night air; the Malay drums throb and beat and thud; all manner of shrill yells fill
the sky, and the roar of a thousand native voices rises heavenwards, or rolls
across the white waters of the river, which are flecked with deep shadows and
reflections. The jungles on the far bank take up the sound and send it pealing
back in recurring ringing echoes till the whole world seems to shout in chorus.
The Moon which bathes the earth in splendour, the Moon which is so dear to
each one of us, is in dire peril this night, for that fierce monster, the Gĕrhâna,^19
whom we hate and loathe, is striving to swallow her. You can mark his black
bulk creeping over her, dimming her face, consuming her utterly, while she
suffers in the agony of silence. How often in the past has she served us with the
light; how often has she made night more beautiful than day for our tired, sun-
dazed eyes to look upon; and shall she now perish without one effort on our part
to save her by scaring the Monster from his prey? No! A thousand times no! So
we shout, and clang the gongs, and beat the drums, till all the animal world joins
in the tumult, and even inanimate nature lends its voice to swell the uproar with
a thousand resonant echoes. At last the hated Monster reluctantly retreats. Our
war-cry has reached his ears, and he slinks sullenly away, and the pure, sad,
kindly Moon looks down in love and gratitude upon us, her children, to whose
aid she owes her deliverance.”^20
The “spots on the moon”^21 are supposed to represent an inverted banyan tree
(Bĕringin songsang), underneath which an aged hunchback is seated plaiting
strands of tree bark (pintal tali kulit t’rap) to make a fishing-line, wherewith he
intends to angle for everything upon the earth as soon as his task is completed. It
has never been completed yet, however, for a rat always gnaws the line through
in time to save mankind from disaster, despite the vigilance of the old man’s cat,
which is always lying in wait for the offender.^22 It is perhaps scarcely necessary
to add that when the line reaches the earth the end of the world will come.
“Bujang (‘single,’ ‘solitary,’ and hence in a secondary sense ‘unmarried’) is a
Sanskrit word bhujangga, ‘a dragon.’ ‘Bujang Malaka,’ a mountain in Pêrak, is
said by the Malays of that State to have been so called because it stands alone,
and could be seen from the sea by traders who plied in old days between the
Pêrak river and the once flourishing port of Malacca. But it is just as likely to
have been named from some forgotten legend in which a dragon played a part.
Dragons and mountains are generally connected in Malay ideas. The caves in the
limestone hill Gunong Pondok, in Pêrak, are said to be haunted by a genius loci