They are perhaps more strict in the avoidance of
deer and cattle. One old chief, who had been ailing for a long time,
hesitated to enter the Resident's house because he saw a pair of horns
hanging up there. When he entered he asked for a piece of iron, and
on returning home he killed a fowl and a pig, and submitted to the
process of having his soul caught by a DAYONG, lest it should have
incurred some undefined injury in the neighbourhood of the horns.
The Kayans avoid the skin of the tiger even more strictly than the
Kenyahs or any other tribe; even a great chief will not touch a
tiger-skin, and we have known one refuse to enter a house because he
knew that it contained a tiger-skin war-coat.
Like the Kenyahs, the Kayans entertain a superstitious dread of the
Maias and the long-nosed monkey, but the DOK (MACACUS NEMESTRINUS),
the coco-nut monkey of the Malay States, has special relations to
them. It is very common in their district, but they will kill it only
when it is stealing their rice-crop; and they will never eat it as
other peoples do. There is a somewhat uncertain belief that it is a
blood-relative, and the following myth is told to account for this. A
Kayan woman of high class was reaping PADI with her daughter.
Pages:
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469