Parameter spirit of life; vitality; soul (in the old Indonesian sense); the Indonesian ‘soul’ is a bird of life, timorous and easily scared; its flight ... is synonymous with weak vitality; it leaves the body in sleep, and when absent from the body may be seduced or captured by other persons; magic is used sometimes to attract and so win a girl’s , or to attach it to oneself; Malays believe that this spirit of life is found in all nature, even in things that we consider inanimate; thus the ‘soul of iron’ is responsible for the special merits of iron, and due homage has to be paid to it if a is to retain its virtue; this animistic belief underlies the special reverence paid to certain weapons, and comes out clearly in the harvest rites associated with the ‘rice soul’; if the seed rice is to give a good crop the following year it must retain its spirit of life, and every care is taken to honor it and to see that reaping is done so as not to lessen its vitality [50f05913cc0ea68216b16ab64d4fa583]