For Plantains (or Bananas) you must dig a big hole, and the evening is the time to plant them. The evening is the quicker, and if planted after the evening meal they fill out better.
Plant Sweet Potatoes on a starry night to ensure their filling out properly (by getting plenty of eyes?)
Plant Cucumbers and Gourds on a dark moonless night, to prevent them from being seen and devoured by fire-flies (api-api).
Plant Cocoa-nuts when the stomach is overburdened with food (kalau kita ’nak sangat berak); run quickly and throw the cocoa-nut into the hole prepared for it without straightening the arm; if you straighten it the fruit-stalk will break. Plant them in the evening, so that they may bear fruit while they are still near the ground. When you pick seed cocoa-nuts off the tree somebody should stand at the bottom of the tree and watch whether the “monkey-face” of each seed cocoa-nut, as it is thrown down, turns either towards himself or the base of the tree, or whether it looks away from both. In the former case the seed will be good, in the latter it is not worth planting.
Plant Rice in the early morning, about five, because that is the hour at which infants (the Rice Soul being considered as an infant) get up.
The Cultivation of Rice
The most important contribution of the Malays to the animistic theory of vegetation is perhaps to be found in the many strange ceremonies with which they surround the culture of Rice. In order to properly understand the significance of these ceremonies, however, a proper understanding of the Malay system of rice-planting is essential, and I therefore quote in extenso a description of rice-culture, which possesses the additional interest of being translated from the composition of a Malay:[186]—
“It is the established custom in Malacca territory to plant rice once a year, and the season for doing so generally falls about the month of Zilkaʿidah or Zilhijah.[187]
“In starting planting operations, however, the object is, if possible, to coincide with the season when the West wind blows, because at that time there are frequent rains, and accordingly the earth of the rice-field becomes soft and easy to plough. Moreover, in planting rice it is an invariable rule that there must be water in the field, in order that the rice may sprout properly; though, on the other hand, if there is too great a depth of water the rice is sure to die. It has also been observed that as a rule the season of the West wind coincides with the fourth month[188] of the Chinese calendar, and sometimes also with the month of Zilkaʿidah or Zilhijah.[189]
“2. In olden time the order of planting operations was as follows:—First, the elders had to hold a consultation with the Pawang; then the date was fixed; then Maulud[190] prayers were read over the ‘mother-seed,’ and benzoin, (incense) supplied by the Pawang, was burned; then all the requisites for rice-planting were got ready, viz.:—