over the scene, the Sea of Sand resumes its ordinary aspect of loneliness and
desolation.
THE DYAKS OF BORNEO.It is not certain that the Dyaks possess any religion. Temminck asserts that they
have, and that it bears a close resemblance to “fetichism.” The god Djath, he
says, rules the sublunar world, and the god Sangjang presides over hell. These
gods wear the human form, but are invisible; the Dyaks invoke them by
sprinkling rice on the ground, and offering various sacrifices. In the houses of
the Dyaks, adds Temminck, wooden idols are frequently met with.
Other travellers are of opinion that they profess a kind of Pantheism, and
represent them as believing, like the ancient Greeks, in a multitude of gods, gods
above and gods below the world, as well as innumerable good and evil spirits, of
whom Budjang-Brani is undoubtedly the most wicked. All diseases are caused
by the agency of evil demons, and all misfortunes; and therefore the Dyaks make
vigorous efforts to drive them away by shouts, and shrieks, and the discordant
gong. So in some of the West Indian islands the natives, during an eclipse,
would seek, by a horrible clamour, to frighten away the monster they supposed
to be devouring the moon.
Some authorities go so far as to represent the Dyaks as cherishing vague ideas of
the Unity of the Godhead and the immortality of the soul.
Madame Ida Pfeiffer was by no means a philosophical traveller, but she was an
honest observer; and as the result of her explorations in Borneo, she positively
affirms that among the tribes she visited are neither temples nor idols, priests nor
sacrifices. On the occasions of their births, marriages and funerals they perform
certain ceremonies, but these appear to be devoid of all religious character.
Usually on such occasions they kill fowls as well as hogs. When concluding
treaties of peace they always slaughter swine, but they do not eat them, and in
this custom we may trace perhaps the propitiatory idea. A few tribes burn their
dead, and preserve the ashes in hollow trees; others inter them in the least
accessible localities, such as the summits of lofty mountains; others bind the
corpse to the trunk of a tree in the position in which S. Peter was crucified, that
is, with the feet upwards and the head downwards.