“The loser is often fined in addition to suffering the loss of his stakes (one-half
of which goes to the Raja). He also has to pay the customary fees, namely, $6.25
for the use of the balei, $12.50 to the krani, and $5 to each of the boys.
“This ordeal is not peculiar to Perak. I find a short description of a similar
custom in Pegu in Hamilton’s New Accounts of the East Indies (1727). In Pegu,
he says, the ordeal by water is managed ‘by driving a stake of wood into a river
and making the accuser and accused take hold of the stake and keep their heads
and bodies under water, and he who stays longest under water is the person to be
credited.’”^217
But by far the largest class of divinatory rites consists of astrological calculations
based on the supposed values of times and seasons, or the properties of numbers.
For the purposes of the native astrologer, exhaustive tables of lucky and unlucky
times and seasons have been compiled, which are too long to be all examined
here in detail, but of which specimens will be found in the Appendix. Few of
them are likely to be original productions, most, if not all, being undoubtedly
translated from similar books in vogue either in India or Arabia. Besides these
tables, however, use is frequently made of geometrical (and even of natural)
diagrams, to the more important parts of which certain numerical values are
assigned.^218
Perhaps the oldest and best known of the systems of lucky and unlucky times is
the one called Katika^219 Lima, or the Five Times. Under it the day is divided
into five parts, and five days form a cycle^220 : to each of these divisions is
assigned a name, the names being Maswara (Maheswara), Kala, S’ri, Brahma,
and Bisnu (Vishnu), which recur in the order shown in the following table or
diagram:—
Morning.Forenoon. Noon. Afternoon. Evening.
(pagi) (tĕngah naik)(tĕngah hari)(tĕngah turun)(pĕtang)
(1st day) Maswara Kala S’ri Brahma Bisnu
(2nd day)Bisnu Maswara Kala S’ri Brahma
(3rd day) Brahma Bisnu Maswara Kala S’ri
(4th day) S’ri Brahma Bisnu Maswara Kala
(5th day) Kala S’ri Brahma Bisnu Maswara