Some Kelantan games and entertainments
A.H. Hill’s 1952 ethnographic survey, written from direct observation in post-war Kelantan, documents four principal forms of Malay recreation—bull-fighting, kite-flying, a board game, and the shadow play—arguing that the Kelantanese invest in their leisure pursuits with the same intensity they bring to agricultural labour. The article was received in August 1950, placing it in the immediate aftermath of the Sultan’s lifting of a pre-war ban on animal contests, and it draws heavily on informant interviews, personal attendance at events, and comparison with earlier colonial-era accounts by Brown, Clifford, and Swettenham.
Summary
Hill structures the article around four distinct entertainments, each treated with considerable linguistic and technical detail. The bull-fighting section is the longest and most empirically rich, cataloguing the taxonomy of bull colouration (kumbang, jebat, gedabu, sela, kubing, kijang, langsat, and mixed types), horn morphology (dogol, debek, chakar, molek, sodo’, kupit, kerutut, kerutok), and fighting techniques (tandok, ambil rusok, pulas, bembing, gonggong, tanggang). Hill records the full ritual of a match at the Kota Bharu amusement park, including the sympathetic magic practices once employed to weaken an opponent’s bull, and narrates a particularly dramatic contest between two molek-horned bulls, “Bingkai Badang” and “Langsat Mata,” in which the former lifted his opponent entirely off the ground.
The kite-flying section describes the construction and aerodynamics of the wau bulan and other types, noting that the largest kites stand ten feet high with an eight-foot wingspan and that strings may be paid out beyond 2,000 feet. Hill observes that the judge determines the winner by estimating string length and angle of inclination without any knowledge of trigonometry, yet his verdict is rarely contested. The Tiger Game (Main Rimau) is presented as a two-player board game unique to Kelantan, in which two tigers attempt to escape encirclement by twenty cattle pieces on a twenty-five-hole board.
The wayang kulit section situates the shadow play within the broader South and Southeast Asian tradition, distinguishing the wayang siam (based on the Ramayana) from the wayang jawa (based on the Mahabharata and Javanese mythology). Hill describes the construction of buffalo-hide puppets, the layout of the panggong stage, the role of the To’ Dalang, and the musical accompaniment, concluding with a note on the modern innovation of inserting coloured cellophane panels into the hide to produce a primitive form of colour projection.
Key Findings
- The Kota Bharu bull-fighting arena (bong) measures sixty yards square, enclosed by stout bamboo posts with the top horizontal rail approximately eight feet from the ground (p. 20).
- The Sultan of Kelantan made bull-fighting and all animal contests illegal before the war primarily to curb gambling; the ban was lifted in August 1950 at the suggestion of the Kelantan University Appeal Fund Committee (p. 20).
- The largest Kelantan kites stand ten feet high with an eight-foot wing span; the flying string, made of thin twine identical to that used for fishing nets, may be paid out to a distance exceeding 2,000 feet (pp. 27–28).
- The Tiger Game (Main Rimau) is played on a board of twenty-five holes with two rimau (tigers) against twenty lembu (cattle); the tigers begin in the two middle holes of the outermost rows on opposite sides, while the cattle are distributed four holes marked A at five per hole (p. 29).
- A fully equipped To’ Dalang possesses over one hundred puppets, including representations of houses, palaces, and trees; the panggong stage floor measures approximately twelve feet square and is raised five feet off the ground on open scaffolding (pp. 32–33).
- The wayang jawa tradition traces its Javanese heyday to the Hindu kingdom of Majapahit, which perished in 1475 A.D. with the advent of Islam (p. 32).
Conclusion
Hill’s definitive takeaway is that Kelantanese recreation is not a peripheral pastime but a culturally central institution, governed by its own elaborate lexicon, ritual protocols, and competitive structures that mirror the seriousness of agricultural and economic life. The article implicitly positions these practices as a coherent cultural system worthy of systematic documentation before modernization erodes them.
Context
- The article is grounded in Hill’s personal fieldwork in Kelantan, supplemented by comparison with earlier colonial-era publications (Brown 1928, Clifford 1896 and 1923, Swettenham 1912) and the scholarly work of Rentse, Braddell, and Winstedt on wayang kulit and Indian cultural influence in the region.
- The piece contributes to the MBRAS’s ongoing ethnographic record of Malay cultural practices in the immediate post-war period, a time when several traditional entertainments were in flux due to the recent lifting of the Sultan’s ban and the growing influence of cinema.