Birds and deities in Borneo

Abstract

From the earliest days of contact, Western observers have been struck by the deep significance of birds in Bornean religions. Birds are a well nigh universal feature of religious symbolism, but in Borneo systems of augury are found that are unparalleled in their complexity and in the compelling nature of the omens taken from them. Not only the domain of ritual, but also economic activity, social organisation, even warfare, are in part regulated by them. For those with a classical education, Roman and Greek comparisons immediately suggested themselves. Hose, who wrote extensively about his experiences as an officer of the Brooke regime in Sarawak, tells us that after watching a Kenyah chief call an omen bird he felt as though I had just lived through a book of the Aeneid (Hose and McDougall 1912, vol. II: 54). The classical scholar W. Warde Fowler, having stumbled onto Hose's account, developed the comparison further (1920). Despite this early interest, accounts of particular systems of augury are almost entirely lacking, with the exception of Dr. Freeman's pioneer work among the Iban of Western Borneo. The first aim of this paper is to describe another system, that of the Berawan1 of Central North

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