46 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
noted that the graves described were all in the plains, and we do not pretend 
to say that they were identical with those of the Sakais of the neighbouring 
mountains, though the men whom we questioned at Telom told us that they 
buried all a person’s goods with him. The actual depth of the grave varies 
considerably, and we were told that people of importance are buried deeper 
than those of less account, as, when a chief or one of his family dies, all the 
camp and all his relatives assemble to dig the grave. In cases of murder or 
other violent death it is probable, from what we heard, that the body is allowed 
to lie where it falls. 
The very fact that goods are buried with a dead man or placed upon his 
grave shows that the Mai Darat believe in some form of existence after death, 
and they told us that these goods were for the use of the deceased. Whenever 
a death occurs in a clearing, that clearing is deserted, even though the crops 
are still growing, as soon as the corpse has been buried, though the grave, as 
the Sakais at Telom told us, may be in the jungle. Several of those we saw 
ourselves in the plains were in the close vicinity of the ruins of Sakai houses, 
if they had not been dug directly under them. After the clearing has been 
deserted, the grave is visited at intervals by the relatives, who may place offerings 
of food upon it ; at Telom we were told by the Sakais that they always pro- 
vided the dead man with five days’ food, but that they never passed near a 
grave if they could help it, because they feared the ghost. 
Besides the ghosts of dead men they also stand in awe of certain other 
spirits, whose proper home is the jungle, and whom they call nyani. When 
a person is sick, the head-man of the camp, who is also its medicine-man, 
summons these spirits by incantations ; the other members of the community 
striking a fallen tree-trunk with bamboos, held vertically. The spirits are 
then induced to leave the sick person and take up their abode in a ‘baby’ ( anak ), 
hung up outside the house. The ‘ baby ’ consists of a bunch of grass or shredded 
banana leaves suspended in a bell-shaped structure composed of similar materials 
and decorated with the inflorescence of a palm. In a specimen (Plate XIII, 
figs. 3, 4) we obtained near Bidor two small sticks ornamented with shavings, 
and comparable to the peeled wands used in Bornean, Japanese, and Australian 
ceremonies, were fixed near the top. They were about six inches long, and 
the shavings, which were in three series, were short. In this camp the bell- 
shaped structure was called Balei or Sambong Nyani ; both balei and sambong 
being common Malay words, though Nyani is not. The shaved sticks were 
called Cbin-nordh. This Balei differed very much from any Balei Hantu , or 
‘ Audience hall of the Spirits,’ that we saw among the Malays. 
There is no more a true tribal organization among the Mai Darat than 
