A sacrifice is offered as soon as the stalks have emerged from the ground and are tall enough "to hide the doves." Another marks the moment of flowering, and a third, the most important, celebrates the time of harvest. On this last occasion the owner cuts off the heads of three of the stalks and wraps them up in a cloth. The next step is to pass them through the smoke of a fire in which several pieces of eagle-wood are burning. These ears are the first-fruits offered to the goddess Pô Nögar, and they are afterwards hung in the owner's house until the next sowing time comes round. The same field will then be sown from the rice thus gathered.
For "unconsecrated" ricefields the ritual is less complicated. When the harvesting is due the oldest woman of the group is selected to cut three tufts, which she sets with much pomp against the bank which borders the field and harangues the grain as yet ungathered in the following terms:
"Follow the example you see here before you and you will be worthy of a place in my barns." After this address harvesting proceeds without interruption.
When the grain is safely gathered in, the Cham believe that it sleeps all day and only awakes at night. It would be the height of desecration and imprudence to disturb its slumbers, and consequently we soon learnt the futility of asking our hosts for paddy in the daytime. We were invariably informed that we must wait until night. It was only at a late hour that the owner would consent to open the door of his barn and give us what we wanted.
There was a very curious rite, fallen into desuetude since our occupation in 1888, which accompanied the gathering of the precious essence known as eagle-wood or aloe-wood. This substance is mentioned in the Bible, the Egyptian papyri, and by many Greek, Hindu and Arab writers. It seems to have been used extensively for embalming the dead, as also for combining with camphor to make a kind of incense burnt in the temples. It appears under different names, "ahalot" in Hebrew, "aghäluhy" in Arabic, "ἀγάλλοχον" in Greek, "agaru" in Sanscrit. The Cham call it "galao." Portuguese explorers, who seem to have been the first to discover its commercial value, used the Arabic name and translated it "pao de Aguila." In Latin this becomes "lignum aquilae," and so, in modern tongues, "eagle-wood," or "agal-wood," "adlerholz," and "bois d'aigle."
This essence has attracted the attention of travellers of all nations owing to its various properties, and was formerly a commercial product of great importance among the Cham. It is found all over this region, which seems to have been the land of its origin, for it is never met with further north than the thirteenth or fourteenth degree of latitude.
Botanists are not yet agreed as to the class of trees from which it is produced. The most up-to-date investigators assert that it is produced by diseases due to malnutrition in certain trees such as the aquilaria secundaria, aloexylum agallochum, and aquilaria agallocha, all of the family of the aquilarinæa. It is an aromatic substance with a slightly resinous odour and bitter to the taste.
The natives distinguish three varieties, according to their commercial value. The first quality, which is almost impossible to find to-day, commanded a price of no less than fifty-four pounds a kilogramme. The medium quality was worth sixteen pounds for the same quantity, and the cheapest quality was worth rather more than one pound a kilogramme.
The variety of uses to which this accommodating substance can be put is astonishing, though it is not suitable for cabinet-making.