CHAPTER V

Magic Rites connected with the Several Departments of Nature

(a) Air

1. WIND AND WEATHER CHARMS

Not the least important attribute of the Malay magician in former days was his power of controlling the weather--a power of which Malay magic incantations still preserve remarkable traces.

Thus when the wind fails and the sails of a boat are flapping (kalau layer k'lepek-k'lepek), a Selangor magician would not unfrequently summon the wind in the following terms:--

"Come hither, Sir, come hither, my Lord, Let down your locks so long and flowing."

And if the wind is contrary he would say:--

"Veer round, Wind, a needle or twain (of the compass), A needle to (let me) fetch Kapar. [212] However heavy the merchandise that I carry unassisted, Let me repair to Klang for the (morning) meal, And Langat for the (evening) bathe. Come hither, Sir, come hither, my Lord, And let down your locks so long and flowing."

Again, if the wind grew violent he would say:--

"Eggs of the House-lizard, Eggs of the Grass-lizard, Make a trio with Eggs of the Tortoise. I plant this pole thus in the mid-stream (That) Wind and Tempest may come to naught. Let the White (ones) turn into Chalk, And the Black (one) into Charcoal. [213]

Sometimes the magician will fasten a rice-spoon (chemcha) [214] horizontally to the mast of the vessel, and repeat some such charm as the following:--

"The bird 'Anggau-anggau' flies To perch on the house of Malim Palita. May you die as you lean, may you die from a push, May you die by this 'sending' of 'Prince Rice-spoon's.'" [215]

Of rain-making ceremonies in Selangor there now remains little but tradition. Yet a Langat Malay told me that if a Malay woman puts upon her head an inverted [216] earthenware pan (b'langa), and then, setting it upon the ground, fills it with water and washes the cat in it until the latter is more than half drowned, heavy rain will certainly ensue. [217]

On the other hand the recital of the following charm will, it is believed, effectually stop the heaviest downpour:--

"Though the stem of the Meranti tree [218] rocks to and fro (in the storm), Let the Yam leaves be as thick as possible, [219] That Rain and Tempest may come to naught."

With the foregoing should be classed such charms as are used by the Malays to dispel the yellow sunset glow. [220]

2. BIRDS AND BIRD CHARMS

The chief features of the Bird-lore of the Peninsular Malays, which, as will appear in the course of this chapter, is strongly tinged with animism, have been thus described by Sir William Maxwell:--

"Ideas of various characters are associated by Malays with birds of different kinds, and many of their favourite similes are furnished by the feathered world. The peacock strutting in the jungle, the argus pheasant calling on the mountain peak, the hoot of the owl, and the cry of the night-jar, have all suggested comparisons of various kinds, which are embodied in the proverbs of the people. [221] The Malay is a keen observer of nature, and his illustrations, drawn from such sources, are generally just and often poetical.

"The supernatural bird Gerda (Garuda, the eagle of Vishnu), who figures frequently in Malay romances, is dimly known to the Malay peasant. If, during the day, the sun is suddenly overcast by clouds and shadow succeeds to brilliancy, the Pêrak Malay will say "Gerda is spreading out his wings to dry." [222] Tales are told, too, of other fabulous birds [223]--the jintayu, which is never seen, though its note is heard, and which announces the approach of rain; [224] and the chandrawasi, which has no feet. The chandrawasi lives in the air, and is constantly on the wing, never descending to earth or alighting on a tree. Its young even are produced without the necessity of touching the earth. The egg is allowed to drop, and as it nears the earth it bursts, and the young bird appears fully developed. The note of the chandrawasi may often be heard at night, but never by day, and it is lucky, say the Malays, to halt at a spot where it is heard calling.

"There is an allusion to this bird in a common pantun--a kind of erotic stanza very popular among the Malays:--

"Chandrawasi burong sakti, Sangat berkurong didalam awan. Gonda gulana didalam hati, Sahari tidak memandang tuan. [225]

"Nocturnal birds are generally considered ill-omened all over the world, and popular superstition among the Malays fosters a prejudice against one species of owl. If it happens to alight and hoot near a house, the inhabitants say significantly that there will soon be 'tearing of cloth' (koyah kapan) for a shroud. This does not apply to the small owl called punggok, which, as soon as the moon rises, may often be heard to emit a soft plaintive note. The note of the punggok is admired by the Malays, who suppose it to be sighing for the moon, and find in it an apt simile for a desponding lover.

"The baberek or birik-birik, another nocturnal bird, is a harbinger of misfortune. This bird is said to fly in flocks at night; it has a peculiar note, and a passing flock makes a good deal of noise. If these birds are heard passing, the Pêrak peasant brings out a sengkalan (a wooden platter on which spices are ground), and beats it with a knife, or other domestic utensil, calling out as he does so: "Nenek, bawa hati-nia" ("Great-grandfather, bring us their hearts"). This is an allusion to the belief that the bird baberek flies in the train of the Spectre Huntsman (hantu pemburu), who roams Malay forests with several ghostly dogs, and whose appearance is the forerunner of disease or death. "Bring us their hearts" is a mode of asking for some of his game, and it is hoped that the request will delude the hantu pemburu into the belief that the applicants are ra`iyat, or followers of his, and that he will, therefore, spare the household.

"The baberek, [226] which flies with the wild hunt, bears a striking resemblance to the white owl, Totosel, the nun who broke her vow, and now mingles her "tutu" with the "holloa" of the Wild Huntsman of the Harz. [227]

"The legend of the Spectre Huntsman is thus told by the Pêrak Malays:--

"In former days, at Katapang, in Sumatra, there lived a man whose wife, during her pregnancy, was seized with a violent longing for the meat of the pelandok (mouse-deer). But it was no ordinary pelandok that she wanted. She insisted that it should be a doe, big with male offspring, and she bade her husband go and seek in the jungle for what she wanted. The man took his weapons and dogs and started, but his quest was fruitless, for he had misunderstood his wife's injunctions, and what he sought was a buck pelandok, big with male offspring, an unheard-of prodigy.

"Day and night he hunted, slaying innumerable mouse-deer, which he threw away on finding that they did not fulfil the conditions required.

"He had sworn a solemn oath on leaving home that he would not return unsuccessful, so he became a regular denizen of the forest, eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the animals which he slew, and pursuing night and day his fruitless search. At length he said to himself: 'I have hunted the whole earth over without finding what I want; it is now time to try the firmament.' So he holloa'd on his dogs through the sky, while he walked below on the earth looking up at them, and after a long time, the hunt still being unsuccessful, the back of his head, from constantly gazing upwards, became fixed to his back, and he was no longer able to look down at the earth. One day a leaf from the tree called Si Limbak fell on his throat and took root there, and a straight shoot grew upwards in front of his face. [228] In this state he still hunts through Malay forests, urging on his dogs as they hunt through the sky, with his gaze evermore turned upwards. [229]

"His wife, whom he left behind when he started on the fatal chase, was delivered in due time of two children--a boy and a girl. When they were old enough to play with other children, it chanced one day that the boy quarrelled with the child of a neighbour with whom he was playing. The latter reproached him with his father's fate, of which the child had hitherto been ignorant, saying: 'Thou art like thy father, who has become an evil spirit, ranging the forests day and night, and eating and drinking no man knows how. Get thee to thy father.'

"Then the boy ran crying to his mother and related what had been said to him. 'Do not cry,' said she, 'it is true, alas! that thy father has become a spirit of evil.' On this the boy cried all the more, and begged to be allowed to join his father. His mother yielded at last to his entreaties, and told him the name of his father and the names of the dogs. He might be known, she said, by his habit of gazing fixedly at the sky and by his four weapons--a blow-pipe (sumpitan), a spear, a kris, and a sword (klewang). 'And,' added she, 'when thou hearest the hunt approaching, call upon him and the dogs by name, and repeat thy own name and mine, so that he may know thee.'

"The boy entered the forest, and, after he had walked some way, met an old man who asked him where he was going. 'I go to join my father,' said the lad. 'If thou findest him,' said the old man, 'ask him where he has put my chisel which he has borrowed from me.' This the boy promised to do, and continued his journey. After he had gone a long way he heard sounds like those made by people engaged in hunting. As they approached, he repeated the names which his mother had told him, and immediately found himself face to face with his father. The hunter demanded of him who he was, and the child repeated all that his mother had told him, not forgetting the message of the old man about the chisel. Then the hunter said: 'Truly thou art my son. As for the chisel, it is true that when I started from home I was in the middle of shaping some bamboos to make steps for the house. I put the chisel inside one of the bamboos. Take it and return it to the owner. Return now and take care of thy mother and sister. As for him who reproached thee, hereafter we will repay him. I will eat his heart and drink his blood, so shall he be rewarded.'

"From that time forward the Spectre Huntsman has afflicted mankind, and many are those whom he has destroyed. Before dismissing his son, he desired him to warn all his kindred never to use bamboo for making steps for a house, and never to hang clothes to dry from poles stuck in between the joists supporting the floor, and thus jutting out at right angles with a house, 'lest,' said he, 'I should strike against such poles as I walk along. Further,' he continued, 'when ye hear the note of the bird birik-birik at night, ye will know that I am walking near.'

"Then the boy returned to his mother and delivered to her and all their kindred the injunctions of the lost man. One account says that the woman followed her spectre husband to the forest, where she joins in the chase with him to this day, and that they have there children born in the woods. The first boy and girl retained their human form, according to this account, but some Pawangs say that the whole family are in the forest with the father. [230]

"Numerous mantra, or charms, against the evil influence of the Wild Huntsman are in use among the Pawangs, or medicine-men of Pêrak. These are repeated, accompanied by appropriate ceremonies, when the disease from which some sick person is suffering has been traced to an encounter with the hantu pemburu. [231]

"The following may serve as a specimen:--

"Bi-smi-lláhi-r-rahmáni-r-rahim. Es-salamu `aleykum Hei Si Jidi laki Mah Jadah.

Pergi buru ka-rimba Ranchah Mahang. Katapang nama bukit-nia, Si Langsat nama anjing-nia, Si Kumbang nama anjing-nia, Si Nibong nama anjing-nia, Si Pintas nama anjing-nia, Si Aru-Aru nama anjing-nia, Timiang Balu nama sumpitan-nia, Lankapuri nama lembing-nia, Singha-buana nama mata-nia, Pisau raut panjang ulu Akan pemblah pinang berbulu. Ini-lah pisau raut deripada Maharaja Guru, Akan pemblah prut hantu pemburu. Aku tahu asal angkau mula menjadi orang Katapang. Pulang-lah angkau ka rimba Ranchah Mahang. Jangan angkau meniakat-meniakit pada tuboh badan-ku.

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful, Peace be on thee, O Si Jidi, husband of Mah Jadah.

Go thou and hunt in the forest of Ranchah Mahang. Katapang is the name of thy hill, Si Langsat is the name of thy dog, Si Kumbang is the name of thy dog, Si Nibong is the name of thy dog, Si Pintas is the name of thy dog, Si Aru-Aru is the name of thy dog, Timiang Balu is the name of thy blow-pipe Lankapuri is the name of thy spear, Singha-buana is the name of its blade, The peeling-knife with a long handle Is to split in twain the fibrous betel-nut. Here is a knife from Maharaja Guru, To cleave the bowels of the Hunter-Spirit. I know the origin from which thou springest, O man of Katapang. Get thee back to the forest of Ranchah Mahang. Afflict not my body with pain or disease.

"In charms intended to guard him who repeats them, or who wears them written on paper, against the evil influences of the Spectre Huntsman, the names of the dogs, weapons, etc., constantly vary. The origin of the dreaded demon is always, however, ascribed to Katapang [232] in Sumatra. This superstition strikingly resembles the European legends of the Wild Huntsman, whose shouts the trembling peasants hear above the storm. It is, no doubt, of Aryan origin, and, coming to the Peninsula from Sumatra, seems to corroborate existing evidence tending to show that it is partly through Sumatra that the Peninsula has received Aryan myths and Indian phraseology. A superstitious prejudice against the use of bamboo in making a step-ladder for a Malay house and against drying clothes outside a house on poles stuck into the framework, exists in full force among the Pêrak Malays.

"The note of the birik-birik at night, telling as it does of the approach of the hantu pemburu, is listened to with the utmost dread and misgiving. The Bataks in Sumatra call this bird by the same name--birik-birik. It is noticeable that in Batak legends regarding the creation of the world, the origin of mankind is ascribed to Putri-Orta-Bulan, the daughter of Batara-Guru, who descended to the earth with a white owl and a dog." [233]

To the information contained in the foregoing passage I would add the following observations:--

Charms for neutralising the power of the Spectre Huntsman are by no means uncommon, and though they almost invariably differ in unimportant details, such as the names of his dogs and weapons, they still bear strong and unmistakable family likeness. Still there are some versions which contain important divergencies (two or three of these versions will be found in the Appendix), and it will only be after the diligent collation and compilation of a great many versions that the real germ or nucleus of the myth as known to the Malays will be clearly apparent.

One of the charms given in the Appendix evidently alludes to a different version of the story; the lines which contain the allusion being as follows:--

"I know your origin, O man of penance, Whose dwelling was upon the hill of Mount Ophir, [You sprang] from a son of the Prophet Joseph who was wroth with his mother, Because she would eat the hearts of the birds of Paradise."

Yet even here, if we except the obvious interpolation of the reference to the "son of the Prophet Joseph," the task of reconciling the conflicting versions may be easier than would appear at first sight. [234]

A still more curious deviation occurs in another version, [235] where the Spectre Huntsman's poniard and k'ris are declared to be the insignia of the great Spirit-King Rama. The passage is as follows:--

"With a blind crow as his guide, The giant demon, Si Adunada, Carries (his weapons) slung over his shoulder with back bent double. Salampuri is the name of his poniard (sekin), Silambuara the name of his k'ris, The insignia of the Demon Rama."

That it is his weapons which the Spectre Huntsman's son (Adunada) carries on his back appears from a passage below, which runs:--

"O Si Adunada, with the sword slung at your back, Bent double you come from the lightwood swamps, We did not guess that you were here."

This reference to Rama opens up a long vista of possibilities, but for the present it will be sufficient to remark that the Spectre Huntsman himself is almost universally declared by the Malays to be the King of the Land-folk (Raja orang darat). It is on account of this kingship that his weapons receive distinguishing titles such as are given to royal weapons. This, too, is the reason that he is so much more dreaded by Malays than ordinary spirits of evil; his mere touch being considered sufficient to kill, by the exercise of that divine power which all Malay Rajas are held to possess. [236]

To return from the foregoing digression: there are many other curious legends connected with Birds. Thus, in 1882, Captain Kelham wrote as follows:--

"From Mr. W. E. Maxwell, H.M. Assistant Resident, of Lârut, I hear that the Malays have a strange legend connected with one of the large Hornbills; but which species I was not able to find out. It is as follows:--

"'A Malay, in order to be revenged on his mother-in-law (why, the legend does not relate), shouldered his axe and made his way to the poor woman's house, and began to cut through the posts which supported it. After a few steady chops the whole edifice came tumbling down, and he greeted its fall with a peal of laughter. To punish him for his unnatural conduct he was turned into a bird, and the tebang mentuah (literally, He who chopped down his mother-in-law) may often be heard in the jungle uttering a series of sharp sounds like the chop of an axe on timber, followed by Ha! ha! ha!'" [237]

The following account of the bird-lore of the Malay Peninsula was compiled by me from notes supplied to the Selangor Journal [238] by the late Sir William Maxwell:--

The Night-jar (Burong cheroh [239]) takes its name from the word applied to the second stage in the operation of husking rice. Malay women husk rice by pounding it in a mortar with a wooden pestle. The husked grain is then commonly winnowed in a sieve, and the unhusked rice (antah) which remains has to be separated from the husked rice and pounded over again. The second process, which is called ckeroh, is that from which the night-jar derives its name, the quick fancy of the Malay hearing in the note of the bird the slow measured stroke of a pestle (antan) descending in a mortar (lesong). This is possibly the foundation of the legend that the Night-jar is a woman who, while engaged in husking rice by moonlight, was turned into a bird in consequence of a quarrel with her mother. Another name for the night-jar is burong chempak.

The Burong sepah putri ("Princess's betel-quid") belongs to the Honey-birds or Bee-eaters, of which there are several species, remarkable chiefly for their brilliant metallic plumage. [A quaint story is told in explanation of its name: once upon a time the Owl (ponggok) fell in love with the Princess of the Moon (Putri Bulan) and asked her to marry him. She promised to do so, if he would allow her first to finish her quid of betel undisturbed; but before finishing it she threw it down to the earth, where it took the form of the small bird in question. The Princess then requested the Owl to make search for it, but as, of course, he was unable to find it, the proposed match fell through. This is the reason why the Owl, to quote the Malay proverb, "sighs longingly to the Moon," and is the type of the plaintive lover. [240]]

The Burong tinggal anak (lit. "Good-bye, children" bird) is a small bird whose note is to be heard at the season when the young rice is sprouting (musim padi pechah anak). As soon as her young are hatched out this bird dies in the nest, repeating the words "Tinggal anak" ("Good-bye, children"), and the maggots which breed in her corpse afford an unnatural nourishment to her unsuspecting offspring.

Burong diam 'kau Tuah, or "Hold your peace, Tuah," is the name of a small bird which is said to repeat the words--

"Diam 'kau, Tuah, K'ris aku ada,"

or,

"Hold thy peace, Tuah, My k'ris (dagger) is with me."

The story runs that once upon a time there was a man who had a slave called Tuah, who answered him back, and with whom he accordingly found fault, using the words given above. In the transport of his rage he was turned into a bird.

The bird called Kuau in Perak (kuau is the name given in Malacca and Selangor to the argus pheasant, which in Perak is called kuang) is about the size of the mynah (gambala kerbau), and is said to have been metamorphosed from a woman, the reason of whose transformation is not known. It is said to be unknown on the right bank of the Perak River.

The "'Kap-kap' bird" is the name of a night-bird of evil omen, whose note heard at night prognosticates death.

The Tearer of the shroud (Burong charik kapan) is also a night-bird, with a slow, deliberate note which the Malays declare sounds exactly like the tearing of cloth. [241] This signifies the tearing of the shroud, and unerringly forebodes death. Yet another night-bird ominous of approaching dissolution is the Tumbok larong. This bird, like the two preceding, is probably a variety of owl; the first and third are only found inland at a distance from the sea.

'Toh katampi ("Old-man-winnow-the-rice-for-the-burial-feast," as Sir Frank Swettenham calls him, [242]) is a species of horned owl, which derives its name from a word meaning to winnow (tampi, menampi). Malays say that this bird has a habit of treading upon the extremities of its own wings, and fluttering the upper part while thus holding them down. This singular habit produces a sound resembling that of winnowing.

The 'Toh katampi is larger than the Jampuk, another species of owl, which is popularly supposed to enter the fowl-house and there live on the intestines of fowls, which it extracts during life by means of a certain charm (`elmu pelali, a charm similar to those used by the Malays for filing teeth, etc.) which it uses in order to perform the operation painlessly.

The "Luck-bird" (Burong untong) is a very small white bird about the size of a canary. It builds a very small white nest, which if found and placed in a rice-bin possesses the valuable property of securing a good harvest to its owner. As, however, the nest is built on branches in places difficult of access it is but rarely found, and Malays will give $10 for a genuine specimen, while sellers are known to ask as much as $25.

The Ruwak-ruwak is a kind of Heron whose nest if discovered would give the possessor the power of becoming invisible (alimun). But as neither nest nor eggs can usually be found it is held to be childless. Yet, however, if it is possible to approach sufficiently near, when the bird is heard calling in the swamps, it may be seen dipping a twig or else its bent leg into the water, and accompanying its action with its call, as if it were bathing a child on its knee; hence the Malay who hears its note says mockingly, "the Ruwak-ruwak is bathing its young one."

Tukang is the name given in Kedah to a kind of Hornbill, which is believed to be the same as the langlin of Perak. The horn is of a yellow tinge, and is made into buttons, which, the Malays say, turn to a livid colour whenever the wearer is about to fall sick, and black when he is threatened by the approach of poison. [243]

The Merbu (? merbok) is a variety of Dove which brings good luck to its owner. Instances have been known where all the houses in a village have been burnt except that which contained a merbu; indeed, treatises have been written on the subject of keeping them. When the merbu dies its body merely shrivels up instead of breeding worms, which, it is added, would be worth keeping as curiosities should any appear. [244]

The bird called Pedrudang is a diver which has the power of remaining under water for a very long time. It is only to be found where the fish called kelesah exist in large quantities. The eggs of the kelesah are of great size, and the Malays say, therefore, that it cohabits with the pedrudang. These eggs are considered a delicacy by the Malays, who make them into a sort of custard pudding (s'ri-kaya).

To the Ground-pigeon (Tekukur) belongs the following story:--"Once upon a time there was a maiden who lived in the forest with her parents and little sister. When she grew up she was troubled by an anxiety to accompany her father in his expeditions to the forest, where he was engaged in clearing the ground for a rice-plantation. Her parents, however, persuaded her to stay at home; first until the trees were felled, then until the fallen timber had been burnt off, then till the rice had been planted, and then again till it was cut. When, however, they attempted to put her off yet once more, until the rice should be trodden out, she could bear it no longer, and taking off her bracelets and earrings, which she left behind the door, and placing her little sister in the swinging-cot, she changed herself into a ground-dove and flew away to the clearing. [She retained her necklace, however, and this accounts for the speckled marks on this dove's neck.] On arriving at the spot where her parents were engaged at work, she alighted on a dead tree stump (changgong), and called out thrice to her mother, 'Mother, mother, I have left my earrings and bracelets behind the door, and have put my little sister in the swing.' Her mother, amazed at these words, hastened home, and found her daughter gone. She then returned to the bird, which repeated the same words as before, this time, however, concluding with the coo of a dove. In vain the distressed parents endeavoured to recapture her, by cutting down the tree on which she had perched; before they had done so she flew to another, and after following her from tree to tree for several miles they were obliged to desist, and she was never recaptured." [245]

The following notes on birds are taken from a reprint [246] of "Museum Notes" by Mr. L. Wray, jun., the official curator of the Perak Museum. Mr. Wray says:--

"The Weaver-bird, which makes the long hanging bottle-shaped nests occasionally seen hanging from the branches of a low tree, is said to use a golden needle in the work; and it is affirmed that if the nest is carefully picked to pieces, without breaking any part of it, the needle will be found; but if it is pulled ruthlessly apart, or if even a single piece of the grass of which it is made is broken in unravelling it, the golden needle will disappear. The makers of these curious and beautiful nests are said to always choose trees that are infested with red ants or wasps, or which grow in impassable swamps."

The Weaver-bird (Ploceus Baya, Blyth) is called (in Selangor) Burong Tempua or Chiak Raya. It is said to use only the long jungle grass called lalang for making its nest, which latter is called buah rabun, and is used by the Malays for polishing sheaths and scabbards. When an infant keeps crying, one of the parents takes the weaver-bird's nest, reduces it to ashes, and fumigates the child by thrice moving it round in a circle over the smoke. Whilst doing so, the parent either stands up with the right toe resting upon the toe of the left foot, or else squats upon the left heel, bending the right knee, and saying, 'As the weaver-bird's young in its nest, so rest and weep not' (Bagimana anak tempua dalam sarang-nya, bagitu-lah 'kau diam jangan menangis). To the above I may add that besides the ordinary bottle-shaped nest, the weaver-birds also occasionally make a hood-shaped, or rather a helmet-shaped nest, which is alleged by the Malays to be the male bird's 'swing' (buayan). This 'swing' resembles the upper half of an ordinary bottle-shaped nest, with a perch across it, which latter is also woven of grass. On the walls of the swing, just over each end of the perch, is a small daub of clay. The Malays allege that the male bird swings in it while the hen bird is sitting, and that the young too 'take the air' in it as soon as they are able to fly so far. Into the two daubs of mud over the perch the male bird (say the Malays) sticks fire-flies to give itself light at night.

"The King crow [247] is called by the Malays the Slave of the Monkeys (Burong hamba kra). It is a pretty, active, noisy little bird, incessantly flying about with its two long racquet-shaped tail feathers fluttering after it. They say that when it has both of these feathers it has paid off its debt and is free, but when it is either destitute of these appendages, or has only one, it is still in bondage.

"The Gray Sea-eagle [248] is called Burong hamba siput 'the Slave of the Shell-fish,' and its office is to give warning by screaming to the shell-fish of the changes of the tide, so that they may regulate their movements, and those species which crawl about on the mud at low water may know when to take refuge in the trees and escape the rising tide, or when the tide is falling, that they may know when to descend to look for food.

"The Burong demam, or 'Fever bird,' is so called from its loud, tremulous note, and the Malays say that the female bird calls in its fever-stricken voice to its mate to go and find food, because it has fever so badly that it cannot go itself. This bird is probably one of the large green barbets. The note is often heard, and doubtless the bird has been collected, but it is one thing shooting a bird and another identifying it as the producer of a certain note.

"Another bird, the White-breasted Water-hen, a frequenter of the edges of reedy pools and the marshy banks of streams, is reputed to build a nest on the ground which has the property of rendering any one invisible who puts it on his head. The prevailing idea among the Malays is that the proper and legitimate use to put it to is to steal money and other species of property."

The next few notes on Malay bird-lore were collected by the writer in Selangor:--

The Toucan or small Hornbill (Enggang) was metamorphosed from a man who, in conjunction with a companion, broke into the house of an old man living by himself in the jungle, and slew him for the sake of his wealth. When life was extinct they threw a sheet over the body, and proceeded to ransack the house, throwing the loot into a second sheet close to the corpse. Day was about to dawn, when a false alarm induced them to make a hurried departure, so that they picked up the sheet with their loot and made off with it, carrying it slung hastily upon a pole between them. As they proceeded on their way day commenced gradually to dawn, and the man behind noticing something unexpected about the bundle, and divining the cause, called out to his companion "Orang!" (pr. o rang) "The man!" His companion, misunderstanding his exclamation, thought he meant that they were pursued by "a man," and only went all the faster, until, on hearing his comrade repeat the cry a second and a third time, he turned round, and there saw the feet of the man he had murdered protruding from the sheet, a sight which startled him to such a degree that he turned into a bird upon the spot, and flew away into a tree, repeating as he went the fatal cry of "O'Rang! 'Rang!" which had caused the transformation. And to this day, whenever the Malay hears among the tree-tops the cry of "'Rang! 'rang!" he knows that he is listening to the cry of the murderer. [249]

The Argus-pheasant [250] and the Crow [251] in the days of King Solomon were bosom friends, and could never do enough to show their mutual friendship. One day, however, the argus-pheasant, who was then dressed somewhat dowdily, suggested that his friend the crow should show his skill with the brush by decorating his (the argus-pheasant's) feathers. To this the crow agreed, on condition, however, that the arrangement should be mutual. The argus-pheasant agreed to this, and the crow forthwith set to work, and so surpassed himself that the argus-pheasant became, as it is now, one of the most beautiful birds in the world. When the crow's task was done, however, the argus-pheasant refused to fulfil his own part of the bargain, excusing himself on the plea that the day of judgment was too near at hand. Hence a fierce quarrel ensued, at the end of which the argus-pheasant upset the ink-bottle over the crow, and thus rendered him coal-black. [252] Hence the crow and the argus-pheasant are enemies to this day.

The bird called "Barau-barau" is said to have once been a bidan (midwife) whose employers (anak bidan) refused to pay her for her services, and kept constantly putting her off. Her patience, however, had its limits, and one day, after experiencing the usual evasion, she broke out into a torrent of intemperate language, in the midst of which she was changed into a bird, whose querulous note may be recognised as the voice of the aged woman as she cries out for the payment of her just wages.

About the big Kingfisher (Pekaka) an amusing parallel to the fable of the Fox and the Crow is related. It is said that this kingfisher once caught a fish, and flew to a low branch just overhanging the water to devour it. The fish, seeking for a means to save his life, decided to try the effect of a speech, and accordingly addressed his captor in the following verses, judiciously designed to appeal at once to her vanity and compassion:--

"O Kingfisher! Kingfisher! What a glistening, glittering beak! Yet while you, Big Sister, are filling your maw, Little Brother will lose his life."

At this critical juncture the Kingfisher opens her beak to laugh, and the fish slips back into his native element and escapes!

Fowling Ceremonies

Ideas of sympathetic magic run very strongly through all ceremonies connected with the taking of wild birds, such for instance as jungle-fowl or pigeon.

The commonest method of snaring jungle-fowl is to take a line (called rachik), with a great number of fine nooses attached to it, and set it so as to form a complete circle, enclosing an open space in the forest. You must bring a decoy-bird with you, and the instructions which I collected say that you should on arriving enter the circle, holding the bird like a fighting cock, and repeat these lines:--

"Ho, Si Lanang, Si Tempawi, Come and let us play at cock-fighting On the border-line between the primary and secondary forest-growth. Your cock, Grandsire, is spurred with steel. Mine is but spurred with bamboo."

Here deposit the bird upon the ground. The challenge of the decoy-bird will then attract the jungle-fowl from all directions, and as they try to enter the circle (in order to reach the decoy), they will entangle themselves in the nooses.

As often as you succeed, however, in catching one, you must be careful to cast the "mischief" out of it, using the same form of words as is used to drive the "mischief" out of the carcase of the deer.

The method of catching wild pigeon is much more elaborate, and brings the animistic ideas of the Malays into strong relief, the "souls" of the wild pigeon being repeatedly referred to.

First you build a small sugar-loaf (conical) hut (called bumbun) in a carefully selected spot in the jungle. This hut may be from four to five feet high, is strongly built of stakes converging to a point at the top, and is thickly thatched with leaves and branches. The reason for making it strong is that there is always an off-chance that you may receive a visit from a tiger. At the back of the hut you must leave a small square opening (it can hardly be dignified with the name of a door), about two feet high and with a flap to it, through which you can creep into the hut on your hands and knees. [I may remark, parenthetically, that you will find the hut very damp, very dark, and very full of mosquitoes, and that if you are wise you will take with you a small stock of cigarettes.] In front of the hut, that is to say, on the side away from the door, if you want to proceed in the orthodox way, you will have to clear a small rectangular space, and put up round it on three sides (right, left, and front opposite the hut) a low railing consisting of a single bar about 18 inches from the ground. This is to rail off what is called "King Solomon's Palace-yard," and will also be useful from a practical point of view, as it will serve as a perch for your "decoy." [253]

The instructions proceed as follows:--

Before entering the hut the wizard must go through what is called the "Neutralising Rice-paste" (tepong tawar) ceremony, first in the centre of the enclosed space, and then in each corner successively, beating each of the forked sticks (uprights) at the corners with a bunch of leaves. He must then take the decoy-tube, and after reciting the appropriate charm, sound a long-drawn note in each corner successively, and then insert the mouth-end of it into the hut through a hole in the thatch, supporting the heavy outer end upon a forked upright stick. Then entering the hut, he slips the noose at the end of the decoy-bird's rod on to the decoy-bird's feet, and pushing the bird out through the front door of the hut, makes it flutter on to one of the horizontal rods, where it will sit, if well trained, and call its companions. After a time the decoy-bird's challenge is met by first one and then many counter challenges, then the wild pigeon approach, there is a great fluttering of wings, and presently one of the first arrivals flies down and commences to walk round and round the hut. Then the wizard awaits his opportunity, and as the pigeon passes in front of the door he pushes out one of the rods with a noose at the end, slips the noose over the bird's neck or feet, and drags it into the hut.

The hut must be used, if possible, before the leaves with which it is thatched have faded, as the wild pigeon are less likely to be suspicious of the hut when its thatch is green.

In the way just described any number of pigeon can be taken, a bag of twenty or thirty being a fair average for a day's work under favourable conditions.

The "call" will occasionally, for some unexplained reason, attract to the spot wild animals such as deer (especially mouse-deer) and tigers. Is it not possible that the story of the lute of Orpheus may have had its origin in some old hunting custom of the kind?

The following are specimens of the charms used by the wizard:--

When you are about to start (to decoy pigeons) say--

"It is not I who am setting out, It is 'Toh Bujang Sibor [254] who is setting out."

Then sound the decoy-tube (buluh dekut) thrice loudly, and say--

"I pray that they (the pigeons) may come in procession, come in succession, To enter into this bundle [255] of ours."

Now set out, and when you reach the conical hut (bumbun) say--

"My hut's name is the Magic Prince, My decoy's name is Prince Distraction, Distraught be ye, O Kapor [256] (pigeon), Distraught be ye, O Puding[3] (pigeon), Distraught be ye, O Sarap[3] (pigeon), Distraught (with desire) to enter our bundle."

Or else when you first reach the hut, "take the (leaves of) the branch of a tree which is as high as your head, the leaves of the branch of a tree which is as high as your waist, the leaves of the branch of a tree which is as high as your knee, and the leaves of a tree which is only as high as your ankle-joint. Make them all into a bunch, and with them "flick" the outside of the hut, saying these lines--

"Dok Ding [stands for the] 'Do'ding' Pigeon, Which makes three with the Madukara Pigeon, The twig breaks, and the twig is pressed down, And our immemorial customs are restored."

When scattering the rice, say--

"Sift, sift the broken rice-ends, Sift them over the rush-work rice-bag, As one disappears another is invited, Invited and brought down. If you descend not, the Bear-cat (Binturong) shall devour you, If you come not, wild beasts shall devour you, And if you perch on a twig, you shall fall headlong, If you perch on a bough, you shall be killed by a woodcutter, If you perch on a leaf, you shall be bitten by the leaf-snake, If you descend to the ground, you shall be bitten by a venomous serpent, If you fly upwards, you shall be swooped upon by kites and eagles, (That is) if you descend not. Cluck, cluck! souls of Queen Kapor, of Princess Puding, and Handmaid Sarap. Come down and assemble in King Solomon's audience-hall, And put on King Solomon's breast-ornaments and armlets."

When sprinkling the rice-paste (tepong tawar) on the uprights at each corner of the railed-off enclosure, say--

"Neutralising rice-paste, genuine rice-paste, Add plumpness to plumpness, Let pigeon come down to the weight of thousands of pounds, And alight upon the Ivory Hall, Which is carpeted with silver, and whose railings are of amalgam, Unto the dishes of Her Highness Princess Lebar Nyiru (Broad-sieve). Come in procession, come (in succession), The 'assembly-flower' begins to unfold its petals, Come down in procession, come down as stragglers, King Solomon's self has come to call you. Sift, sift (the rice) over the rice-bag, King Solomon's self bids you haste. Sift, sift the rice-ends, Sift them over the rush-work bag. As one disappears another is invited, Is invited and escorted down. Sift, sift the rice-ends, Sift them over the salt-bag, As one disappears another is invited, And escorted inside (the hut)."

When you are sounding the call (melaung), stand in the middle of the enclosure and say:--

"Cluck, cluck! soul of Princess Puding, of Queen Kapor, and Queen Sarap, Enter ye into our Bundle, And perch upon the Ivory Railing. Come in procession, come in succession, The assembly-flower unfolds its petals. Come down in procession, come down in succession, King Solomon's self is come to call you. If you do not come down, the Bear-cat shall eat you, If you do not appear, wild beasts shall devour you, If you perch upon a twig, you shall fall headlong (All over) the seven valleys and seven knolls of rising ground. If ye go to the hills, ye shall get no food; If ye go to the forest-pools, ye shall get no drink."

Or else the following:--

"Cut the mengkudu [257] branch, Cut it (through) and thrust it downwards. Let those which are near be the first to arrive, And those which are far off be sent for, Let those which have eggs, leave their eggs, And those which have young, desert their young, Let those which are blind, come led by others, And those which have broken limbs, come on crutches. Come and assemble in King Solomon's audience-hall. Cluck, cluck! souls of Queen Kapor, Princess Puding, Handmaid Sarap, Come down and assemble in King Solomon's audience-hall, And put on King Solomon's necklace (breast-ornaments) and armlets." [258]

When about to enter the hut say--

"[Hearken], O Hearts of Wild Doves, Cut we the Rod of Invitation, This hut is named the Magic Prince, This tube is named Prince Distraction, Distraught (be ye) by day, distraught by night, Distraught (with longing) to assemble in King Solomon's Hall, Cluck, cluck! souls of Queen Kapor," etc. (as before). [259]

When you have just entered, and before you seat yourself, say--

"Sift, sift the rice-ends, Sift them over a rush-work rice-bag," etc. (as before).

Put your lips to the decoy-tube, and sound the call, saying--

"Cut the mengkudu stem; Cut it (through) and thrust it downwards," etc. (as before).

(or else some longer version, such as one of those given in the Appendix). When the wild pigeon have arrived and have entered the enclosure or "Palace-yard," wait till they are in a good position, and then push out one of the rods with the fine noose at the end, slip the noose over the bird's neck, and drag it into the house, saying as you do so--

"Wak-wak [stands for] a heron on the kitchen shelf, Covered over with the top of a cocoa-nut shell, Do you move aside, Sir Bachelor, Master of the Ceremonies, I wish to ensnare the necks of the race of wild doves."

Now that you understand the process of decoying pigeon with a pigeon-call, I must explain something of the curious nomenclature used by the wizard; for during the ceremony you must never call a spade a spade. In the first place, the hut must not on any account be mentioned as such: it is to be called the Magic Prince--why so called, it is hard to say, but most likely the name is used in allusion to the wizard who is concealed inside it. The name given to the calling-tube itself is more appropriate, as it is called "Prince Distraction" (Raja Gila), this name of course being an allusion to the extraordinary fascination which it evidently exercises on the pigeon. Then the decoy (or rather, perhaps, the rod to which it is linked) is called Putri Pemonggo', or the Squatting Princess. Next to these come three Princesses which prove to be merely the representatives of three important species of wild pigeon. Their names, though variously given, are perhaps most commonly known as Princess "Kapor," Princess "Sarap," and Princess "Puding."

Finally, even the rod used for ensnaring the pigeon has its own special name, Si Raja Nyila (Prince Invitation).

"King Solomon's necklaces" and armlets are of course the nooses with which they are to be snared, and which will catch them either by the neck or by the leg.

The Princesses are invited to enter a gorgeous palace:--

"Come down, pigeons, in your myriads, And perch upon the 'Ivory Hall,' (That is) carpeted with silver, and railed with amalgam, (Come down) to the dishes of Her Highness Princess Lebar Nyiru (Broad-sieve)." [260]

The "dishes of Her Highness Princess Broad-sieve" cleverly suggest an abundance of provender such as is likely to appeal to a hungry bird!

In another version the three Princesses are invited to enter the "Palace Tower" called "Fatimah Passes" (Mahaligei Fatimah Lalu).

Moreover those who issue the invitation are no respecters of persons:--

"Let those which are near, arrive the first, Let those which are far off be sent for, Let those which have eggs, leave their eggs, Those which have young, leave their young, Those which are blind, be led by others, Those which have broken limbs, come on crutches; Come and assemble in King Solomon's Audience-Chamber." [261]

And a similar passage in another charm says--

"Let those which are near, arrive the first, Let those which are far off be sent for, Cluck! cluck! souls of the children of forest doves, Come ye down and assemble together In the fold of God and King Solomon."

If blandishments fail, however, there is to be no doubt about the punishments in store for their wilful Highnesses: thus, a little later, we find the alternative, a thoroughgoing imprecation calculated to "convince" the most headstrong of birds:--

"I call you, I fetch you down, If you come not down you shall be eaten by the Bear-cat, You shall be choked to death with your own feathers, You shall be choked to death with a bone in your throat. If you perch on a creeper you shall be entangled by it, If you settle on a leaf you shall be bitten by the 'leaf snake,' Come you down quickly to God's fold and King Solomon's."

And an imprecation of similar import says--

"[If you do not come down, the Bear-cat shall eat you], If you perch on a bough, you shall slip off it, If you perch on a creeper, you shall slide off it, If you perch upon a leafless stump, the stump shall fall; If you settle on the ground, the ground-snake shall bite you, If you soar up to heaven, the eagle shall swoop upon you."

(b) Earth

1. BUILDING CEREMONIES AND CHARMS

The first operation in building is the selection of the site. This is determined by an elaborate code of rules which make the choice depend--firstly, upon the nature of the soil with respect to colour, taste, and smell; secondly, upon the formation of its surface; and, thirdly, upon its aspect:--

"The best soil, whether for a house, village, orchard, or town, is a greenish yellow, fragrant-scented, tart-tasting loam: such a soil will ensure abundance of gold and silver unto the third generation. [262]

"The best site, whether for a house, village, orchard, or town, is level. [263]

"The best aspect (of the surface) is that of land which is low upon the north side and high upon the south side: such a site will bring absolute peacefulness." [264]

When you have found a site complying with more or less favourable conditions, in accordance with the code, you must next clear the ground of forest or undergrowth, lay down four sticks to form a rectangle in the centre thereof, and call upon the name of the lords of that spot (i.e. the presiding local deities or spirits). Now dig up the soil (enclosed by the four sticks), and taking a clod in your hand, call upon the lords of that spot as follows:--

"Ho, children of Mentri [265] Guru, Who dwell in the Four Corners of the World, I crave this plot as a boon."

(Here mention the purpose to which you wish to put it.)

"If it is good, show me a good omen, If it is bad, show me a bad omen." [266]

Wrap the clod up in white cloth, and after fumigating it with incense, place it at night beneath your pillow, and when you retire to rest repeat the last two lines of the above charm as before and go to sleep. If your dream is good proceed with, if bad desist from, your operations. Supposing your dream to be "good," you must (approximately) clear the site of the main building and peg out the four corners with dead sticks; then take a dead branch and heap it up lightly with earth (in the centre of the site?); set fire to it, and when the whole heap has been reduced to ashes, sweep it all up together and cover it over while you repeat the charm (which differs but little from that given above). Next morning uncover it early in the morning and God will show you the good and the bad.

The site being finally selected, you must proceed to choose a day for erecting the central house-post, by consulting first the schedule of lucky and unlucky months, and next the schedule of lucky and unlucky days of the week. [267]

[The best time of day for the operation to take place is said to be always seven o'clock in the morning. Hence there seems to be no need to consult a schedule to discover it, though some magicians may do so.]

The propitious moment having been at last ascertained, the erection of the centre-post will be proceeded with. First, the hole for its reception must be dug (the operation being accompanied by the recital of a charm) and the post erected, the greatest precautions being taken to prevent the shadow of any of the workers from falling either upon the post itself or upon the hole dug to receive it, sickness and trouble being otherwise sure to follow. [268]

[The account in the Appendix, of which the above is a résumé, omits to describe the sacrifice which has to be made before the erection of the centre-post, which has therefore been drawn from the instructions of other magicians.]

"When the hole has been dug and before the centre-post is actually erected, some sort of sacrifice or offering has to be made. First you take a little brazilwood (kayu sepang), a little ebony-wood (kayu arang), a little assafoetida (inggu), and a little scrap-iron (tahi besi), and deposit them in the hole which you have dug. Then take a fowl, [269] a goat, or a buffalo [according to the ascertained or reputed malignity of the locally presiding earth-demon (puaka)], and cut its throat according to Muhammadan custom, spilling its blood into the hole. Then cut off its head and feet, and deposit them within the hole to serve as a foundation for the centre-post to rest upon (buat lapik tiang s'ri). Put a ring on your little finger out of compliment to the earth-spirit (akan membujok jembalang itu), repeat the charm [270] and erect the post." [271]

Another form of the above ceremony was described to me by a magician as follows:--

"Deposit in the hole a little scrap-iron and tin-ore, a candle nut (buah k'ras or buah gorek), a broken hatchet head (b'liong patah), and a cent (in copper). Wait till everybody else has returned home, and, standing close to the hole, pick up three clods (kepal) of earth, hold them (genggam) over the incense, turn 'right-about-face' and repeat the charm. [272] Then take the three clods home (without once turning round to look behind you till you reach home), place them under your sleeping pillow and wait till nightfall, when you may have either a good or a bad dream. If the first night's dream be bad, throw away one of the clods and dream again. If the second night's dream be bad, repeat the process, and whenever you get a good dream deposit the clod or clods under the butt-end of the centre-post to serve as a foundation."

A magician gave me this specimen of a charm used at this ceremony (of erecting the centre-post):--

"Ho, Raja Guru, Maharaja Guru, You are the sons of Batara Guru. I know the origin from which you spring, From the Flashing of Lightning's spurs; I know the origin from which you spring, From the Brightening of Daybreak. Ho, Spectre of the Earth, Brains of the Earth, Demon of the Earth, Retire ye hence to the depths of the Ocean, To the peace of the primeval forest. Betwixt you and me Division was made by Adam."

Another rule of importance in house-building is that which regulates the length of the threshold, as to which the instructions are as follows:--

"Measure off (on a piece of string) the stretch (fathom) of the arms of her who is to be mistress of the proposed house. Fold this string in three and cut off one third. Take the remainder, fold it in eight and cut off seven-eighths. Take the remaining eighth, see how many times it is contained in the length of the threshold, and check off the number (of these measurements) against the "category" (bilangan) of the "eight beasts" [273] (benatang yang d'lapan). This category runs as follows:--(1) The dragon (naga); (2) the dairy-cow (sapi); (3) the lion (singa); (4) the dog (anjing); (5) the draught-cow (lembu); (6) the ass (kaldei); (7) the elephant (gajah), and (8) the crow (gagak), all of which have certain ominous significations. If the last measurement coincides with one of the unlucky beasts in the category, such as the crow (which signifies the death of the master of the house), the threshold is cut shorter to make it fit in with one that is more auspicious." [274]

The names of the "eight beasts," coupled with the events which they are supposed to foreshadow, are often commemorated in rhyming stanzas.

Here is a specimen:--

I.--The Dragon (naga).

"A dragon of bulk, a monster dragon, Is this dragon that turns round month by month. [275] Wherever you go you will be safe from stumbling-blocks, And all who meet you will be your friends."

II.--The Dairy-Cow (sapi).

"There is the smoke of a fire in the forest, Where Inche `Ali is burning lime; They were milking the young dairy-cow, And in the midst of the milking it sprawled and fell down dead."

III.--The Lion (singa).

"A lion of courage, a lion of valour, Is the lion gambolling at the end of the Point. The luck of this house will be lasting, Bringing you prosperity from year to year."

IV.--The Dog (anjing).

"The wild dog, the jackal, Barks at the deer from night to night; Whatever you do will be a stumbling-block; In this house men will stab one another."

V.--The Draught-Cow (lembu).

"The big cow from the middle of the clearing Has gone to the Deep Forest to calve there. Great good luck will be your portion. Never will you cease to be prosperous."

VI.--The Ass (kaldei).

"The ass within the Fort Carries grass from morn to eve; Whatever you pray for will not be granted, Though big your capital, the half will be lost."

VII.--The Elephant (gajah).

"The big riding elephant of the Sultan Has its tusks covered with amalgam. Good luck is your portion, No harm or blemish will you suffer."

VIII.--The Crow (gagak).

"A black crow soaring by night Has perched on the house of the great Magic Prince; Great indeed is the calamity which has happened: Within the house its master lies dead."

In close connection with the ceremonies for the selection of individual house sites are the forms by which the princes of Malay tradition selected sites for the towns which they founded. The following extract will perhaps convey some idea of their character:--

"One day Raja Marong Maha Podisat went into his outer audience hall, where all his ministers, warriors, and officers were in attendance, and commanded the four Mantris to equip an expedition with all the necessary officers and armed men, and with horses and elephants, arms and accoutrements. The four Mantris did as they were ordered, and when all was ready they informed the Raja. The latter waited for a lucky day and an auspicious moment, and then desired his second son to set out. The Prince took leave after saluting his father and mother, and all the ministers, officers, and warriors who followed him performed obeisance before the Raja. They then set out in search of a place of settlement, directing their course between south and east, intending to select a place with good soil, and there to build a town with fort, moat, palace, and balei. [276] They amused themselves in every forest, wood, and thicket through which they passed, crossing numbers of hills and mountains, and stopping here and there to hunt wild beasts, or to fish if they happened to fall in with a pool or lake.

"After they had pursued their quest for some time they came to the tributary of a large river which flowed down to the sea. Farther on they came to a large sheet of water, in the midst of which were four islands. The Prince was much pleased with the appearance of the islands, and straightway took a silver arrow and fitted it to his bow named Indra Sakti, and said: 'O arrow of the bow Indra Sakti, fall thou on good soil in this group of islands; wherever thou mayest chance to fall, there will I make a palace in which to live.' He then drew his bow and discharged the arrow, which flew upwards with the rapidity of lightning, and with a humming sound like that made by a beetle as it flies round a flower, and went out of sight. Presently it came in sight again, and fell upon one of the islands, which on that account was called Pulau Indra Sakti. On that spot was erected a town with fort, palace, and balei, and all the people who were living scattered about in the vicinity were collected together and set to work on the various buildings." [277]

Even in the making of roads through the forest it would appear that sacrificial ceremonies are not invariably neglected. On one occasion I came upon a party of Malays in the Labu jungle who were engaged in making a bridle-track for the Selangor Government. A small bamboo censer, on which incense had been burning, had been erected in the middle of the trace; and I was informed that the necessary rites (for exorcising the demons from the trace) had just been successfully concluded.

2. BEASTS AND BEAST CHARMS

All wild animals, more especially the larger and more dangerous species, are credited in Malay folklore with human or (occasionally) superhuman powers.

In the pages which now follow I shall deal with the folklore which refers to the more important animals, first pointing out their anthropomorphic traits, then detailing some of the more important traditions about them, and finally, where possible, describing the methods of hunting them.

The Elephant

Of the Elephant we read:--

"The superstitious dread entertained by Malays for the larger animals is the result of ideas regarding them which have been inherited from the primitive tribes of Eastern Asia. Muhammadanism has not been able to stamp out the deep-rooted feelings which prompted the savage to invest the wild beasts which he dreaded with the character of malignant deities. The tiger, elephant, and rhinoceros [278] were not mere brutes to be attacked and destroyed. The immense advantages which their strength and bulk gave them over the feebly-armed savage of the most primitive tribes naturally suggested the possession of supernatural powers; and propitiation, not force, was the system by which it was hoped to repel them. The Malay addresses the tiger as Datoh (grandfather), and believes that many tigers are inhabited by human souls. Though he reduces the elephant to subjection, and uses him as a beast of burden, it is universally believed that the observance of particular ceremonies, and the repetition of prescribed formulas, are necessary before wild elephants can be entrapped and tamed. Some of these spells and charms (mantra) are supposed to have extraordinary potency, and I have in my possession a curious collection of them, regarding which, it was told me seriously by a Malay, that in consequence of their being read aloud in his house three times all the hens stopped laying! The spells in this collection are nearly all in the Siamese language, and there is reason to believe that the modern Malays owe most of their ideas on the subject of taming and driving elephants to the Siamese. Those, however, who had no idea of making use of the elephant, but who feared him as an enemy, were doubtless the first to devise the idea of influencing him by invocations. This idea is inherited, both by Malays and Siamese, from common ancestry." [279]

To the above evidence (which was collected by Sir W. E. Maxwell no doubt mainly in Perak) I would add that at Labu, in Selangor, I heard on more than one occasion a story in which the elephant-folk were described as possessing, on the borders of Siam, a city of their own, where they live in houses like human beings, and wear their natural human shape. This story, which was first told me by Ungku Said Kechil of Jelebu, was taken down by me at the time, and ran as follows:--

"A Malay named Laboh went out one day to his rice-field and found that elephants had been destroying his rice.

"He therefore planted caltrops of a cubit and a half in length in the tracks of the offenders. That night an elephant was wounded in the foot by one of the caltrops, and went off bellowing with pain.

"Day broke and Laboh set off on the track of the wounded elephant, but lost his way, and after three days and nights journeying, found himself on the borders of a new and strange country. Presently he encountered an old man, to whom he remarked 'Hullo, grandfather, your country is extraordinarily quiet!' The old man replied, 'Yes, for all noise is forbidden, because the king's daughter is ill.' 'What is the matter with her?' asked Si Laboh. The old man replied that she had trodden upon a caltrop. Si Laboh then asked, 'May I see if I can do anything to help her?'

"The old man then went and reported the matter to the king, who ordered Si Laboh to be brought into his presence.

"[Now the country which Si Laboh had reached was a fine open country on the borders of Siam. It is called 'Pak Henang,' and its only inhabitants are the elephant-people who live there in human guise. And whoever trespasses over the boundaries of that country turns into an elephant.]

"Then Si Laboh saw that the king's daughter, whose name was Princess Rimbut, was suffering from one of the caltrops which he himself had planted. He therefore extracted it from her foot, so that she recovered, and the king, in order to reward Si Laboh, gave him the Princess in marriage.

"Now when they had been married a long time, and had got two children, Si Laboh endeavoured to persuade his wife to accompany him on a visit to his own country. To this the Princess replied 'Yes; but if I go you must promise never to add to the dish any young tree-shoots at meal-time.' [280]

"On this they started, and at the end of the first day's journey they halted and sat down to eat. But Si Laboh had forgotten the injunctions of his wife, and put young tree-shoots into the dish with his rice. Then his wife protested and said, 'Did I not tell you not to put young tree-shoots into your food?' But Si Laboh was obstinate, and merely replied, 'What do I care?' so that his wife was turned back into an elephant and ran off into the jungle. Then Si Laboh wept and followed her, but she refused to return as she had now become an elephant. Yet he followed her for a whole day, but she would not return to him, and he then returned homewards with his children.

"This is all that is known about the origin of elephants who are human beings."

A Malay charm which was given me (at Labu) to serve as a protection against elephants (pendinding gajah) gives the actual name of the Elephant King--

"O Grandfather Moyang Kaban, Destroy not your own grandchildren."

Ghost elephants (gajah kramat) are not uncommon. They are popularly believed to be harmless, but invulnerable, and are generally supposed to exhibit some outward and visible sign of their sanctity, such as a stunted tusk or a shrunken foot. They are the tutelary genii of certain localities, and when they are killed the good fortune of the neighbourhood is supposed to depart too. Certain it is, that when one of these ghost elephants was shot at Klang a year or two ago, it did not succumb until some fifty or sixty rifle-bullets had been poured into it, and its death was followed by a fall in the local value of coffee and coffee land, from which the district took long to recover. [281]

A ghost elephant is very often thought to be the guardian spirit of some particular shrine--an idea that is common throughout the Peninsula.

Other general ideas about the elephant are as follows:--

"Elephants are said to be very frightened if they see a tree stump that has been felled at a great height from the ground, as some trees which have high spreading buttresses are cut, because they think that giants must have felled it, and as ordinary-sized men are more than a match for them they are in great dread of being caught by creatures many times more powerful than their masters. Some of the larger insects of the grasshopper kind are supposed to be objects of terror to elephants, while the particularly harmless little pangolin (Manis pentadactyla) is thought to be able to kill one of these huge beasts by biting its foot. The pangolin, by the bye, is quite toothless. Another method in which the pangolin attacks and kills elephants is by coiling itself tightly around the end of the elephant's trunk, and so suffocating it. This idea is also believed in by the Singhalese, according to Mr. W. T. Hornaday's Two Years in the Jungle." [282]

The foregoing passage refers to Perak, but similar ideas are common in Selangor, and they occur no doubt, with local variations, in every one of the Malay States. Selangor Malays tell of the scaring of elephants by the process of drawing the slender stem of the bamboo down to the ground and cutting off the top of it, when it springs back to its place.

The story of the "pangolin" is also told in Selangor with additional details. Thus it is said that the "Jawi-jawi" tree (a kind of banyan) is always avoided by elephants because it was once licked by the armadillo. The latter, after licking it, went his way, and "the elephant coming up was greatly taken aback by the offensive odour, and swore that he would never go near the tree again. He kept his oath, and his example has been followed by his descendants, so that to this day the 'Jawi-jawi' is the one tree in the forest which the elephant is afraid to approach." [283]

The following directions for hunting the elephant were given me by Lebai Jamal, a famous elephant hunter of Lingging, near the Sungei Ujong border:--

"When you first meet with the spoor of elephant or rhinoceros, observe whether the foot-hole contains any dead wood, (then) take the twig of dead wood, together with a ball of earth as big as a maize-cob taken from the same foot-hole (if there is only one of you, one ball will do, if there are three of you, three balls will be wanted, if seven, seven balls, but not more). Then roll up your ball of earth and the twig together in a tree-leaf, breathe upon it, and recite the charm (for blinding the elephant's eyes), the purport of which is that if the quarry sees, its eyesight shall be destroyed, and if it looks, its eyesight shall be dimmed, by the help of God, the prophet, and the medicine-man, who taught the charm.

"Now slip your ball of earth into your waistband just over the navel, and destroy the scent of your body and your gun. To do this, take a bunch of certain leaves [284] (daun sa-cherek), together with stem-leaves of the betel-vine (kerapak sirih), leaves of the wild camphor (chapa), and leaves of the club-gourd (labu ayer puteh), break their midribs with your left hand, shut your eyes, and say 'As these tree leaves smell, so may my body (and gun) be scented.'

"When the animal is dead, beat it with an end of black cloth, repeating the charm for driving away the 'mischief' (badi) from the carcase, which charm runs as follows:--

"Badiyu, Mother of Mischief, Badi Panji, Blind Mother, I know the origin from which you sprang, [285] Three drops of Adam's blood were the origin from which you sprang, Mischief of Earth, return to Earth, Mischief of Ant-heap, return to Ant-heap, Mischief of Elephant, return to Elephant, [286] Mischief of Wood, return to Wood, Mischief of Water, return to Water, Mischief of Stone, return to Stone And injure not my person. By the virtue of my Teacher, You may not injure the children of the race of Man."

The perquisites of the Pawang (magician) are to be "a little black cloth and a little white cloth," and the only special taboo mentioned by Lebai Jamal was "on no account to let the naked skin rub against the skin of the slain animal."

Before leaving the subject of elephants, I may add that Raja Ja`far (of Beranang in Selangor) told me that Lebai Jamal, when charged by an elephant or rhinoceros, would draw upon the ground with his finger a line which the infuriated animal was never able to cross. This line, he said, was called the Baris Laksamana, or the "Admiral's Line," and the knowledge of how to draw it was naturally looked upon as a great acquisition.

The Tiger

"The Tiger is sometimes believed to be a man or demon in the form of a wild beast, and to the numerous aboriginal superstitions which attach to this dreaded animal Muhammadanism has added the notion which connects the Tiger with the Khalif Ali. One of Ali's titles throughout the Moslem world is 'the Victorious Lion of the Lord,' and in Asiatic countries, where the lion is unknown, the tiger generally takes the place of the 'king of beasts.'" [287]

But the anthropomorphic ideas of the Malays about the Tiger go yet farther than this. Far away in the jungle (as I have several times been told in Selangor) the tiger-folk (no less than the elephants) have a town of their own, where they live in houses, and act in every respect like human beings. In the town referred to their house-posts are made of the heart of the Tree-nettle (t'ras jelatang), and their roofs thatched with human hair--one informant added that men's bones were their only rafters, and men's skins their house walls--and there they live quietly enough until one of their periodical attacks of fierceness (mengganas) comes on and causes them to break bounds and range the forest for their chosen prey.

There are several of these tiger-villages or "enclosures" in the Peninsula, the chief of them being Gunong Ledang (the Mount Ophir of Malacca), just as Pasummah is the chief of such localities in Sumatra. [288] So too, from Perak, Sir W. E. Maxwell writes in 1881:--

"A mischievous tiger is said sometimes to have broken loose from its pen or fold (pechah kandang). This is in allusion to an extraordinary belief that, in parts of the Peninsula, there are regular enclosures where tigers possessed by human souls live in association. During the day they roam where they please, but return to the kandang at night." [289]

Various fables ascribe to the tiger a human origin. One of these, taken down by me word for word from a Selangor Malay, is intended to account for the tiger's stripes. The gist of it ran as follows:--

"An old man picked up a boy in the jungle with a white skin, green eyes, and very long nails. Taking the boy home his rescuer named him Muhammad Yatim (i.e. 'Muhammad the fatherless'), and when he grew up sent him to school, where he behaved with great cruelty to his schoolfellows, and was therefore soundly beaten by his master ('Toh Saih Panjang Janggut, i.e. 'Toh Saih Long-beard), who used a stick made of a kind of wood called los [290] to effect the chastisement. At the first cut the boy leapt as far as the doorway; at the second he leapt to the ground, at the third he bounded into the grass, at the fourth he uttered a growl, and at the fifth his tail fell down behind him and he went upon all fours, whereat his master (improvising a name to curse him by), exclaimed, 'This is of a truth God's tiger! (Harimau Allah). Go you,' he added, addressing the tiger, 'to the place where you will catch your prey--the borderland between the primeval forest and the secondary forest-growth, and that between the secondary forest-growth and the plain--catch there whomsoever you will, but see that you catch only the headless. Alter no jot of what I say, or you shall be consumed by the Iron of the Regalia, and crushed by the sanctity of the thirty divisions of the Koran.'" Hence the tiger is to this day compelled to "ask for" his prey, and uses divination (bertenung), as all men know, for the purpose of discovering whether his petition has yet been granted.

Hence, too, he carries on his hide to this very day the mark of the stripes with which he was beaten at school.

The method of divination said to be practised by the tiger is as follows: The tiger lies down and gazes (bertenung) at leaves which he takes between his paws, and whenever he sees the outline of a leaf take the shape of one of his intended victims, without the head, he knows it to be the sign that that victim has been "granted" to him, in accordance with the very terms of his master's curse.

I once asked (at Labu) how it was known that the tiger used divination, and was told this story of a man who had seen it:--

"A certain Malay had been working, together with his newly-married wife, in the rice-fields at Labu, and on his stepping aside at noon into the cool of the forest, he saw a tiger lying down among the underwood apparently gazing at something between its paws. By creeping stealthily nearer he was able at length to discern the object at which the tiger was gazing, and it proved to be, to his intense horror, a leaf which presented the lineaments of his wife, lacking only the head. Hurrying back to the rice-field he at once warned the neighbours of what he had seen, and implored them to set his wife in their midst and escort her homeward. To this they consented, but yet, in spite of every precaution, the tiger broke through the midst of them and killed the woman before it could be driven off. The bereaved husband thereupon requested them to leave him alone with the body and depart, and when they had done so, he took the body in his arms, and so lay down embracing it, with a dagger in either hand. Before sunset the tiger returned to its kill, and leapt upon the corpse, whereupon the husband stabbed it to the heart, so that the points of the daggers met, and killed it on the spot."

The power of becoming a man- or were-tiger (as it has sometimes been called), is supposed to be confined to one tribe of Sumatrans, the Korinchi Malays, many of whom are to be met with in the Malay Native States. This belief is very strongly held, and on one occasion, when I asked some Malays at Jugra how it could be proved that the man really became a tiger, they told me the case of a man some of whose teeth were plated with gold, and who had been accidentally killed in the tiger stage, when the same gold plating was discovered in the tiger's mouth. [291]

Of the strength of the Malay belief in were-tigers Mr. Clifford writes:--

"The existence of the Malayan Loup Garou to the native mind is a fact, and not a mere belief. The Malay knows that it is true. Evidence, if it be needed, may be had in plenty; the evidence, too, of sober-minded men, whose words in a Court of Justice would bring conviction to the mind of the most obstinate jurymen, and be more than sufficient to hang the most innocent of prisoners. The Malays know well how Haji `Abdallah, the native of the little state of Korinchi in Sumatra, was caught naked in a tiger trap, and thereafter purchased his liberty at the price of the buffaloes he had slain while he marauded in the likeness of a beast. They know of the countless Korinchi men who have vomited feathers, after feasting upon fowls, when for the nonce they had assumed the forms of tigers; and of those other men of the same race who have left their garments and their trading packs in thickets whence presently a tiger has emerged. All these things the Malays know have happened, and are happening to-day, in the land in which they live, and with these plain evidences before their eyes, the empty assurances of the enlightened European that Were-Tigers do not, and never did exist, excite derision not unmingled with contempt." [292]

Writing on the same theme, Sir Frank Swettenham says:--

"Another article of almost universal belief is that the people of a small State in Sumatra called Korinchi have the power of assuming at will the form of a tiger, and in that disguise they wreak vengeance on those they wish to injure. Not every Korinchi man can do this, but still the gift of this strange power of metamorphosis is pretty well confined to the people of the small Sumatran State. At night when respectable members of society should be in bed, the Korinchi man slips down from his hut, and, assuming the form of a tiger, goes about 'seeking whom he may devour.'

"I have heard of four Korinchi men arriving in a district of Perak, and that night a number of fowls were taken by a tiger. The strangers left and went farther up country, and shortly after only three of them returned and stated that a tiger had just been killed, and they begged the local headman to bury it.

"On another occasion some Korinchi men appeared and sought hospitality in a Malay house, and there also the fowls disappeared in the night, and there were unmistakable traces of the visit of a tiger, but the next day one of the visitors fell sick, and shortly after vomited chicken-feathers.

"It is only fair to say that the Korinchi people strenuously deny the tendencies and the power ascribed to them, but aver that they properly belong to the inhabitants of a district called Chenâku in the interior of the Korinchi country. Even there, however, it is only those who are practised in the elemu sehir, the occult arts, who are thus capable of transforming themselves into tigers, and the Korinchi people profess themselves afraid to enter the Chenâku district." [293]

There are many stories about ghost tigers (rimau kramat), which are generally supposed to have one foot a little smaller than the others (kaki tengkis). During my stay in the Langat district I was shown on more than one occasion the spoor of a ghost tiger. This happened once near Sepang village, on a wet and clayey bridle-track, where the unnatural smallness of one of the feet was very conspicuous. Such tigers are considered invulnerable, but harmless to man, and are looked upon generally as the guardian spirits of some sacred spot. One of these sacred spots was the shrine (kramat) of 'Toh Kamarong, about two miles north of Sepang village. This shrine, it was alleged, was guarded by a white ghost elephant and ghost tiger, who ranged the country round but never harmed anybody. One day, however, a Chinaman from the neighbouring pepper plantations offered at this shrine a piece of pork, which, however acceptable it might have been to a Chinese saint, so incensed the orthodox guardians of this Muhammadan shrine that one of them (the ghost tiger) fell upon the Chinaman and slew him before he could return to his house.

By far the most celebrated of these ghost tigers, however, were the guardians of the shrine at the foot of Jugra Hill, which were formerly the pets of the Princess of Malacca (Tuan Putri Gunong Ledang). Local report says that this princess left her country when it was taken by the Portuguese, and established herself on Jugra Hill, a solitary hill on the southern portion of the Selangor coast, which is marked on old charts as the "False Parcelar" hill.

The legend which connects the name of this princess with Jugra Hill was thus told [294] by Mr. G. C. Bellamy (formerly of the Selangor Civil Service).

"Bukit Jugra (Jugra Hill) in its isolated position, and conspicuous as it is from the sea, could scarcely escape being an object of veneration to the uneducated Malay mind. The jungle which clothes its summit and sides is supposed to be full of hantus (demons or ghosts), and often when talking to Malays in my bungalow in the evening have our discussions been interrupted by the cries of the langswayer (a female birth-demon) in the neighbouring jungle, or the mutterings of the bajang (a familiar spirit) as he sat on the roof-tree. But the 'Putri' (Princess) of Gunong Ledang holds the premier position amongst the fabulous denizens of the jungle on the hill, and it is strange that places so far apart as Mount Ophir and Bukit Jugra should be associated with one another in traditionary lore. The story runs that this estimable lady, having disposed of her husband by pricking him to death with needles, [295] decided thenceforth to live free from the restrictions of married life. She was thus able to visit distant lands, taking with her a cat [296] of fabulous dimensions as her sole attendant. This cat appears to have been a most amiable and accommodating creature, for on arriving at Jugra he carried the Princess on his back to the top of the hill. Here the lady remained for some time, and during her stay constructed a bathing-place for herself. Even to this day she pays periodical visits to Jugra Hill, and although she herself is invisible to mortal eye, her faithful attendant, in the shape of a handsome tiger, is often to be met with as he prowls about the place at night. He has never been known to injure any one, and is reverently spoken of as a rimau kramat (ghost tiger)."

To the above story Mr. C. H. A. Turney (then Senior District Officer and stationed at Jugra) added the following:--

"The Princess and the stories about her and the tiger are well known, and the latter are related from mother to daughter in Langat.

"There are, however, they say, one or two omissions; instead of one tiger there were two, the real harimau kramat and an ambitious young tiger who would also follow the Princess in her round of visits. This brute came to an untimely and ignominious end (as he deserved to) at the hands of one Innes, who was disturbed whilst reading a newspaper, and this can be verified by Captain Syers.

"The other tiger jogged along gaily with his phantom mistress, and made night hideous with his howlings and prowlings all about the Jugra Hill. He was really kramat, and was said to have been shot at by several Malays, and the present Sergeant-Major Allie, now stationed at Kuala Lumpur, can vouch for this." [297]

I myself collected at the time the following extra details:--

"The local version of the legend about the kramat at the foot of Jugra Hill runs somewhat as follows:--Once upon a time one Nakhoda Ragam was travelling with his wife (who is apparently to be identified with the Princess of Malacca, Tuan Putri Gunong Ledang) in a boat (sampan), when the latter pricked him to death with a needle (mati di-chuchok jarum). His blood flooded the boat (darah-nya hanyut dalam sampan), and presently the woman in the boat was hailed by a vessel sailing past her. 'What have you got in that boat?' said the master of the vessel, and the Princess replied: 'It is only spinach-juice' (kuah bayam). She was therefore allowed to proceed, and landed at the foot of Jugra Hill, where she buried all that yet remained of her husband, which consisted of only one thigh (paha). [298] She also took ashore her two cats, which were in the boat with her, and which, turning into ghost tigers, became the guardians of this now famous shrine." [299]

Tigers are naturally too fierce to be tracked by the Malays, and are usually caught in specially constructed traps (penjara rimau), or killed by a self-acting gun or spear-trap (b'lantek s'napang, b'lantek terbang, b'lantek parap, etc.); but even in this case the Pawang explains to the tiger that it was not he but Muhammad who set the trap. There are, however, as might be expected, a great number of charms intended to protect the devotee in various ways from the tiger's claws and teeth. Of these I will give one or two typical specimens.

Sometimes a charm is used to keep the tiger at a distance (penjauh rimau):--

"Ho, Bersenu! Ho, Berkaih! I know the origin from which you sprang; (It was) Sheikh Abuniah Lahah Abu Kasap. Your navel originated from the centre of your crown, Your breasts are [to be seen] in [the spoor of] your fore-feet. [300] May you go wide (of me) as the Seven Tiers of Heaven, May you go wide (of me) as the Seven Tiers of Earth; If you do not go wide, You shall be a rebel unto God," etc.

Sometimes the desired effect is expected to be obtained by a charm for locking the tiger's jaws:--

"Ho, Sir Cruncher! Ho, Sir Muncher! Let the twig break under the weight of the wild goose. Fast shut and locked be (your jaws), by virtue of `Ali Mustapah, OM. Thus I break (the tusks of) all beasts that are tusked, By virtue of this Prayer from the Land of Siam." [301]

The next specimen is described as a "charm for fascinating" (striking fear into) a "tiger and hardening one's own heart":--

"O Earth-Shaker, rumble and quake! Let iron needles be my body-hairs, Let copper needles be my body-hairs! Let poisonous snakes be my beard, A crocodile my tongue, And a roaring tiger in the dimple of my chin. Be my voice the trumpet of an elephant, Yea, like unto the roar of the thunderbolt. May your lips be fast closed and your teeth clenched; And not till the Heavens and the Earth are moved May your heart be moved To be wroth with or to seek to destroy me. By the virtue of 'There is no god but God,'" etc.

To which may be added--

"Kun! Payah Kun! Let (celestial) splendour reside in my person. Whosoever talks of encountering me, A cunning Lion shall be his opponent. O all ye Things that have life Endure not to confront my gaze! It is I who shall confront the gaze of you, By the virtue of 'There is no god but God.'"

When tigers were wounded, it was said (in Selangor) that they would doctor themselves with ubat tasak, which is the name generally given to a sort of poultice used by those who have just undergone circumcision. And when a tiger was killed a sort of public reception was formerly always accorded to him on his return to the village.

Though I have not seen the actual reception (generally miscalled a "wake"), I once saw near Kajang in Selangor a tiger which had been prepared for the ceremony. The animal was propped up on all fours as if alive, and his mouth kept open by propping the roof with a stick. It was unfortunately impossible for me to wait for the ceremony, but from a description which I received afterwards, it was evidently regarded as a sort of "reception" given by the people of the village to a live and powerful war-chief or champion (hulubalang) who had come to pay them a visit, the dancing and fencing which takes place on such occasions being intended for his entertainment.

One of these ceremonies, which took place in Jugra in Selangor, was thus described:--

A Tiger's Wake

"At 10 A.M. a great noise of rejoicing, with drums and gongs, approaching Jugra by the river, was heard, and on my questioning the people, I was told Raja Yakob had managed to shoot a tiger with a spring gun behind Jugra Hill, and was bringing it in state to the Sultan. I went over to the Sultan's at Raja Yakob's request to see the attendants on the slaughter of a tiger. The animal was supported by posts and fastened in an attitude as nearly as possible approaching the living. Its mouth was forced open, its tongue allowed to drop on one side, and a small rattan attached to its upper jaw was passed over a pole held by a man behind. This finished, two swords were produced and placed crosswise, and a couple of Panglimas [302] selected for the dance; the gongs and drums were beaten at a quick time, the man holding the rattan attached to the tiger's head pulled it, moving the head up and down, and the two Panglimas, after making their obeisance to the Sultan, rushed at their swords, and holding them in their hands commenced a most wild and exciting dance. They spun around on one leg, waving their swords, then bounded forward and made a thrust at the tiger, moving back quickly with the point of the weapon facing the animal; they crawled along the ground and sprung over it uttering defiant yells, they cut and parried at supposed attacks, finally throwing down their weapons and taunting the dead beast by dancing before it unarmed. This done, Inas told me the carcase was at my disposal.

"The death of the tiger now establishes the fact of the existence of tigers here, for asserting which I have been pretty frequently laughed at. However this is not the Jugra pest, a brute whose death would be matter for general rejoicing, the one now destroyed being a tigress 8 feet long and 2 feet 8 inches high." [303]

I may add that both the claws and whiskers of tigers are greatly sought after as charms, and are almost invariably stolen from a tiger when one is killed by a European. I have also seen at Klang a charm written on tiger's skin.

The Deer [304]

Anthropomorphic ideas are held by the Malays almost as strongly in the case of the Deer as of any other animal.

The Deer is, by all Malays, believed to have sprung from a man who suffered from a severe ulcer or abscess (chabuk) on the leg, (which is supposed to have left its trace on the deer's legs to this day). Of the Perak form of this legend Sir William Maxwell writes as follows:--

"The deer (rusa) is sometimes believed to be the metamorphosed body of a man who has died of an abscess in the leg (chabuk), because it has marks on the legs which are supposed to resemble those caused by the disease mentioned. Of course there are not wanting men ready to declare that the body of a man who has died of chabuk has been seen to rise from the grave and to go away into the forest in the shape of a deer." [305]

The Selangor legend is practically identical with that current in Perak.

The deer are frequently addressed, in the charms used by the hunters, exactly as if they were human beings, e.g.--

"If you wish to wear bracelets and rings Stretch out your two fore-feet."

These rings and bracelets are of course the nooses which depend from the toils.

In a charm of similar import we find:--

"Ho, Crown Prince (Raja Muda) with your Speckled Princess (Putri Dandi), Rouse you quickly (from your slumbers) And clasp (round your neck) King Solomon's necklace."

I may add that in some places the Pawang (magician) will himself first enter the toils, probably with the object of deceiving the stag as to their nature and purpose.

The ceremonies for hunting deer are somewhat intricate, and it will perhaps be best to commence by giving a general description of deer-catching as practised by the Malays.

"This pastime" [306] (deer-catching) "is one the Malay delights in. After a rainy night, deer may be easily traced to their lair by their footprints, and as they remain stationary by day the hunters have ample time to arrange their apparatus. When the hiding-place is discovered all the young men of the kampong [307] assemble, and the following ceremony is performed before they sally out on the expedition: Six or eight coils of rattan rope, about an inch in diameter, are placed on a triangle formed with three rice-pounders, and the oldest of the company, usually an experienced sportsman, places a cocoa-nut shell filled with burning incense in the centre, and taking sprigs of three bushes, viz. the jellatang, sapunie, and sambon [308] plants (these, it is supposed, possess extraordinary virtues), he walks mysteriously round the coils, beating them with the sprigs, and erewhile muttering some gibberish, which, if possessing any meaning, the sage keeps wisely to himself. During the ceremony the youths of the village look on with becoming gravity and admiration. It is believed that the absence of this ceremony would render the expedition unsuccessful, the deer would prove too strong for the ropes, and the wood demons frustrate their sport by placing insurmountable obstacles in their way. Much faith appears to be placed in the ceremony. Each coil referred to above is sixty to seventy fathoms long, and to the rope running nooses, made also of rattan rope, are attached about three feet apart from each other. On reaching the thicket wherein the deer are concealed, stakes are driven into the ground a few feet apart in a straight line, the coils are then opened out, and the rope attached to the stakes, two or three feet above the ground, with the nooses hanging down, and two of the party conceal themselves near the stakes armed with knives for the purpose of despatching the deer when entangled in the nooses. The remainder of the hunters arrange themselves on the opposite side of the thicket and advance towards it, shouting and yelling at the top of their voices. The deer, startled from their rest, spring to their feet and naturally flee from the noise towards the nooses, and in a short time are entangled in them. As they struggle to escape, the concealed hunters rush out and despatch them. Occasionally the flight is prolonged till the major party arrives, and then the noble creatures soon fall beneath the spears and knives of their assailants. The animal is divided between the sportsmen." [309]

The "gibberish" employed by the deer Pawangs when the latter enter the jungle is intended to induce the wood demons and earth demons to recede, or at least to dissuade them from active interference with the proceedings. Charms are also employed by the Pawang, as he proceeds, from time to time, to "ask for" a tree (to which the toils may be fastened); to "ask for" a deer; to unroll and suspend the toils; to call upon the spirits (who are the herdsmen of the deer) to drive the latter down to meet the dogs; to turn back the deer when they have got away; to "prick" or urge on the dogs, or make them bark; to stop wild dogs from barking in the jungle, or those of the pack from barking at the wrong moment; to deceive the deer as to the reality of the toils used by the hunters; to deceive the spirits as to the identity of the hunting-party; and, finally, to drive out the "mischief" (badi) from the carcase of the slain animal; examples of all of which will be found in the course of the next few pages.

The first charm which I give is one used in "asking for deer":--

"Ho! master of me your slave, Sidi the Dim-eyed, Si Lailanang and Si Laigan his brother, Si Deripan, Si Baung, Si Bakar, Si Songsang (Sir Topsy Turvy), Si Berhanyut (Sir Floater), Si Pongking, Si Temungking! I demand Deer, a male and a female, Blunt-hoofed, hard-browed, Long-eared, tight-waisted, Shut-eyed, shaggy-maned, spotted; If not the shut-eyed, the shaggy-maned and the spotted, The "rascal," the starveling, the mere skeleton. Most fervently we beg this boon, by the light of this very same day, By virtue of the 'kiraman katibin.' [310] And here is the token of my petition." [311]

The directions proceed:--

"On first entering the jungle, say--

"Ho, Hantu Bakar, Jembalang Bakar, Turn a little aside, That I may let loose my body-guard."

(By which the "pack" is no doubt intended.)

"When you meet the slot, examine the slot. If it is a little shortened on one side, the quarry is in some danger; if it has gone lame of one hoof, it is a sign that it will be killed within seven days.

"After entering the jungle, and finding the dogs, wait for the dogs to bark, and then give out this 'cooee'--

"Ho! Si Lanang, Si Lambaun, Si Ketor, Si Becheh!

Ye Four Herdsmen of the Deer, Come ye down to meet the dogs. And refuse not to come down Or ye shall be rebels unto God, etc. It is not I who am huntsman, It is Pawang Sidi (wizard Sidi) that is huntsman; It is not I whose dogs these are, It is Pawang Sakti (the 'magic wizard') whose dogs these are; Let Dang Durai cross the water, It is only a civet-cat that is left for me. Grant this by virtue of my teacher, 'Toh Raja-- May his art be yet more powerful in my hands. [312] By virtue of 'There is no god but God,'" etc.

A deer Pawang ('Che Indut) also gave me this charm for recital when the support (lit. "shoulder") of the noose is being cut (for which purpose it would appear that a young tree of the kind called "Delik" is usually taken).

"The Delik's branches spread out horizontally (at the top), [313] Chop at it, and it will produce roots. Though its bark is destroyed, a cudgel is still left for people's bones, Even though it be worked on by the charm Kalinting Bakar." [314]

From the same source I obtained this charm, addressed to the Deer, but intended for fixing the scent (menetapkan bau), and for suspending the toils (memasang jerat):--

"Teng [315] [stands for] the satengteng flower, Ascend ye the twin stream. If you delight in bracelets and rings Push forward your two fore-feet.

"When setting the nooses (bubohkan perindu jerat) say, addressing the deer as before:--

"Be filled with yearning, be filled with longing, As the Holy Basil grows even to a rock, Be filled with yearning as you sit, be filled with yearning as you go, Fast-bound by love of this noose of mine."

The directions given me by another Pawang commenced with a charm for emboldening the dogs, after which the account proceeds:--

"When you have finished (the charm referred to), take seven steps forward, leaving the toils behind you, and standing erect, look forward and call as follows:--

"O all ye Saids (lawful descendants of the Prophet), Unto you, my Lords, belong the Deer, Si Lambaun was the origin of the Deer, Si Lanang is their Herdsman, Drive ye the Deer into our toils. This causeway of rock (titian batu) is your high road and market-square, The resort of innumerable people. Follow, follow in long procession, And let the "Assembly"-Flower unfold its petals. Come in procession, come in succession, Our toils have come to summon you to the spot. Ho, Deer that are unfortunate, Deer that are curst, Enter this path of mine which is empty of men. On the left stand spearmen, On the right stand spearmen, And whichever of (those two) ways you go, By that self-same way will you be turned back.

"Now proceed till you meet the stag, and as he rouses himself from slumber, say:--

"Ho, Crown Prince with your Speckled Princess, Rouse you in haste and slip on King Solomon's royal breast ornament. Receive it, receive it in your turn, And do ye (huntsmen) shout 'Bi' again and again.

"[Here the spearmen right and left shout in concert.]

"So, too, when spearing the deer, say--

"It is not I who spear you, It is Pawang Sidi who spears you.

"When you have secured a deer, flick (kebaskan) the carcase thrice in a downward direction with a black cloth or with a leafy spray (if you will), such as the deer feed upon, for instance with the sendayan (or sendereian, a kind of sedge), or with fern-shoots, and call out:--

"O Si Lanang, Si Lambaun, Si Ketor, Si Becheh, who are Four Persons, Take back your own share (of the carcase). [316]

"Here 'take the representative parts, pierce them with a rattan line, and suspend them from a tree.'"

But the fullest account of this ceremony (of driving out the mischief from the carcase) runs as follows:--

"When you have caught the deer, cast out the mischief from it (buang dia-punya badi). To effect this, take a black jacket such as can cast out this mischief (if no black jacket is obtainable, take the branch of any tree), and stroke (the carcase) from the head downwards to the feet and the rump, saying as you do so:--

"Ho Badi Serang, Badi Mak Buta, Si Panchor Mak Tuli, It is not I who cast out these mischiefs, It is the Junior Dogboy who casts them out. It is not I who cast out these mischiefs, It is the Dogboy Rukiah who casts them out. It is not I who cast out these mischiefs, It is Mukaël [317] (Michael) who casts them out. It is not I who cast out these mischiefs, It is Israfel who casts them out. It is not I who cast out these mischiefs, It is Azrael who casts them out. It is not I who cast out these mischiefs, It is Mukarael (?) who casts them out. I know the origin of these mischiefs, They are the offspring of the Jin Ibni Ujan, [318] Who dwell in the open spaces and hill-locked basins. Return ye to your open spaces and hill-locked basins, And do me no harm or scathe. I know the origin from which you spring, From the offspring of the Jin Ibni Ujan do ye spring.

"Here take small portions of his eyes, ears, mouth, nose, hind-feet, fore-feet, hair (of his coat), liver, heart, spleen and horns (if it be a stag), wrap them up in a leaf, and deposit them in the slot of his approaching tracks, saying: 'O Mentala (Batara) Guru, one a month, two a month, three a month, four a month, five a month, six a month, seven a month (be the deer which fall) by night to you, by day to me. One deer I take with me, and one I leave behind.'"

A deer Pawang named 'Che Indut gave me a charm for turning the deer back upon their tracks, "though their flesh was torn to rags and their bones well-becudgelled." It concluded with the following appeal to the spirits:--

"Ho (ye Spirits) turn back my Deer! If you do not turn them back, At sea ye shall get no drink, Ashore ye shall find no food. By virtue of the word of God," etc.

I will conclude with the following charm, believed to be a means of bringing the stag low:--

"Measure off three sticks (probably dead wood taken from the slot of the deer, as in the case of the elephant), their length being measured by the distance from the roof of your mouth to the teeth of the lower jaw. Lay these sticks in a triangular form inside the slot of the stag, press the left thumb downwards in the centre of the triangle, and humble your heart. This will humble the deer's heart too."

The Mouse-deer or chevrotin is the "Brer Rabbit" of the Malays. It figures in many proverbial sayings and romances, in which it is credited with extraordinary sagacity, and is honoured by the title of "Mentri B'lukar," the "Vizier of the (secondary) Forest-Growth." [319]

It is generally taken by means of a snare called tapah pelandok, but sometimes by tapping on the ground with sticks (mengetok pelandok), the sound of which is supposed to imitate the drumming of the buck's fore-feet upon the ground in rutting-time, by which the attention of the doe is attracted. Whatever the reason may be, there is no doubt that the method is often successful.

When this "tapping" method is adopted, the charms used are similar to those used for calling the big deer, e.g.--

"Arak-arak iring-iring Kembang bunga si Panggil-Panggil, Datang berarak, datang beriring, Raja Suleiman datang memanggil.

Follow in procession, follow in succession, The Assembly-flower has opened its petals. Come in procession, come in succession, King Solomon comes to summon you."

But at the end of the charm is added, "Ini-lah gong-nya," i.e. "This is his (King Solomon's) gong."

The stick which is used may be of any kind of wood except a creeper, and the best place for the operation is where the ground sounds hollow when tapped. Either three, five, or seven leaves must, however, be laid on the spot before the tapping is commenced.

The directions for setting the snare (jerat or tapah pelandok) were taken down by me as follows:--

First look for a tree whose sap is viscid, and chop at it thrice (with a cutlass). If the splinters fall, one the right and the other the wrong way up (lit. one prone and the other supine), it is a bad sign (though it is a good sign when one is setting a trap); for in the case of a snare they must fall the wrong way up (supine).

When this is done, commence to set the snare near the foot of a tree, at about a fathom's distance, and say:--

"As a cocoa-nut shell rocks to and fro When filled with clay, Avaunt ye, Jembalang and Badi, That I may set this snare."

Next you say:--

"Ho, Sir 'Pointed-Hoof,' Sir 'Sharp-Muzzle,' Do you step upon this snare that I have spread Within two days or three. If you do not step upon this snare that I have spread Within two days or three, You shall be choked to death with blood in your throat, You shall be in sore straits within the limits of your own Big Jungle. At sea you shall get no drink, Ashore you shall get no food, By virtue of," etc.

Hunting-Dogs

Hunting-dogs are spoken to continually as if they were human beings. Several examples of this occur in the deer charms.

Thus we find the following passage addressed to the dogs:--

"Let not go the scent, Formidable were you from the first;

Hot-foot, hot-foot, do you pursue, If you do not pursue hot-foot, I will minimise my benediction (lit. my 'Peace be with you'). If it (the deer) be a buck, you shall have him for a brother; If it be a doe, you shall have her for a wife."

So too, again, after calling several dogs by name, the Pawang gets together the accessories (leaves of the tukas and lenjuang, a brush of leaves (sa-cherek) and a black cloth), and exclaims:--

"Bark, Sir Slender-foot; bark, Sir Brush-tail."

The Pawang generally tries to deceive the deer as to his ownership of the hunting-dogs. Thus he will say:--

"It is not I whose dogs these are, It is the magical deer Pawang whose dogs these are."

So, too, they are called by certain specific names (according to their breed and colour), which are in several cases identical with the names of the dogs with which the wild Spectre Huntsman (the most terrible of all personified diseases in the Malay category) hunts down his prey. [320]

Ugliness is by no means looked upon as a disadvantage, but rather the opposite. An ugly dog is apparently formidable. Thus we find a dog addressed as follows:--

"Let not go the scent (of the quarry) As you were formidable (lit. ugly) [321] from the first."

Again, the description of the "good points" of some of these dogs which is given in the Appendix would, if ugliness and formidability are convertible terms, satisfy the most exacting whipper-in, the so-called good points being for the most part a mere list of deformities. These points, however, are merely the external sign of the Luck to which dogs, as well as human beings, are believed to be born. In a fine passage we are told:--

"From the seven Hills and the seven Valleys Comes the intense barking of my Dogs. My Dogs are Dogs of Luck, Not Luck that is adventitious, But Luck incarnate with their bodies. Go tread upon the heaped and rotting leaves, And never desert the scent."

Speaking of dog-lore generally, it may be remarked that though dogs are very frequently kept by the Malays, it is considered unlucky to keep them. "The dog ... is unlucky. He longs for the death of his master, an event which will involve the slaying of animals at the funeral feast, when the bones will fall to the dogs. When a dog is heard howling at night, he is supposed to be thinking of the broken bones (niat handak mengutib tulang patah)." [322]

Even the wild dogs in the jungle [323] are warned not to bark, and are addressed as if they were human:--

"If you bark your windpipe shall burst, If you smack your lips your tongue shall be docked.

If you come nearer, you shall break your leg;

Return to the big virgin jungle, Return to your caverns and hill-locked basins, To the stream which has no head-waters, To the pond which was never dug, To the waters which bear no passengers, To the fountain-head which is [never] dry. If you do not return, you shall die, Cursed by the First Pen (i.e. the Human Tongue), Pierced by the twig of a gomuti-palm, [324] Impaled by a palm thatch-needle, Transfixed by a porcupine's quill."

Bears and Monkeys

"The Bear [325] is believed to be the mortal foe of the Tiger, which he sometimes defeats in single combat. (Bruang, the Malay word for 'bear,' has a curious resemblance to our word 'Bruin.' [326]) A story is told of a tame bear which a Malay left in charge of his house and of his sleeping child while he was absent from home. On his return he missed his child, the house was in disorder, as if some struggle had taken place, and the bear was covered with blood. Hastily drawing the conclusion that the bear had killed and devoured the child, the enraged father slew the animal with his spear, but almost immediately afterwards he found the carcase of a tiger, which the faithful bear had defeated and killed, and the child emerged unharmed from the jungle, where she had taken refuge. It is unnecessary to point out the similarity of this story to the legend of Beth-Gelert. It is evidently a local version of the story of the Ichneumon and the Snake in the Pancha-tantra." [327]

Monkeys and men have always been associated in native tradition, and Malay folklore is no exception to the rule. Thus we get the tradition of the great man-like ape, the Mawas (a reminiscence of the orang-outang or mias of Borneo), which is said to make shelters for itself in the forks of trees, and to be born with the blade of a cutlass (woodknife) in place of the bone of the forearm, so that it is able to cut down the undergrowth as it walks through the jungle. It is believed, moreover, occasionally to carry off and mate with human kind. [328]

The Siamang (Hylobates lar), [329] which walks on its hind-legs, is, however, the species which is most commonly associated in legend with the human race; in fact, it is not impossible that there may sometimes have been a confusion between its name (siamang) and Semang, which is the name of one of the aboriginal (Negrito) races of the interior. The following Malay legend, which I took down at Labu in Selangor is believed to explain its origin, and also that of the Bear: [330]--

Once upon a time her Highness the Princess Telan became the affianced bride of Si Malim Bongsu. After the betrothal Si Malim Bongsu sailed away and did not return when the period of the engagement, which was fixed at from three to four months, came to an end.

Then Si Malim Panjang, elder brother of Si Malim Bongsu, decided to take the place of his younger brother, and be married to the Princess Telan. The latter, however, repelled his advances, and he therefore attacked her savagely; but she turned herself into an ape (siamang) and escaped to the jungle, so that Si Malim Panjang desisted from pursuit. Then the ape climbed up into a pagar-anak tree which grew on the sea-shore, and leaned over the sea, and there she chanted these words:--

"O my dear Malim Bongsu, You have broken your solemn promise and engagement, And I have to take upon myself the form of an ape."

Now Si Malim Bongsu was passing at the time, and on recognising the voice of the Princess Telan he took a blow-gun and shot her so that she fell into the sea. Then he took rose-water and sprinkled it over her, so that she resumed her natural shape, and they started to go home together. Still, however, Si Malim Bongsu would not wed her, but promised that he would do so when he came back from his next voyage, whereupon the Princess chanted these words:--

"If you do not return within three months You will find me turned into an ape."

The same course of events, however, happened as before. Malim Bongsu did not return at the time appointed; his elder brother, Malim Panjang once more attacked her, and, leaping towards an areca palm, she once more became an ape, whereupon she chanted as before:--

"O my dear Malim Bongsu, You have broken your solemn promise and engagement, And I am forced to become an ape."

Again Malim Bongsu, as he passed by, heard and recognised her voice; but upon learning that he had been for the second time the cause of his Princess's troubles, he exclaimed, "Better were it for me were I nothing but a big fish"; and leaping into the water he disappeared, and was changed into a big fish as he desired.

Now the Princess's nurse (who was called "The Daughter of Sakembang China") was at the same time transformed into a bear, and as they were bathing at the time when they were surprised, and had not time to wash off all the soap (rice-cosmetic), the white marks on the breast and brows of the bear and on the breast and brows of the ape (siamang) have remained unto this day.

Occasionally the opposite transformation is believed to take place, some species of the monkey tribe being supposed to turn into fish.

Thus the k'ra (Macacus cynomolgus) is believed to develop into a species of fish called senunggang, and of the fish called kalul (kalui or kalue), Sir W. E. Maxwell writes: "The ikan kalul (is believed) to be a monkey transformed. Some specially favoured observers have seen monkeys half through the process of metamorphosis--half-monkey and half-fish." [331] The species of monkey which is believed to turn into the ikan kalul is, as I was told in Selangor, the b'rok or "cocoa-nut monkey."

"Berhakim kapada brok" is a Malay proverbial expression which means, "'To make the monkey judge,' or, 'to go to the monkey for justice.' A fable is told by the Malays of two men, one of whom planted bananas on the land of the other. When the fruit was ripe each claimed it, but not being able to come to any settlement they referred the matter to the arbitration of a monkey (of the large kind called brok). The judge decided that the fruit must be divided; but no sooner was this done than one of the suitors complained that the other's share was too large. To satisfy him the monkey reduced the share of the other by the requisite amount, which he ate himself. Then the second suitor cried out that the share of the first was now too large. It had to be reduced to satisfy him, the subtracted portion going to the monkey as before. Thus they went on wrangling until the whole of the fruit was gone, and there was nothing left to wrangle about. Malay judges, if they are not calumniated, have been known to protract proceedings until both sides have exhausted their means in bribes. In such cases the unfortunate suitors are said to berhakim kapada brok." [332]

The Wild Pig and Other Animals

There are several superstitions about the Wild Boar which prove that it was not always regarded as an unclean animal.

Of these the following recipe, which was given me by a Jugra (Selangor) Malay, for turning brass into gold is the most remarkable:--

"Kill a wild pig and rip open its paunch. Sew up in this a quantity of old 'scrap' brass, pile timber over it, burn it, and then leave it alone until the grass has grown right over it. Then dig up the gold." Again, certain wild boars are believed to carry on their tushes a talisman of extraordinary power, which is called rantei babi, or "Wild Boar's Chain." This chain consists, it is asserted, of three links of various metals (gold, silver, and amalgam), and is hung up on a shrub by the wild boar when he is enjoying his wallow, so that it is occasionally stolen by Malays who know his habits. I may add that, according to a Malay at Langat, the "were-tiger" (rimau jadi-jadian) occasionally appears in the shape of a wild boar escaping from a grave, in the centre of which may be afterwards seen the hole by which the animal has escaped.

"Among the modern Malays avoidance of the flesh of swine and of contact with anything connected with the unclean animal is, of course, universal. No tenet of El-Islam is more rigidly enforced than this. It is singular to notice, among a people governed by the ordinances of the Prophet, traces of the observance of another form of abstinence enjoined by a different religion. The universal preference of the flesh of the Buffalo to that of the Ox in Malay countries is evidently a prejudice bequeathed to modern times by a period when cow-beef was as much an abomination to Malays as it is to the Hindus of India at the present day. This is not admitted or suspected by ordinary Malays, who would probably have some reason, based on the relative wholesomeness of buffalo and cow-beef, to allege in defence of their preference of the latter to the former." [333]

To the above I may add that it is invariably the flesh of the Buffalo, and not that of the Ox, which is eaten sacrificially on the occasion of festivities. [334] But the flesh of the so-called White (albino) Buffalo (kerbau balar) is generally avoided as food, though I have known it to be prescribed medicinally (as in the case of Raja Kahar, a son of H.H. the Sultan of Selangor, the circumstances of whose illness will be detailed elsewhere). [335] As might be expected, a story is told by the Malays to account for this distinction. The general outline of the tale is to the effect that a Malay boy (a mere child) fell into the big rice-bin (kepok) in his parents' absence and was suffocated by the rice. After some days the body began to decompose, and the ooze emanating from the rice-bin was licked up by a buffalo belonging to the boy's parents. The attention of these latter being thus attracted to the rice-bin, they found therein the remains of their child, and thereupon cursed the buffalo, which (we are led to infer) became "white," and has remained so ever since. According to one version, a ground-dove (tekukur) was implicated both in the offence and the punishment which followed it. Wherefore to this day no man eats of the flesh of either of the offenders.

Perhaps the most extraordinary transformation in which the Malays implicitly believe is that of the Squirrel, which is supposed to be developed from a large caterpillar called ulat sentadu. [336]

About the Cat there are many superstitions which show that it is believed to possess supernatural powers. Thus it is supposed to be lucky to keep cats because they long for a soft cushion to lie upon, and so (indirectly) wish for the prosperity of their master. [337] On the other hand, cats must be very carefully prevented from rubbing up against a corpse, for it is said that on one occasion when this was neglected, the badi or Evil Principle which resides in the cat's body entered into the corpse, which thus became endowed with unnatural life and stood up upon its feet. So too the soaking of the cat in a pan of water until it is half-drowned is believed to produce an abundance of rain. [338] It is, besides, believed to be extremely unlucky to kill cats. Of this superstition Mr. Clifford says:--

"It is a common belief among Malays that if a cat is killed he who takes its life will in the next world be called upon to carry and pile logs of wood, as big as cocoa-nut trees, to the number of the hairs on the beast's body. Therefore cats are not killed; but if they become too daring in their raids on the hen-coop or the food rack, they are tied to a raft and sent floating down stream, to perish miserably of hunger. The people of the villages by which they pass make haste to push the raft out again into mid-stream, should it in its passage adhere to bank or bathing-hut, and on no account is the animal suffered to land. To any one who thinks about it, this long and lingering death is infinitely more cruel than one caused by a blow from an axe; but the Malays do not trouble to consider such a detail, and would care little if they did." [339]

Before leaving the subject of cats, I must mention the belief that the "fresh-water fish called ikan belidah" was "originally a cat." Sir W. E. Maxwell says that many Malays refuse to eat it for this reason, and adds, "They declare that it squalls like a cat when harpooned, and that its bones are very white and fine like a cat's hairs." [340] A story is also sometimes told to account both for the general similarity of habits of the cat and the tiger and for the fact that the latter, unlike most of the Felidæ, is not a tree-climber. It is to the effect that the cat agreed to teach the tiger its tricks, which it did, with the exception of the art of climbing trees. The tiger, thinking it had learnt all the cat's tricks, proceeded to attack its teacher, when the cat escaped by climbing up a tree; so the tiger never learnt how to climb and cannot climb trees to this day.

Even the smallest and commonest of mammals, such as Rats and Mice, are the objects of many strange beliefs. Thus "clothes which have been nibbled by rats or mice must not be worn again. They are sure to bring misfortune, and are generally given away in charity." [341]

So too on the Selangor coast a mollusc called siput tantarang or mentarang is believed to have sprung from a mouse; and many kinds of charms, generally addressed to the "Prophet Joseph" (Nabi Yusuf), are resorted to in order to drive away rats and mice from the rice-fields.

The following passage describes the general ideas about animal superstitions which prevail on the east coast of the Peninsula:--

"The beliefs and superstitions of the Fisher Folk would fill many volumes. They believe in all manner of devils and local sprites. They fear greatly the demons that preside over animals, and will not willingly mention the names of birds or beasts while at sea. Instead, they call them all chêweh [342]--which, to them, signifies an animal, though to others it is meaningless, and is supposed not to be understanded of the beasts. To this word they tack on the sound which each beast makes in order to indicate what animal is referred to; thus the pig is the grunting chêweh, the buffalo the chêweh that says 'uak,' and the snipe the chêweh that cries 'kek-kek.' Each boat that puts to sea has been medicined with care, many incantations and other magic observances having been had recourse to, in obedience to the rules which the superstitious people have followed for ages. After each take the boat is 'swept' by the medicine man with a tuft of leaves prepared with mystic ceremonies, which is carried at the bow for the purpose. The omens are watched with exact care, and if they be adverse no fishing-boat puts to sea that day. Every act in their lives is regulated by some regard for the demons of the sea and air, and yet these folk are nominally Muhammadans, and, according to that faith, magic and sorcery, incantations to the spirits, and prayers to demons, are all unclean things forbidden to the people. But the Fisher Folk, like other inhabitants of the Peninsula, are Malays first and Muhammadans afterwards. Their religious creed goes no more than skin deep, and affects but little the manner of their daily life." [343]

3. VEGETATION CHARMS

The Vegetation Spirit of the Malays "follows in some vague and partial way," to use Professor Tylor's words, from the analogy of the Animal Spirit. It is difficult to say, without a more searching inquiry than I have yet had the opportunity of making, whether Malay magicians would maintain that all trees had souls (semangat) or not. All that we can be certain of at present is that a good many trees are certainly supposed by them to have souls, such, for instance, as the Durian, the Cocoa-nut palm, and the trees which produce Eagle-wood (gharu), Gutta Percha, Camphor, and a good many others.

What can be more significant than the words and actions of the men who in former days would try and frighten the Durian groves into bearing; or of the toddy-collector who addresses the soul of the Cocoa-nut palm in such words as, "Thus I bend your neck, and roll up your hair; and here is my ivory toddy-knife to help the washing of your face"; [344] or of the collectors of jungle produce who traffic in Eagle-wood, Camphor, and Gutta (the spirits of the first two of which trees are considered extremely powerful and dangerous) or, above all, of the reapers who carry the "Rice-soul" home at harvest time?

A special point in connection with the Malay conception of the vegetation soul perhaps requires particular attention, viz. the fact that apparently dead and even seasoned timber may yet retain the soul which animated it during its lifetime. Thus, the instructions for the performance of the rites to be used at the launching of a boat (which will be found below under the heading "The Sea, Rivers, and Streams") [345] involve an invocation to the timbers of the boat, which would therefore seem to be conceived as capable, to some extent, of receiving impressions and communications made in accordance with the appropriate forms and ceremonies.

So, too, a boat with a large knot in the centre of the bottom is considered good for catching fish, and in strict conformity with this idea is the belief that the natural excrescences (or knobs) and deformities of trees are mere external evidences of an indwelling spirit. So, too, the fruit of the cocoa-nut palm, when the shell lacks the three "eyes" to which we are accustomed, is believed to serve in warfare as a most valuable protection (pelias) against the bullets of the enemy, and the same may be said in a minor degree of the joints of "solid" bamboo (buluh tumpat) which are occasionally found, whilst to a slightly different category belong the comparatively numerous examples of "Tabasheer" (mineral concretions in the wood of certain trees), which are so highly valued by the Malays for talismanic purposes. Such trees as the Mali mali, Rotan jer'nang (Dragon's-blood rattan), Buluh kasap (rough bamboo), etc., are all said to supply instances of the concretions referred to, but the most famous of them all is without doubt the so-called "cocoa-nut pearl," of which I quote the following account from Dr. Denys's Descriptive Dictionary of British Malaya.

Cocoa-nut Pearls

The following remarks concerning these peculiar accretions are extracted from Nature:--

"During my recent travels," Dr. Sidney Hickson writes to a scientific contemporary, "I was frequently asked by the Dutch planters and others if I had ever seen 'a cocoa-nut stone.' These stones are said to be rarely found (1 in 2000 or more) in the perisperm of the cocoa-nut, and when found are kept by the natives as a charm against disease and evil spirits. This story of the cocoa-nut stone was so constantly told me, and in every case without any variation in its details, that I made every effort before leaving to obtain some specimens, and eventually succeeded in obtaining two.

"One of these is nearly a perfect sphere, 14 mm. in diameter, and the other, rather smaller in size, is irregularly pear-shaped. In both specimens the surface is worn nearly smooth by friction. The spherical one I have had cut into two halves, but I can find no concentric or other markings on the polished cut surfaces.

"Dr. Kimmins has kindly submitted one-half to a careful chemical analysis, and finds that it consists of pure carbonate of lime without any trace of other salts or vegetable tissue.

"I should be very glad if any of your readers could inform me if there are any of these stones in any of the museums, or if there is any evidence beyond mere hearsay of their existence in the perisperm of the cocoa-nut." [346]

On this letter Mr. Thiselton Dyer makes the following remarks:--"Dr. Hickson's account of the calcareous concretions occasionally found in the central hollow (filled with fluid--the so-called 'milk') of the endosperm of the seed of the cocoa-nut is extremely interesting. It appears to me a phenomenon of the same order as tabasheer, to which I recently drew attention in Nature.

"The circumstances of the occurrence of these stones or 'pearls' are in many respects parallel to those which attend the formation of tabasheer. In both cases mineral matter in palpable masses is withdrawn from solution in considerable volumes of fluid contained in tolerably large cavities in living plants; and in both instances they are monocotyledons.

"In the case of the cocoa-nut pearls the material is calcium carbonate, and this is well known to concrete in a peculiar manner from solutions in which organic matter is also present.

"In my note on tabasheer I referred to the reported occurrence of mineral concretions in the wood of various tropical dicotyledonous trees. Tabasheer is too well known to be pooh-poohed; but some of my scientific friends express a polite incredulity as to the other cases. I learn, however, from Prof. Judd, F.R.S., that he has obtained a specimen of apatite found in cutting up a mass of teak-wood. The occurrence of this mineral under these circumstances has long been recorded; but I have never had the good fortune to see a specimen." [347]

The Durian

The Durian tree (for an account of whose famous fruit the classical description in Wallace's Malay Archipelago may be referred to) is a semi-wild fruit-tree, whose stem frequently rises to the height of some eighty or ninety feet before the branches are met with. It is generally planted in groves, which are often to be found in the jungle when all other traces of former human habitation have completely disappeared, though even then its fruit, if tradition says true, is as keenly fought over by the denizens of the forest (monkeys, bears, and tigers) as ever it was by their temporary dispossessors. Interspersed among the Durian trees will be found numerous varieties of orchard trees of a less imperial height, amongst which may be named the Rambutan, [348] Rambei, [349] Lansat, [350] Duku, [351] Mangostin, [352] and many others. A small grove of these trees, which was claimed by the late Sultan `Abdul Samad of Selangor, grew within about a mile of my bungalow at Jugra, and I was informed that in years gone by a curious ceremony (called Menyemah durian) was practised in order to make the trees more productive. On a specially selected day, it was said, the village would assemble at this grove, and (no doubt with the usual accompaniment of the burning of incense and scattering of rice) the most barren of the Durian trees would be singled out from the rest. One of the local Pawangs would then take a hatchet (beliong) and deliver several shrewd blows upon the trunk of the tree, saying:--

"Will you now bear fruit or not? If you do not I shall fell you." [353]

To this the tree (through the mouth of a man who had been stationed for the purpose in a Mangostin tree hard by) was supposed to make answer:--

"Yes, I will now bear fruit; I beg you not to fell me." [354]

I may add that it was a common practice in the fruit season for the boys who were watching for the fruit to fall (for which purpose they were usually stationed in small palm-thatch shelters) to send echoing through the grove a musical note, which they produced by blowing into a bamboo instrument called tuang-tuang. I cannot, however, say whether this custom now has any ceremonial significance or not, though it seems not at all unlikely that it once had. [355]

The Malacca Cane

No less distinct are the animistic ideas of the Malays relating to various species of the Malacca-cane plant. Mr. Wray of the Perak Museum writes as follows:--

"A Malacca-cane with a joint as long as the height of the owner will protect him from harm by snakes and animals, and will give him luck in all things. What is called a samambu bangku [356] or baku, possesses the power of killing any one even when the person is only slightly hurt by a blow dealt with it. These are canes that have died down and have begun to shoot again from near the root. They are very rare, one of eighteen inches in length is valued at six or seven dollars, and one long enough to make a walking stick of, at thirty to fifty dollars. At night the rotan samambu plant is said to make a loud noise, and, according to the Malays, it says, 'Bulam sampei, bulam sampei,' [357] meaning that it has not yet reached its full growth. They are often to be heard in the jungle at night, but the most diligent search will not reveal their whereabouts. The rotan manoh [358] is also said to give out sounds at night. The sounds are loud and musical, but the alleged will-o'-the-wisp character of the rattans which are supposed to produce them seems to point to some night-bird, tree-frog, or lizard as being the real cause of the weird notes, though it is just possible that the wind might make the rattan leaves vibrate in such a way as to cause the sounds." [359]

In Selangor it is the stick-insect (keranting) which is believed to be the embodiment of the "Malacca-cane spirit" (Hantu Samambu), by which last name it is most commonly called. These stick-insects are believed by the Selangor Malays to produce the sounds to which Mr. Wray refers, and in order to account for their peculiar character a story is told, the main features of which are as follows:--

Once upon a time a married couple fell out, and the husband surreptitiously introduced stones into the cooking-pot in place of the yams which his wife was cooking. Then he went off to climb for a cocoa-nut, and as he climbed, he mocked her by calling out "Masak belum? Masak belum?" ("Are they cooked yet? Are they cooked yet?"). What she did by way of retaliation is not clear, but as he climbed and mocked her, she is said to have retorted, "Panjat belum? Panjat belum?" ("Have you climbed it yet? Have you climbed it yet?"), a reply which clearly shows that her woman's wit had been at work, and that she was not going to allow her husband to get the better of her. [360] However this may be, a deadlock ensued, the result of which was that both parties were transformed into stick-insects, but were yet condemned to mock each other as they had done during the period of their human existence.

I have often from my boat, during dark nights on the Langat river, listened to the weird note which my Malays invariably ascribed to these insects, and which is not inaptly represented by one of the Malay names for them, viz. "belum-belam." I have not yet, however, succeeded in identifying the real producer of the note, of which all I can say at present is, that although it may not be itself discoverable, the Malays look upon it as a certain guide to the localities where the Malacca-canes grow.

The Tualang or Sialang Tree

So too of the Tualang-tree Mr. Wray writes:--

"One of the largest and stateliest of the forest trees in Perak is that known as Toallong, or Toh Allong; [361] it has a very poisonous sap, which produces great irritation when it comes in contact with the skin. Two Chinamen who had felled one of these trees in ignorance, had their faces so swelled and inflamed that they could not see out of their eyes, and had to be led about for some days before they recovered from the effects of the poison. Their arms, breasts, and faces were affected, and they presented the appearance of having a very bad attack of erysipelas. These trees are supposed to be the abiding-places of hantu, or spirits, when they have large hollow projections from the trunk, called rumah hantu, or spirit houses. These projections are formed when a branch gets broken off near the trunk, and are quite characteristic of the tree. There are sometimes three or four of them on a large tree, and the Malays have a great objection to cutting down any that are so disfigured, the belief being that if a man fells one he will die within the year. As a rule these trees are left standing when clearings are made, and they are a source of trouble and expense to planters and others, who object to their being left uncut.

"The following series of events actually happened:--A Malay named Panda Tambong undertook, against the advice of his friends, to fell one of the Toh Allong trees, and he almost immediately afterwards was taken ill with fever, and died in a few weeks' time. Shortly after this some men were sitting plaiting ataps [362] under the shade of another of these ill-omened trees, when, without any warning, a large branch fell down, breaking the arm of one man, and more or less injuring two others. There was not a breath of wind at the time, or anything else likely to determine the fall of the branch. After this it was decided to have the tree felled, as there were coolie houses nearly under it. There was great difficulty in getting any one to fell it. Eventually a Penang Malay undertook the job, but stipulated that a Pawang, or sorcerer, should be employed to drive away the demons first. The Pawang hung pieces of white and red cloth on sticks round the tree, burnt incense in the little contrivances made of the split leaf-stalks of the bertam palm, used by the Malays for that purpose, cut off the heads of two white fowls, sprinkled the blood over the trunk, and in the midst of many incantations the tree was felled without any mishap; but, strange to say, the Pawang, who was a haji [363] and a slave-debtor of the Toh Puan Halimah, died about nine months afterwards." [364]

There appears to be very little reason to doubt that the word Tualang ('Toh Alang or Sialang) is the name not of a particular species of tree, but rather the generic name of all trees in which wild bees have built their nests, so that in reality it simply means a "Bee-Tree."

I have not yet succeeded in obtaining any of the Malay charms used by the collectors of these bees' nests, except such as are used by Sakais under Malay influence on the Selangor coast, the Sakais being most usually the collectors. Some of these latter, however, were pure Malay charms, and may perhaps be considered, in the absence of charms collected from Malays, as evidence of at least secondary importance. One of these charms commences as follows:--

"Here is the Peeling-knife, the knife with the long handle, Stuck into the buttress of a Pulai-Tree." [365]

And another, which is almost word for word the same, as follows:--

"Here is the Peeling-knife, the knife with the long handle, With which to stab (lit. peck at) the buttress of the Pulai-Tree." [366]

It will be noticed that both refer to the Pulai-tree by name, and not to the Tualang. The footnote which I here quote with reference to the customs of Siak is, almost word for word, equally true of the Bee-Trees in Selangor. [367]

Other haunted trees (pokok berhantu) are the Jawi-jawi, the Jelotong, and Berombong, of which the following tradition will perhaps suffice:--

"All trees," according to Malay tradition, "were planted by 'the Prophet Elias,' [368] and are in the 'Prophet Noah's' charge. In the days of King Solomon, trees could speak as well as birds and animals, and several of the trees now to be seen in the forest are really metamorphosed human beings. Such are the 'Jelotong' and the 'Berombong,' which in the days of King Solomon were bosom friends, until there broke out between them an unfortunate quarrel, which terminated in 'Si Jelotong's' lacing the skin of 'Si Berombong' all over with stabs from his dagger, the effect of which stabs remains visible to this day. Si Berombong, on the other hand, cursed Si Jelotong with his dying breath, praying that he might be turned into a tree without any buttresses to support his trunk, a prayer which was, of course, duly fulfilled. Thus originated the lack of buttresses at the base of the former tree, and the laced and slashed bark of the latter."

The Lime-Tree

Yet another tree whose spirit is the object, as it were, of a special cult, [369] is the lime-tree, which is revered and looked up to almost as their chief patron by the theatrical players (orang ma'yong) of Penang. The invocations addressed to this spirit show that, as in most branches of magic, every part of the tree had its appropriate "alias." Thus the root was called the "Seated Prince," the trunk the "Standing Prince," the bark the "Prince Stretching Himself," the boughs the "Stabbing Prince," the leaves the "Beckoning Prince," the fruit the "Prince loosing an arrow."

The Eagle-wood Tree

The following account of Eagle-wood and of the tree which produces it is quoted from the Journal of the Straits Asiatic Society:--

"In Crawfurd's Dictionary of the Malay Archipelago [370] I find the following:--'Agila, the Eagle-wood of commerce.--Its name in Malay and Javanese is kalambak or kalambah, but it is also known in these languages by that of gharu or kayu gharu, gharu-wood, a corruption of the Sanskrit agahru.... There can be no doubt but that the perfumed wood is the result of disease in the tree that yields it, produced by the thickening of the sap into a gum or resin.'

"This 'Eagle-wood of commerce,' under its more familiar name gharu, is one of the rarest and most valuable products of our Malayan jungles, and the following notes may be of interest. They are the result of inquiries amongst the Malays and Pawangs in Ulu Muar and Johol, and I am indebted to Mr. L. J. Cazalas for much assistance in obtaining the information contained in them.

"The gharu-tree is a tall forest tree, sometimes reaching the size of fifteen feet in diameter. The bark is of a silvery gray colour, and the foliage close and dense, of a dark hue. The Malay name for the tree is "tabak," and no other may be used by the Pawang when in search of the kayu gharu. [371] Gharu, the diseased heart-wood of the tabak, is found in trees of all sizes, even in trees of one foot in diameter, thus showing that the disease attacks the tree at an early stage.

"The gharu is found in pockets, and may sometimes be discovered by the veins which run to these pockets. In other trees the veins are absent, which renders the process of searching more difficult. The tree is generally cut down and left to rot, which exposes the gharu in about six months.

"'Pockets' are found to contain as much as 104 catties; a single tree has been known to yield 400 catties. [372] Gharu is seldom found in the sap-wood, generally in the heart-wood or teras.

"Many tabak-trees do not contain gharu at all. To select the right trees is the special province of the Pawang or wise man. The tabak-trees are under the care of certain hantu or wood-spirits, and it would be hopeless for the uninitiated to attempt to find gharu; even the Pawang has to be very careful.

"The following is the process as far as I have been able to ascertain it:--

"On the outskirts of the forest the Pawang must burn incense, and repeat the following charm or formula:--

"Homali hamali [373] matilok (mandillah ?) serta kalam mandiyat serta teboh. Turun suhaya [374] trima suka turun kadim serta aku kabul kata gharu mustajak [375] kata Allah Berkat la ilaha il'allah. Hei Putri Belingkah, [376] Putri Berjuntei, Putri Menginjan [377] aku meminta isi tabak. Ta'boleh di surohkan, ta'boleh lindong kapada aku kalau di-suroh di-lindong-kan biar durâka kapada tuhan."

"There is no "pantang gharu" except that the words "isi" and "tabak" must be used instead of "tras" and "gharu." [378]

"He then proceeds to search for a likely tree, and upon finding one he again burns incense and repeats the spell as above. The tree having been cut down, the next thing is to separate the gharu from the sap-wood. The best way is to let the tree rot, but the Pawang is often "hard-up," and does not mind wasting some of the gharu in his hurry to realise.

"The following are said to be the tests for finding gharu in a standing tree:--

1. The tree is full of knots. (Berbungkol.) 2. The bark full of moss and fungus. (Bertumuh berchandawan.) 3. Heart-wood hollow. (Berlobang.) 4. Bark peeling off. (Bergugor kulit.) 5. A clear space underneath. (Mengelenggang.) 6. Stumps jutting out. (Berchulak.) 7. Tree tapering. (Bertirus.) 8. The falling of the leaves in old trees.

"There are great differences in the quality of gharu, and great care is taken in classifying them. It requires a skilled man to distinguish between some of the varieties.

"The names are as follow:--

1. Chandan. [379] 2. Tandok. 3. Menjulong-ulong. [380] 4. Sikat. 5. Sikat Lampam. [381] 6. Bulu Rusa. 7. Kemandangan. 8. Wangkang.

"The chandan (pada tiada champur) is oily, black, and glistening. It sinks in water.

"The tadak very closely resembles the chandan.

"The menjulong-ulong may be distinguished from the chandan and the tandok by its length and small breadth. Splinters, 36 inches long, have been found evidently from veins, not pockets. [382]

"Sikat (bertabun champur kubal dan teras), fibrous, with slight lustre, will just float in water. Black and white streaks.

"Sikat lampam--the same as sikat, only white streaks more prominent.

"Bulu Rusa will float in water, fibrous, generally of a yellow colour.

"Kemandangan floats in water, whitish, fibrous fragments small.

"Wangkang floats in water, fibrous blocks whitish in colour.

"The chandan tree differs from other gharu-trees in having a maximum diameter of about 1 1/2 feet, and very soft sap-wood.

"Gharu varies in price between 200 and 50 dollars a pikul [383] according to the variety. The chandan and the tandok are the most valuable.

"Chinese and Malays burn it in their houses on high days and festivals--the latter generally take a supply with them on the pilgrimage to Mecca. The better varieties are used in the manufacture of aromatic oils." [384]

Before setting out to search for gharu, the gharu-wizard burns incense and repeats these words, "O Grandsire Duita, Divinity of Eagle-wood, if you are far, be so good as to say so; if you are near, be so good as to say so," and then sets out on his quest. On finding a karas-tree he chops the bark of the trunk lightly with his cutlass, and then puts his ear to the trunk to listen. If he hears a kind of low singing, or rather whispering noise (bunyi ting ting) in the tree, he takes this as a signification that the tree contains gharu (isi), [385] and after marking the bark with a cross (silang ampat) he collects wood to build a temporary shelter (pondong) for himself, and when about to plant the first post repeats the following charm:--

"O Grandsire Batara of the Earth, Earth-Genie, Earth-Spirit, Idol of Iron, Son of Wani, Solitary Wani, Son of Wayah, Bandan the Solitary, I ask you to show me (an eagle-wood tree), If you do not do so You shall be a rebel against God," etc.

The result of this invocation is, or should be, that the gharu-spirit appears to the wizard (generally, no doubt, in a dream), and informs him what kind of sacrifice he requires on this particular occasion. Whatever kind of sacrifice is asked for, must of course be given, with the exception of a human sacrifice which, as it is expressly stated, may be compounded by the sacrifice of a fowl.

When the tree has been felled you must be exceedingly careful to see that nobody passes between the end of the fallen trunk and the stump; whoever does so will surely be killed by the "eagle-wood spirit," who is supposed to be extremely powerful and dangerous. I myself received a warning to this effect from some Labu Malays when I saw one of these trees felled. Malays maintain that men are frequently killed by this spirit (mati de' Hantu Gharu), but that they may be recalled to life if the following recipe is acted upon:--"Take two 'cubits' (?) of 'Panchong leaves' (daun panchong dua heta), flowers of the sunting mambang, and 'bullock's eye' limes (limau mata kerbau), squeeze [the limes(?)] and rub them over the corpse, saying, 'Sir Allah! Sir Mangga Tangan! God's Essence is in your heart (lit. liver). God's attributes are in your eyes. Go and entertain the male Borer-Bee that is in your heart and liver.' The dead man will then revive and stand upon his feet."

The most important point about eagle-wood, however, from the animistic point of view, is the Pawang's use of the gharu merupa, a strangely shaped piece of eagle-wood which possesses a natural resemblance to some animal or bird. It is believed to contain the soul of the tree, and therefore is always, when possible, carried by the collectors of eagle-wood in the belief that it will aid them in their search. I myself once owned one of these gharu merupa, which possessed a remarkable resemblance to a bird. This appears to me very fairly sufficient evidence to prove that the tree-soul is not supposed by the Malays necessarily to resemble a tree. [386]

Camphor

The following account of the superstitious notions connected with the search for Camphor (kapur Barus) is extracted from a paper by Messrs. H. Lake and H. J. Kelsall [387]:--

"The chief interest attaching to the Kapur Barus in Johor lies in the superstitions connected with the collection of the camphor by the natives, or Orang Hulu. [388]

"Amongst these superstitions the most important is the use of a special language, the subject of the present paper, which has been the means of preserving some remnants of the aboriginal dialects of this part of the Malay Peninsula. This language is called by the Orang Hulu "Pantang Kapur"; pantang means forbidden or tabooed, and in this case refers to the fact that in searching for the camphor the use of the ordinary Malay language is pantang, or forbidden. In addition to this there are restrictions as to food, etc.

"This Camphor language is first referred to by Mr. Logan in his account of the aboriginal tribes of the Malay Peninsula, [389] and he gives a list of eighty words, thirty-three of which are Malay or derived from Malay."

"The Jakuns believe that there is a "bisan," or spirit, which presides over the camphor-trees, and without propitiating this spirit it is impossible to obtain the camphor. This bisan makes at night a shrill noise, and when this sound is heard it is a sure sign that there are camphor-trees near at hand. (This bisan is really one of the Cicadas which are so numerous in the Malayan jungles.)

"When hunting for camphor the natives always throw a portion of their food out into the jungle before eating, as an offering to the bisan.

"No prayers are offered up, but all food must be eaten dry, i.e. without sumbul, [390] or stewed fish, or vegetables. Salt must not be pounded fine; if it is eaten fine, the camphor when found will be in fine grains; but if eaten coarse the grains of camphor will be large. In rainy weather the cry of the bisan is not heard. At certain seasons regular parties of Jakuns, and sometimes Malays, go into the jungle to search for camphor, and they remain there as long as three or four months at a time. Not only must the men who go into the jungle to search for the camphor speak the 'Pantang Kapur,' but also the men and women left at home in the Kampongs.

"The camphor occurs in the form of small grains deposited in the cracks in the interior of the trunk of the tree. Camphor is only found in the older trees, and not in all of these, and to obtain it the tree must be cut down and split up. There are certain signs which indicate when a tree contains camphor, one of which is the smell emitted from the wood when chipped. A man who is skilled in detecting the presence of camphor is called Penghulu Kapur. [391] The camphor when taken away from the tree is washed, and all chips of wood and dirt carefully removed, and it is then sold to Chinese traders at Kwala Indau at prices varying according to the quality from $15 to $40 per katti.

"The Camphor language consists in great part of words which are either Malay or of Malay origin, but contains, as above mentioned, a large number of words which are not Malay, but which are presumably remnants of the original Jakun dialects, which are apparently almost obsolete otherwise in the Indau and Sembrong districts of Johor." [392]

Gutta-percha

The trees from which Gutta-percha is taken are also supposed to be inhabited by a spirit; but this, the Gutta-spirit, being far less dangerous than the Eagle-wood spirit, fewer precautions are taken in dealing with it. In the invocation addressed to the Gutta-spirit, the petitioner asks for the boon of a drop of the spirit's blood, which of course is an indirect way of asking for the tree's sap.

Here is a specimen of the charms used by the gutta-collectors:--

"Ho, Prince S'ri Bali, Prince S'ri Bandang, I wish to crave the boon of a drop of blood; May the yield be better than from this notch of mine.

(Here the speaker notches the tree.)

"If it be not better You shall be a rebel unto God," etc. [393]

The Cocoa-nut Palm

The following instructions to be followed by toddy-collectors (who tap the Cocoa-nut palm for its juice, which is boiled into sugar) were given me by a Kelantan Malay ('Che `Abas of Klanang):--

"When you are about to set foot against the base of the trunk (i.e. to start climbing) repeat these lines:--

"Peace be with you, O Abubakar! Drowse not as you keep watch and ward in the heart of this tree (umbi)."

Here climb half-way up and say:--

"Peace be with you, Little Sister, Handmaiden Bidah, Drowse not as you keep watch and ward in the middle of the trunk, Come and accompany me on my way up this tree."

Here climb up among the leaf-stalks, lay hold of the central shoot, give it three shakes, and say--

"Peace be with you, Little Sister, Youngest of the Princesses, Drowse not as you keep watch and ward over the central shoot, Do you accompany me on my way down this tree."

Now commence by bending down one of the blossom-sheaths, lay hold of the central shoot, and thrice repeat the following lines:--

"Peace be with your Highnesses, Princesses of the Shorn Hair and (perpetual) Distillation, Who are (seen) in the curve (lit. swell) and the ebbing away of the Blossom-sheath, Of the Blossom-sheath Si Gedebeh Mayang, Seven Princesses who are the Handmaidens of Si Mayang."

(Here the speaker addresses the soul (or rather souls) of the tree.)

"Come hither, Little One, come hither, Come hither, Tiny One, come hither, Come hither, Bird, come hither, Come hither, Filmy One, come hither. Thus I bend your neck, Thus I roll up your hair, And here is an Ivory Toddy-knife to help the washing of your face.

Here is an Ivory Toddy-knife to cut you short, And here is an Ivory Cup to hold under you, And there is an Ivory Bath that waits below for you. Clap your hands and splash in the Ivory Bath, For it is called the 'Sovereign Changing Clothes.'" [394]

Rules for planting various Crops

The following rules have an evident bearing upon the subject of vegetable animism. They were collected at Langat, in Selangor:--

The time to plant Sugar-cane is at noon: this will make it sweeter, by drying up the juice and leaving the saccharine matter. If you plant it in the early morning its joints will be too long, if in the middle of the day they will be short.

Plant Maize with a full stomach, and let your dibble be thick, as this will swell the maize ear.

For Plantains (or Bananas) you must dig a big hole, and the evening is the time to plant them. The evening is the quicker, and if planted after the evening meal they fill out better.

Plant Sweet Potatoes on a starry night to ensure their filling out properly (by getting plenty of eyes?)

Plant Cucumbers and Gourds on a dark moonless night, to prevent them from being seen and devoured by fire-flies (api-api).

Plant Cocoa-nuts when the stomach is overburdened with food (kalau kita 'nak sangat berak); run quickly and throw the cocoa-nut into the hole prepared for it without straightening the arm; if you straighten it the fruit-stalk will break. Plant them in the evening, so that they may bear fruit while they are still near the ground. When you pick seed cocoa-nuts off the tree somebody should stand at the bottom of the tree and watch whether the "monkey-face" of each seed cocoa-nut, as it is thrown down, turns either towards himself or the base of the tree, or whether it looks away from both. In the former case the seed will be good, in the latter it is not worth planting.

Plant Rice in the early morning, about five, because that is the hour at which infants (the Rice Soul being considered as an infant) get up.

The Cultivation of Rice

The most important contribution of the Malays to the animistic theory of vegetation is perhaps to be found in the many strange ceremonies with which they surround the culture of Rice. In order to properly understand the significance of these ceremonies, however, a proper understanding of the Malay system of rice-planting is essential, and I therefore quote in extenso a description of rice-culture, which possesses the additional interest of being translated from the composition of a Malay: [395]--

"It is the established custom in Malacca territory to plant rice once a year, and the season for doing so generally falls about the month of Zilka`idah or Zilhijah. [396]

"In starting planting operations, however, the object is, if possible, to coincide with the season when the West wind blows, because at that time there are frequent rains, and accordingly the earth of the rice-field becomes soft and easy to plough. Moreover, in planting rice it is an invariable rule that there must be water in the field, in order that the rice may sprout properly; though, on the other hand, if there is too great a depth of water the rice is sure to die. It has also been observed that as a rule the season of the West wind coincides with the fourth month [397] of the Chinese calendar, and sometimes also with the month of Zilka`idah or Zilhijah. [398]

"2. In olden time the order of planting operations was as follows:--First, the elders had to hold a consultation with the Pawang; then the date was fixed; then Maulud [399] prayers were read over the 'mother-seed,' and benzoin, (incense) supplied by the Pawang, was burned; then all the requisites for rice-planting were got ready, viz.:--

"(1) A strong buffalo (to pull the plough). (2) A plough with its appurtenances (to turn over the earth and the short weeds). (3) A harrow with its appurtenances (to level and break up small the clods of earth left by the plough). (4) A roller with its appurtenances (to knock down the long weeds, such as sedges, in fields that have lain fallow for a long while). (5) A wood-cutter's knife, to mend any of the implements that may get out of order at the time of ploughing. (6) A hoe to repair the embankments and level the higher grounds. (7) A scythe [400] to cut the long weeds. (8) And a whip to urge the buffalo on if he is lazy.

"3. When the proper season has arrived for beginning the work of planting, and the elders have come to an agreement with the Pawang, then on some Friday after the service in the Mosque the Penghulu addresses all the people there present, saying that on such a day of the month every one who is to take part in rice-cultivation must bring to the Mosque half a quart of grain (for 'mother-seed') in order that Maulud prayers may be read over it. (At that time ketupats [401] and lepats [402] are prepared for the men who are to read those prayers.)

"When the Maulud prayers are over, every man goes down to the rice-field, if possible on the same day or the next one, in order to begin ploughing the nursery plot, that is, the plot which is near his house or in which he has been in the habit of sowing the seed every year.

"But if a man has a great number of plots, he will begin by ploughing half of them, and then at the end of the month of Zilhijah he must diligently prepare the nursery plot so as to be ready in about ten days' time.

Of Sowing

"4. Before sowing one must first of all lay out the grain, both the seed-grain and the 'mother-seed,' each separately, to dry. It must then be soaked in a vessel (a bucket or pot) for two days and two nights, after which it is taken out, strained and spread quite evenly on a mat with fresh leaves (areca-nut fronds are best), and every afternoon one must sprinkle water on it in order that the germ may quickly break through, which will happen probably in two days' time or thereabouts.

"5. While the seed is soaking, the nursery plot must be carefully prepared; that is to say, it must be ploughed over again, harrowed, levelled, ditched, and the soil allowed to settle; the embankments must be mended, and the surface made smooth. When the germs have sprouted the seed is taken to the nursery plot. Benzoin supplied by the Pawang is burnt, and the plot sprinkled with tepong tawar. [403] Then a beginning is made by sowing the 'chief of the seed,' i.e. 'mother-seed,' in one corner of the nursery prepared for the purpose, and about two yards square; afterwards the rest of the seed is sown all over the plot. It is well to sow when the plot contains plenty of water, so that all the germs of the seed may be uppermost, and the roots may not grow long, but may be pulled up easily. The time for sowing must be during the dark half of the month, so that the seedlings may be preserved from being eaten by insects. [404]

"Three days after the seed is sown the young shoots begin to rise like needles, and at that time all the water should be drawn off the plot; after seven days they are likened to a sparrow's tail, and about the tenth or fifteenth day they break out into blades. At that period the water is again let into the plot, little by little, in order that the stalks of the seedlings may grow thick.

"The seedlings have to remain in the nursery for at least forty or forty-four days from the time of sowing before they are sufficiently grown; it is best to let them remain till they are about seventy days old.

"6. While the seedlings are in the nursery the other plots are being ploughed, one after another; and this is called the first ploughing. Then the embankments are mended and re-formed with earth, so that the water in the field may not escape and leave it dry. After the embankments have been mended the harrowing begins: a start is made with the plot that was first ploughed (other than the nursery plot), for there the earth will have become soft, and the weeds being rotten after many days of soaking in the water will form a sort of manure. Each plot is so dealt with in its turn. Then all have to be ploughed once more (which is called the second ploughing) and harrowed again; for the first harrowing merely breaks up the clods of earth, and a second is required to reduce them to a fine state and to kill the weeds. Most people, having first used an iron harrow, use a wooden one for the second harrowing, in order that the earth may be broken up quite fine. Their rice is sure to thrive better than that of people who are less careful; for in rice-planting, as the saying goes, there is 'the plighted hope of good that is to come,' in the way of bodily sustenance I mean. So day by day the different plots are treated in the way that has been described in connection with the nursery plot in paragraph 5 above.

Of Planting

"7. When the seedling rice has been in the nursery long enough, and the fields are clean and ready for planting (which will be about the month of Safar, or August) the seedlings are pulled up and tied together with strips of dried palas [405] leaves into bundles of the size known as sachekak (i.e. the space enclosed by the thumb and the index finger when their ends meet). If the roots and blades are long the ends can be clipped a little, and the roots are then steeped in manure. This manure is made of buffalo bones burnt with chaff till they are thoroughly calcined, and then pounded fine, passed through a sieve and mixed with mud: that is the best kind of manure for rice-planting, and is known as 'stock manure.' (It can also be applied by merely scattering it in the fields. In that case, after cutting off the ends of the blades, the seedlings are planted, and afterwards, when they are green again and appear to be thriving, the manure is scattered over the whole field. There are some places, too, where no manure at all is used because of the perennial richness of the soil.)

"Afterwards the seedlings are allowed to remain exposed to the air for about two nights, and then taken to the field to be planted. The bundles are broken up, and bunches of four or five plants together are planted at intervals of a span all over the different plots till all are filled up. If there are very many plots, ten or fifteen female labourers can be engaged to assist in planting, and likewise in pulling up the seedlings, at a wage of four cents for every hundred bundles.

Of the Rice after it has been Transplanted

"8. Ten days after the young rice has been transplanted it recovers its fresh green colour; in thirty days the young shoots come out; in the second month it increases more and more, and in the third it becomes even all over. After three months and a half its growth is stayed, and in the fourth month it is styled bunting kechil.

"At that stage the stalk has only five joints, and from that period it must be fumigated daily till the grain appears.

"About the time when the stalk has six joints it is called bunting besar; in forty days more the grain is visible here and there, and twenty days later it spreads everywhere. At this time all the water in the field must be drawn off so that the grain may ripen quickly. After five or six days it ripens in patches, and a few days later the rice is altogether ripe.

"From the time of transplanting to the time when it is ripe is reckoned six months, not counting the days spent in ploughing and in growing it in the nursery, which may be a month or two, or even (if there are many plots) as much as three months to the end of the ploughing.

Of Reaping and taking the Soul of the Rice

"9. When one wishes to begin reaping the grain one must first have the Pawang's permission, and burn benzoin supplied by him in the field.

"The following implements must be got ready, viz.:--

"(1) A small basket to hold the rice cut first, known as the 'Soul of the Rice' (semangat padi).

(2) A jari lipan [406] to put round the small basket.

(3) A string of terap [407] bark to tie up the rice that is cut first.

(4) A small stem of bamboo, of the variety known as buloh kasap, with a flag attached, which is to be planted in the small basket as a sign of the 'Soul of the Rice' that has been cut first.

(5) A small white cloth to wrap up the 'Soul of the Rice.'

(6) An anchak [408] to hold the brasier.

(7) A brasier, in which to burn the incense provided by the Pawang.

(8) A nail and a kind of nut, known as buah keras, [409] to be put into the anchak together with the brasier.

"When the rice is ripe all over, one must first take the 'Soul' out of all the plots of one's field. You choose the spot where the rice is best and where it is 'female' (that is to say, where the bunch of stalks is big) and where there are seven joints in the stalk. You begin with a bunch of this kind and clip seven stems to be the 'soul of the rice'; and then you clip yet another handful to be the 'mother-seed' for the following year. The 'Soul' is wrapped in a white cloth tied with a cord of terap bark, and made into the shape of a little child in swaddling clothes, and put into the small basket. The 'mother-seed' is put into another basket, and both are fumigated with benzoin, and then the two baskets are piled the one on the other and taken home, and put into the kepuk (the receptacle in which the rice is stored).

"10. One must wait three days (called the pantang tuai) before one may clip or cut any more of the rice. At first only one or two basketfuls of rice are cut; the rice is dried in the sun, winnowed in a winnowing basket, and cleaned in a fanning machine, pounded to free it from the husk, so that it becomes beras (husked rice), and then boiled so that it becomes nasi (cooked rice), and people are invited to feast on it.

"11. Then a bucket is made for the purpose of threshing the rest of the rice, and a granary built to keep it in while it remains in the field, and five or six labourers are engaged to reap and thresh it (banting). [410] Their hours of working are from 6 to 11.30 A.M., and all the rice they thresh they put into the granary.

"12. If the crop is a good one a gallon of seed will produce a hundredfold. Each plot in a field takes about a gallon of seed.

"13. When the rice has all been cut it is winnowed in order to get rid of the chaff, and then laid out in the sun till quite dry, so that it may not get mouldy if kept for a year.

"Then the wages of the labourers are taken out of it at the rate of two gallons out of every ten. When that is settled, if the rice is not to be sold, it is taken home and put into the rice-chest.

"Whenever you want to eat of it, you take out a basketful at a time and dry it in the sun. Then you turn it in the winnowing basket, and clean it in the fanning machine, pound it to convert it into beras, and put a sufficiency of it in a pot and wash it. Enough water is then poured over it to cover it, and it is put on the kitchen fire till it is boiled and becomes nasi, when it can be eaten.

"14. The custom of reaping with a sickle (sabit) and threshing the rice as described in paragraph 11 is a modern method, and is at present mainly practised by the people living in the neighbourhood of the town of Malacca, in order to get the work done quickly; but in olden times it was not allowed, and even to this day the people who live in the inland parts of the territory of Malacca prefer to clip their rice with a tuai, [411] and put it into their baskets a handful at a time [i.e. without threshing it]. (If labourers are employed to do this their wage is one-tenth of the rice cut.) It takes ever so many days to get the work done, but the idea is that this method is the pious one, the 'Soul of the Rice' not being disturbed thereby. A good part of the people hold this belief, and assert that since the custom of threshing the rice has been introduced, the crops have been much less abundant than in years of olden time when it was the custom to use the tuai only.

"15. If a man has broad fields so that he is unable to plant them all by his own labour, he will often allow another to work them on an agreement, either of equal division of the produce (each bearing an equal share of the hire of a buffalo and all other expenses incidental to rice-planting), or of threefold division (that is, for example, the owner bears all expenses, in which case the man who does the work can get a third of the produce; or the latter bears all expenses, in which case the owner only gets a third of the produce). Or again, the land can be let; for instance, a field which ordinarily produces a koyan [412] of rice a year will fetch a rent of about two hundred gallons more or less.

"16. Every cultivator who does not act in accordance with the ordinance laid down in paragraphs 9 and 10 above, will be in the same case as if he disregarded all the prohibitions laid down in connection with planting. If a man does not carry out this procedure he is sure to fail in the end; his labour will be in vain and will not fulfil his desires, for the virtue of all these ordinances and prohibitions lies in the fact that they protect the rice, and drive away all its enemies, such as grubs, rats, swine, and the like." [413]

I will now deal with the ceremonies indicated in the foregoing article from the ceremonial point of view exclusively.

The Sowing of the Rice-Seed

The ceremony to be observed at the sowing of the rice-seed was thus described to me by the Pawang who performed the reaping ceremony described below:--

"First arrange four poles upon the ground, so as to form a rectangular frame (galang dapor), in the middle of the clearing. Then plant in succession at the four corners--

"1. A young banana-tree. 2. A plant of lemon grass (serai). 3. A stem of sugar-cane (of the kind called lanjong). 4. A plant of saffron (kunyit).

Perform the operation carefully, so that they are all likely to live.

"In the centre of the ground enclosed by the frame deposit a cocoa-nut shell full of water.

"Early next morning go out and observe the omens. If the frame has moved aside (berkuak) ever so little, or if the water has been spilt, it is a bad omen. But if not, and if the water in the cocoa-nut shell has not been spilt, or if a black ant (semut) or a white ant (anei-anei) is found in the water, it is a good sign.

"When good omens have been obtained, proceed by planting rice-seed in seven holes with a dibble of satambun wood, repeating the following charm:--

"In the name of God, etc., Peace be with you, Prophet 'Tap, Here I lodge with you, my child, S'ri Gading, Gemala Gading, [414] But within from six months to seven I will come and receive it back, Cluck, cluck, soul! cluck, cluck, soul! cluck, cluck, soul!"

The Planting out of the Young Rice

The following account (by Mr. C. O. Blagden) of the ceremony of planting out the young rice (from the rice-nursery) appeared in the Journal of the Straits Asiatic Society in 1896:--

"In agricultural operations the animistic ideas of the Malays are clearly apparent: thus, before the rice is cut a sort of ritual is performed which is known as puji padi, and which is regarded, apparently, as a kind of propitiatory service, a sort of apology to the padi (rice) for reaping it. The padi is usually sprinkled with tepong tawar (flour mixed with water) before the reaping is commenced, and the first lot cut is set apart for a ceremonial feast.

"At planting there are also ceremonies: as a rule the beginning of the planting season is ushered in by a visit of the whole body of villagers to the most highly revered kramat in the neighbourhood, where the usual offerings are made and prayers are said. Sometimes, however, there is a special service known as bapua, [415] consisting of a sort of mock combat, in which the evil spirits are believed to be expelled from the rice-fields by the villagers: this is not done every year, but once in three or four years.

"Another occasional service of a peculiar character, which is not of very frequent occurrence, is the ceremony which would perhaps be best described as the propitiation of the earth-spirit. Some years ago I happened, by chance, to be present at a function of this kind, and as its details may be of some interest as illustrating the wide dispersion of certain points of ritual, I will end these notes by giving a full description of it as noted down at the time. It was in the month of October, and I happened to be out shooting snipe in the padi-fields of the village of Sebatu on a Sunday morning, when I was met by the Penghulu, the headman of the village, who asked me to leave off shooting for an hour or so. As I was having fair sport, I naturally wanted to know the reason why, so he explained that the noise of gunshots would irritate the hantu, and render unavailing the propitiatory service which was then about to begin. Further inquiry elicited the statement that the hantu in question was the one who presided over rice-lands and agricultural operations, and as I was told that there would be no objection to my attending the ceremony, I went there and then to the spot to watch the proceedings. The place was a square patch of grass-lawn a few yards wide, which had evidently for years been left untouched by the plough, though surrounded by many acres of rice-fields. On this patch a small wooden altar had been built: it consisted simply of a small square platform of wood or bamboo raised about three or four feet above the ground, each corner being supported by a small sapling with the leaves and branches left on it and overshadowing the platform, the sides of which appeared to face accurately towards the four cardinal points. To the western side was attached a small bamboo ladder leading from the ground to the edge of the platform. At the four corners of the patch of grass were four larger saplings planted in the ground. On the branches of all these trees were hung a number of ketupats, which are small squarish bags plaited of strips of the leaves of the screw-pine (mengkuang) or some similar plant, like the material of which native bags and mats are made. A larger ketupat hung over the centre of the altar, and all of them were filled with a preparation of boiled rice. On the altar were piled up various cooked foods laid on plantain leaves, including the flesh of a goat cooked in the ordinary way, as well as rice and different kinds of condiments and sweetmeats. The Pawang was present as well as a number of the villagers, and soon after my arrival with the Penghulu the ceremony began by some of the villagers producing out of a bag the skin of a black male goat with the head and horns attached and containing the entrails (the flesh having been cooked and laid on the altar previously). A large iron nail four or five inches long, and thick in proportion, was placed vertically in a hole about two feet deep which had been dug under the altar, and the remains of the goat were also buried in it, with the head turned towards the east, the hole being then closed and the turf replaced. Some of the goat's blood, in two cocoa-nut shells (tempurong), was placed on the ground near the south side and south-west corner of the altar close to the ladder.

"The Pawang, after assisting at these preliminaries, then took his stand at the west side of the altar, looking eastward: he covered his head, but not his face, with his sarong wrapped round it like a shawl, and proceeded to light a torch, the end of which was tipped with incense (kemenyan). With this he touched the bottom of the altar platform four times. He then took a cup of tepong tawar and dipped in it a small bundle of four kinds of leaves, with which he then sprinkled the north-west and south-east corners of the platform. He then coughed three times--whether this was part of the ritual, or a purely incidental occurrence, I am unable to say, as it was not practicable to stop the ceremony for the purpose of asking questions--and again applied the torch under the altar and sprinkled with tepong tawar all the corners of it, as well as the rungs of the ladder.

"At this stage of the proceedings four men stationed in the rice-field beyond the four corners of the patch of turf, each threw a ketupat diagonally across to one another, while the rest of the assembly, headed by the Penghulu, chanted the kalimah, or Muhammadan creed, three times.

"Then a man holding a large bowl started from a point in the rice-field just outside the north side of the patch of turf, and went round it (first in a westerly direction). As he walked, he put handfuls of the rice into his mouth and spat or vomited them out, with much noise, as if to imitate violent nausea, into the field. He was followed closely by another who also held a bowl filled with pieces of raw tapioca root and beras bertih (rice roasted in a peculiar way), [416] which he threw about into the field. Both of them went right round the grass plot. The Pawang then took his cup of tepong tawar and sprinkled the anak padi, that is, the rice-shoots which were lying in bundles along the south and east sides of the altar ready for planting. Having sprinkled them he cut off the ends, as is usually done; and after spitting to the right and to the left, he proceeded to plant them in the field. A number of others then followed his lead and planted the rest of the rice-plants, and then a sweetmeat made of cocoa-nut and sugar was handed round, and Muhammadan prayers were said by some duly qualified person, an orang `alim or a lebei, and the ceremony was concluded.

"It was explained to me that the blood and the food were intended for the hantu, and the ladder up to the altar was for his convenience; in fact the whole affair was a propitiatory service, and offers curious analogies with the sacrificial ceremonials of some of the wild aboriginal tribes of Central India who have not been converted to Hinduism or Islam. That it should exist in a Malay community within twenty miles of the town of Malacca, where Muhammadanism has been established for about six [417] centuries, is certainly strange. Its obvious inconsistency with his professed religion does not strike the average Malay peasant at all. It is, however, the fact that these observances are not regarded with much favour by the more strictly Muhammadan Malays of the towns, and especially by those that are partially of Arab descent. These latter have not much influence in country districts, but privately I have heard some of them express disapproval of such rites and even of the ceremonies performed at kramats. According to them, the latter might be consistent with Muhammadan orthodoxy on the understanding that prayers were addressed solely to the Deity; but the invocation of spirits or deceased saints and their propitiation by offerings could not be regarded as otherwise than polytheistic idolatry. Of course such a delicate distinction--almost as subtle as that between dulia and latria in the Christian worship of saints--is entirely beyond the average Malay mind; and everything is sanctioned by immemorial custom, which in an agricultural population is more deeply-rooted than any book-learning; so these rites are likely to continue for some time, and will only yield gradually to the spread of education. Such as they are, they seem to be interesting relics of an old-world superstition.

"I have mentioned only a few such points, and only such as have been brought directly to my knowledge; there are hosts of other quaint notions, such as the theory of lucky and unlucky days and hours, on which whole treatises have been written, and which regulate every movement of those who believe in them; the belief in amulets and charms for averting all manner of evils, supernatural and natural; the practice during epidemics of sending out to sea small elaborately constructed vessels which are supposed to carry off the malignant spirits responsible for the disease (of which I remember a case a few years ago in the village of Sempang, where the beneficial effect was most marked); the widespread belief in the power of menuju, that is, doing injury at a distance by magic, in which the Malays believe the wild junglemen especially to be adepts; the belief in the efficacy of forms of words as love-charms and as a protection against spirits and wild beasts--in fact, an innumerable variety of superstitious ideas exist among Malays." [418]

The Reaping Ceremony

On the 28th January 1897 I witnessed (at Chodoi, in the Kuala Langat district of Selangor) the ceremony of fetching home the Rice-soul.

Time of Ceremony.--I arrived at the house belonging to the Malay owner of the rice-field a little past 8 A.M., the hour at which the ceremony was to take place having been fixed at angkat kening (about 9 A.M.) a few days previously. On my arrival I found the Pawang (sorceress), an aged Selangor woman, seated in front of the baskets required for the ceremony. [419]

Accessories.--At her extreme left stood one of the circular brass trays with high sides which are called dulang by the Malays, containing the following objects:--

1. A small bowl of "parched rice" (b'ras ber'tih). 2. A small bowl of "saffron rice" (b'ras kunyit). 3. A small bowl of "washed rice" (b'ras basoh). 4. A small bowl of "oil of frankincense." 5. A small bowl of "oil of Celebes" (minyak Bugis). 6. A small bowl of "incense" (kem'nyan). 7. A small bundle of incense (in addition to the bowl). 8. One of the hard jungle-nuts called buah k'ras (the candle-nut). 9. One of the shells called k'rang (a cockle shell). 10. A hen's egg. 11. A stone (a small block of quartz). 12. A large iron nail. 13 to 15. Three Malay reaping instruments (penuwei). [420]

Close to the dulang stood a cocoa-nut shell filled with the tepong tawar, which plays so prominent a part in Malay magic ceremonies, and a brush made up of the leaves of seven different plants, bound up as usual with a cord of kulit t'rap (the bark of the Wild Breadfruit), and ribu-ribu (a kind of small creeper). The plants which supplied the leaves of which the brush was composed, were as follows:--

1. Sapenoh. 2. Sapanggil. 3. Jenjuang (or lenjuang) merah (the Red Dracæna). 4. Gandarusa. 5. Pulut-pulut. 6. Selaguri. 7. Sambau dara (a kind of grass).

But the most interesting object was a small oval-shaped basket bound with the ribu-ribu creeper, and about fourteen inches long, which was standing just in front of the three rice-baskets and close to the Pawang, and which, as I afterwards found out, was intended to serve as the cradle of the Rice-soul (or "Rice-baby"). I examined it, however, and found that as yet it only contained the following objects:--

1. A strip of white cloth (folded up and lying at the bottom of the basket). 2. Some parti-coloured thread (benang panchawarna or pancharona). 3. A hen's egg. 4. One of the hard jungle-nuts (candle-nuts) already referred to. 5. A cockle shell (k'rang). 6. A long iron nail. 7. Five cubits of red cloth by means of which the soul-basket was to be slung round the neck of its bearer. (The correcter custom would require an expensive cloth of the kind called jong sarat, or the "Loaded Junk," according to my informant the Pawang.)

Three new Malay skirts or sarongs were added, (one to each basket), and everything being ready, the various receptacles described above were entrusted to five female bearers (Penjawat), who descended from the house, with the Pawang at their head, and set out for the rice-field. Before they had gone many yards they were joined by the owner of the field, who walked in front of them bearing what was called the junjongan padi. This was the stem and leaves of a dark red kind of sugar-cane, which was used in substitution for the black or "raven" variety (tebu gagak) which, the Pawang explained, would have been used in preference if it had been obtainable. Meanwhile the procession passed on, and the Pawang repeated as we went the following prayer to the spirits:--

"In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate, Peace be with thee, O Prophet 'Tap, in whose charge is the Earth, I know the origin of the Rice, S'ri Gading, Gemala Gading, That (dwelleth at) the end of the clearing, and that (dwelleth at) the beginning (top) of the clearing; That is scattered broadcast, that is cast headlong, That is over-run (!) by the ants called Silambada. Ho, Dang 'Pok, Dang Meleni, [421] (and) Dang Salamat, who carriest the pole slung on thy back, Gather together and press hitherwards your attendants. May safety and our daily bread be granted us by God."

On reaching the rice the procession filed through a lane already made in the rice, until the "mother-sheaf" was reached from which the Rice-soul was to be taken. But immediately on arriving at the spot, and before depositing the rice-baskets on the ground, the Pawang repeated these lines:--

"Herons from all this region, Roost ye upon the shaft of my bow; Retire ye, O Spectral Reapers, That we may deposit our baskets upon the ground."

Here the baskets were deposited, and the Pawang took up her station in front of the mother-sheaf, of which mention has just been made.

Covering her head with a flowing white cloth of which the ends fell upon her shoulders, the Pawang now stood up facing the sheaf, and waved the ends of this cloth thrice upward to the right, thrice upward to the left, and finally thrice upward to the right again. Then for a few moments she stood still, close to the sheaf with her head bent forward and buried among the ears, after which she reseated herself and dabbled the tepong tawar thrice upon the roots of the sheaf. One of the female bearers now planted the stem of the sugar-cane upright in the centre of the sheaf, [422] whilst the Pawang sprinkled it with the tepong tawar, and then holding the sharpened end of it over the incense, fumigated it, saying:--

"Peace be with thee, O Prophet 'Tap! Lo, I plant this Sugar-cane For you to lean against, Since I am about to take away this Soul of yours, S'ri Gading, And carry it home to your palace, Cluck, cluck, soul! cluck, cluck, soul! cluck, cluck, soul!"

Here the Pawang and Penjawat (Female Bearer), together proceeded to plant the sugar-cane in the centre of the sheaf, and (pressing the sheaf more tightly round the sugar-cane) drew the waist of the sheaf together and belted it with some of the outer stems of the sheaf itself; then the Pawang applied the tepong tawar once more to the sheaf, and after fumigating it in the usual manner, ran her hands up it. Next she took in one hand (out of the brass tray) the stone and the egg, cockle-shell and candle-nut, and with the other planted the big iron nail in the centre of the sheaf close to the foot of the sugar-cane. Then she took in her left hand the cord of tree-bark, and after fumigating it, together with all the vessels of rice and oil, took up some of the rice and strewed it round about the sheaf, and then tossed the remainder thrice upwards, some of it falling upon the rest of the company and myself.

This done, she took the end of the cord in both hands, and encircling the sheaf with it near the ground, drew it slowly upward to the waist of the sheaf, and tied it there, after repeating what is called the "Ten Prayers" (do`a sapuloh) without once taking breath:--

"The first, is God, The second, is Muhammad, The third, Holy Water of the five Hours of Prayer by Day and Night, The fourth, is Pancha Indra, The fifth, the Open Door of Daily Bread, The sixth, the Seven Stories of the Palace-Tower, The seventh, the Open Door of the Rice-sifting Platform, The eighth, the Open Door of Paradise, The ninth, is the Child in its Mother's Womb, The tenth, is the Child created by God, the reason of its creation being our Lord. Grant this, `Isa! [423] Grant this, Moses! Grant this, Joseph! Grant this, David! Grant me, from God (the opening of) all the doors of my daily bread, on earth, and in heaven."

This prayer completed, [424] she dug up with the great toe of the left foot a small lump of soil, and picking it up, deposited it in the centre of the sheaf.

Next she took the contents of the soul-basket (the egg and stone, candle-nut and shell as before), and after anointing them with oil and fumigating them, replaced them in the basket; then taking the penuwei sulong ("Eldest Rice-cutter"), anointed the blade with the oil of frankincense, and inserting the thumb of the right hand into her mouth, pressed it for several moments against the roof of her palate. On withdrawing it she proceeded to cut the first seven "heads" of rice, repeating "the Ten Prayers" as she did so. Then she put the seven "heads" together, and kissed them; turned up the whites of her eyes thrice, and thrice contracting the muscles of her throat with a sort of "click," swallowed the water in her mouth. [425] Next she drew the small white cloth which she took from the soul-basket for the purpose across her lap, and laying the little bundle of seven ears in it, anointed them with oil and tied them round with parti-coloured thread (benang panchawarna), after which she fumigated them with the incense, and strewing rice of each kind over them, folded the ends of the cloth over them, and deposited them as before in the basket, which was handed to the first bearer. Then standing up, she strewed more rice over the sheaf, and tossing some backwards over her head, threw the remainder over the rest of the party, saying "tabek" ("pardon") as she did so, and exclaiming "kur semangat, kur semangat, kur semangat!" ("cluck, cluck, soul!") in a loud voice. Next she pushed the cocoa-nut shell (which had contained the tepong tawar) into the middle of the sheaf, and removed all traces of the lane which had been trodden round the sheaf (to make it accessible) by bending down the surrounding ears of rice until the gap was concealed.

Then the First Bearer, slinging the basket of the Rice-child about her neck (by means of the red cloth before referred to), took an umbrella [426] from one of the party, and opened it to shield the Rice-child from the effects of the sun, and when the Pawang had reseated herself and repeated an Arabic prayer (standing erect again at the end of it with her hands clasped above her head), this part of the ceremony came to an end. Moving on to another part of the field, the Pawang now cut the next seven "heads" and deposited them in one of the three rice-baskets, which she then handed to one of the female bearers, telling her and her two companions to reap the field in parallel straight lines facing the sun, until they had filled the three rice-baskets, after which they were to return to the house. Leaving the three reapers at their task, I followed the Pawang and Eldest Bearer (the latter still shielding the Rice-child from the sun with the umbrella) and arrived in time to witness the reception of the party as they reached the foot of the house-ladder. Here (on the threshold) we were met by the wife of the owner, and other women of his family, the former thrice calling out as we approached, "Apa khabar?" ("What news?"), and thrice receiving the reply, "Baik" ("It is well"). On receiving this reply for the third time she threw saffron-rice over the Pawang and repeated these lines:--

"Chop the 'tree' Galenggang (a kind of shrub), Chop it to pieces in front of the door: Yonder comes One swinging (her) arms; That (methinks) is a child of mine."

To which the Pawang immediately replied:--

"Chop the young bamboo-shoots as fine as you can, If you wish to stupefy the fish in the main stream. In good sooth I have crossed the stream, For great was my desire to come hither."

And the bearer of the Rice-child added--doubtless on the Rice-child's behalf:--

"This measure is not a measure filled with pepper, But a measure filled with rice-husks. My coming is not merely fortuitous, But great (rather) was my desire, the wish of my heart."

She then entered the house and laid the Rice-child (still in its basket) on a new sleeping-mat with pillows at the head. About twenty minutes later the three Bearers returned, [427] each of their rice-baskets covered with a sarong. These baskets were carried into the bedroom and deposited in order of size on the mat at the foot of the soul-basket, the largest basket being the nearest to the soul-basket. Finally, the Pawang removed the sarongs which covered each basket and deposited them on the Rice-child's pillow, and sticking the "penuweis" into her hair, fumigated the entire row of baskets and the Rice-child, and covered them over with the long white cloth, after which the wife of the master of the house was told to observe certain rules of taboo for three days.

The following were the taboos imposed upon her:--

1. Money, rice, salt, oil, tame animals, etc., were forbidden to leave the house, though they might enter it without ill consequences. 2. Perfect quiet must be observed, as in the case of a new-born child. 3. Hair might not be cut. 4. The reapers, till the end of the reaping, were forbidden to let their shadows fall upon the rice. (Yang menuwei sampei habis menuwei, tiada buleh menindeh bayang.) 5. The light placed near the head of the Rice-child's bed might not be allowed to go out at night, whilst the hearth-fire might not be allowed to go out at all, night or day, for the whole three days.

The above taboos are in many respects identical with those which have to be observed for three days after the birth of a real child.

I may add that every day, when the reapers start their reaping, they have to repeat the following charm:--

"A swallow has fallen, striking the ground, Striking the ground in the middle of our house-yard; But ye, O Shadows and Spectral Reapers, See that ye mingle not with us."

When reaping, they must cover their heads and must face the sun, no matter what hour of the day it is, in order to prevent their own shadows from falling upon the rice in the basket at their side.

Pounding the first of the padi.--I witnessed this ceremony three days later, at about 9 A.M. The three baskets filled with the first reapings were removed from the mat on which they had been placed, and their contents emptied out upon a new mat, to each corner of which four rice-ears were tied, and trodden out (di-irekkan) by the owner of the field. Then the rice was poured back into two of the baskets, and the straw of the rice "heads" was plaited into a wreath. [428]

Drying the first of the padi.--Preparations being complete, the two baskets full of newly-cut rice were carried down the steps and out to an open part of the field, a little way from the house, and there spread on a mat in the sun to dry. To spread it properly is not an easy matter, the operator (who in this case was the owner), standing on the mat and spreading the grains with a long sweeping motion of the hand from one side of the mat to the other (the process being called di-kekar, di-kachau, or membalikkan jemoran). In the present case several objects were placed in the centre of the mat, consisting of--

1. A basket-work stand (one of those used for the cooking-pots, and called lekar jantan). 2. A bowl of water deposited upon this stand and intended "for the Rice-soul (semangat padi) to drink when it becomes thirsty with the heat of the sun." 3. A big iron nail. 4. A candle-nut (buah k'ras). 5. Six trodden-out rice "heads," a couple of which tied in a slip knot (simpul pulih) are fastened to each corner of the matting.

Pounding of the rice from the three baskets.--When the rice had been sufficiently dried, it was once more collected in the baskets, and carried back to the house to be pounded. [429] That operation took place the same evening, when the rice was pounded and winnowed [430] in the ordinary way, the only noteworthy addition being the tying of bunches of the grass called sambau dara to the upper ends of the long wooden pestles which the Malays use for the pounding operation.

Disposal of the empty rice-stalks from the three baskets.--The chaff thus obtained was deposited in a heap by the owner of the field in a place where three paths met, crowned with a wreath made of the empty rice-stalks, and covered by a big stone which was intended, I was told, to keep it from being blown away.

The sugar-cane was left to grow in the midst of the mother-sheaf, until the latter should be reaped by the wife of the owner; when this takes place, it is carried back to the house and used for next year's reaping. Meanwhile the "heads" of the mother-sheaf are pounded, and the grain thus obtained is mixed with the grain obtained from the Rice-soul, and deposited in the rice-bin (kepok) together with a stone, a lump of rosin (damar), and a wreath composed of the empty rice-ears. I may add that I saw the articles which had been deposited in the previous year in the rice-bin of the Malay at whose house I witnessed the ceremony which I have just described.

I did not witness the preliminary search for the mother-sheaf (in which the Rice-soul was supposed to be contained), but it was described to me by the Pawang, and performed for my benefit by the people of the house. The Pawang's description ran as follows: In order to confine the "Rengkesa" (a Spectral Reaper) to the boundaries, visit the four corners of the field, and at each corner tie a knot in a rice-leaf, and hold your breath while you repeat the following charm:--

"In the name of God, etc., A swallow has fallen striking the ground, Striking the ground in the middle of our house-yard. But ye, O Shadows and Spectral Reapers (Rengkesa), Have your appointed place on the Boundaries (of this field). By virtue of," etc.

These noxious spirits being thus confined to the Four Corners, you may search in safety till you find one of the special varieties of rice-ear in which the Rice-soul resides.

There are several varieties, of which the best is called Tongkat Mandah; it may be described as an ordinary "rice-head" bending over to meet the tip of a second (adventitious) "rice-head," but it is produced only by a freak of nature. There is some risk connected with this variety, however, for if the "Reception (Sambut) Ceremony" is not properly performed the owner will die. The second best is called "The Kite" (Lang). The third best is called "The Veiled Princess" (Putri Bertudong); in this case the sheath of the "head" is of unusual length, and overshadows the "head" itself. A fourth kind is called Padi Bertel'kum, and is described as a "Female Rice" (padi betina); like the "Veiled Princess," it has an unusually well-developed sheath; whilst a fifth kind is the "Padi Mendhara"--a rice-plant whose leaves show white lines or markings.

How women should reap on ordinary occasions.--Whenever women go out to reap they should repeat certain charms before leaving the house, [431] and again before depositing their baskets on the ground. Their heads should be covered, and they should always be careful to reap, as has been said, facing the sun, to prevent their shadow from falling upon the rice in the basket at their side. Occasionally, however, the body is uncovered, and I was even told of one, Inche Fatimah of Jugra, in Selangor, who when reaping stripped herself bare from the waist upwards, and when asked why she did so said it was "to make the rice-husks thinner, as she was tired of pounding thick-husked rice."

The sheaf which is left standing after the taking home of the Rice-soul is called the Mother of the Rice-soul (Ibu Semangat Padi), and treated as a newly-made mother; that is to say, young shoots of trees (putik-putik kayu) are taken, pounded together (di-tumbok), and scattered broadcast (di-tabor) every evening for three successive days.

When the three days are up you take cocoa-nut pulp (isi niyor) and what are called "goat flowers" (bunga kambing), mix them, and eat them with a little sugar, spitting some of the mixture out among the rice. [So, after a birth (as the Pawang informed me), the young shoots of the jack-fruit (kababal nangka), the rose-apple (jambu), and certain kinds of banana (such as pisang abu and pisang Benggala), and the thin pulp of young cocoa-nuts (kelongkong niyor) are mixed with dried fish, salt, acid (asam), prawn-condiment (b'lachan), and similar ingredients, to form a species of salad (rojak). For three successive days this salad is administered to mother and child, the person who administers it saying, if the child be a girl, "Your mother is here, eat this salad," and if the child be a boy, "Your father is here, eat this salad."]

Invariably, too, when you enter the rice-clearing (menempoh ladang) you must kiss the rice-stalks (chium tangkei padi), saying, "Cluck, cluck, soul of my child!" (kur, semangat anak aku!) just as if you were kissing an infant of your own.

The last sheaf (as I think I have said) is reaped by the wife of the owner, who carries it back to the house (where it is threshed out and mixed with the Rice-soul). The owner then takes the Rice-soul and its basket and deposits it in the big circular rice-bin used by the Malays, together with the product of the last sheaf. Some of the product of the first seven "heads" will be mixed with next year's seed, and the rest will be mixed with next year's tepong tawar. [432]

4. MINERALS AND MINING CHARMS

In the Western States of the Peninsula by far the most important branch of industry has for many years been that of Tin-mining. Though something like 90 per cent of the labourers employed in the mines are Chinese, the ceremonies used at the opening of tin-mines are purely Malay in character.

The post of mining wizard, once a highly lucrative one, was in past days almost always filled by a Malay, though occasionally the services of a Jungle-man (Sakai) would be preferred. These mining wizards enjoyed in their palmy days an extraordinary reputation, some of them being credited with the power of bringing ore to a place where it was known that no ore existed; some, too, were believed to possess the power of sterilising such ore as existed, and of turning it into mere grains of sand.

The ore itself is regarded as endued not only with vitality, but also with the power of growth, ore of indifferent quality being regarded as too young (muda), but as likely to improve with age. Sometimes, again, it is described as resembling a buffalo, in which shape it is believed to make its way from place to place underground. This idea, however, is probably based upon traditions of a lode, though it is quite in keeping with Malay ideas about the spirits residing in other minerals, the Gold spirit being supposed to take the shape of a kijang or roe-deer (whence the tradition of a golden roe-deer being found at Raub in Pahang).

In connection with the subject of tin-mining the account contributed [433] in 1885 by Mr. Abraham Hale (then Inspector of Mines in the Kinta district of Perak) to the Journal of the Straits Asiatic Society is of such value as to necessitate its being quoted in extenso. It will be followed by such notes upon mining invocations as I was able to collect in Selangor, after which a few remarks upon the Malay theory of animism in minerals generally will bring the subject to a conclusion.

To commence with Mr. Hale's account:--"The valley of the Kinta is, and has been for a very long time, essentially a mining country. There are in the district nearly five hundred registered mines, of which three are worked by European Companies, the rest being either private mines, i.e. mines claimed by Malays, which have been worked by them and their ancestors for an indefinite period, or new mines, in other words new concessions given indifferently on application to Malays and Chinese. There are about three hundred and fifty private Malay mines, and it is with these principally that the following paper will deal.

"So far, no lodes have been discovered in Kinta; it is, however, probable that, as the country is opened up and prospectors get up amongst the spurs of the main range, the sources of the stream tin will come to light.

"Mining in Kinta, like mining in Lârut, is for stream tin, and this is found literally everywhere in Kinta; it is washed out of the sand in the river-beds--a very favourite employment with Mandheling women; Kinta natives do not affect it much, although there is more than one stream where a good worker can earn a dollar per day; it is mined for in the valley, and sluiced for on the sides of hills; and, lastly, a very suggestive fact to a geologist, it has been found on the tops of isolated limestone bluffs and in the caves [434] which some of them contain.

"This stream tin has probably been worked for several centuries in Kinta; local tradition says that a very long time ago Siamese were the principal miners, and there is evidence that very extensive work has been done here by somebody at a time when the method was different from that which is commonly adopted by Kinta Malays at the present day. There are at least fifty deep well-like pits on the Lahat hill, averaging about eight feet in diameter and perhaps twenty feet deep.

"Further up country I have seen a large pit which the natives called a Siamese mine; this is about fifty feet in diameter and over twenty feet deep, and its age may be conjectured from the virgin forest in which it is situated. Besides these, at many places extensive workings are continually brought to light as the country is opened up, and these appear to have been left undisturbed for at least a hundred years. Further evidence of old work is furnished by slabs of tin of a shape unlike that which has been used in Perak in the memory of living persons; and only a few weeks ago two very perfect 'curry stones' of an unusual shape and particularly sharp grit were found at a depth of eight feet in natural drift. These may, perhaps, have been used to grind grain.

"So peculiarly is Kinta a mining district, that even the Sakais of the hills do a little mining to get some tin sand wherewith to buy the choppers and sarongs which the Malays sell to them at an exorbitant price.

"The Malay pawang, or medicine-man, is probably the inheritor of various remnants and traditions of the religion which preceded Muhammadanism, and in the olden time this class of persons derived a very fair revenue from the exercise of their profession, in propitiating and scaring those spirits who have to do with mines and miners; even now, although the Malay pawang may squeeze a hundred or perhaps two hundred dollars out of the Chinese towkay [435] who comes to mine for tin in Malaya, the money is not perhaps badly invested, for the Chinaman is no prospector, whereas a good Malay pawang has a wonderful 'nose' for tin, and it may be assumed that the Chinese towkay and, before his time, the Malay miner, would not pay a tax to the pawang unless they had some ground for believing that, by employing him and working under his advice, there would be more chance of success than if they worked only on their own responsibility.

"The pawang being a person who claims to have powers of divination and other imperfectly understood attributes, endeavours to shroud his whole profession in more or less of mystery. In his vocabulary, as in that of the gutta-hunters, special terms are used to signify

## particular objects, the use of the ordinary words being dropped;

this is called 'bahâsa pantang.' [436]

"The following are some of the special terms alluded to:--

"Ber-olak tinggi, [437] instead of gajah--elephant. The elephant is not allowed on the mine, or must not be brought on to the actual works, for fear of damage to the numerous races and dams; to name him, therefore, would displease the spirits (hantu).

"Ber-olak dâpor, instead of kuching--cat. Cats are not allowed on mines, nor may the name be mentioned.

"A tiger of enormous size called Ber-olak is said to haunt Kinta. The legend about him is as follows:-- A long time ago, in the pre-Muhammadan days, a man caught a tiger kitten and took it home; it grew up quite tame and lived with the man until he died, when it returned to the jungle and grew to an enormous size, nine cubits (hasta) long; it is still there, though nobody ever sees it; it does no harm, but sometimes very large tracks are seen, and men hear its roar, which is so loud that it can be heard from Chemor to Bâtu Gajah; when heard in the dry season, it is a sure prognostication of rain in fifteen days' time.

"Sial, [438] instead of kerbau--water-buffalo. The buffalo is not allowed on the mine for the same reason as the elephant.

"Salah nama, [439] instead of limau nipis--lime (fruit). If limes are brought on to a mine, the hantu (spirits) are said to be offended; the particular feature of the fruit, which is distasteful, appears to be its acidity. It is peculiar that Chinese have this superstition concerning limes as well as Malays; not very long ago a Chinese towkay of a mine complained that the men of a rival kongsi [440] had brought limes and squeezed the juice into his head race, and, furthermore, had rubbed their bodies with the juice mixed with water out of his head race, and he said they had committed a very grave offence, and asked that they might be punished for it.

"With Malays this appears to be one of the most important pantang [441] rules, and to such a length is it carried that belachan (shrimp-paste) is not allowed to be brought on to a mine for fear it should induce people to bring limes as well, lime-juice being a necessary adjunct to belachan when prepared for eating.

"Buah rumput, [442] or bunga rumput, instead of biji--tin sand.

"Akar, or akar hidop, [443] instead of ular--snake.

"Kunyit, [444] instead of lipan--centipede.

"Batu puteh, [445] instead of timah--metallic tin.

"It was important that the Pawang should be a marked man as to personal appearance; for this reason there are certain positions of the body which may be assumed by him only when on the mine. These attitudes are--first, standing with the hands clasped behind the back; and, secondly, with the hands resting on the hips. This second position is assumed when he is engaged in 'invocating' the 'spirits' of a mine; the pawang takes his station in front of the genggulang, [446] having a long piece of white cloth in his right hand, which he waves backwards and forwards over his shoulder three times, each time calling the special hantu whom he wishes to propitiate, by name; whilst engaged in this invocation his left hand rests on his hip. During the performance of any professional duty he is also invariably dressed in a black coat; this nobody but the pawang is allowed to wear on a mine. These attitudes and the black coat comprise what is technically termed the pakei pawang.

"The professional duty of the pawang of a mine consists in carrying out certain ceremonies, for which he is entitled to collect the customary fees, and in enforcing certain rules for the breach of which he levies the customary fines. [447]

"At the time of the opening of a mine he has to erect a genggulang, [448] and to call upon the tutelary hantu of the locality to assist in the enterprise. The fee for this is one bag (karong) of tin sand.

"At the request of the miners, instead of a genggulang a kapala nasi [449] may be erected, as cheaper and more expeditious. The fee is one gantang [450] of tin sand.

"He also assists in the ceremony of hanging the ancha [451] in the smelting-house; his principal associate in this is the Panglima Klian, who draws the ancha up to its proper position close under the attaps.

"1. Raw cotton must not be brought on to a mine in any shape, either in its native state or as stuffing of bolsters or mattresses. The fine (hukum pawang) is $12.50; the ordinary pillow used by a miner is made of some soft wood.

"2. Black coats and the attitudes designated pakei pawang [452] may not be assumed by any one on the mine, with the exception of the pawang. (Hukum pawang, $12.50.)

"3. The gourd used as a water vessel by Malays, all descriptions of earthenware, glass, and all sorts of limes and lemons, and the outer husk of the cocoa-nut, are prohibited articles on mines. (Hukum pawang, $12.50.)

"Note.--All eating- and drinking-vessels should be made of cocoa-nut shell or of wood: the noise made by earthenware and glass is said to be offensive to the hantu. But in the case of a breach of this regulation the pawang would warn the offenders two or three times before he claimed the fine.

"4. Gambling and quarrelling are strictly forbidden on mines; the fine is claimed for the first offence. (Hukum pawang, $12.50.)

"5. Wooden aqueducts (palong) must be prepared in the jungle a long way from the mine. (Hukum pawang, $12.50.)

"The noise of the chopping is said to be offensive to the hantu.

"6. Any breach of the bahasa pantang is an offence. (Hukum pawang, $12.50.)

"7. Charcoal must not be allowed to fall into the races. (Hukum pawang, $12.50.)

"8. A miner must not wear and go to work on the mine in another man's trousers. (Hukum pawang, one karong of tin sand.)

"Note.--This applies only to the senar seluar basah, or working dress. It is also an offence to work in the garment called sarong.

"9. If the chupak (measure) of the mine is broken, it must be renewed within three days. (Hukum pawang, one bhara of tin.)

"10. No weapon may be brought within the four posts of the smelting-house which immediately surround the furnace. (Hukum pawang, $1.25.)

"11. Coats may not be worn within this space. (Hukum pawang, $1.25.)

"12. These posts may not be cut or hacked. (Hukum pawang, one slab of tin.)

"13. If a miner returns from work, bringing back with him some tin sand, and discovers that somebody has eaten the cold rice which he had left at home, he may claim from the delinquent one karong of tin sand. The pawang adjudicates in the matter.

"14. An earthenware pot (priok) which is broken must be replaced within three days. (Hukum pawang, one karong of tin sand.)

"15. No one may cross a race in which a miner is sluicing without going some distance above him, up stream; if he does he incurs a penalty of as much tin sand as the race contains at the moment, payable to the owner of the race. The pawang adjudicates.

"16. A kris, or spear, at a mine, if without a sheath, must be carefully wrapped in leaves, even the metal setting (simpei) must be hidden. Spears may only be carried at the "trail." (Hukum pawang, uncertain.)

"17. On the death of any miner, each of his comrades on that mine pays to the pawang one chupak (penjuru) of tin sand.

"It will be noticed that the amount of the majority of these fines is $12.50; this is half of the amount of the fine which, under the Malay customary law, a chief could impose on a ra`iyat [453] for minor offences. It is also the amount of the customary dowry in the case of a marriage with a slave or with the widow or divorced wife of a ra`iyat.

"The Malay miner has peculiar ideas about tin and its properties; in the first instance, he believes that it is under the protection and command of certain spirits whom he considers it necessary to propitiate; next he considers that the tin itself is alive and has many of the properties of living matter, that of its own volition it can move from place to place, that it can reproduce itself, and that it has special likes--or perhaps affinities--for certain people and things, and vice versa. Hence it is advisable to treat tin-ore with a certain amount of respect, to consult its convenience, and what is, perhaps, more curious, to conduct the business of mining in such a way that the tin-ore may, as it were, be obtained without its own knowledge!"

Mr. Hale adds an interesting vocabulary of Malay mining terms from which the following words are extracted as being specially connected with the superstitions of the miners:--

Ancha.--A square frame 1' 6'' × 1' 6'', composed of strips of split bamboo for the floor and four pieces of peeled wood for the sides. The proper wood is kayu sungkei, [454] because it has flat even twigs and leaves which lie flat and symmetrically; these must be bound together with a creeper: rattan may not be used; it is hung to the tulang bumbong [455] just under the attaps [456] of the smelting-shed; it is used as an altar, the offerings made by the miners to the spirits being placed on it.

Genggulang.--The platform or altar erected by the pawang at the opening of a mine. It should be built entirely of kayu sungkei. The wood is peeled, except the four branches which serve as posts; these are only peeled up to the twigs and leaves, which are left on, about 4 feet 6 inches from the ground. At 3 feet 3 inches from the ground a square platform of round peeled sticks, about 1 foot 3 inches each way, is arranged; one foot above the level of the platform a sort of railing is fixed round three sides of the square, and from the open side a ladder with four steps reaches down to the ground; the railing is carried down to the ground on each side of the ladder, and supports a fringe of cocoa-nut leaves (jari-lipan). The whole erection must be tied together with creepers; rattan must not be used.

Jari lipan.--A fringe made of the young white leaflets of the cocoa-nut palm plaited together. [457]

Jampi.--The incantation of the pawang.

Kapala nasi.--A stake of peeled wood (kayu sungkei) stuck in the ground; the top of this is split into four so as to support a platform similar to that of the genggulang. Offerings are made upon it. [458]

Pantang burok mata.--The period of mourning observed when a death occurs at a mine.

Mourning consists in abstention from work (in the case of a neighbour or comrade) for three days, or, in the case of the death of the pawang, penghulu kelian, or the feudal chief, for seven days. The expression is derived from the supposition that in three days the eyes of a corpse have quite disappeared. Chinese miners have a similar custom; whoever goes to assist in the burial of a corpse must not only abstain from work, but must not go near the mine or smelting furnace for three days. [459]

Perasap.--Half a cocoa-nut shell, a cup, or any other vessel, in which votive offerings of sweet-smelling woods and gums are burnt.

Sangka.--A receptacle in which to burn offerings of sweet woods and gums; it is made of a stick of bamboo about three feet long, one end being split and opened out to receive the charcoal; it is stuck in the ground near races and heaps of tin sand. [460]

Tatin gulang.--The pawang's fee for the ceremony of erecting a genggulang. [461]

The following notes on tin-mining in Selangor were contributed to the Selangor Journal by Mr. J. C. Pasqual, a well-known local miner:--

"The Malay mining pawang will soon be a thing of the past, and many a pawang has returned to tilling the soil in place of his less legitimate occupation of imposing upon the credulity of the miners. The reason for this is not far to seek, as the Malay miner, as well as the Chinese miner, of the old school, with their thousand-and-one superstitions, has given place to a more modern and matter-of-fact race, who place more reliance for prospecting purposes on boring tools than on the divination and jampi of the pawang. But the profession of the pawang has not altogether died out, as he is sometimes called into requisition for the purpose of casting out evil spirits from the mines; of converting amang [462] (pyrites) into tin-ore, and of invoking the spirits of a mine previous to the breaking of the first sod in a new venture. These ceremonies generally involve the slaying of a buffalo, a goat, or fowls, and the offering of betel-leaf, incense, and rice, according to the means of the towkay lombong.

"The term pawang is now used by the Chinese to indicate the 'smelter' (Chinese) of a mine (probably from the fact that this office was formerly the monopoly of the Malay pawang).

"To the pawangs are attributed extraordinary powers, for besides inducing tin-ore to continue or become plentiful in a mine, he can cause its disappearance from a rich 'claim' by the inevitable jampi, this latter resource being resorted to by way of revenge in cases where the towkay lombong (or labor) fails to carry out his pecuniary obligation towards the pawang whose aid he had invoked in less prosperous times. Some of the stories told of the prowess of pawangs are very ridiculous; for instance, a native lady in Ulu Langat (for women are also credited with the pawang attributes), who was the pawang of Sungei Jelok in Kajang, could command a grain of tin-ore to crawl on the palm of her hand like a live worm. [463] The failure of the Sungei Jelok mines was attributed to her displeasure on account of an alleged breach of contract on the part of the towkay lombong.

"The term pawang is sometimes used as a verb in the sense of 'to prospect' a sungei or stream; thus in alluding to certain streams or mines, it is not uncommon to hear a Malay say that they have been prospected (sudah di-pawangkan) by 'Inche' So-and-so--meaning that the stream had been discovered and proved by a pawang prior to the opening of the mines." [464]

In a later article Mr. Pasqual says: "It is believed that tin will even on rare occasions announce its presence by a peculiar noise heard in the stillness of night, and that some birds and insects by their chirrupings and whirrings will proclaim its whereabouts." [465]

In a still later article, after briefly referring to the use of the bhasa pantang, or "Taboo Language," by tin-miners in Selangor, Mr. Pasqual proceeds:--

"There are, again, certain acts which are forbidden. In the mine, especially if the karang [466] has not yet been removed, it is forbidden to wear shoes or carry an umbrella. This rule, it seems, originated with the coolies themselves, who in olden times insisted that the Towkay Labur should take off his shoes and close his umbrella whenever he visited the mine, so that, as they alleged, the spirits might not be offended. But their real object was not to allow him to pry too much into the mine, in case it might not bear scrutiny; and thus, by depriving him of the protection from the sun and from the rough mining quartz which would have been afforded by the umbrella and shoes, they prevented him from going about here, there, and everywhere, and making unpleasant inquiries, as he would otherwise have liked to do.

"Quarrelling and fighting in the mine is strictly forbidden, as it has a tendency to drive away the ore.

"Bathing in the mine is not allowed.

"A man must not work in the mine with only his bathing-cloth around his body. He must wear trousers.

"If a man takes off his sun hat and puts it on the ground, he must turn it over and let it rest upon its crown.

"Limes cannot be brought into the mine. This superstition is peculiar to the Malay miner, who has a special dread of this fruit, which, in pantang language, he calls salah nama (lit. 'wrong name') instead of limau nipis.

"In looking at the check-roll it is forbidden to point at the names with the finger. No one may examine the check-roll at night with an open light, owing more probably to the fear of setting it on fire than to superstitious prejudices.

"It is considered unlucky for a man to fall off the mining ladder, for, whether he is hurt or not, he is likely to die within the year.

"An outbreak of fire in the mine is considered an omen of prosperity. Several mines have been known to double or treble their output of tin after the occurrence of a fire.

"It is unlucky for a coolie to die in the kongsi house. When, therefore, a man is very sick and past all hopes of recovery, it is customary to put him out of the house in an extempore hut erected in the scrub, so that death may not take place in the kongsi amongst the living. His chuleis [467] attend him during his last hours and bury him when dead. These and other superstitious ideas and observances are, however, fast dying out, though it would still be an unsafe experiment to enter a mine with shoes on and an umbrella over your head." [468]

The remaining notes on mining ceremonies and charms were collected by me in Selangor. On reaching the tin-bearing stratum, the tin-ore is addressed by name:--

"Peace be with you, O Tin-Ore, At the first it was dew that turned into water, And water that turned into foam, And foam that turned into rock, And rock that turned into tin-ore; Do you, O Tin-Ore, lying in a matrix of solid rock, Come forth from this matrix of solid rock; If you do not come forth You shall be a rebel in the sight of God. Ho, Tin-Ore, Sir 'Floating Islet,' 'Flotsam-at-sea,' and 'Flotsam-on-land,' Do you float up to the surface of this my tank, [469] Or you shall be a rebel to God," etc.

Sometimes each grain of ore appears to be considered as endowed with a separate entity or individuality. Thus we find in another invocation the following passage, where the wizard is addressing the grains of ore:--

"Do You (Grains of Ore) that are on the Hills descend to the Plains, You that are at the Head-waters descend to Mid-stream, You that are at the Estuary ascend to Mid-stream. And assemble yourselves together in this spot.

Assemble yourselves together, 'Rice-grains' and 'Spinach-seed,' 'Tobacco-seed,' 'Millet,' and 'Wild Ginger-Seed,' Assemble ye together in this spot. I am desirous of excavating this spot, And of making a mine here; If ye do not assemble yourselves together I shall curse you; You shall be turned into dust, and turned into air, And you shall also be turned into water."

The separate personality of each individual grain is remarkably clear in the above passage. The names of the different kinds of seed are in allusion to the various shapes and sizes of the grains of ore.

Yet in the very same charm various kinds of lizards and centipedes are begged to "bring the tin-ore with them, some of them a grain or two, some of them a fistful or two, some of them a gallon or two, some of them a load or two," and so on. No doubt the wizard was determined to allow the grains no loophole for escape.

The objects of the charms employed by the mining wizards are the following:--

(1) To clear the jungle of evil spirits (and propitiate the good ones?) before starting to fell, as is shown by the following passage:--

"O Grandfather King Solomon, Black King Solomon, I desire to fell these woods, But it is not I who am in charge of these woods, It is Yellow King Solomon who is in charge of them, And Red King Solomon who is in charge of them. It is I who fell the jungle, But only with the permission of those two persons. Rise, rise, O Ye who watch it (the tin?), [Here are] three 'chews' of betel for you, and three cigarettes, O Maimurup, O Maimerah, O Gadek Hitam, Si Gadek Hitam (Black Grannie) from Down-stream, Si Gadek Kuning (Yellow Grannie) from Up-stream, And Si Maimerah from Mid-stream."]

(Here some lines follow which are as yet untranslatable.)

"Retire ye and avaunt from hence, If ye retire not from hence, As you stride, your leg shall break, As you stretch your hand out, your hand shall be crippled, As you open your eye (to look), your eyeball shall burst, Your eye stabbed through with a thorn of the T'rong Asam, [470] And your hand pierced with the Sega jantan, [471] And your finger-nails with Heart of Brazilwood. Moreover, your tongue shall be slit with a bamboo splinter, For thus was it sworn by 'Grandfather Sakernanaininaini' [472] Into the leaf (of the) Putajaya, Upon the summit of the mountain of Ceylon.

I know the origin from which you spring, From the Black Blood and the Red, That was your origin. We are two sons of one father, but with different inheritances; In my charge is Gold and Tin-ore, In yours are Rocks and Sand, With chaff and bran."

(2) To clear evil spirits away from the ground before commencing the work of excavation. The charm for this is given in the Appendix, but is little more than a list of names.

(3) To propitiate the local spirits and induce the tin-ore to show itself, when the tin-bearing stratum is reached, by means of the charm quoted above.

(4) To induce the spirits to partake of a banquet which is spread for them in a receptacle intended to be the model of a royal audience-chamber.

This, the "spirits' audience-chamber" (as it is called), is usually from two to three feet square, and is filled with offerings similar in character to those usually deposited on the sacrificial tray (anchak), with the addition, however, of certain articles which are considered to be specially representative of the miners' food. These articles are sugar-cane, plantains, yams, sweet potatoes, and fish, etc.; all of which should be placed together with the customary offerings in the "spirits' audience-chamber." Outside the "audience-hall," at each of the two front corners, should be placed a red and a white flag and a wax taper; and at each of the two back corners should be placed a taper, making in all four flags and seven tapers.

A standard censer (perasapan) must be erected in front of the "audience-chamber," and a second small censer must also be obtained, so that burning incense may be "waved" to and fro underneath the floor of the audience-chamber in order to fumigate it before the offerings are deposited inside it.

During the fumigation a charm is recited, in which the assistance of the spirits of certain canonized Muhammadan worthies is invoked, concluding thus:--

"Peace be with you, O White Sheikh, wizard of the virgin jungle, Wizards old, and wizards young, Come hither and share the banquet I have prepared for you. I crave pardon for all mistakes, For all shortcomings I beg pardon in every particular."

Then when the tapers are all lighted and the offerings ready, a further charm is recited, which begins as follows:--

"Ho, White Sheikh, king of the virgin jungle, It is you to whom belong all people of the jungle and virgin forest, Do you, whose back is turned towards heaven, Give your orders to all the Elders of the earth and Princes who are here, You who here hold the position of Indra, Come hither and partake of my banquet.

I wish to ask for your assistance, I wish to open (excavate) this mine." [473]

The chief taboos are the killing of any sort of living creature within the mine; to wear a sarong (Malay skirt); to bring into the mine the skin of any beast; and to wear shoes or use an umbrella within the mine. These are some of the perpetual taboos, but no doubt there are many others.

In the case of a sacrifice, however, the white buffalo may of course be killed, not within the mine itself, but still upon its brink; and when this is done, the head is buried, and small portions (which must be "representative" of every part of the carcase) should be taken and deposited in the "audience-chamber."

Among the seven days' taboos are mentioned the killing of any living timber (within the precincts of the mine?), lewdness, and the praising or admiring of the "grass seed" (puji buah rumput), which is the name by which the tin-ore must invariably be called within the precincts of the mine. This last taboo is due to the use of a special mining vocabulary to which the greatest attention was formerly paid, and which did not differ very greatly from that used in Perak.

Another account of the ceremony runs as follows; I give it word for word as I took it down from my Malay informant:--

"Take five portions of cooked and five portions of uncooked fowls, both white and black, together with black pulut rice, [474] millet-seed (sekoi), seeds of the chebak China, etc. etc. When all is ready, burn incense, scatter the black rice with the right hand over the bottom of a tray, i.e. an anchak (such as is used for offerings to the spirits), fumigate and deposit the offerings in five portions upon this layer of rice (one portion going to each corner and one to the middle of the tray). Take black cloth, five cubits long, fumigate it, and wave it thrice round the head with the right hand from left to right, repeating the following invocation (serapah):--

"O Grandfather 'Batin' [475] the Elder, In whose charge are caverns and hill-locked basins, O Grandfather 'Batin' the Younger, In whose charge are all these your civil and military companies, May the Ore which is on the Hills descend to the Plain, May that which is Up-stream descend to Mid-stream, And that which is Down-stream ascend to Mid-stream, Assemble you together, O Ores, in this spot; It is not I who call you, It is Grandfather Batin the Elder who calls you, It is Batin the Younger who calls you, It is the Elder Wizard who calls you, It is the Younger Wizard who calls you, Assemble yourselves together, Rubbish and Trash, House-lizards, 'Kalerik,' Centipedes, and Millipedes, And partake of my banquet. Let whosoever comes bring me ore, A ketong [476] or two,

A fistful or two, An arai [477] or two, A gallon or two, A basket or two, Assemble yourselves together, Boiled Rice-seed, Spinach-seed, Tobacco-seed, Millet-seed, Wild Ginger-seed, Assemble yourselves together in this spot. I wish to excavate this spot, I wish to open a mine: If you do not come, if you do not gather yourselves together, I shall curse you; You shall turn into dust, into air, and into water. By virtue of the magic arts of my teacher be my petition granted. It is not I who petition, It is the Elder Wizard who petitions, It is the Younger Wizard who petitions. By the grace of 'There is no god but God,'" etc.

The foregoing descriptions of mining ceremonies and charms refer to tin only, but in so far as general animistic ideas go, they might be equally well applied to other metals, such as silver and gold.

It has already been remarked that as the Tin spirit is believed to take the form of a buffalo, so the Gold spirit is said to take the form of a golden roe-deer (kijang). Of the ceremonies which the Malays believe to be essential for successful gold-mining, not much information has yet been published. In Denys' Descriptive Dictionary, however, we read the following:--

"Gold is believed to be under the care and in the gift of a dewa, or god, and its search is therefore unhallowed, for the miners must conciliate the dewa by prayers and offerings, and carefully abstain from pronouncing the name of God or performing any act of worship. Any acknowledgment of the sovereignty of Allah offends the dewa, who immediately 'hides the gold,' or renders it invisible. At some of the great limbongan [478] mas or gold-pits in the Malay States of the interior, any allusion to the Deity subjects the unwitting miner to a penalty which is imposed by the Penghûlu. The qualities of the gold vary greatly in the same country. The finest gold brought to market is that of the principality of Pahang, on the eastern side of the Malay Peninsula, which brings a higher price than even that of Australia by better than three per cent. The gold is all obtained by washing, and the metal has never been worked, and scarcely even traced to the original veins. It is mostly in the form of powder or dust--the mas-urai of the Malays, literally 'loose or disintegrated gold.'" [479]

Gold, silver, and an amalgam formed of the two, are regarded as the three most precious metals, and of these gold is, to a very uncertain and partial extent, still sometimes regarded as a royal prerogative. [480]

Of Silver still less information has been collected than of gold. This, however, is but natural, as silver has not yet been found in payable quantities, whereas many gold mines exist. It is just possible, however, that silver may be worked by the Malays on a small scale in the Siamese-Malay States, as it would be difficult on any other hypothesis to account for the following invocation, which was given me by a Malay of Kelantan ('Che `Abas):--

"Peace be with you, O Child of the Solitary Jin Salaka (Silver), I know your origin. Your dwelling-place is the Yellow Cloud Rock; The Place of your Penance the Sea of Balongan Darah; The Place of your Penance is a Pond in every stream; The Place of your Birth was the Bay where the Wind Dies; Ho, Child of the Solitary Jin Salaka, Come hither at this time, this very moment, I wish to make you a propitiatory offering, to banquet you on arrack and toddy. If you do not come hither at this very moment You shall be a rebel unto God, And a rebel unto God's Prophet Solomon, For I am God's Prophet Solomon."

No other metals, so far as I am aware, are worked to any extent in the Peninsula, yet there is the clearest possible evidence of animistic ideas about Iron. Thus for the Sacred Lump of Iron which forms part of the regalia of more than one of the petty Sultans in the Peninsula, the Malays entertain the most extraordinary reverence, not unmingled with superstitious terror. [481] It is upon this "Lump of Iron," when placed in water, that the most solemn and binding oath known to those who make use of it is sworn; and it is to this "Lump of Iron" that the Malay wizard refers when he recites his category of the most terrible denunciations that Malay magic has been able to invent. [482]

It is possible that there may be, in the Malay mind at all events, some connection between the supernatural powers ascribed to this portion of the regalia and the more general use of iron as a charm against evil spirits. For the various forms of iron which play so conspicuous a part in Malay magic, from the long iron nail which equally protects the new-born infant and the Rice-Soul from the powers of evil, to the betel-nut scissors which are believed to scare the evil spirits from the dead, are alike called the representatives (symbols or emblems) of Iron (tanda besi). So, too, is the blade of the wood-knife, or cutlass, which a jungle Malay will sometimes plant in the bed of a stream (with its edge towards the source) before he will venture to drink of the water. So, too, is the blade of the same knife, upon the side of which he will occasionally seat himself when he is eating alone in the forest; both of these precautions being taken, however, as I have more than once been told, not only to drive away evil spirits, but to "confirm" the speaker's own soul (menetapkan semangat).

Even Stone appears to be regarded as distinctly connected with ideas of animism. Thus the stone deposited in the basket with the Rice-soul, the stone deposited in the child's swinging cot by way of a substitute when the child is temporarily taken out of it, and above all the various concretions to be found from time to time both in the bodies of animals ("Bezoar" stones) and in the stems or fruit of trees (as tabasheer), are examples of this. Examples of tabasheer have already been quoted (under Vegetation Charms), but a few remarks about Bezoar stones may be of interest.

The Bezoar stones known to the Peninsular Malays are usually obtained either from monkeys or porcupines. Extraordinary magical virtues are attached to these stones, the gratings of which are mixed with water and administered to the sick. [483]

I was once asked $200 for a small stone which its owner kept in cotton-wool in a small tin box, where it lay surrounded by grains of rice, upon which he declared that it fed. [484] I asked him how it could be proved that it was a true Bezoar stone (which it undoubtedly was not), and he declared that if it were placed upon an inverted tumbler and touched with the point of a k'ris (dagger) or a lime-fruit it would commence to move about. Both tests were therefore applied in my presence, but the motion of the Bezoar stone in each case proved to be due to the most overt trickery on the part of the owner, who by pressing on one side of the stone (which was spherical in shape) naturally caused it to move; in fact I was easily able to produce the same effect in the same way, as I presently showed him, though of course he could not be brought to admit the deception. [485]

Before I leave this portion of the subject, I may mention that magic powers are very generally ascribed to the "celts" or "stone-age" implements which are frequently found in the Peninsula, and are called thunderbolts (batu halilintar). They are not unfrequently grated and mixed with water and drunk like the Bezoar stones, but usually they are kept merely as a touch-stone for gold.

(c) Water

1. PURIFICATION BY WATER

The following description (by Sir W. E. Maxwell) of the bathing ceremony, as practised by the Perak Malays, may be taken as typical of this subject:--

"Limes are used in Perak, as we use soap, when a Malay has resolved on having a really good "scrub." They are cut in two and squeezed (ramas) in the hand. In Penang a root called sintok is usually preferred to limes. When the body is deemed sufficiently cleansed the performer, taking his stand facing the East, spits seven times, and then counts up seven aloud. After the word tujoh (seven) he throws away the remains of the limes or sintok to the West, saying aloud, Pergi-lah samua sial jambalang deripada badan aku ka pusat tasek Paujangi, 'Misfortune and spirits of evil begone from my body to the whirlpool of the lake Paujangi!' Then he throws (jurus) a few buckets of water over himself, and the operation is complete.

"The lake Paujangi is situated in mid-ocean, and its whirlpool most likely causes the tides. All the waters of the sea and rivers are finally received there. It is probably as eligible an abode for exorcised spirits as the Red Sea was once considered to be by our forefathers." [486]

The ceremony just described is evidently a form of purification by water. Similar purificatory ceremonies form an integral part of Malay customs at birth, adolescence, marriage, sickness, death, and in fact at every critical period of the life of a Malay; but will be most conveniently discussed in detail under each of the particular headings referred to. The tepong tawar ceremony (for the details of which see