Ngar – Ritual of mordant bath

In Iban community, weaving was a criteria for evaluating the status of a woman. A woman weaver, capable of designing and weave a meaningful pua kumbu through her own ingenuity plus able to perform a ritual of mixing mordant bath, known as indu’ takar, indu ngar. She is recognised as a mystic woman as it is believed that her knowledge of mixing the mordant is based on her mystical relations with an ancestral weaver. She received an instruction in her dreams and the performance of ngar is to fulfil that dream. The pua kumbu she’d weave based on this dream is her very own individual intellectual property rights.