[187] The former of them serves as a fixed date in
relation to which other events are dated.
The traditional lore of the Kayans provides answers of a kind to many
of the deep questions that the spirit of enquiry proposes whenever
man has made provision against the most urgent needs of his animal
nature. Yet the keener intelligences among them do not rest satisfied
with these conventional answers; rather, they ponder some of the
deepest questions and discuss them with one another from time to
time. One question we have heard debated is -- Why do not the dead
return? Or rather, Why do they become visible only in dreams and even
then so seldom? The meeting of dead friends in dreams generally leaves
the Kayan doubtful whether he has really seen his friend; and he will
try to obtain evidence of the reality of the REVENANT by prayer and by
looking for a favourable answer in the liver of a pig, the entrails of
a fowl, or in the behaviour of the omen birds. They argue that persons
who have been much attached to their relatives and friends would surely
return to visit them frequently if such return were at all possible.
The relation of the sky to the earth remains also an open and disputed
question. One of us well remembers how, when staying in a Kenyah house,
he was approached by a group of youths who evidently were debating some
knotty problem, and how they very seriously propounded the following
question: -- If a dart were shot straight up into the air and went
on and on, what would become of it? Would it come up against the sky
and be stopped by it?
The whereabouts of the home of the white men, and how long is spent
on the journey thither, are questions often raised.
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