Heritage Snippets of Sarawak
This is the second of a four-part series titled ‘The Naga Moves: Dragon Tales from Borneo’. The first part can be read here.
By Monica Janowski
ON 10 November 2017, at a craft market along the waterfront in Kuching, I was browsing the stalls and spotted some narrow strips of ikat cloth with what appeared to be snakes or dragons woven into them. I spoke to the owner of the stall, Doris Dawa Jubin@Hajijah Abdullah, and she told me that the strips bore nabau dragons. She also told me that the ones she had for sale were some that she’d made to sell to soldiers going to fight in the Confrontation between Indonesia and Malaysia in the mid-60s.
I was slightly startled by this information. Why would the soldiers buy these strips? I began asking other Iban about them and soon discovered that the strips are called labong Bungai Nuing and that they are regarded as protective, ensuring the safety of those who carry them. I found newly-made labong Bungai Nuing for sale at various stalls in craft markets. Some bore one nabau dragon and others a pair of nabau.
I asked Janet Rata Noel, Curator at the Tun Jugah Foundation in Kuching, about labong Bungai Nuing, and she immediately produced one that she herself carries with her, in a special small purse, carefully folded. She told me that she has a number of other labong Bungai Nuing at home and that she always carries one with her to ensure her safety. She told me that many Iban carry them.
I discussed the labong Bungai Nuing with Bangie Embol and other weavers from Rumah Garie in the Balleh river in early 2018, and discovered that the weavers make them regularly—and that they sell like hot cakes! Bangie told me that she had recently delivered 30 of her labong to the handicraft centre in Miri. The weavers told me that it is mostly other Iban who buy them, but that people from other ethnic groups also do so. While labong strips are traditionally worn wrapped around the head by Iban men, the labong Bungai Nuing are, I came to understand, usually tucked away in a pocket or purse.
The fact that nabau dragons are woven into the ikat strips did not surprise me too much. There is a strong tradition of making ikat-woven pua cloths among the Iban and these often carry nabau dragons, which project a message of power, fertility and protection. However, I wanted to know more about the fact that the strips of cloth were named after Bungai Nuing who is one of the heroes said to inhabit Panggau Libau, a spirit or semi-spirit world parallel to that in which humans live.
The making of labong Bungai Nuing originated, I was told, in a dream dreamt by a man who was involved in a car accident but escaped injury. I was told the story of this man by a number of people, though none of them knew who the man was.
The night after his accident, the man had a dream in which he encountered Bungai Nuing. In different versions of the dream, Bungai Nuing is said to have appeared either in the form of a snake or with a snake coiled around his head. Bungai Nuing told the man that he (Bungai Nuing) had saved him from death. In one version, he told the man to arrange for weavers to make ikat labong strips bearing a nabau that people could carry to keep themselves safe. The nabau on the labong would, in fact, ‘be’ him (Bungai Nuing); the labong would incorporate his spirit.
In another version of the story, weavers who heard about the man’s experience and his dream began making the labong for sale. In the version of the dream in which Bungai Nuing told the man to arrange for the labong to be woven, he said that they should be sold for 50 ringgit and no more—probably meaning that they should not be too expensive and should therefore be available to all. This instruction has been interpreted by weavers as meaning that they should sell the labong at 50 ringgit per nabau. Labong Bungai Nuing are sometimes woven with a pair of nabau, and in this case they are to be sold, I was told, at 100 ringgit.
According to both Bangie Embol and Vernon Kedit, an Iban specialist on pua cloths, it is only the central couple Kumang and Keling, and Bungai Nuing who are represented on cloths as nabau. So why is it Bungai Nuing rather than Kumang and Keling who is represented as a nabau on the labong? Perhaps this is because he is regarded as the God of War, and is therefore strong and able to defend others; and he is said to have sometimes taken on the role of saviour, helping out Iban who are threatened by danger. One story recounted in Kapit tells, for example, how he trapped a remaung, a dangerous spirit tiger/ clouded leopard, inside a rock, using a gong, preventing it further attacking a longhouse which it had been threatening (see https://parennyawi.blogspot.com/2014/10/legend-of-bungai-nuing-god-of-war.html, accessed 20 March 2023).
Labong Bungai Nuing are carried on the person or hung in a car and are regarded as powerful amulets or charms that ensure safety and protection. They are regarded as particularly appropriate for those who travel, particularly in airplanes and on ships. Bangie Embol told me that many of those she had delivered to the Miri handicraft centre were sold to people who work offshore on the oil platforms near Miri, who want to buy them because they are exposed to a lot of danger.
Dr Monica Janowski is a social anthropologist who has been doing research in Sarawak since 1986. She has published many articles and books, including Tuked Rini, Cosmic Traveller: Life and Legend in the Heart of Borneo (NIAS Press and Sarawak Museum, 2014). She began researching Borneo dragon stories and legends in 2017. She is currently Curator of the SE Asia Museum at the University of Hull.
This is the second of a four-part series titled ‘The Naga Moves: Dragon Tales from Borneo’. The first part can be read here.
“Heritage Snippets of Sarawak” is a fortnightly column.
— DayakDaily
