The pagan tribes of Borneo - Get a Free Blog Here

XII DECORATIVE ART 235
and
frequently applied. The name dog-pattern (kalang
asu) is given to a very large number ; and of these
some obviously reproduce the form of the dog,
while the derivation of the others from the same
original can generally be made clear by the inspection
of a number of intermediate forms, although
some of them retain but very slight indications of
the form or features of the dog. The unmistakable
dog-patterns are illustrated by one of the panels
shown in PI. 124 ;
in Pis. 134 et seq. we repro-
duce a number of dog-patterns of more or less conventionalised
characters. It will be noticed that the
eye is the most constant feature about which the
rest of the pattern is commonly centred ; but that
the eye also disappears from some of the most conventionalised.
It seems probable that, although the
name kalang asu continues to be commonly used to
denote all this group of allies, many of those who
use the term, and even of those who carve or work
the patterns, are not explicitly aware in doing so
that the name and the patterns refer to the dog, or
are in any way connected with it ; that is to say,
both the words and the pattern have ceased to
suggest to their minds the meaning of the word
dog, and mean to them simply the pattern appropriate
to certain uses.
We have questioned men who have been
accustomed to apply the dog -pattern as to the
significance of the parts of the pattern, and have
led them to recognise that the parts of the dog,
eye, teeth, jaws, and so on, are represented ; and
this recognition has commonly been accompanied by
expressions of enlightenment, as of one making an
interesting discovery.^ This ignorance of the origin
of the pattern is naturally true only of the more
conventionalised examples, whether of the dog or
^ Some Kayans habitually speak of most of the dog-patterns by the term
usang orang (which means the prawn's head). This indicates possibly some
gradual substitution of designs of the one origin for those of the other.