Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society/Volume 29/Notes on the Folk-lore and Popular Religion of the Malays
NOTES ON THE FOLK-LORE AND POPULAR RELIGION OF THE MALAYS.
[Read before the Straits Philosophical Society.]
THE folk-lore and the popular religious beliefs and practices of any race form a wide subject which it is hardly possible to compress within the limits of a short paper. I do not propose here to give a complete survey of the subject, but merely to offer a few notes illustrating the general character of Malay ideas and customs under this head so far as they have come within my own personal observation.
A good deal has been written on these matters, and amongst other papers I would refer particularly to that by Mr. W. E. MAXWELL, which appeared in the seventh number of the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, in 1881. The chief point made in that paper is the thoroughly non-Muhammadan character of many of the common Malay beliefs and practices. That characteristic is also perhaps the only one that I can claim to illustrate.
Malays in the country districts are in fact only superficially Muhammadan. It is true they often carry out all the ritual precepts of that religion: many of them pray the required number of times daily, most attend the Mosque with decent regularity on Fridays, and a fair proportion (but by no means all) keep the fast of Ramadhan. But to their Muhammadan observances they superadd a good many practices which, from the Muhammadan point of view, are at least unorthodox, in fact almost pagan, and which can often be traced to a heathen origin.
For instance, although officially the religious centre of the village community is the Mosque, there is usually in every small district a holy place known as a kramat, at which vows are paid on special occasions, and which is invested with a very high degree of reverence and sanctity.
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 notoricty 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 explanation 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 islam, 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, localized 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.
As may be imagined, it is exceedingly difficult to discover any authentic facts regarding the history of these numerous kramats: even where there is some evidence of the existence of a grave, the name of the departed saint is usually the one fact that is remembered, and often even that is forgotten. The most celebrated of the Malacca kramats, the one at Machap, is a representative type of the first class, that in which there really is a grave: it is the one place where a hardened liar respects the sanctity of an oath, and it is occa- sionally visited in connection with civil cases, when the one party challenges the other to take a particular oath: a man who thinks nothing of perjuring himself in the witness box and who might not much mind telling a lie even with the Koran on his head, will flinch before the ordeal of a falsehood in the presence of the "Dato' Machap." 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.
To return to the elemental spirits: it was explained to me by a Malay, with whom I discussed the subject at leisure, that apart from the spirits which are an object of reverence and which when treated with proper deference are usually bene- ficent, there are a variety of others. To begin with, spirits (the word used on this occasion was hantu) are of at least two kinds—wild ones, whose normal habitat is the jungle, and those that are, so to say, domesticated. The latter, which seem to correspond to what in Western magic are called "familiars," vary in character with their owners or the persons to whom they are attached. Thus in this particular village of Bukit Senggeh, a few years ago, there was a good deal of alarm on account of the arrival of two or three strangers believed to be of bad character, who were supposed to keep a familiar spirit of a particularly malignant disposition which was in the habit of attacking people in their sleep by throttling them. One or two cases of this kind occurred, and it was seriously suggested that I should make the matter the subject of a magisterial enquiry, which, however, I did not find it necessary to do. But familiar spirits are by no means necessarily evil: indeed the Pawang (a functionary of whom more will be said later on) keeps a familiar spirit, which in his case is a hantu pŭsâka, that is, an hereditary spirit which runs in the family, in virtue of which he is able to deal sum- marily with the wild spirits of an obnoxious character. The chief point of importance is to keep these wild spirits in their proper place, viz. the jungle, and to prevent them taking up their abode in the villages. For this reason charms are hung up at the borders of the villages, and whenever a wild spirit breaks bounds and encroaches on human habitations it is necessary to get him turned out. Some time ago, one of these objectionable hantus had settled down in a kĕrayong tree in the middle of this same village of Bukit Senggeh, and used to frighten people who passed that way in the dusk: so the Pawang was duly called upon to exorcize 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.
In many places there are trees which are pretty generally believed to be the abodes of spirits, and not one Malay in ten would venture to cut one down, while most people would hardly dare to go near one after dark. On one occasion an exceptionally intelligent Malay, with whom I was discussing the terms on which he proposed to take up a contract for clearing the banks of a river, made it an absolute condition that he should not be compelled to cut down a particular tree which overhung the stream, on the ground that it was a "spirit" tree. That tree had to be excluded from the contract.
The accredited intermediary between men and spirits is the person who has already been referred to several times as the Pawang: the Pawang is a functionary of great and traditional importance in a Malay village, though in places near towns the office is falling into abeyance. In the inland districts, however, the Pawang is still a power, and is regarded as part of the constituted order of society, without whom no village community would be complete. It must be clearly understood. that he has nothing whatever to do with the official Muham- madan religion of the Mosque: the village has its regular staff of elders—the Imam, Khatib and Bilal—for the Mosque service. But the Pawang is quite outside this system, and belongs to a different and much older order of ideas; he may be regarded as the legitimate representative of the primitive "medicine-man" or "village sorcerer" and his very existence in these days is an anomaly, though it does not strike Malays as such.
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 kaběsâran, 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 (běras) and two chupaks of ĕmping (a preparation of rice and coco-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, 7 1/2 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 (sabil) 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 semi-circular 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.
In this, as in one or two other cases, it may be supposed that the Pawang's ordinances preserve the older forms of procedure and are opposed to innovations in agricultural methods. The same is true of the pantang rule which prescribes a fixed rate of price at which padi may be sold in the village community to members of the same village. This system of customary prices is probably a very old relic of a time when the idea of asking a neighbour or a member of your own tribe to pay a competition price for an article was regarded as an infringement of communal rights. It applies to a few other articles of local produce[1] besides padi, and I was frequently assured that the neglect of this wholesome rule was the cause of bad harvests. I was accordingly sometimes pressed to fine transgressors, which would perhaps have been a somewhat difficult thing to do. The fact, however, that in many places these rules are generally observed is a tribute to the influence of the Pawang who lends his sanction to them.
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 for reaping it. The padi is usually sprinkled with těpong tâwar (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 begin- ning 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 băpuâ,[2] 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 Sěbâtu 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 ex. plained that the noise of gunshots would irritate the hantu and render unavailing the propitiatory service which was then about to begin. Further enquiry 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 kĕtupats, which are small squarish bags plaited of strips of the leaves of the screw-pine (měngkuang) or some similar plant, like the material of which native bags and mats are made. A larger kĕtupat 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 sweelmeats. 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 coco-nut shells (těmpurong), 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 eastwards 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 (keměnyan). With he touched the bottom of the altar platform four times. then took a cup of tĕpong tâwar 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 tĕpong tâwar 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 kĕtupat 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 bĕras bertih (rice roasted in a peculiar way) which he threw about into the field. Both of them went right round the grass-plot. The Pawang then took his cup of tĕpong tâwar 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. number of others then followed his lead and planted the rest of the rice-plants, and then a sweetmeat made of coco-nut and sugar was handed round and Muhammadan prayers were said by some duly qualified person, an orang ‘alim or a lebei, 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 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 very 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 understand- ing 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 měnuju, 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, and, of course, it is quite impossible even to refer to them all here. I must also leave to others the task of citing parallels from the folk-lore of other races and can only conclude this paper by expressing the hope that some of the facts I have mentioned, though in themselves trivial, may derive additional interest from such comparisons.
- ↑ In Bukit Senggeh the articles subject to this custom are priced as follows:—
Padi, ... 3 cents a gantang. Bēras, ... 10 cents a gantang. Kabong sugar, ... 2 1/2 cents a "buku" of two pieces and weighing a kati. Coco-nuts, ... 1 cent each. Hen's eggs, ... 0 1/4 cent each. Duck's eggs, ... 0 1/2 cent each. - ↑ Menangkabau and Naning pronunciation for bĕrpuar. Puar is the name of a jungle plant, said to be akin to cardamum, the stem of which is used as a sort of javelin in this mock combat.