Malay Magic _ Being an introduction to the - Walter William Skeat

(Perpustakaan Sri Jauhari) #1

that a letter which announces a death should have no kapala.^110 Loud wailing
and weeping is forbidden by the Imām for fear of disturbing the dead. The
mosque drum is not usually beaten for funerals in Selangor, nor is the body
usually carried into the mosque, but is borne straight to the tomb. If the coffin is
a single plank one, on arriving at the grave (which should have been dug early in
the morning) an excavation is made on the left side of the grave for the reception
of the corpse, the cavity being called liang lahad. Three men then lower the
corpse into the grave, where three others are waiting to receive it, and the corpse
is deposited in the cavity on its right side (mĕngiring ka lambong kanan),
looking towards the west (Mecca), and with the head therefore lying towards the
north. Four pegs (daka-daka) are then driven in to keep the plank in a diagonal
position and prevent it from falling on the body, while the plank in turn protects
the corpse from being struck by falling earth.


The karanda is lowered into the centre of the grave in the same way as a
European coffin, the body, however, being invariably deposited in the position
just described; whilst the long acts as a sort of lid to a shallow trench (just big
enough to contain the body) which is dug (di-k’roh) in the middle of the grave-
pit. The five bands swathing the corpse (lima tali-pĕngikat maiat) are then
removed, and at this point the bystanders occasionally hand lumps of earth
(tanah sa-kĕpal) to the men standing in the pit, who, after putting them to the
nostrils of the deceased “to be smelled,” deposit them at the side of the grave,


when they are shovelled in by those standing at the top.^111 The filling of the
grave then proceeds, but as it is “taboo” (pantang) to let the earth strike against
the coffin in its fall, the grave-diggers, who are still standing in the pit, receive it
as it falls upon a sort of small hurdle or screen made of branches, and thence tilt
it into the grave. As the grave (which is usually dug to about the level of a man’s
ear) fills up, the grave-diggers, who are forbidden to shovel in the soil
themselves, tread down the earth and level it, and they are not allowed to leave
the pit till it is filled up to the top. One of the relations then takes a piece of any
hard wood, and rudely fashions with a knife a temporary grave-post (nisan or
nishan), which is round in the case of a man and flattened in the case of a
woman; one of these grave-posts is placed exactly over the head (rantau kapala)
and the other over the waist (rantau pinggang), not at the feet as in the case of
Europeans. Thus the two grave-posts are ordinarily about three feet apart, but
tradition says that over the grave of a kramat or saint, they will always be found
some five or six feet at least apart, one at the head and one at the feet, and it is

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