Part 10
Raja Iskander passed most of his time on the water, but Maimûnah lived in the house on shore. A very modest dwelling it was; a building of mat sides and thatched roof raised from the damp and muddy earth on wooden piles, a flight of steps led into the front of the house and a ladder served for exit at the back. The interior accommodation consisted of a closed-in verandah, one large room, and a kitchen tacked on behind.
The edges of the muddy river were fringed by the _nipah_ palm, which is never seen beyond tidal influences; the banks were covered by rank grasses, the country was flat and desolate, the jungle insignificant, and in the heat of the day the oppression of steaming mud and shelterless plain was so great that sleep seemed to force itself on insect, reptile, and every living thing.
At night the myriads of fireflies sparkling in the riverside bushes, their twinkling lights reflected in the water, gave some relief to tired eyes; but the gain in the change of temperature and scene was hardly appreciated when the mosquitoes and sand-flies began their merciless attacks.
Under such circumstances and amidst such surroundings, Raja Slêman came into the life of Maimûnah.
He was about the same age as Raja Iskander, but in other respects there was a striking difference between the two men. Slêman was a man of pleasing features, extremely quiet, and of courtly manners; the casual observer would probably fail to realise that this outward appearance concealed a firm determination and a dauntless courage. Of worldly goods he had little enough, and small prospect of multiplying them, but in rank he was almost, if not quite, the equal of Raja Iskander.
One day as Slêman sat in his boat he saw Maimûnah and her maidens come down to the river to bathe. In his country he had never beheld a woman as beautiful as this one, and he fell hopelessly in love with Iskander’s wife. Then each day he watched for her, and never failed, morning and evening, to follow her with his eyes for the few moments when she slowly wended her way from house to river and back again.
Meanwhile, Maimûnah, suffering from the _spretæ injuria formæ_ and chafing under the monotony of existence, had heard all about the arrival of Slêman and readily listened to the tales of his valorous deeds. Soon she began to look for him, and as he was ever watching for her coming it was not long before their eyes met. He pleased her, and, when she saw in his face the admiration he had no desire to conceal, she would drop the covering that hid all but her eyes, and what he then beheld only increased his passion.
Malay ladies are adepts in speaking the language of the eyes, the chances of verbal speech are but few, and so carefully is this art cultivated, so thoroughly understood, that principals and witnesses never fail to rightly interpret the signs.
Slêman and Maimûnah had already mutually declared themselves without the exchange of a syllable, and it was with perfect confidence that Slêman sought a closer intimacy by the friendly aid of a messenger.
Iskander was too much engaged with his opium and his latest favourite, too generally satisfied with himself, to notice what was going on. Had he realised the state of affairs he would not have been indifferent to the disgrace that must be his, should his wife’s _liaison_ become public property. It is unlikely that he had any suspicion of Slêman, but, if he had, it would never occur to him that any man would have the courage to do more than carry on a clandestine intrigue, and of that he suspected Maimûnah had already been guilty. Least of all would it seem possible for a foreigner supported by a dozen followers to brave the power and resentment of well nigh the greatest chief of a powerful State.
In this, however, he was misled by the _suave_ manners of the quiet stranger.
Slêman’s suit prospered, and he was not satisfied to continue indefinitely filling the _rôle_ of false friend to Iskander and fearful lover to his wife. However much he despised the man, however easily he found he could profit by Iskander’s indifference, he meant to play a bolder game and make Maimûnah his own at all hazards if she were prepared to face the risk.
Her courage was equal to his own (for failure meant probably death to her as to him), and one night, while Iskander lay in his boat dreaming over his opium-pipe, the stranger was carrying off his royal spouse within earshot, almost from under his very eyes.
Once in Slêman’s boat, and the bark had been silently unmoored and allowed to drift out of sight and hearing, little time was lost in getting out the oars and pulling with might and main down river towards the coast.
All night long the rowers bent to their work, but when morning broke and less than half the distance to the river’s mouth had been traversed, Slêman ordered the men to pull in to the bank, fasten up the boat and rest.
It seemed a foolhardy proceeding to waste the precious time, for with the dawn the elopement would be discovered and Iskander would be in pursuit before the sun had cleared the tops of the jungle trees.
Raja Slêman’s quiet serenity was not disturbed by anticipations of capture or fear of the outraged husband’s fury. On the contrary, he procured a small boat and a messenger, and he indited a letter to Raja Iskander, informing him he had carried away the Raja Maimûnah, but that he had not gone far, having only reached the place he named. He added that he would wait there for one night and one day against the coming of any who might wish to try and take the lady from him, and that after that time he should continue his journey to the coast and thence to his own country.
Raja Iskander received this missive whilst yet undecided what course to take in the untoward disaster that had befallen him. The letter did not greatly help him to arrive at a decision, and he was still discussing with his chiefs who should have the honour of pursuing and punishing the abductor when the twenty-four hours expired.
Neither Iskander nor any of his people ever started on that quest, and Raja Slêman carried Maimûnah in safety to his own country.
The disconsolate husband, whose ideas were in accord with a civilisation beyond the education or sympathetic comprehension of his subjects, decided to divorce his faithless wife and leave her lover to marriage and the punishment of his own conscience. It is a painful fact that this conduct earned him not the admiration but the contempt of his people.
Iskander had one revenge: he discovered amongst Maimûnah’s women two who had carried messages between the lovers. One was a woman of twenty-five, the other a girl of fourteen, and both were incontinently strangled.
As for Slêman and Maimûnah, they were duly married, and she bore him a daughter in all respects like her mother, though not, the old people say, her peer in beauty. The _laudator temporis acti_ is a common and flourishing plant in Malâya.
In the two children born before the elopement, it is difficult to trace any resemblance to their mother.
Maimûnah died years and years ago, the victim of a malignant disease; but Slêman still lives in his own country, his hair is getting grey, but otherwise he shows few signs of age. Time has only intensified the courteous bearing and quiet repose of manner which seem to fitly accompany his gentle winning voice; no one would suspect that this man, almost single-handed, carried off the chief spouse of an Oriental prince, and then defied the whole country to take her from him.
There are no local bards to record Slêman’s story in deathless song, and the people are so impregnated with vice that they seek for no excuses to palliate his conduct, and have no condemnation for this ruthless destroyer of Iskander’s happy home. But they are Muhammadans, and seldom allow themselves the luxury of burning moral convictions. I have never seen a missionary proselytising amongst the Malays, but many years ago I was told that a Christian missionary came to Malâya full of zeal and confident of success. He began with a man who seemed an earnest, truthful person, anxious to learn, a promising subject. The missionary told him the story of the Immaculate Conception. The Malay listened to the end, showing great interest in the miraculous narrative of the Blessed Virgin; then he said, “If that had happened to my wife, I should have killed her.”
XVII
MALAY SUPERSTITIONS
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy
_Hamlet_
Malay superstitions are the survival of a time antecedent to the advent of the gospel of Islam, and their strong hold on the people is only another proof of the conservative tendencies of the race. What was the Faith of Malâya seven hundred years ago it is hard to say, but there is a certain amount of evidence to lead to the belief that it was a form of Brahmanism and that no doubt had succeeded the original Spirit Worship.
I do not propose to attempt to enumerate all the various forms of superstition, their name is legion, but only to describe a few that are both curious and interesting.
I have already referred to what is known as _bĕr-hantu_, the practice of a kind of witchcraft for the healing of the sick; it reminds one of “casting out devils in the name of Beelzebub the Prince of the devils”—and I might here give some of the incantations commonly spoken by the exorcist, but one will suffice. Here is the translation of a most potent exorcism believed to be efficacious against the malevolent attacks of a thousand lesser demons:
Heigh! thou Spirit whose name is Jin Pari of the Jin Âruah; Rabiah Jâmil was thy mother’s, Imam Jâmil thy father’s name; thou art the grandchild of Hakim Baisuri, the great-grandchild of Mâlim of the Forest. Thou Spirit of the path Lôrin, Spirit of the rising ground Sri Permâtang, Spirit of the ant-hill known as “Piebald Horse.” Heigh! you white ants Sekutânai, why do you, Sekutâpa, flying up stream make me think you are on your way down, and flying down stream give the impression that you are going to the interior?
I know your origin, spawn of Hell’s spouting flame; do not any longer torment this person.
If you disobey, I will curse you by the name of the Most High, saying, “By the Grace of God, by the Grace of God, by the Grace of God.”
The final threat to drive out the demon by using the name of the Almighty is curious as showing how the exorcist seeks by a judicious blending of tradition with his latter-day Faith to get the better of the tormentor.
A very widespread superstition is that certain persons have familiar spirits who will, at the instance of their owners, enter into and plague any one whom it may be desired to injure. These evil spirits are known as _Bâjang_, _Pôlong_, _Pĕlsit_, and _Langsûior_, the last being a female spirit. They are either inherited or acquired by the practice of witchcraft, and the way in which their possession is brought home to any member of the community is as little reasonable as the “proof” of the exercise of similar powers in the Western witch not so many centuries ago.
Some one in a village falls ill of a complaint, the symptoms of which are unusual; there may be convulsions, unconsciousness, or delirium, possibly for some days together or with intervals between the attacks. The relatives will call in a native doctor, and at her (she is usually an ancient female) suggestion, or without it, an impression will arise that the patient is the victim of a _bâjang_. Such an impression quickly develops into certainty and any trifle will suggest the owner of the evil spirit. One method of verifying this suspicion is to wait till the patient is in a state of delirium and then to question him or her as to who is the author of the trouble. This should be done by some independent person of authority who is supposed to be able to ascertain the truth.
A further and convincing proof is then to call in a “_Pâwang_” skilled in dealing with wizards (in Malay countries they are usually men), and if he knows his business his power is such that he will place the sorcerer in one room, and, while he in another scrapes an iron vessel with a razor, the culprit’s hair will fall off as though the razor had been applied to his head instead of to the vessel! That is supposing he _is_ the culprit; if not, of course he will pass through the ordeal without damage.
I have been assured that the shaving process is so efficacious that, as the vessel represents the head of the person standing his trial, wherever it is scraped, the wizard’s hair will fall off in a corresponding spot. It might be supposed that under these circumstances the accused is reasonably safe, but this test of guilt is not always employed. What more commonly happens is that when several cases of unexplained sickness have occurred in a village, with possibly one or two deaths, the people of the place lodge a formal complaint against the supposed author of these ills and desire that he be punished.
Before the advent of British influence it was the practice to kill the wizard or witch whose guilt had been established to Malay satisfaction, and such executions were carried out not very many years ago.
I remember a case in Perak less than ten years ago when the people of an up-river village accused a man of keeping a _bâjang_, and the present Sultan, who was then the principal Malay Judge in the State, told them he would severely punish the _bâjang_ if they would produce it. They went away hardly satisfied and shortly after made a united representation to the effect that if the person suspected were allowed to remain in their midst they would kill him. Before anything could be done they put him, his family, and effects on a raft and started them down the river. On their arrival at Kuala Kangsar the man was given an isolated hut to live in, but not long afterwards he disappeared.
The hereditary _bâjang_ comes like other evils, the unsought heritage of a dissolute ancestry, but the acquired _bâjang_ is usually obtained from the newly-buried body of a stillborn child, which is supposed to be the abiding-place of a familiar spirit until lured therefrom by the solicitations of someone who, at dead of night, stands over the grave and by potent incantations persuades the _bâjang_ to come forth.
_Pôlong_ and _Pĕlsit_ are but other names for _Bâjang_, the latter is chiefly used in the State of Kĕdah where it is considered rather _chic_ to have a _pĕlsit_. A Kĕdah lady the other day, eulogising the advantages of possessing a familiar spirit (she said that amongst other things it gave her absolute control over her husband and the power of annoying people who offended her), thus described the method of securing this useful ally:
“You go out,” she said, “on the night before the full moon and stand with your back to the moon and your face to an ant-hill so that your shadow falls on the ant-hill. Then you recite certain _jampi_ (incantations), and bending forward try to embrace your shadow. If you fail try again several times, repeating more incantations. If not successful go the next night and make a further effort, and the night after if necessary—three nights in all. If you cannot then catch your shadow, wait till the same day on the following month and renew the attempt. Sooner or later you will succeed, and, as you stand there in the brilliance of the moonlight, you will see that you have drawn your shadow into yourself, and your body will never again cast a shade. Go home and in the night, whether sleeping or waking, the form of a child will appear before you and put out its tongue; that seize and it will remain while the rest of the child disappears. In a little while the tongue will turn into something that breathes, a small animal, reptile or insect, and when you see the creature has life put it in a bottle and the _pĕlsit_ is yours.”
It sounds easy enough, and one is not surprised to hear that everyone in Kĕdah, who is anybody, keeps a _pĕlsit_.
_Langsûior_, the female familiar, differs hardly at all from the _bâjang_ except that she is a little more baneful, and, when under the control of a man, he sometimes becomes the victim of her attractions, and she will even bear him elfin children.
It is all very well for the Kĕdah ladies to sacrifice their shadows to obtain possession of a _pĕlsit_, leaders of society must be in the fashion at any cost; but there are plenty of people living in Perak who have seen more than one ancient Malay dame taken out into the river, and, despite her protestations, her tears and entreaties, have watched her, with hands and feet tied, put into the water and slowly pushed down out of sight by means of a long pole with a fork at one end which fitted on to her neck. Those who witnessed these executions have no doubt of the justice of the punishment, and not uncommonly add that after two or three examples had been made there would always ensue a period of rest from the torments of the _bâjang_. I have also been assured that the _bâjang_, in the shape of a lizard, has been seen to issue from the drowning person’s nose. That statement, no doubt, is made on the authority of those who condemned and executed the victim.
The following legend gives the Malay conception of the origin of all _Jin_, _hantu_, _bâjang_, and other spirits.
The Creator determined to make Man, and for that purpose He took some clay from the earth and fashioned it into the figure of a man. Then He took the Spirit of Life to endue this body with vitality and placed the spirit on the head of the figure. But the spirit was strong, and the body, being only clay, could not hold it and was reft in pieces and scattered into the air. Those fragments of the first great Failure are the spirits of earth and sea and air.
The Creator then formed another clay figure, but into this one He wrought some iron, so that when it received the vital spark it withstood the strain and became Man. That man was Adam, and the iron that is in the constitution of his descendants has stood them in good stead. When they lose it, they become of little more account than their prototype the first failure.
Another article of almost universal belief is that the people of a small State in Sumatra called Korinchi have the power of assuming at will the form of a tiger, and in that disguise they wreak vengeance on those they wish to injure. Not every Korinchi man can do this, but still the gift of this strange power of metamorphosis is pretty well confined to the people of the small Sumatran State. At night when respectable members of society should be in bed, the Korinchi man slips down from his hut, and, assuming the form of a tiger, goes about “seeking whom he may devour.”
I have heard of four Korinchi men arriving in a district of Perak, and that night a number of fowls were taken by a tiger. The strangers left and went further up country, and shortly after only three of them returned and stated that a tiger had just been killed, and they begged the local headman to bury it!
On another occasion some Korinchi men appeared and sought hospitality in a Malay house, and there also the fowls disappeared in the night, and there were unmistakable traces of the visit of a tiger, but the next day one of the visitors fell sick, and shortly after vomited chicken-feathers!
It is only fair to say that the Korinchi people strenuously deny the tendencies and the power ascribed to them, but aver that they properly belong to the inhabitants of a district called Chenâku in the interior of the Korinchi country. Even there, however, it is only those who are practised in the _elĕmu sĕhir_, the occult arts who are thus capable of transforming themselves into tigers, and the Korinchi people profess themselves afraid to enter the Chenâku district.
It was my misfortune some years ago to be robbed of some valuable property, and several Malay friends strongly advised me to take the advice of an astrologer or other learned person who (so they said) would be able to give the name of the thief, and probably recover most of the stolen things. I fear that I had no great faith in this method of detection, but I was anxious to see what could be done, for the East is a curious place, and no one with an inquiring mind can have lived in it long without seeing phenomena that are not always explained by modern text-books on Natural Philosophy.
I was first introduced to an Arab of very remarkable appearance. He was about fifty years old, tall, with pleasant features and extraordinary grey-blue eyes, clear and far-seeing, a man of striking and impressive personality. I was travelling when I met him, and tried to persuade him to return with me, but that he said he could not do, though he promised to follow me by an early steamer. He said he would be able to tell me all about the robbery, who committed it, where the stolen property then was, and that all he would want was an empty house wherein he might fast in solitude for three days, without which preparation, he said, he would not be able to see what he sought. He told me that after his vigil, fast, and prayer, he would lay in his hand a small piece of paper on which there would be some writing, into this he would pour a little water, and in that extemporised mirror he would see a vision of the whole transaction. He declared that, after gazing intently into this divining-glass, the inquirer first recognised the figure of a little old man. That having duly saluted this _Jin_, it was only necessary to ask him to conjure up the scene of the robbery, when all the details would be re-enacted in the liquid glass under the eyes of the gazer, who would there and then describe all that he saw. I had heard all this before, only it had been stated to me then that the medium through whose eyes the vision could alone be seen must be a young child of such tender years that it could have never told a lie! The Arab, however, professed himself not only able to conjure up the scene, but to let me see it for myself, if I would follow his directions. Unfortunately, my grey-eyed friend failed to keep his promise, and I never met him again.
A local Chief, however, declared his power to read the past by this method, if only he could find the truthful child. In this he appeared to succeed, but when, on the following day, he came to disclose to me the results of his skill, he said that a difficulty had arisen because just when the child (a little boy) was beginning to relate what he saw he suddenly became unconscious, and it took the astrologer two hours to restore him to his normal state. All the mothers of tender-aged and possibly truthful children declined after this to lend their offspring for the ordeal.
My friend was not, however, at the end of his resources, and, though only an amateur in divination, he undertook to try by other methods to find the culprit. For this purpose he asked me to give him the names of everyone in the house at the time the robbery was committed. I did so, and the next day he gave me one of those names as that of the thief. I asked how he had arrived at this knowledge, he described the method and consented to repeat the experiment in my presence. That afternoon I went with him to a small house belonging to his sister. Here I found my friend the Chief, his sister, and two men whom I did not recognise. We all sat in a very small room, the Chief in the centre with a copy of the Korân on a reading-stand, near to him the two men, opposite to each other, the sister against one wall and I in a corner. A clean new unglazed earthenware bowl with a wide rim was produced. This was filled with water, and a piece of fair white cotton cloth tied over the top, making a surface like that of a drum.