an integral portion of most, if not all, of the more important ceremonies,^212 and
eventually develops into a special and separate rite called Tilek (divination), of
which examples will now be given.
One form of this rite was taught by a Malay of Penang extraction, whose
instructions, taken down by me at the time, ran as follows:—
Take a lemon (limau purut), a hen’s egg, a taper made of bees’-wax (lilin lĕbah),
four bananas, four Malay (palm-leaf covered) cigarettes, four “chews” of betel-
leaf, a handful of parched rice, washed rice, and rice stained with turmeric
(saffron), one of the prickles or “thorns” (duri) of a thorn-backed mudfish, a
needle with a torn eye (taken out of one of the sets of a “score” in which they are
sold—jarum rabit dalam sĕkudi), and a couple of small whips, or rather birches,
one of which must be composed of seven, and the other of twelve, leaf-ribs of
the “green” cocoa-nut palm (niyor hijau).
Two of the bananas, two cigarettes, two chews of “betel,” half of each of the
three kinds of rice, the egg, and the birch of seven twigs, must now be taken
outside the house and set down under a tree selected for the purpose. When
setting it down the egg must be cracked, the cigarettes lighted, and finally the
taper also. On one occasion when I witnessed the performance, the taper, after
being taken up between the outstretched fingers of my friend’s two hands, was
waved slowly to and fro—first to the right and then to the left; finally it was set
down on the ground and began to burn blue, the flame becoming more and more
dim until it almost expired. On seeing this the medicine-man exclaimed, “He has
promised” (dia mĕngaku), and led the way back to the house, where he
proceeded to go through the remainder of the ceremony.
First, he deposited the brazier with incense upon the leaf of a banana-tree, then
took the prickle of the fish and thrust it horizontally through the lower end of the
lemon, leaving both ends exposed; then he thrust the needle through in a
transverse direction, so as to form a cross, the ends of the needle being likewise
exposed, and slipped the noosed end of a piece of silken thread of seven
different colours over the points thus exposed.
Next he scattered the rice round the censer and fumigated the birch and the
lemon, recited a charm as he held the latter in his right hand, recited the charm
for the second time^213 as he took the birch in both hands, with the upper end