Plate 135 (face pg. 254) from C.Hose / W.McDougall (1912): The Pagan Tribes of Borneo.
Identifier: pagantribesofbor01hose (find matches)
Title: The pagan tribes of Borneo; a description of their physical, moral and intellectual condition, with some discussion of their ethnic relations
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Hose, Charles, 1863-1929 McDougall, William, 1871-1938 Haddon, Alfred C. (Alfred Cort), 1855-1940
Subjects: Ethnology Anthropometry
Publisher: London : Macmillan and co., limited
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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,worth as much as sixty dollars if the very best workman-ship is demanded, from six to twenty dollars if only inferiorworkmanship is required.^ For tatuing the fingers theoperator receives a nialat or short sword. Nieuwenhuis(8, p. 236) states that it is supposed that the artist will diewithin a year if her charges are excessive ; but we have notmet with this belief amongst the Kayans of the Rejang andBaram rivers. The knee-cap is the last part to be tatued, and beforethis is touched the artist must be paid ; as this part of thedesign is the keystone, as it were, of the whole, the requiredfee is always forthcoming. A narrow strip down the backof the thigh is always left untatued ; it is supposed thatmortification of the legs would ensue if this strip was notleft open. 1 The prices in the Baram river are much higher than in the Mendalam,where a gong can only be demanded by an artist of twenty years experience;less experienced artists have to be content with beads and cloth (9, p. 452).
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Plate 135. KALABIT TATU (WOMAN). DECORATIVE ART 255 The time at which to begin tatuing a girl is about theninth day after new moon, this lunar phase being known asbutit halap^ the belly of the halap fish (Baibus brmnoides)\as the skin of the girl being tatued quickly becomes verytender, it is often necessary to stop work for a few days,but it is a matter of indifference at what lunar phase workrecommences, so long as it was originally begun at butithalap. A Kayan chief of the Mendalam river informed Dr.Nieuwenhuis (9, p. 455) that in his youth only the wivesand daughters of chiefs were permitted the thigh tatu,women of lower rank had to be content with tatu of the lowerpart of the shin and of the ankles and feet. The designswere in the form of quadrangular blotches divided by narrowuntatued lines, and were known as tedak danau^ lake tatu.The quadrangles were twelve in number, divided from eachother by four longitudinal and two transverse untatued lines,6 millimetres broad, two of the

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