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Updated: June 23, 2025
Many remarked upon the expense of obtaining a wife, the cost sometimes amounting to several hundred florins, all of which must be earned by gathering rubber. The tiwah feast is observed, but as to legends there are none, and their language and customs are disappearing. These Tamoans are disintegrating chiefly on account of the ravages of cholera.
When preparing for a tiwah feast it was the custom to close the river for perhaps three months by suspending a rattan rope on which were hung many spears of wood, tail feathers of the great hornbill, and leaves of certain trees. After a head had been secured the impediment was removed, but the government has forbidden the temporary obstruction.
Should any of these injunctions be disregarded a gutshi, the value of which may be twenty florins, must be paid to his relatives. If the widow desires to marry earlier than the tiwah feast she is required to pay the entire cost of the celebration, and sometimes an additional amount. A simpler device than the panyanggaran is also used, serving a similar purpose and called sapundo.
These Katingans begin their year in June and July, when they cut the jungle in order to make ladangs, months being designated by numbers. At the beginning of the year all the families sacrifice fowls, eat the meat, and give the blood to antoh in accordance with their custom. After the harvest there is a similar function at which the same kind of dancing is performed as at the tiwah feast.
She practised her profession and the husbands gathered rattan and rubber. She was known to have had thirty-three husbands, keeping a man a couple of weeks, or as many months, then taking others. She had no children. In this connection it is of interest to note how the Kahayans use the flying prahu as a feature of the great tiwah festival.
Assuming that the requirements are six in number, according to my informant, the following should be observed by the widow: To make the tiwah feast; to refrain from remarriage until the feast has been celebrated; to abstain from sexual intercourse; to remain in the same place until after the feast; to ask permission from the family of the deceased if she wants to leave the kampong temporarily; to wear no red garments until the feast has been completed.
This disposition of the bones is accompanied by a very elaborate feast, generally called tiwah, to the preparation of which much time is devoted.
Fires are kept burning within the house and also outside, and after each meal the people strike one another's legs with firebrands in order to forget their grief. Members of the family, who begin to wail immediately after his death, continue to do so constantly for seven days, and they wear no red garments until after the tiwah feast which constitutes his second funeral.
Not only this, but the liao of every animal, bird, and fish which the family eats from the time of his death until the tiwah feast is given to him. Account is kept by incised cross-cuts on certain posts, notifying him of the number. I was told that when a raja died similar marks of account were made on a slave.
Every night the women dance inside the house, around a tree composed of many bamboo stalks placed together so as to form a large trunk. As soon as the tiwah feast has been decided upon the people start simultaneously to perfect the various arrangements, some looking for a water-buffalo or two, others beginning to make the several contrivances which the occasion demands.
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