Malay Magic by Walter William Skeat

The Malays have been from time immemorial a sea-faring race, and are quite as superstitious in their ideas of the sea as sailors in other parts of the world. As has been already indicated, [487] their animistic notions include a belief in Water Spirits, both of the sea and of rivers, and occasionally this belief finds expression in ritual observances. Thus, for instance, it was formerly the custom to insert a number of sugar-palm twigs (segar kabong) into the top of the ship's mast, making the end of it look not unlike a small birch of black twigs. [488] This was intended to prevent the Water Spirit (Hantu Ayer) from settling on the mast. His appearance when he does settle is described as resembling the glow of fire flies or of phosphorescence in the sea--evidently a form of St. Elmo's fire. The ship being a living organism, one must, of course, when all is ready, persuade it to make a proper start. To effect this you go on board, and sitting down beside the well (petak ruang), burn incense and strew the sacrificial rice, and then tapping the inside of the keelson (jintekkan serempu) and the next plank above it (apit lempong), beg them to adhere to each other during the voyage, e.g.:-- "Peace be with you, O 'big Medang' and 'low-growing Medang!' Be ye not parted brother from brother, I desire you to speed me, to the utmost of your power, To such and such a place; If ye will not, ye shall be rebels against God," etc. I need hardly explain, perhaps, that "big medang" and "low-growing medang" are the names of two varieties of the same tree, which are supposed in the present instance to have furnished the timber from which these different parts were made. Then you stand up in the bows and call upon the Sea Spirits for their assistance in pointing out shoals, snags, and rocky islets. [489] Sometimes a talisman is manufactured by writing an Arabic text on a leaf which is then thrown into the sea. So, too, it is not unusual to see rocks in mid-stream near the mouths of rivers adorned with a white cloth hanging from a long stick or pole, which marks them out as "sacred places," and sometimes in rapids where navigation is difficult or dangerous, offerings are made to the River Spirits, as the following quotation will show:-- "We commenced at last to slide down a long reach of troubled water perceptibly out of the horizontal. The raft buried itself under the surface, leaving dry only our little stage, and the whole fabric shook and trembled as if it were about to break up. Yelling 'Sambut, sambut' ('Receive, receive') to the spirits of the stream, whom Kulup Mohamed was propitiating with small offerings of rice and leaves, the panting boatmen continued their struggles until we shot out once more into smooth deep water, and all danger was over." [490] The importance of rivers in the Malay Peninsula, and for that matter, in Malayan countries generally, can hardly be overrated. It was by the rivers that Malay immigration, coming for the most part, if not entirely, from Sumatra, entered the interior of the Peninsula, and before the influx of Europeans had superseded them by roads and railways the rivers were the sole means of inland communication. All old Malay settlements are situated on the banks of rivers or streams, both on this account and because of the necessity of having a plentiful supply of water for the purpose of irrigating the rice-fields, which constitute the main source of livelihood for the inhabitants. Accordingly the backbone, so to speak, of a Malay district is the river that runs through it, and from which in most cases the district takes its name; for here, as elsewhere, the river-names are generally older than the names of territorial divisions. They are often unintelligible and probably of pre-Malayan origin, but are sometimes derived from the Malay names of forest trees. As a rule every reach and point has a name known to the local Malays, even though the river may run through forest and swamp with only a few villages scattered at intervals of several miles along its banks. Of river legends there are not a few. The following extract relates to one of the largest rivers of the Peninsula, the river Perak, which gives its name to the largest and most important of the Malay States of the West Coast. Perak means silver, though none is mined in the country; and the legend is a fair specimen of the sort of story which grows up round an attempt to account for an otherwise inexplicable name:-- "On their return down-stream, the Raja and his followers halted at Chigar Galah, where a small stream runs into the river Perak. They were struck with astonishment at finding the water of this stream as white as santan (the grated pulp of the cocoa-nut mixed with water). Magat Terawis, who was despatched to the source of the stream to discover the cause of this phenomenon, found there a large fish of the kind called haruan engaged in suckling her young one. She had large white breasts from which milk issued. [491] "He returned and told the Raja, who called the river 'Perak' ('silver'), in allusion to its exceeding whiteness. Then he returned to Kota Lama." [492]