Borneo-Dayak CRAFTS
indonesia exporter of dayak tribe's handmade crafts & tribal arts

Borneo's Dayak handicraft, the beauty of ancient tribal arts and handmade crafts

Traditional Life: The Living and the Death

The Murut commonly believe in the transmigration of the deceased's spirits into animals, and the Iban equate such animals with gods. For the Ot Datum the spirit, after a long time in the village of the dead, has to return to earth. Such transmigration and reincarnation possibly involves only a transfer of mana.

The spirits of the village of the dead do not interfere much in human affairs, as the living do not allow it, having severed relations with them. They are not worshipped, nor are the wooden human statues considered ancestor figures and worshipped. Round stones kept in Ngaju shrines are male representations of the deceaseds' spirits but do not house them.

The living may, however, reserve the right to call on the spirits of the dead - for instance to help a new spirit journey to the village of the dead - and they keep the skulls of the ancient dead at hand for these occasions, usually in the house attic. The funeral rites call on the spirits to descend into the skulls, offer them food and drink, then dismiss them. The skulls function here as no more than a convenient temporary quartering.

There is no widespread ancestor worship, and rarely are important dead persons - like among certain Iban groups a prominent war leader - installed as ancestors in a special ritual, and granted a status close to that of a god. Such an enshrined spirit remains on earth but is not harmful like the ordinary spirits of the dead, as it is declared "still alive". It has some interaction with the living, protecting and helping its descendants, who gain prestige from its shrine, which often becomes a place of pilgrimage.

Art in traditional life: People at home, Household arts and crafts, Clothes and textiles, Personal adornment, The wider world, The fields, River and forest, Trade, War, headhunting, and sacrifice, Traditional religion, Of Gods and men, Life and ritual, Sickness and shamanism, Death and funeral art, Primary funerals, Secondary funerals, The living and the death.