“This ordeal is not peculiar to Perak. I find a short description of a similar custom in Pegu in Hamilton’s New Accounts of the East Indies (1727). In Pegu, he says, the ordeal by water is managed ‘by driving a stake of wood into a river and making the accuser and accused take hold of the stake and keep their heads and bodies under water, and he who stays longest under water is the person to be credited.’”[217]
But by far the largest class of divinatory rites consists of astrological calculations based on the supposed values of times and seasons, or the properties of numbers. For the purposes of the native astrologer, exhaustive tables of lucky and unlucky times and seasons have been compiled, which are too long to be all examined here in detail, but of which specimens will be found in the Appendix. Few of them are likely to be original productions, most, if not all, being undoubtedly translated from similar books in vogue either in India or Arabia. Besides these tables, however, use is frequently made of geometrical (and even of natural) diagrams, to the more important parts of which certain numerical values are assigned.[218]
Perhaps the oldest and best known of the systems of lucky and unlucky times is the one called Katika[219] Lima, or the Five Times. Under it the day is divided into five parts, and five days form a cycle[220]: to each of these divisions is assigned a name, the names being Maswara (Maheswara), Kala, S’ri, Brahma, and Bisnu (Vishnu), which recur in the order shown in the following table or diagram:—
| Morning. | Forenoon. | Noon. | Afternoon. | Evening. | |
| (pagi) | (tĕngah naik) | (tĕngah hari) | (tĕngah turun) | (pĕtang) | |
| (1st day) | Maswara | Kala | S’ri | Brahma | Bisnu |
| (2nd day) | Bisnu | Maswara | Kala | S’ri | Brahma |
| (3rd day) | Brahma | Bisnu | Maswara | Kala | S’ri |
| (4th day) | S’ri | Brahma | Bisnu | Maswara | Kala |
| (5th day) | Kala | S’ri | Brahma | Bisnu | Maswara |
These names are the names of Hindu divinities, Maheswara being Shiva, and constituting with Brahma and Vishnu the so-called Hindu Trinity, while Kala is either another title of Shiva, or stands for Kali, his wife, and S’ri is a general title of all Hindu gods[221]; but it may be doubted whether this division of time is not of Javanese or Malayan origin, although the importance of the number five is also recognised by the Hindus.[222]
The same mystic notions of colour and the like are attached to these divisions by the Malays as obtain in the case of the Javanese days of the week: thus Maheswara’s colour is yellow-white (puteh kuning): if you go out you will meet a man of yellow-white complexion, or wearing yellow-white clothes; it is a lucky time for asking a boon from a Raja, or for doing any kind of work; good news then received is true, bad news is false, and so on.
Kala’s colour is a reddish black (hitam merah[223]); if you go out you will meet a bad man or have a quarrel; it is an unlucky time altogether: the good news one hears turns out untrue, and the bad true; illness occurring at this time is due to a ghost (hantu orang), and the remedy is a black fowl; in cock-fighting a black cock will beat a white one at this time, but when setting him to fight you must not face towards the west, etc.
Similarly S’ri’s colour is white, Brahma’s is red, Vishnu’s is green, and each division has its respective advantages or disadvantages.[224]
Another version of this system, known as the Five Moments (saʿat), is based on a somewhat similar diagram, but has orthodox Muhammadan names for its divisions, viz. Ahmad, Jibra’il (Gabriel), Ibrahim (Abraham), Yusuf (Joseph), and ʿAzra’il (Azrael).
Its diagram, as will be seen, is not quite the same as that of the Katika Lima, though the general scheme of the two systems corresponds closely.