By : RAYMOND TOMBUNG
ON JULY 15, 2012, Tan Sri
Dr. Herman Luping, a Sabah lawyer and a former deputy chief minister, wrote in
his Sunday column in a local paper to reassert his theory that Kinoringan, the
traditional god of the Kadazandusuns, and his wife Suminundu, appeared from a
giant rock that split millennia ago, and began to begat humanity. He contended
that the rock was one of the numerous rocks that were spewed out by Kinabalu
when the mountain was still an active volcano.
I argued that geologists
have confirmed that Kinabalu was never a volcano, and that Luping’s theology
raised the question of who created the rock that brought forth Kinoringan, or
regressively, who created Kinabalu.
I contend that Luping had
forgotten that the traditional legend actually stated that the first couple who
appeared from the rock was the first humans – our version of Adam and Eve – and
this is confirmed by I.H.N Evans in his book, The Religion of the Tempasuk
Dusuns of North Borneo. Kinoringan on the other hand was the creator
(minamangun) of everything.
I also raised the question
of whether it is really true that the Kadazandusun people actually originated
from Nunuk Ragang (in Tompios, Ranau), as is the accepted belief by most
Kadazandusun leaders, especially those in the Kadazandusun Cultural Association
(KDCA) which is led by Tan sri Joseph Pairin Kitingan as the president and Huguan
Siou. For decades now KDCA has been reemphasizing the legend and traditional
theology around the belief that the Kadazandusuns originated from Nunuk Ragang
to construct a coherent legend and quasi-history of the people.
But since several years ago
I had raised this doubt about Nunuk Ragang being our place of origin based on
the existence of another story in Tuaran which says that a group from Indai in
that district abandoned their village to resettle in Nunuk Ragang.
This creates only possible
two scenarios: (1) The people from Tuaran were the ones who started the Nunuk
Ragang settlement, or (2) The people from Tuaran went to Nunuk Ragang to join
the people who were already in Nunuk Ragang.
Both scenarios would wipe
out the possibility that we all originated from Nunuk Ragang! Additionally,
stories in Tuaran confirm that during the time of the Indai settlement, Dusuns
had already settled in Kindu and Lumawang in Tuaran, and Bongawan in Papar.
And three more groups from
Tuaran went to the Kadamaian plains, the Tambunan valley, and the Keningau
plains. Hence, I argue that the best that we can conclude about Nunuk Ragang is
that it was merely on of the many places we had settled in in the past.
The following story, or
history, titled, “The Last Days of Indai,” records why the group from Tuaran
went to Nunuk Ragang:
Once upon a time, many
hundreds of years ago, there was a very large population occupying one single
longhouse in a village called Indai in Tuaran. The longhouse was so long that
if somebody died at one end of the house in the evening the news would reach the
other end of the house only the next day. If someone plucked a branch of basil
(bawing) and walked from one end of the longhouse, the basil would already be
totally wilted by the time he reaches the other end.
The number of the population
of the village were so huge that if a coconut frond fell on the main path of
the village in the morning, by evening all the leaves of the frond would be
totally separated from their midribs (tinggur). And in the evening, when the
women went to the river nearby to wash their cooking pots before cooking rice
for the evening, the amount of rice crust (kogut) thrown into the river would
block (kowokok) the flow of the river!
One day, one old woman
called Odun Lumban who was living somewhere near the middle of the longhouse,
went to the swamps to catch fish with a scoop net (sikop). But strangely,
unlike the other fishing trips when she used to scoop a lot of fish, this time
she didn’t managed to catch a single fish. She scooped and scooped but all she
managed to catch was single tiny crab.
She threw this away but she
scooped it again, and no matter how many times she threw it away, and no matter
how far away she tossed it, it kept appearing in her scoop net in the next
sweep of her small net. Eventually she decided to take it and tossed it into
the back-carried basket (barait).
And although she kept trying
to catch fish in many parts of the swamp until late afternoon, she failed to
catch anything more. Tired, she went home and upon reaching home, she felt pity
for the crab which was too tiny to be eaten, and put it in a bowl made of a
coconut shell (satu’), putting in enough water for it to dip in.
When she woke the next
morning, she was surprised to find out that it had grown up suddenly overnight,
filling up the whole bowl. She then decided to put it into a tagu (a container
shaped from the sheath of the beetlenut frond).
By next morning the crab had
grown further, this time filling up the whole tagu. Having nothing else bigger
which could hold water for the crab to dip in, she decided the best place was
an abandoned buffalo wallowing hole (oburon) which had water, in front of her
home. By next morning the crab had grown so huge it filled the whole wallow
hole.
That night, the crab spoke
to her in her dream, saying, “Thank you for looking after me. I had actually
come to you for a very important purpose. I am here to protect the village from
a powerful ombuakar (dragon) which will come to attack the village from the
sea. I am leaving tonight as I am growing even bigger to fight the ombuakar at
the river mouth, and if one day soon you see that the water of the river is
coloured white during high tide, you will know that that will be my blood being
shed from the fight.”
So by next morning the crab
had already gone. Some many days later Odun Lumban noticed that the water of
the river was white during a high tide, and she remembered what the crab said
in her dream.
Worried for crab, she took
her boat and paddled to the seaside, and true enough a fight between the
ombuakar and her crab, which was then enormous in size, was raging on.
At one point one of the
claws (anggip) of the crab was about to break from the strain of fighting, and
she hurriedly went to the nearby jungle to get some rattans and helped to tie
up the injured claw and this managed to give the crab renewed strength and
eventually won the fight, killing the ombuakar.
Bidding goodbye, the crab
dived into the sea, while Odun Lumban decided to take a piece of the bone of
the ombuakar as a souvenir of the event. On reaching home she buried the bone
in front of her varendah. Not long after a kolian tree grew from the bone.
Eventually this kolian tree,
miraculously bore fruits that were made of gold! As the tree grew more golden
fruits, the whole of the village began to enjoy plucking and possessing gold
pieces which became so many they made household items made of gold – spoons,
plates, coconut graters (pongoguan), winnowers (lilibu) and so on.
The village which is today
called Selupoh (a few kilometers from Indai), especially around the small lake
(which was part of Tuaran river) now fronting the residence of OKK Imbun Orow,
used to be known as Libu-Libu because two golden padi winnowers were found
there, but these items had been taken to other districts and are now lost. A
golden coconut grater and rice scoopers (kikiriw) had also been found elsewhere
in Tuaran.
By and by, the people of
Indai became very wealthy, and with wealth came pride and conceit. One day two
naughty villagers thought they would commit a huge act of deceit by taking a
large piece of rock, carved it to be perfectly round and plated it with gold
from the Kolian tree. They took this to Bangawan by boat and went to the owner
of a very precious and deeply revered large jar (gusi) called Gurunon.
The offered their gold for
Gurunon, but the sacred jar was the spiritual icon and symbol of pride of the
Bangawan community and was so priceless that the owner refused the offer.
But after a lot haggling and
convincing about the much greater value of the gold, the owner, eventually
relented and agreed to hand over Gurunon in exchange for the large ball of
]‘gold’ from the Kolian tree from Indai which had become famous far and wide.
Extremely thrilled, the two
fraudsters paddled away in their canoe back to the sea to head home for Indai.
But one of them, unable to control his excitement, began singing loudly,
“Salu-salu bulawan, nokotuhun Gurunon!” (Having mistaken it for gold, Gurunon
had come down!”
He went on singing even
louder although his companion kept asking him to keep quiet. Eventually someone
from the river bank heard the singing, and the man started wondering what it
all meant. But he knew the name Gurunon, the jar being so famous and worshipped
in Bangawan.
He rushed to the house of
the owner of the jar, related what he heard and asked what the singer meant
when he sang “Salu-salu bulawan, nokotuhun Gurunon!” Fearful of what had
actually transpired, and suspecting something was terribly wrong, they split
the so-called ball of gold and found out to their shock that it was almost all
just a piece of worthless rock.
The news hit the whole
community with horror and untold fury. Livid and seething for vengeance because
of the shame brought on the community, they decided to take ultimate revenge on
the people of Indai in ways that would be deadly and terrible. Using their most
powerful magicians, they first sent a tree dragon, which eventually was known
as the Topirik (the creature that pulls up), because this dragon went to perch
on the tree tops at a jungle near the Indai longhouse.
Day by day many small
children disappeared from the village without any trace, and all efforts to
search for them failed to recover a single one of them. Eventually they
realized that those who disappeared were those who went playing in the forest
nearby. So some adults went to spy on these children to find out what actually
was happening.
Eventually they saw that
there was a dragon high up on a tree lowering its many tentacles which were
very beautiful, and shone and flickered with luminescent multicoloured lights.
Because they were very much
attracted to the strange shiny ‘ropes’ they had never seen before, the innocent
children would play by swinging on them. This was when the Topirik would twirl
the ends of its tentacles and hoisted up (pirik) the unfortunate children up to
be instantly devoured.
In retaliation the villagers
came to cut the Topirik’s tentacles, pulled it down and killed it. It turned
out that the Topirik, although dragon-like, only had a short stump of a body.
But its scaly skin, like its tentacles, was shining with multiple luminescent
colours. The villagers were about to find out that the secretive attack of the
Topirik was only a foretaste of the more terrible things to come.
To celebrate their success
in solving the mystery of the disappearing children and the victory of killing
the monster, they took the Topirik’s skin, dried it up, and used it to make to
make a drum. The found out to their shock that when they first beat the drum,
it spoke, “Tob, tob, mitobok!” (Tob, tob, stab each other!) and the people
instantly took up knives and parangs and started stabbing each indiscriminately
forgetting themselves, causing hundreds to die.
Unaware of the cause of the
fighting, they beat the drum again and again it spoke, “Tob, tob, mitotok!”
(Tob, tob, slash each other!) and the people would take parangs and swords and
started to slash each other, again killing hundreds. Realizing to their horror
of the drums deadly magical power, the people then decided to end the menace by
burning up the drum.
They thought then that they
had got over the worse of the calamities. But the worst and most terrifying was yet to come. The
people of Bangawan, then sent over a flying pig head to Indai which, horribly,
perched on the sinungkiap (the parts of the roof that could be partly opened to
allow light in) and started crowing like a cockerel.
And everytime it crowed,
hundred of people who heard the crowing instantly fell dead. It would then fly
over to another sinungkiap of the other part of the longhouse, started crowing
again and causing hundreds more to fall dead.
The people of Indai, gripped
by fear and realizing they was nothing they could do to fight the terrible
menace, decided that the best decision was to abandon the village. Four groups
were formed; one group decided to go to the Kadamaian in what is now Kota
Belud, one group decided to go to the Tambunan valley, one to the Keningau
plains, and another group went to settle in Nunuk Ragang.
And that was the end of Indai.
After the exodus, it was totally abandoned for centuries, and the Lotuds who
much later settled in Tuaran never even dared to settle in the area believing
it was cursed. Indai was never settled again until the early 1950s when a few
Lotuds re-opened the land.
Among those who spearheaded
the pioneering of the land for agriculture and settlement was my uncle (my
mother’s elder brother), the late Ipos Undugan (Mohd Salleh Undugan) and my
cousin and son of Ipos’ elder brother, OKK Imbun Orow.
When they opened up the land
by cutting down jungles with huge trees that had grown for hundreds of years,
they found dozens of jars which obviously functioned as coffins, evidenced by
the bones found in them.
They are still there. Many
reminders have been made to the Muzeum Department to undertake a geological
research oh the area, but nothing concrete was ever done, which a huge loss of
our history.
At one part of a swamp which
was a river, a huge heap of long-rotten clam shells were found buried in one
spot. When preparing a piece of land to build a house near the old mansion
belonging to OKK Indan Kari (later Tun Hamdan Abdullah) in Kg. Lumpiring,
Tuaran, people found a buried treasure of weapons (parangs, swords, spears,
shields, etc.) there, believed to have been left by the people of Indai before
they proceeded to their new settlements. They must have despaired at the
futility of weapons in the face of powerful black magic!
In the early 1990s I managed
to see marks of the longhouse in Kg. Indai Baru. This was a long row of
anthills (puzsu) which the elders told me were spots where the kitchen stoves
(ropuhan) of the ancient longhouse fell to the ground. Such stoves of ash and
earth would always entice termites to build new anthills. The late KK Panglima
Liput Erah even pointed out to us the approximate spot where the Kolian tree
stood.
The story of the destruction of Indai is considered
without doubt to be a true story, a historical event, by the Lotuds of Tuaran.
The story may have elements of the magical but that is believable knowing the
power of black magic, especially in the ancient days.
But while this is a Lotud
story, it’s important to note that the people of Indai were not Lotuds. They
had a totally different language and only one living elder in Tuaran can still
recite just one solitary sentence that is still remembered from the language of
Indai. The Lotuds of Tuaran are not descendants of the Indai people, but people
who came from Gua’kon in Tamparuli a long time ago.
