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DUSUN OF TEMPASUK IN THE EARLY DAYS

              1953, I.H.N. Evans published one of the most important works ever published on the Dusun of North Borneo. The book deals with he religious practices of a sub-group of community concentrated in the region called Tempassuk, after the Tempassuk River (also known as Kadaimaian River at its upper course), The Dusun (or Kadazandnsun, as they re known today) are the largest ethnic group in present-day Sabah. They were concentrated mainly on-the west coast, though some smaller tribes exist on the east coast. The Dusun were categorized y some authors as pagans, though vans' book clearly demonstrates that he community did have a comprehens­ive belief system and an entire corpus f elaborate religious ceremonies and rites. The original version of the hook as first published in 1953 and is still he most comprehensive collection of religious ceremonies and rites of the Dusun people ever recorded.

Ivor Hugh Norman Evans was born n Cambridge on 6 October 1886, and as educated at Clare College, Cambridge University where he read ethnography. He joined the North Borneo Company as a cadet in 1910 at the slightly more mature age of 24.His only posting in Sabah was as a cadet and 3rd Class Magistrate; in the Tuaran and Tempassuk district in the West Coast Residency. Evans was first engaged by the Chartered Company on 21 June 1910 and arrived in Sabah on 5 August 1910. He resigned his appointment on 8 August 1911.

Even though his initial stay in Sabah as extremely short, it did not deter Evans from developing a keen interest n the indigenous society, particularly the Dusun people. In one of his first communications published in the fort­ightly official journal British North Borneo Herald during his service in the Chartered Company, Evans reported the discovery of some flint implements in he Tempassuk district. These finds, along with some other specimens of' stone `celts' (axcheads), had been rought to him by some Bajau, these articles were thought by the natives to the thunderbolts, and were considered as powerful charms and medicines. This report probably marked the beginning f Evans' fascination with the religion and beliefs of the natives and started  him on a life-long passion

It is unclear why Evans resigned so soon after his arrival, but it was probab­ly due to medical reasons, In May 911, Evans was granted six weeks medical leave of absence on full pay. It s also believed that he had wanted to continue with his studies. After leaving he service, Evans returned to Cambridge to study anthropology under Professor Haddon and took a Master's degree.

In April 1912, Evans returned to Southeast Asia  as assistant curator and ethnographer at the Perak Museum in Taiping, the Federation of Malay States. He served the Federated Malay States Museum from 1912 till 1932 and was editor of the Journal of the Federated Malay States Museum for many years. Shortly after his appointment at Taiping, Evans had collected enough material to publish a paper entitled "Religious Beliefs, Superstitions, Ceremonies and Taboos of the Dusuns of Tuaran and Tempasuk" (1912); another paper on the Dustin was pub­lished in 1917, this time on their beliefs and customs. These early works eventu­ally culminated in his most popular work, Among the Primitive Peoplesin Borneo published in 1922.

The study is a description of the various groups of indigenous people and the Chiflese on the west coast of Sabah, with pri­mary focus on the Dusun community and their cus­toms. It was based on the material col­lected during his brief stay in Sabah in 1910-11 and a two-month visit in 1915, In his works, Evans was found to be more sym­pathetic to the plight of the indigenous people than to his former employer, the North Borneo Company, of which he was highly criti­cal, In fact, Evans even entered into cor­respondence with Company officials in London dealing with their objections to some of his views expressed in the book.

Even as he continued to be fascinat­ed by the Dusun, his work in the Perak Museum eventually saw Evans engaged in pionrcring work in archaeology and ethnography in the Malay Peninsula, E, excavation of two ~ caves at l.cngymg in Upper Perak was the first systematic study on Malayan prehisto­ry. This was followed by work at various Stone Age sites in Perak and the Iron Age site at Tanjong Rawa at Kuala Selinsing.

However, Evans' archaeological works are less well known than his ethnographical studies. Evans was appointed_. Ethnographer for the FMS Museum in 1926 and remained in that position until his retirement in 1932. It is his ethnographical studies of the Negrito of Upper Perak and Kelantan with which Evans' name is closely asso­ciated. He was a friend of Father Paul Schebesta, a Catholic priest who was also an authority on the Negrito.

Evans was instrumental in providing logistical assistance to the priest-ethno­grapher on the latter's expedition into upper Perak in 1925-26, as well as being a sound critic to Schebesta's works. Evans' own study of the Negrito resulted in two related volumes: Studies in Religion, Folklore vand Custom in British North Borneo and the Malay Peninsula was published in 1923 and The Negritos of Malaya in 1937.After retiring from the Federated Malay States Museum in 1932, Evans returned to Suffolk. However, after five years of preoccupying himself with "fishing for pike, playing with the East Anglian Gypsies and searching for Neolithic flints", Evans made the deci­sion to sell off everything and he returned to Sabah in 1938.

The call from the land that had first enchanted him was too strong for him to resist. It was during this prolonged stay in Sabah from 1938 to 1942 that the information contained in the present volume was collected. The details of his research were recorded by Evans in a meticulously kept diary, which survived the war and has recently been pub­lished.This most fruitful four years, how­ever, were interrupted by the Japanese occupation. The Japanese landed in Sabah on 1 January 1942 and had the entire state under its control by 24 January. During the first four months of .the Japanese occupation, Evans remained in Kota Belud, making occa­sional trips to Jesselton.

It was a rather strange situation as the Japanese had entered into an agree­ment with the European officials on the west coast, asking the latter to remain in their, posts in return for freedom, This short interlude came to an end in May 1943 when the Japanese decid­ed to intern all the Europeans and to replace them with locals and Japanese. Evans was asked to report to Jesselton , where he was immediately interned.

Shortly afterwards, he was sent to the main prisoner of war camp in Batu Lintang, Kuching along with the rest of the European community; there he spent the remainder of the War.

After being released from intern­ment, Evans chose to make his home in Labuan and made frequent trips back to the Tempassuk region where he tried to recapture some of the information lost during his internment. During this time Evans also made several trips abroad, including visits to the UK.

Ivor Evans passed away in 1957 after a long illness. He was reported to have been buried at a Muslim cemetery, after expressing a desire to convert to Islam on his death bed. His estate was divided between Din bin Ibrahim, his long-time travelling companion, and Cambridge University. In Cambridge, a research fund named after I;vans was established to fund ethnography and archaeology research in Southeast Asia,

 The Dusun of  Tempasuk

It would be interesting to know how and why Evans was captivated by the Dusun community living in the Tempassuk region. Perhaps it was love at first sight; it was also probably because the lifestyle of the Tempassuk Dusun had not been severely affected by modernization and development. Owen Rutter classified the Tempassuk Dusun as one of the lowland Dusun groups. The community is also known as (he Kadaimaian Dusun, after the upper course of the Tempassuk River, which is known as Kadaimaian. According to Rutter, the Tempassuk Dusun communities stretch from Tenggilan to Marudu and meet tho~e of the Kiau Dusuns towards the upper reaches of the Tcmpassuk River. They are sub-divided into three main groups: the Kiau, the Saiap and the Kadaimaian. Despite being a lowland Dusun commu­nity, the Tempassuk group was one of those least exposed to external influ­ence.

The Tempassuk Dusun studied by Evans in his book covered a vast area­from the lowland Dusun villages near the coast such as Mankahak, Kadaimaian, Taun Gusi, Piasau, Nahabak, Ginabon, Kahung Malawan and Kabaiau to the villages of Tembatuon and Kahung Saraiyoh in the upper Kadaimaian.Strictly speaking, the two villages of Tcmbatuon and Kahung Saraiyoh were not lowland as both are situated on the upper reaches a1' [tic 1'cmltasruk­Kadainrtian River). Kahung ti,rraiyuh (also known as Kahun Ulu) is situated less than ten miles from the village of Kiau and about fifteen miles from Bundu Tuhan, on the approach to Mount Kinabalu.

The remoteness of the two villages ensured that much of the material col­lected and studied by Evans was `intact' and was not `contaminated'; hence it was closer to the original form.

Since the establishment of Chartered Company rule, lowland Dusun like those at Putatan-Penampang, Papar and Tuaran had been exposed to new developments that were beginning to change their way of life.The Company’s inroads into these areas also meant that the Dusun were beginning to experience new jobs, for instance, as baggage carriers and auxiliaries to police expeditions and as labourers in the rubber estates opened in Tenghilan and Tuaran. Despite these changes among the lowland Dusun,they were less apparent in the Tempasuk, especially in the area studied by Evans.

  For instance, Tambatuon, Evans’ favourite village, was a highland Dusun settlement, twenty-two miles from Kota Belud by the bridle-path to the interior. Evans’ choice of the village was perhaps also due to his friendship with Gampus, the village headman of whom Evans was particularly fond. Gampus was a main informant for Evans.Evans explained his choices of the two villages by saying that the people were of good type and extrovert – quite different from the introvert villagers of Kahung Saraiyoh, the next village upstream.

Very few of the Tambatuon villagers were working on the rubber estates, as did many men from Kahung Saraiyoh. Tambatuon struck him as being a happy village, while Kahung Saraiyoh did not.Evans also mentioned that: “Apart from the District Officer, there were still no Europeans in the district – no estates, no missionaries, to corrupt and disorganize native life.” The place also remained almost ‘in-situ’ as Evans had left it in 1911 when he was stationed there. Hence, the Dusun of Tempasuk, to a large extent, were intact, and a perfect subject for an ethologist like Evans. This is evident from the many massive verbatim recordings of cultural and religious practices of the community.

The Book

 Much of what went into the book was based on Evans’ few notes and diaries that had survived the Japanese occupation and also what he managed to gather during a research trip from the end of 1945 to 1947. When Evans learned that the notes on the Dusun he had collected during his 1938-1942 stay in Tempasuk were destroyed in Labuan during the war, he decided to return to Tempasuk and stayed with the people for the first few years immediately after the war to retrieve the lost information.   

     According to Evans, his Dusun lan­guage was not particularly strong Therefore, he used an interpreter to talk, to his informants in Dusun and then translate into Malay. This was especially so during particular religious rites or ceremonies. Evans recorded all that was told  him. The question remains of whether any words and details were lost during the process of translation and transmission. Hence, the information in the book has to be read with a degree of scepticism. Relating Evans' method of collecting data, Dr Fay-Cooper Cole, a distinguished American ethnologist said,            `

His method of securing data was  simple. He played games with the children; he showed them how we did things or how "the people over there did them". Soon he knew how they did it. This system, only slightly modified ,worked at all stages. He seldom asked direct questions, yet at days end his note book was well filled. I watched during ­ceremonies when priestesses would pause as anxious to explain as to effect a cure.

One major consequence of Evans' method was that his works, including the present Volume, reflect his lack of strong empirical research methodology and the­oretical framework. This is interesting as when Evans published his Among Primitive People in Borneo in 1922 the field of ethnography and anthropology had just started to undergo a `functional revolution'. However, Evans never departed from his own method of investigation and accmcH content with his rudimentary ways.

In his efforts to record the details of the religious rites and ceremonies, Evan attended many of them. In Appendix 11, of the book, for instance, he detailed the various ceremonies and rites attended   during a visit to Kahung Saraiyoh after the War. During that particular session, he attended a series of ceremonies and rites including maginakan, molihing, mogambai , moginsinahau,lumampang,mahau ,mongimuhau do pomogunan,mogindalan, and moninkosub.

In order tu be informed of ceremonies in different localities, Evans appointed agents in some villages to inform him of any forthcoming ceremonies, e.g. in April 1939 he appointed agents for the two villages of Tombulion and Piasau.

It is also important to note that the religious practices mentioned in the book were recorded over different periods: 1910-11, 1915; 1938-1942 and 1947--1952.

Even though he had lost most of the information obtained in 1915 and 1938-1942, Evans mentioned that some notes survived while other information came from his memory. It is unclear if the information relating to the religious practices mentioned in the book was actually recorded from his last visit in the late 1940s or from an earlier record. In any case, religious practices of the Tempasuk Dusun could change with time and remained relevant even when the book was published.

The present reprint is an important effort to bring hack into circulation a book that has been out-of-print for many  years. More than fifty years have passed .since the publication of the original edi­tion by the Cambridge University Press. Much has happened during this fifty years. In 1963, the Colony of North Borneo achieved independence and became one of the states in the  Malaysian Federation.

The socio-economic development that has taken place in-the state has in many ways transformed its landscape. The Tcmpassuk Dusun, for instance, are no longer as isolated as they were during Evans' days. The area that they inhabit­ed, though it has remained Dusun, has become more porous than in previous times. People of other ethnic groups have penetrated the area and, as a result, the Tentpasuk Dusun have been exposed to many external influences.

The inroads made by the mainstream religions such as Islam and Christianity have probably helped to erode many of the original religious practices of the Dustin of Tempasuk.

Conversion to these religions has^, inevitably resulted in many of the religious practices witnessed by Evans being abandoned because of their incom­patibility with the teachings of these new religions. However, the extent of such influence on the traditional religious practices has not yet been fully studied.

Hence, it may not be too much to suggest that the present effort is an attempt to highlight the religious prac­tices of the Tempassuk Dusun, many of to      which may have evolved and changed ~er      over the long period since the publica­ng tion of the original edition. In many is-       ways, Evans' text has to be seen as a his­A torical document which recorded the ~i- religious practices of the Tempassuk Dustin during the period prior to 1953. The question is whether they still m- maintain similar religious practices. Anthropologists and ethnologists as well as  practitioners of the Dusun religious practices may find traces of practices  recorded in Evans' books still in exis­tence.

The historical value of the study is ernomous in capturing the essence of the religious practices of a people on the  threshold of change.In addition to the main text there is a collection of appendixes which were probably added later by Evans during the lull between sending in his manuscript in 1948 and its final publication five years later. At the end of the book is a series of the plates (photographs) taken by Evans of the people and the religious ceremonies covering the period between his initial stay in Tempassuk to his final visit before the book was published.  The most interesting feature of these photographs is that many of them portray  to thc Tcmpassuk Dusun in their traditional costumes, which have changed consider­ably   since then. Evans' book, though first published more than fifty years ago, remains a of         mine of information for anthropologists  and ethnologists who wish to study the  Kadazandusun     community of Tempassuk. It is also an important source for  the study of  the social  and cultural history  of the community.

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