190 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



ceremonial wail is heard. At the funeral of Obal, the mourner 

 was his daughter Ungayan, his wife having- died before him. It 

 was she too who mourned when the lid was nailed down. When 

 the coffin was lifted from the bier by Maliguna, Ogtud and Bungan, 

 the three men cousins of Obal, Ungayan stooped down on tin- 

 ground, and just as the coffin was placed in the grave she reached 

 down and with one hand silently touched the head of the coffin. 

 This she did twice or thrice. Then she rose and walked a few 

 steps east of the grave, where she squatted on her feet, then 

 turned her head partly away from the grave and placed her right 

 arm horizontally across her eyes. One of the relatives dropped 

 upon the coffin Obal's old kabir in which was deposited the rice 

 that had been put aside at breakfast, with some coffee, a few areca 

 nuts and buyo leaves, Obal's tobacco-tube (kokong), and two lime- 

 tubes {tag an), all of which constituted the traveling-outfit {pnong) for 

 Obal's soul. Then the three cousins began to push earth into the 

 grave. Simultaneously with the falling of the first clod, Ungayan 

 took up her wail for the second time that day, crying and moaning 

 as before, but for a longer period and in a more vehement manner. 

 While she mourned, her young husband, Ulian, made an invoca- 

 tion addressed to the gimokud of Obal, which was supposed to 

 have been walking through the village since death, but whose 

 departure for Kilut must now be hastened. The intention of the 

 burial ritual seems rather for the benefit of the living than that 

 of the dead, for it is recited with the hope that the gimokud will 

 go down in peace to Kilut, without attempting to trouble the 

 members of his family, or to draw them after him. They told me 

 that Ulian said the words to keep Ungayan and himself and the 

 others from getting sick. Ulian took up a slightly elevated position 

 on the crooked trunk of a gnarled old balbalin tree, a part of 

 which had curved in growth until it was almost parallel with the 

 ground. Ulian looked steadily into the grave, gazing with a fixed 

 stare at the coffin as it disappeared beneath the falling clods, as if 

 his attention were wholly riveted upon the spirit which he was 

 addressing in an urgent entreaty to depart. 2 ' 1 ' This formula was 

 called ihisal, and ran as follows. 



207 The tradition that the soul Lingers near the grave and funeral customs that 



express this belief are widespread in the Mala] region. Martin says: "Hesonders wich- 



-iiid die Vorstellungen, die Bich die Inlandstiimme von dem Ycrhalten der Seele 



nach dem Tode machen. Am meisten verbreitel isl der Glauhe, dass der Geist bcim 



