ether dead or alive.

This account is, as far as I know, purely Bornean, inasmuch as had there
been any admixture from a foreign source (as we shall see further on was
probably the case with the Dyaks) there would have been possibly some
reference to a Supreme Creator rather than to this union of a vine and a
tree as the original source of life. The Kayans from whom I obtained
this account have had exceedingly little communication with the outside
world, except through occasional Malay or Chinese traders. There is just
a possibility that the idea of the wooden sword-handle being the
ultimate _fons et origo_ of all life comes from the fact that the word
for chief--"penghulu"--is derived from "hulu," meaning a sword-handle,
and the prefix "peng" denoting agency, so that the whole word means
literally "the master of the sword," and thus the ruler or chief. From
association of ideas, the sword-handle, without which the blade is
ineffective and useless, may have been suggested to them as the chief
of all beings. The sudden appearance of Ajai Avai on the scene as the
husband of Katirah Murai, is not at all at variance with the accounts
from many other sources of the populating of the world. In Laki Oi, we
recognize the Kayan "Prometheus," whose memory is revered by sanctifying
the fire procured after his manner of teaching, and from this tradition
it is probable that the procuring of fire by means of the "fire-saw" is
the aboriginal method. Should all of the fires in a Kayan house become
extinguished and no spark be left, new fires may be started by this
method, and by this method alone; even the fire-drill, and flint and
steel, which are not unknown to them, are tabooed.

The Dayaks, who are closely akin in every respect to the Malays, and no
doubt adopted the traditions which were rife among the Malays both
before and after the latter became converted to Mohammedanism, give an
account of the creation of the world differing in every particular from
the foregoing Kayan story.

One of the Dayak versions of the creation which I heard from the people
of that tribe, living in the Baram district of Sarawak, is that in the
beginning there were two large birds,--the _Burong Iri_ and the _Burong
Ringgong_ (Burong meaning _bird_), who made all the rivers, the great
sea, the earth, and the sky. The first things to have life were plants
and trees. When trees were first made, the winds blew them down, and
again and again the Iri and th