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plantain-leaves. Round the whole is placed a cylindrical piece of tin or other metal called glōng, which serves to prevent the dishes from falling when the dalōng is moved about. The whole stands beneath a handsomely worked cover in the shape of a great truncated cone, the summit of which is sunk inwards so as to resemble a crater[1]. Over this again is spread a costly cloth covering known as seuhab. The second dalōng contains simply rice, but is also provided with the protecting cylinder named glōng, the cover (sagè) and the cloth (seuhab).
To complete a feast at which idangs are used, after the rice and its accessories which we have just described, two more dalōngs are brought forward, one filled with glutinous rice[2] and a sweet, savoury sort of plantain sauce[3], and the other with sundry sweetmeats[4].
If there are no persons of importance among the guests, two complete idangs will suffice, one being set in the front or stair verandah for the women. Should the food run short, more rice etc. is simply added. But distinguished guests often have a separate idang a-piece or between two of them, while the numerous attendants (rakans) who invariably accompany them, are given everyday fare.
At a wedding-feast, as on all ordinary occasions, the male guests are served first: the women must wait till their lords have finished[5].
The bridal pair have also food served them, and are even requested to eat out of the same dish[6], but their share of the feast is of course merely nominal. After partaking of this pretended meal, the young pair are smeared behind the ears with yellow glutinous rice[7], the bride by the bisans (the relatives of her husband), the bridegroom by the peunganjōs[8] of the bride. On this occasion the bride receives from each of the bisans a gift in money, about one or two dollars.
- ↑ These covers are called sangè. The handsomest are manufactured in Daya; they are formed of pandan-leaves and are adorned on the outside with coloured threads and on the inside with goldleaf. The common hemispherical covers made elsewhere are called sangè gampōng to distinguish them from these beautiful sangè Daya.
- ↑ Bu leukat: see p. 31 above.
- ↑ Pisang peungat, the Javanese kolaʾ.
- ↑ These are called peunajōh, a word really meaning "food", but which in the colloquial is almost synonymous with the Javanese jajan pasar.
- ↑ All, both men and women, who join in escorting the bridegroom are for this evening called bisan. This name is at other times only used to express the connection between the two pairs of parents whose children have married one another.
- ↑ This is called meurab bu = "to eat rice close together".
- ↑ See p. 306 above.
- ↑ See p. 316 above.
