Note 202 — Chapter V · Magic Rites connected with the Several Departments of Nature

“14. The custom of reaping with a sickle (sabit) and threshing the rice as described in paragraph 11 is a modern method, and is at present mainly practised by the people living in the neighbourhood of the town of Malacca, in order to get the work done quickly; but in olden times it was not allowed, and even to this day the people who live in the inland parts of the territory of Malacca prefer to clip their rice with a tuai,202 and put it into their baskets a handful at a time [i.e. without threshing it]. (If labourers are employed to do this their wage is one-tenth of the rice cut.) It takes ever so many days to get the work done, but the idea is that this method is the pious one, the ‘Soul of the Rice’ not being disturbed thereby. A good part of the people hold this belief, and assert that since the custom of threshing the rice has been introduced, the crops have been much less abundant than in years of olden time when it was the custom to use the tuai only.