“Berobat Pinya” is also for sickness. At this one priest and four or five priestesses attend, the interdict lasts four days, and one pig and one fowl are killed. Outside the door of the family apartment in which the incantation is held are gathered together, in a winnowing basket, an offering of fowls, yams, and pork, fowl and pig’s blood in a cup, boiled rice and sirih-leaf, and areca-nut: these are for the various spirits. On the first day of the incantation two priestesses pretend to fight with each other with drawn swords, which they wave and slash about in so furious a manner, as at once to put to flight the trembling ghost. After this display of valour, chanting begins, accompanied by the music of a small gong and a drum, the latter beaten by the priest; this continues for a day and night. Towards midnight he proceeds to get the soul of the patient. Carefully wrapping up a small cup in a white cloth, he places it amidst the offerings before mentioned, then, with a torch in one hand and a circlet of beads and tinkling hawk bells in the other, he stalks about shaking his charms. After a little time he orders one of the admiring spectators to look in the cup previously wrapped up in white cloth, and sure enough there the soul always is, in the form of a bunch of hair to vulgar eyes, but to the initiated in shape and appearance like a miniature human being. This is supposed to be thrust into a hole in the top of the patient’s head, invisible to all but the learned man. He has thus recovered the man’s soul, or, as it may be called, the principle of life that was departing from him.
The Land Dayaks of Sarawak say they have only one soul; the “Sibuyaus” talk of several; but their souls, as shown by the priest to the friends of the patient, bear a suspicious resemblance to the seeds of the cotton plant.
“Berobat Sisab” has a similar aim to the above. At this, one priest, but no priestess, is present. The priest first makes a bamboo altar[10] in the common verandah outside the door of the patient’s room, round which are placed offerings, and a pig and a fowl are killed. The interdict lasts for eight days. For two there is beating of gongs and drums, and dancing by the man who makes the charm, usually some relation of the sick person. On the first night the soul is recovered, and the patient washed in the milk of the cocoa-nut. I have often been present when these ceremonies were going on; it is astonishing that any patient should recover, stunned as he must be by the beating and clanging of these ear-splitting instruments close to him. It has effectually prevented my closing my eyes; and the melancholy wail of the priestesses is sufficient, one would imagine, to drive hope itself from the bedside of the sufferer.
The feasts and incantations connected with farming operations are as follows:—First, in the midst of cutting down the jungle; second, when it is set on fire. These are small affairs, the interdict lasting but one day, and only a fowl being killed. They are called “Mekapau,” only one gong and one drum are beaten; and also “nyirañgan,” because a bamboo altar is built by the roadside, and upon it a small offering of rice and blood is placed for the spirit. The second feast is to drive away all evil influences from the earth, when ready for the seed.
The third feast[11] is the blessing of the seed before planting. It is brought out, and the priestesses wave over it their flat brush-like wands, which consist of the undeveloped fruit of the areca palm, stripped of its sheath, and is in itself one of the prettiest objects in the world, and in its natural bursting spreads around the parent stem a delicious perfume that scents a whole grove. They thus expel all malign influences; the interdict lasts two nights, one fowl is killed, and there is music and dancing.
During the growth of the rice, if the rats be making havoc among it, or the pale green leaf appear blighted, there are similar ceremonies to awe the vermin, and charm back the colour to the plant. But the harvest feasts are the great days; there are three:—The feast of first fruits,[12] when the priestesses, accompanied by a gong and a drum, go in procession to the farms and gather several bunches of the ripe padi. These are brought back to the village, washed in cocoa-nut water, and laid round a bamboo altar, which at the harvest feasts is erected in the common room of the largest house, and decorated with white cloth and red streamers, so as to present a very gay appearance, and is hung around with the sweet-smelling blossom of the areca palm. This feast and interdict last two days; only fowls are killed; dancing and gong-beating go on night and day; and when it is over, the Dayaks may set themselves to repair their bamboo platforms outside the houses, on which the rice is trodden out from the ear, and then dried in the sun. They may now also gather in their crops.
The second feast[13] is a more important affair: it is held about the middle of harvest, and lasts four days; fowls and a pig are killed, and dancing and beating of gongs go on almost continually. The first part of this feast is celebrated, not in the village, but in a shed at some distance from it, frequently built by the roadside, and sometimes on the very summits of the hills on which the villages are situated. Although strangers are forbidden to approach the place during these ceremonies, yet at Sirambau I have often been invited to be present during this and the other feasts. They choose a lovely spot for the erection of their shed, which is tastefully decorated with green boughs and climbing plants, and situated under the loftiest fruit-trees I have ever seen; and here as in other villages, around the spot where the shed was erected were planted yellow bamboos, and their golden tapering stems and graceful feathery tufts are a charming and pleasing contrast to the rude leaf walls and roof of the neighbouring building.
At this, and at the third and last harvest feast, the soul of the rice is secured. The way of obtaining it varies in different tribes. In the Quop district it is done by the chief-priest alone; first, in the long and broad verandah where the altar is erected, and afterwards in each separate family apartment. Sometimes it is performed by day, sometimes by night; and the process is this: the priest, fixing his eyes on some object visible only to him, takes in one hand his bundle of charms and in the other a second composed of pigs’ and bears’ and dogs’ tusks and teeth, and large opaque-coloured beads; a little gold dust is also necessary in this ceremony, during which he calls aloud for white cloth; when it is brought and spread before him, he waves his charms towards the invisible object in the air, and then shakes it over the white cloth, into which there fall a few grains of rice, which Tapa, in reward for their offerings and invocations, sends down to them. This is the soul, and it is immediately wrapped up with great care and laid among the offerings around the altar.
The gold dust and white cloth are generally furnished at their earnest request by the government, as the Dayaks think it exercises a beneficial effect to receive it from white men. It used to be supplied by the Malay rulers.
In some tribes it is a far more exciting spectacle, especially when done at night. A large shed is erected outside the village, and lighted by huge fires inside and out, which cast a ruddy glow over the dense mass of palms surrounding the houses; while gongs and drums are crashing around a high and spacious altar near the shed, where a number of gaily-dressed men and women are dancing with slow and stately step and solemn countenances, some bearing in their hands lighted tapers, some brass salvers on which are offerings of rice, and others closely covered baskets, the contents of which are hidden from all but the initiated. The corner-posts of the altar are lofty bamboos, whose leafy summits are yet green and rustic in the wind; and from one of these hangs down a long, narrow streamer of white cloth. Suddenly elders and priests rush to it, seize hold of its extremity, and amid the crashing sound of drums and gongs and the yells of spectators, begin dancing and swaying themselves backwards and forwards, and to and fro. An elder springs on the altar, and begins violently to shake the tall bamboos, uttering as he does so shouts of triumph, which are responded to by the swaying bodies of those below; and amid all this excitement, small stones, bunches of hair and grains of rice, fall at the feet of the dancers, and are carefully picked up by watchful attendants. The rice is the soul sought for, and the ceremony ends by several of the oldest priestesses falling, or pretending to fall, to the earth senseless; where, till they recover, their heads are supported and their faces fanned by their younger sisters.