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TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION
II. GODS, SPIRITS AND GHOSTS:
(a) Primitive Gods
(b) Siva and the Hindu Gods
(c) Good and Evil Spirits of Dead Mortals
(d) Primitive Spirits, Fairies and Ghosts
(e) Angels and Devils of Islam
(f) Jinn
III. THE MALAY MAGICIAN
IV. THE MALAY CHARM
V. THE SOUL OF THINGS
VI. THE RITUAL OF THE RICE-FIELD
VII. THE SHAMAN'S SEANCE
VIII. THE SHAMAN'S SACRIFICE
IX. MAGIC AND MAN:
(a) Birth and Infancy
(b) Adolescence
(c) Betrothal and Marriage
(d) Death
(e) Installation Ceremonies
X. MAGICIAN AND MUSLIM
XI. MAGICIAN AND MYSTIC
I. INTRODUCTION
This book deals with the magic of the Muslim Malays of the Crown
Colony of the Straits Settlements, comprising Singapore, Penang
and Malacca; of the Federated Malay States, Perak, Selangor, Negri
Sembilan and Pahang; of the Unfederated Malay States, Johore,
Kedah, Kelantan and Trengganu; and of Patani, a northern Malay
State belonging to Siam.
The Malay Peninsula is the most southern extremity of the
continent of Asia. It has the region of Indo-China to the north.
South lies the Malay Archipelago. It stands midway between India
and China. Nature has laid it open to many influences, though
students not presented with the evidence of geography,
anthropology and history are apt to speak as if Malay magic were
unique and indigenous.
The language belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian or Oceanic or
Austronesian family, which obtains from Formosa to New Zealand and
from Madagascar to Easter Island. To the eastern branch belong the
languages of Samoa, Tahiti and Tonga. To the western branch belong
Malay, Malagasy, and languages of the Philippines, Sumatra, Java,
Borneo and Celebes. This latter branch is termed Indonesian,
rather unfortunately, since for anthropologists the word defines a
particular physical strain found in the Bataks of Sumatra, the
Dayaks of Borneo and the Torajas of Celebes.
The typical civilised Indonesian peoples, Malays and Javanese, are
variants of a Proto-Malay race with Indian, Arab and other foreign
admixtures. In that Proto-Malay race, whatever else may be its
components, there is a Mongoloid strain.
In the south of the Peninsula, the bullet-headed straight-haired
Proto-Malays are represented by jungle-tribes known generally as
Jakun and specifically as Biduanda in Negri Sembilan, Blanda in
Selangor, and Mantra In Malacca. The coastal tribes are termed
Orang Laut, or "Men of the Sea," and form a link between the
Proto-Malays of the Peninsula and those of the Riau Archipelago
and Sumatra, their original home.
Another aboriginal forest-dweller is the wavyhaired long-headed
Sakai, supposed mainly on linguistic grounds to have come down
from Indo-China and on anthropological grounds to be related to
the Veddas of Ceylon. A branch of this tribe, the Besisi, have
intermarried freely with the Jakun.
Oldest of all Malaya's inhabitants are the Semang and Pangan of
the north, small dark frizzy-haired Negritos, thought to be
related to the Aetas of the Philippines and the Mineopies of the
Andamans.
Already at the beginning of the Christian era Indian religions,
the caste system and government by rajahs had been introduced into
Java and into Sumatra, whence most of the Malays of the Peninsula
came, and Indian influence spread in a less degree throughout the
Archipelago even as far as the Philippines. The old Malay kingdom
of Palembang in Sumatra introduced Mahayana Buddhism into Java and
had a vague suzerainty over the Malay Peninsula for several
centuries, until in the thirteenth the modern Siamese gained
control in the north and Islam a permanent hold in the south. A
Buddhist inscription from Province Wellesley opposite Penang (in
the southern Indian style of writing found In West Java) dates
back to 400 A.D. But in Malaya, as in Java, the religion of Siva
retained a footing until the advent of Islam.
II. GODS, SPIRITS AND GHOSTS
(a) PRIMITIVE GODS
THE Mantra, a Proto-Malay tribe, claim to be descended from
Mertang, the first magician, who was the child of two persons
called Drop of Water and Clod of Earth. In the Moluccas the earth
is a female deity, who in the west monsoon is impregnated by Lord
Sun-Heaven. The Torajas in Celebes believed in two supreme powers,
the Man and the Maiden, that is, the sun and the earth. The Dayaks
of Borneo hold that the sun and the earth created the world. The
terms, "Father Sky and Mother Earth," occur in the Malay ritual of
the rice-year, at the opening of mines and of theatrical shows and
in the invocations of the Kelantan shaman. A Kelantan account
relates that sun and earth once had human form, sun the form of a
man and earth the form of a woman, whose milk may be traced in the
tin-ore of Malaya and whose blood is now gold. Actors in the north
of the Malay Peninsula say that "the earth spirit, whom actors
fear, is the daughter of Seretang [1] Bogoh, who sits in the sun
and guides the winds, and of Sang Siuh, the mother of the earth,
who sits at the navel of the world." Many religions at once unite
and dissociate the fruitful earth and the gloomy underworld. But
as Malay drama came from India, this northern tradition may be a
corruption of Hindu mythology. By some Malay actors Raja Siu, lord
of the surface of the earth, is invoked along with Siva, and the
name is perhaps a corruption of Siva. Anyhow, in time Siva and Sri
usurped the place of Father Sky (or Father Water, as he is
sometimes called) and of Mother Earth in the Malay pantheon, and
to-day even the existence of these two primitive gods has been
forgotten.
The study of early cults shows that the place of a sky-god tends
later to be taken by gods of the sun, the moon and the stars. So
in some ancient layer of Malay beliefs before the introduction of
Saivism, the white spirit of the sun, the black spirit of the
moon, and the yellow spirit of sunset may have been important,
seeing that they have Indonesian names (mambang), have been
incorporated into the Malay's Hindu pantheon, and have survived
under Islam as humble genies.
"The fishermen along the west of the Peninsula sacrifice to four
great spirits " (also called mambang) "who go by many names but
whose scope is always the same. One is the spirit of the bays,
another
[1. A dialect form of Sultan.]
that of banks or beaches, another that of headlands, and last and
fiercest is the spirit of tideways and currents." Three of these
bear primitive names used by the Proto-Malays. The spirit of the
tides is famous. The spirit of the bays is mentioned as a black
genie and the spirit of headlands as a white. Was there originally
a fourth spirit? To the three Proto-Malay names yet another, not
convincingly authentic, is sometimes added. But only three of the
four bear Sanskrit names. And the modern naming of four spirits
after the Archangels may be due to the liking of the Malay Muslim
pantheist for that number.
It is uncertain, too, if the primitive Malays, like the people of
Madagascar and Celebes, believed in four gods of the air in charge
of the quarters of the globe. In Bali Indian influence gave these
gods Hindu names, and three are still worshipped there as forms of
Siva. One Peninsular charm speaks of "the four children of Siva
who live at the corners of the world." A Perak charm describes
Berangga Kala as the spirit of the West, Sang Begor as the spirit
of the East, Sang Degor as the spirit of the North, and Sang
Rangga Gempita as the spirit of the South. But generally the four
corners of the world are held to be in charge of four Shaikhs, of
whom the most often mentioned, 'Abdu'I-Qadir, is probably the
founder of the famous order of Muslim mystics.
A Malay knows of Vayu under the name of Bayu. But when with arms
akimbo, loosened hair, and head-cloth streaming over his shoulder,
the sailor whistled to the Raja of the Wind, he may have been
invoking not Vayu but some indigenous spirit or the Prophet
Solomon, to whom Allah gave dominion over the breezes of heaven.
In the Malay pantheon there is a mysterious black Awang, addressed
by actors as king of the earth, who "walks along the veins of the
earth and sleeps at its gate." Apparently, therefore, he is
identified with Siva, and this identification, if correct,
suggests a high place for this forgotten figure of some early
cult. But in a Proto-Malay charm to propitiate the aforesaid
spirits of the sea, Warrior Awang figures as their servant, who
climbs the mast of a ship in distress, a young man with "hairy
chest, red eyes, black skin and frizzy hair." A Kelantan charm,
also, depicts him as a haunter of forest undergrowth, "a span in
height, with bald temples, frizzy hair, red eyes, white teeth,
broad chest, and feet and hands disfigured with skin disease."
This is a good picture of a Negrito, member of the oldest race in
Malaysia, but it may be a posthumous description as applied to
this god or godling of a primitive cult, who rides the storm and
can cause ague and disease.
(b) SIVA AND THE HINDU GODS
A white genie, "jewel of the world," lives in the sun and guards
the gates of the sky. He has a brother, with seven heads, king of
all the jinn. This white genie is entitled Maharaja Dewa, a Malay
corruption of Mahadeva, the blue-throated Siva. The distinction
between this white genie and his black brother, who lives in the
moon, is sometimes obliterated, as in the invocation used when
opening the stage for a ma'yong play:--"Peace be upon Mother Earth
and Father Sky! ... Peace be upon thee, Black Awang, king of the
earth! ... Peace be upon the blessed saints at the four corners of
the world! ... Peace be upon my grandsire, Batara Guru, the first
of teachers, who became incarnate when the body was first created,
teacher who livest as a hermit in the moon, teacher who rulest in
the circle of the sun, teacher of mine whose coat is of green
beads, teacher of mine whose blood is white, who hast but one
bone, the hair of whose body is upside down, whose muscles are
stiff, who hast a black throat, a fluent tongue and salt in thy
spittle." Incidentally it is interesting to find the Malay still
paying homage to Siva as Nataraja, lord of dancers and king of
actors, though to-day he is quite unaware of this name and róle of
the Hindu god whose theatre is the world and who himself is actor
and audience. In another Malay invocation the Black Genie too is
painted as "having but one bone, the hair of whose body is upside
down, who can assume a thousand shapes." Though he has "one foot
on the heart of the earth," yet this Black Genie also "hangs at
the gate of the sky."
Batara Guru or Divine Teacher is the Malay name for Siva. And it
is not surprising to find that on accepting the Hindu deities into
their spirit-world Malays paid great homage to Siva under his
sinister aspect of Kala the destroyer of life. Anyhow, here are
the white spirit of the sun and the black spirit of the moon
identified with manifestations of Siva. The spirit of the tides is
often associated with the spirits of the sun and moon, and, again,
the Malay expressly identifies him with Siva and makes Kala the
dread god of the sea.
Furthermore, in Malay mythology there is a Spectre Huntsman, whom
magicians identify with Siva. This Spectre Huntsman is even known
by the various Malay appellations of the Divine Teacher such as
"Raja of land-folk," "Raja of Ghosts," and "Gaffer Long Claws."
Now Siva, of course, was the Rudra of Vedic times. And it has been
pointed out how in Rudra are found the same characteristics that
distinguish the German Wodan (or Odin), namely those of a
storm-god followed by hosts of spirits, a leader of lost souls,
identified both in Malay and German legend with the Spectre
Huntsman. The association by Malays of the Spectre Huntsman with
Siva clearly corroborates the relationship between Rudra and Wodan
and lends colour to the theory of an Indo-Germanic storm-god, the
common source of the Indian and Teutonic myths.
The identification of Siva with Gaffer Long Claws finds a parallel
among the Bhils, Kols and Gonds of India, who also confound him
with a chthonic tiger-god. And like those tribesmen the Malay
appears sometimes to confuse Siva with Arjuna, calling that
demigod the earth spirit and king of the sea.
Last phase of all, Siva becomes father and king of the jinn
imported with Islam. Even his white bull Nandi is yoked to the
service of the new religion. According to early Hindu mythology
Brahma, or according to later belief Vishnu, took the form of a
boar and raised the earth out of the waters. Other stories current
in India make an elephant or a bull the support of the earth.
Muslim cosmogony definitely places the earth on a bull with forty
horns having seven thousand branches, a beast whose body stretches
from east to west. So the Kelantan magician invokes "the father
and chief of all jinn practising austerity in the stall of the
black bull who supports and fans and shakes the world." The idea
that the king of the jinn is the father of seven children may be
connected with the Muslim notion of seven earths.
The wife of Siva is known to Malays as Mahadewi "the great
goddess," as Kumari "the Damsel," and above all, as Sri, goddess
of rice-fields. As Sri she may be said to have taken the place of
"Mother Earth," just as her divine spouse represented "Father
Sky." As Kumari she is supposed in the north of the Peninsula to
have been made by Gaffer Mahsiku out of a bit of eaglewood. (In
Patani a name for the earth spirit is Siriku.) The goddess married
her creator. But the legend adds that she had one daughter by the
god (deva) of the moon and one by the god of the sun, a remarkable
preservation of the Malay myth that the Divine Teacher under
different manifestations lived in both those luminaries. The same
tradition adds that Kumari is invoked against lock-jaw and
dumbness, because she made her eldest daughter live on a hill as
an ascetic with her mouth wide open till it grew into a cave which
Hanuman entered!
The Malay magician often vaunts that "the sword of Vishnu is
before his face" to protect him. And with Siva, Brahma, Kala and
Sri, this god presides over the five divisions of the old-world
diviner's day. Brahma is known as Berma Sakti, but hardly enters
into Malay magic. In Kelantan, Krishna is said to be entreated to
cure snake-bites and the stings of scorpions and centipedes.
Ganesha, under the name of Gana, is little more than a village
godling.
The Hindu demons and demigods that have found a place in the magic
of the Malays may be conveniently inserted here. Of most of them
the magician has only a literary knowledge. The Asuras exalted
demons that war not against men but gods, are represented by Rahu,
who causes eclipses of the sun and moon, and to the Malay mind is
a huge dragon. Danu, a demon relation of his in Hindu mythology,
is the serpent who inhabits the rainbow. In the north, where plays
founded on the Ramayana are popular, Sri Rama, the hero of that
epic, is a demigod invoked especially in charms connected, with
the hunting of elephants, and Hanuman, the monkey-god, is an evil
spirit with the face of a horse and the body of a man. There, too,
the great Rishis or sages are invoked, and the magician takes
shelter behind the name of Narada and the name of Samba, his
derider.
Bhuta and Raksasa are often mentioned as demons even by Malay
peasants. But to-day, at any rate, acquaintance with them is due
mainly to popular romances that have come from the Deccan. The
Malay will turn, for instance, to the story of Marakarma and read
of a Raksasa who lights a fire as big as a burning town, pours
rice on a mat a hundred yards wide, and eats it along with
spiders, centipedes, lizards, flies, rats and mosquitoes that,
overcome by the steam, drop on to his food; he drinks a well of
water, hiccups like thunder, and picks from his teeth with a log
chunks of food so large that they kill cat, goose or fowl by their
impact. Of the cousinship between the Indian Bhutas and the
Indonesian spirits of men who have perished by violence so little
is known that in one account the Spectre Huntsman is called a
Bhuta and in a Perak charm the great goddess Sri is described as
the "Genie Bhuta Sri who presides over rice-fields!" But in fact
it is not these immigrant demons that are the concern of the Malay
magician.
For centuries the Muhammadan zealot and more recently the Ford car
have invaded the fastnesses where Malaya's illiterate priests of
Siva invoked these alien deities. The Hindu gods continue to
survive in invocations degraded to magical charms. Still, too, at
the installation of a Perak Sultan the real Hindu name of the
demigod, who descended on a Mount Meru in Sumatra and became the
father of most of the royal houses of the Peninsula, is whispered
by Sri Nara 'diraja, keeper of the State secret, into the ear of
the new ruler. He and his master are perhaps unaware that so at
the initiation of a child into one of the higher Hindu castes his
teacher whispers a formula containing the name of the god who is
to be his special protector through life. It is to be hoped that
fanaticism will never extinguish this voice from the past.
(c) GOOD AND EVIL SPIRITS OF DEAD MORTALS
The view that ancestor-worship is the oldest of religious
practices no longer obtains. Some savages have believed in a god
existing before the coming of death. Some sacrifice to gods and
not to the ghosts of the departed. Others, exchanging old lights
for new, have come to neglect their high gods and sacrifice to
dead ancestors. Many have nature-gods. Besides, being a family
cult, ancestor-worship cannot have accompanied the group-marriage
of the most primitive tribes.
The origin of this form of worship is easily intelligible. The
dead appear to the living in dreams. Or the dead may be born again
in a child, who is the image of a forefather. A Malay prays at the
grave of an ancestor to beget a child, unaware that probably his
worship is based on the idea of the dead welcoming reincarnation.
The exact likeness of a male child to his father, that is, the
possession of two hosts by the same soul, causes alarm to a Malay;
one of the boy's ears must be pierced, otherwise either the father
or the son is likely to die. Curiously, the resemblance of a girl
to her father or of a boy or girl to the mother is of no moment.
That the dead can be kind to the living is a notion not foreign to
the Malay mind. The ritual by which a Malay acquires the powers of
a shaman suggests that originally the magician's familiars were
spirits of the dead. At the propitiation of the spirits of Upper
Perak, invocations were addressed to the spirits of a famous Raja
Nek and of the byegone magicians of the neighbourhood. A ruler
looks to his royal ancestors for the protection of his person and
his State, visits their scattered tombs after his installation or
before any great enterprise, and when sickness afflicts his house
sets a cooling potion for the patient overnight upon a family
grave. As a Muslim the Malay makes vows to prophets and saints
imploring their aid in the hour of need. In Singapore many vows
are sworn at the shrine of Habib Noh, a humble clerk of the last
century, who gave up the pride of the eye and the lusts of the
flesh for religious asceticism until he could appear in several
places at once. "In every part of Naning are found tombs of men
famed for piety, in whose names the people make vows for the
prosperous termination of any project and whose burial places they
honour with frequent visits and oblations." One outward and
visible sign of the sanctity of such tombs is the supernatural
lengthening of the space between the head and foot stones,
supposed to be the work of the deceased. There are the long graves
of Shaikh Muhammad and Shaikh Ahmad on Bukit Gedong in Malacca,
the burial place of an old Achinese medicine-woman at Kemunting in
Perak, the graves of Shaikh Sentang at Temerloh, of To'Panjang at
Kuala Pahang and of To'Panjang at Ketapang in the Pekan district
of Pahang. These sacred tombs, which exist throughout Malaya, bear
an Arabic name (karamat), though the dead whose tenements they are
need not be Muslim saints and may have been merely some powerful
ruler or the revered founder of a settlement, or even a pagan
trafficker with black magic. A celebrated shrine is the reputed
tomb of Sultan Iskandar, the mythical last Malay ruler of ancient
Singapore, whose grave on the slopes of Fort Canning is the resort
of many suppliants; and a few years ago, when it was desired to
explore it, no one, Malay, Indian or Chinese, would undertake the
task. In Jempul, in Negri Sembilan, there is a grave shaded by a
yellow-blossomed chempaka tree, whose branches are always hung
with strips of white cloth to commemorate the vows paid to a
magician interred beneath them. If the entreaty for health or a
son or whatever may be desired wins a favourable answer, then
failure to sacrifice the promised goat and hold a feast with
prayers and cracker-firing beside the grave brings tribulation
upon the perjured ingrate. The tenant of that Jempul grave was
believed to attend his widow in the form of a tiger. He would
frighten off his daughters' lovers, protect the home when their
mother was absent, and drive temporal tigers from their path.
"There are many little graveyards throughout Jempul which are
credited with having produced tigers out of-human corpses." So,
too, the spirit of the last chief of Muar is supposed to haunt the
wooded hills round his home, a sacred tiger friendly to his
people. The credulity of these Sumatran settlers in Negri Sembilan
finds a counterpart in that of certain Patani families, who in
sickness or misfortune invoke the aid of 'To Sri Lam, an
ancestor's sister who turned into a crocodile. None of these
spirits of the dead that can be gracious to suppliants are
homeless ghosts; they are attached to a religion, a district or a
clan.
Fear, however, leads to respect for many sacred places. The anger
of a Malay ruler is dreaded when he is alive; it is not less
terrible when he is gone. A European who visited the graves of the
Johore princes at Kota Tinggi in 1826 records how his guide
trembled on approaching the place, declaring that any injury to
the stones would bring misfortune on all present and behaved "as
if a demon was about to pounce upon him." There may have been a
peculiar reason for this. Among the tombs is that of Sultan Mahmud,
the last representative of the royal house of Malacca, which
furnished rulers for most of the Peninsular States. He alone of
Peninsular rulers was murdered, stabbed to death for a sexual
crime, the white blood of (Muslim saints and) Malay royalty
gushing from his veins. Apparently he survives in Kelantan as a
white genie, Sultan Mahmud, a sea-spirit, who can cause chills and
ague. A chief, swearing to his suzerain that he had not offered a
bribe to a Government officer, undertook in a tremendous oath
(which came into my hands) to be smitten "by the majesty of the
ruler and of his royal ancestors," if he were committing perjury.
Attributable, perhaps, to this fear of deceased rulers is the
custom of dropping their real names after death and giving them
such titles as "The Deceased who died at the Three Islands," "The
Deceased Pilgrim," and so on. The magician also is not less
terrible after death than in life. Only fear could regard as a
sacred place the rock at Batu Harnpar, where a Sultan of Johore,
caused to be executed a pagan jungle chief "detected in
necromantic practices!" Three months after his execution this
Jakun chief appeared to his son on the same spot and thereafter
haunted it, sometimes assuming the form of a white cock.
Especially baneful are the homeless ghosts of those who perish by
a violent death, of murdered men, of women who die in child-birth.
To them no honour is paid. They are driven away by magical charms
and amulets, by prickly thorns, ashes, and the stench of burnt
herbs.
According to the Muhammadan faith those who die in child-birth are
entitled to the rank of martyrs with whom God is well pleased. The
Malay has found it hard to accept this comfortable doctrine. The
horror of their untimely end led his ancestors to think that such
women generate malevolent spirits. Throughout Malaysia terror is
felt at the plaintive cry of a banshee (Pontianak), which is
supposed generally to appear in the form of a bird and drive her
long claws into the belly of the expectant mother, killing her and
the unborn child. Another banshee (Langsuyar) flies in the shape
of an owl with a face like a cat. The knowing imitate her hoot and
utter the insulting ejaculation, "Your hoot is near, your grave is
far, and you are sprung from the lid of a cooking-pot in a
deserted house," whereupon she keeps silent and cannot bring death
or disaster to any one in the village. Or she may wear the form of
a beautiful woman with flowing tresses. But in the nape of her
neck is a hole, which she is terrified may be found by the
smooth-scaled climbing perch, used therefore by the cunning to
make protective amulets. She flies by night and the rustle of her
tresses is as the rustle of rain. She loves to alight on tall
trees and hide in the bird's-nest fern. When this banshee passes,
the pregnant woman should be bathed and the following charm
recited over betel-vine, which must be given her to chew
I am a Great Rishi!
I slay without asking leave
I behead without making enquiry
I am Allah's champion on earth
I can destroy all creatures;
Only what I create I cannot destroy.
We are children of different seed!
O thou with broad bosom and small teeth!
Thou with flowing tresses and long nails!
Thou with the swaying gait!
If thou alightest on a tree,
Mistress Stickfast is thy name!
If thou alightest on a rapid,
Sang Rangga is thy title!
If thou sittest on a tree-stump,
The Fair Bhuta is thy name.
If thou alightest on the ground,
The Fair Swaying One thy name!
If thou mountest the house-ladder,
Thy name the Fair Sitter!
If thou sittest at the house-door,
Thy name the Fair Bar-door.
If thou sittest on a roof-beam,
Thy name the Fair Peerer!
If thou alightest on the mat,
Thy name the Fair Seated Woman!
Molest not the children of Adam
Or thou wilt be a traitor to Allah!
Such, at any rate, is the charm used in Upper Perak.
To prevent a woman who dies in child-birth from becoming one of
these banshees glass beads are put in the corpse's mouth to keep
her from inhuman shrieking, hen's eggs laid under her armpits so
that she may not lift them to fly, and needles placed in the palms
of her hands so that she may not open or clench them to assist her
flight. (A hen's egg is laid also under the arm-pit of a
still-born child before burial.)
Another spirit (Penanggalan) which sucks the blood of those in
child-bed, consists of a woman's head and neck with trailing
viscera, which shine at night like fire-flies. If she sucks the
blood of woman or child, death follows. The lights of a hill in
Perak called Changkat Asah, lights described in that most readable
book on the Peninsula, George Maxwell's In Malay Forests, are
thought by the superstitious to be troops of these shining ones.
Then there is a class of familiar spirits created from the dead.
Many Malays say that their several names are only dialect terms
for one familiar, but others distinguish three species. The Bajang
may be just a malignant forest spirit or, according to others, a
man's familiar. As the latter he is kept in a stoppered bamboo
vessel and fed with eggs and milk. Released he will cause sickness
and delirium to his victims, especially to children. His visible
embodiment is a civet-cat. He may be the hereditary property of
his owner, but more often is conjured at dead of night from the
newly-dug grave of a still-born child. Pour the blood of a
murdered man into a bottle and recite the appropriate charm, and
after seven or twice seven days a bird-like chirp will announce
the presence of a Polong. Every day the owner must feed this
familiar with blood from his or her finger. Its victim dies raving
unless through his mouth the Polong will confess the name of its
owner and of any malicious person who may have hired it from that
owner. But the best known of these familiars (Pelsit) is of the
nigget type and takes the shape of a house-cricket. A woman goes
into the forest on the night before the full moon, and standing
with her back to the moon and her face to an ant-hill recites
certain charms and tries to catch her own shadow. It may take
three nights. Or she may have to try for several months, always on
the same three nights. Sooner or later she will succeed and her
body never again cast a shadow. Then in the night a child will
appear before her and put out its tongue. She must seize the
tongue, whereupon the body of the child vanishes. Soon the tongue
turns into a tiny animal, reptile or insect, which can be used as
a bottle imp. According to a more gruesome version the tongue that
can change into this familiar must be bitten out of the exhumed
corpse of the first-born child of a first-born mother and buried
at cross-roads. This vampire cricket is employed especially by
jealous wives to injure their rivals or their rivals' children.
Besides these two classes of malicious birth-spirits and
familiars, created from the corpses of man, there are graveyard
spooks of the sheeted dead. In Patani one of the most noted of
these (hantu bungkus) is thought to appear as a white cat or to
lie like a bundle of white rags near a burial ground. "Should a
person pass it who is afraid, it unrolls, twines itself round his
feet, enters his person by means of his big toe and feasts within
on his soul, so that he becomes distraught and dies in
convulsions, unless a competent medicine-man can exorcise it in
time to save his life and reason." A bold person anxious to see
ghosts has only to use as a collyrium the tears of the wide-eyed
slow loris!
A relic of the Malay's fear of the departed survives in the
moribund custom of abandoning a house where a death has occurred.
(d) PRIMITIVE SPIRITS, FAIRIES AND GHOSTS
Spirits and ghosts that are not termed jinn by the Malay
spontaneously may be classed together as flotsam of primitive
beliefs. They may be the ghosts of men who lived too long ago to
be associated ordinarily with the genies of a religion they never
practised in their lives. They may be fairies too human to have
sprung from smokeless fire. They may be godlings or nature-spirits
too local or petty and neglected to have attracted the attention
of the pious. Or they may be spirits too vague to have acquired a
local habitation and a name. Challenged, the devout Malay would
give to all of them the sinister canonisation of Jinn.
Some of this class are on the border-line between spirits and
ghosts. There is the Spectre Huntsman, known generally as a ghost,
in one aspect an avatar of Siva, in another an uxorious villager
whose endless hunt for a mouse-deer for his gravid wife led to his
being turned alive into a forest demon. In many lands a vanquished
aboriginal people are allotted by their conquerors to the
borderland class between ghost and spirit. Were it not that he
also is identified with Siva, it would be tempting to include in
it Black Awang in his shape as a Negrito (p. 7 supra).
Then there are "Bachelor" spirits, who may be forgotten godlings
or the ghosts of youths cut off in their prime. There is the
Bachelor Cock-fighter, who presides over mains and hates liars.
There are the Black Bachelor and the Boy with the Long Lock, of
whom Perak peasants speak.
There are a few spirits of high places, like the Chief of the
mountain Berembun in Perak or Dato Parol, sainted lord of Gunong
Angsi in Negri Sembilan and commander of an army of the dead who
have sprung from their graves as tigers. Most famous is the fairy
Princess of Mount Ledang in Malacca, who married Nakhoda Ragam, a
wandering prince of Borneo. After his death at sea from the prick
of her needle she donned fairy garb and flew to Gunong Ledang,
whence she migrated later to Bukit Jugra further up the coast with
a sacred tiger as her companion. Others make her consort of the
founder of Malacca. But a foreign and literary origin is suggested
for this fairy by the mention of her flying garb, the account in
the seventeenth century Malay Annals of her garth, her singing
birds and her demand, when a Sultan of Malacca wooed her, for a
betrothal present of seven trays piled with the livers of
mosquitoes, seven trays piled with the livers of fleas, a tub of
tears, a basin of royal blood, and one golden and one silver
bridge to be built from Malacca to her hill top.
There is a mysterious Grannie Kemang, known both in Sumatra and in
the Malay Peninsula. In Perak it is thought that she will sow
tares, a refuge for goblin pests, on the fresh clearing unless the
farmer rise betimes to alleviate with cool offerings; the smart of
the burnt forest. Her cooking-pot is the inexhaustible widow's
cruse of the Malay peasant. She is said to have taught the art of
rice-cultivation. One Perak account speaks of her as the
embodiment of the rice-soul. (In a Kelantan charm she is described
as the nigget vampire and declared to be the product of the
afterbirth.)
There are echo-spirits of the mountains, like men and women in
shape. If one of them visits a mortal woman, she bears an albino
child. A former Dato' of Kinta lived with a female echo-spirit in
a cave in the face of a limestone bluff, a beautiful woman called
the Princess of the Rice-fields by the Hot Spring. One of his
followers took another echo-spirit to wife. In three weeks she
bore him a son, whom no mortal woman could suckle.
There is a vague dream demon, Ma' Kopek, the hag that causes
nightmare. Children playing hide and seek may lose themselves
behind her prodigious breasts and be found days later dazed and
foolish. Sometimes she takes them to a thorn-brake and feeds them
on earth-worms and muddy water, which by her magic look and taste
like delicate cates.
There is a Kitchen Demon, a gray dishevelled hag, who warms
herself before the hearth at night and loves to blow into flame
the embers in a deserted house.
There is the Spook that Drags Himself along. He wears the shape of
an orang-outang, peeps into attics where fair maids sleep, and
once carried a girl off up a tree and lived with her as his wife.
There are formless spirits that bring colic, cholera, smallpox,
blindness. Most of these are unknown except to the medicine-man,
who diagnoses, for example, one hundred and ninety nine spirits of
smallpox according to the part affected, and names the one that
attacks a patient's tongue after the Muslim Angel of Death!
Formless too are maleficent auras that emanate from the corpses of
murdered men, of slain deer, wild pig, wild dogs, certain reptiles
and birds. "Soon after death the bristles on the back move, and
stand on end with contraction and relaxation of the muscles; and
to come within the range of the aim of these bristles, which have
the position they assume when the living animal is enraged, is to
invite the attack of the bahdi." A white jungle cock, or indeed
any jungle cock of unusual colour, a jungle cock that does not
struggle in the toils but perches on the rod that suspends the
noose, these have bahdi. "The bahdi have the power of bringing
sickness, blindness or madness upon the hunter, and an attack of
fever after unwonted exertion in a malarial forest is always
ascribed to them. The jinggi can let the deer pass by the
unwitting hunter in the form of a mouse or attack him in the form
of a tiger. They can also give the hunter the appearance of the
hunted and thus expose him to the fire of his friends. The
genaling can kill the hunter outright." In these auras the idea of
potent soul-substance seems to have become merged in the idea of
malicious spirits. The bahdi of a deer can be expelled by sweeping
first a gun, then a branch, and finally the noose in which the
animal was caught, over its carcase from muzzle to hind-legs; the
noose is quickly slipped on to a stake and tightened round it.
Here the magician appears to remove "transmissible properties of
matter" to the stake. In Patani syncretism has given the aura of a
murdered man the shape of a mannikin, and has made the auras of
beasts the slaves of Siva. By some Kelantan magicians bahdi are
said to be one hundred and ninety in number and are given a name (gana)
meaning spirit. All these evil influences are sometimes classed
with jinn.
With jinn, too, are often classed one hundred and ninety goblins
of the soil (jembalang) that creep into the baskets of the reaper
and round the stems of rice-plants, and infest hill and mountain
and plain. Ordinarily their shape, if they have a shape, is not
given. In Patani it is said they are the ghosts of men and, under
Muslim influence, it is alleged that they may "be seen at night in
waste places, leaning on long sticks, wearing red caps and eating
earth. If any one is bold enough to seize one of their caps and
swift enough to escape their pursuit, he will gain the great art
of becoming invisible."
There are numerous nature-spirits; the spirit of the river bore,
that drowns men in its matlike curling wave; the spirit of the
cataract that lies "prone on the water with head like an inverted
copper"; spirits of the sea that settle on masts in the form of
St. Elmo's fire; spirits of the jungle track; spirits that tamper
with the noose and snare of the hunter; spirits that live in trees
especially where wild bees nest; the spirit of the faded lotus.
Many a sacred place in jungle and grove, supposed now to be the
site of some saint's vanished tomb, is really a relic of primitive
worship of the spirits of nature.
(e) ANGELS AND DEVILS OF ISLAM
To-day in every hamlet in Malaya, that has sufficient inhabitants
to form a congregation, there is a mosque where, along with his
fellow villagers, the magician acknowledges that there is no God
but Allah and Muhammad is His Prophet. The office of Caliph or
head of the Muslim faith within his own State is the most
cherished prerogative of a Malay ruler. His installation is
attended by the magician, once master of the ceremony but now
merely an onlooker, who listens and hears the court heralds call
to the four archangels to send down upon their new ruler "the
divine majesty of kings by the hands of his angels: the angels of
the rising sun, the angels of the evening, the angels who stand
upon the right and left of the empyrean throne, the angel of the
zenith and the horned princess, angel of the moon." Suckled in
creeds outworn, the magician sits at the feet of the pious and
learns all he can about these angels and the demonology of the
youngest of Malaya's religions. He adds the names of angels and
devils and spirits to his repertory of incantations.
He learns that there are angels, demons (or Shaitan) and jinn, all
higher than man. Actually he has had a Malay account of Muhammadan
mythology for nearly three hundred years in a work called the
Garden of Kings, written in 1638 A.D. by an Indian missionary of
Islam in Acheen. That work tells him of the four angels who bear
the throne Of God, one in the form of a bull, one in the form of a
tiger, one in the form of an eagle, and one in the form of a man.
It tells also of the cherubim who cry incessantly "Glory to God."
But more interesting to him are the four archangels with
individual names, who are concerned with the welfare of men. There
is Gabriel, the angel of revelation, with six pinions, each
composed of one hundred smaller wings; he is covered with saffron
hairs; between his eyes is a sun, and between every two hairs of
his body a moon and stars. Every day he dives three hundred and
sixty times into the Sea of Light, and every drop of water from
his wings creates a spiritual angel (Ruhaniyun) in his likeness.
Two of his pinions he expands only when God desires to destroy
hamlet or town. Two green pinions he opens only once annually on
the night of destiny, when from the tree that stands by the throne
of God the leaves fall inscribed with the names of those who shall
die during the ensuing year. There is Michael, created five
hundred years before Gabriel and five hundred years after Israfil.
His whole body is covered with saffron hairs, every hair
possessing a million faces having a thousand mouths, each mouth
containing a thousand tongues that entreat the mercy of God, while
the tears of his million eyes, weeping for the sins of the
faithful, create cherubim in his likeness. These cherubim are his
servants, who control rain and plants and fruits, so that there is
not a drop of rain falling on earth or sea that is not watched by
one of them. There is Israfil, whose head is level with the throne
of Allah and whose feet reach lower than the lowest earth. With
one pinion he envelopes the west, with another the east; with a
third he covers his person, and with a fourth he veils himself
from mouth to chest. Between his eyes is the jewelled tablet of
fate. His duty it will be to sound the last trump on the day of
judgment. There is 'Azrail, who according to this version is not
(as he should be) the angel of death but only his warder, and is
like Israfil in appearance. The angel of death, bigger than the
seven earths and the seven heavens, God kept hidden and chained
with seventy thousand chains until the creation of Adam. When he
was seen by the angels, they fell into a faint that lasted a
thousand years. He has seven thousand pinions. His body is full of
eyes and tongues, as many as there are men and birds and living
things. Whenever a mortal dies, an eye closes. He has four faces.
When he takes the life of prophet or angel, he shows the face on
his head; the face on his chest is shown to believers, the face on
his back to infidels, and the face on the soles of two of his feet
to jinn. Of his other two feet one is on the borders of heaven,
the other on the brink of hell. So huge is he that if the waters
of all seas and all rivers were poured upon his head, not one drop
would reach the earth. No living creature shall escape death
except the four archangels and the four angels who bear the throne
of God.
There is also a huge angel called Ruh or the Spirit, with the face
of a man, who will stand beside the throne on the day of judgment
and implore mercy for the faithful.
There are the two inquisitor angels, Munkar and Nakir, who visit
the dead in their graves and enquire if they are believers.
Night and day man is protected from devils and jinn by two out of
four attendant angels, who change guard at sunrise and sunset.
Recorders of his good and evil deeds, they are termed Kiraman
Katibin, the Noble Writers; good deeds are written down by the
angel on his right, bad by the angel on his left.
Nineteen Zabaniah (or Guardian Angels), under Malik their chief,
are in charge of hell.
Finally, Iblis, the fallen rebel angel who refused to prostrate
himself before Adam, is commander of an army of supreme interest
to the magician, the host of infidel genies or jinn.
(f) JINN
Jinn or genies sprang from three mangrove-leaves, the green jinn
from a leaf that soared into the green sky, the black from a leaf
that fell at the gate of the forest, the white from a leaf that
fell into the sea. According to another incantation they were
created from the earth of the mountain Mahameru, the Malay Olympus
with the Hindu name. So Malays believe, unless it is to be
supposed that in such charms the magicians were merely inventing
fictitious origins for spirits they wished to control. According
to some incantations the genies of the earth were born of
afterbirth, according to others of the morning star. One
magician's account says that jinn are sprung from the coconut
monkey! Another declares that they were created from Sakti-muna, a
great serpent: the king of the jinn from his life's breath, the
white jinn from the whites of his eyes, the black, blue, green and
yellow jinn from their irises, the genie that lives in the
lightning from his voice. Muslims hold that Jan was the father of
all. the jinn, and Jan in the Quran also signifies a serpent.
There is another legend with a Muslim colouring. When Cain and
Abel were still in the womb they bit their thumbs till the blood
came, and along with them were born jinn, black from the blood
that spurted cloud-high, white from the blood that fell to the
ground. So run the discrepant accounts of the Malay magician, who
accepts also the Quran's version that jinn were created from
smokeless fire.
The account of genies in the Garden of Kings is as follows: Jan,
the father of all jinn, was originally an angel, called firstly
Aristotle but later 'Azazil. When 'Azazil refused to do obeisance
to Adam, his name was changed to Iblis or Jan and his form into
that of a genie; of the relation of Iblis to the genies, however,
there are several variant accounts. Begetting a child every two
days, Jan became the ancestor of all the genies, countless shadowy
beings, numerous as the sands of the earth and filling hill and
cave, forest and plain. At first they inhabited the lowest heaven.
Thence they got the permission of Allah to descend to the earth,
seven thousand troops of them. In time they fought among
themselves and disobeyed God. So He sent Prophets and Angels to
quell them and pen them in a corner of the world. To plague
mankind jinn can assume any shape. Some take the form of men,
others of horses or dogs or pigs, others of snakes, others of
insects. Some can fly. Some can eat, drink and marry. One
tradition talks of three classes of jinn, one winged, another in
the form of dogs and insects, another in human form. A few are
good Muslims and will go to heaven; most are infidels doomed to
hell. Their great age is illustrated from the story of the genie
detected by Muhammad under the disguise of a very old man. Being
recognised as a genie, he admitted that he had met Noah and all
the Prophets after him.
Again the Malay has read of jinn in his recension of the story of
Alexander the Great. That world-conqueror meets a descendant of
the genie Sakhr, who stole Solomon's ring, and assuming Solomon's
shape reigned in his stead for forty days. He and his kin are
guarding till the day of judgment a mosque built for Solomon by
Sakhr in retribution for his presumption. He appears to Alexander
in the form of a handsome youth but turns by request into his
proper shape: huge as the mosque, having seven heads, each with
two faces, each face having four eyes like tongues of flame, a
cavernous mouth, teeth like fiery tongues, a nose like the nose of
a bull; on each forehead are two snakey locks, and the genie has
the feet of a duck and the tail of a bull! Near the border of the
world where the sun sinks Alexander finds genies guarding King
Solomon's treasure-house of jewels. They are the descendants of
human men and ten daughters of Iblis. When Alexander marvels, the
Prophet Khidzr quotes the case of the Queen of Sheba, who had a
human father and a genie mother, and showed this origin by the
hair on her calves.
All jinn are the subjects not of Muhammad but of Solomon, to whom
God gave authority over genies, the animal creation and the wind
of heaven.
One Malay charm speaks of "Jin the son of Jan of the line of the
Pharaohs," a pedigree founded on the Arab notion that the last
king of the pre-Adamite jinn was Jan the son of Jan, and that he
built the Pyramids.
According to Malay belief there are jinn inhabiting the sun, the
moon, the sky, the wind, the clouds. There are others whose homes
or hosts are ant-hills, wells, rocks, the hard heartwood of trees,
ravines, fields, swamps, lakes, rivers, mountain or plain. Others
are genies of cape or bay, the sea, the tide, estuaries.
Syncretism has included in these classes Indonesian soul-substance
and nature-spirits and Hindu divinities; but one tradition of the
Prophet also distinguishes three kinds of genies, one in the air,
one on the land, and one on the sea. Malay medical lore, having
borrowed from Arabia Plato's theory of the origin of disease,
differentiates a fourth class, the genies of fire and fiery
sunsets.
The colour of a Malay genie varies according to his habitation.
Genies of earth and the dark forests and lowering clouds are
black. Those inhabiting the sky are blue or to the Malay eye
green. The jinn of fire and sunset are yellow. In fleecy clouds
and the shimmering sea they are white.
Just as Plato ascribed disease to disturbance of the balance of
power between the four properties of earth, air, fire and water,
out of which the body is compacted, so the Malay medicine-man
ascribes all diseases to the four classes of genies presiding over
those properties. The genies of the air cause wind-borne
complaints, dropsy, blindness, hemiplegia and insanity. The genies
of the black earth cause vertigo, with sudden blackness of vision.
The genies of fire cause hot fevers and yellow jaundice. The white
genies of the sea cause chills, catarrh and agues.
All these are external genies, visible to lonely wayfarers, to the
magician in a trance or, according to Kelantan belief, to the
gazer upon the finger-nails of small innocent boys. They can talk
among themselves or through the mouth of the shaman medium. Genies
of the earth may appear in human form "floating in the air and not
always remaining the same size," or in the form of animals or ants
or scorpions or in any shape they please. The manufacture of old
Chinese crackle-ware is ascribed by Malays to genies. Muslim
genies haunt two mosques in Negri Sembilan, flitting to and fro in
long white robes and sometimes chanting the Quran. If a person
stand under a ladder and bathe in water wherein a corpse has been
washed, he has only to stoop and look between his legs to see
crowds of genies and demons sipping the water. Infidel genies of
the earth are thought in Patani to assume the form of dogs and
guard hidden treasure. If they take a fancy to a person, they
change into little old men and leave sacks of gold for their
favourites to remove. Peculiar bubbles on the surface of the water
indicate the presence of jars of treasure placed by genies in pool
or well. There is a genie "supposed to resemble the human form but
to dart about like a will-o'-the-wisp" and daze the man that
crosses it. Seize a genie and hold him, no matter what terrifying
aspect he may assume, and one can wrest from him the secret of
invisibility. "If a man had a tame genie, he could cause the meat
from another man's cooking-pot to come to him." The founder of a
house of great chiefs in Perak was a poor fisherman. His traps
were repeatedly thrown on the bank and his weirs opened. He
watched and saw the offender, a genie clad in the green robes and
turban of a Muslim pilgrim. He seized the genie and refused to let
him go. The genie said "Swallow this," spat in his mouth, and told
him that he would become the greatest chief in the country and his
family prosper for seven generations.
But these external jinn (for whom Malay physicians find yet
another origin suitable to their medical theories, namely wind)
cannot inflict disease without the help of the class of genies
that inhabit the bodies of men. So, at least, it is said in
Kelantan. When the genie, whose host a man's body is, has weakened
him by loss of blood, coughing, dyspepsia, then only can jinn from
outside enter and cause him hurt. There is a yellow genie
controlling a man's five senses. There is a white genie (jin or
malaikat), also called the Light of the Prophet, that "takes up
its abode in the heart of every Muhammadan and prevents him from
being wicked," Even these internal jinn have colour and shape.
False etymology and recollection of the Indonesian bird-soul make
Patani Malays identify a man's white genie with a bird, one of
Muhammad's parrots!
In some genies abstract ideas seem to find a local habitation and
a name.
The genie of golden life,
The genie of bright desire,
Wearing bangles of brass and coat of steel,
can both abduct a woman's soul on her lover's behalf.
The moral character of the white genie in man's bosom may be due
to confusion of this spirit with the Light of the Prophet. Genies,
destined for heaven, are moral beings, and belong to the several
schools of Muslim belief. The others are capricious and do not
distinguish between good and evil.
The syncretism that has made the name of Malay jinn legion is
patent in the Perak magician's address to "the procession of the
thousand jinn." In that invocation the evil influence believed by
Malay animists to invest the corpses of deer, Indonesian goblins
of the soil, the Misty Beauty that floats over blind wells, the
Piebald Pony, four spirit guardians of the corners of the world,
Kala or Siva in his destructive form, Sri the Hindu Ceres, a Hindu
Moon Fairy beautiful upon waters, the Herald of the World that
dwells in the clouds with a name half Sanskrit half Arabic,
Jamshid a spirit of the headlands bearing the name of a Persian
king, the spirits of the Muslim dead-these and scores more are
entreated so that the magician may display the wealth of his
uncritical lore, offend none of the spirit world and let no genie
escape the net of his magic.
An equally good example is found in the list of the guardian jinii
of Perak, or, to give them their other name, the genies of the
royal trumpets, whose indwelling spirits were fed and revived
annually centuries before the coming of Islam. These include the
Four Children of the Iron Pestle, Old Grannie from up-river, the
Prince of the Rolling Waves, the Children of the Gaffer who lives
in the sky. Brahma, Vishnu, and Indra are among them. King Solomon
and 'Ali, the fourth Caliph, find a place. There are royal
familiars of the State shaman and his assistant. There is the Raja
of all the jinn, who is throned on the breeze of heaven. There is
the Sultan of the Unsubstantial World (maya), who condescends to
the ear-posies of kings from his throne on a crystal car that is
followed by all the Sultans of the universe. And there are spirits
with royal titles in Persian, and female fairies with Sanskrit
names. The list shows a wide knowledge of Malay romances, like the
Hikayat Shamsu'l-Bahrain and the Hikayat Indraputra, that are
based on Indian models and full of heroes and genies with Indian
names. Acquaintance with such literature was an esteemed
accomplishment at Malay courts. Among the jinn regarded by Perak
commoners is 'Umar Ummaiya, the Ulysses of the Persian romance of
Amir Hamzah!
III. THE MALAY MAGICIAN
ANTHROPOLOGY and history confirm the various stages in the
development of the Malay magician.
First he was the Indonesian animist, requiring no initiation into
his office and no help from a familiar spirit. Hunting, fishing,
planting, and healing the sick demanded merely different experts
acquainted with the practice and customs of the particular craft.
In the ritual of the rice-field, for example, a midwife or other
old woman took the leading part, because her sex had a beneficent
influence on the fertility of the crop, and her experience with
human infants qualified her to handle the rice-baby. Courtesy and
persuasion and diplomatic language were the weapons of the Malay
magician of animism.
Next came the shaman. Comparative study has, revealed that
shamanism was "the native religion of the Ural-Altaic peoples from
Behring Straits to the borders of Scandinavia," and "probably of
the early Mongol-Tartar peoples and others akin to them, for
example, in China and Tibet." Its part in the religions of
Malaysian tribes reminds one that on linguistic grounds it has
been surmised the Malay descended from the continent of Asia and
that anthropologists detect in him a Mongol strain. The shaman
still retains his pride of place among the aboriginal tribes of
the Malay Peninsula, Negrito, Indo-Chinese and Proto-Malay. One
word is used by the Malay both for the magician expert in some
particular line and for the shaman who controls spirits by the
help of a familiar. But a distinction between them is recognised.
"Upon the exercise of the shaman's power every Malay looks with
considerable dread, and the least orthodox shakes his head when it
is mentioned." Islam looks far more askance at the shaman who
calls down spirits at a seance than at the commoner medicine-man
who relies solely on charms and invocations covered with a veneer
of orthodox phraseology. His brothers in magic respect the shaman
more highly. In Kelantan when a shaman is operating in any
district "all other medicine-men are disqualified for the time
being."
Sometimes the Malay shaman wears cords round his wrists and across
back and breast over each shoulder and under the opposite arm. He
can use cloth of royal yellow at a seance. Rarely he is a Raja. In
Perak the State shaman was commonly of the reigning house and bore
the title of Sultan Muda. He was too exalted to inherit any other
office except the Sultanate, and according to one account could
ascend no temporal throne. He was allotted a State allowance from
port dues and the tax on opium. The twenty-fifth holder of the
office was a grandson on the distaff side of Marhum Kahar, a
famous ruler of Perak in the eighteenth century: on the spear side
he was a descendant of the Prophet! The wife of its holder bore
the title of Raja Puan Muda. His deputy or heir-apparent was
styled Raja Kechil Muda. So, too, in parts of Timor two Rajas are
recognised-a civil raja who governs the people, and another raja
who can declare tabus and must be consulted by his colleagues in
all important matters.
At a curative (but not apparently at a State-cleansing) seance the
spirit-raising shaman may be a woman. During the last illness of
Sultan Yusuf, a nineteenth century ruler of Perak, a seance was
conducted by Raja Ngah, a scion of the reigning house on the
female side, "a middle-aged woman dressed as a man" for the
occasion-a device I have seen adopted by Malay midwives also. In
Kelantan the shaman may be a Malay or a Siamese woman.
Negritos and certain northern Sakai placed the bodies of dead
shamans in shelters built among tree-branches. The soul of a
Negrito magician may enter tiger, elephant, or rhinoceros, and
there abide until the animal dies, when the soul at last goes to
its own heaven. Some Kinta Sakai used formerly to leave the
corpses of magicians unburied in the houses where they died. The
Jakun of Rompin put them "on platforms and their souls go up to
the sky, while those of ordinary mortals, whose bodies are buried,
go to the underworld." Other Jakun believe that great magicians
are translated alive to heaven. Clearly it was the custom of the
Peninsular aborigines not to bury a magician. His soul might
inhabit a large animal temporarily, but found its way in the end
to some place in the air that is full of the unseen spirits he
controlled. Malays have long buried their magicians. "The majority
of sacred places in the Patani States are the reputed graves of
great medicine-men." But in two of the States on the west coast,
at least, when a practiser of black magic is in the throes of
death, it is believed that the spirit of life can escape only if a
hole is made in the roof of the house.
A shaman by inheritance comes into possession of a familiar
spirit, or perhaps he may inherit one from his preceptor. In
Patani it is said that if a shaman does not bequeath his (or her)
art to a pupil before dying, then his clothes, drums, censer, and
other magical appurtenances will generate a savage ghost. There,
too, it is held that hairy persons are especially qualified to
become magicians. The Benua, a Proto-Malay tribe, believe that the
soul of a dead shaman (who has to be left unburied in the forest)
will in the seventh day attack his heir in the form of a tiger: if
the heir betrays no fear and casts incense on a fire, he will fall
into a trance and be visited by two beautiful female spirits who
become his familiars; if the heir fails to watch by the corpse and
observe this ritual, the dead man's soul enters a tiger for ever.
According to the belief of the Jakun his familiar spirit comes to
a shaman by inheritance or in a dream. In all accounts the shaman
must acquire as his familiar a spirit that has not found rest.
This he does in a trance, often during a vigil beside a grave.
Kelantan Malays prescribe a method of acquiring a shaman's powers
that shows an accretion of Muslim belief on a primitive idea, akin
to the Proto-Malay superstition that round a grave a ditch must be
dug wherein the soul of the deceased may paddle his canoe. Sitting
one at the head and one at the foot of the grave of a murdered
man, the would-be shaman and a companion burn incense and make
believe to use paddles shaped from the midrib of a royal yellow
coconut palm, calling the while upon the murdered man to grant
magical powers. The landscape will come to look like a sea and an
aged man will appear, to whom the request for magic must be
repeated. Now one of the evidences of Muslim saintship is the
ecstatic vision or dream of the Prophet or of one of the greater
saints of Islam. Possibly the "aged man" was Luqman al-Hakim, the
reputed fattier of Arabian magic. One day, according to Kelantan
belief, the Angel Gabriel was commanded to upset Luqman and his
books at sea as a punishment for his pride, and the finders of the
few scattered pages of those books became medicine-men in their
several countries. A Selangor account corroborates the Kelantan
belief that Luqman was the first magician: he lived in the sky,
was descended from Adam and Eve, was a son (or perhaps brother) of
Siva, and so a link with the Hindu element in the modern Malay
medicine-man's shibboleth!
The Malay has always been apt to ascribe greater power to foreign
magic, whether that of a naked illiterate aborigine from the woods
or that of a Hindu trader or an Arab missionary. In an eighteenth
century history of Perak it is recorded how among the medicine-men
in attendance on the daughter of a famous Malay ruler there were
Sakai from the jungle. Magicians, like prophets, have more honour
outside their own borders. It is no wonder, therefore, that the
Malay midwife learnt from the Hindu all the magic he could teach
for the great occasions of birth, adolescence, and marriage, or
that the Malay shaman added gods of the Hindu pantheon to his
demonology and made invocations and offerings to Siva. Long before
the introduction of Islamic mysticism, Hinduism had encouraged the
Malay magician to fortify his powers and command the wonder of the
credulous by ascetic practices. Malay romances, paraphrased from
Indian originals, are full of stories of heroes who acquire magic,
especially for warfare, by retiring into a hermit's seclusion on a
mountain-top. In Patani there is a "curious belief, perhaps more
Siamese than Malay, that no man can become a really great magician
in any country in which the peaks of the hills are rounded, and
that therefore the State of Patalung, in which there are many
conical hills, produces the most powerful medicine-men in the
Malay Peninsula."
When Islam came, the Malay magician sat at the feet of its
pundits, studied their arts of divination, and borrowed their
cabalistic talismans. Before his old incantations he set the names
of Allah and Muhammad, often in impious contexts. He detected his
latest avatar in the living saint of Islam, to whom folk resort
"for advice in legal disputes or as to the success or failure of
an enterprise or as intercessor for the sick or to get a child or
to remove blight or plague or confound enemies." He will,
therefore, seclude himself for certain days of the week or for a
period, the practice being given an Arabic name and having a
religious colour. Sometimes he keeps celibate. Or he may fast to
impress the common herd and enable himself to see visions. A
magician of this type is generally a disciple of a crude form of
Sufism derived from India. A Selangor account, strongly affected
by Neo-Platonic ideas, makes Allah (as Absolute Being beyond all
relations) the first of magicians. "When haze was still in the
womb of darkness and darkness in the womb of haze, before earth
bore the name of earth or sky the name of sky, before Allah was
called Allah or Muhammad was called Muhammad, before the creation
of the Divine Throne and its footstool and the firmament, the
Creator of the worlds was manifested by Himself and He was the
first magician. He made the magician's universe, a world of the
breadth of a tray, a sky of the breadth of an umbrella.... The
magician before time existed was Allah and He revealed Himself by
the light of moon and sun and so showed Himself to be verily a
magician." The first sentence of this quotation is a Malay
paraphrase of the Prophet's simile for God before the creation:
"the dark mist above which is a void and below which is a void."
As Skeat has suggested, the conception of a miniature universe,
Plato's "fixed archetypes," would remind the Malay of the relation
of the tiny Indonesian soul to the physical body. It reminds also
of Ibn 'Arabi's saying that all the universe contains lies
potential in God like the tree in the seed. Indeed, one Malay
account of the origin of the magician relates how at the Muslim
word of creation (kun) "the seed was created and from the seed the
root, from the root the stem, and from the stem the leaves," and
then in the same sentence relates how the word of creation brought
into being a miniature earth and sky. So time has changed the
Malay brother of the Siberian shaman into a humble relative of the
Sufi mystic.
Are there traces of the magician in the Malay king? Among some, at
least, of the Proto-Malay tribes of the Peninsula the commoner
chief or Batin is judge, priest, and magician.
Between the old-world commoner chiefs of the matriarchal tribes of
Negri Sembilan and the Raja ruler there are several ties. Like the
magician (and the European district officer!) both can influence
the weather: a wet season will be ascribed to a cold constitution!
Both are chosen from several branches of one family, theoretically
from each branch in rotation, actually from the branch that
happens to possess the candidate most suitable in years and
character. Both, therefore, like the Malay magician hold "offices
hereditary or at least confined to the members of one family."
Like the Brahmin the Malay magician and the Malay ruler have a
tabu language. A king does not "walk" but "has himself carried";
he does not "bathe" but is "sprinkled like a flower"; he does not
"live" but "resides"; he does not "feed" but "takes a repast"; he
does not "die" but "is borne away." Of the dozen or more words
constituting this vocabulary half are Malay, half Sanskrit. Shaman
and ruler both have felt the influence of Hinduism.
Like the magician, the ruler has wonder-working insignia of
office. The tambourine and other appurtenances of the shaman will
generate an evil spirit if not bequeathed to a successor. To tread
on a Malay State drum may cause death: even a Chinaman has been
known to swell up and die after removing a hornet's nest from this
terrific instrument. The regalia of a Malay ruler were miraculous
talismans that controlled the luck of the State. Quite recently in
Malacca a pretender to the chieftainship of Naning got hold of the
insignia of office, refused to surrender them, and declared that
possession of them gave him a good title.
In the old annual ceremony of expelling malignant spirits from a
Malay State, the ruler took a leading part. And in the ritual of
the now obsolete Perak court magician there are two noteworthy
details. At the seance held during his last illness Sultan Yusuf
was placed shrouded on the wizard's mat with the wizard's
grass-switch in his hand to await, as at an ordinary seance the
shaman alone awaits, the advent of the spirits invoked. Again,
after the annual seance to "revive" the Perak regalia, the State
magician bathed the Sultan and in his person the genies of the
State, who would seem therefore to be regarded as His Highness'
familiar spirits. According to an old account the State shaman of
Perak was eligible for the Sultanate, and the Raja Muda, or heir
to the throne, could become State shaman.
Modern man has forgotten that in appropriating buffaloes with
peculiar horns, albino children, turtles' eggs and other freaks of
nature, the Malay ruler started not as a grasping tyrant but as a
magician, competent above all his people to face the dangers of
the unusual and untried. For under paganism, Hinduism and Islam
magician and raja dead and alive have been credited with
supernatural powers. It is claimed for a modern Malay magician
that he can remain under water for an hour! It was claimed for a
bye-gone ruler of Perak that every Friday he could translate
himself to Mecca and once brought back three green figs as
evidence of his journey. The graves of kings and the graves of
magicians have been alike the object of worship.
IV. THE MALAY CHARM
THERE are three words used by Malays for incantation or charm, two
of them Sanskrit (jampi; mantra), the other the Arabic word for
prayer (do'a). Charms are employed in agricultural operations, by
fishermen, hunters, fowlers and trappers; to abduct or recall the
soul; to revive ore in a mine or a patient on a bed of sickness;
against cramp, poison, snakebite, enemies, vampires, evil spirits;
at birth and at teeth-filing; to save men from tigers, and crops
from rats and boars and insect pests; for beauty, virility, love;
to weaken a rival in a race or in a fight; to divert a bullet or
break a weapon as it is being drawn.
A Malay charm may form part of a primitive ritual, like that of
the rice-year, conducted by a skilled magician. It may be merely
recited on an appropriate occasion by any layman who has learnt
it. One may buy the words of a love-charm, for example, from an
expert "for three dollars, three yards of white cloth, cotton and
thread, limes and salt, areca-nut, and betel-vine," or for "limes
and salt, three small coins, five yards of white cloth and a
needle."
The charm may require to be supplemented by contagious and by
homopathic or mimetic magic. Sand from the foot-print of the
woman loved, earth from the graves of a man and woman, the
hair-like filaments of bamboo, black pepper: these are often
steamed in a pot while a love-charm is being recited. Another
method is to "take a lime, pierce it with the midrib of a fallen
coconut palm, leaving one finger's length sticking out on either
side whereby to hang the lime. Hang it up with thread of seven
colours, leaving the thread also hanging loose an inch below the
lime. Take seven sharpened midribs and stick them into the lime,
leaving two fingers' length projecting. The sticking of the midrib
into the lime is to symbolise piercing the heart and liver and
life and soul and gall of the beloved. Put jasmine on the end of
the midrib skewers. Do this first on Monday night, for three
nights, and then on Friday night. Imagine you pierce the girl's
heart as you pierce the lime. Recite the accompanying charm three
or seven times, swinging the lime each time you recite the words
and fumigating it with incense. Do this five times a day and five
times a night in a private place where no one shall enter or
sleep." A woman recites a charm for beauty over the water in which
she bathes or over the coconut oil with which she anoints her
hair.
Sometimes the Malay appears to be indebted to India for a charm
and to have forgotten or purposely omitted the accompanying
ritual. In the Atharva-Veda there is an incantation to arouse the
passionate love of a woman:
May love, the disquieter, disquiet thee; do not hold out upon thy
bed. With the terrible arrow of Kama I pierce thee in the heart!
The arrow winged with longing, barbed with love, whose shaft is
undeviating desire, with that well-aimed Kama shall pierce thee in
the heart!
With that well-aimed arrow of Kama which parches the spleen, whose
plume flies forward, which burns up, do I pierce thee in the
heart!
Consumed by burning ardour, with parched mouth, come to me woman,
pliant, thy pride laid aside, mine alone, speaking sweetly and to
me devoted!
I drive thee with a goad from thy mother and thy father, so that
thou shalt be in my power, shalt come up to my wish!
All her thoughts do ye, O Mitra and Varuna, drive out of her. Then
having deprived her of her will put her into my power alone.
Now turn to the modern Malay equivalent:
In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate!
Burn, burn, sand and earth!
I burn the heart of my beloved
And my fire is the arrow of Arjuna!
If I burnt a mountain, it wouldfall;
If I burnt rock, it would split asunder.
I am burning the heart of my beloved,
So that she is broken and hot with love,
That giveth her no rest night or day,
Burning ever as this sand burns.
Let her cease to love parents and friends!
If she sleeps, awaken her!
If she awakes, cause her to rise and come
Yielding herself unto me,
Devoid of shame and discretion!
By virtue of the poison of Arjuna's arrow,
By virtue of the invocation,
"There is no God but God and Muhammad is His Prophet."
The Malay lover only talks of Arjuna's arrow. But the Hindu lover
pierced the heart of a clay effigy by means of a bow with a hempen
string carrying an arrow whose barb was a thorn and whose plume
was plucked from an owl.
Even in Vedic times, however, often no ritual was required and the
mere recital of the verbal charm sufficed. A Hindu would mutter in
the presence of a hostile witness:-"I take away the speech in thy
mouth, I take away the speech in thy heart. Wherever thy speech is
I take it away. What I say is true. Fall down inferior to me." So,
too, the Malay today without any ritual recites:-"O God! let the
world be blind, the universe deaf, the earth stretched out dumb;
closed and locked be the desire of my enemy"; or he whispers,
Om! king of genies!
The rock-splitting lightning is my voice!
Michael is with me!
In virtue of my use of this charm
To make heavy and lock,
I lock the hearts of all my adversaries,
I make dumb their tongues,
I lock their mouths,
I tie their hands,
I fetter their feet.
Not till rock moves
Shall their hearts be moved;
Not till earth my mother moves
Shall their hearts be moved.
The voice of the Malay animist is heard in the charm calling the
corn-baby to her embroidered cradle, or in the sailor's invocation
for a breeze: "Come, wind, loose your long flowing tresses," or in
the Perak raftsman's address to the spirit of a perilous
rapid:-"Accept this offering, granddam! Send our raft safe through
the long rapid, we beseech thee! Cause us no harm in mid journey.
Open like the uncurling blossom of the palm! Open like a snake
that uncoils." But it is not in many incantations that the Malay
roars thus "gently as any sucking dove."
Most of his charms bear all the characteristic marks of the Indian
mantra. They must be kept secret. They are in rude metrical form.
Many are a mixture of prayer and spell. Numerous spirits are
generally invoked so that the particular spirit whose help is
wanted or whose malevolence is to be baulked shall not escape
mention. And as knowledge of a man's name will give another power
over him, so it is sought to influence and control a spirit by
enumerating his various names. 'Take an address to the
Earth-Spirit:-
At daybreak thou art called Lord of the Sun-Ray,
In the morning Lord of Fortune,
At mid-day Lord of the World,
At evening Lord of the Evening Light:
In the high forest thy name is the Leafy Orchid,
In mid plain, the Flat One,
In the rivulet, the Flowing One,
In the spring, the Trickler.
Like the Brahmin, the Malay magician will exhaust a series of
possibilities, expelling disease from
Skin and bone and joint and vein,
Flesh, blood, heart, spleen, racked with pain;
or bidding
Genies of the mountains return to the mountains!
Genies of the hills return to the hills!
Genies of the plain return to the plain!
Genies of the forest return to the forest!
For the Malay, too, as for the Hindu the origin of a thing or
spirit gives magical control over them. In the Atharva-Veda the
mention of the names of the father and mother of a plant, for
example, is a typical part of a magic formula. Incense is hailed
by the Malay magician as a product of the brain of Muhammad, "its
smoke the breath of his spiritual life."
Rice-paste:-
It came down from Allah's presence,
From a drop of dew descended!
From the water whence eternal
Life comes-that it's source of being.
The trapper addresses genies -
I know the source of you, genies!
From the mangrove leaves ye were sprung!
One soared into the sky and became the green genies.
One fell at the gate of the forest and became the black genies!
One fell in the sea and became the white genies!
Sometimes an absurdly base origin is purposely assigned, as in a
charm against tigers:-
Ho tiger! I know your origin!
Your mother, tiger, was a toad!
On the plains of Syria you were begotten!
The Malay magician under Indian influence threatens and commands,
though he is apt to disclaim responsibility:-
Take this bait, crocodile,
A cake of yellow rice
The gift of thy sister Fatimah!
If thou takest it not,
Thou shalt be cursed by her,
or again:-
Obey my words, trapped elephant!
If thou obeyest not,
Thou wilt be killed by Sri Rama.
If thou obeyest,
The Great Rishis will keep thee alive.
In a charm to weaken a rival the Malay boasts:-
It is not on the earth that I tread!
I tread on the heads of all living things.
In a charm against a thunderstorm he outroars the tempest:-
Om! Virgin goddess, Mahadewi! Om!
Cub am I of mighty tiger!
'Ali's line through me descends!
My voice is the rumble of thunder,
Whose bolts strike a path for my seeing;
Forked lightning's the flash of my weapons!
I move not till earth moves!
I rock not till earth rocks!
I quake not till earth quakes,
Firm set as earth's axis.
By virtue of my charm got from 'Ali
And of Islam's confession of faith.
To frighten and capture a male elephant the hunter stands on one
leg at sunrise and vaunts his prowess:-
My countenance is the light of breaking day!
My eyes are the star of dawn!
My body is as that of a tusker!
My prop is a fierce tiger!
My seat is a ravening crocodile!
Sitting on the skin of a tiger was supposed by Hindus to give
invisible strength. But these daring assumptions of power were
very far from the mind of the primitive animist, who addressed all
things in heaven and earth with courtesy and deference.
In Malay as in Hindu charms the curse plays a weighty part:-
I would wed the image in the pupil of my mistress' eye
With the image in the pupil of my own!
If thou lookest not upon me,
May thy eyeballs burst!
Or again:-
Genies of supernatural power!
Your home is at the navel of the sea,
By the tree on the broken rock!
Enter not the line drawn by my teacher!
Else will I curse ye with the words,
"There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His Prophet."
Om! I neutralise all evil,
O Solomon! In the name of God.
The mystic Om, symbolical of the Hindu triad, Vishnu, Siva, and
Brahma, still remains a word of power with this Muslim magician,
though almost supplanted by the Arabic kun, "Let it be," the
creative word of Allah:-
In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate!
I fry sand from the foot-print of my beloved;
Nay, I fry her heart and liver
Night and day, as this sand is fried.
"Let it be," says God.
"And it is so," says Muhammad, His Apostle.
Let her body itch with desire
Giving her no rest from longing for me.
"And it is so," says Gabriel.
Islam, coming first from India, introduced the Malay to a wide
field of fresh magic. A woman desiring the love of a man gets the
following charm written down, wrapped in cerements that have
covered the face of a male corpse, and buried where her lover is
bound to step. The charm is interesting, because so, too, the
Moroccan bride will pray to Allah and the Prophet and Fatimah that
her husband may "be fond of her as the dead is fond of his grave";
and Syro-Christian charms (which appear to have influenced early
Islam) invoke the Father and the Son to bind the tongues of false
witnesses and the navel of the newly-born child as "the ox in the
yoke, the dead in the grave." The Malay charm runs as follows:-
If Muhammad can be sundered from Allah
And a corpse move in the grave,
Only then shall my lover's desire move to another.
The desire of his heart shall be only for me;
Straying now hither he shall be my mate unto death,
Safe near me like a corpse in the grave.
The Muslim element in Malay magic will form the subject of a
separate chapter. But the final evolution of the spoken charm in
the Malay vernacular may be illustrated here by the incantation
whereby the Kelantan shaman exorcises the demon of disease at a
seance:-
O universe, the world of Adam!
Earth was made from a clod rom Paradise,
Water from a river of Paradise,
Fire from the smoke of Hell,
Air from the four elements.
Skin and hair, flesh and blood,
Bones and sinews, life and seed
Came from four elements of sperm.
Skin and hair were created by Gabriel,
Flesh and blood by Michael,
Bones and sinews by Israfil,
Life and seed by 'Azrail!
Where is this genie lodging and taking shelter?
Where is he lodging and crouching?
Genie! if thou art in the feet of this patient,
Know that these feet are moved by Allah and His Prophet;
If thou art in the belly of this patient,
His belly is God's sea, the sea, too, of Muhammad.
If thou art in his hands,
His hands pay homage to God and His Prophet.
If thou art in his liver, It is the secret place of God and His
Prophet!
If thou art in his heart,
His heart is Abu Bakar's palace.
If thou art in his lungs,
His lungs are 'Omar's palace.
If thou art in his spleen,
His spleen is 'Usman's palace.
If thou art in his gall-bladder,
His gall-bladder is 'Ali's palace.
The heart, the lung, the spleen, the gall-bladder
Are the homestead of life,
Not the homestead of genie or Iblis,
Not the homestead of sickness or suffering.
Ho there, genie! thy origin was from the tonguelike fumes of
smokeless hell.
I know thy origin,
The name o thy father, thy mother, and of thy child.
V. THE SOUL OF THINGS
THF, primitive Malay looked below the outer aspect of man and
beast and plant and stone and found a veiled power or inner life
for which their exterior is the host or tabernacle. This animating
spirit he called the vital "spark" (semangat), probably because
the dead are cold. For lack of an exact equivalent, it may be
termed soul, despite that word's other connotations. It is
possessed by all things "in widest commonalty spread." There is no
aristocracy among souls, no "rank, condition or degree,"
distinguishing the soul of man from the soul of plant or animal.
But souls inhabiting things useful to men, like rice, arrest the
Malay's attention only less than his own soul. The soul is the
personal property of its host. It is also an impersonal substance,
whose deficiency in the sick can be supplied by soul-substance
derived, for example, from proper diet, rubbing with a bezoar
stone, being breathed upon by the medicine man or brushed with the
lush grass of his aspergillum.
This substance, which enters the Malay child the moment the bamboo
knife (or midwife's teeth) severs the umbilical cord, permeates
his whole body and its secretions like an electric fluid. In some
parts of the globe it is believed that there are separate souls
for the head, the blood, the heart, the saliva, and even the
foot-prints. A survival of this idea may be traced in the Malay
shaman's altar piled with morsels representing every part of the
beast sacrificed. According to one Malay account the soul lives in
the belly. His head to a Malay is sacred: he resents it being
touched even in play. All parts of the body where soul-substance
is present must be guarded from the sorcery of enemies. A woman's
blood can be employed to her hurt by a disappointed lover.
Clippings from hair or nails are hidden or destroyed for fear
possession of them may give an enemy control over their owner's
soul and so over his life. Clippings from finger-nails can turn
into fire-flies just as the soul of a whole man can turn into a
firefly. So strong is the soul-substance in the hair shorn at a
girl's first tonsure that it is buried at the foot of a barren
tree to bring fruit as luxuriant as her tresses. The abundance of
this substance in hair and teeth makes it politic to sacrifice all
save a lock of a Malay boy's hair and to file off part of a
child's teeth at puberty: formerly the stumps were blackened, it
has been surmised, to conceal from the spirits the partial nature
of the sacrifice. In old days warriors especially, like Samson,
wore their hair long and uncut. And after a death relatives used
to sacrifice some or all of their locks so that the dead might not
revisit them. The history of Pasai tells of a Malay princess born
from a bamboo whose life was bound up with one golden hair that
glittered among her raven tresses: when her consort pulled it out,
white blood gushed forth and she died.
The Malay's respect for saliva is shown by the deputing of a
courtier to take charge of the royal cuspidore on ceremonial
occasions. The midwife spits on the baby she welcomes into the
world. This is a gift of a portion of one's self, a pledge of
union and good-will, a diluted form of blood-covenant. Religious
teachers of piety and learning are invited by parents to spit upon
a child's |
