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Updated: May 21, 2025
The form suggests a crocodile, and some of the men agreed that that was its meaning, while others asserted that it was a dog. No doubt it was originally one or other of these, but has now become a conventional design merely, and its true origin has been forgotten. It is tatued on arm and thigh, is reproduced in beadwork, and carved in low relief on decorative panels.
They had rather wild but not unpleasant faces, and were both tatued like the Kenyahs. Their hair had been cut short in the prison. I later took the anthropometric measurements of the young man, who was a fine specimen of the savage, with a splendid figure, beautifully formed hands and feet his movements were elastic and easy.
They believe that after death the completely tatued women will be allowed to bathe in the mythical river Telang Julan, and that consequently they will be able to pick up the pearls that are found in its bed; incompletely tatued women can only stand on the river bank, whilst the untatued will not be allowed to approach its shores at all.
The tatu of the legs and feet is the last to be completed, and the lines round the ankles are denied to all but the bravest veterans. All that has been written above applies equally well to the Ukits, or at least once did apply, for now the Ukits have to a great extent adopted the tatu of the Kayan, and it is only occasionally that an old man tatued in the original, Ukit manner is met.
A number of tribes have adopted more or less the tatu of the Kayans. Thus the men of the following Sarawak tribes, Sibops, Lirongs, Tanjongs, Long Kiputs, Barawans, and Kanowits, are often, though not universally, tatued like Kayans. The women of these tribes very rarely tatu; we have seen a Tanjong woman with a circle of star-shaped figures round her wrist and one on the thumb.
Kenyahs when on the warpath frequently tie a band of plaited palm fibre round the wrist for the same object. The tatu of the backs of the hands is avowedly copied from the Kayans, but has a different name applied to it KUKUM. The metatarsus is tatued with broad bars, IWA, very like the foot tatu of Kayan women of the slave or of the middle class; lines known as JANGO encircle the ankle.
The only other Peng design that we are acquainted with is a large disc tatued on the calf of the leg. Dr. No other part of the body is tatued.
Moreover, the designs of the lower-class women are not nearly so complex as those of the higher class, and they are generally tatued free-hand. The fingers are very simply tatued with a zigzag on the carpal knuckles and transverse lines across the joints; the thumb is decorated in a slightly different way. In Dr.
Two colours, red and blue, are used, and the designs are tatued free-hand, the instrument employed being a piece of copper or brass about four inches long and half an inch broad, with one end bent down at a right angle and sharpened to a point. Sometimes thread is wound round the end of the instrument just above the point, to regulate the depth of its penetration.
The Kayans are, with one or two exceptions, the most tatued race in Borneo, and perhaps the best tatued from an artistic point of view; the designs used in the tatu of the men have been widely imitated, and much ceremonial is connected with the tatu of the women, an account of which we give below.
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