“Elephants are said to be very frightened if they see a tree stump that has been felled at a great height from the ground, as some trees which have high spreading buttresses are cut, because they think that giants must have felled it, and as ordinary-sized men are more than a match for them they are in great dread of being caught by creatures many times more powerful than their masters. Some of the larger insects of the grasshopper kind are supposed to be objects of terror to elephants, while the particularly harmless little pangolin (Manis pentadactyla) is thought to be able to kill one of these huge beasts by biting its foot. The pangolin, by the bye, is quite toothless. Another method in which the pangolin attacks and kills elephants is by coiling itself tightly around the end of the elephant’s trunk, and so suffocating it. This idea is also believed in by the Singhalese, according to Mr. W. T. Hornaday’s Two Years in the Jungle.”[73]
The foregoing passage refers to Perak, but similar ideas are common in Selangor, and they occur no doubt, with local variations, in every one of the Malay States. Selangor Malays tell of the scaring of elephants by the process of drawing the slender stem of the bamboo down to the ground and cutting off the top of it, when it springs back to its place.
The story of the “pangolin” is also told in Selangor with additional details. Thus it is said that the “Jawi-jawi” tree (a kind of banyan) is always avoided by elephants because it was once licked by the armadillo. The latter, after licking it, went his way, and “the elephant coming up was greatly taken aback by the offensive odour, and swore that he would never go near the tree again. He kept his oath, and his example has been followed by his descendants, so that to this day the ‘Jawi-jawi’ is the one tree in the forest which the elephant is afraid to approach.”[74]
The following directions for hunting the elephant were given me by Lĕbai Jamal, a famous elephant hunter of Lingging, near the Sungei Ujong border:—
“When you first meet with the spoor of elephant or rhinoceros, observe whether the foot-hole contains any dead wood, (then) take the twig of dead wood, together with a ball of earth as big as a maize-cob taken from the same foot-hole (if there is only one of you, one ball will do, if there are three of you, three balls will be wanted, if seven, seven balls, but not more). Then roll up your ball of earth and the twig together in a tree-leaf, breathe upon it, and recite the charm (for blinding the elephant’s eyes), the purport of which is that if the quarry sees, its eyesight shall be destroyed, and if it looks, its eyesight shall be dimmed, by the help of God, the prophet, and the medicine-man, who taught the charm.
“Now slip your ball of earth into your waistband just over the navel, and destroy the scent of your body and your gun. To do this, take a bunch of certain leaves[75] (daun sa-chĕrek), together with stem-leaves of the betel-vine (kĕrapak sirih), leaves of the wild camphor (chapa), and leaves of the club-gourd (labu ayer puteh), break their midribs with your left hand, shut your eyes, and say ‘As these tree leaves smell, so may my body (and gun) be scented.’
“When the animal is dead, beat it with an end of black cloth, repeating the charm for driving away the ‘mischief’ (badi) from the carcase, which charm runs as follows:—
“Badiyu, Mother of Mischief, Badi Panji, Blind Mother,
I know the origin from which you sprang,[76]
Three drops of Adam’s blood were the origin from which you sprang,