Regions
Borneo
Also Known As Bornean
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Borneo is the third largest island in the world, divided today among Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, and covered through most of its interior by tropical rainforest drained by rivers such as the Kapuas and the Mahakam. Its interior is the homeland of the Dayak, a broad grouping of dozens of related peoples, among them the Ngaju, Iban and Kenyah, historically organized around longhouse communities and river travel. Traditional Dayak religion, sometimes generalized as Kaharingan, a name under which it gained limited state recognition in Indonesia by classification alongside Hinduism, holds an upperworld of sky beings headed by figures such as Ranying Hatalla Langit among the Ngaju and an underworld of water beings, mediated through ritual specialists, longhouse ceremonies and, historically, secondary funeral rites in which the bones of the dead are given a final ritual journey. Christianity and Islam have both grown substantially on the island since the colonial period, the latter dominant along the coasts.
Facts
Geography
LatitudeApproximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a large or historical region has no formal center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a precise boundary claim. LongitudeApproximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a large or historical region has no formal center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a precise boundary claim. Modern AreaBorneo, the island divided among Indonesia (Kalimantan), Malaysia (Sarawak and Sabah) and Brunei. 2 Traditions
Principal Religious TraditionsKaharingan and related Dayak traditional religion, centered on the upperworld god Ranying Hatalla Langit among the Ngaju and an underworld of water spirits; Islam, dominant along the coasts; and Christianity, widespread in the interior since the colonial missions. 2 Sacred and Liturgical LanguagesThe many Dayak languages, among them Ngaju; Malay and Indonesian as regional and national languages; Arabic for Islamic ritual. 2 Learn More
The Tiwah and the Second Funeral That Completes a Ngaju Death
Ngaju Dayak funerary practice divides death into two ceremonies separated by an interval that can run from months to several years. The first burial is treated as provisional, the deceased regarded as still lingering near the world of the living until the family can gather the wealth a proper second rite requires, chiefly water buffalo for sacrifice. The second ceremony, the tiwah, exhumes the remains, cleans and reburies the bones in a small ossuary structure called a sandung, and through days of ritual, offering and buffalo sacrifice sends the soul on its final journey to Lewu Tatau, the Ngaju afterworld, completing a passage the first burial only began.
Kaharingan itself gained a form of state recognition unusual among indigenous religions in the region. Indonesia's constitution requires citizens to register belief in one god among a small list of officially sanctioned religions, and Kaharingan practitioners secured inclusion in 1980 by having the tradition administratively classified as a variant of Hinduism, a designation that preserved legal standing for Dayak ritual life, including the tiwah, without requiring the religion to abandon Ranying Hatalla Langit and the wider structure of upperworld and underworld spirits the classification does not actually describe.
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