beasts of prey. This wall, however, is being bored through by people called
Yajuj and Majuj (Gog and Magog), and when they succeed in their task the end
of all things will come. Besides these mountains which surround the earth there
is a great central mountain called Mahameru (Saguntang Maha Biru, or merely
Saguntang-guntang).^2 In many Malay stories this hill Mahameru is identified
with Saguntang-guntang on the borders of Palembang in Sumatra.
The account which I shall now give, however, differs considerably from the
preceding. It was taken down by me from an introduction to a Malay charm-
book belonging to a magician (one ʿAbdul Razzak of Klang in Selangor), with
whom I was acquainted, but who, though he allowed me to copy it, would not
allow me either to buy or borrow the book:^3 —
“In the days when Haze bore Darkness, and Darkness Haze, when the Lord of
the Outer Silence Himself was yet in the womb of Creation, before the existence
of the names of Earth and Heaven, of God and Muhammad, of the Empyrean
and Crystalline spheres, or of Space and Void, the Creator of the entire Universe
pre-existed by Himself, and He was the Eldest Magician. He created the Earth of
the width of a tray and the Heavens of the width of an umbrella, which are the
universe of the Magician. Now from before the beginning of time existed that
Magician—that is, God—and He made Himself manifest with the brightness of
the moon and the sun, which is the token of the True Magician.”
The account proceeds to describe how God “created the pillar of the Kaʿbah,^4
which is the Navel of the Earth, whose growth is comparable to a Tree, ... whose
branches are four in number, and are called, the first, ‘Sajeratul Mentahar,’ and
the second ‘Taubi,’ and the third, ‘Khaldi,’ and the fourth ‘Nasrun ʿAlam,’
which extend unto the north, south, east, and west, where they are called the
Four Corners of the World.”
Next we read that the word of God Almighty came in secret to Gabriel, saying,
“Take me down the iron staff of the ‘Creed’ which dangles at the gate of heaven,
and kill me this serpent Sakatimuna.”^5 Gabriel did so, and the serpent brake
asunder, the head and forepart shooting up above the heavens, and the tail part
penetrating downwards beneath the earth.^6 The rest of the account is taken up
with a description, that need not here be repeated, of the transformation of all the
various parts of the serpent’s anatomy, which are represented as turning with a