The Akuan or Spirit-Friends
By Zainul-Abidin bin Ahmad.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Akuan is the term generally in use among Negri Sembilan Malays to designate the Spirit-friends which certain individuals among them are believed to have from among the inhabitants of the spirit-world. Other terms are used in other parts of the Peninsula, and the belief varies with different states in matter of details. In this paper I am speaking of it as it obtains in the "Nine States," particularly those portions of it inhabited by the descendants of the old Menangkabau tribes. The persons credited with the possession of the spirit-friends are usually those having some pretension to the knowledge of a pawang, a diviner, or a medicine-man. They may be men or women, "wizards" or "witches," but in either case they are almost always past middle-age. The word akuan is derived from aku, to own or to claim as one's own; while the thing owned is supposed to be a spirit which may either remain in its natural airy state—a sort of Ariel to the Malay Prospero—or may take the shape of the body of some animal, ordinarily a tiger, for its permanent residence. The "owner" may possess one or both of these two types. But if he is master of the first type, he is as a rule master also of the second. As for the first type, their "owners" are mostly anen, and the number of akuan belonging to each owner is always more than one, ranging from three or four to a dozen or more. They may be male or female, but more often the latter if the owners are men. Their relationship to the owner is, without exception, that of old acquaintances rather than of intimate friends or of servants and master. Hence, they are less under control and never so devoted to the owner as the animal type. Some far-off locality is assigned to each of them as dwelling place—such and such a mountain, rapid, kĕmpas tree (Cumpassia malaccensis), ravine, plain or forest. The names by which they are mentioned are not proper names, but merely epithets descriptive of their sex and dwelling. They do not come unless ceremonially conjured in a solemn séance-like-fashion. This is only done when their aid is imperatively needed on the occasion of very urgent sickness which has taxed all the wit and skill of the medicine-men to cure. Otherwise it is considered improper or even sacrilegious to mention them.
