Tag: borneo headhunters

The Bungai: Ancestry, Identity, and the Iban Connection to Nature

The Iban believe that the self is not limited to the body or the soul that wanders in dreams. Our ancestors believed that each person has a bungai, which is a plant-image that lives in the invisible world of Manang Menjaya, the god of healing. This plant-image takes the form of bamboo or banana and grows in clumps from a single rootstock. It is a powerful way of understanding human life. The bungai grows, strengthens, weakens, dies, and falls to the ground, just as a person does.

When I first heard about this idea, it stuck with me for days. It helped me see the forest differently and understand why the Iban imagine the community the way they do. In this worldview, no one grows alone. We rise from the same source. Relationships, ancestry, and connections we can’t see hold us together in ways that go far beyond our personal stories. This belief feels very grounding at a time when many of us feel adrift or disconnected.

The choice of bamboo and banana is meaningful. These plants do not grow by themselves. They grow in clumps, called bepumpun. A single shoot is part of a larger body that gets its nutrients from the same soil and root. Every shoot has its own height, shape, and direction, but they all come from the same source. This is how the Iban once understood family. A family is one clump. A longhouse community is made up of many clumps. The forest itself becomes a reflection of the social world.

This is not a metaphor for the sake of beauty. People who live close to the land learn its pattern by observing it daily. The Iban watched how plants behave, how they survive storms, and how they keep growing new shoots even after the old ones fall off. The Iban were shaped by the rainforest, and it was a teacher, a mirror, and a guide.

The bungai makes this idea clearer. It shows us that each person is both unique and part of a lineage. A child is a new shoot from an old rootstock. The state of one shoot affects the whole clump. The well-being of the entire garden reflects the condition of the longhouse. No one exists apart from the others who stand beside them. Even in the unseen world, the Iban imagined people living bepumpun, connected through generations, place, memory, and spiritual obligations. 

I find this comforting. There were times in my life when I felt distant from my roots. Leaving home for school, work and marriage created gaps I did not understand at the time. I lived away from Sarawak for many years. I felt as though I was a shoot attempting to thrive in soil that was not my own. Learning about the bungai made me see that the rootstock never disappears. The connection stays even after we leave. We are still held by the unseen garden. It doesn’t matter how far someone travels; the lineage remains.

Another thing I appreciate about the bungai is how it reflects emotional and spiritual states. The bungai becomes weaker when a person is sick. It withers when the soul wanders. This worldview recognizes how closely the body, mind, and emotions are connected. It respects how complicated it is to be human. A withered feeling is not seen as weakness but as a sign that the self needs care, grounding, or healing. Manang Menjaya is responsible for this realm, taking care of the gardens of human life like a healer tends to the sick. It is a gentle belief shaped by compassion.

The idea that the bungai falls when someone dies is also meaningful. The clump remains alive and ready to push a new shoot upward for the next generation. The rootstock stays strong. The lineage continues. There is sorrow, but there is also continuity. The living remain connected to those who came before them.

When I reflect on this, I see how the bungai offers us a way to think about community in today’s world.  Many of us live far from home. Some grow up with mixed heritage, navigating several identities at once. Some people don’t feel connected to their language, their land, or their family’s history. The bungai concept reminds us that belonging isn’t just about being close to someone physically. It also has to do with our shared ancestry, memories, and the unseen ties that still hold us together.

The forest shows us that we can’t survive alone. Bamboo stands because the clump stands. A community stays together because its roots are strong. Long before the words “ecology” or “sustainability” were even used, our ancestors knew this. They practiced it when they built longhouses, shared food, and worked the land. They lived in a world where the rhythms of nature and community supported each other.

Writing about the bungai feels like returning to a memory I never knew I had. It combines culture, spirituality, and nature in a way that feels very Iban. It makes me think of how our people used to observe the forest, learn its patterns, and keep it in balance. The bungai is more than just a spiritual idea. It is a way of looking at life that sees it as connected, continuous, and held by something greater than the self.

I want to honor this understanding as I continue working on my cultural projects. I want the Iban in the diaspora, those growing up with mixed heritage, and those rediscovering their language again to know that our roots are still alive, even when we feel far from them. The bungai reminds us that we come from the same source, and the clump endures.

One Clump
If we were bamboo,
we would be one rootstock.
Two shoots from the same source
fed by the same unseen tenderness
running under everything.

You would lean into me
when the wind turns,
and I would hold fast
with a strength drawn
from the ground we share.

A clump is a world.
A home where no stalk stands alone.
Each one rises
because the others do.
The root simply refuses
to forget a single one.

I want that with you—
a belonging without effort.
Our lives rising
from the same dark earth,
so that even Menjaya
counting lives in his garden,
would find us together.

If you falter, I stand closer.
If you bend, I become your spine.
We are two lives
shaped by each other’s nearness.

If we are a clump, love,
then we are one living thing—
one root,
one anchor,
one quiet refusal
to ever rise alone.

I write about Iban culture, ancestral rituals, creative life, emotional truths, and the quiet transformations of love, motherhood, and identity. If this speaks to you, subscribe and journey with me.

The Forgotten Script of My Ancestors | Remembering the Papan Turai

The majority of us are familiar with Egyptian hieroglyphics. However, not many people are aware that the Iban used to have their own type of pictorial writing. My ancestors’ written language, known as “turai,” is carved onto wooden boards called “papan turai.” During major festivals like Gawai Batu and Gawai Antu, lemambang (ritual bards) used these boards to recall and recite the pengap (folk epics), timang (invocations), and many other types of Iban poetry (leka main asal).

The papan turai is more than just a ceremonial piece. It serves as a link between oral and written tradition. Some of these carved symbols date back about four centuries. They preserve fragments of genealogy (tusut), the Iban’s migration history from the Kapuas region of Kalimantan to Sarawak, and even tales of tribal conflicts and legendary Iban leaders.

Researchers from the Sarawak Museum and UNIMAS have been examining these boards to find out what they symbolize. What is remarkable is that lemambang from various areas can comprehend each other’s papan turai. This demonstrates that there was once a common symbolic language among people in different communities.

This discovery goes against the previous belief that the Iban were completely “pre-literate” before Western influence arrived. The papan turai shows that our forefathers had their own way of keeping records of what they knew, which was based on ritual, cosmology, and collective memory. It reminds us that being able to read and write doesn’t just imply knowing the alphabet and how to write on paper.

In 1947, an Iban scholar named Dunging anak Gunggu expanded upon this tradition. He developed a whole writing system based on turai. However, few people know about this writing system, even among Sarawakians.

When I stood in front of the papan turai at the Borneo Cultures Museum, I felt a sense of recognition. They reminded me of the pua kumbu patterns that Iban women wove to tell stories about spirits, dreams, and journeys. Both have the same goal: to record, remember, and preserve meaning alive beyond the present.

It made me realize that each culture had its unique way of retaining memories. Some people carve it into stone, some into wood, others into sound, and yet others into cloth. For the Iban, it may have been all of these things at once. The lemambang sang what the papan turai contained, and the pua weavers wove tales and ancestral history into the thread. These were our books before books.

As I stood there, I thought about how easily such histories fade away. It’s not because they aren’t relevant, but because they aren’t documented in the systems that the world relies on. The papan turai lived on through continuity of ritual and faith. Its knowledge lived on through the lemambang, in various ceremonies and festivals, and in the community gathered around the ruai during Gawai. When modern eyes look at the papan turai, they may see only strange markings. But these are not just symbols. They hold our heritage. They are reminders that our people were already keeping records of their lives in their own way long before British colonials came with pen and paper. However, I am not sure how long we can keep them alive, as the lemambang is becoming a dying breed of heritage guardians of the Iban. 

I felt pride and loss as I left the museum that day. Pride, since the papan turai shows that Iban civilization was more complicated and deep than most people realize. Loss, because so few of us can interpret those symbols today.

Maybe this is why I write and draw. I want to continue that old rhythm in a new form. My writings and drawings are like my own papan turai, illustrating the lines that connect the past and the present. I strive to document things that could otherwise disappear, including stories from my indigenous perspective, feelings, and fragments of my identity.

To me, the papan turai is more than an artifact. It is a mirror that reflects an ancient hunger to make meaning clear and to preserve memories alive before they disappear. And maybe that instinct to leave a mark and to tell a story is something that never truly goes away. It exists in our language, our art, and our digital words. It’s the same urge that led a lemambang to carve symbols into wood hundreds of years ago, hoping that someone would remember it someday.

Sources: Religious Rites and Customs of the Iban or Dyaks of Sarawak by Leo Nyuak and Edm. Dunn (1906), UNIMAS Gazette. 

I write about Iban culture, ancestral rituals, creative life, emotional truths, and the quiet transformations of love, motherhood, and identity. If this speaks to you, subscribe and journey with me.