The contents of a Dyak medicine chest
C. Hose, writing in 1903, documents a first-hand ethnographic encounter with a Sea-Dyak Manang (spiritual healer) named Dasu in the upper Saribas River, cataloguing the contents and ritual uses of his Lupong (medicine chest) as a means of comparing indigenous Bornean spiritual beliefs with Malay Pawang and Bomom practices. The article is a compact field note arising from a single evening’s interview in the longhouse of Tuai Brok at Kundong village, conducted with the assistance of Rev. William Howell, a noted authority on Sea-Dyak language and custom (pp. 65–66).
Summary
Hose frames the encounter within a broader comparative-religious project: he wished to understand how the original spiritual beliefs of Bornean peoples related to the animist underpinnings of Malay Islam, and how the Manang’s curative methods compared with those of his Malay counterparts (p. 65). The narrative is shaped by the social dynamics of the interview itself. Dasu, a Manang with a large local practice, was initially reticent—partly because Howell’s Christian teaching had undermined the profession’s authority in the area, and partly because Dasu suspected Hose intended to seize his materia medica (p. 66). Only after repeated assurances and the intervention of the longhouse elders did Dasu consent to display his Lupong, an open-mouthed bamboo basket hung by a strip of bark (p. 67).
The core of the article is a sequential description of six principal charms, each identified by its Dyak name, physical description, and stated therapeutic or diagnostic function. The items range from a transparent water-worn stone (Batu bintang) regarded as the Manang’s badge of authority, to a six-sided crystal (Batu ilau) used as a scrying stone to locate a sick person’s wandering soul or the demon causing illness (pp. 67–69). Hose notes the absence of one highly prized item—the Batu burung endan (Pelican stone), which would have secured safe passage to the spirit world (Selayan)—and records Dasu’s expressed wish to obtain it (pp. 69–70). The article closes with Hose’s candid observation that Dasu appeared not to fully believe his own account of the tortoise-spirit vision that had initiated his career, and that he seemed relieved to recover his possessions (p. 70).
Key Findings
- The Lupong was an open-mouthed basket of thin bamboo shavings, hung by a strip of bark; its contents were tied in a cloth bag, with the most prized items further enclosed in secondary containers (a second cloth, a small bamboo box with lid, or a match-box) (p. 67).
- Batu bintang (Star-stone): a small transparent, water-rounded stone, almost spherical with a rough surface; Dasu claimed it was given to him by his guardian-spirit (appearing as a tortoise) in a dream while he was working as a cooly in Upper Sarawak, and that it marked his initiation into the Manang office (p. 68).
- Batu krat ikan sembilan (Petrified section of the Sembilan fish): an oblong stone approximately 2 inches long, 1 inch broad, and ½ inch thick in the middle, tapering to ⅛ inch at the edges, with a large oval perforation through the thick part; used by soaking in water, which is then drunk or rubbed on the affected part (p. 68).
- Batu lintar (Thunder-bolt): a small dark stone about 1½ inches long, ¼ inch thick at the base, tapering to 1/16 inch at the point, curved and highly polished, resembling a very small rhinoceros horn; pressed firmly against the body wherever pain is felt. Hose identifies it as the same stone type used for stone implements found in the Malay Peninsula (pp. 68–69).
- Batu nitar (another name for Thunder-bolt): a minute four-sided crystal, half an inch long and about two lines thick; a charm reserved for extreme cases—dipped in water and shaken over the patient, whose start at the falling drops was taken as a sign of recovery, absence of start as a sign of death (p. 69).
- Batu ilau (Sparkling stone / Batu kras): a six-sided crystal, 2 inches long and ¾ inch thick, one end covered with malau (lac) where it had formerly been fitted into a handle; the indispensable scrying stone for viewing the future, the distant, or the invisible, and specifically for locating a sick person’s errant soul or the causative demon (p. 69).
Conclusion
Hose’s definitive takeaway is ethnographic rather than evaluative: the value of the account lies in having a set of charms “actually in use exhibited and explained by their owner,” as opposed to the several similar collections previously given to him by Manangs who had converted to Christianity (p. 70). His closing observation—that Dasu seemed not to believe his own origin story and was visibly relieved to recover his possessions—introduces a note of scepticism about the sincerity of the practitioner’s own spiritual claims, while the article as a whole serves as a comparative datum for understanding the structural parallels between Bornean animist healing and Malay Pawang practice.
Context
- Hose was Bishop of Sarawak and a long-standing colonial administrator and ethnographer; the article is written from the perspective of a European observer with established access to indigenous communities, and his comparative framework (Bornean animism vs. Malay Islam) reflects the intellectual preoccupations of late-Victorian colonial scholarship (p. 65).
- The primary source is Hose’s own field observation, supplemented by the linguistic and cultural expertise of Rev. William Howell, co-author of A Dictionary of the Sea-Dyak Language (p. 65).