To rightly understand charms of the second class, which includes Bathing and
Betel-charming charms,^49 we must have some idea of the Malay standard of
beauty. This, I need hardly say, differs widely from that entertained by
Europeans. In the case of manly beauty we should, perhaps, be able to acquiesce
to some extent in the admiration which Malays express for “Brightness of
Countenance” (chahia), which forms one of the chief objects of petition in
almost every one of this class of charms;^50 but none of our modern Ganymedes
would be likely to petition for a “voice like the voice of the Prophet David”;^51 or
a “countenance like the countenance of the Prophet Joseph”; still less would he
be likely to petition for a tongue “curled like a breaking wave,” or “a magic
serpent,” or for teeth “like a herd of (black) elephants,” or for lips “like a
procession of ants.”^52
Malay descriptions of female beauty are no less curious. The “brow” (of the
Malay Helen, for whose sake a thousand desperate battles are fought in Malay
romances) “is like the one-day-old moon,”^53 her eyebrows resemble “pictured
clouds,”^54 and are “arched like the fighting-cock’s (artificial) spur,”^55 her cheek
resembles “the sliced-off-cheek of a mango,”^56 her nose “an opening jasmine
bud,”^57 her hair the “wavy blossom-shoots of the areca-palm,”^58 slender^59 is her
neck, “with a triple row of dimples,”^60 her bosom ripening,^61 her waist “lissom
as the stalk of a flower,”^62 her head “of a perfect oval” (lit. bird’s-egg-shaped),
her fingers like the leafy “spears of lemon-grass,”^63 or the “quills of the
porcupine,”^64 her eyes “like the splendour of the planet Venus,”^65 and her lips
“like the fissure of a pomegranate.”^66
The following is a specimen of an invocation for beautifying the person which is
supposed to be used by children:—
“The light of four Suns, five Moons,
And the seven Stars be visible in my eye.
The brightness of a shooting star be upon my chin,
And that of the full moon be upon my brows.
May my lips be like unto a string of ants,
My teeth like to a herd of elephants,
My tongue like a breaking wave,
My voice like the voice of the Prophet David,