Chapter III · Relations with the Supernatural World

(a) The Magician

“Very often the office is hereditary, or at least the appointment is practically confined to the members of one family. Sometimes it is endowed with certain ‘properties’ handed down from one Pawang to his successor, known as the kabĕsaran, or, as it were, regalia. On one occasion I was nearly called upon to decide whether these adjuncts—which consisted, in this particular case, of a peculiar kind of head-dress—were the personal property of the person then in possession of them (who had got them from his father, a deceased Pawang), or were to be regarded as official insignia descending with the office in the event of the natural heir declining to serve! Fortunately I was spared the difficult task of deciding this delicate point of law, as I managed to persuade the owner to take up the appointment.

“But quite apart from such external marks of dignity, the Pawang is a person of very real significance. In all agricultural operations, such as sowing, reaping, irrigation works, and the clearing of jungle for planting, in fishing at sea, in prospecting for minerals, and in cases of sickness, his assistance is invoked. He is entitled by custom to certain small fees; thus, after a good harvest he is allowed, in some villages, five gantangs of padi, one gantang of rice (bĕras), and two chupaks of ĕmping (a preparation of rice and cocoa-nut made into a sort of sweetmeat) from each householder. After recovery from sickness his remuneration is the very modest amount of tiga wang baharu, that is, 7½ cents.

“It is generally believed that a good harvest can only be secured by complying with his instructions, which are of a peculiar and comprehensive character.

“They consist largely of prohibitions, which are known as pantang. Thus, for instance, it is pantang in some places to work in the rice-field on the 14th and 15th days of the lunar month; and this rule of enforced idleness, being very congenial to the Malay character, is, I believe, pretty strictly observed.

“Again, in reaping, certain instruments are proscribed, and in the inland villages it is regarded as a great crime to use the sickle (sabit) for cutting the padi; at the very least the first few ears should be cut with a tuai, a peculiar small instrument consisting of a semicircular blade set transversely on a piece of wood or bamboo, which is held between the fingers, and which cuts only an ear or two at a time. Also the padi must not be threshed by hitting it against the inside of a box, a practice known as banting padi.

The foregoing description is so precise and clear that I have not much to add to it. There are, however, one or two points which require emphasis. One of these is that the priestly magician stands in certain respects on the same footing as the divine man or king—that is to say, he owns certain insignia which are exactly analogous to the regalia of the latter, and are, as Mr. Blagden points out, called by the same name (kabĕsaran). He shares, moreover, with the king the right to make use of cloth dyed with the royal colour (yellow), and, like the king, too, possesses the right to enforce the use of certain ceremonial words and phrases, in which respect, indeed, his list is longer, if anything, than that of royalty.

He also acts as a sort of spirit-medium and gives oracles in trances; possesses considerable political influence; practises (very occasional) austerities; observes some degree of chastity, and appears quite sincere in his conviction of his own powers. At least he always has a most plausible excuse ready to account for his inability to do whatever is required. An aged magician who came from Perak to doctor one of H.H. the Sultan’s sons (Raja Kahar) while I was at Langat, had the unusual reputation of being able to raise a sandbank in the sea at will; but when I asked if I could see it done, he explained that it could only be done in time of war when he was hard pressed by an enemy’s boat, and he could not do it for the sake of mere ostentation! Moreover, like members of their profession all the world over, these medicine-men are, perhaps naturally, extremely reticent; it was seldom that they would let their books be seen, much less copied, even for fair payment, and a Pawang once refused to tell me a charm until I had taken my shoes off and was seated with him upon a yellow cloth while he repeated the much-prized formula.

The office of magician is, as has been said, very often hereditary. It is not so always, however, there being certain recognised ways in which a man may “get magic.” One of the most peculiar is as follows: “To obtain magical powers (ʿelmu) you must meet the ghost of a murdered man. Take the midrib of a leaf of the ‘ivory’ cocoa-nut palm (pĕlĕpah niyor gading), which is to be laid on the grave, and two more midribs, which are intended to represent canoe-paddles, and carry them with the help of a companion to the grave of the murdered man at the time of the full moon (the 15th day of the lunar month) when it falls upon a Tuesday. Then take a cent’s worth of incense, with glowing embers in a censer, and carry them to the head-post of the grave of the deceased. Fumigate the grave, going three times round it, and call upon the murdered man by name:—

‘Hearken, So-and-so,

And assist me;

I am taking (this boat) to the saints of God,

Here take the first midrib, fumigate it, and lay it upon the head of the grave, repeating ‘Kur Allah’ (‘Cluck, cluck, God!’) seven times. You and your companion must now take up a sitting posture, one at the head and the other at the foot of the grave, facing the grave post, and use the canoe-paddles which you have brought. In a little while the surrounding scenery will change and take upon itself the appearance of the sea, and finally an aged man will appear, to whom you must address the same request as before.”

(b) High Places

“These kramats abound in Malacca territory; there is hardly a village but can boast some two or three in its immediate neighbourhood, and they are perfectly well known to all the inhabitants.

“Theoretically, kramats are supposed to be the graves of deceased holy men, the early apostles of the Muhammadan faith, the first founders of the village who cleared the primeval jungle, or other persons of local notoriety in a former age; and there is no doubt that many of them are that and nothing more. But even so, the reverence paid to them and the ceremonies that are performed at them savour a good deal too much of ancestor-worship to be attributable to an orthodox Muhammadan origin.

“It is certain, however, that many of these kramats are not graves at all: many of them are in the jungle, on hills and in groves, like the high places of the Old Testament idolatries; they contain no trace of a grave (while those that are found in villages usually have grave-stones), and they appear to be really ancient sites of a primitive nature-worship or the adoration of the spirits of natural objects.

“Malays, when asked to account for them, often have recourse to the explanations that they are kramat jin, that is, “spirit”-places; and if a Malay is pressed on the point, and thinks that the orthodoxy of these practices is being impugned, he will sometimes add that the jin in question is a jin islām, a Muhammadan and quite orthodox spirit!

“Thus on Bukit Nyalas, near the Johol frontier, there is a kramat consisting of a group of granite boulders on a ledge of rock overhanging a sheer descent of a good many feet; bamboo clumps grow on the place, and there were traces of religious rites having been performed there, but no grave whatever. This place was explained to me to be the kramat of one Nakhoda Hussin, described as a jin (of the orthodox variety), who presides over the water, rain, and streams. People occasionally burned incense there to avert drought and get enough water for irrigating their fields. There was another kramat of his lower down the hill, also consisting of rocks, one of which was shaped something like a boat. I was informed that this jin is attended by tigers which guard the hill, and are very jealous of the intrusion of other tigers from the surrounding country. He is believed to have revealed himself to the original Pawang of the village, the mythical founder of the kampong of Nyalas. In a case like this it seems probable that the name attached to this object of reverence is a later accretion, and that under a thin disguise we have here a relic of the worship of the spirit of rivers and streams, a sort of elemental deity localised in this particular place, and still regarded as a proper object of worship and propitiation, in spite of the theoretically strict monotheism of the Muhammadan creed. Again, at another place the kramat is nothing but a tree, of somewhat singular shape, having a large swelling some way up the trunk. It was explained to me that this tree was connected in a special way with the prospects of local agriculture, the size of the swelling increasing in good years and diminishing in bad seasons! Hence it was naturally regarded with considerable awe by the purely agricultural population of the neighbourhood.

After explaining the difference between beneficent spirits and the spirits of evil, Mr. Blagden continues: “Some time ago one of these objectionable hantus (spirits of evil) had settled down in a kĕrayong tree in the middle of this village of Bukit Sĕnggeh, and used to frighten people who passed that way in the dusk; so the Pawang was duly called upon to exorcise it, and under his superintendence the tree was cut down, after which there was no more trouble. But it is certain that it would have been excessively dangerous for an ordinary layman to do so.

“This point may be illustrated by a case which was reported to me soon after it occurred, and which again shows the intimate connection of spirits with trees. A Javanese coolie, on the main road near Ayer Panas, cut down a tree which was known to be occupied by a hantu. He was thereupon seized with what, from the description, appears to have been an epileptic fit, and showed all the traditional symptoms of demoniac possession. He did not recover till his friends had carried out the directions of the spirit, speaking through the sufferer’s mouth, it seems, viz., to burn incense, offer rice, and release a fowl. After which the hantu left him.

The following description, by Sir W. Maxwell, of a Perak kramat may be taken as fairly typical of the kramat, in which there really is a grave:—

“Rightly or wrongly the Malays of Larut assign an Achinese origin to an old grave which was discovered in the forest some years ago, and of which I propose to give a brief description. It is situated about half-way between the Larut Residency and the mining village of Kamunting. In the neighbourhood the old durian trees of Java betoken the presence of a Malay population at a date long prior to the advent of the Chinese miner. The grave was discovered about twenty years ago by workmen employed by the Mĕntri of Perak to make the Kamunting road, and it excited much curiosity among the Malays at the time. The Mĕntri and all the ladies of his family went on elephants to see it, and it has been an object of much popular prestige ever since.

“The Malays of Java were able from the village tradition to give the name and sex of the occupant of this lonely tomb, ‘Toh Bidan Susu Lanjut,’ whose name sounds better in the original than in an English translation. She is said to have been an old Achinese woman of good family; of her personal history nothing is known, but her claims to respectability are evinced by the carved head and foot stones of Achinese workmanship which adorn her grave, and her sanctity is proved by the fact that the stones are eight feet apart. It is a well-known Malay superstition that the stones placed to mark the graves of Saints miraculously increase their relative distance during the lapse of years, and thus bear mute testimony to the holiness of the person whose resting-place they mark.

Mr. George Bellamy, writing in 1893, thus described the kramat at Tanjong Karang in the Kuala Selangor district:—

In No. 2 of the same volume of the Selangor Journal Mr. Bellamy refers to another kramat—that of ’Toh Kĕtapang—which he appears to localise in Ulu Selangor.

“The chief kramats in the district are ‘Makam ’Toh Sayah’ (the tomb of a Javanese of high repute); ‘Makam Said Idris,’ at Rekoh, Said Idris being the father of the Pĕnghulu of Cheras; ‘Makam ’Toh Janggut’ (a ‘Kampar’ man), on the road to Cheras; and ‘Makam ’Toh Gerdu or Berdu,’ at Dusun Tua, Ulu Langat. ’Toh Berdu was of Sakai origin.”

I have never yet, however, heard of any shrine being dedicated to a Chinaman, and it is probable that this species of canonisation is confined (at least in modern times) to local celebrities professing the Muhammadan religion, as would certainly be the case of the Malays and Javanese mentioned in the foregoing paragraph, and quite possibly too in the case of the Sakai.

It is true that Chinese often worship at these shrines—just as, on the same principle, they employ Malay magicians in prospecting for tin; but there appear to be certain limits beyond which they cannot go, as it was related to me when I was living in the neighbourhood, that a Chinaman who had, in the innocence of his heart, offered at a Moslem shrine a piece of the accursed pork, was pounced upon and slain before he reached home by one of the tigers which guarded the shrine.

Such fasting-places are usually, as in Java, either solitary hills or places which present some great natural peculiarity; even remarkable trees and rocks being, as has already been pointed out, pressed into the service of this Malay “natural religion.”

(c) Nature of Rites

The main divisions of the magico-religious ceremonies of the Malays are prayer, sacrifice, lustration, fasting, divination, and possession.

Prayer, which is defined by Professor Tylor as “a request made to a deity as if he were a man,” is still in the unethical stage among the Malays; no request for anything but personal advantages of a material character being ever, so far as I am aware, preferred by the worshipper. The efficacy of prayer is, however, often supposed to be enhanced by repetition.

This homage-theory will, I believe, be found to cover by far the greater bulk of the sacrifices usually offered by Malays, and the idea of abnegation appears to be practically confined to votal ceremonies or vows (niat), in which the nature and extent of the offering are not regulated by custom, but depend entirely upon the wealth or caprice of the worshipper, there being merely a tacit understanding that he shall sacrifice something which is of more than nominal value to himself.

Of the manner in which offerings are supposed to be received by the deity to whom they are offered it is difficult to obtain very much evidence. I have, however, frequently questioned Malays upon this subject, and on the whole think it can very safely be said that the deity is not supposed to touch the solid or material part of the offering, but only the essential part, whether it be “life, savour, essence, quality” or even the “soul.”

It will perhaps be advisable, in order to avoid repetition, to describe a few of the special and distinctive sub-rites which form part of many of the more important ceremonies, such as (in particular), rites performed at shrines, the rite of burning incense, the scattering of (or banqueting upon) sacrificial rice, and the application of the “Neutralising” Rice-paste (tĕpong tawar).

Of the rites performed at shrines, Mr. Blagden says: “The worship there, as with most other kramats, consists of the burning of incense, the offering of nasi kunyet (yellow rice), and the killing of goats; but I also noticed a number of live pigeons there which illustrate the practice, common in Buddhist countries, of releasing an animal in order to gain ‘merit’ thereby.” At a shrine on the Langat river I have seen fowls which had (I was told) been similarly released.

The burning of incense is one of the very simplest, and hence commonest, forms of burnt sacrifice. Some magicians say that it should be accompanied by an invocation addressed to the Spirit of Incense, which should be besought, as in the example quoted below, to “pervade the seven tiers of earth and sky respectively.” It would appear that the intention of the worshipper is to ensure that his “sacrifice of sweet savour” should reach the nostrils of the gods and help to propitiate them, wherever they may be, by means of a foretaste of offerings to follow. This invocation, however, is not unfrequently omitted, or at least slurred over by the worshipper, in spite of the contention of the magicians who use it, that “without it the spell merely rises like smoke which is blown away by the wind.” The following is one form of the invocation in question:—

Zabur Bajang the name of your Mother,

Zabur Puteh the name of your Fumes,

May you fumigate the Seven Tiers of the Earth,

May you fumigate the Seven Tiers of the Sky,

And serve as a summons to all Spirits, to those which have magic powers, and those which have become Saints of God,

The Spirits of God’s elect, who dwell in the Halo of the Sun,

And whose resort is the “Kaʿbah” of God,

At even and morn, by night and day;

And serve as a summons to the Elect of God,

Who dwell at the Gate of the Spaces of Heaven,

And whose resort is the White Diamond

In the Interior of Egypt, at morn and eve,

Who know (how) to make the dead branch live,

And the withered blossom unfold its petals,

And to perform the word of God;

By the grace of (the creed) “There is no god but God,” etc.

Of these, the parched rice is generally used for strewing the bottom of the sacrificial tray (anchak) when the framework has been covered with banana leaves, but the offerings have not yet been deposited within it.

The washed and saffron rice are generally used for scattering either over the persons to be benefited by the ceremony, or else upon the ground or house-floor.

With reference to the selection of rice for this purpose, it has been suggested that the rice is intended to attract what may be called the “bird-soul” (i.e. the soul of man conceived as a bird) to the spot, or to keep it from straying at a particularly dangerous moment in the life of its owner.

The pulut or glutinous rice is the kind of rice generally used for sacrificial banquets, e.g. for banquets at “high places,” etc.

Lustration is generally accomplished either by means of fire or of water. The best examples of the former are perhaps the fumigation of infants, and the api saleian or purificatory fire, over which women are half-roasted when a birth has taken place, but these being special and distinctive ceremonies, will be described with others of the same nature in Chapter VI.

One of the forms of lustration by water, however, appears rather to take the place of a sub-rite, forming an integral portion of a large class of ceremonies, such as those relating to Building, Fishing, Agriculture, Marriage, and so forth. Hence it will be necessary to give a general sketch of its leading features in the present context.

The ceremony of lustration by water, when it takes the form of the sub-rite referred to, is called “Tĕpong Tawar,” which properly means “the Neutralising Rice-flour (Water),” “neutralising” being used almost in a chemical sense, i.e. in the sense of “sterilising” the active element of poisons, or of destroying the active potentialities of evil spirits.

The brush must be first fumigated with incense, then dipped into the bowl which contains the rice-water, and shaken out almost dry, for if the water runs down the object to which it is applied it is held to “portend tears,” whereas if it spreads equally all round (benchar) it is lucky. The composition of the brush, which is considered to be of the highest importance, appears to vary, but only within certain limits. It almost invariably, in Selangor, consists of a selection of leaves from the following plants, which are made up in small bouquets of five, seven, or nine leaves each, and bound round with ribu-ribu (a kind of small creeper), or a string of shredded tree bark (daun t’rap).

The following is a list of the leaves generally used:—

3. The leaves of the pulut-pulut (the exact identity of which I have not yet ascertained, but which may be the Urena lobata, L., one of the Malvaceae), which is said to be used for the same purpose as the preceding.

4. The leaves of the gandarusa (Insticia gandarusa, L., Acanthaceæ), a plant described as “often cultivated and half-wild—a shrub used in medicine.”

The selection of this plant is said to be due to its reputation for scaring demons (ʿalamat mĕnghalaukan hantu). So great is its efficacy supposed to be, that people who have to go out when rain is falling and the sun shining simultaneously—a most dangerous time to be abroad, in Malay estimation,—put a sprig of the gandarusa in their belts.

6. The leaves of the sapanggil (which is not yet identified).

8. The leaves of the sapĕnoh (unidentified), a plant with big round leaves, which is always placed outside the rest of the leaves in the bunch.

9. To the above list may be perhaps added the satawar, sitawar or tawar-tawar (Costus speciosus, L., Scitamineæ, and Forrestia, spp. Commelinaceæ); and

10. The satĕbal (Fagræa racemosa, Jack., Loganiaceæ).

Leaves of the foregoing plants and shrubs are made up, as has been said, in small sets or combinations of five, seven, or even perhaps of nine leaves a piece. These combinations are said to differ according to the object to which the rice-water is to be applied. It is extremely unlikely, however, that all magicians should make the same selections even for the same objects—rather would they be likely to make use of such leaves on the list as happen to be most readily available. Still, however, as the only example of such differentiation which I have yet been able to obtain, I will give the details of three separate and distinctive combinations, which were described to me by a Selangor magician:—

(1) For a wedding ceremony sambau dara tied round with a string of shredded tree-bark.

sĕlaguri

pulut-pulut

sapanggil

sapĕnoh

(2) For blessing fishing-stakes gandarusa tied with the creeper ribu-ribu.

sĕlaguri

sapanggil

lĕnjuang merah

sapĕnoh

(3) For the ceremony of taking the rice-soul lĕnjuang merah tied with ribu-ribu.

sĕlaguri

pulut-pulut

sapanggil

sapĕnoh

Further inquiry and the collection of additional material will no doubt help to elucidate the general principles on which such selections are made.

“Neutralising Rice-paste, true Rice-paste,

And, thirdly, Rice-paste of Kadangsa!

Keep me from sickness, keep me from death,

Keep me from injury and ruin.”

Fasting, or the performance of religious penance, which is now but seldom practised, would appear to have been only undertaken in former days with a definite object in view, such as the production of the state of mental exaltation which induces ecstatic visions, the acquisition of supernatural powers (sakti), and so forth.

The fast always took place, of course, in a solitary spot, and not unfrequently upon the top of some high and solitary hill such as Mount Ophir (Gunong Ledang), on the borders of Malacca territory. Frequently, however, much lower hills, or even plains which possessed some remarkable rock or tree, would be selected for the purpose.

Finally, I would draw attention to the strong vein of Sympathetic Magic or “make believe” which runs through and leavens the whole system of Malay superstition. The root-idea of this form of magic has been said to be the principle that “cause follows from effect.”

The principle thus described is perhaps the most important of all those which underlie the “Black Art” of the Malays.

Padi (unhusked rice) 3 cents a gantang (about a gallon).

Bĕras (husked rice) 10 cents a gantang.

Kabong (i.e. palm) sugar 2½ cents a “buku” of two pieces and weighing a kati (1⅓ lb. avoir.)

Cocoa-nuts 1 cent each.

Hen’s eggs ¼ cent each.

Duck’s eggs ½ cent each.

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