SEA DYAK RELIGION. 225 
to him an offering of food and drink as a religious act and then 
carried him back again to his own abode. This fellow was at 
the time committing a flagrant breach of social laws, and possibly 
invented the message from the spirit, with the object of screening 
his reputation by showing himself a favourite of the gods. But 
this view of the matter did not present itself to the Dyak mind, 
which is capable of swallowing any monstrosity, or absurd falsehood, 
if it only pretends to bea revelation from the spirits. Such, too, is 
the implicit faith they put in dreams. ) 
SACRIFICES. 
Something must now be said about the sacrifices which have 
been so frequently mentioned. The ordinary offering is made up 
of rice (generally cooked in bamboos), cakes, eggs, sweet potatoes, 
plantains, and any fruit that may be at hand, anda fowl or small 
chicken. This piring, when offered in the house, 1s put upon a 
tabak, or brass salver: if the occasion of the sacrifice necessi- 
tates its being offered anywhere away from the house, a little plat- 
form is constructed, fastened together with rotan, upon four sticks 
stuck into the ground. This is para piring, altar of sacrifice. 
The offering of course is laid upon it. But generally this is cover- 
ed with a rough roof, and thatched with nipah leaves, looking lke 
a miniature native house; but itis the most rude and flimsy thing 
imaginable and soon tumbles to pieces. This is the langkau 
piring, shed of sacrifice. The god or spirit is supposed to come 
and partake of the good things spread there, and go away content- 
ed. I once remonstrated with them on the futility of the whole 
proceeding, on the ground that the food was clearly not eaten by 
any invisible being, but by fowls or pigs, or perhaps by reckless 
boys full of mischief, who would brave the fear of the spirits. But 
their answer was ready. The antu, whatever form it may take in 
showing itself to human eyes, is, asa spirit, invisible, a thing of 
soul, not of matter: now, they said, the soul spirit comes, and eats 
the soul (samangat) of the food: what is left on the altar is only 
its husk, its accidents, not its true essence. Now this answer, re- 
markable as coming from them, contains, as it does, something 
similar to an old philosophic idea, which, in better than Dyak 
