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One day he made a feast, brewed some rice-beer, and invited the other five chiefs, and feasted them. When they were departing, he said: "To-morrow each of you must tell me the dream which he shall have dreamt over-night; and if it is a good dream I will buy it." So next day four of the chiefs came and told their dreams. But they were all bad dreams, not worth buying.
The teeth are stained black at marriage, and henceforth a smile that heretofore displayed rows of small white ivories, and perchance was fairly bewitching, becomes positively repulsive to the Western mind. Sake, or rice-beer, is usually included in the Jap's own meal, but the average European traveller at first prefers limiting his beverage to tea.
As with the people of Nongstoin, the primaeval ancestress, "ka Iaw bei," is worshipped for the welfare of the clan, a sow being sacrificed to her, with a gourd of rice-beer, and leaves of the oak, or dieng-sning tree. The leaves of the oak are afterwards hung up inside the house, together with the jaw bone of the pig.
Even in religion, the most conservative of all institutions, especially among barbarians, the Ainos have suffered Japanese influence to intrude itself. It is Japanese rice-beer, under its Japanese name of sake, which they offer in libations to their gods. Their very word for "prayer" seems to be archaic Japanese.
Saké, the universal spirituous beverage of Japan, is made from fermented rice, and hence is properly rice-beer. It looks like pale sherry, and has a taste which is peculiarly its own. Sweet saké is very delicious, and it may be bought in all the degrees of strength and of all flavors and prices.
As there is no Excise in the district, except within a five-mile radius of Shillong, liquor of both the above descriptions can be possessed and sold without restriction. According to some Khasi traditions the Khasis in ancient times used not to drink spirits, but confined themselves to rice-beer.
So when, obedient to the wizard's advice, you leapt off on to the cloud, I bore you up, and showed you the world in order to make you a wiser man. Let all men learn from this how wickedness leads to condign punishment!" xxvi. The Angry Crow. A man came to a certain village whence was not known, dressed only in fine black robes. While he was there, some rice-beer was brewed.
So I shall be truly grateful if henceforth you will offer rice-beer to me, set up the divine symbols in my honour, and worship me with the words 'I make a libation to the chief of the salmon, the divine fish. If you do not worship me, you will become a poor man. Remember this well!" Such were the words which the divine old man spoke to him in his dream. xxxv. The Hunter in Hades.
The people of the high plateaux generally prefer rice spirit, and the Wárs of the southern slopes of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills customarily partake of it also. The Khasis of the western hills, e.g. of the Nongstoin Siemship, and the Lynngams, Bhois, Lalungs, and Hadems almost invariably drink rice-beer, but the Syntengs, like the Khasi uplanders, drink rice-spirit.
Then they give themselves up to feasting and drinking rice-beer, till they are in a fit state for the wild debauch which follows. The festival now "becomes a saturnale, during which servants forget their duty to their masters, children their reverence for parents, men their respect for women, and women all notions of modesty, delicacy, and gentleness; they become raging bacchantes."