Borneo-Dayak CRAFTS
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Traditional Life: Secondary Funerals

For the Barito and Central-Northern groups these primary rituals are not enough to ensure the spirit a comfortable position in the village of the dead. Further rituals involving a secondary treatment of the remains are performed. Others, like the Iban, similarly treated their important dead.

When such rituals are planned, the coffin or jar containing the body is temporarily buried. Or, it is equipped with a hole and a tube to drain the fluids and stored in the house or in a nearby shelter. It may remain there a few months - as some groups hold these rituals after harvest so that the paddy growth is not endangered - or 20 years or more, until the expensive feast lies within the family's means.

In the meantime the spirit of the dead must be made harmless, and is assigned a temporary dwelling. The Ngaju priest brings the spirit from the coffin to a board painting of the village of the dead. Only wealthy people can afford secondary funerals, which usually last one week to over a month and involve huge expense. Neighboring villages are invited, and as many as 20 buffaloes and 200 pigs may be slain.

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.