note on the north and south points of the compass in Kedah and Trengganu
J.L. Humphreys’s note examines the origin of the Malay terms Kepala tidor (head-in-sleep) and Kaki tidor (feet-in-sleep) used for South and North in Kedah and Trengganu, and the local usage of the four ordinary Malay compass terms in Trengganu.
Summary
Humphreys rejects A.W. Hamilton’s 1922 explanation that the terms arose from the fixed East-West orientation of Siamese houses in Kedah, arguing that no such rigid orientation exists and that the terms are equally common in Trengganu, where there is no Siamese influence (p. 134). He instead proposes that the origin lies in the Islamic burial custom of placing a corpse with head to North and feet to South, and that the Malay sleeping position—head to South, feet to North—is a taboo-based avoidance of the corpse’s orientation, operating on the principle of homoeopathic magic as described by Frazer in The Golden Bough (pp. 134–135).
The note then turns to the practical usage of the standard Malay compass terms in Trengganu, showing that utara, selatan, timor, and barat carry regional rather than cardinal meanings: timor refers to Pahang and Johor, barat to Kelantan and Patani, and the terms mata-hari naik and mata-hari jatoh serve for East and West (p. 135).