Dyak ceremonies in pregnancy and child-birth
Rev. William Howell, a missionary working among the Iban (Dyak) people of Borneo, published this ethnographic account in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1906. The article documents the elaborate system of taboos, rituals, and spiritual beliefs that governed pregnancy, delivery, and early infancy in Dyak society, presenting it as a coherent symbolic framework in which nearly every domestic action carried potential consequences for the unborn or newborn child.
Summary
Howell’s central contribution is a systematic catalogue of the Dyak taboo system as it applied to the perinatal period. The restrictions bind both husband and wife and extend across the full arc from conception through the child’s first teeth. The underlying logic is one of symbolic analogy: an action performed in the domestic sphere is believed to produce a corresponding physical effect in the mother or child. Cutting a creeper over water risks haemorrhage; breaking an egg risks blindness; burning ficus wood risks muteness. What makes the system particularly interesting to Howell is not merely its breadth but its internal flexibility—nearly every prohibition has a prescribed circumvention that nullifies the danger without requiring the act to be abandoned entirely.
The article moves from the taboo system to the practical realities of delivery and the puerperium. Howell records that midwives applied physical force rather than allowing nature its course, that the mother was prohibited from sleeping or drinking water for twenty-four hours, and that ground ginger was applied to the abdomen for up to a month. He preserves an origin myth explaining how midwifery knowledge first entered Dyak society: a man named Kelili Badak Resa observed an orang-utan assisting its mate with ginger and bandages, and thereafter applied the same technique to his own wife’s delivery.
The most ritually elaborate sequence is the first bathing ceremony (nganjong mandi), which Howell describes in considerable detail, including the role of a maiden, the fowl sacrifice, the spear or weaving implement, and the application of various substances to the infant’s body. He also records the house or village taboo observed during the puerperium, in which the dwelling was marked to deny entry to strangers until the umbilical cord had fallen, with a fine of a full-grown pig for trespass.
Key Findings
- The taboo system encompasses at least twenty distinct prohibitions on the husband (cutting creepers, damming streams, plaiting rattan, driving nails, pouring oil, fixing a parang, breaking eggs, planting bananas, burning ficus wood, killing animals, scraping coconut shells, introducing turtles, dyeing black) and a comparable set on the wife (eating in a mosquito curtain, carrying stones, concealing objects, casting stones into water, bending wood into a circle, hanging a scar).
- Each prohibition carries a specific circumvention: for example, a man who kills an animal may nullify the taboo by running away, returning minutes later, and aloud asking “I wonder who killed this animal?”; a nail driven partially and withdrawn before full insertion breaks no law.
- The origin of Dyak midwifery is attributed to Kelili Badak Resa, who observed an orang-utan (maias) using ginger (lia) and bandages to assist its mate, and who named his son Maling with the title Panting Bunga Mengala.
- The mother is forbidden to sleep or drink water for twenty-four hours postpartum; ground ginger is applied to the abdomen and changed once or twice daily for approximately one month.
- The house or village taboo during the puerperium required that no stranger enter until the umbilical cord had fallen (typically five to seven days); a trespasser was liable to a fine of a full-grown pig, a penalty Howell himself paid on one occasion.
- In the nganjong mandi ceremony, a fowl wing is tied with red thread to a spear (for a male child) or to a leletan (weaving implement, for a female child); the infant’s lips are besmeared with bugs, it is made to suck the tail of a Kli fish, and sparrows’ eggs are dashed on its head.
Conclusion
Howell presents the Dyak perinatal ritual system as a densely interlocking web of symbolic correspondences in which the domestic environment is saturated with potential spiritual danger, and in which the community’s collective vigilance—enforced through fines and social pressure—serves as the primary mechanism of protection for mother and child. His account, while framed by a missionary’s occasional moral commentary, provides one of the most detailed early records of Iban ritual life in the perinatal sphere.
Context
- Howell was an active missionary (Rev.) working at a station in the Iban region of Borneo; his account is that of a colonial-era religious observer documenting indigenous practices, and the article contains at least one anecdote in which he asserts Christian doctrine over Dyak belief (the case of the baptized family whose house was tabooed).
- The article draws on direct observation and personal experience rather than archival sources; its value lies in the specificity of the ritual details recorded at a moment when such practices were still in active use.