"Kill a wild pig and rip open its paunch. Sew up in this a quantity of old 'scrap' brass, pile timber over it, burn it, and then leave it alone until the grass has grown right over it. Then dig up the gold." Again, certain wild boars are believed to carry on their tushes a talisman of extraordinary power, which is called rantei babi, or "Wild Boar's Chain." This chain consists, it is asserted, of three links of various metals (gold, silver, and amalgam), and is hung up on a shrub by the wild boar when he is enjoying his wallow, so that it is occasionally stolen by Malays who know his habits. I may add that, according to a Malay at Langat, the "were-tiger" (rimau jadi-jadian) occasionally appears in the shape of a wild boar escaping from a grave, in the centre of which may be afterwards seen the hole by which the animal has escaped. "Among the modern Malays avoidance of the flesh of swine and of contact with anything connected with the unclean animal is, of course, universal. No tenet of El-Islam is more rigidly enforced than this. It is singular to notice, among a people governed by the ordinances of the Prophet, traces of the observance of another form of abstinence enjoined by a different religion. The universal preference of the flesh of the Buffalo to that of the Ox in Malay countries is evidently a prejudice bequeathed to modern times by a period when cow-beef was as much an abomination to Malays as it is to the Hindus of India at the present day. This is not admitted or suspected by ordinary Malays, who would probably have some reason, based on the relative wholesomeness of buffalo and cow-beef, to allege in defence of their preference of the latter to the former." [333] To the above I may add that it is invariably the flesh of the Buffalo, and not that of the Ox, which is eaten sacrificially on the occasion of festivities. [334] But the flesh of the so-called White (albino) Buffalo (kerbau balar) is generally avoided as food, though I have known it to be prescribed medicinally (as in the case of Raja Kahar, a son of H.H. the Sultan of Selangor, the circumstances of whose illness will be detailed elsewhere). [335] As might be expected, a story is told by the Malays to account for this distinction. The general outline of the tale is to the effect that a Malay boy (a mere child) fell into the big rice-bin (kepok) in his parents' absence and was suffocated by the rice. After some days the body began to decompose, and the ooze emanating from the rice-bin was licked up by a buffalo belonging to the boy's parents. The attention of these latter being thus attracted to the rice-bin, they found therein the remains of their child, and thereupon cursed the buffalo, which (we are led to infer) became "white," and has remained so ever since. According to one version, a ground-dove (tekukur) was implicated both in the offence and the punishment which followed it. Wherefore to this day no man eats of the flesh of either of the offenders.