How Rice Plagues Came to Sabah

Author: Frederick Charles Leong

The Seven Sealed Vessels

The Kadazan people believed in a great god called Kinoringan. He lived in a beautiful house called Amo. Inside this house were seven large containers, all sealed tightly shut with leaves. Kinoringan had a son named Towadakon, but the boy was very naughty and liked to cause trouble.

One day, when his father was away, Towadakon ran around the house, touching everything. The next day, his father left again and gave him strict orders: "Stay here and be good. Do not open those seven sealed containers."

As soon as his father left, Towadakon looked at the containers. He wondered why they were always kept closed. He pulled the leaves from the first container—and out flew hundreds of birds that ate rice crops! Then he opened all the other containers. From one came rats, from another came locusts, and from another came evil spirits with long hair called Ragon. People were very afraid of Ragon. The fifth container had rice fleas, the sixth had smelly insects that ate rice, and the seventh had barking deer.

The Earthly Consequences

All these creatures spread everywhere and caused great trouble for the people. When his father came home and saw the open containers, he was very angry. He sent Towadakon away from heaven to live on earth. Now Towadakon brings sickness and bad luck to anyone who says bad things about him. The only way people can feel better is to give gifts of chickens, pigs, and cows. Towadakon throws his nets over the rice fields, pulls up the crops, and eats them. He got his name from the towadak, a type of fat gourd, because Towadakon gets as round and fat as a towadak when he steals rice. And just like the towadak, he likes to live in wet, damp places.

This narrative is part of Sabah Stories, a collection of traditional tales and indigenous folklore originally gathered and rendered into English by scholars attending Saint Francis Xavier High School in Keningau, Sabah, North Borneo, throughout 1968–1973. The text presented here has been entirely rewritten using contemporary language and phrasing whilst preserving all factual content, cultural terminology, place names, character designations, and the substantive narrative elements of the original source. This is not a reproduction of the original material.