In the ginselan there is always some animal slain, and the blood of the victim is used. The person on whose behalf the offering is made is sprinkled or touched with the blood to atone for any wrong he may have done, and the house or farm upon which the blessing of the gods is desired is also sprinkled with the blood.
This kind of sacrifice is very often offered on behalf of farms, and no Dyak thinks his paddy will come to maturity without some application of blood. The fowl is waved in the air over the farm, then it is killed, and the blood sprinkled over the growing paddy.
When there is an epidemic, the ginselan is often offered to the spirits of disease, and blood is sprinkled on the posts of the house and on the ladder leading up to it.
On most occasions the victim of the sacrifice, be it pig or fowl, is afterwards eaten. But if the sacrifice be to Pulang Gana at the commencement of the farming, the pig and other offerings are conveyed with the beating of gongs to the land prepared for receiving the seed. The pig is killed, its liver and gall examined for divination, the body and other offerings put in the ground, and some tuak (native spirit) poured upon them; a long invocation is then made to Pulang Gana, the god of the land. If a fowl be sacrificed for adultery, its body is thrown away in the jungle.
For all ordinary sacrifices a fowl suffices, but on great occasions a pig, being the largest animal the Dyak domesticates, is killed.
Anyone may offer these sacrifices. There does not seem to be among the Dyaks any priestly order whose duty it is to officiate at religious ceremonies. Any man who has been fortunate in life, or knows the form of address to be used to the deities on these occasions, may perform the sacrificial function.
All that the Dyak hopes to get by his religious ceremonies is material benefits—good crops of paddy, the heads of his enemies, skill in craft, health, and prosperity. Even when there is some idea of the propitiation for sin, as in the slaying of a victim after an act of adultery, the idea of the Dyak is not so much the cleansing of the offender as the appeasing of the anger of the gods, because in their anger the gods may destroy their crops or otherwise give them trouble. There is no idea of seeking for pardon for the offenders. It is merely a compensation for wrong done, and a bargain with the gods to protect their material interests.
The longing to communicate with the supernatural is common to all races of mankind. The Dyak has a special means of bringing this about; he has a custom which is called nampok. To nampok is to sleep on the top of some mountain, or other lonely place, in the hope of meeting some good spirit from the unseen world. A cemetery is a favourite place to nampok in, because the Dyaks think there is great probability of meeting spirits in such places. The undertaking requires considerable pluck. The man must be quite alone, and he must let no one know of his whereabouts. The spirit he meets may take any form; he may come in human form and treat him kindly, or he may assume a hideous form and attack him.
A man nampoks for one of two reasons. Either he is fired with great ambition to shine in deeds of strength and bravery, and to attain the position of a Chief, and hopes to receive some charm (pengaroh) from the spirits, or he is suffering from some obstinate disease, and hopes to be told by some kindly spirit what he must do in order to be cured. It can easily be understood how the desire would in many cases bring about its own fulfilment. The unusual surroundings, the expected arrival of some supernatural being, the earnest wish acting upon a credulous and superstitious imagination in the solemn solitude of the jungle—all would help to make the man dream of some spirit or mythical hero.
The Dyak has no temple erected in honour of some god to which, like the ancients of the Western World, he can make a pilgrimage. He has no altar before which he can spend the night in order to receive revelations in dreams, but he goes instead to the lonely mountain-top, or the cemetery where so many heroes of the past have been buried, and makes his offering and lies to rest beside it. The circumstances are different, but the spirit and the object in both cases are the same. The story often told of a miraculous cure is also similar in each case.