KOTA SAMARAHAN: The people of the Baram settlements on the waterways consider the dragon to be a source that can bestow authority and status upon individuals.
Dragons are often revered for their power, protection, threat, and perhaps their associations with hierarchy.
Anthropologist and research fellow of Sarawak Museum, Dr Monica Janowski started researching beliefs about the powerful water beings in 2017 after spending more than 30 years studying the Kelabit of the upper Baram river in Sarawak.
She has shared her findings in a talk titled ‘Power and Status: The Dragon in Baram’ at the Institute of Borneo Studies, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), which was attended by about 50 people in addition to those who joined the programme through Zoom Meeting application on yesterday (Feb 17).
Janowski said she has conducted research on the matter since 2017 with several ethnic groups in Sarawak including Iban, Kelabit, Lundayeh, Lun Bawang, Kayan, Berawan, Penan, and Kenyah.
She noted that dragon encounters are mentioned in the tales of Kayan, Kenyah, Berawan, and Penan in the Baram – and all supposedly evolved from snakes.
With the exception of the Kayan sengiang, which is derived from a deadly snake thought to be the cobra, she said all are said to be from the python.
All dragons, she added, are said to have great strength and to be able to aid humans.
“Python-dragons are said to originate in mountains, sometimes under mountains, and to move into the river when they become dragons. Sometimes they are said to be present under the land in flat areas,” she said.
“Kayan and Kenyah, like the Iban, see the dragon as protective and benevolent towards humans and as a source of power. Berawan on the other hand sees the dragon as a source of power but also, like Kelabit and Lundayeh, as dangerous and possibly not benevolent.
“Meanwhile, Penan associate the dragon with the rainbow – echoes of the Australasian rainbow-serpent. The Kayan associate the sengiang dragon with Maren (aristocrats),” she added.
She asserted that the Baram community has a strong belief in the symbolism of the dragon and that it considers the dragon to be a powerful being that influences both daily life and religious rites.
She shared how the dragon graffiti is often found on walls of buildings in Sarawak, especially in the Kayan community.
Janowski noted that such dragons arguably represent the flow of life and power.
This flow of life and power, she added, is expressed strongly in beliefs about dragons; the swirling lines that the highland people carve can be regarded as expressing something that is expressed more explicitly in a “dragonish” form by other people in Borneo.
To note, Janowski is curator at the South East Asia Museum at the University of Hull and a Research Associate at the School of African and Oriental Studies, London.
As an anthropologist, she has been conducting research in Sarawak since 1986.
The Forest, Source of Life: The Kelabit of Sarawak (2003) and Tuked Rini, Cosmic Traveller: Life and Legend in the Heart of Borneo (2014h are two books she has written about the Kelabit.
She conducted research on Sarawak’s dragon mythology while a research fellow at the Sarawak Museum (2017–2018). Her findings on the Iban dragon and on the dragon in the Kelabit and Lundayeh highlands were published in the Sarawak Museum Journal in 2019.
