MELAKA: Prayer offerings comprising fruits and snacks served on a 48-foot table were all grabbed up by devotees in just two minutes, after a prayer session was held to celebrate the hungry ghost festival.

The over 100-year-old practice of taking prayer offerings home to signify fortune, health and peace took place at a temple at Pokok Mangga on Saturday.

The 48-foot-long table was full of prayer offerings worth RM6,000 contributed by devotees.

Members of the public and devotees brought along plastic bags, shopping bags, boxes or pails to the temple to take part in the tradition of grabbing prayer offerings at 10.30 p.m. after the prayer session was completed.

The temple registered as Persatuan Penganut Dewa Ching San Hou Wang performed the annual prayer during the hungry ghost festival in which the devotees contributed prayer offerings such as coconuts, rambutans, mangosteens, honeydews, bananas, oranges, pears, papayas, snacks, biscuits, bread, etc.

Devotees were allowed to bring home the offerings after the prayer session was over.

Pang Jong Toon, chairman of Persatuan Penganut Dewa Ching San Hou Wang, said instead of wasting food, the practice of bringing prayer offerings home was a gesture of bringing home fortune, health and peace.

“Devotees can share the offerings with their neighbors and relatives so that they, too, are blessed,” he said.

Pang said when his father set up the temple in 1917, the tradition of bringing prayer offerings home originating from China’s Hainan island was preserved in this Melaka temple.

In a Taoist ritual introduced for the first time this year, coins were also buried in sand pit where the prayer was conducted.

After the priests completed their prayers, devotees were encouraged to search for the coins buried in the sand pit like in a treasure hunt.

They were allowed to bring home the coins, another gesture of “growing money” by keeping the coins in a piggy bank.