Accept, accept duly this banquet of mine.
It was good at the first: if it is not good now,
It is not I who give it.”The explanation of this part of the ceremony is that the evil spirit, or “mischief,”
is supposed to leave the body of the sick man, and to proceed (guided, of course,
by the many-coloured thread which the patient holds in his hand) to enter into
the choice collection of “scapegoats” lying in the tray. As soon as his devilship
is got fairly into the tray, the medicine-man looses three slip-knots (lĕpas-lĕpas),
and repeats a charm to induce the evil spirit to go, and throws away the untied
knots outside the house.
The original “disease-boat” used in Selangor was a model of a special kind of
Malay vessel called lanchang. This lanchang was a two-masted vessel with
galleries (dandan) fore and aft, armed with cannon, and used by Malay Rajas on
the Sumatran coast. This latter fact was, no doubt, one reason for its being
selected as the type of boat most likely to prove acceptable to the spirits. To
make it still further acceptable, however, the model was not unfrequently stained
with turmeric or saffron, yellow being recognised as the royal colour among the
Malays.
Occasionally, on the other hand, a mere raft (rakit) is set adrift, sometimes a
small model of the balei (state-chamber), and sometimes only a set of the
banana-leaf receptacles called limas.
The vessel in the case of an important person is occasionally of great size and
excellent finish—indeed, local tradition has it that an exceptionally large and
perfect specimen (which was launched upon the Klang river in Selangor some
years ago, on the occasion of an illness of the Tungku ’Chik, eldest daughter of
the late Sultan), was actually towed down to sea by the Government steam
launch ʿAbdul Samad. When all is ready the lanchang is loaded with offerings,
which are of an exactly similar character to those which are deposited on the
sacrificial tray or anchak^138 already described. Then one end of a piece of
yellow thread is fastened to the patient’s wrist (the other end being presumably
made fast to the spirit-boat, or lanchang); incense is burnt and a charm recited,
the purport of it being to persuade the evil spirits which have taken possession of
the patient to enter on board the vessel. This, when they are thought to have done
so, is then^139 taken down to the sea or river and set adrift, invariably at the ebb