[136] Influence of the Breath in Healing.—In Notes and Queries, No. 1, p. 24, a Malay bomor, or doctor, is described as blowing upon something to be used as medicine. Breathing upon sick persons and upon food, water, medicines, etc., to be administered to them is a common ceremony among Malay doctors and midwives. The following note would seem to show that the Malays have learnt it from their Muhammadan teachers:—
“Healing by the breath [Arab. Nafahal, breathings, benefits, the Heb. Neshamah, opp. to Nephest (soul), and Ruach (spirit)] is a popular idea throughout the East, and not unknown to Western magnetists and mesmerists. The miraculous cures of the Messiah were, according to Moslems, mostly performed by aspiration. They hold that in the days of Isa, physic had reached its highest development, and that his miracles were mostly miracles of medicine; whereas in Mohammed’s time eloquence had attained its climax, and, accordingly, his miracles were those of eloquence, as shown in the Koran and Ahadis.”—The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Burton, vol. v. p. 30.—Notes and Queries, J.R.A.S., S.B., No. 4, sec. 92, issued with No. 17. [↑]
[137] Vide pp. 569–574, infra. [↑]
[138] Vide pp. 418 seqq., supra.
Strictly speaking, money (which is called batu-batu lanchang or lanchang stones) should always form part of them. In Kedah three kĕndĕri (one kĕndĕri amounting to three cents) are said to be used; in Perak three wang, and in Selangor three duits (cents). [↑]
[139] I believe this usually takes place immediately after the ceremony, but one medicine-man whom I knew (’Che Amal of Jugra) used to keep the boat into which the spirits were thought to have entered until the patient recovered, and then set it adrift. When the medicine-man is launching it, he takes the boat in both hands, and repeatedly gives it a rotatory movement towards the left (as if he were using a sieve), and repeats the charm. A small portion of each dish deposited in the lanchang has to be carried back to the patient’s house, and there administered to the patient, together with water scooped up in a bowl from underneath the lanchang as it lay in the water before drifting away. As the sick man receives the offerings, the person who administers them says, addressing the spirit of evil, “Here is your wage, return not back here unto So-and-So; and cause him to be sick no more,” and the spirit replies through the man’s mouth, “I will never return.” [↑]
[140] Arong also means “to cross the water,” and there may be some doubt as to the precise meaning of this line. See the original in App. [cciv]. [↑]
[141] i.e. the Crocodile-spirit (vide pp. 286 (note), 298, supra.) [↑]
[142] In this connection it may be added that there are sundry medical “taboos” in use on various occasions: e.g. it is sometimes forbidden to enter the house where the sick man lies or to approach it by a particular path, and a string, with cocoa-nut leaves hung on it, is often drawn across the path as an indication of such prohibition. The fine for breaking such a taboo (langgar gawar-gawar) was “half a bhara,” or in the case of a Raja “two bharas.” [↑]
[143] Swettenham, Malay Sketches, pp. 153–159. Another excellent account, also by an eye-witness, of a similar ceremony will be found in J.R.A.S. S.B., No. 12, pp. 222–232. [↑]