Borneo's Dayak handicraft, the beauty of ancient tribal arts and handmade crafts
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Whereas the Barito groups' living Tree of Life is the coryline plant, sawang, among the Kayan, Kenyah, and some Melawi groups it is the figtree, lunuk or baringin. The Kenyah belawing festival pole shows a carved jar, gong, or dragon, and buffalo horns at its bottom, and a hornbill, a wind- propeller, and sometimes a godly face at its top.

Bornean Art: The Tree of Life


The metaphor of the tree as the origin of life appears in Kayan myths, where an upperworld creeper impregnates an underworld tree that later gives birth to the first couple. The Barito peoples' upperworld god creates the Tree of Life, batang garing, from his headdress. But it is the opposition - rather than the conjunction - of the underworld and upperworld and their sacred fight over and subsequent destruction of the Tree that makes it "pregnant" with further creation.

Only as the Tree of Life do the opposed male upperworld and female underworld appear in a unified form, the ambivalent bisexual divinity, the total godhead. In a plea for prosperity, the Barito peoples stage ritual fights or contests opposing the upperworld- and underworld-affiliated teams, and reenact the creation and fertilizing destruction of the Tree of Life.

Whereas the Barito groups' living Tree of Life is the coryline plant, sawang, among the Kayan, Kenyah, and some Melawi groups it is the figtree, lunuk or baringin. The Kenyah belawing festival pole shows a carved jar, gong, or dragon, and buffalo horns at its bottom, and a hornbill, a wind-propeller, and sometimes a godly face at its top. In the middle there is an ambiguous motif of daggers and horns. The Barito groups' sengkaran funeral post also features a jar and dragon at the bottom and a hornbill at the top, and a set of daggers and spears is placed, again ambiguously, on the dragon's back.

Whenever the Ngaju assemble a male upperworld and a female underworld elements, they form a Tree of Life representing the cosmic Whole. So is it with the mast and sail, spear and cloth, and flagpole and pennant. The Benua' shaman's bamboo pole and cloth, or a coffin carved with the female dragon, and containing male remains, are the Tree of Life, as is a man covered with a complete set of tatoos.

The tranvestite priest, as well as ambivalent representations like a scaly hornbill, are also the Tree of Life. The Benua' funeral batur nisan, a central stake surrounded by concentric wooden frames, and Malay carved roof finials all over the island are strongly reminiscent of the linga-yoni representation of the divine totality.

Bornean arts: The dragon and the underworld, The Tomb-Womb-Jar, The hornbill and the upperworld, The tree of life, The squatting slave and other anthropomorphs, The old tiger, The spirit ship, Plant and geometric motifs.