PLATE 6.—BAJANG AND PĔLĔSIT CHARMS.Diagrams in the author’s possession representing the Bajang and Pĕlĕsit (birth-spirits).Page 321.I will now take these spirits in the above order. The Bajang, as I have said, is
generally described as taking the form of a pole-cat (musang), but it appears to
be occasionally confused with the Pĕlĕsit. Thus a Malay magician once told me
that the Bajang took the form of a house-cricket, and that when thus embodied it
may be kept by a man, as the Pĕlĕsit may be kept by a woman. This statement,
however, must not be accepted without due reserve, and it may be taken as a
certainty that the usual conception of the Bajang’s embodiment is a pole-cat.^2
I need hardly say that it is considered very dangerous to children, who are
sometimes provided with a sort of armlet of black silk threads, called a “bajang
bracelet” (g’lang bajang), which, it is supposed, will protect them against it. On
the opposite page will be seen a remarkable drawing^3 (of which a facsimile is
here given), which appears to represent the outline of a Bajang, “scripturally”
modified to serve as a counter-charm against the Bajang itself.^4