The _piring_ is an offering composed of rice cooked in bamboos, cakes, eggs, sweet potatoes, plantains, or other fruit, and sometimes small live chickens. If the offering be made in the house these things are put on a brass dish (_tabak_). If the occasion of the sacrifice requires that it be offered elsewhere, a little platform is constructed, consisting of pieces of wood tied together with cane, and fixed on four sticks stuck in the ground. This is the _para piring_ (the altar of sacrifice), and the offering is laid on it. It is covered with a rough roof of palm-leaf, and looks like a miniature native house, and is decorated with white flags. It is the most flimsy thing imaginable, and soon tumbles to pieces. The god or spirit is supposed to come and eat the good things provided, and go away contented. It is no use arguing with the Dyak that he can see for himself that his offering is eaten up by fowls, or pigs, or boys, who are full of mischief, and have no fear of spirits. The Dyak says the spirits eat the soul or spirit of the food; what is left on the altar is only its outer husk, not its true essence. I remember when I was staying at Temudok the Dyaks put up a little shed, with offerings of food, at the landing-place on the bank of the river. There was an epidemic of cholera at the time, and the spirits of disease were supposed to eat these offerings and go away contented. Among the offerings was a little live chicken, that was tied to the _para piring_, but which managed to get loose. Some of the schoolboys staying with me asked if they might catch the chicken, which was running about in the grass, and rear it. I did not like to allow them to do this, because I thought the Dyaks would resent the boys interfering with their sacrifice. But my Dyak catechist told me that the Dyaks had done their duty in making the offerings, and what happened afterwards to the things offered did not matter. So the boys caught the chicken and reared it. I spoke to the Dyaks about it afterwards, and they did not seem to mind their “altar of sacrifice” being robbed of its offering! In the _ginselan_ there is always some animal slain, and the blood of the victim is used. The person on whose behalf the offering is made is sprinkled or touched with the blood to atone for any wrong he may have done, and the house or farm upon which the blessing of the gods is desired is also sprinkled with the blood. This kind of sacrifice is very often offered on behalf of farms, and no Dyak thinks his paddy will come to maturity without some application of blood. The fowl is waved in the air over the farm, then it is killed, and the blood sprinkled over the growing paddy. When there is an epidemic, the _ginselan_ is often offered to the spirits of disease, and blood is sprinkled on the posts of the house and on the ladder leading up to it.