Natives Borneo

T iwah ritual is a procession that‘s intended to provide ancestral spirits of relatives who has passed away towards the afterlife by means of cleanse and move the rest of the body from the grave to some place called Sandung. Tiwah, Death Rituals of Dayak Ngaju Tiwah ritual is unique and distinctive ritual, since it is only done by the Dayak Ngaju of Central Borneo. Tiwah is the last degree of death rituals of Dayaks in Central Borneo especially for Kaharingan religion as the religion of the Dayak ancestors. Tiwah is a funeral ceremony, usually held on somebody who has been dead and buried quite a while until the remains of his body were expected merely a bone. Ritual tiwah aims to straightening the trip from the spirit or soul concerned into Lewu Tatau Dia Rumpang Tilang Isen Raja Kamalesu Uhat ( Heaven ) in order to reside in peace and peace in the strength of nature. Additionally, tiwah also intended like a procession to release Rutas or bad luck to the family from the...

O nce upon a time, Sempung’s daughter from his first wife Nyai Nunyang, the head of the village Tanjung Pamatang Sawang, who is Nyai Undang , made a problem because of her beauty. Many came to propose her, while she was already engaged to her other cousin Sangalang ( Lintung’s son, grandson of Karangkang ). Illustration of Battle of Bataguh Nawang, brother of the King of  Sulu - Mindanao ( Phillipines ) came to propose. He acted foolishly even though she already refused kindly. Because she was angry for being mistreated, Nyai Undang then stabbed Nawang with her Duhung ( Dayak traditional spearhead ). Nawang’s death soon heard by his brother Sawang, and he intended to avenge the death of his brother. He prepared twenty-five pencalang ( a kind of sailboat ) with eight thousand troops on it. Nyai Nunyang fell sick and died because of this incident. Nyai Undang then had to take over the leadership of her country Tanjung Pamatang Sawang. Realizing the condition, Nyai Undan...

T he history from the Iban is dedicated to memory and recorded inside a system of writing on boards (papan turai ) from the initiated shamans (lemambang ). Elaborate genealogies go to 15 generations or even more having a surprising degree of accuracy. Some genealogies are so long as 25 generations and can also still be connected with actual places and incidents. A genealogy (tusut ) normally begins with the foremost remote ancestor and it is a listing of who married and begat whom. Sometimes, the ancestors are characterised briefly descriptions. Other songs contain historical information also, for instance the pengap, a ritual chant sung during each major festival, that recounts deities and also the deeds from the ancestors. According to oral histories, the Iban arrived in western Sarawak from Indonesia about 1675. After an initial phase of colonising and settling the river valleys, displacing or absorbing the local populations of Bukitans and Serus, a phase of internecine warfar...

T he indigenous languages of Borneo is divided into ten subgroups (Hudson 1978). The Malayic subgroup includes Iban and Malay. The diversity and relative archaism from the Malayic languages spoken in West Borneo suggest the Malayic homeland may have been in this region. The Tamanic languages are close enough to the South Sulawesi languages to form a subgroup with these. They‘ve some striking phonological developments in common with Buginese, with which they appear to form a separate branch within the South Sulawesi language group. The Land Dayak languages have a couple of striking lexical and phonological similarities in common with Aslian languages. This means that Land Dayak originated as the results of a language shift from Aslian to Austronesian, or that both Land Dayak and Aslian have in common a source from an unknown third language. Malayic Dayak languages are section of the Malayic sub-family (including, among others, Malay, Minangkabau and Banjarese ), Tamanic languag...