Javanese.”^4
In the magic of the Peninsular Malays we find Vishnu the Preserver, Brahma the
Creator, Batara Guru, Kala, and S’ri simultaneously appealed to by the Malay
magician; and though it would, perhaps, be rash, (as Mr. Wilkinson says), to
infer solely from Malay romances or Malay theatrical invocations (many of
which owe much to Javanese influence), that Hinduism was the more ancient
religion of the Malays, there is plenty of other evidence to prove that the “Batara
Guru” of the Malays (no less than the Batara Guru of Bali and Java) is none
other than the recognised father of the Hindu Trinity.^5
Of the greater deities or gods, Batara Guru is unquestionably the greatest. “In the
Hikayat Sang Samba (the Malay version of the Bhaumakavya), Batara Guru
appears as a supreme God, with Brahma and Vishnu as subordinate deities. It is
Batara Guru who alone has the water of life (ayer utama (atama) jiwa) which
brings the slaughtered heroes to life.”^6
So to this day the Malay magician declares that ’Toh Batara Guru (under any
one of the many corruptions which his name now bears^7 ) was “the all-powerful
spirit who held the place of Allah before the advent of Muhammadanism, a spirit
so powerful that he could restore the dead to life; and to him all prayers were
addressed.”
Mr. Wilkinson, in the article from which we have already quoted, deals with
another point of interest, the expression sang-yang, or batara, which is prefixed
to guru. After pointing out that yang in this case is not the ordinary Malay
pronoun (yang, who), but an old word meaning a “deity,” he remarks, that so far
as he has been able to discover, it is only used of the greater Hindu divinities,
and not of inferior deities or demi-gods. Thus we find it applied to Shiva and
Vishnu, but never to the monkey-god Hanuman, or a deity of secondary
importance like Dermadewa. Such inferior divinities have only the lesser
honorific “sang” prefixed to their names, and in this respect fare no better than
mere mortals (such as Sang Sapurba and Sang Ranjuna Tapa) and animals (such
as, in fables, Sang Kanchil, Mr. Mousedeer; and Sang Tikus, Mr. Rat).
“The expression batara is also limited to the greater Hindu divinities (except
when used as a royal title), e.g. Batara Guru, Batara Kala, Batara Indra, Batara
Bisnu, etc. Thus the expressions sang-yang and batara are fairly coincident in