Fig. 2. The Henna Cake, etc.
Three models of wedding apparatus: the one on the left represents the “henna cake” used at the “henna dance” during the ceremony of staining the finger-nails. The second represents the bouquet of artificial flowers, with coloured eggs and streamers, which must be presented to each guest at a wedding. The model of the buffalo shows the way in which these animals are dressed for presentation to a Raja.
Page 375.
A couple of what we should call “pages,” of about ten years of age, are seated right and left of the bridegroom, and are called Pĕngapit.
The bride usually provides herself with one or more girl companions; but these are supposed to “hide themselves” when there is company, their place being taken by more staid duennas, who are called Tukang Andam (i.e. “coiffeurs”), and a personal attendant or nurse, called Ma’inang (Mak Inang), who appears to act as a sort of Mistress of the Ceremonies.
The second day is spent by the guests (as was said above) in sleeping off their night’s fatigue, and they do not reassemble till evening, at about five P.M.
When the last has arrived (at about seven P.M.) a meal is served, and at about half-past eight the games recommence; but after a round or so (zikir sa-jurus), say at about ten P.M., the bride at her house and bridegroom at his respectively make their first appearance in public, clad in their wedding garments, for the ceremony of staining the finger-nails, this time in public. When they are seated (between the two candlesticks, which are lighted to facilitate the operation) a tray is brought forward, furnished with the usual accessories of Malay magic, rice-paste (tĕpong tawar), washed rice, “saffron” rice, and parched rice, to which is added, in this instance, a sort of pudding of the pounded henna-leaves. A censer is next produced, and a brass tray with a foot to it (called sĕmb’rip) is loaded with nasi bĕrhinei (pulut or “glutinous” rice stained with saffron), in which are planted some ten to fifteen purple eggs (dyed with a mixture of brazil wood (sĕpang) and lime, and stuck upon ornamental sprays of bamboo decorated with coloured paper). The bride (or bridegroom) is then seated in a “begging” attitude, with the hands resting upon a cushion placed in the lap; the first of the guests then takes a pinch of incense from the tray and burns it in the brazier (tĕmpat bara); next he takes a pinch of parched rice, a pinch of newly-washed rice, and a pinch of saffron rice, and, squeezing them together in the right fist, fumigates them by holding them for a moment over the burning incense, and then throws them towards the sitter, first towards the right, then towards the left, and finally into the sitter’s lap.
The “Neutralising Paste”[81] is then brought and the usual leaf-brush dipped into the bowl of paste, with which the forehead of the sitter and the back of each hand are duly “painted.”
A pinch of the henna is then taken and dabbed upon the centre of each palm, the hands of the sitter being turned over to enable this to be done.