Upriver, Downriver, Parts and Wholes
As riparian settlements, Iban longhouses are built along rivers and streams with their long axis ideally oriented parallel to the main river course. Consequently, the two ends of a longhouse are normally distinguished as the ‘upriver’ (ulu) and ‘downriver’ (ili’) ends.[12] This orientation, as well as the presence of a centralizing ‘source’, is basic and is evoked constantly in everyday speech. Thus the location of an individual’s apartment is characteristically indicated by its position vis-à -vis the upriver or downriver end of the longhouse; that is, as being within its upriver (sapiak ulu) or downriver ‘half’ (sapiak ili’), at the head of one or the other of its entry ladders (pala’ tangga’), or as so many biliks from its upriver or downriver end.
The distinction between upriver and downriver functions, in particular, with respect to the location of the pun rumah’s bilik. During house construction, the pun rumah is expected to locate the door to his bilik apartment on the downriver side of the central tiang pemun.[13] Thus, the central tiang pemun serves as the corner post between the pun rumah’s bilik and the next bilik upriver. The pun rumah locates his bilik hearth on the downriver side of his door, while, on the downriver side of his hearth, the tiang pemun of his downriver neighbour similarly forms the corner post between his own and the latter’s apartment (Figure 3). This orientation of bilik posts one to another thus identifies the bilik, in the first instance, as a constituent of the longhouse, with the central tiang pemun to which each bilik post is oriented representing the longhouse as the overriding totality.
The way the longhouse is constructed clearly represents this whole–part relationship between the longhouse and the bilik. During ngentak rumah, beginning with the raising of the central tiang pemun, the order in which the other tiang pemuns representing particular biliks are erected reflects the order of precedence existing among the biliks themselves, moving outward in sequence — first downriver and then upriver — from the house’s central post. Each family’s tiang pemun is thus located at the upriver corner of its apartment, separated by a door and hearth from the tiang pemun of its downriver neighbour (Figure 3). Thus the tiang pemun is clearly a threshold marker. It is located at the juncture (antara) between individual biliks and between the bilik and the gallery. The location of individual biliks relative to one another, and by way of their common orientation to the central apartment of the pun rumah, clearly identifies the bilik, not as a free-standing entity, but as the component member of an encompassing whole.
This encompassment is marked in two other ways as well: firstly, by the side-walls that separate one apartment from another and secondly, by the rules of adat genselan. During house construction, only the pun rumah erects two side-walls, one on each side of his bilik apartment. All other biliks erect only one side-wall, on either the upriver or downriver side of their apartment, depending on the bilik’s location relative to that of the pun rumah. Similarly, each apartment stands on three rows of posts: one central row and two side rows shared by neighbouring biliks (Figure 3). Only the pun rumah erects all three rows; every other bilik erects only two, the central row and either an upriver or downriver row, depending, again, on its location relative to that of the pun rumah. Thus the longhouse shares a common orientational centre and is perceived as growing outwards laterally, or bilaterally, from each side of the pun rumah’s apartment. The lateral addition of bilik apartments to the longhouse, both during and after its initial construction, is referred to by the same term, tampong, as the generational succession of bilik members through time, with the pun rumah serving as the primary reference point in the first process of growth, the pun bilik in the second.
Finally, the pun rumah, by performing sacrifice during ngentak rumah, binds the longhouse together as a ritual community so that if a family should subsequently break this unity by withdrawing, its members must ritually remove their hearth, pay genselan and present offerings at the central tiang pemun in order to restore ritual harmony to the community.
Trunk, Base and Tip
The distinction between upriver and downriver is allied with another between ‘base’ and ‘tip’. Anything that has both a base and a tip (or tips), or forms the main member of a totality composed of parts, is called a batang or ‘trunk’. Thus both the longhouse and the main river on which it is located are described as batang. Like the trunk of a living tree, both rivers and longhouses are seen as extending between a beginning point — a source or ‘base’ (sama pun); and an end point or points — a destination or ‘tip(s)’ (ujong or puchok).[14] At one level the metaphor is botanical and spatial. For a river, its ‘base’ is downriver at its mouth, and its ‘tip’ is upriver at its headwaters.[15] But the metaphor is also totalizing. Thus the Paku Iban refer to the entire Paku River region — including both its main river and tributaries (sungai) and all of its inhabitants taken together — as sakayu batang Paku, literally, ‘the whole of the Paku trunk’.
For the Iban, the notion of source or origin is signified by the term pun, or by related forms such as pemun. Literally, pun means source, basis, origin or cause (see Richards 1981:290). ‘Its root meaning is that of stem, as of a tree’ (Freeman 1981:31). In terms of social actors, pun describes a person who initiates or originates an action; one who announces its purpose and enlists others to participate in bringing it about. Pun, in this sense, has the meaning of ‘founder’ or ‘initiator’. Most groups formed by pun are ephemeral. But some, like the longhouse and the bilik-family, endure. Once an enduring group takes form, the pun becomes, like the pun rumah and pun bilik, the ‘source’ through whom its continuing life is thought to flow from one generation to the next. Thus the notion of pun incorporates a sense of both origin and continuity (Sather n.d.). Similarly, ‘trunk’ represents the entirety of a process, from its initiation to its realization, from beginning to end, from — to follow the botanic metaphor — ‘stem’ to ‘tip’.
Situated between downriver and upriver, the longhouse is also constituted, like the river itself, as a batang. Similarly, the ordering of its parts mirrors that of a living tree. The timbers employed in its construction are placed so that their natural ‘base’ is down or towards the pun of the house, and their natural ‘tip’ is up or towards its ujong, reflecting the orientation that the wood originally had in its forest setting. Thus when trees are felled and cut into timbers, the pun end of each timber is marked so that its correct orientation can be preserved. Similarly, the central tiang pemun represents a centralizing ‘base’ or ‘stem’. It is this central base that ‘fixes’ the house, that is, determines the order of the other parts, while it is from its lateral ‘ends’, the upriver and downriver ‘tips’ of the house, that the longhouse continues to ‘grow’ or ‘extend’ (tampong-menampong), adding new biliks as established households undergo partition or as new families join the community. The imagery of ‘origin’, ‘tip’ and ‘trunk’ is thus not merely classificatory, but essentially processual as well as botanic in nature.
The rituals of house construction not only make these base-tip relationships explicit, but assign them a temporal ordering as well. Thus the central tiang pemun is the first pillar to be erected. Ideally, it is located near the centre of the house and is driven into the earth, or ‘fixed’, base-first, its natural base-end downward and its natural tip upward. The latter, together with the ‘tips’ of the other tiang pemun, support the ridge-capping (perabong) at the highest point of the house. In temporal terms, this capping is the last part of the house to be constructed following the erection of the entry ladders at each end. Fixed to the ‘tips’ of the ‘source posts’, it ritually marks the structure’s completion. When the central post is bathed, oiled and lustrated before being raised, these acts, too, are performed base-first, while the offerings that affirm the post’s ritual status are buried in the earth beneath its base and explicitly symbolize this idea of ‘rootedness’.[16] Finally, once this centralizing ‘base’ is located, the secondary tiang pemun are erected in order, first extending downriver from the central post and then upriver, establishing in this way a temporal relationship between the ‘base’ of the house and its lateral ‘tips’. At the same time, in moving upriver and downriver, the ‘tips’ are associated in a mirror-like reversible relationship, extending bidirectionally from a single centralizing ‘source’. Symbolizing the ‘stem’ or origin of the house, this central source takes ritual priority over the tips, ‘coming before’ them in time (orang ke-dulu), while the latter are essentially co-equal and represent, for the house, points of new or continuing growth.
Finally, while the ordering of the tiang pemuns creates an image of the longhouse as an upright tree, with a central ‘base’ (pun) and ‘tips’ (ujong) that grow outward at each of its lateral ends, the longhouse may be also conceived of as a tree lying down, with its ‘base’ at one end and its ‘tip’ at the other end. Both images correspond to the natural orientation of the wood used in the house’s construction. The contrast between them is shown in Figure 4.[17] Both images apply not to the upstanding tiang, but to the second major category of building material, the ramu, horizontal elements, specifically in this case, its lengthwise beams. The first image represents the longhouse as originating from a central pun, its ramu growing outward, bilaterally, towards both a downriver (ili’) and an upriver (ulu) ujong (Figure 4, Type I). This is the characteristic orientation of houses in the upper Paku. In the second image, the longhouse represents a tree trunk lying down with either a downriver pun and an upriver ujong or alternatively if the direction of the wood is reversed, an upriver pun and a downriver ujong (Figure 4, Type II).
The direction in which the pun points is determined by the arrangement of the mortice-and-tenon joints by which one beam is joined to another as they are slotted through the main support pillars, including the tiang pemun. In each joint there is an upper and lower tenon, and these are always arrayed in the same direction throughout the structure. The Iban say that the pun ‘falls on’ (ninggang) the ujong. Thus the pun end of the ramu forms the upper tenon and the ujong end, the lower tenon, corresponding to a series of trees fallen, end-to-tip, with the base of one ‘falling upon’ the tip of the next, so that the base of each beam points in the same direction, either upriver (kulu) or downriver (kili’) (Figure 4). The direction in all cases applies, moreover, not only to the individual beams, but in a totalizing sense to the longhouse as a whole, thus establishing one of its ends as its pun, the other as its ujong, or, more commonly in the Paku, establishing a central pun with a pair of lateral ujong (Figure 4). For the Skrang Iban, Uchibori (1978:93) maintains that the pun end of the longhouse is always upriver and the ujong end always downriver, and that the pun end is welcoming and the ujong end polluting.[18] In the Paku and Rimbas, however, while some houses have an upriver pun, others have a downriver pun, while yet others have a central pun and both ends are ujong. The same symbolism nonetheless applies in all three cases. Thus, for example, if a bilik-family withdraws from the longhouse, its hearth, when removed, is always ‘thrown away’ (muai) from the ujong end of the structure, whether this is upriver or down. Similarly, the pun is also ritually marked so that, for example, when the bards call for the coming of the spirit heroes while singing the besugi sakit songs, they hang the swing on which they sit so that it faces towards the pun ramu, whether this is centrally oriented or toward one or the other end of the house.
Figure 4.4. Figure 4. The pun-ujong (source-tip) orientation of the longhouse
As riparian settlements, Iban longhouses are built along rivers and streams with their long axis ideally oriented parallel to the main river course. Consequently, the two ends of a longhouse are normally distinguished as the ‘upriver’ (ulu) and ‘downriver’ (ili’) ends.[12] This orientation, as well as the presence of a centralizing ‘source’, is basic and is evoked constantly in everyday speech. Thus the location of an individual’s apartment is characteristically indicated by its position vis-à -vis the upriver or downriver end of the longhouse; that is, as being within its upriver (sapiak ulu) or downriver ‘half’ (sapiak ili’), at the head of one or the other of its entry ladders (pala’ tangga’), or as so many biliks from its upriver or downriver end.
The distinction between upriver and downriver functions, in particular, with respect to the location of the pun rumah’s bilik. During house construction, the pun rumah is expected to locate the door to his bilik apartment on the downriver side of the central tiang pemun.[13] Thus, the central tiang pemun serves as the corner post between the pun rumah’s bilik and the next bilik upriver. The pun rumah locates his bilik hearth on the downriver side of his door, while, on the downriver side of his hearth, the tiang pemun of his downriver neighbour similarly forms the corner post between his own and the latter’s apartment (Figure 3). This orientation of bilik posts one to another thus identifies the bilik, in the first instance, as a constituent of the longhouse, with the central tiang pemun to which each bilik post is oriented representing the longhouse as the overriding totality.
The way the longhouse is constructed clearly represents this whole–part relationship between the longhouse and the bilik. During ngentak rumah, beginning with the raising of the central tiang pemun, the order in which the other tiang pemuns representing particular biliks are erected reflects the order of precedence existing among the biliks themselves, moving outward in sequence — first downriver and then upriver — from the house’s central post. Each family’s tiang pemun is thus located at the upriver corner of its apartment, separated by a door and hearth from the tiang pemun of its downriver neighbour (Figure 3). Thus the tiang pemun is clearly a threshold marker. It is located at the juncture (antara) between individual biliks and between the bilik and the gallery. The location of individual biliks relative to one another, and by way of their common orientation to the central apartment of the pun rumah, clearly identifies the bilik, not as a free-standing entity, but as the component member of an encompassing whole.
This encompassment is marked in two other ways as well: firstly, by the side-walls that separate one apartment from another and secondly, by the rules of adat genselan. During house construction, only the pun rumah erects two side-walls, one on each side of his bilik apartment. All other biliks erect only one side-wall, on either the upriver or downriver side of their apartment, depending on the bilik’s location relative to that of the pun rumah. Similarly, each apartment stands on three rows of posts: one central row and two side rows shared by neighbouring biliks (Figure 3). Only the pun rumah erects all three rows; every other bilik erects only two, the central row and either an upriver or downriver row, depending, again, on its location relative to that of the pun rumah. Thus the longhouse shares a common orientational centre and is perceived as growing outwards laterally, or bilaterally, from each side of the pun rumah’s apartment. The lateral addition of bilik apartments to the longhouse, both during and after its initial construction, is referred to by the same term, tampong, as the generational succession of bilik members through time, with the pun rumah serving as the primary reference point in the first process of growth, the pun bilik in the second.
Finally, the pun rumah, by performing sacrifice during ngentak rumah, binds the longhouse together as a ritual community so that if a family should subsequently break this unity by withdrawing, its members must ritually remove their hearth, pay genselan and present offerings at the central tiang pemun in order to restore ritual harmony to the community.
Trunk, Base and Tip
The distinction between upriver and downriver is allied with another between ‘base’ and ‘tip’. Anything that has both a base and a tip (or tips), or forms the main member of a totality composed of parts, is called a batang or ‘trunk’. Thus both the longhouse and the main river on which it is located are described as batang. Like the trunk of a living tree, both rivers and longhouses are seen as extending between a beginning point — a source or ‘base’ (sama pun); and an end point or points — a destination or ‘tip(s)’ (ujong or puchok).[14] At one level the metaphor is botanical and spatial. For a river, its ‘base’ is downriver at its mouth, and its ‘tip’ is upriver at its headwaters.[15] But the metaphor is also totalizing. Thus the Paku Iban refer to the entire Paku River region — including both its main river and tributaries (sungai) and all of its inhabitants taken together — as sakayu batang Paku, literally, ‘the whole of the Paku trunk’.
For the Iban, the notion of source or origin is signified by the term pun, or by related forms such as pemun. Literally, pun means source, basis, origin or cause (see Richards 1981:290). ‘Its root meaning is that of stem, as of a tree’ (Freeman 1981:31). In terms of social actors, pun describes a person who initiates or originates an action; one who announces its purpose and enlists others to participate in bringing it about. Pun, in this sense, has the meaning of ‘founder’ or ‘initiator’. Most groups formed by pun are ephemeral. But some, like the longhouse and the bilik-family, endure. Once an enduring group takes form, the pun becomes, like the pun rumah and pun bilik, the ‘source’ through whom its continuing life is thought to flow from one generation to the next. Thus the notion of pun incorporates a sense of both origin and continuity (Sather n.d.). Similarly, ‘trunk’ represents the entirety of a process, from its initiation to its realization, from beginning to end, from — to follow the botanic metaphor — ‘stem’ to ‘tip’.
Situated between downriver and upriver, the longhouse is also constituted, like the river itself, as a batang. Similarly, the ordering of its parts mirrors that of a living tree. The timbers employed in its construction are placed so that their natural ‘base’ is down or towards the pun of the house, and their natural ‘tip’ is up or towards its ujong, reflecting the orientation that the wood originally had in its forest setting. Thus when trees are felled and cut into timbers, the pun end of each timber is marked so that its correct orientation can be preserved. Similarly, the central tiang pemun represents a centralizing ‘base’ or ‘stem’. It is this central base that ‘fixes’ the house, that is, determines the order of the other parts, while it is from its lateral ‘ends’, the upriver and downriver ‘tips’ of the house, that the longhouse continues to ‘grow’ or ‘extend’ (tampong-menampong), adding new biliks as established households undergo partition or as new families join the community. The imagery of ‘origin’, ‘tip’ and ‘trunk’ is thus not merely classificatory, but essentially processual as well as botanic in nature.
The rituals of house construction not only make these base-tip relationships explicit, but assign them a temporal ordering as well. Thus the central tiang pemun is the first pillar to be erected. Ideally, it is located near the centre of the house and is driven into the earth, or ‘fixed’, base-first, its natural base-end downward and its natural tip upward. The latter, together with the ‘tips’ of the other tiang pemun, support the ridge-capping (perabong) at the highest point of the house. In temporal terms, this capping is the last part of the house to be constructed following the erection of the entry ladders at each end. Fixed to the ‘tips’ of the ‘source posts’, it ritually marks the structure’s completion. When the central post is bathed, oiled and lustrated before being raised, these acts, too, are performed base-first, while the offerings that affirm the post’s ritual status are buried in the earth beneath its base and explicitly symbolize this idea of ‘rootedness’.[16] Finally, once this centralizing ‘base’ is located, the secondary tiang pemun are erected in order, first extending downriver from the central post and then upriver, establishing in this way a temporal relationship between the ‘base’ of the house and its lateral ‘tips’. At the same time, in moving upriver and downriver, the ‘tips’ are associated in a mirror-like reversible relationship, extending bidirectionally from a single centralizing ‘source’. Symbolizing the ‘stem’ or origin of the house, this central source takes ritual priority over the tips, ‘coming before’ them in time (orang ke-dulu), while the latter are essentially co-equal and represent, for the house, points of new or continuing growth.
Finally, while the ordering of the tiang pemuns creates an image of the longhouse as an upright tree, with a central ‘base’ (pun) and ‘tips’ (ujong) that grow outward at each of its lateral ends, the longhouse may be also conceived of as a tree lying down, with its ‘base’ at one end and its ‘tip’ at the other end. Both images correspond to the natural orientation of the wood used in the house’s construction. The contrast between them is shown in Figure 4.[17] Both images apply not to the upstanding tiang, but to the second major category of building material, the ramu, horizontal elements, specifically in this case, its lengthwise beams. The first image represents the longhouse as originating from a central pun, its ramu growing outward, bilaterally, towards both a downriver (ili’) and an upriver (ulu) ujong (Figure 4, Type I). This is the characteristic orientation of houses in the upper Paku. In the second image, the longhouse represents a tree trunk lying down with either a downriver pun and an upriver ujong or alternatively if the direction of the wood is reversed, an upriver pun and a downriver ujong (Figure 4, Type II).
The direction in which the pun points is determined by the arrangement of the mortice-and-tenon joints by which one beam is joined to another as they are slotted through the main support pillars, including the tiang pemun. In each joint there is an upper and lower tenon, and these are always arrayed in the same direction throughout the structure. The Iban say that the pun ‘falls on’ (ninggang) the ujong. Thus the pun end of the ramu forms the upper tenon and the ujong end, the lower tenon, corresponding to a series of trees fallen, end-to-tip, with the base of one ‘falling upon’ the tip of the next, so that the base of each beam points in the same direction, either upriver (kulu) or downriver (kili’) (Figure 4). The direction in all cases applies, moreover, not only to the individual beams, but in a totalizing sense to the longhouse as a whole, thus establishing one of its ends as its pun, the other as its ujong, or, more commonly in the Paku, establishing a central pun with a pair of lateral ujong (Figure 4). For the Skrang Iban, Uchibori (1978:93) maintains that the pun end of the longhouse is always upriver and the ujong end always downriver, and that the pun end is welcoming and the ujong end polluting.[18] In the Paku and Rimbas, however, while some houses have an upriver pun, others have a downriver pun, while yet others have a central pun and both ends are ujong. The same symbolism nonetheless applies in all three cases. Thus, for example, if a bilik-family withdraws from the longhouse, its hearth, when removed, is always ‘thrown away’ (muai) from the ujong end of the structure, whether this is upriver or down. Similarly, the pun is also ritually marked so that, for example, when the bards call for the coming of the spirit heroes while singing the besugi sakit songs, they hang the swing on which they sit so that it faces towards the pun ramu, whether this is centrally oriented or toward one or the other end of the house.
Figure 4.4. Figure 4. The pun-ujong (source-tip) orientation of the longhouse
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