28 
FIVE DAYS IN NANING. 
Abdulrabmin pointed out a kris of celebrity, which had 
gleamed in many a foughten field in days of old and, as he 
said, “drunk much blood/’ This he regarded with a look of 
veneration, and prized as his most valuable possession. It 
is not simply from virtu that a Malay collects and cherishes 
so many different species of weapons. When the field was 
the grand source of distinction, arms which had served their 
owner well in his hour of need were held in high esteem 
by him and his descendants, while those worn by champions 
distinguished for their prowess, acquired the repute of being 
indued with the supernatural quality of giving invincibility 
to their possessor. As the lapse of time removed from 
around the memory of a warrior all the more vulgar attri¬ 
butes of humanity, raised him into an impersonation of 
heroism, and connected his deeds with the invisible powers 
who had favoured him, his charmed kris (kris betuah*) 
became environed by a spiritual halo in the imagination of 
the Malays. 
To complete the picture of the kampong, I must notice 
the kitchen, an attap fabric a tew paces in the rear of the 
house, but connected with it by a covered platform of split 
nibong,—and the granary, a light and neat structure rais¬ 
ed some feet from the ground, well-roofed, and having its 
sides of narrow bambu placed about an inch separate, so as 
to allow a free passage to the air. The paddy is not heaped 
on the floor, but stored in cylindrical receptacles about 2| 
feet high and 3 to 4 feet broad, made by bending back upon 
itself a broad strip of the thick bark of the Cooppong Tree 
an instance of that adaptation, by the simplest processes, 
of materials ready from the hand of nature, into neat and 
useful articles, which so frequently strikes and pleases the 
observer in a Malayan country, A number of fowls and a 
few goats were scattered about the kampong attending to 
the one business of their lives. Between the cocoanuts there 
are some dark-leaved coffee bushes which yield a crop of 
berries, scanty but sufficient for the use of the house. A 
* Or bertudh, which is evidently formed from tuah by affixing the particle 
her. The only meaning which tudh now bears in Malay is that of old (the 
same idea being probably involved in the idioms mds tudh, mdrd tudh Sfc), and 
the radical acceptation of ber-tudh may have been simply “ destined or charmed 
to a long life,” whence it was extended to invulnerability, indescructibility, 
invincibility &e. But the idea of sacredneBS connected with the object, animate 
or inanimate, that is betudh, may suggest that in this word a Polynesian sense 
of tudh has been preserved, The Polynesian dtud (god), and the Malay antu 
(spirit) tuan , tuanku (master, lord) &c. all probably originate in the reverence 
gnd authority accorded to age, the immortality of the £Lutu and titufi being an 
extended longevity. 
