264 A PECULIAR SUPERSTITION. 



ascend in search of plants, and which is situated on the 

 confines of the Sangow and Sarawak territories. Walk- 

 ing through a jungle between the villages of Sennah and 

 Sudoish, a large snake crossed our path ; and when I 

 inquired of the Sennah Dyak, Pa-Benang, who was 

 walking before me, his reason for not killing it his 

 parang having been drawn, and his arm arrested when 

 raised to strike he told me that the bamboo bush 

 opposite to which we were then standing, had been a 

 man, and one of his relations, who, dying about ten 

 years previously, had appeared in a dream to his widow, 

 and informed her that he had become the bamboo tree 

 we then saw, and the ground in its immediate neigh- 

 bourhood, and everything on it, was sacred on this 

 account. Pa-Benang told me, that in spite of the 

 warning given to the woman in the vision, that the 

 Dyaks should respect this tree, a man had once had the 

 hardihood to cut a branch from it, in consequence of 

 which he soon after died ; his death being considered by 

 the tribe as a punishment for his sacrilegious act. A 

 small bamboo altar was erected before the bush, on which 

 were the remnants of offerings which had been, but not 

 recently, presented to the spirit of the tree. 



Besides the trace of the Hindu religion, which we 

 have recorded, in the disposal of their dead by fire, 

 other relics are to be discovered in their customs, par- 

 ticularly in that which induces them to abstain from the 

 use of animal food of several kinds. This practice as 

 indeed all those which have any connection with Hin- 

 duism is observed more strictly amongst the Sin- 

 ghie, Sow, and other tribes of the western branch of 



