Kun and payah kun
W.G. Maxwell’s short note identifies the etymology of the Malay pawang-lore terms kun and payah kun, which had previously resisted explanation.
Summary
Maxwell notes that kun is straightforwardly the Arabic “let it be,” but the antithetical term payah kun had been variously (and unsatisfactorily) explained as a corruption of Malay supaia or Arabic fihi. Drawing on a suggestion from J.C. Sugars of the F.M.S. Civil Service, Maxwell demonstrates that payah kun is a corruption of the Arabic fa yakun—“and it is”—making the full expression “Let it be, saith Allah; and it is, saith Muhammad” (p. 25).
Maxwell then traces the phrase to its source in the Koran (2:110 and 36:83) and its parallel in Genesis, and speculates that the sentence was originally coined by pawangs as a mantra in the early period of Malay conversion to Islam, with the addition of “saith Muhammad” arising from a combination of ignorance, the national love of antithesis, and the zeal of a convert (p. 26).