CULTIVATION OF RICE IN MALACCA. 303 



is put on the kitchen fire till it is boiled and becomes nasi, when 

 it can be eaten. 



14. — The custom of reaping with a sickle and threshing" 

 the rice as described in paragraph 11 is a modern method and is 

 at present mainly practised by the people living in the neighbour- 

 hood of the town of Malacca, in order to get the work done 

 quickly ; but in olden times it was not allowed and even to this 

 day, the people who live in the inland parts of the territory of 

 Malacca prefer to clip their rice with a taai, an I put it into 

 their baskets a handful at a time [i. e. without threshing it]. 

 (If labourers are employed to do this, their wage is one tenth 

 of the rice cut). It takes ever so many days to get the work 

 done, but the idea is that this method is the pious one, the 

 " soul of the rice" not being disturbed thereby. A good part 

 of the people hold this belief and assert that since the custom 

 of threshing the rice has been introduced, the crops have been 

 much less abundant than in years of o'den time when it was 

 the custom to use the tuai only. 



15. — If a man has broad helds so that he is unable to plant 

 them all by his own labour, he will often allow another to work 

 them on an agreement, either of equal division of the produce 

 (each bearing an equal share of the hire of a buffalo and all 

 other expenses incidental to rice-planting) or of three-fold divi- 

 sion (that is, for example, the owner bears all expenses, in 

 which case the man who does the work can get a third of the 

 produce ; or the latter bears all expenses, in which case the 

 owner only gets a third of the produce). Or again, the land 

 can be let: for instance a field which ordinarily produces a 

 Koyan* of rice a year will fetch a rent of about two hundred 

 gallons, more or less. 



16. — Every cultivator who does not act in accordance with 

 the ordinance laid down in paragraphs 9 and 10 above will l)e 

 in the same case as if he disregarded all the prohibitions laid 

 down in connection with planting. If a man does not carry 

 out this procedure he is stire to fail in the end ; his labour will 

 be in vain and will not fulfil his desires, for the virtue of all 



