IN SUMATRA. 199 



is cooked in a great pot. Then he wiio is to take the oath 

 holding his hand, or a long kriss of the finest sort, over the grave- 

 stone and over the cooked animal, says : " If such and such be 

 not the case, may I be afHicted with the worst evils." The whole 

 of the company then partake of the food. If the man has sworn 

 falsely they believe that in a short time after he will be seized 

 with some dire sickness, and will die ; if he plants his fields 

 they will not grow, or will produce barren stems ; but not only 

 will he himself be crushed by misfortune, but, in an affair of 

 magnitude, all who were of his village who ate of the feast, if 

 not the village also, will be overtaken by disaster. The people 

 of Passumah XJlu Manna, which lies between the broad 

 Passumah and the town of Manna on the sea-coast, have the 

 same origin as those of the broad Passumah, and consequently 

 their most solemn oath must be taken over the same grave. 

 Now where a cause is before the magistrate, and it is accessary to 

 swear a witness, it costs a journey of some twenty days. There 

 has been brought, however, I am told, a stone from the grave of 

 their ancestor to the court of the magistrate, which the people 

 respect and swear over. One can perceive that ere long the oath 

 of the district may be sworn over any stone, and in time to 

 come it may be forgotten why they swear over a stone at all. 



When a man dies his body is brought into the Balai and there 

 laid out by the head man of the village, with various ceremo- 

 nial observances, accompanied by a certain form of words, 

 differing with, and appropriate to, each act, their ritual for 

 the dead. Having wound a cord about the body, he takes the 

 dead man's head between his hands, and rolls it gently from 

 side to side ; the teeth are rubbed with a piece of sapotaceous 

 wood; the tongue is pulled forward and touched with it, the 

 nostrils and the ears also; the eyelid is raised to permit a 

 last look ; the arm is rotated by turning the forefinger ; each 

 toe and finger is flexed ; the nails are gently scraped ; the 

 juice of a lemon is squeezed over the body, which is finally 

 sprinkled with water and wrapped in white cloth. The dead 

 are buried without the village in a square plot— men, women, 

 and children side by side, or they are placed in some unre- 

 membered spot quite in the wilderness. " Are they not dead ? 

 That is the end of them, and what is the good of knowing 

 more about them." 



