I need hardly explain, perhaps, that “big mĕdang” and “low-growing mĕdang”
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.^280
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.”^281
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interior of the Peninsula, and before the influx of Europeans had superseded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