48 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
had been called down by a woman learned in medicine, and had inspired her 
in healing the sick children of the village and in foretelling the future. 
Sacrifices to cast away diseases are very frequently made, especially at 
Jambu, and are, so far as 1 am aware, always sham. Commonly, they take 
one of two forms, that of a spirit ship or that of a spirit audience-hall (balef)> 
both being known as ancbak, Until the last few years a very elaborate ancbak was 
made annually at Jambu, but now this is only done in times of epidemic or other 
public disaster ; one of the last, if not the very last, of these annual ceremonies 
was witnessed in the summer of 1899 by Mr. W. W. Skeat, who has not 
yet published a full account of what he saw. Private persons, however, 
still resort very freely to the practice when they are ill, on a more or less 
extravagant scale according to their means. At Tapah, in South Perak, we 
saw a full-sized model of a steam-launch' about to be set adrift on the river 
for a similar purpose, though here the spirit-ship was said to be an offering to 
a saint buried in a shrine by the water's edge, while at Jambu the idea appears 
to rather be that the 4 mother of the disease,' that is to say, the spirit which 
causes the disease, actually goes away in the ship or deserts the sick person to 
take up its abode in the audience-hall erected for it. There can be little doubt, 
from what we heard, that when an epidemic of smallpox raged in Jambu at 
the end of 1899 , many children, including, we were told, some of the Raja's 
own, were set adrift on drafts, in order that they might take the sickness with 
them, strict orders being given by the Raja that no one who might 
find them stranded was to harbour them. The victims chosen were 
suffering from the disease and not likely to recover, but smallpox 
being one of the few purely physical diseases always associated with 
a spirit's actual presence, they would be all the more likely to carry the 
sickness with them out to sea, though, doubtless, the fear of infection had 
also something to do with their choice. Spirits boats, even in the Patani States, 
are of every size and of every degree of complexity, being, when most 
sumptuous, provided with every necessity for a real ship in counterfeit, 
including sailors, who are represented by little wooden figures. The ships, 
however, could rarely sail by themselves, unless they belong to the cheapest 
kind (which is roughly made out of very light wood), but are, as a rule, 
mounted on rafts. Their furniture may include a few real articles of little 
value, such as one or two tin coins and a cockle-shell full of sweet-scented oil. 
Slip-knots tied in strips of cocoanut leaf are often put in the boats, some of them 
having been ceremonially pulled undone in contact with the patient’s forehead, 
to loose the disease from him, and some of them still untied, probably to keep 
the spirit fast in the ship. At Patani children commonly play at sending off 
t. It wm laid that thii was a device for imuggling opium ; but I am not aware that the suipicioo was confirmed. 
