object of the ceremony, the means of the person for whose benefit they are
offered, the caprice of the medicine-man who carries out the ceremony, and so
on.^124
I shall therefore, in the present place, merely describe the contents of a more or
less typical tray, with the main points of the accompanying ritual.
The bottom of the tray having been lined with banana-leaf, and thickly strewn
with parched rice, there are deposited in the tray itself five “chews” of betel-leaf,
five native “cigarettes” (rokok), five wax tapers, five small water-receptacles or
limas (made of banana-leaf and skewered together at each end), and five copper
cents (or dollars). The articles just enumerated are divided into five portions, one
of which is deposited in the centre of the tray, and the remainder in its four
corners. Besides this there are to be deposited in the tray fourteen portions of
meat (of fowl, goat, or buffalo, as the case may be), and fourteen portions of
Malay “cakes,” care being taken in each case to see that there are seven portions
of cooked and seven portions of uncooked food provided. The rattan
“suspenders,” again, are hung with two sets of ornamental rice-receptacles made
of plaited cocoa-nut leaf (fourteen of the long-shaped kind, or lĕpat, and fourteen
of the diamond-shaped kind, or kĕtupat). Besides this, two sets of (cooked and
uncooked) packets of rice (each stained a different colour) are sometimes
deposited in the tray, the colours used being white, yellow, red, black, blue,
green, and purple. The only other articles required for the tray are a couple of
eggs, of which one must, of course, be cooked and the other raw.
Of the water-receptacles, those in alternate corners are filled with water and
cane-juice, the central receptacle being filled with the blood of the fowl (or other
animal slain for the sacrifice).
Upon the ground, exactly underneath the tray, should be deposited the feathers,
feet, entrails, etc., of the fowl, portions of whose flesh have been used for the
tray, together with the refuse of the parched rice and a censer. Strictly speaking,
a white and a black fowl should be killed, but only half of each cooked, the
remainder being left raw. The “portions” of fowl are as small as they can
possibly be, a mere symbol (ʿisharat) of each kind of food being all that the
spirits are supposed to require. Sometimes funnel-shaped rice-receptacles are
used, which are skewered with a bamboo skewer and called kĕronchot.
Occasionally a standard censer (sangga?) is used, the end of a piece of bamboo