300 SEA DYAK RELIGION. 



escape the pain and danger. * This is the only connection in 

 which I have met with anything which suggests the idea of: 

 future retribution for wrong doing in this life. 



Dyaks attribute to the dead a disposition of mixed good 

 and evil towards the living, and so alternately fear and desire 

 any imaginary contact with them. As has been said before, 

 they do not speak of taking a " corpse" to the grave, but an 

 antu, a spirit ; as though the departed had already become 

 a member of that class of capricious unseen beings which are 

 believed to be inimical to men. They think the dead can 

 rush from their secret habitations, and seize invisibly upon 

 any one passing by the cemetery, which is, therefore, regarded 

 as an awesome, dreaded place. Bat yet this fear does not 

 obliterate affectionate regard, and many a grave is kept clean 

 and tidy by the loving care of the living ; the fear being 

 united with the hope of good, as they fancy the dead may also 

 have the will and the power to help them. I was once present 

 at the death of an old man, when a woman came into the 

 room, and begged him, insensible though he was, to accept a 

 brass finger ring, shouting out to him as she offered it : 

 " Here, grandfather, take this ring, and in Hades remember 

 u I am very poor, and send me some paddy medicine that I 

 " may get better harvests/'' Whether the request was granted, 

 I never heard. Sometimes they seek communion with the dead 

 by sleeping at their graves in hope of getting some benefit from 

 them through dreams, or otherwise. A Dyak acquaintance of 

 mine had made a good memorial covering over the grave of his 

 mother of an unusual pattern, and soon fell ill, in consequence, 

 some said, of this ghostly work. So he slept at her grave 

 feeling sure she would help him in his need, but neither voice 

 nor vision nor medicine came ; and he was thoroughly disap- 

 pointed. He said to me: "I have made a decent resting 

 u place for my mother, and now I am ill and ask her assistance, 

 " she pays no attention. I think she is very un grateful/'' 



* "According to the creel of the Badagas in Tamul India, the souls are 

 obliged to pass by a column of lire which consumes the sinful, and it is only 

 after perils that they reach the land of the blessed by a bridge of rope. 

 Peschel, Races of Man, p. 2o4, quoting- Baiebleix, Nacn undaus Indien. — 

 Ed. 



