SEA DYAK RELIGION. 303 



" Now get out, and help to pull the boat oft' the rock/'' He 

 jumped out, and as soon as his feet touched the rock, boat 

 people and lake vanished, and he found himself standing at 

 his own doorstep. 



But no pleasure did his return bring him, for he found 

 his friends making the last farewell feast for his wife. He 

 neither ate nor drank nor shared in the festivities ; but kept in 

 his own room till all was over when he thought of the sugar 

 cane over the fireplace. He searched for it, but found nothing 

 more than a roll of poisonous tuba* root : again and again he 

 looked but nothing else was there ; so he concluded that this 

 was what his wife meant by the sugar cane. He spoke sor- 

 rowfully to his neighbours and told them he should not live 

 long, and begged them to be kind to his orphan boy and give 

 him his inheritance : then he returned to his room wrapped 

 a blanket round him and laid himself on the floor chewed the 

 fatal root and joined his wife in deathland. 



I have thus traeed the general belief of the Sarawak Sea 

 13 yak about his future existence. There are however excep- 

 tions to it. Occasionally the idea of metempsychosis is met 

 with. At one time the spirit of a man is said to have passed 

 into an alligator ; at another into a snake, etc., the knowledge 

 of it being always revealed by dreams. Sometimes a Dyak 

 will deny the possibility of any future existence ; but only I 

 think to serve the purpose of an argument. But these, wher- 

 ever found, are deviations from the general belief. 



But it is no gloomy Tartarus, nor is it any superior happy 

 Elysium to which the l)yak looks forward ; but a simple rjro- 

 longation of the present state of things in a new sphere. The 

 dead are believed to build houses, make paddy farms, and go 

 through all the drudgery of a labouring life, and to be subject 

 to the same inequalities of condition and of fortune as the 

 living are here. And as men helped each other in life, so 

 death, they think, need not cut asunder the bond of mutual 

 interchanges of kindly service ; they can assist the dead with 

 food and other necessaries : and the dead can be equally gener- 

 ous in bestowing upon them medicines of magical virtue, 



(Jocculus indicus, — Ed. 



