Kalatong: the Murut treatment of chronic disease
Marcus C. Clarke, a colonial medical officer in North Borneo, published this ethnographic account of the Kalatong ceremony in 1954, documenting the most elaborate of Murut healing rituals for chronic disease. Writing from direct observation in the Keningau district, Clarke presents the ceremony as a comprehensive therapeutic system in which spiritual diagnosis, communal feasting, and blood-sacrifice are integrated into a single multi-day event.
Summary
Clarke situates the Kalatong within a broader Murut cosmology of disease causation, in which chronic ailments are attributed to specific classes of spirits—Mangkakayau (tree-dwelling), Pamayabaya (swamp-dwelling), and the witchcraft practice of sampal (cirrhosis). The article then moves to describe the hierarchy of practitioners: the Angangama, a diagnostician of either sex who uses river stones and prayer to identify the cause of illness but does not treat; and the Babalian, an exclusively female healer who has completed a two-year apprenticeship and is competent in both diagnosis and treatment through incantation (bacha-bacha), blood-sacrifice, and herbal medicine.
The bulk of the article is devoted to a detailed narrative of the Kalatong ceremony itself, which Clarke identifies as the “greatest of all the Murut berubat ceremonies” and an “all-out attempt to regain health” for conditions such as chronic haemoptysis or generalised oedema. The ceremony unfolds over several nights: an initial gathering of up to twenty babalian who recite prayers around the patient; a period of weeks during which the patient accumulates food stores and a pig is procured; a second, more intensive phase of three sleepless nights of recitation; and a climactic blood-sacrifice in which a special hereditary dagger is driven through a pig’s chest, the heart is divided, and the patient’s body is painted with a mixture of blood, rice tapai, and seven types of leaves. Clarke notes that the ceremony is enormously expensive and that its frequency is directly governed by harvest yields.
The article is grounded in Clarke’s personal observation and in conversations with local practitioners, including the Chief Health Inspector Mr. Sundang, who offered a dismissive interpretation of the bacha-bacha as “just like poetry: it doesn’t mean anything.” Clarke’s own attempt to have the incantations transcribed and translated into Malay proved unsuccessful, and he acknowledges that the formulae may contain “echoes of a language used in the past.”
Key Findings
- The Kalatong ceremony may involve as many as twenty babalian attending from neighbouring villages, with a total attendance of 100–150 people (p. 70).
- A pig is purchased at Keningau and carried back approximately sixty-five miles to the patient’s village (p. 70).
- The blood-sacrifice employs a special grooved dagger, about six inches long, handed down through generations and used for no other purpose; it is driven deep into the pig’s chest through the axilla (p. 71).
- The patient’s chest is painted with a mixture of pig’s blood, rice tapai (to which water has never been added), and seven different types of leaves tied together (p. 72).
- Post-ceremony dietary restrictions prohibit rice for one week and rice-based tapai for one month; potatoes, tapioca, and tapioca-based tapai are permitted (p. 72).
- With a good harvest, as many as two kalatong may be held in an area within a year; with less rice available, there may be only one in three years (p. 72).
Conclusion
Clarke’s definitive takeaway is that the Kalatong represents the apex of Murut therapeutic practice—a costly, communal, and ritually complex response to chronic illness that is calibrated to the economic realities of the household. The ceremony is not a fixed liturgy but a flexible institution, subject to “a great deal of modification in the hands of different practitioners” and to the practical constraints of food availability (p. 69).
Context
- Clarke held the qualification M.R.C.P. Edin. and was serving as a colonial medical officer in the Keningau district of North Borneo at the time of writing; his perspective is that of an outside observer with clinical training documenting indigenous practice.
- The article draws on direct field observation and informal interviews with local practitioners and medical staff rather than on a systematic archival or linguistic corpus.