it to the heel runs a barbed line
called IKOEH BAJAN, tail of the monitor lizard; curiously enough,
though this is the general name of the design, it is on the right leg
also termed BARAREK, on the left DANDOE TJATJAH. Warriors are tatued
on the elbowjoint with a DANDOE TJATJAH and a cross called SARAPANG
MATA ANDAU.
A Maloh who had lived for many years amongst these people gave us
the following information about their tatu: -- There is with these
people a great difference between the tatu of the high-class and
that of the low-class individuals: amongst the former the designs are
both extensive and complicated, too complicated for our informant to
describe with any degree of accuracy, but they seem to be much the
same as those described by Hamer.
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