Note 111 — Chapter VI · Magic Rites as affecting the Life of Man

The karanda is lowered into the centre of the grave in the same way as a European coffin, the body, however, being invariably deposited in the position just described; whilst the long acts as a sort of lid to a shallow trench (just big enough to contain the body) which is dug (di-k’roh) in the middle of the grave-pit. The five bands swathing the corpse (lima tali-pĕngikat maiat) are then removed, and at this point the bystanders occasionally hand lumps of earth (tanah sa-kĕpal) to the men standing in the pit, who, after putting them to the nostrils of the deceased “to be smelled,” deposit them at the side of the grave, when they are shovelled in by those standing at the top.111 The filling of the grave then proceeds, but as it is “taboo” (pantang) to let the earth strike against the coffin in its fall, the grave-diggers, who are still standing in the pit, receive it as it falls upon a sort of small hurdle or screen made of branches, and thence tilt it into the grave. As the grave (which is usually dug to about the level of a man’s ear) fills up, the grave-diggers, who are forbidden to shovel in the soil themselves, tread down the earth and level it, and they are not allowed to leave the pit till it is filled up to the top. One of the relations then takes a piece of any hard wood, and rudely fashions with a knife a temporary grave-post (nisan or nishan), which is round in the case of a man and flattened in the case of a woman; one of these grave-posts is placed exactly over the head (rantau kapala) and the other over the waist (rantau pinggang), not at the feet as in the case of Europeans. Thus the two grave-posts are ordinarily about three feet apart, but tradition says that over the grave of a kramat or saint, they will always be found some five or six feet at least apart, one at the head and one at the feet, and it is said to be the saint himself who moves them. To the knob of the grave-post is tied a strip of white cloth as a sign of recent death.112