It must not be forgotten, too, in discussing the divine attributes of the Malay king, that he is firmly believed to possess a personal influence over the works of nature, such as the growth of the crops and the bearing of fruit-trees. This same property is supposed to reside in a lesser degree in his delegates, and even in the persons of Europeans in charge of districts. Thus I have frequently known (in Selangor) the success or failure of the rice crops attributed to a change of district officers, and in one case I even heard an outbreak of ferocity which occurred among man-eating crocodiles laid at the door of a most zealous and able, though perhaps occasionally somewhat unsympathetic, representative of the Government. So, too, on one occasion when three deaths occurred during a District Officer’s temporary absence, the mere fact of his absence was considered significant. I may add that royal blood is supposed by many Malays to be white, and this is the pivot on which the plot of not a few Malay folk-tales is made to turn.[46]
Finally, it must be pointed out that the greatest possible importance is attached to the method of saluting the king.
In the “Sri Rama” (the Malay Ramayana) we read, even of the chiefs, that—
“While yet some way off they bowed to the dust,
When they got near they made obeisance,
Uplifting at each step their fingers ten,
The hands closed together like the rootlets of the bakong palm[47]
The fingers one on the other like a pile of sirih[47] leaves.”[48]
Equals in rank when saluting one another touch[49] (though they do not shake) each other’s hands, but a person of humble birth must not touch hands in saluting a great chief. “A man, named Imam Bakar, was once slain at Pasir Tambang, at the mouth of the Tĕmbĕling river. He incautiously touched hands in greeting with a Chief called To’ Gajah, and the latter, seizing him in an iron grip, held him fast, while he was stabbed to death with spears.”[50]
In saluting a great Chief, like the Dato’ Maharaja Pĕrba Jĕlai, the hands are “lifted up in salutation with the palms pressed together, as in the attitude of Christian prayer, but the tips of the thumbs are not suffered to ascend beyond the base of the chin. In saluting a real Râja, the hands are carried higher and higher, according to the prince’s rank, until, for the Sultân, the tips of the thumbs are on a level with the forehead. Little details such as these are of immense importance in the eyes of the Malays, and not without reason, seeing that in an Independent Native State many a man has come by his death for carelessness in their observance.”[51]