272 DYAK VENERATION. 



In the houses of their owners, to whom they are a 

 source of great profit, they are kept with pious care, 

 being covered with beautiful cloths. Water is kept in 

 them, which is sold to the tribe, and valued on account 

 of the virtues it is supposed to possess, and which it 

 derives from the jar which has contained it. 



By what people these relics were made, and by 

 what means they have been thus distributed, and 

 the veneration for them so widely spread, cannot be 

 at this time determined. Some of the jars were 

 sent from Banjar Massin to China, by the Dutch, 

 who hoped to make a profitable speculation by their 

 credulity; but the artists of that country could not, 

 though famed for their imitative powers, copy these with 

 sufficient exactness to deceive the Dyaks, who imme- 

 diately discovered that they were not those they esteemed; 

 and, consequently, set no value upon them. From their 

 price, it is presumed that these jars are very rare. 



I think that I have now mentioned all the relics of a 

 former superstition but more recent than those proper 

 to the Polynesian character which are known to exist 

 in the western and north-western provinces of the 

 island. The veneration for certain plants, now to be 

 described, seems to be more ancient than the intro- 

 duction of the Brahminical religion, excepting in two 

 instances, those of the Draccena and the yellow bamboo 

 which, from their being natives of India, may have 

 come with it. 



The Draccena resembles the species known to 

 Botanists as "Dracaena terminalis," and is not a 



