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Updated: June 10, 2025
On the other hand, some of the coastwise tribes of Klemantans, especially the Malanaus and Kadayans, cultivate magic with some assiduity. The Kayans dislike and discourage all magical practices, with the exception of those which are publicly practised for beneficent purposes and have the sanction of custom. In the old days they used to kill those suspected of working any evil by magic.
These Malay leaders found, no doubt, that their pagan relatives of Sumatra lent themselves more readily to this service than the less warlike Klemantans of Borneo, and therefore, as we suppose, they brought over considerable numbers of them and settled them about the mouths of these rivers.
Amongst all these peoples, especially the Kenyahs, Punans, and Klemantans, there are to be seen a few individuals of very regular well-shaped features of European type.
The beliefs and practices of the Kenyahs and Klemantans in regard to spirits of this class are very similar to those of the Kayans. They designate them by the same general name, TOH. We are doubtful whether the Sea Dayaks can properly be said to have any religion.
And yet, when all these circumstances have been taken into account, the orderly behaviour of a Kayan community must be in part regarded as evidence of the native superiority of character or disposition of the Kayans. For though the Sea Dayaks, Klemantans, and Muruts, live under very similar conditions, they do not attain the same high level of social or moral conduct.
It is probable that many of the tribes which we have classed with the Muruts, on account of their possession of the Murut culture, are, like the Klemantans and Kenyahs, descendants of the ancient Indonesian population who have adopted the culture of more advanced immigrants.
Sometimes the rattan by which the system of poles is set in movement is tied to the upper end of a tall sapling, one end of which is thrust deeply into the mud of the floor of the river. The current then keeps the sapling and with it the system of bamboos swaying and jerking to and fro. The Kayans admit that they have learnt this last "dodge" from the Klemantans.
The Muruts differ somewhat as regards physical features from all the other tribes, especially in having coarser but less Mongoloid features, a longer skull, and a more lanky build of body and limbs. Their intonation is nasal, and the colour of the skin slightly darker and ruddier than that of the Klemantans.
Only the richer folk can afford the luxury of a jar. A rather different procedure is sometimes adopted by the same Klemantans who use the wooden coffins, namely, the corpse is placed in a jar a few days after death. Since the mouth of the jar is generally too small to admit the corpse the jar is broken horizontally into two parts by the following ingenious procedure.
There is no trace of any general division of the people of any tribe into groups which claim specially intimate relations with different animals, except in the case of the Klemantans; and in their case such special relations seem to be the result merely of the different conditions under which the various scattered groups now live.
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