Malay Magic / Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula

by Walter William Skeat

Be not careless or slothful,

Linger not by inlet or river-reach,

Dally not with mistress or courtesan,

But descend and enter into your embodiment.”

A number of rhymed stanzas follow which will be found in the Appendix.

Meanwhile the medicine-man was not backward in his preparations for the proper reception of the spirit. First he scattered incense on the embers and fumigated himself therewith, “shampooing” himself, so to speak, with his hands, and literally bathing in the cloud of incense which volumed up from the newly-replenished censer and hung like a dense gray mist over his head. Next he inhaled the incense through his nostrils, and announced in the accents of what is called the spirit-language (bhasa hantu) that he was going to “lie down.” This he accordingly did, reclining upon his back, and drawing the upper end of his long plaid sarong over his head so as to completely conceal his features. The invocation was not yet ended, and for some time we sat in the silence of expectation. At length, however, the moment of possession arrived, and with a violent convulsive movement, which was startling in its suddenness, the “Pawang” rolled over on to his face. Again a brief interval ensued, and a second but somewhat less violent spasm shook his frame, the spasm being strangely followed by a dry and ghostly cough. A moment later and the Pawang, still with shrouded head, was seated bolt upright facing the tambourine player. Then he fronted round, still in a sitting posture, until he faced the jars, and removed the yam-leaf covering from the mouth of each jar in turn.

Next he kindled a wax taper at the flame of a lamp placed for the purpose just behind the jars, and planted it firmly on the brim of the first jar by spilling a little wax upon the spot where it was to stand. Two similar tapers having been kindled and planted upon the brims of the second and third jars, he then partook of a “chew” of betel-leaf (which was presented to him by one of the women present), crooning the while to himself.

This refreshment concluded, he drew from his girdle a bezoar or talismanic stone (batu pĕnawar), and proceeded to rub it all over the patient’s neck and shoulders. Then, facing about, he put on a new white jacket and head-cloth which had been placed beside him for his use, and girding his plaid (sarong) about his waist, drew from its sheath a richly-wrought dagger (k’ris) which he fumigated in the smoke of the censer and returned to its scabbard.

He next took three silver 20-cent pieces of “Straits” coinage, to serve as batu buyong, or “jar-stones,” and after “charming” them dropped each of the three in turn into one of the water-jars, and “inspected” them intently as they lay at the bottom of the water, shading, at the same time, his eyes with his hand from the light of the tapers. He now charmed several handfuls of rice (“parched,” “washed,” and “saffron” rice), and after a further inspection declared, in shrill, unearthly accents, that each of the coins was lying exactly under its own respective taper, and that therefore his “child” (the sick man) was very dangerously ill, though he might yet possibly recover with the aid of the spirit. Next, scattering the rice round the row of jars (the track of the rice thus forming an ellipse), he broke off several small blossom-stalks from a sheaf of areca-palm blossom, and making them up with sprays of champaka into three separate bouquets, placed one of these improvised nosegays in each of the three jars of water. On the floor at the back of the row of jars he next deposited a piece of white cloth, five cubits in length, which he had just previously fumigated. Again drawing the dagger already referred to, the Pawang now successively plunged it up to the hilt into each of the three bouquets (in which hostile spirits might, I was told, possibly be lurking). Then seizing an unopened blossom-spathe of the areca-palm, he anointed the latter all over with “oil of Celebes,” extracted the sheaf of palm-blossom from its casing, fumigated it, and laid it gently across the patient’s breast. Rapidly working himself up into a state of intense excitement, and with gestures of the utmost vehemence, he now proceeded to “stroke” the patient with the sheaf of blossom rapidly downwards, in the direction of the feet, on reaching which he beat out the blossom against the floor. Then turning the patient over on to his face, and repeating the stroking process, he again beat out the blossom, and then sank back exhausted upon the floor, where he lay face downwards, with his head once more enveloped in the folds of the sarong.