Malay Magic: Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay PeninsulaSkeat, Walter William
Religion
Malay Magic: Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula
Skeat, Walter William
Magic -- Malay Peninsula; Malays (Asian people) -- Folklore; Malays (Asian people) -- Social life and customs
"(1) A small basket to hold the rice cut first, known as the 'Soul
of the Rice' (semangat padi).
(2) A jari lipan [406] to put round the small basket.
(3) A string of terap [407] bark to tie up the rice that is cut first.
(4) A small stem of bamboo, of the variety known as buloh kasap,
with a flag attached, which is to be planted in the small basket as
a sign of the 'Soul of the Rice' that has been cut first.
(5) A small white cloth to wrap up the 'Soul of the Rice.'
(6) An anchak [408] to hold the brasier.
(7) A brasier, in which to burn the incense provided by the Pawang.
(8) A nail and a kind of nut, known as buah keras, [409] to be put
into the anchak together with the brasier.
"When the rice is ripe all over, one must first take the 'Soul' out
of all the plots of one's field. You choose the spot where the rice
is best and where it is 'female' (that is to say, where the bunch of
stalks is big) and where there are seven joints in the stalk. You begin
with a bunch of this kind and clip seven stems to be the 'soul of the
rice'; and then you clip yet another handful to be the 'mother-seed'
for the following year. The 'Soul' is wrapped in a white cloth tied
with a cord of terap bark, and made into the shape of a little child
in swaddling clothes, and put into the small basket. The 'mother-seed'
is put into another basket, and both are fumigated with benzoin, and
then the two baskets are piled the one on the other and taken home,
and put into the kepuk (the receptacle in which the rice is stored).
"10. One must wait three days (called the pantang tuai) before one may
clip or cut any more of the rice. At first only one or two basketfuls
of rice are cut; the rice is dried in the sun, winnowed in a winnowing
basket, and cleaned in a fanning machine, pounded to free it from the
husk, so that it becomes beras (husked rice), and then boiled so that
it becomes nasi (cooked rice), and people are invited to feast on it.
"11. Then a bucket is made for the purpose of threshing the rest of
the rice, and a granary built to keep it in while it remains in the
field, and five or six labourers are engaged to reap and thresh it
(banting). [410] Their hours of working are from 6 to 11.30 A.M.,
and all the rice they thresh they put into the granary.
"12. If the crop is a good one a gallon of seed will produce a
hundredfold. Each plot in a field takes about a gallon of seed.
"13. When the rice has all been cut it is winnowed in order to get
rid of the chaff, and then laid out in the sun till quite dry, so
that it may not get mouldy if kept for a year.
"Then the wages of the labourers are taken out of it at the rate of
two gallons out of every ten. When that is settled, if the rice is
not to be sold, it is taken home and put into the rice-chest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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