The natives of Sarawak
E. Banks, drawing on fifteen years of direct contact with native communities across Sarawak, published this ethnographic essay in 1940 arguing that the seemingly disparate peoples of the territory are in fact the end products of successive cultural and religious invasions—Hindu-Pallava, Islamic, and Kayan-Kenyah—impinging on a single common aboriginal stock he terms the Kalamantans. The article is a synthetic, impressionistic account that privileges linguistic, dietary, and ceremonial evidence over craniometric or blood-group data to reconstruct a deep prehistory of Borneo’s interior and coastal peoples.
Summary
Banks’ central argument is that the heterogeneity of Sarawak’s native populations is a historical accident rather than a natural given. He identifies a common aboriginal substrate—characterized by sago dependence, a shared linguistic core, and a distinctive healing ceremony complex (berbayoh and berayun)—that once extended across the island. This stock was subsequently modified by three successive waves of external influence: a remote Hindu-Pallava invasion (sixth or seventh century, via Java) that left its mark on the Land Dayaks of western Sarawak; a later Islamic imposition from Brunei that transformed the coastal Milanos into what appears to be a Malay population; and a warlike pagan invasion by Kayan and Kenyah rice cultivators from eastern Borneo who fought, exterminated, and then amalgamated with the upcountry aboriginals. The Muruts and Kelabits of the highlands are presented as the least contaminated survivors of the original stock, having retreated to sago-less altitudes where no subsequent invader followed.
The article is structured around three lines of evidence. First, dietary: sago preparation methods (boiling, frying, baking into linut or boyut, the Punan’s brittle biscuit-like mass) persist across tribes that are otherwise linguistically and culturally divergent. Second, linguistic: Banks cites specific cognate pairs between Land Dayak (Sadong) and Milano (Mukah) dialects—mudip/tidup (alive), ramin/lamin (house), keping/beling (ear), betiha/petai (pregnant)—and estimates at least ten per cent lexical similarity excluding Malay loan words, despite the two groups being two to three hundred miles apart with no trade or political connection. Third, ceremonial: the berayun healing rite, involving a rotan swing, a spirit-snare, and the rabong (sickness boat) into which evil spirits are decoyed with food and drink before being drifted away, is documented among Milanos and, to Banks’ astonishment, observed in near-identical form among Lara and Slakau Land Dayaks at Lundu, where the boat was a model hauled along a rotan stretched between house posts.
Banks closes by noting that the arrival of Christianity and the European constitutes a fourth invasion whose effects are still too recent to assess, and observes that the Sea Dayak, an energetic but culturally thin proto-Malay arrival, has been prevented by the European presence from leaving its own mark on the aboriginal stock, instead copying both European and aboriginal attributes.
Key Findings
- Linguistic similarity between Land Dayak (Sadong) and Milano (Mukah) dialects is estimated at a minimum of 10 per cent when common Malay loan words are excluded, with specific cognates cited for terms such as “alive,” “house,” “boat,” “cat,” “ear,” “eat,” “hate,” “name,” “pregnant,” “quick,” and “walk” (pp. 49–50).
- Pallava-era Hindu relics—a large square sandstone Yoni with a socket for a lingam, an elephant-headed Ganesa, and a crouching stone bull (Nandi)—were found at Bukit Berhala on the Samarahan River and are preserved in the Sarawak Museum; they are directly comparable to Indian relics of the early Pallava regime (p. 51).
- Cremation of the dead, described as unique in Borneo, was once common among Land Dayaks and is still practised for important persons among the Singghi, Slakau, and Lara tribes (pp. 51–52).
- Milano long houses accommodating forty to fifty families for collective defence still existed at Matu and above Dalat at the time of writing; the blowpipe, once a common weapon among these people, survived only as a toy used by witch-doctors (p. 52).
- The berayun ceremony, including the rotan swing, spirit-snare, and rabong (sickness boat), was witnessed by Banks among both Milano and Lara/Slakau Land Dayak communities; among the Slakau at the foot of Mt. Poi, the boat was a model slid along a rotan between house posts (pp. 50–51).
- The Punans are characterized as “arch-escapists,” descendants of tribes who abandoned the attempt to copy Kayan-Kenyah rice-cultivation and house-building and retreated into the jungle as nomadic sago-gatherers, having consumed all local sago palms in settled areas (p. 53).
Conclusion
Banks’ definitive takeaway is that the ethnic diversity of Sarawak is not a natural or primordial condition but the accumulated result of layered cultural impositions on a single aboriginal people. Each successive invasion—Hindu, Islamic, Kayan-Kenyah, and now European—has modified the original stock in different regions, producing populations that are now barely recognizable as kin, yet whose shared sago economy, residual linguistic cognates, and common healing rites betray their common descent.
Context
- Banks writes from the position of a long-serving colonial administrator in Sarawak (fifteen years’ residence), and the article reflects the typological and racial framing characteristic of early twentieth-century colonial ethnography, treating “aboriginal” and “invader” as fixed categories.
- The study draws on no named archival collection; its evidential basis is entirely Banks’ own field observation, supplemented by reference to objects in the Sarawak Museum. Its historiographical contribution lies in proposing a unified aboriginal substrate for Borneo’s interior peoples at a time when such populations were typically treated as discrete, unrelated groups.