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Before bringing this chapter to an end, we would point out that among the facts we have described there are some which seem to suggest a possible and, indeed, as it seems to us, a very natural and probable mode of origin of totem-worship. We refer to the varieties of the NGARONG of the Ibans and sporadic analogous cases among the other tribes.
On the day after such a dream the Iban wanders through the jungle looking for signs by which he may recognise his secret helper; and if an animal behaves in a manner at all unusual, if a startled deer stops a moment to gaze at him before bounding away, if a gibbon gambols about persistently in the trees near him, if he comes upon a bright quartzcrystal or a strangely. contorted root or creeper, that animal or object is for him full of a mysterious significance and is the abode of his NGARONG. Sometimes the NGARONG, then assumes the form of an Iban and speaks with him, promising all kinds of help and good fortune.
In other cases the man, being unable to distinguish the particular animal which he believes to be animated by his NGARONG, extends his regard and gratitude to the whole species. In such a case it seems difficult to deny the name "individual totem" to the species, if the term is to be used at all.
On an occasion of this sort it is highly probable that the required token will be found; for the secret helper would no doubt be surreptitiously helped by some member of the household who, being deficient in faith, prefers to make a certainty of so important a matter rather than leave it entirely to the NGARONG.
The NGARONG seems to be usually the spirit of some ancestor or dead relative, but not always so, and it is not clear that it is always conceived as the spirit of a deceased human being.
Anggus adds that when a man dreams of a NGARONG. for the first time he does not accept it, and will still kill animals of that kind; nor is a second dream enough; but when he dreams the same dream a third time, then his scepticism is overcome and he can no longer doubt his good fortune. Anggus himself once shot a gibbon when told to do so by one of us.
We have seen that the NGARONG may assume the form of some curious natural object, or of some one animal distinguished from its fellows by some slight peculiarity, which receives the attentions of some one man only. In such cases the NGARONG is hardly distinguishable from a fetish.
If this occurs the seer usually faints away, and when he comes to himself again the NGARONG will have disappeared. Or, again, a man may be told in his dream that if he will go into the jungle he will meet his NGARONG in the form of a wild boar.
On one occasion, when he was about to go on the war-path, his NGARONG came to him in a dream and said, "Go on, I will help you," and the next day he saw in the jungle a grey gibbon which was undoubtedly his NGARONG. When he died he said to his sons, "Don't you kill the gibbon," and his sons and grandsons have obeyed him in this ever since.
In these KORA, the land-tortoise, and PLANDOK, the tiny mouse-deer, figure largely as cunning and unprincipled thieves and vagabonds that turn the laugh always against the bigger animals and man. The NGARONG or Secret Helper An important institution among some of the Ibans, which occurs but in rare instances among the other peoples, is the NGARONG or secret helper.
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