Dayak headhunter

Dayak is a term for natives of the island of Borneo. They are a tribe of people living in Kalimantan especially in Central Kalimantan. Dayak, divided into 405 sub-sub clans. Each sub-Dayak both Indonesia and Malaysia are identical. Dayak customs and culture comes from the word "Power" which means upstream, to refer to people who live in inland areas or in the interior of Borneo. In the arsenal of art and culture, Dayak has many similarities such as; saber, chopsticks, beliong, betang, cupai, renjung, empajang and others.

Warfare, including headhunting, slave capture, plunder and conquest, was practiced by Dayaks in various parts of Borneo until early part of the 20th century.

Until now there are still some Dayak tribal customs are still preserved. Dayak supernatural world in ancient times still looked strong until now. This custom is one of the cultural property owned by the Indonesian nation. A long time ago the famous Dayak with the term "ngayau" (adventuring by finding the opponent's head to become "Dengah").

Headhunting played a central role in the social organization, religion, and worldview of nearly all Dayak groups of Borneo. Headhunting among the tribe is believed to have begun when the land inhabited by the Ibans grew into over-population and confrontation was an inevitable requirement for survival.

Headhunting, derived from the word "me and ngayau". Me means action, ngayau: beheading enemies, decapitating enemy action (Mengayau contained in the Iban language and Ibanik, also on the Dayak community in general).

Successful headhunters enhanced their own prestige, in part because their actions were perceived to contributes to the prosperity of kin and community through the performance of certain important rituals.

These rituals, such as the Iban kenyalang and the Kenyah mamat, required fresh human heads for their performance.

Headhunting has been associated with ideas regarding the head as the seat of the soul, with some forms of cannibalism in which the body or part of the body is consumed in order to transfer to the eater the soul matter of the victim, and with phallic cults and fertility rites intended to imbue the soil with productivity.

A few groups decorated their trophy skulls in characteristic ways by either attaching wooden or other elements to individual skulls and/or by engraving mostly floral elements on the neurocranial and facial parts of the trophy.

Dayaks are very careful to defend their females, hence in their system of head-taking, the heads of females are more highly valued than those of the men, in as much as it requires more artifice and bravery to obtain them.
Dayak headhunter

Banjar people

The Banjar people, also known as Banjarese, are a Malay people inhabiting parts of the large island of Kalimantan in Indonesia north of the central island of Java.

The Banjar language, Banjar Hulu is a Malayo-Polynesian language thought to have originated in Sumatra with significant admixtures of local Dayak and Javanese words.

The island of Kalimantan was originally settled by colonist from the Asian mainland about 2500 BC and these ancestors of the Dayaks were later joined by Malay settlers. The fusion of the Malay and Dayak peoples is considered the origins of the Banjar ethnic group and the Banjar Hulu language.

South Kalimantan was anciently ruled by a Kingdom known as Nan Serunai, and long the center for Buddhist and Hindu realms that evolved into the first Banjar kingdom.

A Hindu Javanese style court, was established at Negara Dipa in the 13th century. By the 15th century the capital had moved to Negara Daha and during these centuries the Hindu Banjar kingdom was a power along coast of Borneo, although latterly vassal to the Majapahit empire of Java.

Kayu Tangi near Martapura, was the site of the fourth and last, Banjar royal compound and capital, although in fact it was Banjarmasin, the third capital, that the Dutch attacked in 1612, and it was Kay Tangi to which the Banjarese fled.
Banjar people

Mempawah kingdom

West Borneo has been in the history of humans for a long time. There were at least three sultanates that existed in West Borneo, and they were the Sultanate of Pontianak, the Sultanate of Mempawah and the Sultanate of Sambas.

The Bugis Kalimantan was important in the past as they had their own sultanate in Mempawah. One of the founders of Mempawah sultanate, Opu Daeng Manambon, had family links to other sultanate in the province – Pontianak, Sambas and Tanjungpura sultanates which spread the Bugis’ influence further.

Opu Daeng Manambon was originally from Bugis sultanate of South Sulawesi. According to Hikayat Opu Daeng Manambon, the Bugis adventures spread the archipelago after Dutch occupied Makassar in 1667. This hikayat recounts the tale of five Bugis brothers who traveled through the Malay world; one becoming yang dipertuan muda of Riau- Johor., while others dispersed.

The second brother, Opu Daeng Manambon, visited Sukadana, where he married a daughter of the sultan whose mother came from the ruling family of Mempawah. Later this Daeng Menambon moved to Mempawah and became its ruler.

In the past times Mempawah was a subordinate kingdom of the kingdom of Tanjung Pura. During the Dutch colonial period, the Dutch government appointed Pontianak Sultanate as the Dutch representative to preside over all the kings in West Kalimantan.
Mempawah kingdom

History of Kutai Kingdom

Kutai Kingdom is divided into two periods:
Kutai Martapura (350-400)
Kutai Kertanagara beginning around 1300

Kutai Martapura Kingdom was established in 400 AD under the king of Mulawarman Naladewa. Kutai Martapura is believed to be the oldest Hindu Kingdom in Indonesia, whose capital located in Muara Kaman.

The two successive kings of Kutai were Aswawarman and Mulawarman. They were descendents of the indigenous king, Kundunga.

Inscriptions in stone of found in east Kalimantan at a place now called Muara Kaman attest to this history as Brahmans erected stone memorial to express their gratitude and respect for the great king’s kindness, king of Mulawarnan who ruled from late in the fourth century.  The stone inscribed in Sanskrit, using the Pallava script and dated to around the 4th century.

Kutai demonstrates an early transition to Brahmanism, as Mulawarman reportedly staged scarifies and represented fabulous gifts to his recently settled Brahmans. These Brahmans probably had come from India or may have been Austronesian who had voyaged to India for their religious training.

Islam spread mainly along the coast but as there were no active missionary efforts people in the interior kept their traditional belief systems.

Sultanate of Kutai Kertanagara was established on the coasts near the town of Pamarangan. This sultanate was supposedly founded by refugees from the Javanese state of Singasari who had arrived late in the 13th century and converted the local inhabitant to Islam.

Under the reign of Aji Pangeran Sinum Panji Mendapa (1605-1635), Kutai Martapura was integrated into the expanding Sultanate Kutai Kertanagara in 1630 AD.
History of Kutai Kingdom