the lips from injury.
Considerable interest attaches to the filing of the first tooth, on account of the
omens which are taken from the position in which the crown happens to lie when
it falls. If, when the tooth is filed through, the crown adheres to the file, it is
taken as a sign that the patient will die at home; if it flies off and lies with its
edge turned upwards, this means, on the contrary, that he will die abroad.
At the conclusion of the operation a species of poultice (ubat tasak), consisting
mainly of cooked ginger (halia bara di-pahis-ki), which is intended to “deaden
(the feeling of) the gums” (matikan daging gusi) is duly charmed^44 and applied
to the gums of the jaw which happens to be under treatment. The Pawang now
lays one hand (the left) on the top of the patient’s head and the other upon the
teeth of the upper jaw, and presses them together with a show of considerable
force, making believe, as it were, that he is pressing the patient’s upper teeth
firmly into their sockets. Finally, a portion of betel-leaf is charmed (with the
charm Hong sarangin, etc.) and given to the patient to chew, after which, it is
asserted, all pain immediately ceases. The Pawang then washes his hands,
resharpens his tools, and those present sit down to a meal of saffron-stained
pulut rice. This concludes the ceremony for the day, the lower jaw being
similarly treated upon a subsequent occasion.
In the course of three such operations (the Pawang informed me) the teeth can be
filed down even with the gums, in which case they are, I believe, in some
instances somewhat roughly plated or cased with gold. Sometimes, however,
they are merely filed into points, so that they resemble the teeth of a shark.^45
Very frequently, too, they blacken them with a mixture of the empyreumatic oil
of the cocoa-nut shell (baja or g’rang) and kamunting (Kl. karamunting)
wood,^46 which is also used for blackening the eyebrows. These customs,
however, are already dying out in the more civilised Malay States.
Whenever I made inquiries as to the reason of this strange custom, I was
invariably told that it not only beautified but preserved the teeth from the action
of decay, which the Malays believe to be set up by the presence of a minute
maggot or worm (ulat), their most usual way of expressing the fact that they are
suffering from toothache being to say that the tooth in question is being “eaten
by a maggot” (di-makan ulat).