Borneo's Dayak handicraft, the beauty of ancient tribal arts and handmade crafts
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Among the Barito peoples the hornbill god and the dragon goddess are the origin of the Tree of Life, a representation of the cosmic totality made of an upperworld male part and an underworld female part.

Traditional Life: Traditional Religion


In the beginning, there were only the skies and the primeval waters, inhabited by godly beings, respectively male and female. For many Bornean groups, the basic creation myth shows the sky god and the sea goddes copulating, either directly or through various symbolic artefacts, to generate a son and daughter, half human and half divine. The brother and sister then commit the original incest, giving birth to mankind.

The Moslem peoples have a similar myth of origin whereby a princess emerged from the seas marries a prince descended from the skies.

Many groups represent the upperworld god as a hornbill or hawk and the underworld goddess as a water dragon. Among the Barito peoples the hornbill god and the dragon goddess are the origin of the Tree of Life, a representation of the cosmic totality made of an upperworld male part and an underworld female part. The dynamic opposition of the two parts expresses their unity and is the source of life.

In the course of a long sacred fight between upperworld and underworld, the Tree of Life is destroyed and the first man and wife are created. This notion of the destruction of life as a source of life appears widely in Borneo.

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.