Article

Orang Belait

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Orang Belait

Geographic Distribution & Composition

The Orang Belait are a small indigenous community inhabiting the lower reaches of the Belait River in Brunei, near the boundary with Sarawak. The group numbers at most approximately 800 individuals and is understood to comprise two elements that have become fused: the Orang Belait proper, who claim descent from the original inhabitants, and the more numerous Orang Meting, whose origin lies in an expulsion from the Lemeting River, a tributary of the Tinjar and ultimately of the Baram River system in Sarawak, some 50 to 100 years before the 1938 account was written [1, p. 102]. The two groups have intermingled to such an extent that they identify themselves indiscriminately as Orang Belait, and the language spoken is that of the Orang Meting, which is described as somewhat akin to that of the Orang Miri adjacent [1, p. 102]. The Orang Meting retain the practice of preserving human heads, which are ceremonially laved periodically, a custom not shared by the Orang Belait proper [1, p. 102].

The Perakong Ceremony

The most extensively documented aspect of Orang Belait cultural life is the perakong ceremony, a pagan harvest festival of the berhantu (spirit-possession) type, held approximately once every four years to mark the successful completion of the rice harvest [1, p. 103]. Its purposes are to sacrifice to the spirits in order to placate them and to terminate the pantang (taboo) governing the consumption of newly harvested rice and the flesh of fowls, which persists from the commencement of harvesting until the ritual’s conclusion [1, p. 103].

The ceremony lasts two or more days and is performed in a special long-house constructed for the occasion, larger and different in plan from the customary dwelling, divided lengthways into a front assembly area and a rear section for women and domestic purposes [1, p. 103]. The central musical instrument, from which the ceremony takes its name, is a shaped board approximately six feet long, suspended horizontally from the roof beams about two feet above the floor, struck by two players each wielding a peeled rod some five feet long and one inch in diameter, producing a sharp, almost syncopated staccato tattoo [1, p. 104]. This is accompanied by a battery of eight gongs—five agong and three chanang—and a drum [1, p. 104]. The same tune is played without variation or intermission for nearly 48 hours in total [1, pp. 103].

The ritual centre features a swinging seat called atowi, suspended from the roof beams and padded to accommodate two persons, and a collection of exhibits called penjungun, comprising a length of cloth, a model house carved of wood resembling a Balinese house with upward-curling gables, and a large bunch of daun berhantu (spirit leaves), formed by peeling a rib of nipah into innumerable white shavings of paper-like texture [1, p. 103]. Surrounding these are brass trays bearing mounds of husked rice, eggs, bananas, areca nuts, and other offerings contributed by every family benefiting from the past harvest [1, p. 103].

A second-day construction of particular antiquity is the jong, a boat-shaped frame of green bamboo approximately 12 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 2 feet high at the centre, packed with about 2 pikuls of rice-flour packets (nyirek) and fitted with a massive carved crocodile head and tail of hardwood, described as being of some antiquity and handed down through the years for this purpose alone [1, p. 105]. Ornamental bamboo poles, 20 to 30 feet in length, serve as vantage points from which the hantu (spirits) are understood to observe the proceedings; they are pierced with innumerable holes into which are inserted ripe heads of padi, bananas, eggs, areca nuts, a bamboo phial of oil, a cooked sago-palm grub called embatar, and a scored fish called keli [1, p. 106].

The ceremony concludes with the dismantling of the perakong board, which is laid upon the ground, squatted upon by each performer in turn, then reversed and put away not to be touched until the next occasion, it being said that any unwarranted interference would provoke bad luck [1, p. 8]. The final act involves the sacrificial tasting of a plucked fowl on the jambatan, a small open-air extension of the house, which terminates the pantang of the new season’s rice and of fowl meat [1, p. 8].

Research and Documentation

The perakong ceremony was first recorded in European ethnographic literature by H. Hughes-Hallett, a Member of the Civil Service in Brunei, who published his first-hand account in 1938 in the journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society [1]. Hughes-Hallett was informed that he was the first European to have witnessed the performance [1, p. 102]. His account is framed by the administrative ethnography typical of the colonial period, drawing exclusively on direct observation and oral information from the Orang Belait themselves, with no archival or comparative literature cited [1]. The article’s central argument is that, despite the group’s small size and apparent cultural marginality, the extraordinary complexity and antiquity of the ceremony’s material culture indicate a tradition with deep roots in the Baram region of Sarawak, from which the Orang Meting component was expelled approximately 50 to 100 years earlier [1, p. 102].

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. T.D. Hughes (1938). An account of a berhantu ceremony called “perakong” by the Orang Belait of Brunei JMBRAS 16(1): 102–108.