SEA DYAK RELIGION. QA 
his eyes, we shall probably be able to understand what shadows of 
“truth it embodies ; and how much or how little it supplies the place 
_of a better knowledge. If the strength of worship be in propor- 
tion to the number of objects venerated, the Dyak is most empha- 
tically a “worshipping animal,’ but the fact is, that the Dyak 
character contains the smallest amount of real veneration. His 
adoration is brought down to the mere external work of making a 
sacrifice and repeating an invocation, which is done in an off-hand 
manner, withoutany posture of humility or reverence and without any 
idea that it involves the offering of a life in a course of good con- 
duct. Butin the number of his deities, such as they are, he is 
certainly rich. He has not risen to the idea of an omnipresent 
deity, but he imagines the world, especially the heavens, to be 
everywhere inhabited by separate Petaras, whose function it is to 
eare for men. Yet in this manifold personal providence, there is 
room fora spirit of fatalism. He will cry out to Petara, and 
talk of the relentless march of fate. To Pulang Gana he applies 
for good crops; and to Singalang Burong for general luck and 
success In everything. His idea evidently is that good gifts are 
from the gods. 
But while he has this appreciation of a secret power behind the 
realm of the visible, the world of nature is to him a great, wide 
terrible and wonderful combination of phenomena, whose influence 
he feels as that of a living presence, which elicits his sense of awe 
and regard. ‘There is no separate worship offered to the heavenly 
bodies; but in a prayer at farming, the sun is invoked together with 
Pulang Gana, Petaras and Birds; andisaddressed as Datu Patinggi 
Mata-ari. The idea of its personification is suggested by its name, 
“the eye of the day.” The moon and stars are not invoked, but, 
according to him, they have an “invisible belonging,” a Petara, 
just as all parts of the earth have. It is probable that no inani- 
mate objects themselves, not even the sun, though treated as before 
mentioned, are supposed to be divinities; it is an underlying spirit 
in them which is adored, a hidden living influence in them which 
effects their operations. Thus the sea has its Antu Ribai; and the 
wind is the mysterious effluence of Antu Ribut who resides in 
human form in aerial regions; and when a violent storm sweeps 
