Return into the frame and body of So-and-so,
To your own house and house-ladder, to your own ground and yard,
To your own parents, to your own sheath.”
At the end of three days he measures the rice; if the amount has increased, it signifies that the soul has returned; if it is the same as before, it is still half out of the body; if less, the soul has escaped and has not yet returned. In this case the soul is expected to enter the rice and thus cause its displacement.
Another method, not of recalling the soul, but of stopping it in the act of escaping, is to take a gold ring, not less than a maiam[147] in weight, an iron nail, a candle-nut (buah k’ras), three small cockle-shells, three closed fistfuls of husked rice (b’ras tiga gĕnggam bunyi), and some parti-coloured thread. These articles are all put in a rice-bag, and shaken up together seven times every morning for three days, by which time the soul is supposed to be firmly reseated in the patient’s body; then the rice is poured out at the door “to let the fowls eat it.” The ring is tied to the patient’s wrist by means of a strip of tree-bark (kulit t’rap), and it is by means of this string that the soul is supposed to return to its body. When the shaking takes place the following charm must be recited:—
“Peeling-Knife,[148] hooked Knife,
Stuck into the thatch-wall!
Sea-demons! Hamlet-demons!
Avaunt ye, begone from here,
And carry not off the soul of So-and-so,” etc.