“His ‘lah’ (spirit) will require them.”
“But you see his ‘lah’ has not taken them. They are still there, and they are rotting away.”
“Oh, no!” Very promptly. “What you see are only the forms of the things. Their ‘lahs’ have gone away and are with the man’s ‘lah.’”
“Where?”
“In another world below this.”
“And so people’s ‘lahs’ after death go to another world and work as in this?”
“Yes; and if they had no haversack, and no betel-box, and no ‘dah’ how would they get on? How could they cut down forest and cultivate rice for food if they had no ‘dah’?”
He added after a pause:
“So our people say, but I don’t know. I am ignorant. I am only a poor jungle fowl.”
“But,” I persisted, “how do your people know that it is true—that the betel-box, the haversack, the knife, and other things have ‘lahs,’ or even that the man has a ‘lah’?”