Dusun Riddles of Sabah

BBooks — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 08:56:52 +0000

In the olden days of colonial Sabah, the indigenous Dusun people of North Borneo played riddles with one another while they planted young paddy shoots in the rice fields. The practice still continues to this day, but riddling has been brought into the homes as a much-loved form of entertainment for all, regardless of age and gender.

A Study of Brunei Dusun Religion; Ethnic Priesthood on a Frontler of Islam

System — Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:00:00 +0000

A Study of Brunei Dusun Religion; Ethnic Priesthood on a Frontler of Islam

Costumes of Sabah; An Introduction to the Traditional

System — Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:00:00 +0000

An Introduction to the Traditional Costumes of Sabah documents the costume heritage of seven of Sabah’s indigenous groups, namely the Bajau, the Dusun Tindal, the Lotud, the Papar Kadazan, the Penampang Kadazan, the Murut and the Rungus. Why only seven, you may ask. Firstly, because the seven groups are some of the State’s most well-known and popular. Secondly, because, so far, the costume heritage of these seven groups are being exhibited in the Sabah Museum. The book is presented simply, and the reader can browse through it quite easily. It is an important introduction to the costume heritage of Sabah, illustrating one of its most colourful cultural aspects.

Dusun Custom in Putatan District

System — Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:00:00 +0000

Pagans of North Borneo; The ( Reprint)

System — Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:00:00 +0000

There is an old saying, ” Good wine needs no bush ” ; if this is true then assuredly Mr. Owen Rutter’s book needs no introduction. Nor if it did could I claim any special competence, for it is now more than a quarter of a century since I spent six months in the lovely island of which he writes, and even then I saw no Dusun or Murut, the tribes with which the author is almost wholly concerned. Both peoples constitute solid inland groups stretching across the breadth of British North Borneo, both held off from the sea by a continuous coastal fringe of Islamized immigrants who have extended for considerable distances up such large rivers as the Labuk and Kinabatangan. The boundary between Dusun and Murut is irregular, the Dustin of the central area of British North Borneo coming rather further south than the mass of their tribesmen nearer the coasts ; ignoring such slight irregularities and the coastal fringe of Mohammedan peoples, the line between Dustin and Murut may be taken to run roughly from Cowie Harbour on the south-east coast to Beaufort in the north-west. The Dustin, then, are limited to British North Borneo, but this does not hold for the Murut, who extend southward both into Sarawak and Dutch territory. Mr. Rutter spent five years in North Borneo as a District Officer in the Civil Service, during which time he served in each of the five Residencies of the State and so was in close touch with natives of varying types and groups ; and he has also spent eighteen months in the country as a private investigator, when he again travelled extensively. Although he tells us a great deal about the Murut and Dusun he does not say much about their physical characters, and their affinities to the natives of other lands, and it is here, as it seems, that the intervention of an ethnologist finds its justification. It has long been recognized that throughout the Malay Archipelago there exists a relatively early long-headed (dolichocephalic) non-Malay element, to which is applied the term Indonesian, in opposition to the round-headed (brachycephalic) race of Indonesia distinguished as proto-Malay (of which the true Malays are a particular group). There seems little doubt that the natives of Borneo are everywhere a mixture of these two peoples, just as their culture everywhere betrays a dual origin, and the immediate matter is to determine the position of Dusun and Murut. The material on which comparisons must be based will be found in the memoir by Dr. A. C. Haddon, A Sketch of the Ethnography of Sarawak (Archivio per I’ Antropologia e I’ Etnologia, Vol. XXXI, 1901) and his Appendix on the physical characters of the peoples of Borneo in Hose and McDougall’s important work, The Pagan Tribes of Borneo. First with regard to the relationship of Dusun and Murut. Ivor Evans (Among Primitive Peoples in Borneo) records the cephalic index of 19 Dusun, with an average-neglecting decimals of 76 and a maximum of 80. These figures roughly correspond to 74 and 78 on the skull, and with this correction such figures become comparable with the twenty-seven Murut crania measured by Haddon. Now Haddon’s figures give an average Of 73-5 and a maximum Of 79, which, considering the small number of subjects in each series, can scarcely mean other than the substantial identity of the two peoples. There is, of course, the possibility of the two series not being fair samples, but there seems no reason to suspect this, and provisionally, at any rate, the two tribes may be accepted as constituting an ethnic unit, in spite of their cultural dissimilarities, which no doubt are largely related to differences in environment. And since the Murut are the most long-headed of the tribesmen measured by Haddon we may assume that the Murut-Dusun group carry more Indonesian blood than any other tribe in British North Borneo and Sarawak, and in fact probably represent this element in -as pure a form as it occurs in Borneo. In any case both tribes differ markedly from such important peoples as Kenyah, Kayan and Iban, with their indices of from ,80 upwards, who as it would seem more nearly represent the roto-Malays. This was, perhaps, to be anticipated; it is, however, unexpected to find that the Murut-Dusun have approximately the same cephalic index as the Punan, culturally the most primitive of the Borneo jungle tribes, who live in small groups in jungle, do not cultivate, and whose arts and crafts are almost limited to the preparation of rough shelters, mats, and their implements of the chase, to wit blow-guns, and poisoned darts. As to origins, there is so much evidence for the colonization of North Borneo from the Philippines (e.g. the Tagal and Bisaya of Borneo are probably offshoots of the Tagal and Visaya of the Philippines), that there is no objection to believing that the Murut type of culture has been brought into Borneo from the Philippines where, e.g. a system of agriculture similar to that of the Murut is widely practised. Behind this we perceive more vaguely a culture of mixed origin, many elements of which are to be found in Assam, which has spread throughout Indonesia as the result of the clash and fusion of wave upon wave of Indonesian and proto-Malay peoples, giving Borneo a series of tribes presenting physically and culturally so much general resemblance that only prolonged intensive and comparative studies of each area can be expected to add materially to the imperfect knowledge we at present possess. Of the matters treated by Mr. Rutter no doubt the most important is the codification-for it is no less-of pagan law in Chapter IX, and this should be of the greatest practical assistance to administrators. Of peculiar interest is the untranslatable sagit, something between a fine and a customary due (with psychological analogies to a consolation prize and a ‘luck-penny’) which has now come into force in place of the taking of heads, e.g. on marriage. Such a modification as this must be of the greatest interest to Government officials nor, it is encouraging to think, is it without parallel elsewhere. Another interesting matter is the relative frequency of suicide, its prevalence, especially among young girls, as the result of disappointment in love, and the absence in this mixed Indonesian-proto-Malay population of such violent methods of self-destruction (for that is what it came to in the old days) as the Malayan amok. In Chapter VIII Mr. Rutter pays a well-merited tribute to the part played by the Chinese in the economic development and so in the ‘ pacification of the country, but his words must not be taken to imply that until the advent of the Chartered Company the Chinese had little to do with the country. This is scarcely the case. The importance of old jars of Chinese origin thoughout. the interior of Borneo bespeaks at the least a considerable coastwise trade and coastal markets; moreover Legaspi, the Spanish conqueror of the Philippines and founder of Manila, writes of his capture of a junk whose crew were ‘Moors’ of Borneo and which had a cargo of silk, cotton, porcelain, and the like. This was late in the sixteenth century, but progress during the last twenty years in our knowledge of the earlier wares of China, especially of Sung earthenwares and porcelains, enables us to date many of the specimens from the Philippines to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and there does not seem any reason why some of the Borneo wares should not be of equal date. Such jars as Ningka (for the most valuable of these jars have names) figured by Hose and McDougall (Plate XLVI) is certainly in Sung (960-1280) style, and there is at least a presumption that it is of Sung or Yuan (128o-I368) age. Moreover, we have an actual account of Chinese trade with P’o-ni (Borneo) and Pa-lau-yu (Palawan) in the Chui-fan-chi, a work written in the thirteenth century by Chau-ju-Kua, Inspector of Foreign Trade in Fukien, wherein it is recorded that Borneo produces four kinds of camphor, laka wood, yellow wax, and tortoise-shell, which were exchanged inter alia for lacquered bowls and plates and green porcelain (celadon). Palawan is attached to and confused with the Philippines (San-su), from which it is actually no further than it is from Borneo, for here live the Hai-Tan, who are no other than the pygmy Aeta of the Philippines: ” They are small in stature and their eyes are round and yellow (brown), they have curly hair and their teeth show (between their lips). They nest in treetops. Sometimes parties of three or five lurk in the jungle, from whence they shoot arrows on passers-by without being seen, and many have fallen victims to them. If thrown a porcelain bowl, they will stoop and pick it up and go away leaping and shouting for joy.” It is obvious, then, that Chinese pottery and porcelain have been valued on the Indonesian islands for many hundred years, and an interesting line of research would be to compare this eastern trade, thoughout its extent in the hands of Chinese and their congeners, with the western trade, largely Arab, which carried Sung and Ming wares to Mesopotamia and East Africa. One difference is at once apparent: notwithstanding the reference to the importation of celadon into Borneo, and in spite of the durability of the heavy celadons of the first half of the Ming dynasty, this class does not constitute the great majority of Borneo and Philippine ceramics of Chinese origin, the contrary holding true for India and the West. This almost suggests that the Indonesian taste in Chinese ware was formed at an earlier date, i.e. in Sung times before fabrics so eminently suited for export were in existence. Nor is the evidence of this ancient trade with Borneo of mere antiquarian interest, for it gives a hint of the extent of Chinese cultural influence and affords, e.g. an explanation of the similarity of the Borneo tattoo pattern, commonly called asu (at least in Sarawak) to various degraded dragon designs found on Sung and Ming bronzes and porcelains. These, then, are a few of the points of special interest raised by Mr. Rutter’s book, which is full of valuable material.

Religion of the Tempasuk Dusun of North Borneo: The (Reprinted)

System — Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:00:00 +0000

The Religion of the Tempasuk Dusuns of North Borneo, which was first published in 1953, is one of the most important books written about the Dustin of the Tempasuk district, one of the numerous ethnic groups in Sabah (formerly called North Borneo). It is based on the author’s fieldwork in the early 20th century and in the pre- and postWorld War 11 periods when he lived amongst these people. The book gives a very comprehensive account of the Dustin’s general beliefs, beginning with their creation myth, as well as their ceremonies (agricultural, communal and personal). These are not mere text accounts of what the author witnessed at these ceremonies. More than 50 fascinating photographs of these ceremonies are included in the book, an appendix gives the texts of some of the rites. The third section of the book has 65 folktales of the Tempasuk Dustin, covering a wide variety of themes. Several are creation tales, others tell the story of origin of these people, while a number of the stories are morality tales.

Turan Adat; Some Customs of the Dusun of Tuaran West Coast Residency( North Borneo

System — Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:00:00 +0000

These notes on some Tuaran Native Customs apply to the Tuaran Dusuns of the main Coastal plain, the”Suang Latud” (Latud people), a settled agricultural people who own valuable wet padi lands and many buffaloes and cattle. Their other wealth consists mostly in old jars and brass ware. From a Dustin standpoint they are on the whole a prosperous race. The customs described do not apply in detail to the neighbouring hill tribes, and there are variations between them and those of Putatan to the South and Tempasuk to the North. I am indebted in the first place to Pangeran Osman bin O.K.K. Pangeran Haji Omar, D.A.D.O. Tuaran, who prepared much of the groundwork with the help of the late O.T. Anggar, and secondly to O.T. Impas, who went through the whole with me in detail and supplied much further information. The chapter on Inheritance was discussed at a meeting of Latud Headmen, and they agreed that it gave a correct account of this important branch of their Adat. I have also availed myself of some details and illustrations from a report on Tuaran customs submitted by Mr. A.N.M. Garry, then Asst. D.O. Tuaran in 1918, in reply to a Secretariat enquiry. The notes do not pretend to be a complete statement of Tuaran Custom, and a careful collation with Native Court records may reveal various discrepancies. Adat is not like the Laws of the Medes and Persians, and Headmen may admit much in theory that they do not follow in practice, and in individual cases they may often be guided by local influence and more or less irrelevant considerations rather than by the traditions of strictly correct procedure.

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Dusun Riddles of Sabah

A Study of Brunei Dusun Religion; Ethnic Priesthood on a Frontler of Islam

Costumes of Sabah; An Introduction to the Traditional

Dusun Custom in Putatan District

Pagans of North Borneo; The ( Reprint)

Religion of the Tempasuk Dusun of North Borneo: The (Reprinted)

Turan Adat; Some Customs of the Dusun of Tuaran West Coast Residency( North Borneo