Note 69 — Chapter V · Magic Rites connected with the Several Departments of Nature

“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 rhinoceros69 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.”70