Note 30 — Chapter VI · Magic Rites as affecting the Life of Man

To return to the mother. She is bathed in hot water at 8 o’clock each morning for three days, and from the day of birth (after ablution) she has to undergo the strangest ceremony of all, “ascending the roasting-place” (naik saleian). A kind of rough couch is prepared upon a small platform (saleian), which is about six feet in length, and slopes downwards towards the foot, where it is about two feet above the floor. Beneath this platform a fireplace or hearth (dapor)30 is constructed, and a “roaring fire” lighted, which is intended to warm the patient to a degree consistent with Malay ideas of what is beneficial! Custom, which is stronger than law, forces the patient to recline upon this couch two or three times in the course of the day, and to remain upon it each time for an hour or two. To such extremes is this practice carried, that “on one occasion a poor woman was brought to the point of death ... and would have died if she had not been rescued by the kind interposition of the Civil Assistant-Surgeon; the excessive excitement caused by the heat was so overpowering that aberration of mind ensued which continued for several months.”31