Article

Melanus

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Melanus

The Milano (also rendered “Milanos”) are a people of Sarawak, Borneo, whose religious life has been documented primarily through the ethnographic work of Fr. Bernard Mulder and John Hewitt, published in 1911. [1] Their spiritual traditions, centred on the figure of the bayoh (a male or female practitioner who professes special power in the world of spirits), include two principal ceremonies: the Payun, a healing rite built around a rattan swing, and the Plato, a post-mortem communication with a departed spirit. [1] The Milanos have no indigenous medical practice of their own, and the Payun functions as a last resort for severe illness, its performance contingent upon the household’s ability to bear the considerable expense. [1]

The Payun: Healing and the Rattan Swing

The Payun—known to the Malays as Berayun—is an eight-day ceremony timed to the full moon, presided over by one or more bayoh who reside in the patient’s house for its full duration. [1, pp. 171–172] The room is decorated with coloured cloths, festoons of plaited palm leaves fashioned into bird shapes, and illuminated by a hundred tiny candles. [1, p. 172] The essential and only sacred element is the rattan swing; the accompanying accessories—the Rabu (a boat containing crew images), To Jien (a wooden figure serving as a chair), and naga (dragon) figures—are merely furniture, their inclusion depending on the wealth of the host. [1, p. 174]

The bayoh opens the ceremony by lubricating the swing with coconut oil and throwing yellow-dyed rice towards the four walls while chanting an incantation with a magic wand made from an areca palm inflorescence. [1, p. 174] The bayoh then mounts the swing, swinging rhythmically while gabbling incantations in the obsolete Milano language, and the patient follows, controlled by the bayoh pushing from behind. [1, pp. 174–175] A musical ensemble of five players—two large Tawak (drums), two smaller drums, and a set of Gelinang (Malay kromong)—plays continuously throughout. [1, p. 176] If the rattan snaps during the ceremony, this is interpreted as the presence of an angry spirit, and the patient invariably dies within a short time. [1, p. 176]

The Plato: Communication with the Departed

The Plato takes place days or weeks after a Milano death, prompted by a dream in which an aged friend learns that the departed spirit lacks some necessity of life. [1, p. 179] Two bayoh, their heads shrouded in cloth, sit side by side on a small mat and enact a journey along the river of death, paddling and commenting on the imagined scenery—swiftness of the current, overhanging trees, hidden rocks—until they reach the nether world. [1, p. 179] There they accost recognised departed souls, noting their conditions, before one of them announces that he has caught the lost spirit, which he places on the head of the nearest relative and secures with a piece of cloth. [1, p. 180] The bayoh then converses with the captured spirit and instructs the relative to deliver a sarong, cooking pot, or money to the grave, after which the spirit will rest in peace. [1, p. 180]

Research and Documentation

Mulder and Hewitt’s 1911 article in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society represents one of the few complete European descriptions of Milano religious ceremonies at the time. [1] Mulder, a Catholic missionary in Sarawak, drew on his personal attendance at “scores of Payuns,” while Hewitt, a British administrative officer, contributed observational detail. [1] The authors relied on Archdeacon Perham’s earlier account of Sea Dayak manangism as their comparative baseline, arguing that the bayoh and the manang are functionally equivalent figures whose shared ceremonial repertoire—swinging, soul-catching, spirit combat, and fire-display—likely descends from a common ancestral religion in Eastern Asia. [1, pp. 177–178] They noted that the Milanos had specialised in the direction of dakanism (the use of spirit figures), a practice scarcely known among Sea Dayaks, and that the two groups’ languages are quite distinct. [1, p. 178] The record is limited to these two ceremonies and does not extend to broader aspects of Milano social or political life.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. B. Mulder and J.Hewitt (1911). Two religious ceremonies in vogue among the Milanos of Sarawak JSBRAS 57: 171–181.