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Updated: May 10, 2025
Every village consists of such houses as I have described before, grouped, but not by any means closely, under the shade of cocoa-palms, jak, durion, bread-fruit, mango, nutmeg, and other fruit-trees. Plantations of bananas are never far off. Many of these people have "dug-outs" or other boats on the adjacent river, some have bathing-sheds, and others padi plantations.
No care is taken to fill in the holes with earth. By this time the relatively dry season, which lasts only some two months, is at an end, and copious rains cause the seed to shoot above the ground a few days after the sowing. Several varieties of PADI are in common use, some more suitable for the hillsides, some for the marshy lands.
Such charms contained in a basket are usually kept in a PADI barn, from which they are taken to the field by the woman and waved over it, usually with a live fowl in the hand, while she addresses the PADI seed in some such terms as the following: "May you have a good stem and a good top, let all parts of you grow in harmony, etc. etc."
It will be clear from the foregoing account that the women play the principal part in the rites and actual operations of the PADI culture; the men only being called in to clear the ground and to assist in some of the later stages. The women select and keep the seed grain, and they are the repositories of most of the lore connected with it.
The men of the upper class work in the PADI-fields and bear their share of all the labours of the village; but they are able to cultivate larger areas than others owing to their possession of slaves, who, although they are expected to grow a supply of PADI for their own use, assist in the cultivation of their master's fields.
The conference, I am glad to say, ended to every one's satisfaction. "At 8 P.M. the Orang Kaya Rih and two others of the same tribe complained to me of their grievances, and told me that Si Tore, a Sadong man, had forced 10 pieces of iron, weighing 15 catties, on them about two years and a half ago, and that he now demanded 100 pasus of padi for it.
In order to lighten the labour of the cultivator, who has also the indispensable task of raising grain for himself and his family, it is a common practice, and not attended with any detriment to the gardens, to sow padi in the ground in which the chinkareens have been planted, and when this has become about six inches high, to plant the cuttings of the vines, suffering the shoots to creep along the ground until the crop has been taken off, when they are trained to the chinkareens, the shade of the corn being thought favourable to the young plants.
About six inches were allotted to every man; and it took a very long time to divide it, for they are remarkably particular as to the proper size and quantity to each share. Thus the Dyaks, in stowing their rice at harvest, do it with great care, from a superstitious feeling that the Simungi of the padi will escape.
For the women of all the peoples, except the Punans, the husking of the PADI is a principal feature of the day's work, and is performed in much the same fashion by all. The Kenyahs alone do their work out of doors beside the PADI barns, sometimes under rude lean-to shelters.
But whatever the date of the occurrence may have been, it seems to be certain that, by the introduction of PADI cultivation from some other country, most of the tribes of Sarawak were converted, probably very rapidly, from hunting to agriculture.
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