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Updated: June 6, 2025
The first rice spear that is cut is preserved to be taken home and tied underneath the roof outside the door. This is done in order to prevent birds, monkeys, rusa, or babi from eating the paddi. At the ladang rice is boiled, and on this occasion the family and their guests eat at the same time.
We procured one more prahu, but the difficulties of getting more men were very great, one reason being that the people had already begun to cut paddi. Though the new year so far brought us no rain, still the river of late had begun to run high on account of precipitation at its upper courses. High water does not always deter, but rapid rising or falling is fraught with risk.
About articles used by women he was less certain, but he gave me much valuable information, though it was impossible to keep him as long as I desired because he felt anxious about the havoc rusa and monkeys might make with his paddi fields.
The rice, after being cooked, was wrapped in banana leaves, one parcel for each, forty-four in all, and as many more containing dried fish which also had been boiled. The people kindly acceded to my request to have them photographed. They then packed the harvested paddi in big baskets, which they carried on their backs to the storehouse in the kampong the same afternoon.
The same work of destruction was carried on; but the town was larger than at Paddi, and night setting in, the conflagration had a grand effect. Although the greater part of their valuables had been removed, the place was alive with goats and poultry, the catching of which afforded great sport for our men.
After a few minutes passed thus, the eight blians seated themselves in the dangei hut and prepared food for antoh in the way described above, but on this occasion one of them pounded paddi with two short bamboo sticks, singing all the while.
The Singhalese have the impression that the remains of a monkey are never to be found in the forest; a belief which they have embodied in the proverb that "he who has seen a white crow, the nest of a paddi bird, a straight coco-nut tree, or a dead monkey, is certain to live for ever."
A prominent Dayak said to me: "If we did not have this feast there would not be many children; the paddi would not ripen well, or would fail; wild beasts would eat the fowls, and there would be no bananas or other fruits." The first four days are chiefly taken up with preparations, the festival occurring on the fifth and sixth days.
At five o'clock of an afternoon I had finished, and in spite of a heavy shower the kapala left to look after his paddi, with a night journey of six hours before him. These people are satisfied with little, and he was happy to receive, besides rice and money, a quantity of cocoanut oil and some empty tin cans thrown in.
That evening the country was illuminated for miles by the burning of the capital, Paddi, and adjacent villages; at which work, and plundering, our native followers were most expert. At Paddi the river branches off to the right and left; and it was on the tongue of land formed by them that the forts were very cleverly placed. We took all their guns, and burned the stockades level with the ground.
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