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Updated: June 23, 2025
Deer, on the other hand, abound in the forests, and, like most deer, are very timid; and it is perhaps their timidity that has led in some cases to the prohibition against their flesh, for we have seen how a Kenyah chief feared lest his little son, safe at home, should be infected with the deer's timidity if he himself a hundred miles away should come in contact with the skin of one.
Near the mouth of the Lata the expedition was met by a large party of Kenyahs men, women, and children the whole population of a Kenyah village of the Batang Kayan, Lepu Agas by name, who had just arrived with the intention of making their home in that neighbourhood. These people had been the greatest enemies of Tama Bulan, and the feud had only been healed in the previous year.
Although one of us has a practical command of the Kayan, Kenyah, Sea Dayak, and Malay languages, and a tolerably intimate acquaintance with a number of the Klemantan dialects, we do not venture upon the task of discussing their systematic positions and relations to languages of other areas.
These peculiarities may, we think, be accounted for by the supposition that the aborigines from whom the Kenyahs descend had long occupied the central highlands where most of the Kenyah communities still dwell and which they all regard as the homeland and headquarters of their race.
The Punans are more uniform as regards their physical characters than the other peoples; there are no distinctions of upper and lower social strata as among the other tribes, and thus the mixture of blood, which in the Kayan and Kenyah communities results from the adoption of war captives into the lower class, does not occur with them; and they present none of the wide diversities of type such as are common in the other tribes, especially between the upper and lower social classes.
My informant, who had travelled in the interior, said there was little difference in the languages of these subtribes. The Kenyahs, a few Kayans, and the Katingans mutilate the membrum virile by transpiercing the glans and the urethra, and a piece of brass wire is inserted. The kapala of the Penihing kampong Long Kai, on the Mahakam, told me that Kayan and Kenyah are the same people.
If the left-hand piece is the longer, the dog is dead; if of the same size, the dog will be found at a distant future time; but if the right is the longer, the animal will be recovered very soon. The reading of pig's liver in regard to the present or the future is used more by the Kayan than by the Kenyah.
The Kenyahs also invoke in their prayers several spirits who seem, like ODIN LAHANG, to be regarded as deceased members of their tribe; such are TOKONG and UTONG, and PA BALAN and PLIBAN. From all these descent is claimed by various Kenyah and Klemantan sub-tribes; and that they are regarded as standing higher in the spiritual hierarchy than recently deceased chiefs, is shown by the prefix BALI, commonly given to their names, whereas this title or designation is not given to recently deceased chiefs; to their names the word URIP is prefixed by both Kayans and Kenyahs.
Such a chief was Laki Avit, a Kenyah, who, some twenty years before the Rajah's officers first entered upon the task of administering the Baram, was recognised throughout all the interior of the district as the leading chief, a position which could only have been achieved by the consistent pursuit of a wise policy of conciliation and just dealing between. Kenyahs and Kayans.
They display little affection for their dogs, and they do not like children to touch or play with the dogs, but of course cannot altogether prevent them. One young Kenyah chief, on being questioned, said that the reason they will not kill dogs is that they are like children, and eat and sleep together with men in the same house; and he added that, if a man should kill a dog, he would go mad.
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