Article

Superstitions

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Superstitions

The Malay Peninsula and the western coast of Borneo have long been documented as regions where a dense body of popular beliefs—encompassing dream interpretation, animal omens, spirit propitiation, and practical folk magic—persisted alongside, and often in tension with, orthodox Islamic practice. These beliefs, variously termed superstitions, folk-lore, or popular religion by colonial-era observers, were not a single coherent system but a layered composite of pre-Islamic animist traditions, Islamic theological reasoning, and local customary law that varied significantly from district to district. Their significance lies not merely in their cultural colour but in their practical governance of daily life: they regulated agricultural labour, fishing, marriage, travel, and the management of illness, and they provided a framework of explanation for events that orthodox doctrine left unaddressed. The scholarly record of these beliefs, spanning nearly five decades of publication in the Society’s journal, reveals a field of enquiry that shifted from broad ethnographic generalisation toward more precise, locally grounded documentation.

Scope and Historical Definition

The earliest sustained treatment of Malay popular belief in the Society’s literature is C. Otto Blagden’s 1896 paper, which argued that the religious practices of country Malays were “only superficially Muhammadan” in character [1, p. 1]. Blagden, a colonial magistrate in the Malacca district, contended that while rural Malays performed the five daily prayers, attended Friday mosque services, and observed the fast of Ramadhan, they simultaneously maintained a parallel system of beliefs and practices that he traced to a “heathen origin” [1, p. 1]. His paper builds on W. E. Maxwell’s earlier 1881 contribution, which had first articulated the “thoroughly non-Muhammadan character” of common Malay beliefs [1, p. 1].

Blagden’s central analytical category was the kramat—a holy place found in virtually every village, theoretically the grave of a saint or village founder, but in many cases a site of ancient nature-worship with no grave at all [1, pp. 1–2]. He documented specific examples in Malacca territory, including a kramat on Bukit Nyalas consisting of granite boulders overhanging a cliff, identified as the dwelling-place of a jin islam who presided over water and rain, and another consisting of a tree whose swelling trunk was believed to grow or shrink with the agricultural fortune of the district [1, pp. 2–3]. He noted that “hardly a village” in Malacca lacked two or three such sites in its immediate neighbourhood [1, pp. 1–2].

The taxonomy of spirits (hantu) formed another pillar of Blagden’s account. He distinguished between wild jungle spirits and “domesticated” familiar spirits attached to individuals or families [1, p. 5]. The institutional figure who mediated between these categories and the human community was the Pawang—a hereditary village functionary whom Blagden identified as the legitimate successor to the primitive “medicine-man” or “village sorcerer” [1, p. 5]. The Pawang’s authority extended across all agricultural operations, fishing, mineral prospecting, and cases of sickness, and he was entitled by custom to specific fees from each householder after a good harvest: five gantang of padi, one gantang of rice, and two chupaks of emping, and 7½ cents after treating a sick person [1, p. 6].

By 1928, the mode of documentation had shifted from analytical ethnography to descriptive compilation. Haji Abdul Majid, a Malay Muslim scholar who had performed the Hajj, published a numbered catalogue of fifty-five Malay folk beliefs and omens without extended analytical commentary [2, pp. 41–45]. The catalogue spans dream interpretation, animal omens, bodily sensations, marriage customs, spirit beliefs, and practical folk magic. Its value lies in recording a living body of popular belief as understood and articulated by a Malay Muslim informant of the period, blending pre-Islamic animist traditions with Islamic theological reasoning [2, pp. 41–45].

Economic and Ritual Dimensions

The pantang system—ordinances prescribed by the Pawang—occupied a distinctive position at the intersection of superstition and economic regulation. Blagden documented prohibitions on working in the rice-field on certain lunar days, the use of the sickle for cutting padi, and the practice of threshing by beating against a box, which he interpreted as preserving older agricultural forms against innovation [1, pp. 6–7]. More significantly, the pantang system prescribed a fixed customary price for padi sold within the village community, a practice Blagden interpreted as a relic of communal economic rights predating competitive market exchange [1, p. 7].

The earth-spirit propitiation ceremony at the village of Sebatu, observed by Blagden in October 1896, provides the most detailed ritual account in the record. The ceremony involved a wooden altar oriented to the cardinal points, the burial of a black goat’s skin and entrails with a large iron nail beneath the altar (the head oriented eastward), the sprinkling of tepong tawar, the throwing of ketupats across the field, and a man circling the altar while spitting rice into the ground in imitation of violent nausea [1, pp. 8–10]. The assembled villagers chanted the kalimah—the Muhammadan creed—three times during the ceremony, demonstrating what Blagden characterised as the syncretic layering of Islamic formulae over animistic ritual [1, pp. 9–10]. He noted the ceremony’s “curious analogies with the sacrificial ceremonies of some of the wild aboriginal tribes of Central India” and observed its persistence within twenty miles of Malacca, where Islam had been established for approximately six centuries [1, p. 11].

During epidemics, a further practice was documented: small elaborately constructed vessels were sent out to sea to carry off malignant spirits responsible for disease, a practice Blagden witnessed in the village of Sempang [1, p. 11].

Haji Abdul Majid’s 1928 catalogue extends the economic and practical dimensions considerably. Fishing superstitions include the rule that a man going out to fish with a cast-net should do so on an empty stomach, otherwise his catch will not be a big one [2, p. 42], and the prohibition against walking over one’s rod or line when fishing with rod and line, lest one catch no fish at all [2, p. 42]. The planting of coconut or plantain trees is governed by the practice of having as many children as possible hanging on to the planter’s back (berdukong) so that the tree will bear fruit in plenty (buah-nya berdukong-dukong) [2, p. 41]. The Pawang’s role in agricultural regulation documented by Blagden thus finds its popular counterpart in the detailed omens and prohibitions recorded by Abdul Majid.

Spirit Beliefs and Islamic Syncretism

The most striking feature of the documented corpus is the manner in which Islamic theological reasoning was embedded within, rather than displaced by, animist belief structures. Haji Abdul Majid’s catalogue contains several items in which the Quran is explicitly invoked to explain or constrain supernatural behaviour. The tiger, to respect the Quranic ruling that “no person shall die one second before or one second after his appointed time,” always finds out whether his or her appointed time is up before springing at a human prey, by looking at the person through a hole in the leaf of a species of tree with broad leaves; if the person’s time is up, he will be seen without a head [2, p. 43]. The reason a tiger seldom springs at a man from in front but always from behind is that on the forehead of every man is written the verse of the Holy Quran which declares the superiority of man to all other of God’s creatures [2, p. 43]. Sleeping on the right side invites the angels to sleep with one, while sleeping on the left side invites Satan [2, p. 43].

The langsoyor (also langsuir)—the ghost of a woman who has died at childbirth and is believed to wander about on moonlight nights, making her appearance to lonely travellers and tempting them with giggles and laughter—is said to have a hole in the back of her head, which, if filled up with her trailing hair, will turn her into a human being again; but the man who manages to do this must never leave an areca nut (pinang) between the kachip (the scissor-like contrivance used for splitting areca nut) lest she flies away again as a langsoyor [2, p. 42]. The langsoyor and other kindred spirits do not walk this earth with their feet touching the ground, but this can only be discovered by stooping down and looking at them from between one’s legs (chelah kangkang) [2, p. 43].

The concept of darah manis (sweet blood) illustrates the intersection of spirit belief and perceived physical vulnerability. A woman is said to be of sweet blood during the period of her first pregnancy, so much so that the tiger, yearning for such sweet blood, can smell her even from a distance of seven hills and seven valleys; not only the tiger but all wild beasts on land and in the water, as well as the polong and the pelesit (well-known evil spirits), are said to be very fond of the darah manis of a woman during her first pregnancy [2, p. 42].

Sacred tigers (kramat) occupy a further category: they will not molest nor allow other tigers to molest the people of the place they are supposed to protect unless and until someone commits an outrageous sin, such as incest, when they will show their wrath first by killing a cat, an animal believed to be the guru (master) of the tiger; if this warning is not heeded, the sacred tigers themselves will punish the people by preying on them and their livestock night and day until the guilty ones stop or are stopped in their misdeeds [2, pp. 44–45].

Blagden noted that more strictly Muhammadan Malays of Arab descent privately disapproved of kramat ceremonies and spirit propitiation, viewing them as “polytheistic idolatry,” but their influence in country districts was minimal and the practices were sustained by “immemorial custom” [1, p. 11].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on Malay superstitions and popular belief spans from 1896 to 1941, with the most substantial contributions concentrated in the first three decades of the twentieth century. The earliest phase, represented by Blagden’s 1896 paper, was characterised by broad ethnographic generalisation and a comparative framework that situated Malay practice within wider Southeast Asian and even Indian patterns [1, p. 11]. Blagden’s position as a colonial magistrate gave him direct access to rural villages and the authority to be called upon for disputes involving Pawang regalia and pantang transgressions [1, pp. 5–7].

The second phase, exemplified by Haji Abdul Majid’s 1928 catalogue, marks a shift toward indigenous authorship and descriptive precision. Abdul Majid, writing as a Malay Muslim with the title Haji, documented his own culture’s popular beliefs for a colonial-era academic readership without the analytical apparatus of the colonial ethnographer [2, pp. 41–45]. His article draws on no named archival collections; it is a first-person descriptive compilation, likely based on the author’s own knowledge and observation of Malay folk practice in the late 1920s. The absence of an introduction, analytical framework, or conclusion suggests that the catalogue was intended as a reference document rather than an argument.

A. Hale’s 1898 article on the Negri Sembilan, while primarily concerned with customary law and the origins of the Adat Perpatih code, provides important contextual evidence for the persistence of pre-Islamic institutions alongside Islamic governance [3]. His use of Malay proverbs (perbilangan) as evidence for successive stages in the formation of the state’s constitution demonstrates that folk-lore and legal custom were not separable domains in the Malay world [3, pp. 43–61]. The tension between Islamic law and adat that Hale documents in Rembow—where the state adopted Islamic inheritance and debt law after the late Sultan of Johor ridiculed their customs around 1880, yet retained exogamous marriage restrictions and a monogamy custom attributed to a tribal chief’s vow before migration—illuminates the same syncretic layering that Blagden observed in Malacca [3, p. 45].

The record also includes a brief 1900 note by W. Cameron on a Pulau Tiuman superstition, which reports the taxonomic identification of the Malay medicinal fungus known as Susu Rimau as Polyporus sacer, a very widely distributed fungus [4, p. 101]. This entry, while minimal, indicates that the category of “superstition” in the Society’s literature extended to the intersection of folk belief and natural history, where the medicinal properties of a fungus were embedded in a web of popular belief.

The 1941 article by Ishak bin Ahmad on Malay fishermen’s superstitions [5] represents the latest contribution in the record, suggesting continued scholarly interest in the topic into the 1940s, though the full text of this article is not available in the present archival set. The overall trajectory of the literature moves from the comparative, analytically driven ethnography of the 1890s toward the descriptive, locally grounded documentation of the 1920s and 1930s, with a persistent underlying concern: the relationship between Islamic orthodoxy and the deep structures of popular belief that persisted, in Blagden’s phrase, by “immemorial custom” [1, p. 11].

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. C.O. Blagden (1896). Notes on the folk-lore and popular religion of the Malays JSBRAS 29: 1–12.
  2. Abdul Majid bin Haji Zainuddin Haji (1928). Some Malay superstitions JMBRAS 6(4): 41–45. Read on JSTOR
  3. Hale A (1898). Folk-lore and the Menangkabau code in the Negri Sembilan JSBRAS 31: 43–61.
  4. W. Cameron (1900). A Pulau Tiuman superstition JSBRAS 34: 101.
  5. Ishak bin Ahmad (1941). Malay fishermen’s superstitions JMBRAS 19(1): 131–136.