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A peculiar and infrequent variety of Sea Dayak MANANG are the MANANG BALI. They are men who adopt and continuously wear woman's dress and behave in all ways like women, except that they avoid as far as possible taking any part in the domestic labour.
"They no longer listen to the voices of birds to tell them when to sow their seeds, undertake a journey, or build a house; they never consult a manang in sickness or difficulty; above all, they set no store by the blackened skulls which used to hang from their roofs, but which they have either buried or given away to any people from a distance who cared for them, assuring them at the same time that they 'were no use."
He makes sure of this beforehand, and demands his fee before he undertakes the case. The Manang never carries his own box of charms; the people who fetch him must carry it for him. He arrives at the house of the sick man generally at sunset, for he never performs by daylight, unless the case is very serious, and he is paid extra for doing so.
The cocks have artificial steel spurs which are very sharp. The children of Borneo are taught from their earliest years that there are evil spirits everywhere in the air, in the trees, in the rocks and in the streams and that these cause disease and death. And so when sickness comes, the witch doctor or Manang is sent for, because he claims to have mysterious powers over the spirits.
These manangs, being as it were the priests of Dyak superstitions, and getting their living by pretended cures, interpretations of omens and the voices of birds, were of course the natural enemies of truth and enlightenment. Bulan, however, had tried to be an honest manang, and finding it impossible had turned with all his heart to Christianity.
He pretends to converse with the evil spirit that troubles the sick man, repeating aloud the answers that the spirit is supposed to make. There are many different ceremonies resorted to in cases of illness, but the following is what is common to all Manang performances.
The medicine man of the Ibans is known as MANANG; the MANANGS are more numerous than the DAYONGS of the Kayans; they are more strictly professional in the sense that they do but little other work, depending chiefly on what they can earn by their treatment of disease and by other ways of practising upon the superstitions of their fellows.
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