BOOKS.

THE PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO.* THE minute specialism of to-day almost necessitates in any scientific work some measure of co-operation. The book before us is clear evidence of its value. We have from Dr. Charles Hose the results of a quarter of a century's intimate study of and sympathetic companionship with the people of the interior of Borneo, where be was Resident Magistrate. As his chief collaborator is careful to point out, the main honours of the book must fall to Dr. Hose, but, by a happy conjunction, this collaborator is the Oxford Reader in Mental Philosophy, Mr. William McDougall, one of the first of our psychologists.

Mr. McDougall went out in 1897 as a member of the Cam- bridge Anthropological Expedition under Dr. A. C. Haddon,

and in 1899, with Drs. Hose, Myers, Seligmann, and others, they visited Sarawak. Dr. Haddon has contributed not only an appendix on the physical characters of the Borneo tribes, but,

with his accustomed generosity, has helped to see the book through the press and given constant encouragement.

To all anthropologists Dr. Hose and Mr. McDougall. in co-operation, are known by an invaluable paper on "The

Relations between Men and Animals in Sarawak," which appeared in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute for 1901. This paper we are glad to find reappearing, with of course substantial additions, as chapter xv. of the second volume, under the title "Animistic Beliefs Connected with Animals and Plants." The joint authors are both, as becomes

men of wide and detailed experience, very cautious and sparing of theory, but in the matter of animism and animals they do allow themselves a slight excursus into conjecture, and even set foot on the quaking bog of totemism.

With guides so safe we will venture in their wake, the more so as the relations of certain tribes of Borneo, notably the Kenyahs, to animals can be closely paralleled by the practices of Greeks and Romans. So close, indeed, and instructive to the classical scholar are these parallels that at this point we will make our one complaint. Why was not some classical scholar enlisted to

give evidence from his side P In a book of the most careful and exhaustive specialism it is odd to find as the only source of information "some passages from Dr. Smith's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities referring to the practice of the Romans."

We all owe much to Dr. Smith, but we do not go to him now, after our school-days, for classical lore. With two Universities at their back, the authors might surely have tapped springs of more living water. What is a University if not a federation of specialists for mutual help and support ?

Take the case of the omen-birds. It is interesting to be told (ii. 87) that the Ibans have made, from the substantive butong (a bird) a verb, namely, bebutong (to bird), i.e., to take omens of any kind, whether from bird or beast. Aristophanes would have been at home among the Ibans, but of the Birds

of Aristophanes there is no mention.

"An ox or an ass that may happen to pass, A voice in the street or a slave that you meet, A name or a word by chance overheard, If you deem it an omen you call it a bird."

Ar., Ayes, 719 (trans. Rogers), Hesiod, too, might have dwelt in Sarawak. What is for him the whole duty of man? He sums it up at the end of the Works and Days (v. 825) :— "Lucky and blessed is he who, knowing all these things, Toils in the fields, blameless before the Immortals, Knowing in birds and not overstepping tabus."

The Boeotian farmer must watch the "House Carrier," the "soaring spider," the Wise One (the ant), but most of all the magical birds, crane and swallow and cuckoo, to know when he should plough or prune his vines. "It was from Jupiter mainly that the future was learnt," says, we are told, Dr. Smith, "and the birds were his messengers " ; but what about Pious, wood- pecker and king, with his " godsent bird" appearing on a • The Pagan Tribes of Borneo. By Merles Hose, D.Sc., and William McDougall, MB., F.H.B. With an Appendix by A. C. Haddon, D.Sc., F.H.B. $ vole. London: Macmillan and Co. 1_452.] wooden pillar; what about the oracular doves of Dodona whom Zeus displaced ? What about the ancient bird-goddess Orthia

at Sparta?

The classical scholar can, of course, supply the deficiencies of Dr. Smith ; the fear is that he will never read the works of Dr. Hose and Mr. McDougall. We pass to the question: Are these close relations with animals, whether with omen- birds or sacrificial pigs, survivals of a previous totemistic state? The authors think not, and their negative attitude comes as something of a shock, and perhaps a wholesome one.

"If an Iban kills an omen-bird by mistake he wraps it in a piece of cloth and buries it carefully in the earth, and with it he buries rice and flesh and money, entreating it not to be vexed and to forgive him because it was all an accident."

The Greeks of the island of Seriphos would not eat a lobster, so 2E1ian tells us, for they accounted them sacred. If they found one dead they would bury it and lament for it. Yet neither lobsters nor omen-birds are necessarily totems. They do not imply a totemistic organization of society. But—and this is the interesting point—they are indications of the state of mind out of which totemism may, but need not necessarily, arise.

The Ibans have an institution known as the Ngarong, or Secret Helper. So sacred and secret is the Ngarong that one of the explorers lived fourteen years with the Ibans without ever hearing of its existence. A man has a dream, in which it is announced to him that a spirit will become his special protector. Sometimes it is also announced what form the spirit will appear in—it may be a bright stone or it may be a gibbon. After his Ngarong is established by a second dream as, e.g., a gibbon, naturally the man will not as a rule kill the beast, but under pressure be may do it after apology. A native, whose grandfather's Ngarong was a gibbon, was ordered by a white man to shoot one. He addressed it thus: "I don't want to kill you, but the Tuan who is giving me wages expects me to, and the blame is his. But if you are really the Ngarong of my grandfather, make the shot miss you." Here the Ngarong, though nowise a god, and expected

to listen to reason, was on the way to become a sort of family spirit, whose cult was observed by descendants. In a word,

the writers hold that the totemistic tendency starts with individualism and may end in collectivism. Collectivism is rampant just now, and is used as a key to open perhaps too many locks. Anyhow, the opinion of two such competent

observers must give collectivism pause.

Space forbids our discussion of countless points of detail The book deals not only with religious beliefs, but with the whole family and social conditions of the Borneo tribes, their ethnology, their handicrafts, agriculture, life on the rivers, life in the jungle, the nomad life of certain tribes, and their practices in war. To those—and they are many —to whom the Borneo tribes are chiefly known as "Head- hunters," the whole account will come as a revelation.

TheseHead-hunters are not a barbarous race of savages; they are an orderly, temperate, and in many respects highly

civilized and gentle people. They are notably kind to their children, and punishments are almost unknown. In extreme cases of disobedience a child's ear may be tweaked, while it is asked if it is deaf. If the child's behaviour has been offensive to persons outside his own family, be may be haled before the chief and, very properly, the delinquent's father

is fined.

"But in the main the Spencerian method of training is fol- lowed. A parent warns his child of the ill-effects that may be expected from the line of behaviour he is taking, and when those effects are realized he says, Well, what did I tell you?' and adds a grunt of withering contempt."

How high their moral sense is, is shown by the saw often quoted to children, "Better white bones than white eyes," which means "Death is preferable to shame."

Over two hundred fine phototype plates, besides numerous figures in the text, bring the whole life of the people vividly before the reader. They are a race of quite remarkable physical beauty, without any of the grossness of development that often disfigures native races. The group in plate 169 of two Kayans Wrestling' would be hard to beat even in Greek sculpture, and the 'Iban Woman Weaving,' in plate 121, is a thing of sheer loveliness. So is the 'Than Woman with the Spinning Wheel,' of plate 119.

In plate 61 we have the record of a strange custom. At their great harvest festival the Kayan women often dress themselves as men. In like fashion, at the Greek festival of the Hybristika, the women wore men's clothes, and the Roman matrons dressed themselves as men when they sacrificed to the deity of fertility, Mutinus Tutinus. Women are usually of importance in early agricultural rites. We recall the -Greek rites of the Thesmophoria, at which no man might be present. The Kayan women select and keep the seed grain, and women alone are allowed to gather the first ears of the crop. They sometimes sleep on the padi fields while the crop is growing, but as to the why of this custom they are, to their male inquirers, naturally reticent.

The seed grain is naturally of supreme sanctity. The women carefully select enough for next season's sowing, and with this is mixed a small quantity of the seed grain of the previous seasons, which has been kept in a special basket from good harvests of past years. The basket is never emptied; always a pinch of the old padi is mixed with the new, and then a handful of the mixture added to the old stock.

"The idea seems to be that the old grain, preserving continuity generation after generation with the original pcnE of mythical origin, ensures the presence in the grain of the soul or spirit or vital principle of padi. While mixing the old with the new seed grain the woman calls on the soul of the padi to cause the seed to be fruitful and to favour her own fertility. For the whole festival is a celebration or cult of the principle of fertility or vitality—that of the women no less than that of the Tacit. Sterile women who desire children will sleep upon the freshly gathered ears in the huts in the fields."

The elaborate care of the seed corn reminds us of Mr. Warde Fowler's recent and most valuable interpretation of the Latin ceremonial Mundus patet. He suggests that the mysterious Roman mundus was primarily nothing but the storehouse in which the seed corn of the next sowing was for better security stored apart from the rest of the harvest. He further suggests that in the sanctity of the seed corn we have the real explanation of the reverence paid to a special harvest sheaf to this day and its further development into various semi-humanized shapes as Corn Mother or Corn Baby. The primitive sanctity is here, as so often in its final analysis, only the emotion that con- centrates round a practical utility ; the supreme revelation made to the initiates at Eleusis was, we remember, "an ear of corn reaped."

We have only noted a few of the countless suggestions to which the ceremonials of the Borneo tribes give rise. The book is a mine of information, and, owing to ita beautiful illustra- tions, a veritable treasure-house of delight.