Mantra gajah
W. George Maxwell published this article in 1907, presenting a complete transcription of a Malay manuscript of elephant-driving charms (mantra gajah) held in the family of the former Orang Kaya Sri Adika Raja of Kuala Plus. The article situates this hereditary lore within the broader context of the Siamese elephant trade through the Malay Peninsula in the seventeenth century, arguing that the non-Malay portions of the charms represent a corrupt form of Siamese rather than the older Indian origin Maxwell had previously suggested.
Summary
Maxwell’s article is primarily a philological and ethnographic document. He reproduces in full a small manuscript of twelve sheets (twenty-four pages) containing charms, medicinal recipes, and divinatory lore used by Malay elephant-drivers. The manuscript was given to him by Mat Jawi, Assistant Penghulu of Kuala Plus and grandson of the former Orang Kaya Sri Adika Raja, who identified it as a family heirloom of considerable age. Maxwell notes that the book begins without introduction and ends abruptly when the scribe ran out of paper, scratching out an unfinished charm and writing “tamat” (the end).
The manuscript itself is a composite of practical veterinary knowledge and ritual incantation. It covers treatments for a wide range of elephant ailments—swelling, fever, eye disease, loss of appetite, skin conditions, and behavioural problems such as refusal to swim or to enter a stable. Remedies draw on local botanicals (roots, leaves, barks), minerals (salt, lime, metals), and animal products, often administered by chewing with betel and nutmeg and spitting onto the animal, or by applying poultices. Interspersed among these are incantations in a non-Malay language that Maxwell identifies as a degraded form of Siamese, used for purposes such as driving away forest spirits, binding a wild elephant to a tame one, protecting the driver in the forest, and performing the “Raja Gajah” (King of Elephants) rite. The manuscript also contains a section on divining an elephant’s auspiciousness from physical features (tusk orientation, nail count, colour markings) and a classification of elephant “races” by height.
Maxwell’s historical framing draws on Gemelli Careri’s 1695 account of the Siamese elephant trade and on India Office records of ships arriving at Masulipatam from Tenasserim carrying large numbers of elephants between 1680 and 1684. He argues that the Siamese, whose own country was richly stocked with elephants, were unlikely to have sought them in the Peninsula at an early date; rather, the trade developed in response to demand from India and Burma for state and commercial elephants. Whether the Malays acquired these charms in the seventeenth century or earlier remains, in Maxwell’s view, a matter of conjecture.
Key Findings
- The manuscript consists of six sheets of stout paper sewn into a twelve-leaf, twenty-four-page booklet, with no internal dating; the scribe’s final line was scratched out for want of space, followed by the word “tamat” (p. 71).
- Gemelli Careri’s 1695 account (in Giro del Mondo, Vol. III, pp. 358–359) describes the Siamese carrying elephants overland from Malacca to Tenasserim, where merchants purchased them for transport by sea to “the dominions of Mahometan princes” (p. 72).
- India Office records at Masulipatam document elephant shipments from Tenasserim alone: 16 elephants (May 1680), 13 (April 1681), 15 + 15 + 11 + 6 + 4 (February–April 1682), 46 + 12 + 20 (March–April 1684) (pp. 72–73).
- The manuscript classifies elephant “races” by height: twelve hesta (Membang), six hesta (Dewa), five hesta (Indra, Bangsawan) (p. 79).
- Auspicious physical signs include: ears meeting in front, trunk reaching the ground, tusks near the ground showing five or three layers of nail, twenty nails, and the tail reaching the ground (p. 79).
- The non-Malay charms contain recurring formulae such as “sidikan guru” / “sitikan guru” and “batiya” / “batiya,” which Maxwell transcribes without emendation, noting that spelling variants are exact transliterations of the manuscript (p. 86).
Conclusion
Maxwell’s definitive takeaway is that the mantra gajah represent a hereditary body of practical and ritual knowledge transmitted within a specific Malay family (the Sri Adika Raja line) and that their non-Malay components are best understood as a late, corrupted borrowing from Siamese, most plausibly connected to the seventeenth-century elephant trade rather than to an earlier Indian origin.
Context
- The primary source is a single family manuscript from Kuala Plus, supplemented by Maxwell’s earlier translation of a related charm book (JSBRAS No. 45) and by secondary references to Gemelli Careri and India Office factory records (via Anderson, English Intercourse with Siam in the Seventeenth Century).
- The article contributes to the early historiography of the Siamese–Malay elephant trade and to the documentation of Malay veterinary and ritual practice, predating later scholarly treatments of Siamese influence on Malay culture.