I wish to ask for your assistance,
I wish to open (excavate) this mine.”[264]
The chief taboos are the killing of any sort of living creature within the mine; to wear a sarong (Malay skirt); to bring into the mine the skin of any beast; and to wear shoes or use an umbrella within the mine. These are some of the perpetual taboos, but no doubt there are many others.
In the case of a sacrifice, however, the white buffalo may of course be killed, not within the mine itself, but still upon its brink; and when this is done, the head is buried, and small portions (which must be “representative” of every part of the carcase) should be taken and deposited in the “audience-chamber.”
Among the seven days’ taboos are mentioned the killing of any living timber (within the precincts of the mine?), lewdness, and the praising or admiring of the “grass seed” (puji buah rumput), which is the name by which the tin-ore must invariably be called within the precincts of the mine. This last taboo is due to the use of a special mining vocabulary to which the greatest attention was formerly paid, and which did not differ very greatly from that used in Perak.
Another account of the ceremony runs as follows; I give it word for word as I took it down from my Malay informant:—
“Take five portions of cooked and five portions of uncooked fowls, both white and black, together with black pulut rice,[265] millet-seed (sĕkoi), seeds of the chĕbak China, etc. etc. When all is ready, burn incense, scatter the black rice with the right hand over the bottom of a tray, i.e. an anchak (such as is used for offerings to the spirits), fumigate and deposit the offerings in five portions upon this layer of rice (one portion going to each corner and one to the middle of the tray). Take black cloth, five cubits long, fumigate it, and wave it thrice round the head with the right hand from left to right, repeating the following invocation (sĕrapah):—
“O Grandfather ‘Batin’[266] the Elder,
In whose charge are caverns and hill-locked basins,
O Grandfather ‘Batin’ the Younger,