SEA DYAK RELIGION. 219 
higher world. There is plenty of room here for the play of selt- 
interest and trickery, but the fact that such pretended revelations 
are acted up to, is evidence of a true belief.* 
The longing to communicate with the supernatural, common to 
all religions, has,in the Dyak, produced a special means to satisfy 
the aspiration. He has a “custom” for the purpose, viz., “nan- 
pok.” To “nampok” is to sleep on the tops of mountains with 
the hope of meeting with the good spirits of the unseen world. A 
man who was fired with ambition to shine in deeds of strength and 
bravery, or one who desired to attain the position of chief, or to 
be cured of an obstinate disease, would, in olden times spend a 
night or nights by himself on a mountain, hoping to meet a bene- 
volent spirit who would give him what he desired. To be alone 
was a primary condition of the expected apparition. It can be 
easily seen that the desire would bring about, in many cases, its 
own fulfilment, the earnest wish combined with a lively and su- 
perstitious imagination and the solemn solitude of the mountain 
jungle would, in most cases, produce the expected appearance of a 
Petara, or mythic hero with whose story he would be familiar, I 
have said in olden days, for the custom is now much less frequent ; 
at least, in the coast district of Sarawak. But it is not altogether 
obsolete, for, a year or two ago, a Rejang Dyak, afflicted with some 
disease, tried several hills to obtain a cure, and at length came to 
Lingea, and was guided by some Dyaks of the neighbourhood to 
Lingga mountain. He offered his sacrifice, and laid him down to 
sleep beside it, saw an antu, and returned perfectly cured. Dyaks 
have erected no temples to Petaras or to antus, and therefore can- 
not do as the ancients of the western world who made pilgrimages 
to the temples of Escunapius, and of Ists and SEerapis to obtain 
healing from the gods; but a pilgrimage to the temple at Cano- 
pus, where the suppliant spent a night before the altar in order to 
receive revelations in dreams, is exactly paralleled by the unso- 
phisticated Dyak sleeping on the still mountain-top with his little 
sacrifice beside him. The spirit and object are the same, and 
stories of cures are similar in each. : 
*The Revd. H. RowLey writes of a like belief among the African races. 
* Religion of the Africana,”’ p, 60, 
