Rejang baskets from Sarawak
J.C. Swayne’s 1933 article in the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society provides a detailed ethnographic account of Rejang baskets (bakan or tepoko) produced by the Seduan and Kenauit peoples of the Rejang River in Sarawak. Writing in the context of early twentieth-century colonial museum collecting, Swayne documents the full production cycle—from raw material preparation through weaving to finishing—and, more significantly, catalogues the named geometric patterns and their indigenous meanings, arguing against the prevailing assumption that such symbolism had been lost to time.
Summary
The article addresses a gap in the published record of Kelamantan basketry by combining technical description with a systematic catalogue of pattern names and their semantic content. Swayne begins by establishing that while the Rejang basket is the standard household form across all Kelamantan tribes, the name is reserved specifically for the products of the Seduan and Kenauit peoples, whose work has been exported for many years and is well known beyond Sarawak. He then traces the entire manufacturing process: the collection of bemban (sitah) and various rotans by men, the multi-stage preparation of wefts (soaking, splitting, pith removal in four distinct operations, and dyeing with dragon’s blood or tar), and the weaving itself, which proceeds from the bottom upward on a mould constructed from an old rotan basket reinforced with split bamboo and sago palm spathe.
The more original contribution of the piece is its treatment of pattern semantics. Swayne explicitly challenges Dr. Otis Mason’s suggestion that time has obliterated all symbolic content in Malayan basketry, pointing instead to the work of Mr. Woolley published in an earlier volume of the same journal as evidence that meaning persists. He provides a complete catalogue of pattern names for one illustrated basket, reading from top to bottom, and then lists the principal pattern for each of the remaining illustrated examples. The names draw on a wide range of referents—fish, bird ticks, bamboo shoots, rotan fishing hooks, pillar tombs, belt toggles, and even a grass used for tying bundles—suggesting a rich associative vocabulary embedded in the craft.
Swayne closes with a brief comparative observation, noting the similarity in weave and pattern between Rejang baskets and those made in British Guiana and by the Chetamacki Indians of Louisiana, though he does not develop this point further.
Key Findings
- Average basket dimensions: 8 inches diameter at the bottom, 12 inches at the top, 8 inches in height (p. 182, n. 5).
- The red dye is dragon’s blood (jernang) obtained from the fruit of a rotan; the black dye is tar purchased from Chinese traders (p. 181).
- Pith removal from bemban wefts involves four sequential operations: asid (cutting over a knife edge), tuep (second scraping with a notched blade), mamoh (pulling remaining fibres with the teeth), and trah (running a blade at right angles over the weft) (pp. 181–182).
- The Seduan and Kenauit differ in weaving hand: the Seduan picks up the upper weft (matup) with the right hand and places the lower weft (irah) with the right, while the Kenauit does the reverse, causing bands of colour to run in opposite directions (p. 182).
- A complete pattern catalogue for one basket includes, among others: Benaro dua (twilled twos, named after a tying grass), Ningir Kli (feeler of a mud-fish), Blaut (a fish or an inferior spirit-world member), Robong (bamboo sprout), and Benaro telau (twilled threes) (p. 183).
- Most of the illustrated baskets are held in the Cambridge Museum of Ethnology (p. 189).
Conclusion
Swayne’s definitive takeaway is that the geometric patterns on Rejang baskets are not merely decorative but carry specific, nameable meanings drawn from the natural and spiritual world of the Kelamantan peoples, and that this symbolic layer remains accessible to ethnographic documentation. By providing a systematic catalogue of pattern names and their referents, he establishes a baseline for future comparative work and refutes the then-current assumption of symbolic loss.
Context
- Swayne was almost certainly a colonial administrative or museum official in Sarawak; the article reads as a field report compiled for a learned society audience, and the material described was collected for institutional collections (the Sarawak Museum and Cambridge Museum of Ethnology).
- The article sits within the broader early-twentieth-century project of documenting “vanishing” indigenous crafts for colonial museums, and its comparative aside on Guiana and Louisiana basketry reflects the era’s interest in transoceanic cultural parallels.