By Marlynda Meraw
LONG before they ever touched Iban soil, they were shaped in distant kilns across seas, carried across perilous trade routes by winds unknown. Yet, to call the tajau a foreign import is to miss the magic of how people can fold the wider world into their own beating heart.
These heavy ceremonial heirloom jars, cool-belied and mostly earth-toned, marked by old hands did not arrive the native lands only as merchandise. The tajau arrived like travellers from afar, hauled from the ancient kilns of China, Siam, and Burma, finding their way home into the longhouses to stay.
Through centuries of bridewealth, rituals, and family griefs, the Ibans have deeply indigenised the tajau that it can no longer be seen as something borrowed. The tajau now exists a permanent fixture within the Iban community, proving that what people learn to love and embrace eventually becomes part of who they are.
Worth of a jar
Far from being mere decorations, the tajau carried real economy of early generations. According to Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Leonard Linggi, chairman of the Tun Jugah Foundation, these jars once served as the currency of the land’s communities; anchoring wealth, status, and survival to the clay.
“Whether it’s a settlement of dispute or debts, the tajau will be used as payment,” he said.
Long before these jars were heirlooms, they existed as arbiters of justice and debt. They were handed over to balance the ledger of human life, passing from hand to hand as compensation, or earned as wages for honest work.
Beyond matters of law, the tajau too, moved through circles of diplomacy, exchanged as tokens of respect between leaders. One such jar was the tajau menaga labang (white dragon). It lives on in memory as the gift Sir Charles Vyner Brooke, the last White Rajah of Sarawak, gave to Temenggong Koh Jubang, the first Paramount Chief of the Ibans. It marked their friendship and the official recognition of the Kapit Peace Declaration of 1924.
In the 1950s, another meaningful bond was sealed through the gift of a jar. British Governor-General Sir Malcolm MacDonald presented a tajau to Temenggong Koh following the former’s first visit to the leader’s longhouse in Baleh.
These jars also presided over the tender, binding moments of romance and kinship. For Leonard, the memory lives in the sanctity of his own wedding to his late wife, Datin Amar Datuk Margaret Linggi. As she entered the threshold of their newly shared home, a tajau pemai marked their union. This inheritance jar sealed the bond between their families.
Even today, the tradition remains. Rampa Agon, tuai rumah (longhouse chief) of Genturong Selepong 3 in Kapit, whose hands have guided countless Iban customary rites, recalled being paid for his labour with a tajau or two, its size and number shifting to match the importance of the role he served.
Long after the heavy trade of generations settles into silence, the presence of the tajau remains. These vessels were once keepers of peace and archives where people poured their history, their honour, and their love.
The death stratum
Like many things of worth, the tajau carries its own hierarchy—an order of value written into colour, size, and the character of its surface, whether it yields smooth beneath the fingers or resists in coarse, uneven ridges.
This ordering holds true for the adat pemati (death custom), and among the Saratok and Saribas communities, the tajau follows its own particular ladder of rank when called upon to mark a death.
From the most exalted to the humblest, the order runs: ningka, menaga, rusa, alas, panding, and jabir—six rungs a family must climb, or descend in order to find one that fits. When a figure of consequence passes, choosing the correct tajau rank demands meticulous deliberation.
Leonard explained that rank dictates funeral honours, taking example of former senator, the late Datuk Douglas Sullang Ganda, who was also a prominent businessman.
Because of his dual standing, a tajau menaga was symbolically assigned to him post-mortem to reflect his high status. Serving as a posthumous designation rather than a physical jar placed with the deceased, this tajau functioned purely as an epitaph of rank.
“It can take hours to figure out the suitable tajau,” Leonard said. “If the rank of the tajau is too high, it will affect the family. If the rank is too low, it will affect the longhouse.”
The weight of that decision, it seems, is never carried by one household alone; a wrong measure ripples outward, unsettling the balance between a family’s grief and the community’s sense of order.
And perhaps this is what makes the tajau more than a container: each jar is a small negotiation between the dead and the living, between what a person was and what a community agrees to remember.
It’s a solemnity that isn’t lost on Leonard, even as his affections drift toward gentler ground.
“This is my favourite tajau,” he said, gesturing to a jar that curved only slightly from its almost-straight silhouette, its lobes horizontal. This type exists only in muted, neutral tones; belonging to the same category of jars traditionally used to store human remains in Sabah.
Despite its funerary history, Leonard expressed that he liked that particular design for its simplicity and smooth glaze. Depending on its form, a guchi’s origin can be traced back centuries: four-lobed guchi date as far back as the Tang dynasty, while six-lobed versions can be traced to either the Ming or Song dynasty.
Interestingly, the term carries a different meaning whereby locals colloquially use the word ‘guchi’ to refer to much smaller jars—ones as big as chicken egg, which are normally used to store charms.
Leonard noted that both usages are correct; the word simply shifting in scale and meaning depending on context.
Dream visitors
According to Rampa, some tajau do carry inhabitants. And those that do, he believes without exception that the spirits within are benevolent, holding no ill will toward the households they occupy. After all, why would people welcome such a jar in their homes if it were to bring harm?
“They (tajau spirit) only turn bad following constant neglect. They get angry that they are forgotten and uncared for,” said Rampa.
It is only when that neglect is left to fester, when a spirit’s patience finally wears thin and turns disagreeable, even malevolent, that the tajau must be destroyed–broken apart or given to fire.
But before it comes to that, Rampa said, the spirit rarely stays silent. When a tajau spirit grows dissatisfied, or simply has something to say, it waits for its owner to sleep, slipping into their dreams to voice what it could not otherwise convey.
It is there, in that borderland of slumber, that the spirit makes its request known—and those who find themselves visited in such a way, would do well to listen closely and heed the call before neglect turns to something harder to undo.
Reunion of two siblings
A jar may seem unassuming, but love it enough, give it a reason, and it finds its meaning.
Marcathy Gindau, 57-year-old chairman of Bawang Assan Homestay, told the story of a twin tajau that once belonged to his grandfather. His grandfather gave one of the pair to his sworn brother as a token of their creed. The brother lived at another longhouse, so the jar left with him and settled into a new home. There, it was cared and loved in return—until the man himself left, leaving the tajau in the hands of the generation that followed.
Without him, no one quite knew how to care for it the way he once had, and in time, it became a mere decoration. Then one night, his kinswoman dreamt of the jar. In the dream, it asked to be returned to its sibling. She woke and thought little of it, but the dream was unceasing, turning more insistent each night.
Driven by restlessness, the tajau tipped onto its side and rolled across the ground, a stubborn protest against its continued exile.
“The people had a hard time trying to get it back up whenever the tajau telentang (lay down). They said it was incredibly heavy to carry,” said Marcathy.
Unsettled, the longhouse residents began asking around, tracing the jar’s history back to the day it had first been given away, hoping to find the sibling it longed for.
The other half of the pair belonged to Marcathy. The villagers called him, explaining that the tajau’s sibling was throwing tantrums, longing to be reunited with its sibling. Marcathy agreed to take her in.
“She entered this longhouse a little after the Gawai celebration last year,” said Marcathy, adding that since the move, the tajau has not thrown a single tantrum. It has been peaceful ever since—two siblings, finally under one roof.
Moving houses
A tajau cannot simply be moved from one place to another. Before it can leave one roof for the next, an offering must first be made; a small ceremony of goodbye before the journey even begins.
It was no different for the tajau that came to live in Marcathy’s house: a piring (offering) was made before it left the old home, and another piring must be offered upon its arrival.
The offering may vary from household to household, but the one Marcathy’s prepared for the tajau’s arrival included penganan cuan (flower-shaped, traditional crispy snack), egg, rice, and salt, among other things. Even after settling in, the tajau is not forgotten; once a year, it must be fed again with piring.
The piring itself is a gesture of care—a way of speaking to the tajau, and to the spirit said to dwell within it, so that it might understand what is about to take place. Before the move, the tajau is told it will be leaving, so the spirit inside is not caught unaware. And upon reaching its new house, following another piring, it must be told again that it has arrived.
“If the piring is not given upon leaving and arrival of the tajau, the spirit will be confused during the move,” said Rampa. “They (the spirit) could be left behind at the previous house, and left lost.”
There is something endearing in the idea that even a jar must be spoken to with the same gentleness owed to a person leaving one place for another, lest its inhabitant be left behind, wandering and unable to find its way home.
Wine brewed in clay
For all its many uses, the tajau has long lived a quieter, more domestic life too. The common tajau being used to store rice, salt, even water drawn and kept for later use. And among these everyday roles, one stands apart: the tajau’s part in making tuak, the Iban’s well-loved rice wine.
There is something fitting in that pairing; a jar shaped by patience, lending itself to drink that asks for the same. Time does its quiet work inside the clay, and what comes out is certainly worth the wait.
“My longhouse in Katibas still uses tajau to make tuak,” said Rampa, who insisted that tuak brewed this way carries a richer taste than what modern convenience can offer.
Still, he admitted that the practice is fading. Plastic containers are easier, lighter, and far less particular than the clay of a tajau.
A vessel of meaning
After the trade winds have long settled into silence, and the last sweet measure of tuak has been drawn from its cool, earthen belly, the tajau remains what it was always destined to be: a keeper of human devotion. It remains a marvel that clay shaped in distant kilns and carried across perilous seas, could come to beat with the pulse of an Iban longhouse.
Whether present as loyal witness to wedding customs, keeping vigil over the honoured dead, or rolling in stubborn protest across floorboards in search of its lost twin, these vessels ask for so little—only that we tend to them and keep them in thought.
They teach us that history is too, fired into the earth itself, and handed down from one pair of hands to the next. Long after lighter, modern vessels have splintered and faded into obsolescence, the tajau will still be holding the shape of our griefs, our bonds, and our love; proving that what we choose to cherish eventually becomes the very shape of our home. — DayakDaily
