animism. Thus the stone deposited in the basket with the Rice-soul, the stone
deposited in the child’s swinging cot by way of a substitute when the child is
temporarily taken out of it, and above all the various concretions to be found
from time to time both in the bodies of animals (“Bezoar” stones) and in the
stems or fruit of trees (as tabasheer), are examples of this. Examples of
tabasheer have already been quoted (under Vegetation Charms), but a few
remarks about Bezoar stones may be of interest.
The Bezoar stones known to the Peninsular Malays are usually obtained either
from monkeys or porcupines. Extraordinary magical virtues are attached to these
stones, the gratings of which are mixed with water and administered to the
sick.^274
I was once asked $200 for a small stone which its owner kept in cotton-wool in a
small tin box, where it lay surrounded by grains of rice, upon which he declared
that it fed.^275 I asked him how it could be proved that it was a true Bezoar stone
(which it undoubtedly was not), and he declared that if it were placed upon an
inverted tumbler and touched with the point of a k’ris (dagger) or a lime-fruit it
would commence to move about. Both tests were therefore applied in my
presence, but the motion of the Bezoar stone in each case proved to be due to the
most overt trickery on the part of the owner, who by pressing on one side of the
stone (which was spherical in shape) naturally caused it to move; in fact I was
easily able to produce the same effect in the same way, as I presently showed
him, though of course he could not be brought to admit the deception.^276
Before I leave this portion of the subject, I may mention that magic powers are
very generally ascribed to the “celts” or “stone-age” implements which are
frequently found in the Peninsula, and are called thunderbolts (batu halilintar).
They are not unfrequently grated and mixed with water and drunk like the
Bezoar stones, but usually they are kept merely as a touch-stone for gold.