Note 15 — Chapter III · Relations with the Supernatural World

A general survey of the charms and ceremonies brought together in this volume will, I think, be likely to establish the view that the Malays (in accordance with the reported practice of many other races) probably commenced with the idea of sacrifice as a simple gift, and therefrom developed first the idea of ceremonial homage, and later the idea of sacrifice as an act of abnegation. Evidences of the original gift-theory chiefly survive in the language of charms, in which the deity appealed to is repeatedly invited to eat and drink of the offerings placed before him, as a master may be invited to eat by his servants. The intermediate stage between the gift and homage theories is marked by an extensive use of “substitutes,” and of the sacrifice of a part or parts for the whole. Thus we even find the dough model of a human being actually called “the substitute” (tukar ganti), and offered up to the spirits upon the sacrificial tray; in the same sense are the significant directions of a magician, that “if the spirit craves a human victim a cock may be substituted” and the custom of hunters who, when they have killed a deer, leave behind them in the forest small portions of each of the more important members of the deer’s anatomy, as “representatives” of the entire carcase. In this last case the usual “ritualistic change may be traced from practical reality to formal ceremony.” “The originally valuable offering is compromised for a smaller tribute or a cheaper substitute, dwindling at last to a mere trifling token or symbol.”15