56 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap. 



Bali Flaki is also consulted before sowing and 

 harvesting the rice crop, but besides being appealed 

 to publicly on behalf of the whole community, his 

 aid may be sought privately by any man who wishes 

 to injure another. For this purpose a man makes 

 a rough wooden image in human form, and retires 

 to some quiet spot on the river bank where he sets 

 up a teguluuy a horizontal pole supported about a 

 yard above the ground by a pair of vertical poles. 

 He lights a small fire beside the teguluuy and, taking 

 a fowl in one hand, he sits on the ground behind it 

 so as to see through it a square patch of sky,^ and 

 so waits until a hawk becomes visible upon this 

 patch. As soon as a hawk appears he kills the 

 fowl, and with a frayed stick smears its blood on the 

 wooden image, saying, ** Put fat in his mouth " 

 (which means '* Let his head be taken and fed with 

 fat in the usual way "), and he puts a bit of fat in the 

 mouth of the image. Then he strikes at the breast 

 of the image with a small wooden spear, and throws 

 it into a pool of water reddened with red earth, and 

 then takes it out and buries it in the ground. While 

 the hawk is visible, he waves it towards the left ; for 

 he knows that if it flies to the left he will prevail 

 over his enemy, but that if it goes to the right his 

 enemy is too strong for him. 



When a new house is built, a wooden image of 

 Bali Flaki with wings extended is put up before it, 

 and an offering of mixed food is put on a little shelf 

 before the image, and at times, especially after 

 getting good omens from the hawks, it is offered 

 bits of flesh and is smeared with pig's blood. If the 

 people have good luck in their new house, they 

 renew the image ; but if not, they usually allow it 

 to fall into decay. If, when a man is sitting down 

 to a meal, he espies a hawk in the heavens, he will 



1 "The person who has to take them (the auspices) first marked out with 

 a wand ... a division of the heavens called ' templum,' . . . within which 

 he intended to make his observations." 



