Malay Magic _ Being an introduction to the - Walter William Skeat

(Perpustakaan Sri Jauhari) #1

As regards true totemism, I am not sure that it can be traced among the Malays
of the Peninsula, although a few elements of the system are to be found here and
there among them. Thus, for instance, in certain districts (e.g. northern Malacca
and the Negri Sembilan) there are clans descending in the female line among
whom exogamy is still the rule, to the extent, at least, that intermarriage is
forbidden between the children of sisters (J.R.A.S., S.B., No. 23, p. 143); and we
also sometimes find tutelary or taboo animals, etc. more or less closely
connected with certain families; but these two sets of facts do not seem to be
interwoven as they appear to be among certain other races. Traces of animals,
etc. being regarded as specially connected with particular families are not, I
believe, very common: two instances occur in the Sĕjarah Malayu, viz. the man
“Bat’h,” who emerged from foam vomited by a bull (Malay Annals, p. 23), and
who is regarded as the progenitor of the still existing Malay tribe (Bangsa


Muntah Lĕmbu) of hereditary bards, to whom beef, milk, etc. are taboo^1 ; and the
Indian prince “Mani Farendan” (ibid. p. 110), who on his voyage to Malacca was
preserved from drowning by the alu-alu fish and the gandasuli tree, and on that
account “forbade all his descendants to eat of the fish alu-alu or to wear the
flower of the gandasuli.” His descendants formed a noble family in Malacca, the
heads of which usually bore the title of S’ri Naradiraja, and during the 15th
century A. D. often held the highest offices of state; so the legend may, probably
enough, preserve the record of an actual custom peculiar to that family. Both the
above cases, however, seem to be derived from a Hindu origin.


The tutelary animals connected with holy (kramat) places may perhaps
sometimes be in point in this connection: for instance, at Malacca Pindah, in
Malacca territory, I remember seeing the private burial-place of a certain family
(which lived close by), and being informed by the local village headman that,
whenever any member of that family died, certain tigers were in the habit of
wailing (mĕnangis) round the place at night.


It has been observed by the author (pp. 71, 153, 163) that kramat animals
generally have some physical peculiarity, such as a shrunken foot or stunted
tusk; it may be added that they are sometimes white (i.e. albino individuals of a
species which is not usually white), and thus marked out from their fellows by
the characteristic sacred colour. I remember reading in the local Straits
newspaper some years ago that a white mouse-deer, which was caught
somewhere in the Negri Sembilan, was regarded by the Malays as kramat: very

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