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Updated: June 6, 2025
The Ibans read omens not only from the birds mentioned above as the son-in-law of Singalang Burong, but also from some other animals. An excellent account of the part played by omens in the life of the Ibans has been given by Archdeacon Perham in the paper referred to above, and we have nothing further to add to that account.
On the occasion of the great peace-making at Baram in March 1899, at which thousands of Kenyahs, Kayans, Klemantans, and Ibans were present, the Ibans made an elaborate image of the hornbill some nine feet in height, and hung upon it many thousands of cigarettes, and these were smoked by the men of the different tribes, all apparently with full understanding of the value of the act.
The above general account of the secret helper is founded on the descriptions of many different Ibans, and we will now supplement it by describing several particular instances. Once a man came to his grandfather in a dream and said to him, "Don't you kill the gibbon," and then turned into a grey gibbon. This gibbon helped him to become rich and to take heads, and in all possible ways.
Corresponding with this increased importance and definition of the anthropomorphic hawk-god, we find that for the Mans the virtue has departed out of the individual hawks, and that they are no longer consulted for omens; for the Ibans say that Singalang Burong never leaves his house, and that for this reason they do not take omens from the hawks when going on the war-path.
We are inclined to suppose that the Ibans have copied many of their cloth-patterns from the Malays together with the crafts of dyeing and weaving. For their technique is similar to that of the Malays all over the peninsula, and the same is true of some of their designs.
If this does not drive away the pests, they resort to the more thorough and certainly effectual process of making the clay crocodile. Many Ibans claim the live crocodile as a relative, and, like almost all the other peoples, will not eat the flesh of crocodiles, and will not kill them, save in revenge when a crocodile has taken one of their household.
The co-operation between the piratical Malay Tuankus and the descendants of their imported PROTEGES continued up to the time of the suppression of piracy by the British and Dutch half a century ago. It seems to us probable that the greater part of the ancestors of the Ibans entered Borneo in this way.
The NGARONG IS one of the very few topics in regard to which the Ibans display any reluctance to speak freely.
So great is their reserve in this connection that one of us lived for fourteen years on friendly terms with Ibans of various districts without ascertaining the meaning of the word NGARONG, or suspecting the great importance of the part played by the notion in the lives of some of these people.
Three such invasions may be distinguished as of principal importance: that of the Kayans in the south and perhaps in the south-east, of the Muruts in the north, and of the Ibans in the south-west.
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