Ngaju

The Ngaju, called Dayak Ngaju or Dayak Biaju, are the largest Dayak people of central Borneo, dwelling in longhouses along the Kapuas, Kahayan, Katingan and Mentaya rivers. Their Ngaju language is an Austronesian tongue of the Barito group, and through river trade most also came to speak Banjarese, the lingua franca of the south Borneo coast.

Traditionally they followed Kaharingan, the Dayak animist faith, whose death cult centres on the tiwah secondary funeral: bones are exhumed, cleansed and laid in carved mausoleums called sandung, while hampatong figures guard the villages. From the early 1800s growing numbers converted to Christianity or Islam, the Muslim Ngaju forming the separate Bakumpai community, though Kaharingan rites and the riverine way of life persisted.