The killing of pigs and fowls, the flesh of which is eaten, small portions being set aside with rice for the spiritual powers; and from the blood being mixed with spittle, turmeric, and cocoa-nut water, a filthy mess is concocted and called physic, with which the people attending the feast are anointed on the head and face. Dancing by the elders and the priestesses round a kind of bamboo altar, erected on these occasions either in the long room or on the exterior platform of one of the houses round which the offerings are placed, always accompanied by the beating of all the gongs and drums of the tribe by the young lads, and singing, or rather chanting, by the priestesses. The “Parneli” or tabu of an apartment, house, or village for one, two, four, eight, and even sixteen days, during which, in the case of a village, no stranger can enter it; in the case of a house, no one beside the family residing therein; and in the case of an apartment, no one out of the family. The Dayaks acknowledge four chief spirits: “Tapa,” who created men and women, and preserves them in life; “Tenahi,” who made the earth and, except the human race, all things therein, and still causes it to flourish; “Iang,” or “Iing,” who first instructed the Dayaks in the mysteries of their religion, and who superintends its performance; “Jirong,” who looks after the propagation of the human species, and causes them to die of sickness or accident. They believe that when Tapa first made the world, he created Iang, then the spirits “Triee” and “Komang,” and then man. That man and the spirits were at first equal and fought on fair terms, but that on one woeful occasion the spirits got the better of man, and rubbed charcoal in his eyes, which rendered him unable any longer to see his spirit foes, except in the case of some gifted persons, as the priests, and so placed him at their mercy. With respect to a future state, the common Dayak belief is, that when a man dies, he becomes a spirit and lives in the jungle, or (this Mr. Chalmers heard from one of the body-burning tribes) that as the smoke of the funeral pyre of a good man rises, the soul ascends with it to the sky, and that the smoke from the pyre of a wicked man descends, and his soul with it is borne to the earth, and through it to the regions below. Another version is, that when a man dies a natural death, his soul, on leaving the body, becomes a spirit, and haunts the place of burial or burning. When a spirit dies--for spirits too, it would seem, are subject unto death--it enters the hole of Hades, and coming out thence again becomes a “Bejawi.” In course of time the Bejawi dies, and lives once more as a “Begutur;” but when a Begutur dies, the spiritual essence of which it consists enters the trunks of trees, and may be seen there damp and blood-like in appearance, and has a personal and sentient existence no longer.