In a critical rejoinder to Rousseau (1980), Freeman (1981) presents a more detailed account of Iban leadership than is contained in his earlier work. Here he points up in particular the connection that exists between what he sees as the distinctively egalitarian nature of Iban leadership — its consensual, non-instituted basis — and what he rightly calls “a most fundamental concept of traditional Iban society, that of pun” (1981:31).

Literally, pun means source, basis, origin, or cause (Richards 1981:290; Sather 1993:75-76). Its root meaning “is that of stem, as of a tree, from which the development of any kind of activity springs” (Freeman 1981:31). In reference to group undertakings, pun typically describes the person who initiates or originates an action, who announces its purpose, and enlists others to join him or her in bringing this purpose about. As an example, Freeman (1981:35) describes the bejalai, a journey undertaken, primarily by young men to gain wealth and social recognition:

A bejalai group was formed by an experienced individual announcing his intention to undertake such a journey; and as others chose [emphasis in the original] to join him, and a group of individuals with common interests formed, so he became its pun bejalai, and its leader (tuai).

Similarly, with other undertakings — migration, for example, the construction of a new longhouse, or the launching of a raid — each is initiated by a pun, who, once the action is under way, became, for the members of the group formed to carry it out, their tuai or leader (lit. “elder”). The point that Freeman makes is that anyone who chooses to may assume the role of initiator and provided he proves himself competent, may attract and hold a following as its leader. Those who follow an initiator’s lead, and so recognize him as their tuai, do so voluntarily, of their own free will. Thus the tuai’s position is in no sense ascriptive, or socially prescribed, and, as Freeman (1981:38) aptly puts it, each “individual had [traditionally] to be the source (pun) of his own achievements”.

But in addition to this, the notion of pun has also a range of further meaning that reflects a different and somewhat more complex image of Iban leadership. Not all groups in Iban society are short-lived like those formed for bejalai or to carry out a raid. In this respect, the term pun may also convey a notion of group continuity. For example, a pun tusut refers to a “main-line” genealogy from which branching or collateral lines are said to “break off” (mechah ari, v.f.).^[5] Each branching line has a new “source” and the potential of becoming a main-line itself in time. This same imagery of “stem” and “breaking off” also applies to the bilik-family and is used to describe the processes of family succession and partition. Partition, like genealogical branching, is described as “breaking from the bilik” (mechah ari bilik). The seceding family is distinguished as the “new family” (bilik baru) and, similarly, its founder, with regard to its other members, becomes its new “source” or pun (Sather 1990:32-34, 1993:68-70). At the same time, continuity is marked by a succession of pun. Thus every bilik-family has a pun bilik. From its founding onward, it is through the person of its successive pun bilik that a family is said “to be continued” (tampong) from generation to generation. Thus the pun bilik is the acknowledged heir through whom, in each generation, bilik rights and possessions are said to devolve (cf. Sather 1993:70). As such, the “family source” represents the living embodiment of bilik continuity, the chief link between its present and past generations, and the reference point in terms of whom all other members reckon their bilik affiliation. The continuing succession of pun bilik thus symbolizes the continuing life of the bilik-family, including that of its jointly held assets and sacra, for which the pun is the primary custodian. Similarly, every longhouse, too, has a pun. At the time of house-construction, the pun rumah acts as the original founder by erecting the first house-post, but also, with the passage of time, like the pun bilik, the original pun rumah is succeeded by a continuing series of successors, each of whom embodies the community’s continuing existence and serves as the principal custodian of its sacra, particularly its cooling charms or ubat penyelap (Sather 1993:68-74).

Pun in this second sense thus represents a locus of continuity, the “stem” through which the continuing life of any permanently constituted social group is thought to flow. The same principle applies to families, longhouses, and to entire riverine societies, all groups that, for the Iban, endure through time.

Recognition of this double meaning of pun, as both initiator and locus of continuity, helps illuminate the historical dynamics of Iban leadership. Thus in times of outward expansion, the Iban were able to throw up an array of effective leaders, who, as initiators of action and organizers of collective projects, led migrations, pioneered new areas of settlement, defeated rivals and competitors in war, felled the jungle, and founded new longhouses and bilik-families. Those who were successful in these undertakings were, and continue to be, remembered, and so form the principal founders and connecting links in the main-line genealogies by which the Iban remember and celebrate their ancestral past (Sather 1994:27). Those who can claim direct connection to these leaders stood, and continue to stand the best chance of becoming longhouse pun and tuai and of making their own genealogies the principal main-line tusut of the longhouses and riverine communities in which they live. Later on, in times of social and territorial consolidation, when the flow of migrants slows or ceases, successive generations of leaders, by invoking their genealogical links to these historical founders were able to assert a connection to this formative past, including its initiating “sources” (pun), and so were able to link their own claims to leadership to a potent image of societal origins and continuity. Hence, in this way, in long-settled areas such as the Saribas, genealogies and related oral historical narratives assume, in the competition for power and office, major political significance.^[6]