Iban History
The oral history of the Iban has traditionally been committed to memory, and recorded in a system of writing on boards (papan turai) by the initiated shamans, or lemambang. This includes elaborate genealogical records, which usually go back about fifteen generations, although some purport to go back up to twenty-five. These genealogies (tusuts) are essentially records of who married and begat whom. Sometimes a name is accompanied by a short description.
Some of the songs of the Iban people's oral history (such as the ritual pengap chant, sung during festivals) are mythological or historical accounts.
Read more about Iban History: Pre-colonisation, Rule By Brooke, World War II
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)