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Updated: May 4, 2025
Both seem incongruous to fact and primitive ideas, and perhaps his view would better be accepted only as an indication of his ignorance in the matter. The young people are taught to dance by the blian before they are married, and take lessons for a year or two. These images are called jurong, two being males, the other female, and carrying a child on its back.
Then, as the prahu, now very small to the eye, approached the distant bend of the river, in a few seconds to disappear from sight, the man who had been standing in deep reflection went down to the water followed by the two women, each of whom slipped off her only garment in their usual dexterous way, and all proceeded to bathe, thus washing away all odours or other effects of contact with the corpse, which might render them liable to attack from the antoh that had killed the woman blian.
The blian usually resorts also to feats of juggling, proceeding in the following way: Clasping his open hands forcibly together over the painful part, at the same time turning himself round and stamping on the floor, he wrings his hands for a few seconds and then, in sight of all, produces an object which in the Penihing conception represents a bad antoh in fact, by them is called antoh.
When all this had been made ready the old blian, accompanied by two young pupils, took position before the sacrifice. For about ten minutes he spoke, with his face to the south, requesting a good antoh to come and the evil one to depart, after which he, the young men, and the kapala, who stood near, all repeatedly threw up rice in a southerly direction.
An old blian sold it to me, and his wife softly reproved him for so doing, but when I gave her ten cents as a present she seemed very well satisfied. For the interpretation of these designs I found an excellent teacher in a gentlewoman from the lower kampong.
The companion insisted on the money first, but the kapala's wife, who was a very nice woman, began to sing, her friend frequently joining in the song. This was the initial prayer, without which there could be no story-telling. She was a blian, and her way of relating legends was to delineate stories in song form, she informed me.
In the presence of many persons, the afflicted man lying on his mat, the blian dances in the room holding the prahu on his hands, the left at the bow, and swerving it to left and to right; he sings at the same time but there is no other music.
Afterward he extracted some smaller ones in a similar manner but without stamping his foot. The singing was then continued by another man and a woman, in order to call the friendly antoh, that the exercises might be happily concluded. The blian also tries to placate the malevolent antoh by the gift of food.
In another only women took part, and they moved one behind another in a circle with unusually quick, short steps, signifying that good antohs had taken possession of them. The principal blian later sat down on a mat and sang; three women sitting near accompanied her by beating small oblong drums. They all became enthusiastic, for music attracts good antohs.
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