Note 38 — General Results

This peculiar expression while frequently used is not fully understood by the story tellers who in place of the word “whip” occasionally use “make.” In one text which describes the Sayang ceremony, I find the following sentence, which may help us to understand the foregoing: “We go to make perfume at the edge of the town, and the things which we take, which are our perfume, are the leaves of trees and some others; it is the perfume for the people, which we give to them, which we go to break off the trees at the edge of the town.” Again in tale 20, Kanag breaks the perfume of Baliwán off a tree.—The use of sweetly scented oil, in raising the dead, is found in Dayak legends. See Ling Roth, The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, Vol. I, p. 314.