Malay Magic by Walter William Skeat

Leaves of the foregoing plants and shrubs are made up, as has been said, in small sets or combinations of five, seven, or even perhaps of nine leaves a piece. These combinations are said to differ according to the object to which the rice-water is to be applied. It is extremely unlikely, however, that all magicians should make the same selections even for the same objects--rather would they be likely to make use of such leaves on the list as happen to be most readily available. Still, however, as the only example of such differentiation which I have yet been able to obtain, I will give the details of three separate and distinctive combinations, which were described to me by a Selangor magician:-- (1) For a wedding ceremony sambau dara tied round with a selaguri string of shredded pulut-pulut tree-bark. sapanggil sapenoh (2) For blessing gandarusa tied with the fishing-stakes selaguri creeper ribu-ribu. sapanggil lenjuang merah sapenoh (3) For the ceremony of lenjuang tied with taking the rice-soul merah ribu-ribu. selaguri pulut-pulut sapanggil sapenoh Further inquiry and the collection of additional material will no doubt help to elucidate the general principles on which such selections are made. Short rhyming charms are very often used as accompaniments of the rite of rice-water, but appear to be seldom if ever repeated aloud. The following is a specimen, and others will be found in the Appendix: [147]-- "Neutralising Rice-paste, true Rice-paste, And, thirdly, Rice-paste of Kadangsa! Keep me from sickness, keep me from death, Keep me from injury and ruin." Other not less important developments of the idea of lustration by water are to be found in such ceremonies as the bathing of mother and child after a birth and the washing of the floor (basoh lantei) upon similar occasions, the bathing of the sick, of bride and bridegroom at weddings, of corpses (meruang), [148] and the annual bathing expeditions (mandi Safar), which are supposed to purify the persons of the bathers and to protect them from evil (tolak bala). Fasting, or the performance of religious penance, which is now but seldom practised, would appear to have been only undertaken in former days with a definite object in view, such as the production of the state of mental exaltation which induces ecstatic visions, the acquisition of supernatural powers (sakti), and so forth. The fast always took place, of course, in a solitary spot, and not unfrequently upon the top of some high and solitary hill such as Mount Ophir (Gunong Ledang), on the borders of Malacca territory. Frequently, however, much lower hills, or even plains which possessed some remarkable rock or tree, would be selected for the purpose. Such fasting, however, did not, as sometimes with us, convey to the Malays the idea of complete abstinence, as the magicians informed me that a small modicum of rice contained in a ketupat (which is a small diamond-shaped rice-receptacle made of plaited cocoa-nut leaf) was the daily "allowance" of any one who was fasting. The result was that fasts might be almost indefinitely prolonged, and the thrice-seven-days' fast of 'Che Utus upon Jugra Hill, on the Selangor coast, [149] is still one of the traditions of that neighbourhood, whilst in Malay romances and in Malay tradition this form of religious penance is frequently represented as continuing for years. Finally, I would draw attention to the strong vein of Sympathetic Magic or "make believe" which runs through and leavens the whole system of Malay superstition. The root-idea of this form of magic has been said to be the principle that "cause follows from effect." "One of the principles of sympathetic magic is that any effect may be produced by imitating it.... If it is wished to kill a person, an image of him is made and then destroyed; and it is believed that through a certain physical sympathy between the person and his image, the man feels the injuries done to the image as if they were done to his own body, and that when it is destroyed he must simultaneously perish." [150] The principle thus described is perhaps the most important of all those which underlie the "Black Art" of the Malays.