SEA DYAK RELIGION. 293 



up round the grave. Great warriors have been sometimes 

 buried for a time and then exhumed, and their relics sacredly 

 kept by their descendants in or near their houses, or it may be, 

 on the spur of a neighbouring hill, with the object of securing 

 the departed ancestor as a tutelary spirit. 



Sea Dyaks do not consider burial as the last office which 

 they can render to the dead, bat follow them up with certain 

 after-ministries of mixed affection and superstition. For 

 three or four evenings after death, they light a fire somewhere 

 outside the house for the use o£ the departed ; for in Hades, 

 they say, fire is not to be procured without paying for it. 

 After burial, the nearest relation lives in strict seclusion and 

 keeps a comparative fast until the observance called pana 

 is made. A plate of rice with other eatables is taken by one 

 of the neighbours to this chief mourner, and from this time 

 he or she returns to the usual diet, and occupations of life. 

 But this neighbourly act to the living is the least part of 

 pana, amongst those tribes, at least where professional 

 w 7 ailers exist. It is principally concerned with the dead, to 

 whom by it food is supposed to be sent. Boiled rice and 

 other things usually eaten with it, together with Dyak delica- 

 cies, are put together, and thrown through the opening at the 

 back of the house, and the wailer is fetched to effect their 

 transmission to Hades. She comes again to the house of 

 mourning, not to lament over the dead — that is left for the 

 relatives to do — but to call upon the adjutant bird, "the 

 royal bird which lishes the waters all alone/' to do her bid- 

 ding in conveying the articles of the pana to the other world. 

 Among these are included with some pathos the sorrows and 

 sighs of the living. 



" To ci.rry the pana of tears to the departed one 

 " at the clear mouth of the Potatoe river. 



" To carry deep sighs to those sunk out of view 

 " in the land of the red ripe ramhutan 



" To carry pitying sobs to those who have fallen 



" unripe in the land of empty fruiting limes." 



The bird, says the song, speeds on its way, and after 

 taking a rest on the bacha tree, which bears for flower one 

 dark red bead, arrives in the region of the departed. There 



