The tiger in Borneo
A.H. Everett’s note examines the absence of the tiger from Borneo’s fauna, presenting both a widespread indigenous tradition of the animal’s presence and a physical specimen—a tiger’s skull preserved among the Singgi Dyaks of Sarawak.
Summary
Everett considers two hypothetical explanations for the tiger’s absence from Borneo: Wallace’s suggestion of former presence and subsequent extinction, or a more recent southward range extension that was blocked by the submergence of the land bridge between the Malay Peninsula and Borneo (p. 158). He then documents a tradition of large tigers (harimau) among several distinct tribes of the North-West Coast, including the Land Dyaks of Serimbo, the Balan Dyaks of the Semunjan river, and the Muruts of the Linbang and Padas rivers, all of whom described the animals as inhabiting caves (pp. 158–159).
The central evidence is a tiger’s skull found in a head-house (pangah) at Singgi, measuring 13⅓ inches long by 9⅓ inches across the jugal arches, preserved in an ancient camphor-wood dish and treated with extreme veneration by the Dyaks, who attributed supernatural consequences to its disturbance (p. 159). Everett argues that if the skull were proven fossil, it would support Wallace’s extinction hypothesis; alternatively, it may have been imported from Java during the period of Majapahit influence and made an heirloom, with the tribal traditions deriving from reports of tigers seen in Java or the Peninsula, or from the original Malayan colonists (p. 160). He adds a postscript noting that Burns recorded the Kayans of the Rejang river as having a proper name for the tiger and insisting on its existence in the interior (p. 160).