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Updated: May 21, 2025
Only one tribe, namely, the Red Karens, practises tatu, and among them a figure which seems to represent the rising sun is tatued on the back of the men only . They weave a coarse cloth. These differences are not very great, and their significance is diminished by the following considerations. The Kayans may have acquired their aversion to killing the dog through contact with Malays.
Nieuwenhuis was fortunate in finding one very old woman so tatued. Nowadays the class restrictions as regards tatu are not so closely observed, but it is always possible to distinguish between the designs of a chiefs daughter, an ordinary free-woman, and a slave, by the number of lines composing the figures of the designs, the fewer these lines, the lower being the rank of the woman.
On the forearm are tatued eight bold zigzag bands, one-eighth of an inch broad, which do not completely encircle the arm, but stop short of joining at points on the ulnar side of the middle line on the flexor surface. The series of lines is known as BETIK TISU, the hand pattern. The legs are tatued on the back of the thigh, on the shin, and sometimes on the knee-cap.
A girl when about ten years old will probably have had her fingers and the upper part of her feet tatued, and about a year later her forearms should have been completed; the thighs are partially tatued during the next year, and in the third or fourth year from the commencement, I.E. about puberty, the whole operation should have been accomplished.
The tatuer or her assistant stretches with her feet the skin of the part to be tatued, and, dipping a pricker into the pigment, taps its handle with the striker, driving the needle points into the skin at each tap.
It must be remembered that the Long Glat design is tatued in rows down the front and sides of the thigh, whilst these Kayan designs have been modified to form more or less of a sinuous line design for the back of the thigh; or, in other words, the hornbill elements in the Long Glat design, though they are serially repeated, are quite separate and distinct one from the other, whilst in the Kayan designs the hornbill elements are fused and modified to produce the sinuous line pattern that in one form or another is generally employed for the decoration of the back of the thigh.
The part of the body on which the design was tatued, is not specified and the sketch is rather inadequate, so that it is impossible to tell for certain whether the design was tatued in outline only or whether the outline was filled in uniformly; our impression is that the outline only was tatued on this individual, and that it was employed either as an experiment or from idle amusement.
In the upper Teweh river, an upper tributary of the Barito the men are tatued a good deal, especially on parts of the face, such as the forehead, the cheeks, the upper lip.
Fowls or a pig are killed for the artist by the parents of the girl who is being tatued.
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