beneath the reaper’s fingers and does not alarm the ‘soul of the rice.’ When once the seed-rice has been harvested, more expeditious reaping-tools may be employed, since it is clearly unnecessary to retain the spirit of life in grain that is only intended for the cooking-pot. Similar rites attend all the processes of rice-cultivation—the sowing and the planting-out as well as the harvest,—for at each of these stages there is a risk that the vitality of the crop may be ruined if the bird of life is scared away. In the language used by the high-priests of these very ancient ceremonies we constantly find references to Sri (the Hindu Goddess of the Crops), to the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and to Adam who, according to Moslem tradition, was the first planter of cereals;—many of these references only represent the attempts of the conservative Malays to make their old religions harmonize with later beliefs. Beneath successive layers of religious veneer, we see the animism of the old Indonesians, the theory of a bird-spirit of life, and the characteristic view that the best protection against evil lies in gentleness and courtesy to all animate and inanimate things.”(577) (M152) “It is a familiar fact,” says another eminent authority on the East Indies, “that the Indonesian imagines rice to be animated, to be provided with ‘soul-stuff.’ Since rice is everywhere cultivated in the Indian Archipelago, and with some exceptions is the staple food, we need not wonder that the Indonesian conceives the rice to be not merely animated in the ordinary sense but to be possessed of a soul-stuff which in strength and dignity ranks with that of man. Thus the Bataks apply the same word _tondi_ to the soul-stuff of rice and the soul-stuff of human beings. Whereas the Dyaks of Poelopetak give the name of _gana_ to the soul-stuff of things, animals, and plants, they give the name of _hambaruan_ to the soul-stuff of rice as well as of man. So also the inhabitants of Halmahera call the soul-stuff of things and plants _giki_ and _duhutu_, but in men and food they recognise a _gurumi_. Of the Javanese, Malays, Macassars, Buginese, and the inhabitants of the island of Buru we know that they ascribe a _sumangè_, _sumangat_, or _sĕmangat_ to rice as well as to men. So it is with the Toradjas of Central Celebes; while they manifestly conceive all things and plants as animated, they attribute a _tanoana_ or soul-stuff only to men, animals, and rice. It need hardly be said that this custom originates in the very high value that is set on rice.”(578)